Corvettes and 55 piloting: A discussion.

Gathorn, I think you make some valid points about the turret problem. And I know quite a few people who target someone then throw up the auto-pilot for insta kills. If you think reducing accuracy of turrets and auto-pilot will help the survival smaller ships, then I’m all for it.

I know the importance of frigates in space battle, and I’m not really trying to discuss major vs major space combat. I’d rather stick to the problem that the payer base finds almost no reason to get involved in space combat. Currently, there are no benefits to space piracy, raids, ect. Essentially the dynamics of space battle for non-clans is camping space for a specific target, cargo, or scouting.

The one benefit the playerbase currently has is they can utilize corvettes as mini-bases with a relatively low piloting level. Kill that… and then what do non-pilot/smuggler mains get access to? This further adds to our problem; we need to encourage players to participate in space combat/activities, not make it more difficult.

Alas, I would be doing nothing for the conversation if I were only to point out the negatives and not provide a solution! Here are some ideas that we could do to help solve this problem:

– We could add more secure docking bays to encourage player pirating (disabling ships, docking, then stealing cargo or credits – something)
– Allow independent players to purchase large ships, without having to form a clan (this would be a HUGE boost to non-major conflicts)
– Provide easier ways to level pilot mains
– Provide additional gameplay to piloting (pilot simulators? maybe)
– Give players the ability to raid systems to cause some kind of negative impact on the planet economy. Maybe add NPC cargo ships, and disabling them and docking with them causes the player to gain credits/cargo? This could (with some immy guidance) encourage main clans to send out patrols around planets that were not heavy/large capitols. This then could put more emphasis on the smaller anti-starfighter capitol ships?
– We could even go as far as adding a perk for pilot mains to select that provides a 50-100% chance of escape podding through a blockade? if we increase the chance of not losing a pilot main, people would be less afraid of losing their pilot toons.

Those probably aren’t the most ideal way to go about this, but I think we do need to add/change some things to encourage player conflict in space.

Escape pods go directly through blockades. Only eject gets you killed. This was a cause of some rage for Ocerion last TL.

As far as leveling faster, the ability is there. People just don’t take advantage of it. Pirate-hunting is a huge source of piloting xp.

Space combat is very unforgiving which is why a lot of people are turned off by it. You generally only get one chance and if you screw up, you’re permed. Even if you survive, if you’re a clan pilot you’ve probably doomed your entire clan’s fleet which is going to lead to you, personally, being hated and your clan probably folding pretty fast. It’s also a much larger, more confusing fight than ground PK is and it can take a long time to learn. All of that adds up to an undesirable role on the MUD.

Back to the topic of corvettes: I like them. A lot. But food for thought, almost every character I’ve had owes his death to a corvette-sized ship. They attract attention and they tend to make you think you’re safer than you really are. An ISD is going to tear through any ship it opens up on, from a public shuttle to a corvette. The only difference is on a public shuttle, they don’t know who the pilot is.

Thats right.. Forgot about that.

I do agree with Gathorn on nerfing turrents. If we get that much, I’ll call this discussion a win. If that happens, I’m totally on board with putting Corvettes in their own category at about 90ish piloting. And someone somewhere said move transports up to medium. BAM! Fixed.

And nerfing autopilot should absolutely happen. How you’d go about that, I’m not even sure. Throw in a check maybe to see if someone is physically manning the ship? Or even better: autopilot can only use AUTOBLASTERS! To be honest, that is what I thought autoblasters were for…if the ship is attacked while its on autopilot. It may allow that skill we all wish we could use more (fakesignal) to bring the immortal heavy pilots down a notch.

Avanga, you mentioned pirate hunting as a source of piloting XP. That’s very true. However, whenever the IMMs decided to up the difficulty on the pirates, it pretty much made hunting them in anything smaller than a corvette suicide. And sometimes hunting them in a corvette was suicide still. I don’t have a solution. Just saying.

Piloting simulators were horrible. There are now datachips. Nuff said on that.

Veska: Your idea of raiding systems is something I tossed over to the IMMs to make crime or pirate clans more ANYTHING. I 110% love it.

And slightly off topic, but maybe make satellites be the only "ship" that can destroy those pesky pirates that raid systems. That would free up ships to actually make blockades, run system patrols, or even hide your secret fleet somewhere. Would also be a sign when shady things could go down in a system.

TL;DR: Nerf turrents, put corvettes in their own category around level 90, and move transports to medium. And nerf the hell out of autopilot.

I’ve done pirate-hunting in gunships and even when I was hardly paying attention and getting pummeled I was never in any real danger. You could probably pirate-hunt starfighters in a well-equipped freighter.

a well-equipped starfighter could down pirates with a little difficulty so long as you are within 1000 of a planet just in case things go south a la eject

My suggestion would be to implement a new skill entirely for the usage of corvettes and other potential heavy gunships like the CR90. Make medium spacecraft only applicable to freighters and other types of ‘civilian’ ships that are too big to be considered for small spacecraft. My view would be that space lanes would become more balanced, without everyone in the galaxy being able to cruise around in a heavily armed vessel etc

Just an fyi, CR90s aren’t "heavy gunships," they’re classed as corvettes.

I think we could add one more class for piloting at around level 90 called "assault spacecraft" which would include gunships, corvettes and frigates.

Gathorn, teach me to pilot!

^this

Don’t fix what isn’t broken is what most people play by… however I like quicksilvers idea of making the large/heavy ships available to single players… You can still RP that you employ ship staff etc. If it needs to be fixed make it large I guess, I mean in some instances corvettes are classed as capitals in canon.

My opinion:
lvl 55 piloting is too low to be allowed to fly corvettes, level 85-90 sounds good to me. gunships and lower are good as they are now.

Pirateship should stay the same, not being able to be used on gunships and higher. Canonly these ships will have some kind of crew, 1 smuggler can’t steal a crew. furthermore I sense it would bring about a lot of abuse, smugglers stealing gunships and covettes at random to shoot people down. Besides that, I realy don’t see any valid reason why one would steal such a ship.

Lastly, I am a total suporter that single players(not just clans) should be able to own Frigates, although there should be a max of 1 frigate per player. And if I can afford it, and fly it, why should I be denied a Frigate, that I can land on the surface to protect it? Anything bigger though, no.

Less talky more decision…er…y!