6.2.0 revision thoughts (VSHAR, BR2K, AVG-IX)

I’ve tested all 3 of these ships pretty extensively since the 6.2.0 update. Here are my initial thoughts:

• VSHAR

Before 6.2, the Vulcan V’Shar was already a quite capable ship. Identity-wise, it was somewhat overshadowed by the Romulan Valdore though. They’re both cloaking warp 11 ships with plasma and mines, with the Valodre being more powerful and capable of regenerating itself to full power, while the V’Shar has a lighter, almost “CL-13” kind of feel.

Both ships can take a beating, and both can bring down an opponent easily if the target hasn’t been careful to conserve power. By comparison, the biggest drawback to the V’Shar vs it’s close relative te Valdore, is that the V’Shar will need to resupply between fights. All things being equal, the Valdore had more to offer.

Now as I said, the V’Shar was already very capable; it just didn’t offer much that the Valdore couldn’t already do. So while giving the V’Shar a Tracking Transwarp (as Squirel half-jokingly suggested) was mostly unnecessary, it does give the little Vulcan a personality all its own. There is a tactical improvement, in that you can twarp onto a target, possibly catching him off guard. There’s also a huge benefit in terms of survivability, since you can twarp to safety of you find yourself in trouble.

Thoughts on the VSHAR:

All in all, the V’Shar has stepped out of the shadow of its big brother, the Valdore, and it has now become a much more entertaining ship to fly than it was previously. I say, this part of the 6.2 update was a success.

• BR-2000

The BR-2000 has seen very little use as long as it’s been in the game (it was added to Jtrek in the early 00s). And strangely, it has been unpopular throughout the years- in spite of being clearly superior to its sister class, the classic BR-1000.

As was the case with the V’Shar, the BR-2000 was already a very capable ship when Version 6 went live on mtrek.com a few months ago. I tested it a lot in the Beta period, and I’ve messed around with it some since. It is a perfectly fine ship without the cloak. A so-minded player could fly this class, and will find that the easy torp range combined with the lucrative gold-earning rate, will provide plenty of fun.

Standing alone, it’s a great ship without cloak and I wouldn’t feel handicapped by flying it. But as soon as you start comparing it to other ships with similar top speeds, those other options begin to look much more attractive. The II-A & CON-II for example, offer the same warp 14 cruising speed, but with much more powerful torpedos, only a slight reduction in weapons range, and cloaking devices to boot. Ships like the Larson and Galor are a little slower and have a shorter torp range, but more than make up difference with raw firepower. It’s no surprise then, that the BR-2000 has not been a top pick amongst players; we all want to “win” and even a slight advantage can make all the difference.

Because of the nature of the robots’ programming, any ship with a cloak stands a much better chance of killing them. It really comes down to the fact that bots lack the intuition of what to do when an enemy ship is cloaked. A bot will prove more difficult to kill, and the non-cloaking ship will be costlier to operate by virtue of taking my more damage with every conflict.

The slaughter of bots has become central to the game for players wishing to climb the scoreboards. If there’s an easier route to accomplishing this, most players will take it. When you throw even a short, slow-to-recharge cloak on the BR-2000, it instantly becomes very adept at killing robots. It still has less power/less durability than the other warp 14 cloakers, but it obviously retains its usefulness at harassing a slow ship from long range, and it can still rake in the cash when it docks at a SB.

So there’s my reasoning in favor of keeping the cloak option for the BR2K. But I also feel that the cloak might be just a hair too good for this already-decent ship class. In 45 seconds, you can drop all 4 of its mines on a slower target. Or you can load a full load of torps at a torp-supply. The very super-slow cloak recharge helps mitigate this, but not enough.

My thoughts for the BR-2000:

We should reduce the cloaking time to about 25 seconds, max. In the current 45 seconds, it is possible to travel more than 16,000 distance while cloaked. It seems reasonable to only allow about 1/2 of that distance under cloak, and a max of two consecutive cloak-mines or half a load of torps. That, and keep the slow-regen as it is.

(I haven’t run the BR-1000 through its paces yet, but I suspect we will see similar results… though maybe to a lesser extent because the “1K” has a slower rate of fire, only 2 mines, and a softer hull.)

• AVG-IX

I think we can all agree that the AVG-IX emerged from the 6.0 lineup at the Best all-around ship. It looks great on paper and it performs exceptionally well in practice. It is an absolute blast to fly, and it is very suitable for both seasoned- and newer players alike. Statistically, it has outperformed every other ship class in the game by a wide margin.

So with 6.2, rather than sacrifice the usefulness, versatility, or survivability of the ship, all of which lend towards making the AVG fun– I took the advice of one of most AVG-savvy players, and cut back on the “financial” benefits of the class. Specifically, I cut its raw damage gold earnings in half.

Having flown the AVG extensively myself- both before and after 6.2, I feel like this was absolutely the right way to go with this nerf. No need to change macros, adjust strategies (significantly at least, bc we did slow down the torp regen just a hair too) etc… We only have to accept that the Gold will fill our hulls at a considerably lower pace now.

I think in the long run however, that the gold-hit might have been slightly too hard. The slower torp regen requires players to play just a little more conservatively now, which on its own will affect the AVG’s overall earnings. Bringing in a mere 150-180 gold for detonating a gold-less ship, somehow makes the kill less satisfying. I found myself not even wanting to fly the ship unless there was an easy gold-carrying bot or two to pick off.

Thoughts on the AVG-IX nerf:

The torp-regen reduction was spot-on, but the gold cut was too heavy. I think we should split the difference and go with about a 70-75% of “standard” earning rate, so that we can at least get 200 gold for a full detonation kill.