lol I get it man. We’ve been going in circles with this for a while. I was j/k about the sphere/rwar, but seriously, take a moment to consider:
It isn’t illogical or wrong for other players to want to play the game differently from the way you play. Not everyone has the same strategies, the same goals, or the same skills. So I should hope that it’s conceivable to you, that another player’s experience in a particular class might be wholly different from your own.
For example, you’ve been pretty vocal against the AVG-IX, and you’ve made it clear enough that you don’t care for it. That’s perfectly fine. On the other hand, Pete has logged 11+ hours and earned nearly 75K over the past week or so in an AVG. I can’t speak for him, but he did call it a “great ship” a few posts back. Is he wrong? Are you? Is anyone?
Your generalization of the WB vs RWAR vs KPB vs D7 vs D-11 vs KEV vs Vorcha- is basically the same discussion as the Borgs all over again. I don’t feel like spelling out the individual merits of each class right now, but suffice it to say, there are merits to every one of those ships. And even though you can’t see a reason why anyone would fly X instead of Y, someone else might.
Not everyone would agree with me on this (you obviously don’t), but I think it’s fantastic that there are so many ships, and I actually like that some of them offer only subtle variations across a spectrum of ship-designs. (WB/RWAR – Br5/Br6 – BR1K/BR2K – KEV/D7/D-11/Vorcha). I think it’s really cool that ships of the same species share some of the same archetypes. The variants, to me at least, give the ships slightly different personalities, but a Klingon still feels like a Klingon, an Orion still feels like an Orion, and a Rommie still feels like a Rommie… I also think it’s neat that different species offer their own versions of similar ships to fill certain “roles” in the game (KEV/Galaxy – Larson/Galor – RBOP/GBOP – Valdore/V’Shar).
Quit trying to rule out which ship is “obsolete” or “inferior” simply because there’s another like it, or because it’s an older design… If nothing else, look at it like buying cars, and you can afford as many cars as you like. Maybe the Federation is Ford, the Klingons are Dodge, and the Romulans are Chevy. Chevy doesn’t need to redesign the Camaro into a pickup truck because you’d rather drive a Mustang, any more than Ford needs to discontinue the Mustang because they built a pickup truck with a Ford V8 engine. If you own a construction business, don’t complain that you can’t fit enough lumber into a compact car. Instead, buy a truck and let the accountant guy enjoy decent gas mileage on his way to work. Maybe on the weekend, you could cruise around in a 1972 Gorn Firebird.
Build your fleet to suit your style. Maybe you have a thing for Rommies. Or maybe you like fast ships, but you’re crap without a cloak. If you don’t care about DamageGiven/DamageReceived-Ratio and Gold doesn’t particularly interest you, maybe you should stick to the easier RWAR, while somebody else flies the slightly more powerful, but also more challenging Warbird- and cashes in on the 20% more gold that it earns.
It doesn’t have to make sense. Otherwise, the game would have only a single perfect ship class. “Good morning, Captain! Welcome aboard the USS Ship, a Ship class Starship!”
Please let me know if I’m completely missing the mark here, but my focus on ship balance really boils down to answering a few questions about each ship:
- Is this ship playable? (Could an average-skill player have a reasonable chance at achieving a typical goal for this specific ship)
- Could someone be entertained by playing this ship? (NOT necessarily “Are you entertained”. Maybe you can’t hit squat with plasma or maybe you can’t control a ship faster than warp 14. If someone else can, the answer might still be yes)
- Are the other classes still worthwhile to fly? (A litmus test to see if the ship is “OP”. Is this class just so incredible, that it would be painfully difficult or even impossible to achieve similar results in a different class?)
- Are there any other ships that can operate in the game without getting completely wrecked by this one? (assuming both pilots are of a similar skill level)
Ideally, the answer should be “yes” to all of those questions, and then it’s just fine tuning from there.