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Always glad to hear some constructive criticism. Player feedback drives most of the decisions I make here, so I’m wide open to suggestions.
But let’s be honest here, simply telling me to completely redesign a ship to “make it more unique” is pretty vague.
Maybe you could share which of these areas you think should be adjusted to make the AVG-IX less of a “Sphere knockoff”? (nevermind that the AVG predates the Sphere by about a decade…)
Turning Warp:
Cruising Warp:
Emergency Warp:
Warp Energy:
Warp Energy (w/ xtals):
Impulse Energy:
Transwarp?:
Tracking?:
Warp cost:
Hull pct:
Shields:
Cloak sec:
Cloak pwr:
Cloak rgn:
Visibility:
Scan Range:
Phaser type:
Phaser power:
Phaser recharge:
Phaser range:
Torpedo type:
Torpedo tubes:
Torpedo regen:
Torpedo min range:
Torpedo max range:
Torpedo quantity:
Variable sp drones?:
Drone power:
Drone regen:
Drone quantity:
Mine power:
Mine regen:
Mine quantity:
Gold earning rate:
Anything else:So let’s start with that. And in the meantime, maybe another player could weigh in on the discussion. (Mike? Pete? pleeeease…) This whole thing seems awfully familiar. Only, last time it was Harold. The difference was, he said (rather vaguely) that it was too Larson/Galor-like and that it should be Feared, so I redesigned it… But according to the logs, I’m pretty sure he hasn’t flown it at all since the redesign. Go figure.
Thanks for the feedback, Pete! I’ve spent at least an hour in each of the ships you mentioned, and I pretty much agree with your assessments 100%.
The Defiant, ACR-45, and the D7 are all perhaps “weak-ish” in their own ways, and that’s by design. As you say, not every ship has to be “easy”. We might get a little spoiled in ships with regen weapons, large torp-spreads, and get-out-of-jail-free cards like xwarp… I’d say those three ships in particular really just depend on a player’s preference and play style. I think I could get any one of them up pretty high on the scoreboard, for whatever that’s worth…
I feel pretty good about where the Excel and the Keldon are. I had a lot of fun flying both, but a second opinion would certainly be welcome.
My sarcasm/troll detector is pinging a little bit here, but for argument’s sake, let’s take a look at the AVG.
It just doesn’t seem like a borg ship… It seems like it’s just a sphere knockoff.
Technically, the Sphere is a spinoff of the AVG-IX…
A brief History of the Borg in MTrek:
In the mid-1990s Chuck created the “borg” object to combat the global chat spam, and give players a reason to fight, rather than treat the game like a Star-Trek themed chat room. It was an object (basically a planet) that constantly intercepted the last message received and would shoot Warheads (Think Planet Megadon in Gamma) at any ship in range. It also served well to remove campers and base-sitters. The only effective way to damage or kill it was with ship detonations. It was somewhat useful, but widely-regarded as annoying.
Fast-forward to Jay/Joe’s JavaTrek in the early-2000s, a very similar “borg” was introduced. Instead of being a planetary-type object, it was a DY-600 Robot ship retrofitted with borg-like characteristics
In 2004 or 2005, I approached Jay with the idea for a Borg as one of the “upgrade” ships. Similar to the Valdore or Vor’Cha, a player could fly a ship to Tech Planet in Delta Quad and exchange his vessel for a Borg AVG IX. The design principle of the ship, was that it was constructed using technology from other ships that had been assimilated into The Collective. In practice, we simply took the specs from 9 of the existing ship classes and averaged them (hence the name). Unfortunately for Borg-lovers across the galaxy, the ship ended up being very weak; the weapons didn’t regenerate and it was not capable of transwarp. It (codenamed “Norm) would later serve as the foundation for today’s Borg Sphere.
And so it remained. A somewhat useless ship that was very unpopular. Partly due to the fact that traveling to Delta through a Spatial Anomaly was a pain, but mostly because the ship sort of sucked. Its only real value was as a novelty. A couple of players used them simply because they were there and several players became outraged after “upgrading” a high-score ship to an AVG and then later realizing it was actually more of a downgrade.
In the early days of XmlTrek, before I launched mtrek.com even, I was a regular player there an I pestered Robert (xmltrek admin) to re-instate the ship upgrades for Valdore, Vor’Cha, Galaxy, and AVG IX. I also talked to him about enabling the AI-controlled Borg bots; I may have even suggested to him that the DY-600 borg was cool, but the AVG might be more appropriate given that it was an actual Borg. My recollections of those conversations from 5 years ago is a little fuzzy, but that’s pretty much how it went down. Robert activated the borg bots, changed the name to (cringe) “OMG! A Borg Cube”, and switched the base class from DY to AVG IX. If you fly to Delta via Spatial Anomaly in xmltrek and upgrade to an AVG IX, you’ll find yourself piloting the exact same lackluster “Norm” from the mid-2000s.
In the buildup mtrek.com, I took a different approach to the AVG. I had long felt that the AVG was falling short of its potential, and as admin here, I was finally in a position to do something about it. First I added the xwarp, I then figured out how to make the photons and other weapons regenerate, and finally I reduced the warp cost and eliminated the need for xtals. This essentially new ship was interesting and dynamic. It was powerful enough to kill other ships and survivable enough to hang on to gold for a very long time. Basically, it was everything the “Norm” wasn’t. So to honor its new identity, I gave it a new name: The Borg Sphere
With 6.0, I wanted to offer players a wide selection of ships, grouped by the core mtrek ships, jtrek ships, classic pre-1995 ships, and recent mtrek.com originals. This presented me with a choice. Should I lump the Sphere in with the jtrek ships, or celebrate its new identity alongside the mtrek.com originals? It wouldn’t have been accurate to call it “Sphere” as a jtrek ship, and as an mtrek original, it left me with the anemic old AVG IX filling out the list of jtrek ships. I very much wanted to include the AVG, which meant making it strong enough to be playable in today’s game, but I wanted it to be different enough from the Sphere to justify both ships’ existence. So in the AVG-IX’s design, (note the hyphen) I basically put it on steroids, hoping it would retain some of its “II-Aish” feel, and become more borg-like with some region capability. This gives us the nimble xwarping Sphere and the grittier heavy-hitting AVG. Both ships are descended from “Norm”, but neither is as weak or boring to fly.
Notice the “hours played” on each scoreboard
The current scoreboard with only ships launched in the past 90 days
A few queries I used when I was developing version 4.0; again filtered to only show post-6.0 ships
Totals stats of every ship class, only showing post-6.0 ships
All 3 of those links have filters to only show only recently-launched ships. So Spheres launched pre-beta and flown since then aren’t factored in… but on the other hand, it isn’t quite fair to compare usage, popularity, and survivability between the Sphere/AVG when the AVG hasn’t even been available to play for most of the past year. Also, the sample size is small since only ships launched in the past month or so are being counted. (or 90 days on the hotlist) Take all of that for what it’s worth.
Personally, I think the AVG is performing quite well.
The AVG gains a torp once every 6 seconds and has to save cloak for emergency’s like br-1k’s and br-2k’s. So you’re basically flying around torpless and afraid to cloak.
Nothing stopping you from buying torps on occasion, and 50 seconds of cloak is probably more than it needs, tbh. In terms of strategy, think of it as a sort of II-A.. except more robust. I’ve found it quite easy to keep alive and more than capable of killing every bot I targeted in the hour I played it. In fact, using the AVG-IX, I placed in the Top 10″ for 5 of the categories listed on the stats page:
- #10 for DmgGiven/Second (1-9 occupied by a D-10 and 8 JHs)
- #4 for GoldEarned/Second (behind a DY, an ACR, and a JH)
- #1 for DmgGiven/Conflict (leading the #2 ship by more than 1,000)
- #1 for GoldEarned/Conflict (with 1,153 per cfl – I wasn’t being particularly selective of my targets.)
- #6 for DmgRcvd/Conflict (This is a “Hall of Shame” listing, but it really speaks to the fact that I survived having 100+ damage and likely wouldn’t have survived, had I been flying a less durable class)
[update] I just noticed that after 20+ conflicts, Pete’s AVG-IX is #2 in the game for DmgGiven/DmgReceived ratio… How is this thing not good enough?
The borg cube is supposed to be AWESOME…
1: The Borg AVG-IX is not a Cube
2: The AVG-IX is awesomeI would ask you to reconsider your position on the AVG. Are you asking me to fix an under-powered, unbalanced ship, or are you really asking for some supercharged uber-ship? (which would detract from the game’s balance)
To be perfectly honest, after flying the AVG for an hour in its current state, I’m actually considering the possibility that it’s overpowered. It was a blast to fly and I could see it quickly becoming a top-tier ship if the other players catch on…
The Valdore is a heavy ship; I would say it’s similar to a KEV-12 or a CV-97…
In choosing to fly a CL-13 vs a Valdore, I think it’s a trade-off between lethality and survivability. The CL remains one of the top-tier “survivors”, while the Valdore offers a deal more firepower. I think I’d have a tough time grinding the Valdore to the top without constantly keeping my back to a starbase. It can become overwhelmed quickly in busy areas like DV.
Bots are dumb and fall for a lot of cloaking tricks, so it’s a little hard to say which is “better” because player goals and styles vary widely.
Just to clarify, are you calling for a Valdore nerf, a Gorn buff, or some combination of both?
The code tags seem to work, but an error in our site seems to be using white-on-white text. If you highlight the below, you’ll see what I mean.
I really don’t want nasty scripts running on this site and security comes first, but fixing this:
(1\014PPPPPp (2\033\0240uTt\033\0241\033t…is on my to-do list.
And then what if BR-5s were capable of traveling at warp 21 and will automatically stop/dock at any starbase?
But instead of docking on sbs, they would explode on ships- oh and we called them unlocked freighter torps instead.
So… Hypothetically speaking of course, during a battle, your enemy torps you, runs out of torps because your 25/35 shield hull, and then docks at sb4 to load up. Let’s say at the same time, you stop at oh, I dunno, 4,412 distance away from sb4 and intercept.
Depending on the target’s hull, it will receive possibly 100, maybe more damage in the amount of time it would take them to load 50 of its own torps. Meanwhile, you’re sitting still, recovering shields, and healing damage with all but 10 of your energy.
In a real fight, most players wouldn’t sit still for that and would probably move on to some other base – leaving you clear to heal/reload without xwarping.
4,412 isn’t the only distance the freighter tag works, but it’s at the longer end of the scale, and it’s easy to remember. If you want to save yourself some math, grab some scratch paper and fire torps off into space. Watch the distance updates for each tick. You can use that to make a list of distances between 1000 and 4,500 for reference.
Using the torps like this shouldn’t be your primary DY-600 strategy, but if you always have it in the back of your mind, you’ll find plenty of stationary targets to plink at. Over time, you’ll become proficient at stopping on a dime and remember the distances where the torps will hit.
Yes. And can you explain why that makes a difference? Spawning/starting from a random location vs starting docked (0 distance), moving away-then-approaching at the same speed?
I have a feeling you already know, but when you make the connection here you’ll see how the next step is pummeling your opponents with freighter torps at greater-than-1000 distance.
Well, starting at a random point in space and traveling towards sb6 at warp 16, if you manage to stop as close as possible, there’s about a 4% chance of falling out of warp within a dockable distance -or a 1/25 chance. That’s why most players step down their speed in increments like 16-14-6-3-0
Since we’re comparing this with the freighter torp, which travels at warp 21 and has a smaller detonation radius than even the docking/orbiting range, you might only hit with 1 or 2 out of your entire 200 torp load. There is very little benefit in chucking them unless you know they’re going to hit. So how can you “know” when they’re capable of hitting? Even more importantly, how can you make it so?
Take another look at your br5/sb6 exercise. This time, run it in reverse:
- Start out docked on sb6
- Using only warp 16 and warp 0, move away from the base at warp 16 and then stop a few seconds later
- Now move back towards the base and try to stop at zero distance without stepping-down your speed
I’m willing to bet that by doing this, you can land on the base 50% of the time or better. With practice and timing, you should be hitting it almost every time. Can you tell me why this is true?
Not really. I’m talking about going warp 16 and then abruptly stopping at 0-1 distance from a sb. If you can figure out how to do that, you can figure out how to use unlocked freighter torps.
Alright. Let’s use orbiting/docking as an example, because it has a similar effect radius of 1-2 distance maximum for your ship to be “orbitable/dockable”.
In a br5, you can’t drop from warp 16 to warp 0 next to a planet and reasonably expect to be within “orbitable” range. You have to increment down to slower speeds so that when you stop, you are 0-1 units away.
…or is there a way to stop zero distance from the target planet, using only warp 16 and warp 0, stopping with a single keystroke in the span of one game tick?
Once you can answer “yes” to the above question, it is an easy translation into making those freighter torps connect. Sorry I’m being so cryptic about this, but figuring out the “why” first will help you gain an understanding of the fundamental mechanics of the game.
I’m practically giving you the answer here, but do this exercise, and you’ll be freighter tagging in no time:
- Make a new br5.
- Dock at starbase 6
Rules:
- It has to be a new br5 spawning from Orion
- You can only use warp 16 and warp 0 within scan range of sb6
- You can break the first 2 rules, but if you do, you have to quit and start over
- You can quit and start over as often as you like
Once you learn how to use the freighter torps, you’ll find that chucking them like plasma is indeed one of the core parts of an effective DY strategy. In fact, it can be downright nasty against an opponent unfamiliar with the practice. But… It still won’t change the fact that it’s mostly a defensive ship, though you can earn a lot of points and control areas of space with the “freighter tag”.
Hint: As you mentioned, the 1-unit detonation radius is a key factor in making the freighter tag work.
“Did you test it with pvp?”
Nope. And I think I see where you’re going with this, so let me stop you right there… Over the decades, I have flown DYs successfully enough times, and even put them on the high scoreboards in a pure PvP game. I have a pretty good idea how it handles, and I realize that a lot of PvP fights are going to be one-sided.
The DY-600 never has been, nor will it be, a PvP slayer. That’s just the personality of it. You’re trading lethality for survivability. The DY, even back before there were bots, has always been a slow-grind. You fly it with an eye for the long game. You’re going to absorb a lot of torps and spend a lot of time xwarping- often without dealing any damage at all. The trade off, is that you can keep the DY alive almost indefinitely with a tiny bit of patience and self-control. Over time, you’ll deal damage, get kills, and earn gold.
The DY isn’t well-suited for an instant gratification play style. If your idea of fun is to start a new ship each time you log in, and jump straight into battle for some fast action, (nothing wrong with that) the DY probably isn’t for you. It requires a slower, more strategic kind of play. It is a much more rewarding ship for players who like to build up big-gold ships over weeks or months. You have to capitalize on opportunities to vulture injured ships and wait for your enemies to get lulled into making mistakes.
At near-zero range, the DY can absolutely melt almost any ship in the game (especially with the new upgraded freighter torps and fast-recharge phasers). The xwarp isn’t particularly useful for direct offense, but if you’re mindful of what’s going on in the quadrant, you can use “xwarp braking” and pop in on battling enemies.
The DY-600 still presents a very viable option for gameplay, which is at the heart of making ship balance work. I think it would be incorrect to say that it “needs” a cloak simply because it doesn’t go well with an aggressive strategy.
