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*bump*
Compiled all the patch notes so far into the 1st post.
Our latest patch included the addition of an xwarp (a la DY-600) to the Classic CON-II. (Not the II-A) Something was needed because it was basically a free kill for a few kinds of ships, and being cloakless, it was utterly defenseless after firing torps. The ultra-low power and high warp cost virtually guaranteed your death in certain situations. Incidentally, the low power means it will be difficult, but not impossible to use the xwarp offensively. Also the pilot must make the judgement call to use xwarp pretty quickly because the xwarp’s 30 warp energy requirement will leave you sitting if you take a few big hits. After playing around with one for a while in the new configuration, it feels much more balanced, and is actually pretty entertaining to fly!
Hi Squirel
Thanks for the review. I will definitely put these thoughts through the grinder after I’ve logged some more testing hours myself.
I think the WB vs RWAR thing will basically boil down to personal preference. The RWAR is more forgiving and has more torps to tough it out in an extended conflict, while the WB is a little more lethal and earns gold a bit faster. I think both have merits and either one is worthy of flying. I can’t really expect balance to get much better than that.
I’ll agree that CV is a tough little ship. I think I’d put it on par with our other slow heavy-hitters like the KEV, Galaxy, Valdore etc. I’m not sure that it’s even “overpowered”, but I would definitely feel more comfortable flying it around than I would the “original” CV-97.
I tend to agree with the rest of your assesments, but I will add that the D’Kora might be a little too strong. I will run it through its paces first to be sure.
CROSS-POSTED
6.0.2 (Beta) Update: 21 Feb
After quite a lot of testing and reading your feedback, I’ve made some ship balance adjustments. Most were very slight tweaks, but here are some of the more noticeable ones:
- Reduced KEV-12 and KBOP cloak duration to original levels. (50 seconds and 60 seconds, respectively)
- Added an oblit tube to KBOP. (From 1 tube to 2)
- Bumped DY-600’s warp cost back to original. (From 1 to 2)
- VSHAR warp/impulse energy reduction/lowered cloak cost.
- EXCEL hull adjustment. (45 to 40) Torp capacity up to 66
- ACR-45 energy tweak, removed drones, bumped mines to 12.
- CDA-180 +10 torps. (70 to 80)
- RWAR hull adjustment. (45 to 50)
- Larson +8 torps. (48 to 56)
I’ve also bumped the bots up from 17 to 20, and reduced their respawn interval from every 13 seconds to every 60 seconds.
This week, I’ll concentrate a little more on the middle-speed classes in my testing, and perhaps get through the warp 14 ships. There will likely be another balance patch next weekend, which will hopefully dial-in most of the remaining ships, and i’ll have a look at the results of this weekend’s patch to see if anything else is needed.
obit
sigh.. the bug that’s haunted the game for more than a decade.
I’ve restarted it. Thanks for the heads-up!
It is possible to change the RoF for torps… but in this case I’m not sure that’ll necessarily be warranted. Besides, varying the number of tubes provides plenty of adjustment with the damage level increasing in 100-per-second increments for each additional tube.
The KBOP seems pretty ok in most regards and in the hour or so I’ve played it in the beta, I’ve found it to be a surprisingly capable ship against a variety of other classes. I’ve added it to the list in the original post and will absolutely take a look at the KBOP on an individual level and how it fits into the “big picture” of the game too.
I think that’s the KBOP’s authentic personality shining through. I considered giving the KBOP a second tube, but ultimately left it the way it was because it is still very capable of accumulating score and surviving for a long time if played deliberately.
Nothing’s “off the table” though, so I’ll add it to the balance list in the original post.
Thanks a lot for the Galaxy inputs. I think you’ve confirmed that the Galaxy might just be a little tougher in this version, and that it’s not entirely imagined on my part.
I’ve been playing around with the Ursus cluster in an attempt expand the battlefield for base-sitting types of classes… but I’m not entirely sure that’s the route I want to take with this. It feels a bit like killing a fly with a hammer. For starters, the quadrant (even with more bots) felt somewhat empty because the bots now seem to spend a lot more time in open space while patrolling, and once more than one bot ends up needing supplies near Ursus, they scare each other and get stuck in a loop of fleeing, heading in for supplies, seeing the other bot, and fleeing again- this with several bots at the same time. I’ve seen this behavior before, and it kind of breaks the immersion for me…
I’ll leave Ursus there for just a little while, but honestly the Galaxy (and similar ships) balance issues might be better dealt with on an individual-ship-basis, rather than a massive geographical alteration.
At this point, I’d rather not include Delta. Part of the reason Delta was dropped, is to have a higher concentration of players in one zone, as opposed to having us divided among essentially, two servers (3 if you count xmltrek.com). But another, more overarching reason, was to shift gameplay towards a slightly slower- but more tactical type of gameplay. Since the 100-gold cap was removed from the bots, as will be the case in 6.0, gold earning and score advancement will still be considerably faster, compared to the first 9 months of version 5.x.
Another factor, is that I started of the beta with a somewhat conservative number of bots (13) to give everyone a chance to find their bearings with the new setup. I don’t intend for players to sit twiddling their thumbs for 10 minutes between every fight, but I also don’t want anyone to become frustrated because they are frequently being overwhelmed by waves of bots. Delta, which played very similarly to mtrek.pro, had a very fast gameplay which centered around clusters of supply planets. The environment was well-suited for some ship classes and play styles, but others were left out. I suppose the advantage of the classic quadrant layout, coupled with the distribution of the bots, is that players can vary their own “intensity” levels by patrolling different areas of the game. For example, the “strip” (Vulcan & SB 3/4/5) will almost always have some bots to shoot at, as will Delta Vega / Deneva. In Gamma quadrant, the planet cluster a, t, and b- along with praxis/sb28 are good places to hunt.
Another feature re-introduced for 6.0, is the ability to “summon” bots for a fight, provided they are in the same quadrant and full power. To do so, simply send the bot a message with the word “no” in it. If he’s up for it, he’ll reply back that you’re about to suffer some horrible fate, and soon enough he’ll be in your area looking for you. It isn’t 100% guaranteed to get you a fight because, for example, the bot might get attacked on the way to find you.. but I think you get the idea.
And at the end of the day, if the bot population is still too small, I can always increase the number from 13.
Pete, when you read this, hats-off to you, buddy. The Galaxy is a challenging ship to keep alive!
I’ve set out to spend at least an hour in each class for the Beta, running down the list (from slowest to fastest) and right now I’m working on the Keldon. I’ve spent an hour each, in the KEV, the KBOP, and in the Galaxy.
The Galaxy’s new (slow) regen torps saved me a couple of times and the long cloak allowed me to sit and wait for a bot to leave (who could have easily killed me, had it been human) at least twice. My impatient “kill it with fire now” play-style doesn’t always mesh well with the warp 10 ships, and of the three I’ve completed the hour in so far, the Galaxy is the hardest to keep alive. It seems to be an absolute necessity to set up shop somewhere near a supply of mines and torps. Crystals are somewhat of an afterthought, but I found the Delta Vega area to be a great zone for killing bots, and as long as I’m conservative, I think I could maintain a presence there almost indefinitely. DV has the black hole nearby and sb1 isn’t too far away to be used as an escape route. As an added bonus, the asteroid field can be used to bring down the warp 14 bots, which otherwise seem nearly impossible to hit with more than a single torp volley when I decloak on them. Now I wouldn’t say it is underpowered by any means, but given the choice between the Beta Galaxy and the Beta KEV, I would probably lean slightly towards the KEV. Overall, I think the Beta Galaxy is just about right, but I’d definitely like to hear PZ’s take on it, since he’s logged more hours in the Galaxy than practically anyone else.
The Beta KEV-12 now, is a beast. The cheap cloak is a pretty even trade-off with the Galaxy’s cheap warp cost, and the fast-regen oblits serve it well. I found I could chew through opponent after opponent, (bots of course) without having to spend too much time running and healing… which is good since the KEV was, and still is- not the best ship for running away. The extra 25 seconds of cloak made a world of difference and I felt pretty fearless covering distances in open space that would have been much riskier before, such as a trip to Vulcan. I’m not entirely sure whether the ship feels “overpowered” now, or if was simply enjoying it a lot more than I did the original KEV. Perhaps it’s both. But I wouldn’t say it’s far-off, and it certainly doesn’t seem like it would be game-breaking to leave it as-is. A nice thing about powerful SLOW ships, is that if you’re flying something fast, you can normally just walk away from it if need be. The real test would be trying to kill it in a faster ship like the II-A or CDA-120, which have traditionally been able to pose a real threat to the KEV.
The KBOP is nice to fly too (for a slow boat) and I think I would possibly endure the warp 10 and low lethality of it long enough to get it on the scoreboards. It stayed alive easily enough, but with a single tube, I found it somewhat annoying not being able to kill most of my targets. I was often subjecting myself to unnecessary damage, just for an opportunity to do more damage with my phasers and to get in a few extra torps. Since I was practically always getting damage with it, I only bothered to get xtals one time with it and afterwards I just didn’t bother because it felt like a waste of time and gold. That said, this is another one that would probably do well near DV and unless I got swarmed, or a human interfered, I think I could earn damage points (and gold) from the bots with impunity.
When I finish my hour in the Keldon, I’ll post some thoughts on it. So far, it is going surprisingly well!
Not that I’ve noticed! (Aside from 50 pwr and 800 range, which makes them slightly strong compared to some ships…)
A note on the ship specs table:
On paper, the specs might appear to be comparatively weak for a few classes, but in several cases the seemingly “weak” ships have had an adjustment or two which will not be apparent by the table alone. ie obliterators regenerating faster on one class than on another, or a higher/special gold-earning-rate.
