What if a torpedo could wipe out a mid size ship, but at $ 5MM cost?

JeanGrey

JeanGrey
Well, the title says it all.

One thing Elite suffers from in my opinion is excess of balance, specially in its weapons.
When you think about torpedos and missiles, you usually are reminded of weapon systems of great power, but this is not the case here.

Should they be unbalanced in terms of power, yes absolutely.
Should they be cheap? Off couse not.

Load a Cobra MK3 with two torpedos in its small hardpoints and you are good to put down a Corvette at a cost of $ 10MM.
Would this be so bad?

The way they are now, they are pretty much useless!
 

JeanGrey

JeanGrey
goemon said:
a) griefers paradise.

b) useless? here is an inspiring video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnxbsZsVatg - granted, it isn't a torpedo cobra, but a torpedo keelback, and it isn't a corvette, but a cutter.
Click to expand...


Interesting video, there is another one of the same guy against a FDL, but I think his NPC fighter makes a good difference in this one.
Have a look at the DPS / DMG of these guns, all class 2 fixed:

Gun DPS DMG
Beam Laser = 15.96 / 15.96
Multi-Cannon = 15.64 / 2.19
Rail Gun = 50.03 / 41.53
Plasma Accelerator = 17.92 / 54.3
Seeker Missile = 13.3 / 40
Torpedo Launcher = 120 / 120

Strange numbers, aren't they?

I've been playing the game for quite some time and really can't drop my beam lasers and multi-cannons.
Tried everything else but rail guns and really was never able to deliver as much DPS as my modded beam lasers and Multi-Canons can!
 
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varonica

varonica
jeangrey said:
Well, the title says it all.

One thing Elite suffers from in my opinion is excess of balance, specially in its weapons.
When you think about torpedos and missiles, you usually are reminded of weapon systems of great power, but this is not the case here.

Should they be unbalanced in terms of power, yes absolutely.
Should they be cheap? Off couse not.

Load a Cobra MK3 with two torpedos in its small hardpoints and you are good to put down a Corvette at a cost of $ 10MM.
Would this be so bad?

The way they are now, they are pretty much useless!
Click to expand...

A torpedo boat or submarine during WW2 could sink much larger vessels, agreed, however it absolutely relied on the torpedo impacting the primary physical hull of the larger ship. There were many defenses used against torpedo's that rendered them ineffective by causing them to detonate away from the hull. Look up Torpedo belt and torpedo bulge
for instance. There are others but those two examples will do. This is even more critical in space than in the water. Water, being incompressible, forms a barrier around the explosion so that the force is exerted against the object it is in contact with, remove this contact and you remove most of the danger. In space there is no water, even exploding a couple of metres away from the ships hull would render them pointless, and of course we have shields and point defense, really torpedo's in space should only be of any use once the shields are down, and then they need to get past the point defense.

In other words, torpedo's in space should be utterly pointless, they are slow, don't have any serious destructive radius and I suspect are only included in the game for game play purposes, and I am fine with that, it's a game, it needs to be fun. Torpedo's should be a finishing weapon, to destroy a ship once it's helpless and defenseless, they being pretty much useless is understandable in context.
 

trollson

trollson
Insta-death weapons do not make for a good game, whatever justification can be made for them. Don't forget that any weapon you can have, so can the NPCs.
 

JeanGrey

JeanGrey
You guys are probably right. Overpowered weapons would probably cause lot's of trouble.

But some times it really feels boring as I can't make much difference out of the available weapons.
I got really disappointed when I tried the plasma acc and ended up delivering less DPS (over certain time) than an ovecharge multi-cannon with autoloader.

I will give another try to missile racks.
 
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CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead
Overpowered super weapons are great fun in solo or PvE games, but as soon as PvP is added to the mix, you can't have a super weapon, as they just become the meta, making every other weapon redundant.

Missiles are good fun, and do have a very good purpose in Elite.
I use a pair of Packhound launchers on my Anaconda, these are great for disabling the thrusters on fast moving shieldless ships that my main guns might struggle to keep up with.

PAs I never had much luck with. My aiming with fixed is always poor, so I miss alot, and they use loads of capacitor, so combined with low accuracy and DPS, I basically end up wasting a hardpoint. Lol
 

goemon

goemon
jeangrey said:
You guys are probably right. Overpowered weapons would probably cause lot's of trouble.

But some times it really feels boring as I can't make much difference out of the available weapons.
I got really disappointed when I tried the plasma acc and ended up delivering less DPS (over certain time) than an ovecharge multi-cannon with autoloader.

I will give another try to missile racks.
Click to expand...

generally multicannons are a bit "too good" for various reasons, but if you like high DPS weapons, i suggest you either look at railguns (needs some skill), or - i love them - frags. frags are the true DPS wonders, and various engineering like double shot or overcharged can add to that. they need different piloting, though, as you have to get really close to use them, and can use the reload time to postion for the next attack. i have a frag courier, i have flown a vulture with frags for some time, and i even have a CZ frag python (with ammo increased frags).
 

JeanGrey

JeanGrey
Great feedback on this tread, I do really appreciate!

I'm trying missiles with Drag Munition and Thermal Cascade, so far so good.
My mistake in the past was to use only one rack, so the point defenses could easily shut down my missile and it was ineffective. Now with two racks things are different. [big grin]

I will give a try with the Rail Gun too.
 
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JeanGrey

JeanGrey
goemon said:
i love them - frags. frags are the true DPS wonders, and various engineering like double shot or overcharged can add to that. they need different piloting, though, as you have to get really close to use them, and can use the reload time to postion for the next attack. i have a frag courier, i have flown a vulture with frags for some time, and i even have a CZ frag python (with ammo increased frags).
Click to expand...

I used to run two large frag cannons in my FAS.
At the time there was a triple shot glitch, which I didn't know it was a glitch. The frags were brutal back then.

Quick question, is the effective range for frags still up to 600 meters? I've looked at ED Shipyard and it says the damage fall off starts at 1,800 meters, this looks to be a lot and might be wrong!
 

goemon

goemon
jeangrey said:
Quick question, is the effective range for frags still up to 600 meters? I've looked at ED Shipyard and it says the damage fall off starts at 1,800 meters, this looks to be a lot and might be wrong!
Click to expand...

frags have natural jitter, firing a cone - so not a lot of bullets will hit even a conda at 1800 meters. effective range is around 600 meter or less for smaller hitboxes.
 

[VR] Frank_G

[VR] Frank_G
Back in the olde days, we had an energy bomb installed in our Cobra Mk. IIIs, that destroyed all enemies in the vicinity. Some sort of expensive last option to survive... Also worked nice against Thargon fighters (small ships that were dropped by Thargoid vessels). But that wont work in a multiplayer game.
I would like to see capital class torpedos for large and huge hardpoints, that could only target ships of Anaconda size up, including dealing significant damage to capital ships. Their disadvantage should be slow travel speed, so they could be intercepted and shot down by fighters and fast ships.
 

JeanGrey

JeanGrey
Robert Maynard said:
Define cheap (taking into account the fact that there are players with tens of billions of credits)....
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The most recent way to make quick money I found was in Quince.
You might be able to an average of 30MM an hour there, so basically if you fire a torpedo which costs 5MM, you are shooting 10 minutes of your game play time in each shot.

Juts think about how many ships you usually kill in a conflict zone or RES, and how much would it cost if you were killing with 5MM torpedos. Probably it will cost you an A rated Anaconda (or 20 hours of gameplay) each two or three runs, so a Billion goes away quickly.

One can't evaluate cost based on how much people has accumulated, but on how much time it would take to replenish it.
This gives a better indication if people would be comfortable with spending the money or not.
 
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