Nerf Reverski

[Frenotx]

Just fought a player pirate in a cutter using my Viper IV. It was dumb. Constant "ping pong" of him drifting in reverse, then boosting when I got close. His cutter was faster than my Viper IV, so there wasn't really anything I could do about it. Didn't help that one of our connections was acting up leading to invisible projectiles and his fixed weapons being able to hit me when I was above him, but still. It was a tedious fight at best. Ultimately just left when my hull was getting close to 50%. Had to high wake, since as stated, his 1100t base hull mass multirole cutter was a touch faster than my Viper IV. Good times.

The dude was a good sport afterwords, and shared a few tons of his ill-gotten diamonds with me. At least the game has plenty of good-spirited folks playing it.

 

[CMDR The Riz]

Just fought a player pirate in a cutter using my Viper IV. It was dumb. Constant "ping pong" of him drifting in reverse, then boosting when I got close. His cutter was faster than my Viper IV, so there wasn't really anything I could do about it. Didn't help that one of our connections was acting up leading to invisible projectiles and his fixed weapons being able to hit me when I was above him, but still. It was a tedious fight at best. Ultimately just left when my hull was getting close to 50%. Had to high wake, since as stated, his 1100t base hull mass multirole cutter was a touch faster than my Viper IV. Good times.

The dude was a good sport afterwords, and shared a few tons of his ill-gotten diamonds with me. At least the game has plenty of good-spirited folks playing it.

Out of curiosity, did that fight resemble this:

Spoiler

[video=youtube_share;qGENWUNs3kQ]https://youtu.be/qGENWUNs3kQ?t=1m32s[/video]

Apologies for a) the Discord chat in the background and b) my terrible flying. In case the link doesn't point to the correct timestamp (which it REALLY doesn't want to do), the section I am highlighting is the Cutter fight at 1:32.

 

[lenna]

It's fine if you felt it was fine and controllable before the lateral acceleration buff. Yes, that is an opinion. I thought it was not fine. That is also an opinion. The ship being MORE controllable after the lateral acceleration increase is not an opinion, it's an objective fact. What you're arguing is like saying putting a bigger, faster engine in a car is somehow a nerf because it isn't forced to drive slowly anymore.

Errm... the context of this debate is about reverski - in that context the Beta 1 Chieftain was able to do that kind of manoeuvre - at least for a time - (and others) without relying on FA/Off at all. I mentioned nothing about whether the revised changes made the Chieftain more controllable or not, though IMO the Beta 1 Chieftain was perfectly balanced to allow for a variety of space combat manoeuvres - the release balance is less well balanced IMO and therefore the balance change was a nerf.

If certain players are arguing against the current FA/Off benefits - like reverski - then IMO the compromise would be to make ALL craft drift more (c/f Release Chieftain reverted to Beta 1 manoeuvrability and comparable changes across the board) and remove FA/Off completely.

 

[lenna]

Well simple would have been a direct answer to a simple question.. the fact you didn't provide one speaks volumes.

Actually, they did answer it directly - but in an obtuse fashion.

What I believe they meant was that currently the system allows for a wide variety of manoeuvres including reverski/star-fury-manoeuvre. Such tactics are perfectly valid, nerf that tactic and you will not only affect that tactic but others too (either directly or indirectly). The net effect is options for combat manoeuvres would be more restricted and therefore (potentially negatively) affect gameplay for them and others.

Their short version "Because the flight model as-is works for most people" is IMO a fair summary of the situation - whether the "most" part is fairly attributed or not is moot.

 

[Truesilver]

Personally I think there are times when you have to reverski in a big ship.
Not sure how you nerf something like that and make it so the big ships can
get a bead on a little ship.

You're right, you can't, at least in serious PvP. It's impossible for a big ship to use fixed weapons for more than momentary ToT against a well-flown medium, without considerable reverski.

This was my first contribution to this thread:

Sorry, not read the whole thread but as ever it comes back to the 'Big Ship PvP Problem'...

... HD booster stacking is OP on mediums but if it gets a straight nerf, without some other help, Big Ships are dead ...

... reverski is OP on mediums but if it gets a straight nerf, without some other help, Big Ships are dead ...

Anyone amongst the player-base or the Devs who wants a straight nerf of either of the two things above needs to come up with a coherent rescue plan to Save the Big Ships, or they are dead.

(I haven't flown a Big Ship outside of Betas since 2015, but I don't want them to be become extinct. Two years in Courier. Currently making FdL. But I'm just trying to be fair, here.)

Having read others' contributions I would say that there are two dilemmas:

(1) How to address the issue without killing the big ships?

(2) How to address the issue without making too many (to some) unacceptable changes to the flight model?

I suspect that item (1) could more easily be solved than item (2).

 

[Good Death]

Just fought a player pirate in a cutter using my Viper IV. It was dumb. Constant "ping pong" of him drifting in reverse, then boosting when I got close. His cutter was faster than my Viper IV, so there wasn't really anything I could do about it. Didn't help that one of our connections was acting up leading to invisible projectiles and his fixed weapons being able to hit me when I was above him, but still. It was a tedious fight at best. Ultimately just left when my hull was getting close to 50%. Had to high wake, since as stated, his 1100t base hull mass multirole cutter was a touch faster than my Viper IV. Good times.

The dude was a good sport afterwords, and shared a few tons of his ill-gotten diamonds with me. At least the game has plenty of good-spirited folks playing it.

Your post put a thought in my head. That thought consist of a mosquito landing on my leg and me swatting it to the ground not killing it just knocking it off. Then I imagine what that mosquito's thoughts must be that was unbalanced maybe I can convince the creator to make that pesky human slower weaker and more stupid than I am. Mosquito gets up tries again receiving the same punishment. This time it thoughts are to hell with this I know that dog over there is too stupid fight back. Dog eats mosquito end of story. Mosquitos die a lot only in large numbers are they a able to flourish. So I know your reputation is that of a highly skilled pilot but don't be upset if you don't win every battle. And no I don't care about paragraphs I'm not trying to please my English teacher.

 

[Frenotx]

Errm... the context of this debate is about reverski - in that context the Beta 1 Chieftain was able to do that kind of manoeuvre - at least for a time - (and others) without relying on FA/Off at all. I mentioned nothing about whether the revised changes made the Chieftain more controllable or not, though IMO the Beta 1 Chieftain was perfectly balanced to allow for a variety of space combat manoeuvres - the release balance is less well balanced IMO and therefore the balance change was a nerf.

If certain players are arguing against the current FA/Off benefits - like reverski - then IMO the compromise would be to make ALL craft drift more (c/f Release Chieftain reverted to Beta 1 manoeuvrability and comparable changes across the board) and remove FA/Off completely.

There's this very important point that you are just refusing to understand: increasing the strength of the chieftain's lateral thruster did not REMOVE any abilities to it- only added. You don't need to "rely on FA/Off" to perform drift-looking maneuvers- you can just use your (now buffed) lateral thrusters to push your ship along in the exact same manner. You can fly, completely in FA/On, exactly like you could if the ship had weaker thrusters, if you wanted to. I should know; my combat style makes heavy use of lateral thrusters to slide around all over the place. Watching my ship, it's probably that some people would assume I'm in FA/Off or driving something with weak thrusters, but they'd be wrong. Having strong lateral thrusters simply ADDS the ability to NOT drift, IF YOU SO CHOOSE. Since increasing the power of the lateral thrusters takes 0 abilities away from the ship, while also ADDING some new ones. It is, objectively, not a nerf.

If you still refuse to believe me for some reason, give it a try. Get in your chieftain, get up to speed, then pitch up while also applying down thrust. Lo and behold you will drift along your original vector, just like you had the garbage, so-weak-it-can-barely-operate-in-a-planet's-gravity thrusters of old.

Your post put a thought in my head. That thought consist of a mosquito landing on my leg and me swatting it to the ground not killing it just knocking it off. Then I imagine what that mosquito's thoughts must be that was unbalanced maybe I can convince the creator to make that pesky human slower weaker and more stupid than I am. Mosquito gets up tries again receiving the same punishment. This time it thoughts are to hell with this I know that dog over there is too stupid fight back. Dog eats mosquito end of story. Mosquitos die a lot only in large numbers are they a able to flourish. So I know your reputation is that of a highly skilled pilot but don't be upset if you don't win every battle. And no I don't care about paragraphs I'm not trying to please my English teacher.

I have no illusion of winning every fight. If I felt that was likely, I would get bored pretty quickly. If I wanted to feel that way, I sure as hell wouldn't fly a viper IV. My point was not one of frustration that I lost. My point was that the fight was extremely boring, reverse + high speed made the only advantage any small ship has pointless, and that neither pilot had any chance of killing the other one unless they allowed it to happen. It also makes the only real disadvantage of a large ship, poor maneuverability, a completely moot point. It makes all other combat maneuvers irrelevant, and grossly dumbs down combat to a completely uninteresting to play and boring as all get out to watch travesty.

 

[Han_Zen]

Have you played the first Elite? Because the movement in that one is way closer to what we have in E than full Newtonian... No yaw whatsoever, and no lateral thrusters whatsoever.

And no reverse.

 

[Exiton]

Having read others' contributions I would say that there are two dilemmas:

(1) How to address the issue without killing the big ships?

(2) How to address the issue without making too many (to some) unacceptable changes to the flight model?

I suspect that item (1) could more easily be solved than item (2).

By properly scaling damage of weapons. Now each next step of weapons is twice as big, yet only does 50% more damage. Thus Cutter or Corvette are doing damage comparable to FdL.

More realistically would be for each next weapon size increment doing at least twice the amount of damage.

Next thing is nerfing the special effects of weapons when hitting big ships. I fly Corvette and a skilled enough Vulture with dual TLB APAs can completely deny me ability to target. While my sensors array weights whooping 160 tonnes. This is not ok. Same should go for mines, torpedoes, etc.

Finally when big ship's shields are being hit with anything but huge weapons they should take diminished damage. I'd say 50% for big weapons, 20% for medium and 5% for small. Because size matters. Because my Corvette shield generator weights 4 times more than my FdL shield generator.

The primary idea: you want to take out big ship? Roll out your own big ship. This is how it should be.

Currently a couple of skilled Couriers with mines, missiles and rails can take out any big ship.

And don't even get me started about armor situation. Currently armor resistances mechanic makes zero sense. Armor class increment makes zero sense (with class 5 being only slightly better than class 4 while being twice its size). In-existence of class 6..8 armor makes zero sense.

 

[lenna]

There's this very important point that you are just refusing to understand: increasing the strength of the chieftain's lateral thruster did not REMOVE any abilities to it- only added.

I disagree, there are factors you are refusing to understand. - but lets not rehash that particular debate, it serves no purpose.

 

[EdzUp]

taking into account the ship's themselves I can see where OP is coming from but it would change a lot of the game to implement this change.

I am for no reverse at all or a limited one but imagine supercruise you would have to drop way further to maneuver to the destination

It would be Elite:Thrust that annoying game of yore.

 

[Frenotx]

By properly scaling damage of weapons. Now each next step of weapons is twice as big, yet only does 50% more damage. Thus Cutter or Corvette are doing damage comparable to FdL.

More realistically would be for each next weapon size increment doing at least twice the amount of damage.

Next thing is nerfing the special effects of weapons when hitting big ships. I fly Corvette and a skilled enough Vulture with dual TLB APAs can completely deny me ability to target. While my sensors array weights whooping 160 tonnes. This is not ok. Same should go for mines, torpedoes, etc.

Finally when big ship's shields are being hit with anything but huge weapons they should take diminished damage. I'd say 50% for big weapons, 20% for medium and 5% for small. Because size matters. Because my Corvette shield generator weights 4 times more than my FdL shield generator.

The primary idea: you want to take out big ship? Roll out your own big ship. This is how it should be.

Currently a couple of skilled Couriers with mines, missiles and rails can take out any big ship.

I'm sorry, did you say you believe big ships, which already can have preposterously large shields that would a long to to drop even if the big ship just sat there, should only take 50% for big weapons, 20% for medium and 5% for small? You know, those big ships that can also mount the most and the largest SCBs, which scale in a non-linear manner favoring large sizes? You do realize that such a change would be even the federal corvetter, the ship with the most huge weapons, would only do about 27% as much damage to another large ship's shield as it currently does, right? Also, you're telling me that a big ship getting gang-banged by several skilled CMDRs should have no concern whatsoever because... they have a big ship? I'm guessing your ideal game is one in which big ships are objectively superior to everything else in the game, everyone is either in a big ship or working to one, and said big ships are basically immortal. That sounds like an incredibly lame game to me.

I disagree, there are factors you are refusing to understand. - but lets not rehash that particular debate, it serves no purpose.

I really should just ignore you since I'm becoming increasingly convinced you're just a troll, but... what? Do you believe upgrading a racecar's engine is actually a "nerf" to the car because it can't drive slow anymore? As I said, it's not a matter of opinion, it's just fact. If a thing has ability 1 and 2, then it is altered such that it has ability 1, 2, and 3, then it has not been "nerfed". Something being "nerfed" means it was made less powerful, or abilities were taken away. Giving something more abilities without taking any others away is not a nerf. That's not what that word means. Giving something new abilities while allowing it to keep all its old ones is what is called a buff.

 

[Exiton]

I'm sorry, did you say you believe big ships, which already can have preposterously large shields that would a long to to drop even if the big ship just sat there, should only take 50% for big weapons, 20% for medium and 5% for small? You know, those big ships that can also mount the most and the largest SCBs, which scale in a non-linear manner favoring large sizes? You do realize that such a change would be even the federal corvetter, the ship with the most huge weapons, would only do about 27% as much damage to another large ship's shield as it currently does, right? Also, you're telling me that a big ship getting gang-banged by several skilled CMDRs should have no concern whatsoever because... they have a big ship? I'm guessing your ideal game is one in which big ships are objectively superior to everything else in the game, everyone is either in a big ship or working to one, and said big ships are basically immortal. That sounds like an incredibly lame game to me.

This is because the game currently lacks any dedicated big ships mechanics whatsoever. Currently they are just like huge Vipers.

There's an enormously large completely untapped field here for inventing and implementing special effects and weapons for huge slots, that should make flying big ships unlike anything else.

Also you seem to have an illusion that currently it's hard to bring down big ships. It's not. A couple of counter-fitted Couriers can do it easily. When you fly Corvette and see a wing of 2 with all mines Cobra and quad rails and plasma FdL you only have one option - run, and pray that this Cobra commander is not skilled enough.

 

[Frenotx]

This is because the game currently lacks any dedicated big ships mechanics whatsoever. Currently they are just like huge Vipers.

There's an enormously large completely untapped field here for inventing and implementing special effects and weapons for huge slots, that should make flying big ships unlike anything else.

I completely agree that big ships are insufficiently differentiated, and that several problems stem from that. I would love to see flying a big ship be like playing a totally different game, when compared to flying a small ship. Less emphasis on piloting, and more emphasis on module management, strategy, and resource balancing. Think more like the captain in a star trek show, and less like luke flying an x-wing.

I don't think making them immune to small ship (and largely immune to even ships of their own class) is the right way to do that. I would much rather see combat taking place between ALL ship sizes, as that would lead to far more variety.

Note: I don't really want to see more things balanced around special effects. Engineers already has way too strong of an impact. Making something only balanced when the right special effects are in play just makes that problem worse.

 

[Captain N]

Have you played the first Elite? Because the movement in that one is way closer to what we have in E than full Newtonian... No yaw whatsoever, and no lateral thrusters whatsoever.

And no reverse.

It had rear-facing gun mounts, which is basically the same thing.

Also a single player game, so it didn't have to worry itself with what is balanced or fun for multiplayer. It was like most single player games, designed to make the player feel like God in his little universe. Can't do that in a PVP multiplayer game, since not everyone can be God.

 

[Exiton]

It had rear-facing gun mounts, which is basically the same thing.

If Cutters had all (or mostly) rear facing weapons I'd have no problem with that.

I do have a problem with Cutters flying at 450 m/s in reverse. This should not be possible given the size of their forward thrusters and the fact that we are submerged in non-Newtonian fluid with velocity-dependent reactive viscosity*.

 

[Han_Zen]

It had rear-facing gun mounts, which is basically the same thing.

Also a single player game, so it didn't have to worry itself with what is balanced or fun for multiplayer. It was like most single player games, designed to make the player feel like God in his little universe. Can't do that in a PVP multiplayer game, since not everyone can be God.

Absolutely. The current is very much a product of ED being a multiplayer game. The old Elite model would not have worked well in multiplayer. The Fe2/FFE model would not have worked at all.

Reversing is not an issue on it's own. It's more a question if the Fast ship/long range weapon/FA off combo has become to powerful, with the current stats?

By the way, I think ED does a good job at making every player feel like a god.

 

[[VR] Enexemander]

Reversing is not an issue on it's own. It's more a question if the Fast ship/long range weapon/FA off combo has become to powerful, with the current stats?

It has. Specifically long range hitscan weapons. Long range projectiles aren't a problem, because any pilot half way paying attention could avoid them.

But also, it kind of depends the situation. A 1v1 PvP duel to the death is a contrivance in the game (though I do enjoy them from time to time). If a Cutter wants to full reverse with long range weapons, there's nothing keeping you in the fight with that spoilsport. Just make fun of them and leave. They can't even mass lock you they're shooting you from forever away.

But yes, if FDev cares about balance,
1) Long range hitscan has to go. Full stop.
2) Hitpoint inflation has to be dealt with.

 

[h347h]

Yeah this game is going down the wrong path. Console inspired C&P might as well gimp larger ships and just give them nerf lasers to boot.

You can nerf reverse as soon as larger ships get more turrets, a second NPC fighter pilot, and harder armor to compensate.

 

[optiplex]

Nerf it all guys and when you've finished nerfing, go ahead and nerf it some more, let's see how much of the player base is left playing. Then you can all move on to ruin another game? Shall I draw up a list?

Nerfers are nearly as bad as griefers they both want to ruin everyone's game