Shock
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Posted - 2003.08.25 09:07:00 -
[1]
Edited by: Shock on 25/08/2003 09:12:29
It seems to me that the devs are a bit forgetting what the initial characteristics were for all ship for the races:
Amarr: slow, heavily armoured, huge cap and grid, massive firepower, low tech, expensive.
Caldari: fast, lightly armoured but very good shield, not too much firepower unless very expensive missiles are used, low grid but a lot of cpu, hightech, expensive.
Gallente: all atributes are in the middle except the dronebay.
Minmatar: very fast (fast enough to make a difference in combat), very light armoured and normal shield, massive firepower, high grid but cpu and tech normal. Very cheap.
This is how it should be and what IMHO the devs are not minding so much anymore.
The problems as I see them are:
The missiles are underpowered. Everybody would agree, but when they are upgraded to what they should become: the most feared weapons there are, the price should also rise drastically so they are only used when the price of victory is not important.
The battleship speed is only important when travelling, in battle you're too quickly dead anyway and the power to determine the fighting distance by being the fasted is not important and ruinied by MWDs.
The lowslots are mainly used for weaponupgrades. While this would be hightech and thus be linked to CPU and med slots (or better give guns a 2nd slot like ammo for the weaponupgrades). The lowslots are meant for armour and power and are essential for the balancing of Amarr ships. With 8 gunturrets and the grid to put the heaviest weapons in all of them they shouldn't need additional weaponupgrades.
These are supposed for the other races, particulary the Caldari and the Minmatar, since the Caldari lock the grid and turretslots for serious turretpower so they use weaponupgrades to lift them to acceptional support weapons in combination with EW and use missiles only if they can afford it. And for the Minmatar the turretpower is essential since it has to make up for their lack of defences.
The drones are useless. Clumsy slow and not comparable to turrets. While the Gallente are good at everything, they excell at nothing, that's where the drones are for: to give them their edge.
Also all battleships are way too cheap. It's ridiculous that so many people are using them. Frigates are nothing more then a steppingstone to the cruiser after which they become useless. And from the cruiser to battleship may last a bit longer eventually everybody will get there.
In battles the make up of only battleships is considered ideal. Things like frigate or cruiser support are utterly useless except for Blackbirds, but Scorpios are considered cuperior anyway.
All ships should be severely handicapped when fighting 'down the ladder' and mainly be used to fight ships of their own class or a higher class in groups. This should force veteran players back into the frigates. Also make sure fighting in a frigate stays cheap because a frigate may be expandable, veteran clones are not. This can be solved by giving pods a better chance of escaping.
I think a lot of people wont like what I said here, but I was attracted to this game partially because of the tactical battles with frigates cruisers and an occasional battleship. But it seems this game is becoming more and more the quest for the biggest sword. And after you have that all you can do is start killing other people with smaller swords since there is very little tactical challenge left.
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