"Power creep" with new Split ships

[Nort The Fragrent]

I am not bothered regarding how many weapons a ship can carry.
I am wanting Fast, manoeuvrable, sleek with good looks.

So I can wiz around, and around, and around till the cows come home.

Yippee.

[eXalt!]

I think that the real problem is that balance calculation between fighting ships takes ware storage as a factor, when it actually means next to nothing.
Put a storage value to missiles, satellites and the like and then lets see how the Nemesis/new split corvette compares to other Ms.

[Wehrwolf_10]

It would be interesting to see the boarding ships S and M (few weapons, many marines, good shields, good speed), an assault teleport for Terran ships (Terran teleportation technology)

[Raevyan]

The devs already said they won’t touch existing ships because it is too much work. So the only fix we can hope is some rebalance of the existing ships parameters (no new weapon mounts), but I don’t have high hopes this will happen in x4. Which is very sad because the new ships also have much more details than the existing one. So you end up with a game that uses lower detail models because it had to be released because they were running out of time/funding and then you got shiny new ones where they got more time to put details in. This really makes me feel like I’m playing a beta. Yes the 3.0 patch notes are impressive but also terrifying at the same point that the game, after one year, still needs that many fixes.

[spankahontis]

https://i.imgur.com/TAgSpRk.png

I got this screenshot from a new XLOG video. We can see that a new Split corvette(or Frigate) is going to have 6 weapons.

In online games this is called "Power creep" - https://www.urbandictionary.com/define. ... er%20Creep

But this is not online game, we already have OP Paranid ships, with Nemesis being more powerful then Argon and Teladi Destroyers.
It's ok to implement new powerful entities in the game if old entities are also improved, but who will fly or command teladi or human ships in combat if you have paranid(and in the future) split ships?


{Images posted directly to the forums should not be greater than 640x480 or 100kb, oversize image now linked - Terre}

Thing is I always choose the Argon Eclipse over the Argon Pulsar, for the reason that the Pulsar has more punch than the Eclipse, but the Eclipse has more longevity when being hit by weapons fire.
Guns aren't everything.

Split have always been Weapons and Boosters first, Shields/Hull last, their Achilles heal.
Argon should be more balanced with the 4 while the Teladi should be best with Hull, Shields and Storage space.
But you take from one then the other becomes OP.. Wish they could use Ship Mods to fill in the gap, some ships should have unique ship mods like you can with your ships so not all ships are designed equal.

[Dinadin]

Thing is I always choose the Argon Eclipse over the Argon Pulsar, for the reason that the Pulsar has more punch than the Eclipse, but the Eclipse has more longevity when being hit by weapons fire.
Guns aren't everything.

It all depends on the proportions.

Your choice is good because Eclipse has 100% more shields and only 33% less guns than Pulsar

Nemesis has 150%(!) more guns than Cerberus(costs more) or Minotaur(costs same) and only 33% and 0%(!) less shields respectively. They have 2 more turrets, but they are much weaker than main guns and don't have 100% uptime firing forward. At the same time, Nemesis is much more agile and faster.

[GCU Grey Area]

Nemesis has 150%(!) more guns than Cerberus(costs more) or Minotaur(costs same) and only 33% and 0%(!) less shields respectively. They have 2 more turrets, but they are much weaker than main guns and don't have 100% uptime firing forward. At the same time, Nemesis is much more agile and faster.

That's true, however personally whenever I used a Nemesis didn't tend use more than a couple of guns at once, very rare for me to use all 5 (they cool quicker if you don't have too many active). Obviously nice to have more, but not really essential. Generally just fitted extra guns so I'd have more options available. However, even then most of the time I'd stick to my 2 favourite guns & the rest went largely unused. Eventually began to wonder why I was flying a Nemesis, since most of the time I simply wasn't using it's USP.

These days tend to prefer the 4-turret gunships. Turrets don't have the same cooling issues as main guns & fire much more consistently. Particularly fond of Peregrine & Minotaur. On both ships turrets are closely spaced & all 4 are well positioned to fire forwards. Incidentally, Shard turrets for preference. Not particularly accurate, but 4 of them can create a wall of shot in front of my ship. Not sure precisely how many individual projectiles (far too many to count), but looks to be on the order of a couple of dozen - most unpleasant for any ship trying to fly through it (3.0b Flak also worked well, but couldn't see a damn thing through all the explosions, so ended up reverting to Shard). Don't get nearly the same effect with only 2 turrets.

[Derp]

I'd rather go with +1 weapon for gunships and +2 turrets for frigates.

Damn, your idea is much better. In this case gunships could finally receive their own role instead of being just "inferior frigates without landing pad and less shielding"

So it's settled then. Devs? Deeevs?

They could just copy+paste most of the changes from VRO, which solves the issue by giving gunships a third, special gun for nuking capship turrets through shields, nerfs some Nemesis guns to be lighter, and makes frigates much beefier alternatives than either. None of them are clearly the best ship for all occasions.

As for the topic, Split ships in X3 were sufficiently glass cannons not to count as power creep, They had the best guns and speed, but you really did take your life into your hands every time you flew one. I don't know how well that can translate to X4's living economy, unless the ships are really cheap and disposable.

[chew-ie]

Damn, your idea is much better. In this case gunships could finally receive their own role instead of being just "inferior frigates without landing pad and less shielding"

So it's settled then. Devs? Deeevs?

They could just copy+paste most of the changes from VRO, which solves the issue by giving gunships a third, special gun for nuking capship turrets through shields, [..]

Oh please don't. I'd rather have VRO & it's design goals staying a mod while Egosoft keeps on working on their own vision for their game. The new weapon balance in 3.0 HF 5 is a step in the right direction. Obvious design errors (balancing-wise) like Nemesis and Odysseus are slowly worked on.

Once Split are back the Paranids can go back to their high-tech-low-cargo theme while teladi get high-cargo-high-shield-crap-shield-generators and argon a more balanced direction (right now their new turret specs offer too much of an advantage)

[Cdaragorn]

However, that is pretty realistic. Once a person can afford to buy a luxury car, they have very little reason to drive anything else. I doubt many people who drive a Mercedes S-Class or Porche also drive a semi-trailer or a courier van during work hours. They pay someone else to do it.

That analogy honestly ignores what people are actually complaining about. We're not concerned with the cost to upgrade to a much better/cooler/bigger ship. We're concerned that only one race's ships have that.
Every race should have ships that compete with similar class ships from other races. They certainly shouldn't be the same, but I should be able to stand toe to toe against another race's ship of the same class as whatever one I'm flying.
It's much more like only one company anywhere in the world actually building a luxury car. So if you want to upgrade to luxury you only have one car to pick from.

[Panos]

If defense drones were easier to command and control, then a ship like a Cerberus of Gorgon might be a viable alternative to a nemesis. But the drones launch too slowly, and the player has little to no control over what the defense drones do when launched, sadly.

Osprey Sentinel. The most underrated frigate. It has fantastic turret placement and a big beast eating even destroyers solo for breakfast especially when fully upgraded with purple mods.
Followed by the Peregrine Sentinel. My second most favourite ship.

Both the Teladi ships might not look great on paper, but I found them more reliable than anything else.

[tomchk]

However, that is pretty realistic. Once a person can afford to buy a luxury car, they have very little reason to drive anything else. I doubt many people who drive a Mercedes S-Class or Porche also drive a semi-trailer or a courier van during work hours. They pay someone else to do it.

That analogy honestly ignores what people are actually complaining about. We're not concerned with the cost to upgrade to a much better/cooler/bigger ship. We're concerned that only one race's ships have that.
Every race should have ships that compete with similar class ships from other races. They certainly shouldn't be the same, but I should be able to stand toe to toe against another race's ship of the same class as whatever one I'm flying.
It's much more like only one company anywhere in the world actually building a luxury car. So if you want to upgrade to luxury you only have one car to pick from.

Strongly agreed. We need the Nemesis "competitors" to be able to actually compete!

[Solflame]

Has there ever been a straight Nemesis competitor before? AFAIK it's the only ship in the base game that's marked as a Corvette: all the rest were Bombers (now Gunships).

Honestly, what we need isn't to buff gunships, it's to give the Paranid a Gunship and everyone else Corvettes.

----

EDIT to make basically a second post.

Another thing is the qualifications for what is and what isn't in a category is kind of weird. For example, the Quasar is considered a "Heavy Fighter" when the only right it gets to that claim is the number of guns it has. It has the lowest hull of any fighter, even the Nova. I'd call it more of a Heavy Interceptor. Speaking of interceptors, you've got the Elite Vanguard, which is... Ok, I get it, it's a starting ship, but come on. It's completely outclassed in every single way by a Discoverer. I'd rename that from Interceptor to... I don't know. Sports car? The biggest thing it has going for it is it's got a really, really cool interior. It's actually one of my favorites, and I would love an improved variant like how there's all the variants on the Discoverer chassis (Pulsar, Quasar, Callisto). I don't know how you'd do it, but man it's cool.

[Panos]

Has there ever been a straight Nemesis competitor before? AFAIK it's the only ship in the base game that's marked as a Corvette: all the rest were Bombers (now Gunships).

Honestly, what we need isn't to buff gunships, it's to give the Paranid a Gunship and everyone else Corvettes.

Peregrine is a very good ship and so is the Osprey. Nemesis is very overrated tbh. I bought one and feels pathetic, gave it to an AI pilot to protect a route from pirates. Tried to use it against 6xPs incursion and was shred to pieces. Against the same 6 ships the Osprey laugh at their faces blowing them in no time.

And agree on your second point.

[Warnoise]

I absolutely agree. The X4 ship "system" pretty much kills choice. I guess one could still fly one-gun S ships or two-gun M ships for roleplaying purposes, but aside from that - what's the point? Starter ship, then straight to Nemesis, you're done. While the game touts this ability to "fly (almost) every ship", it does nothing to convince us to actually do so. Sad ©

In general I agree, some rebalancing probably couldn't hurt. Once you can buy a Nemesis, you have little reason to fly anything else.

However, that is pretty realistic. Once a person can afford to buy a luxury car, they have very little reason to drive anything else. I doubt many people who drive a Mercedes S-Class or Porche also drive a semi-trailer or a courier van during work hours. They pay someone else to do it.

I am sorry that is a wrong analogy. There are varieties among luxury cars each with its own positive and negative points. Also Porche and Mercedes S-Class, one is sports luxury car and the other is classic luxury car.

Basically, what I wanted to say, even if the Paranid Nemesis is a great ship, there should be equally great ships (that don't have to fulfill exactly the same role, but have similar impact in the battlefield)