Katana nerfed to oblivion

[Radimov]

So what im going talk about here is mainly from the viewpoint of the AI, we as players act and make decisions differently and even if something is a pile of **** we can make it work somewhat bearable.

With the new flight + engine/AI tweaks, the Katana feels extremely bad, yes the Katana is heavy and it was always slow to turn, but now because of these new changes the AI even to kill a simple fighter or a heavy one it has trouble to deal with it... why? because the AI is terrible in how to handle the very slow turn speed of the Katana.

Out of Sector it took almost 2 mins to kill a Xenon heavy fighter, fully maxed out with Terran tech, where in 7.10 it was WAY faster to deal with with the same loadout, the difference? the Katana now when fighting feels like a Destroyer and almost acts like one, because while the other ships are doing laps around the Katana the AI is just sitting there trying to turn very slowly, and now sometimes doing that while going backwards (something i never seen that happening in 7.10). The same behavior while you are out of sector, the Xenon heavy fighter was doing laps and getting behind the Katakana easily while the Katana was mostly staying the same spot while turning very slowly... again YES we as players can make it work specially with split engines + mods but thats not the point isn't it?

The Katana now is just a waste of money to have a fleet of them or just for letting the AI using them, i watched the fight vs these other ships or even a PE and 90% of the time it was just the 2 turrets actually firing because the AI has an insane trouble to actually get into a good position... it might not happen to other ships, but thats why the Katana at the current time is nerfed to oblivion, and again i only care about this because i want to AI to actually use them correctly or at least to be as efficient as it was in 7.10, now its just a lump of scrap flying around.

Do any Katana players noticed the same ? i will repeat my point one last time... in the AI hands! AI using the Katana, in/out of sector.

[LameFox]

In my experience it's basically all ships have a harder time landing hits now. Not only because of their own manoeuvring, but the enemies are faster and slide around more. I noted this during the beta too. IMO weapons need some improvement to compensate for lower time on target, like better projectile speed.

[HeinzS]

Well, if you change the flight behavior so drastically, it should have been clear beforehand that Egosoft would now have to adjust other parameters as well, or was the plan to weaken the factions and give the Xenon an advantage.

[Imperial Good]

Out of Sector it took almost 2 mins to kill a Xenon heavy fighter, fully maxed out with Terran tech, where in 7.10 it was WAY faster to deal with with the same loadout, the difference? the Katana now when fighting feels like a Destroyer and almost acts like one, because while the other ships are doing laps around the Katana the AI is just sitting there trying to turn very slowly, and now sometimes doing that while going backwards (something i never seen that happening in 7.10). The same behavior while you are out of sector, the Xenon heavy fighter was doing laps and getting behind the Katakana easily while the Katana was mostly staying the same spot while turning very slowly... again YES we as players can make it work specially with split engines + mods but thats not the point isn't it?

Out of sector logic is closer to a turn based RPG than real time combat. Player never was able to participate in low attention combat. It is unclear if the flight mechanics would even alter the results from this, or if this is the result of other balance changes done to the hit rate and damage calculations of the low attention combat logic. Pilot skill seems to play a significant role in low attention combat, with players reporting silly wins such as single M ships beating Ks when at max skill in the past.

Well, if you change the flight behavior so drastically, it should have been clear beforehand that Egosoft would now have to adjust other parameters as well, or was the plan to weaken the factions and give the Xenon an advantage.

Possibly a bit of both. As it stood before there was a huge Xenon entropy as the game progressed to the point they often self extinguished.

[Radimov]

Out of Sector it took almost 2 mins to kill a Xenon heavy fighter, fully maxed out with Terran tech, where in 7.10 it was WAY faster to deal with with the same loadout, the difference? the Katana now when fighting feels like a Destroyer and almost acts like one, because while the other ships are doing laps around the Katana the AI is just sitting there trying to turn very slowly, and now sometimes doing that while going backwards (something i never seen that happening in 7.10). The same behavior while you are out of sector, the Xenon heavy fighter was doing laps and getting behind the Katakana easily while the Katana was mostly staying the same spot while turning very slowly... again YES we as players can make it work specially with split engines + mods but thats not the point isn't it?

Out of sector logic is closer to a turn based RPG than real time combat. Player never was able to participate in low attention combat. It is unclear if the flight mechanics would even alter the results from this, or if this is the result of other balance changes done to the hit rate and damage calculations of the low attention combat logic. Pilot skill seems to play a significant role in low attention combat, with players reporting silly wins such as single M ships beating Ks when at max skill in the past.

Yes i do understand that, i also played Imperium Galactica 2 Alliances and it had both components like real time battle and we could turn on "Overrun" that would be the simulation aspect to speed up the process of cleaning the space, so i do have a general idea of how it works and what aspects takes into account. The issue becomes when the ship can't even shoot(roll the dice)... what i mean by this is : since in 7.10 the movement was more erratic (all of this in out of sector) like the Katana doing "sharp" turns, rotating front facing the enemy and it was also faster to react which made to have many more times to shoot (roll the dice), because the enemy was having more time in the "firing radius" than whatnot. In this system what i saw was a Destroyer behavior like from the Katana while the movements are less erratic it also made the Katana a "sitting" duck which made the enemy to be outside of its "firing radius/cone".

If i had to make a % comparison it would be: Katana vs Xenon heavy fighter - V 7.10 - 60 to 80% of being able to roll the dice, V 7.50 - 10 to 40 %. Its a huge difference, the damage is still there when the Katana in the very few occasions that its able to roll the dice it actually hits hard, but since it takes so long to be able to hit again the shields are back to full again... and the situation im talking about is just basically with the same loadout and pilot stats for both versions.

I take issue with this for 2 aspects, 1 is that even if we make a fleet(or several) of Katanas and mod each individual ship is not viable, not only its not viable its also an annoying and extremely time consuming process with the whole randomness of the mods (i would hope Egosoft rework this system), and 2, are the Terrans and Segaris going to mod them? do all of them have 5* pilots + crew? do the Terrans/Segaris buy Split engines? there you go...

In sector: i feel the behavior system in dog fight took a step forward BUT (there is always a but isnt it), at least with the Katana with the points i already made before, now the more common behavior is acting like a carousel... always turning to one side and goes around around around around in circles in trying to face forward the enemy until it receives enough damage to actually use the boost to gain a little gap in which sometimes results in 1 nice damage dealing situation and then we are back to go around around around around the carousel.... to me, both these situations the way it acts and maneuvers it broke the ship, i havent seen the Dragon yet (because is also another slow/"wonky" turner ship) to see if it has the same behavior or not.

Don't get me wrong the system overall is a step forward, but because of all these changes/tweaks in both systems, there would be a good % that a couple ships would be underperforming or some others might be overperforming. I really should have recorded the situation.

[bignick217]

I don't have a problem with the new flight model. To be honest, I got used to it pretty quickly because it feels very similar to how Star Citizen felt back in the 2.0+ days. What I will say though, is the strafing engines feel far too weak. There's something to be said for trying to use your main engines more, but with the new flight model, any change of direction that isn't directly forward or opposing your inertia basically ends up in slides that last way way too long. Not even Star Citizen back in the day was "that" floaty. Because of this the ships all feel like great straight line racers, but they don't feel like tight combat ships. And yes, I get the Katana is supposed to be feel heavier, but there's a big difference between feeling heavy and feeling like a slip-and-slide because the maneuvering/strafing engines are woefully under powered to keep you in the fight. That might be "ok" for a turret focused gunship, but not for a front loaded brawler like the Katana. And no, hitting the boost doesn't really help. In fact it feels more like a trap half the time because it too often tends to sling you in a wild high speed arc more likely to get you killed, than it does give you any meaningful control to change direction the way you need it to in a combat scenario.

I like the direction the new flight model is going (the 2.0 era Star Citizen flight model is still one of my favorite flight models, but this is not that), but the strafe engines on the Katana are way too weak to be viable for the Katana's intended role.

[Radimov]

[...] And yes, I get the Katana is supposed to be feel heavier, but there's a big difference between feeling heavy and feeling like a slip-and-slide because the maneuvering/strafing engines are woefully under powered to keep you in the fight. That might be "ok" for a turret focused gunship, but not for a front loaded brawler like the Katana. And no, hitting the boost doesn't really help. In fact it feels more like a trap half the time because it too often tends to sling you in a wild high speed arc more likely to get you killed, than it does give you any meaningful control to change direction the way you need it to in a combat scenario [...]

Very well said and explained, 100% agree with this. I never played Star Citizen so i can't agree or deny the comparison, also in terms of my experience with flying ships, it was only the very old Terminal Velocity and many hours on Freelancer, that's why when im doing my evaluation/critics i keep it to my experience on X4 7.10 version. it would be also fair to make the assumption that the Dragon is in the same boat as the Katana since they are pretty similar, but the Dragon has the advantage of being able to use the MK4 combat engine, still...it may suffer the same downside.

Iv seen some players saying that some Xenon engines got "buffed", IF it's true (beside the tweaks and changes that happened) then it would help in understanding in why the Xenon ships are doing laps around the Katana

[LameFox]

Dragon and most Split ships (other than Raider variants and IIRC Mamba) have always had poor manoeuvrability. It kind of makes sense given the strong hulls but it also makes their focus on speed and short ranged weapons kind of questionable.