Author Topic: Nominations for Worst Ship Ever (II)  (Read 12311 times)

Offline keith.lamothe

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Nominations for Worst Ship Ever (II)
« on: February 18, 2012, 06:43:57 pm »
Ok, the cutlass changes seem to have been a positive step, so time for another round of this.

Just name the fleet ship you think most needs a buff.

For reference:
Nomination Thread I
Poll Thread I
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Offline Wanderer

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Re: Nominations for Worst Ship Ever (II)
« Reply #1 on: February 18, 2012, 06:45:13 pm »
Anti-Starship.  Nearly useless ship due to firing restrictions.  Needs Guardian and Guardpost attackability at the least.
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Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Nominations for Worst Ship Ever (II)
« Reply #2 on: February 18, 2012, 06:50:46 pm »
Sorry, I should have said "bonus ship type" :)  ARS-granted stuff. The Anti-starship Vs are getting a buff either way.
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Offline Wanderer

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Re: Nominations for Worst Ship Ever (II)
« Reply #3 on: February 18, 2012, 07:03:13 pm »
Ah!  I'll have to vote for the Spider again then.
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Offline Shrugging Khan

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Re: Nominations for Worst Ship Ever (II)
« Reply #4 on: February 18, 2012, 07:04:57 pm »
The tank. It feels more like a Bomber that's always late to the party and takes more damage than its faster counterpart en route, than it does like an actual tank.

Unlike the tiger, it does not make me feel like Rommel.
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Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Nominations for Worst Ship Ever (II)
« Reply #5 on: February 18, 2012, 07:16:48 pm »
Ah!  I'll have to vote for the Spider again then.
Stands to reason, since Anti-Starship Vs are actually Spider Vs with some adjusted stats.


And yes, I think the Space Tank could stand a Rommelization.  I'm just never sure what to do for it, other than just buff stats.  At one point I implemented a mechanic where if a space tank hit a ship that ship's reload bar was reset to need the full reload cycle again, but I would have had to make so many things immune to it to avoid really unbalanced stuff (20 tanks locking down a mothership, etc) that there didn't seem much point.
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Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Nominations for Worst Ship Ever (II)
« Reply #6 on: February 18, 2012, 07:19:25 pm »
it does not make me feel like Rommel.
And I need that as a line from the Soldier in a TF2 comic.
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Offline HellishFiend

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Re: Nominations for Worst Ship Ever (II)
« Reply #7 on: February 18, 2012, 07:22:25 pm »
How about the deflector drone? With so many different types of weapons out there, how useful are these, really, with their otherwise poor hp and damage?

How many ships even use lasers?
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Offline Wanderer

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Re: Nominations for Worst Ship Ever (II)
« Reply #8 on: February 18, 2012, 07:32:12 pm »
How about the deflector drone? With so many different types of weapons out there, how useful are these, really, with their otherwise poor hp and damage?

How many ships even use lasers?

I happen to like the deflector drones, though I wouldn't mind them getting a bit of a dps buff.  Their range and speed make them excellent for anti-mirror, gravity guardians, and other assundry annoyance removal.
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Offline Spikey00

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Re: Nominations for Worst Ship Ever (II)
« Reply #9 on: February 18, 2012, 08:14:45 pm »
Well, the deflectors do have a very large range--13k or something, exceeding frigates.

Since you specified only one ship, I'll nominate the teleport battle station again; however, I still feel many mentioned in the previous topic need a buff.  I'll be waiting for the Worst Ship Ever - X edition.
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Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Nominations for Worst Ship Ever (II)
« Reply #10 on: February 18, 2012, 08:21:36 pm »
If you really want to name more than one ship, go ahead.  Somewhat dilutes the voting to have so many options, but even with 15 or whatever it was last time the result was really clear.
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Offline Orelius

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Re: Nominations for Worst Ship Ever (II)
« Reply #11 on: February 18, 2012, 10:32:53 pm »
I'd also like to suggest buffing acid sprayers.  They're essentially another cap of fighters but more expensive and worse; they really need something else going for them if they're going to be worthwhile to pick.

Offline Wanderer

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Re: Nominations for Worst Ship Ever (II)
« Reply #12 on: February 18, 2012, 11:15:27 pm »
I'd also like to suggest buffing acid sprayers.  They're essentially another cap of fighters but more expensive and worse; they really need something else going for them if they're going to be worthwhile to pick.

I debated on Acid Sprayers but they're kind of a weakened eyebot against your whipping boy.  The immunity to missiles and snipers makes me concerned about significant buffs to them.

Then again, if you can stop eyebots, you can stop buffed Acid Sprayers... I dunno.
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Offline Spikey00

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Re: Nominations for Worst Ship Ever (II)
« Reply #13 on: February 18, 2012, 11:21:45 pm »
While that's true, there were still votes on every nominee but two on the last poll; so, it'd be ideal if we could fit all those in eventually.  The cutlass was definitely among the worst on that first list.

As for the additional ships apart from the teleport battle station, I'd say spider (aforementioned), armour booster, anti-armour, gravity ripper,  Zenith polarizer, infiltrator, and armour ship.

I think I'm close to nominate Spire stealth battleships on this list as well, but I'll give a go with them before I make a decision.


Random thoughts on ships from last poll that more adequately shows my prospective on them (colourized for your convenience :P):
Needs attention
- Spiders are probably the worst on the list now, with the teleport station in tow.  Very low HP, low engine damage, low range and no combat worth.  Very hard ship to work with in a fleet, and redundant to tractor/spider/gravity turrets.  We now have a lot of ships that also have tractor, gravity, and paralysis abilities.
- Gravity rippers are probably in line.  As I said in the nomination topic, we many other tractor-beaming, gravity-effecting, engine-damaging, and paralysis-inflicting ships available, so why would we need an ability to temporarily shut down engines?  This is a difficult ability to fit into offense and defense, let alone being affordable.
- Zenith paralyzers have non-optimal targeting (Mantis, zharmad comment:  http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=2146), but the ability is promising.
- Infiltrators... I haven't touched this one forever.  Do they still do engine damage?  Very cheap swarm-type of ship, but as I recall they weren't good against most fleet ships.  Low HP, no cloak, situational use.  I wouldn't use this.
- Armour boosters.  These need to bring up armour to a flat amount if armour is lower than the multiplied amount, IMO.
- Anti-armours.  Actually similar to the deflector drones:  low-hp but very high range.  Unfortunately, these don't have much of that range and go like crackers in combat.
- Armour ships:  well... these do have a lot of HP.  That's kind of it, they don't mesh well into a fleet like forcefield bearers.  Maybe they need to aggro shell fire or somesuch abilities.
- Sentinel frigates:  still meh compared with snipers.  But I heard some arguments FOR them, so, maybe they're not that far behind?  They got one vote in the poll (which wasn't mine).



Satisfactory or unknown
- Ether jets seem _okay_ to me.  Might not be as useful as the Spire tractor platforms on a purely tractor use, but the stealth, high speed, and high cap gives it better overall capabilities.
- Tanks... not too decided yet.  But if you're going to give the tank a huge boost, it might overshadow the Zenith chameleon bomber.  Human use of the camouflage is meh, but IIRC it does have slightly better stats than the vanilla bomber...
- Armour rotters are okay, but situational (vs AI/human golems, mostly).  As a human player, though, I wouldn't use it.
- Impulse emitter:  damage based on armour amount is really too arbitrary for me to judge on effectiveness, which is why I'd shy away from this one.


EDIT:  oops, impulse emitters do damage based on energy, and acid sprayers use that mechanic for armour.  That's actually one ship I missed, too.
« Last Edit: February 18, 2012, 11:37:43 pm by Spikey00 »
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Offline chemical_art

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Re: Nominations for Worst Ship Ever (II)
« Reply #14 on: February 19, 2012, 03:37:12 am »
Potential ones:

Acid Sprayers: Poor dps
Armor boosters: Doomed until armor redone
Teleport battlestations: Poor stats overall
Armor ship: Poor dps, expensive
Tank: Expensive, poor dps
Spiders: Poor overall: Engine damage covered VERY well by spiders on defense, sieges overall
Impulse emitters: Pathetic damage against "normal" targets, damage capped in the few cases that COULD make up for it
Polarizers: See above
Armor Rotters: Pathetic against 98% of units, 99.8% of those not using "hard" minor factions or fallen spire

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