DOGMA#8169 posted (#post-28410)

It already takes 3 ships to kill a dreadnought that knows what it's doing without a healer and you want more?

A destroyer can obliterate a dreadnought 1-1 very quickly precisely because the TTK is too fast...weapons do too much damage and combat is dumbed down to point blank fragfests.

obliviondoll#5677 posted (#post-28373)

This is literally suggesting the removal of weapon differentiation between classes as well as reducing customisation. Ships have primaries which fit their role. Destroyers have effective mid- to long-range weapons, Arty has super-long-range guns, Corvettes have extreme CQC primaries. Secondary weapons are not a fixed weapon, but a customisable option. Some are better for close combat, others for long range. You can complement your primary role, or provide yourself with a counterpoint to let you cover a weakness in your build.

Weapon differentiation by class still remains in place. Dreads can have their secondaries be very long range but also very low damage. Destroyers can have their secondaries have shorter range than dreads and be low damage still...but destroyers would have more ammo than a dread in the secondaries. Primary weapons would be the opposite when it comes to ammo..dreads have much higher ammo counts in primary while destroyers have lower ammo counts. That makes the dreadnought very scary at close range.

Differences between the different weapon options for primaries and secondaries could then be implemented by changing the projectile speed,effects and homing/dumbfire stats. The destroyer rocket secondary is a great example.. slow projectile speed, dumbfire... at the long range they would be used (as secondaries) it would be rather ineffective if the target is moving..but its a heck of a good weapon to saturate the air with pain and deny the opponent movement space at range. They could even be given some AOE blast when they hit /reach max range and detonate.

Corvettes simply dont have secondaries. All their weapons would be primaries of different types. Close range weapons ...the ship after all is supposed to be the mobile high speed craft.

Artillery ships are a clusterF as they are now anyways.. their primary weapon should really be firing mini-nukes (aoe blasts) in dumbfire mode with medium-slow projectile speed rather than the super-high damage, high refire rate, long range, superfast projectile speed weapon it has. Artillery secondaries should be a host of above mentioned aoe-denial rocket/swarm weapons...its an artillery cruiser it should not be able to fight stuff at close range as well as they do now.

Nuclearmoose#1670 posted (#post-28240)

Wait, pressing the "W key" is to hard for you? Hold i need to go write that down, that's a new one.

Its a matter of kinesiology/biomechanics. Your middle left finger must remain pressing the W key if you want to move forward. Your index and ring finger on the S and D key to rotate ship left and right. Now, what happens when you must use a module?

Your only options are to stop pressing W to reach up to the F keys or if re-mapped, to the 1-5 keys directly above. If you want to keep the W pressed you must use the ring or index finger...which cant cross over the middle finger so each has to be used to press the number in their movement arc. Removing your hand from the W key is a problem because many ships take time to speed up but slow down much quicker when there is no thrust input.

Problem with that is the ring finger in most humans doesn't have the accuracy or dexterity of the middle or index finger simply because of how the nerves and tendons are wired/attached in the hand. So your F1-F2, 1-2 keystrokes are not only likely to be difficult to make but it also has a very high potential to harm your hand in the long run (you think carpal tunnel is bad? wait till you get tendon damage).

Your only real option now is to either use a console gamepad or use a macro program to keep that W pressed. I use voice attack and my index and middle finger are free to use the module keys without any issue..if I want to stop i just tap the W key and the auto-hold-W-down macro stops. I ain't messing my hand because of lousy control design. Gamepads are console controllers and the entire UI/Interface of the game is literally the same thing you see in games ported from console to PC... just BAD keyboard layout and an interface that relies entirely on toggle/scroll options because a gamepad has limited number of buttons while a keyboard has several hundred options.

Feedback:

Combat is still very fast paced when it comes to battles between cap ships. This can be the result of weapons doing too high damage or ships not having enough armor or defensive abilities (like the shield).

I would prefer a game that has longer shooting matches between big ships rather than quickly-over fragfests.

I would suggest that changes be made to the way ships fire their weapons. Primary weapons should be slow refire rate, high damage, short range weapons. Secondaries should be long range, very low damage and very high refire rate. This means the primary weapons have low ammo while secondaries have large amounts of ammo.

Armor could be increased.. the Armor on the heavy dreadnought should be the armor of the medium destroyer to give an idea of what I'm thinking..

This would then make most battles begin at longer distances with lead barrages rather than the current meta of rushing to point blank fights. It would make battles last longer (increased armor, lower overall dps on ships unless really close) which enables players to use more ship abilities for defense and offense and teamwork.

The controls are probably because the game is being designed for console not pc. I had to use voice attack to macro the move forward key to save myself from carpal tunnel and broken phalanges.

It should just fire upward.

I've never been able to understand just how game developers take feedback and do anything but what the feedback indicates.

Range was never the issue on the artillery cruisers. Damage output, rate of fire, projectile velocity and shield type was the issue.

Artillery cruisers even with the range nerfs are still performing massacres every map because what makes them OP is still there in full force.

Reduce the rate of fire. Reduce the projectile velocity. Return the range to what it was and change the shield type and you fix the entire class.

Because...

Kirk was half mad from third stage alien syphilis.

Picard never left the Holodeck at starfleet academy. Common sense tells you your enemy doesn't stop shooting for whole minutes so you can talk to your crew, come up with a plan and deliver fantastic philosophical speeches.

Sisko punched Q. Q then erased him from existence. Seriously, don't punch the best character ever made. Ever.

Janeway risked her ship and crew to get coffee out of a nebula. Bad captain, bad.

Sheridan and Sinclair lived in a universe populated by man-children aliens. Even Picard would've done better in there.

Archer apparently started the ad naseum time travel stuff in Star Trek. Disqualified for that alone.

Apollo Adama kamikaze'd the newest, undamaged, high tech battlestar Pegasus to save his daddy's old wrecked rustbucket.... when the Galactica herself had a skeleton crew just like Pegasus. Not smart enough to pick up the radio and yell 'hey pops, run to the Raptors and come over to the new more powerful warship and lets get out of here'. Disqualified.

Now, William Adama ... lied to his crew, kept them going after the apocalypse, took a woman's advice and acted on it (OMG) because 'they better start making babies' and other just equally bad-assed decisions that ultimately led the colonials to a planet full of ape creatures they could get nasty with. Full of WIN.

Personally though, I would nominate Joshua Calvert of the starship 'Lady McBeth' as the best captain ever. Read THE REALITY DYSFUNCTION novels to know why. Hint: realistic space combat, very alien aliens AND the dead coming back to possess the living.