Well, today is the technical ‘free’ release day of Custodian and apart from the servers sh*tting themselves again , IT LOOKS LIKE 'OL DERP WAS RIGHT.
IT F*CKING SUCKS
And before I go absolutely insane let me say this:
I wanted to like this ship;
I wanted to like this weapon;
but I can’t.
The model is fantastic apart from one gripe I have that I’ll append to the end of the post which is more of a question that I might ask Mr Orca to forward, the unique sound is lovely, the weapon effects are amazing - but the stats are just SO. DAMN. BAD. I can’t even remain positive in the positive section of this post I’m so burned.
PLASMATRON
WHAT’S GOOD?
Base damage is high
You can charge energy converter with the self damage
effects + sounds are nice
WHAT’S BAD?
Literally everything else about this weapon.
Projectile speed is too low
Crit damage is too low
Crit base is too low
Self damage scales with modifiers
Self damage scales with ammunition
Fire rate is too low
Lead marker doesn’t update dynamically
Charge time is too long
Overheat cycle is too long
Overheat in general is too short
Now then let’s run down how horrificly abhorrent this mongrel of a weapon is. The plasmatron is the first charged explosive precision weapon in Star Conflict which everything of that description is wrong.
Precision weapons aren’t explosive so they can actually damage interceptors as the trade off for having low fire rate in general is high base damage, high crtical and generally high projectile speed.
Plasmatron threw literally all of that out the window. It has lower than average critical damage, extremely long charge time, extremely low projectile speed (it takes 7 seconds w/o acceleration coils for an uncharged projectile to reach max range) and is explosive - inherintly meaning it does next to nothing to interceptors as they take 25% less explosive damage thanks to their modifier before resistances.
I know the balanceing team generally like to take things slow (look at that 10% speed boost to fed dessies when every other dessie needed it more) but Plasmatron needs either a massive buff or to be completely reworked.
If I was the sorry soul to be responsible for tweaking the stats of this weapon to make it somewhat competitive outside of low level sectors in open space I would probably:
-Lower base range to 4500m
-Increase uncharged projectile speed by 250%
-Increase charged projectile speed by 150%
-Remove damage scale with charge
-Reduce max charge time to 2 seconds, holding projectile for 4 seconds makes the AoE
-Increase the critical damage to 50%
-Make the AoE unable to crit
-Make the AoE not explosive damage
-Make the AoE unaffected by external damage multipliers
-Lower the cooling cycle by 1 second
-Either make it EM or give thermal weapons some projectile speed munitions finally
In case you didn’t notice. That’s a big list. With some big numbers. Because this weapon is f*cking trash right now. It barely can kill bots quickly in medium level sectors in open space. Holy crap. I hate it so bad. I wish I could like it. Another thing to note - the changes to the AoE. Turns out, 4 seconds for two blasts can’t even kill a Falcon-m with nearly 0 thermal resistances. Why? Because the AoE is explosive. It took less damage simply because it was an interceptor. Also you’ll die before both detonations trigger because 90% of interceptors can kill a frigate in under 10 seconds and you just dealt 24,000 thermal damage to yourself. Even more if you were under crystal infiltrator.
PURSUIT ALGORITHM
WHAT’S GOOD?
Decent cooldown time
Good active time
Speed boost attached to it
Radar invis on a guard
WHAT’S BAD?
Shield resistance debuff (yes, another)
Speed boost is too low to actually ‘pursue’ stuff
This one is a short one because I can almost like this module. The only things bad are also completely stupid. Why does this module have a resistance debuff when adaptive camo doesn’t? Frigates are bigger and easier to spot than an interceptor so you sure as hell aren’t going to be sneaking into an enemy team and slaughtering them all and furthermore the Custodian has a MASSIVE HITBOX so the resistance debuff just gives less reason to use this module.
As for the speed boost being too weak, going from 230 m/s to 330 isn’t going to help you actually pursue even a Federation engineer - even closing the gap on an Empire LRF is difficult because they’ll just Reverse thruster and dump a torp on your face whilst you have lowered resistances.
How fix?
Make the speed buff stronger a bit
Remove the resistance debuff or do everyone a favour and move it across to adaptive camo. Okay.
DEFENCE ALGORITHM
WHAT’S GOOD?
Low cooldown
Hull restore effect, even if low
Shield resistance buff
Low energy consumption
Obvious effect
WHAT’S BAD?
Speed debuff (again)
Classified as an ‘Active module’ instead of multipurpose
That’s really my only issues. In the situations you actually need this module the speed debuff will get you killed and it should be multipurpose because it fits that definition in the literal sense. It has multiple purposes. Otherwise this module is good. The Hull restore effect is just large enough to come in handy and the shield resistances are just large enough and last long enough that they can help you in an engagement. The only thing dragging this module down is the two aforementioned negatives.
You should get it.
THE SHIP AS A WHOLE
IS REALLY UNDERWHELMING.
Fresh out of the box we have some issues with the base stats being bad.
- Shield capacity doesn’t move at all with synergy increase which yes; it does have a healthy value, but that value means nothing because you can’t repair that massive shield on your own because:
- The capacitor is tiny
Even with a max volume +20% synergy bonus it is tiny. You barely have enough energy to move around and use modules let alone keep emergency shield booster active and pop a normal shield booster.
- The passive shield regen amount is tiny in comparison to shield size. The Custodian can have a shield as large as an Archon but has an innate quarter of it’s passive regen and even less capability to passive boost it.
- It’s stupidly slow. Like really slow. Like holy hell it’s so slow.
Custodian has Boremys as a direct competitor and not only does Boremys have the bonus of being federation but it’s special module is useful and has a low cooldown and actually gives a significant speed boost. Custodian has none of that coupled with poor energy economy, bad passive slots and being Jericho. What speed boosts it does have with Pursuit Algorithm and Protective barrier are too weak to be seen as significant because the base speed is so low.
As already stated over and over - Custodian has to compete directly with Boremys and currently Boremys is an outright better choice. It’s premium which means 0 repair cost and bonus credit and synergy gain, it has access to unique modules, it’s faster, the special module is far more useful, the primary weapon is effective against all ships, the unique module is effective in most scenarioes and has no drawbacks, it has better energy economy, better hull capacity and is able to hull tank with it’s special module rather than being restricted to shield tanking.
So what needs to change to bring it to the par at the least?
One basic fix all is to make Custodian a fully customisable ship - or in other words let players change the passive modifier slots as well as the synergy bonuses + special module. This would alleviate any complaints about the horrible passive slot selection for the weapons + modules the ship has access to.
As for base stat issues:
-raise the passive shield regen to 200-300pts/s so the ship doesn’t have to crutch on shield regen modules constantly(rotating ESB + SB)
-Increase energy regen by… well I’m not very good with energy regen numbers since there is a curve. I guess 15pts/s would be safe?
And I don’t even know about speed buffing because if pursuit gets touched up the ship itself wouldn’t need a speed buff.
I’ve been typing for so long I’m not angry anymore.
Help.
Oh right Protective barrier
Protective barrier currently is weird. It’s good but also useless but also amazing. So the problem right now is all explosives negate the shield completely - missiles, torps, photons you name it. Even with your shields down they splash right to your hull which in that case you just died because the shield tripled your hitbox when your shields were down.
However the passive resistance buff is amazing. The psasive +65 lets Custodian compete kind of without the usual guard crutches like Adaptation mechanism and Conformist booster. The only reason I haven’t really thought of anything to fix this is I feel like this has to do with how explosives work as a whole. Also singularities and phaser spheres go right through it which is annoying. REE.
As for my question about the model: Are the afterburners supposed to be missing?
I don’t know how I only realised this today.
The image we’ve been looking at for the past 100 days every time the game boots up:
Notice the afterburners missing? They should be where those random spikes are.
It’s been bothering me since I realised it. Same with the railgun Mk5 model in the Atlas vs on the ship.
Okay I’m done now. Help.
Please confirm my lack on braincells somewhere. I’m so burnt from trying to get Plasmatron to work.
