How effective are ship modules and weapons?

Game Discussion Balance
1

Watched NuclearHail’s video on the “murdergnat” 

 

Was pretty entertaining, and was amazed how he could just eat ships and noticed the fully maxed equipment. Honestly getting pretty frustrated at the game and want to quit already. Reached r8 Empire interceptor (Swarm) today and now not only are engi’s, dessies and guards out repping my dps, now even the paid ships like the sigurdr are just tearing me apart and taking close to no damage. Do interceptors get better at higher ranks, or do I just have to pay $$$ to afford decent equipment when unlocking a new ship? Ships seem to be getting alot worse for me, i’m only getting a k/d of about 0.7 when it was above 5:1 when I started playing in the lower ranked ships. Even with my 300 or so speed, fed ships seem to be doing well over 500 and same goes for some of the Jericho intercepors, and i’m doing sub 40 damage per shot on non-guard ships. I really want to enjoy this game, but the many many amounts of annoyances like paid ships, destroyers and being completely out-classed by players with far superior ships to me is making me hate this game already.

2

WoW the gnat is super fast.!!!

3

Focus on the basics of this game. It is not the balance of ships that is the problem but rather it is the players who throw themselves recklessly into the line of fire, dying and ultimately contributing nothing to the team effort that are the problem.

Ship positioning, tactical awareness, good usage of modules, and flying in a squad. Those are basics you have to focus on if you ever want to become good at this game.

Mk4 equipment is only marginally better than Mk2 equipment. It is the SKILL of the pilot flying the ships that determine whether or not they can turn the tide of a battle. I guarantee you that if you ask any of the longtime vets on these forums to 1v1 in a mk2 ship against a newer player in a maxed ship, the outcome is that they will win 99% of the time.

Premium ships are nowhere even close to being p2w as you imply. They are simply ships that confer different bonuses than the regular ships and give a slight income boost that doesn’t even matter when the player is endgame oriented.

Moral of the story? Focus on the basics of tactical decision making and you will die less. This game punishes players who think they can run headlong into a team thinking that they can do well. You are currently thinking like that and that is the easiest path to failure.

4

Another problem: you are trying to kill things in a recon. While it may work against an unskilled player, you will definitely have a very hard time killing good players. Especially tanks that are being healed like the guard and their pocket engi that you mention.

Recons are not damage dealers as their primary role. You want a damage dealer, look at a covert ops or gunship.

5

Still ship is very important. Just try and let two teams of equal skill fly, one with level 1 equipped ships and modules like u get them at start, and other team with mk4 and choosen modules.

6

Thanks for the replies, just got annoyed when not even scratching the shields of some ships. Changed to a thermal weapon instead of my old EM plasma gun and now i’m doing over 1k per hit to some ships and things seem alot smoother. I tried gunship before, and the Fed gunships seem like the perfect ship but I chose not to go down that route as there weren’t many of them. Is covert ops that much more effective for taking out enemies? The plasma web active seems sort of meh against larger targets, or am I mislead?

7

I always recommend for new players to focus on Fighters, they are solid middle ground, have high skill cap ceiling, can be almost like interceptors and almost like Frigates, can carry games and can do team support. Get a feeling for them and then move to interceptors. Interceptors are awesome, but for alot of people it takes quite a while to start becoming a threat in those, so a lot of people complain about imbalances without having a chance to actually enjoy the game.

 

Oh and Equipment - Mk2 vs Mk4 is not that much of a difference, of-course it is there, but pilots performance have much more weight in the outcome.

8

Soo many guides to make, soo little upload speed… I can show you various tactics with various roles but it takes time to sink that all in, im up if you’re up, custom pvp 1v1.

9

4 hours ago, Cameron23 said:

I tried gunship before, and the Fed gunships seem like the perfect ship but I chose not to go down that route as there weren’t many of them. Is covert ops that much more effective for taking out enemies? The plasma web active seems sort of meh against larger targets, or am I mislead?

Fed gunships are some of the best gunships in the game IMO. They’re a worthy line of ships for you to level in. Seriously. Skilled gunship players are some of the most dangerous pilots you will face in this game.

Covert ops inties are some of the best at dealing ridiculously good DPS (more so than a gunship but not as sustained DPS), but they are very vulnerable when their modules are on cooldown.

The plasma web, for me, is more of a utility ability than a damage dealing one. Example: tag a tackler with it before you jump on them and they won’t be able to cloak for very long without being pulled out of invisbility. Sure, you can hopefully kill with it on a very low hull interceptor, but the chances of that are laughable.

10

Plasma web is a dot ability - it goes through obstactles, all it needs is a target lock and range.

It’s great against things that try to cloak, or take a beacon, or are almost dead and try to get away.

It really does look weak compared to overdrive on gunships or warp on recons, or even the ecm metastase - but together with what CO has to offer in speed and manouverability and damage output, it becomes a rather handy spell for certain situations. The power is more in the summary of abilities here, not the special module. Also because you have more room for survival modules.

I personally find it hard to say which ships someone should start with. If someone immediately says, he wants to fly fast and dodge, and pew pew stuff, I would go ceptor first, fed healer and gunship second, and probably go more jerri later (command, tackler) and emp in the end. That was me once.

If someone likes to go with the team, dish out damage, and has good aim, i would suggest emp first. Their ships are great team players.

If someone tends to go frig first, i tend to try to get them out of the comfort zone, not to become too dependant on tank and focus on the healers more - there the fighter is indeed a good thing to learn. For some I do understand, that ceptors are too fast gameplay, there the emp ceptors really have a lot to offer, as you can fill the most important support ceptor roles, without worrying about too much speed, which you can even learn to turn against your opponent. The only shipclass I advise to learn last is actually LRF, while for tackling i advise to first learn all fighters and ceptors, to know your best impact, because it’s subpar to be the 6th gunship like tackler in a team. These are also the two worst captain picks.

If someone does not really have preference at all, Fighter is a good start, like, all of them, especially gunships and commands.

So it is a bit also about finding out, where one is strong - but from experience I’d also say, playing something that doesnt work in the start for you doesnt mean, you should leave it. Ships where you do not naturally have a clue, how to play it, are worth research. There I always played without trying to improvise, by copying other players fits.

I mean, you see, it’s really about finding out, where your strengths and interests are vs. the goal of one day understanding all ships in theory.

Btw. I enjoy to read the views of others where to start a lot.