In my opinion it is not pay to win. There is a grind to get the best stuff, so if you want to speed up the process of having all that juicy best stuff, you can pay to lessen the grind with a license. As for ships, not pay to win. Sure here and there you will get a premium ship that has a different module layout which could fit a unique build better or sometimes they fill a gap where a free ship should be in the tech tree in that particular tier (also the ship comes fully synergised and has a bigger free syn bonus but if you like a free ship, you will synergize it fairly quickly anyway). But apart from that, a lot of free to play ships are better. I have 3 out of the 50 something premium ships, I use one in my t3 line up. The other 3 ships in my line up are free to play and quite frankly are complete beasts. I wouldn’t even consider using the other 2 premium ships I own now that I have a better understanding of the game.
DLC ships like the Desert Eagle, Bear, Sai etc. have to have some “relevance” in the game. Otherwise they could not justify selling them.
The solution to actually give Empire an f2p R9 engineer (styx), federation an R9 guard (anaconda-m), etc. balances the DLC ships into T3, but the golden ships still have importance. I can understand this management move, even if I know of course, that means, T3 empire gunship play needs money. Also, on some other instances, this also rather seems a bit of unintentional.
I do not see this as pay2win, especially since the final game content is not buyable. you can buy yourself in, mid-game, with some ships that make it worth the price you pay. After all, somebody has to pay for an online game.
If someone has a problem with this concept, he should progress to T4/T5, but interestingly, T3 actually is alive *because* many old players like to play their golden ships (and there is a big variety of ships flying around). T3 is simply more fun, because you have more mix in the playerbase, more games, more people, and because the ships in that tier do *not* allow you to easily go one-directional, simply because you have to have weaknesses on every fit.
Yes we need more players, but also to keep T3 alive, because our game atm. depends on that. If T3 falls, and every tier except T2 needs hours to go in, it would be tragic. We need more players *before* we can change the T3 shiptree. Also, T3 is actually 2 tiers. T3 progression (R7&R8), and R9. Usually R9 F2P ships become important because they allow you to Queue for those matches. This is why people love to bring Styx, Black Swarm, Kite, Anaconda-M, Kris AE, etc. along. Golden T3 ships all count as R8 in MM.
Some sidenote on the “dangers of p2w” for us…
Now I was more concerned about the T5 Mauler, or any T5 Premium ships. I expected rather having more T5 designs coming in, to modify your final ships, making that tier somewhat more interesting, or taking in T4 and T5 together into some kind of endgame worthy gameplay. Actually the missing concept of a “Styx”/“Minotaur” in T5 was my main incentive to get there. But the overall “completeness” of the ships in T5 makes it also less interesting. especially for ceptors.
The grind in the game is one thing, but what is missing is progression. With a concept of golden ships, unlocking standard ships should be easier, while equipping them should be a long term goal, so people do not just go for the ships which are “worth it”. specializing into ship alternatives can still go over bought ships. The devs have tried to ease up the progress to T3, I do not know how far they got with it, because I am already in T3 for quite a while.
So for a new player I suggest, try every role in T3, progress further to T5 gradually with some of your prefered ones, and you will have so much fun, the grind just falls away and suddenly you will see you unlocked the ship tree in all three factions in no time.
You need the practice, it is an FPS, even with an MMO lobby, or the yet to be released open space expansion.
This is why people love to bring Styx, Black Swarm, Kite, Anaconda-M, Kris AE, etc. along. Golden T3 ships all count as R8 in MM.
Styx, Black Swarm, Ana-M have no premium equivalents, or their premium versions are a tier lower (i.e. no Gigas II, plus fewer slots).
What i think is, tiers should be more uniform in slots. At least the actives. It’s nonsense that r9 have 4 actives and the others have only 3. T3 would be fine with 3 slots all they way. Then there would be some sense in playing T4.
What i think is, tiers should be more uniform in slots. At least the actives. It’s nonsense that r9 have 4 actives and the others have only 3. T3 would be fine with 3 slots all they way. Then there would be some sense in playing T4.
but the same goes for t2, first line of t2 ships only have 2 slots while the rest have 3