I’ve searched godamned everywhere (read, every forum’s 1st page because, imo, anything past that is a bit of a broadside hit on recent events past 7.0), so I’m making a new one. If the mods actually find a recent one (post 8.2, at least), feel free to let me know and I’ll shift everything over.
Now… Is it really that bad? Some people say yes, some are happy with it (read “some”: Engineer fanboys and Premium users). Most people, however, find it unbalanced. To be fair with everyone, both sides are right.
Rank 3/6/9/12 ships are excellent to fly in (mostly because you tend to feel gimped without those shiny extra slots) and even any lower ranked ship might be considered “fun” by some nutty standards but for those who don’t stick to the “1-ship-gameplay”, it’s mildly unappetizing to see their favorite T2 ship vanish from existence in T3. Other such discrepancies include the existence of 13 T4 ships in the Federation whilst Jericho only gets a meager 10. Or the fact that Jericho T3 is inhabited by 5 Frigates and Federation T3 by a single a-bloogey-woogey-woo Tackler when these are, allegedly, their mainstream Fighter (the same can be said of T3 Empire Fighters).
The only viable T3 Gunships and Tacklers are Premium ships, so if this is some sort of dastardly evil plan to take over the world €1 at a time, I approve! Otherwise, this was an attempt of doing it, which I still approve! However, many pilots feel a bit silly if they want to play a role and find themselves using something from another faction. This is all fine and dandy for Gunships because the Wolf-M actually makes for an excellent replacement to the Nukem I or the Desert Eagle, by not being a flying tank with a railgun strapped onto it and fitting the role of “Glass Cannon”. Or maybe it is and my testing of both ships came out wrong because I simply suck whenever I grab anything that flies near the “space speed limit”. What’re we? Afraid that the space police is going to arrest us? “Hey buddy, you were flying faster than 700m/s were you not?” To which pilots politely answer by venting their cockpits. “Oh, I’m sorry, officer, I accidentally clicked my fire-ze-missiles button, I hope that’s ok.”
But I digress. The point I’m so feebly trying to get across is that there’s a way around this that doesn’t involve any hocus-pocus and that solution has already been provided by JasanQuinn in another thread (I can’t find it because I’m blind). His idea was elegant, simple and, overall, a magnificent view of how things should pan out in the ship tree, but I had a slightly different view from his tree which I believe to be just a tad more balanced due to the fact that it won’t mess with the current ship roles set in place (at least not too much, I hope), nor grant Frigates and Ceptors on Rank 1. To the both of us, it also made no sense that the tree gave up dead ends whenever you picked this or that ship. Or that you’re suddenly being forced to spend 45mill credits because you want that specific ship, but have to buy the previous 6 that have nothing to do with the one you want *cough* Empire Engies *cough*. Sorry, must be catching a cold. So, without further ado, here’s smoked pork! On the attached files.
I tried to keep the sense of progression I feel the tree should have but still able to give you some options if you want to explore a bit. I also feel that the difference between Rank 5/8 ships should be limited to survivability and not module number. This goes in line with two other small changes that don’t belong in this thread.
So, discuss!! Cause that’s the whole point of this, anyway. Your thoughts? Your opinions? Your contributions? This thread will represent your wishes of the game so the devs can make it better.
