I really just want to see 2 things.
Loyalty increases and less cool downs.
nerf the synergy requirements across to the board. synergy needed to next ship should be 5, max 7 for skipping, like in certain ship trees.
Weapon balancing is, meh.
People still have to fear my Covert Op. Once you know how to use them. They are DEADLY.
They could have introduced light, medium and heavy variants of all weapons to be fitted exclusively to the respective classes – achieving separate balanceability (sic?) – so this argument is actually null and void.
I never said it was the only way to do it, but it did do it.
Yes I am mostly flying Interceptors.
Here my personal view on the Interceptor weapons:
Sharpnel cannon:
If you have an ECM this weapon is really deadly.
I fixed it. Now you have the true feedback about this weapons.
@Jphack : +1
People still have to fear my Covert Op. Once you know how to use them. They are DEADLY.
deadly or broken? lol 
i seem to rack up countless kills in those things. or engineers with coil mortars and accel = dahell jus’ happen? top frags as engineer every game = something wrong mr. wong…
RF Plasma is horrible. I was a great RFP fan, and found it to be one of the most challenging and fun weapons there were. It’s now a plasma railgun instead of a DPS-over-time machine, has lunatic spread and far too fast overheating, even if it is fine, that now it has to overheat. It should maybe instead overheat slowly, but use a bit more cooldown instead. Also, without the Damage mod, it becomes pretty much an assist weapon max.
I do like the usable new weapons, tho.
I am also getting used to the nerfed CO, but I still dont see why it had to be nerfed in T3.
I did retake 2 CO setups in fights, even if I still troll with the Deagle and Singularities.
I still feel Orion nerf needs to be undone or redesigned, because the only weapon it helps (again), is the shrapnel.
I’d whish Energy war was a bit more prominent (energy transfer for all ceptors), and the ECM would be rethought in terms of modules a bit, especially the All-Stop-3-second-killswitch. Which is incredible if you have a team or even masses of ECMs in coordination, and almost useless if you have no team, which seems to be the case of my matchmaking luck most of the time.
I’d also whish, the MM would be redesigned to lesser help people find equal foes (which obviously usually does not work), and instead really increase the logic of the conquest mode and make Tier battles become fuller, because usually, I know, the enemy I am fighting against is also in the same faction as me, so it sometimes just seems pointless to even bother about that part of the game. After constantly being trashed by Novas, Wolves and Bears, suddenly I find myself fighting NASA teams, even if we should be theoretically on the same side there. I know however, to make that work, much more has to be considered, and of course I know, it would work better if we had 10k players instead of 1k online.
In disagreement with betatrash tho, I dont find Electronic Counter Measures has to do much with missiles not hitting, it should be usually targeting and energy war, or counter energy war related. I’d whish for a bit more metagame in energy war, make it even become a used term, especially in higher tiers.
Atm, it is only part of T1, where the energy transfer is your main module to slow down the unstable builds those ships use, which works great. Later, it just becomes timed blackouting of a certain target and watching yourself go down in matter of seconds, because you cant move, shoot, or even counter the effect; even if you got modules which theoretically should at least give you a chance; and especially not, if the other ecms hit you exactly as the timer runs out. I wonder why nobody has tried an All-In-ECM-ball yet.
Yes I am mostly flying Interceptors.
Here my personal view on the Interceptor weapons:
Sharpnel cannon:
If you have a good aiming this weapon is really deadly.
Assault Plasma:
Very effective against fighters and frigates.
Pulse Laser:
Same as Assault Plasma.
RF Plasma:
Did not try this one yet.
Agree on Shrapnel.
partially agree on assault plasma: partially couse u can’t move if u wanna hit with a decent amount of ammons per sec… and yes… u are deadly but also a free target.
Pulse laser : never tryed new vertion… i used to hate the old one and as far as i know now it overheats more quikly too… so…
RF Plasma: Please be my guest… try it out. It could be put in an encyclopedia as example of Uselessnes.
I posted this elsewhere, but I wanted the devs to see the state of progression in their game in the wake of their .9 patch.
Interceptor: Pulse Laser
Remove spread + Increase range to medium distance, keep damage and other stats the same
laser inties already suffer 2 major drawbacks namely not being able to fire off rockets on-target and match target’s turning radius while firing at the same time
other weapons don’t have these disadvantages in dogfights, pulse laser deserve the boost.
Interceptor: RF Blaster
Halve overheating (from 6/1 to 3/0.5 for eg) + Boost DMG per shot a little
This gun severly lacks burst damage
I wrote more why it needs to be the EM equivalent of Shrapnel but ended up an essay.
Lets just say RFB needs this otherwise there will never be a situation to fit this over Shrapnel … so - Burst Damage pls.
Interceptor: Plasma Gun
Raise Rate of Fire -OR- Better Overheating ie. longer firing time
Decent anti-fighter support weapon but does nothing to frigates and unable to hit interceptors. 1/3 is not good enough incentive to use this gun.
Either make it anti-frigate grade or anti-interceptor as well. RoF for inties, Overheating for frigates.
I love the mechanics on this gun but it is too situational. Needs better overall performance boost to tempt people into using it.
Fighter: Singularity Cannon
Take away slow barrels from Positron and give it to this xxxx
It does it’s job against Frigates but it’s also killing interceptors and fighters which is a no-no
Hit indicator is also missing like so many have said already and it’s shooting over barriers… feature or bug?
Fighter: Gauss Cannon
Reduce from 3 charge to 2
This thing is killing interceptors too easily, on a gunship it kills other fighters just as effortlessly
Increase the number of times you need to hit a ship before killing someone to balance it out
Fighter: Assault Rails
Fighter: Ion Emitter
??? I Don’t Know???
This gun is underused mainly because all the other fighter weapons are already good
I know it’s supposed to have lower DPS because it’s a hitscan and ‘theoretically’ you should be hitting more with this BUT
Most pilots on average are hitting just as good with the other weapons (except nubs on Singularity) so we get better DPS using something else
It needs an extra ooomph to make it work, zero overheating maybe and cap the max damage?
Currently there is no role where the Ion is the best choice weapon
Frigate: Positron Hail Baby
Remove slow barrels - It doesn’t need it - Give it to Singularity Cannon
Aim Assist Off pl0x - It’s frikkin annoying and sometimes target lead indicator is wrong and I need to shoot somewhere else.
Repair Projectile Spread - It probably looks realistic but as a sniper weapon for a sci-fi game, it simply should not be there.
At certain ranges, the plasma beams will shoot around an interceptor and not a single one will hit because of this
I wouldn’t even mind if you made the mechanics similar to Interceptor’s Plasma Gun. More Charge, Higher Accuracy
Frigate: Assault Lasers
Frigate: Rapid Beam
Reduce Spread by a tiny amount
Remove Slow Barrels - PLEASE
Otherwise this is a favourite amongst certain frig pilots for obscure reasons.
It’s fine as it is with the above 2 tweaks but it does share about the same role as Assault Laser despite different mechanics so:
Suggestion: Reduce DPS, Increase Range, Increase Overheating/Cooldown times and make it a proper AoE suppression weapon like today’s machineguns
Frigate: Coil Mortar
Reduce Damage per hit , Increase RoF alot , Keep Same DPS overall
This gun is not scary enough most people don’t care
Ofcourse they die when they do but still it’s so low key it feels ‘off’
Alternatively make Coil Mortar like Octupus volley missiles. High Damage in quick succession but with a relatively long cooldown.
Otherwise this is already a balanced gun that requires Rapid Fire Rails level of aim but less fun to shoot with.
I posted this elsewhere, but I wanted the devs to see the state of progression in their game in the wake of their .9 patch.
I’m assuming you haven’t actually done any T4 then. Because in T4, your speed crashes, and in T5 it crashes even harder. This is because of absurd synergy requirements to proceed on higher level ships coupled with lack of games you can join outside prime time and massive 4v4 and 5v5 ESB “destroy the tier for everyone else” action on the edges of prime time.
T1 speed is by far the highest, order(s) of magnitude (yes, likely somewhere between 20 and 100 times faster levelling), T2 is significantly slower, T3 is even slower, T4 becomes a pain and T5 is just torture.
Consider that it takes 340.000 synergy just to level R13 ship for lvl8>lvl9.
Ignore width of each jaggid point, I didn’t account for how long it actually takes between each rank, because I don’t even know this. Mainly focused on how much stronger or weaker you feel at each rank. As for T5, meh… ESB has just as much chance to be on your team as your opponents…
EDIT: So if it was realllly accurate, stretch out the latter half of the graph x3 or x5 lol
Frigate: Rapid Beam
- Reduce Spread by a tiny amount
- Remove Slow Barrels - PLEASE
Otherwise this is a favourite amongst certain frig pilots for obscure reasons.
It’s fine as it is with the above 2 tweaks but it does share about the same role as Assault Laser despite different mechanics so:
Suggestion: Reduce DPS, Increase Range, Increase Overheating/Cooldown times and make it a proper AoE suppression weapon like today’s machineguns
The problems with this weapon are :
_Laser —> Maximal and Optimal range as to be use correctly
_Slow barrel ----> enough said for something that looks like a AAA cannon.
_Spread —> Huge spread for 4000m range.
The other solution is to keep the thermal dammage, reduce a little bit the spread and change the type to “Railgun”, I mean : Heavy Blaster —> Heavy Gatling.
That will correct the loose of efficiency after 2500 m for a 4k range weapon.
Frigate: Coil Mortar
- Reduce Damage per hit , Increase RoF alot , Keep Same DPS overall
This gun is not scary enough most people don’t care
Ofcourse they die when they do but still it’s so low key it feels ‘off’
Alternatively make Coil Mortar like Octupus volley missiles. High Damage in quick succession but with a relatively long cooldown.
Otherwise this is already a balanced gun that requires Rapid Fire Rails level of aim but less fun to shoot with.
If you reduce the dammage, you will kill this weapon.
The actual Firing rotation make already this weapon harder to use than most of people think.
The projectile speed is slow, really slow, super slow…
The rof is so slow, you can’t shutdown a command’s diffusion shield, It just regen it energy between each shot.
The mortar have more restriction than the Singularity cannon, for what? a little AoE and 650m more range?
Frigate: Positron Hail Baby
- Remove slow barrels - It doesn’t need it - Give it to Singularity Cannon
- Aim Assist Off pl0x - It’s frikkin annoying and sometimes target lead indicator is wrong and I need to shoot somewhere else.
- Repair Projectile Spread - It probably looks realistic but as a sniper weapon for a sci-fi game, it simply should not be there.
At certain ranges, the plasma beams will shoot around an interceptor and not a single one will hit because of this
I wouldn’t even mind if you made the mechanics similar to Interceptor’s Plasma Gun. More Charge, Higher Accuracy
I don’t know how some people can play with it.
Slow barrel / Insane spread (in fact when you equip this weapon, you also equip a drunked artillor, for each charge, he drinks one bottle of vodka)
Fighter: Ion Emitter
??? I Don’t Know ???
This gun is underused mainly because all the other fighter weapons are already good
I know it’s supposed to have lower DPS because it’s a hitscan and ‘theoretically’ you should be hitting more with this BUT
Most pilots on average are hitting just as good with the other weapons (except nubs on Singularity) so we get better DPS using something else
It needs an extra ooomph to make it work, zero overheating maybe and cap the max damage?
Currently there is no role where the Ion is the best choice weapon
This weapon is underrated.
I love it on my tackler.
One thing make me laugh since the patch : Kinectic dammage destroying shields as they destroy hull.
Forget to mention that some players, Had just to press buy on the t5 ships/items because they already reach 15/15/15 before a long time ago patch
I don’t know how some people can play with it.
Slow barrel / Insane spread (in fact when you equip this weapon, you also equip a drunked artillor, for each charge, he drinks one bottle of vodka)
Acceleration coils + electronic guidance and you start sniping ceptors like there’s no tomorrow. I used to go with dual coils but since they buffed the gun recently that’s no longer needed. Without sacrificing that much tank it’s pretty limited though I agree.
Goes for all frigate weapons except the beam cannon though, you need to compensate for their weaknesses (unless your ship is bonused - coil mortar works extremely well out of the box on a Templar, for example).
Ignore width of each jaggid point, I didn’t account for how long it actually takes between each rank, because I don’t even know this. Mainly focused on how much stronger or weaker you feel at each rank. As for T5, meh… ESB has just as much chance to be on your team as your opponents…
EDIT: So if it was realllly accurate, stretch out the latter half of the graph x3 or x5 lol
Basic math failure on both points. There are 10 spots in your typical 5v5 game. That means you have 1/6 chance of getting on the winning team and 5/6 on the losing team.
When it goes to 4v4 you have zero chance of being on the winning team.
And you need to reverse the graph. Speed is exceptionally high for low tiers and exceptionally slow for high tiers. Not vice versa as your graph shows.
Acceleration coils + electronic guidance and you start sniping ceptors like there’s no tomorrow. I used to go with dual coils but since they buffed the gun recently that’s no longer needed. Without sacrificing that much tank it’s pretty limited though I agree.
Goes for all frigate weapons except the beam cannon though, you need to compensate for their weaknesses (unless your ship is bonused - coil mortar works extremely well out of the box on a Templar, for example).
As it stands right now, the frigate hails are massively OP, far more so than singularity. ESB engineers typically snipe about 2 maniac medals worth of points per game with them.
They really need a range/projectile speed nerf at the very least.
Excuse me? I’ve yet to see an Engi actually keep their eyes on everybody’s hp and deploy repair stations as needed. Hell, most of them actually FORGET to turn the HoTs on.
You’ve yet to seen one? How unfortunate you are.
Well, given that frigates are on the verge of extinction, and how “skilled” pilot always go with fighter/ceptor, it’s only natural that you either see few to none engy with actual understanding of his role.
But ego?, oh please, there are far more people in this game who only care about their ego.
Frigate: Positron Hail Baby
-
Remove slow barrels
- It doesn’t need it - Give it to Singularity Cannon
-
Aim Assist Off
pl0x - It’s frikkin annoying and sometimes target lead indicator is wrong and I need to shoot somewhere else.
-
Repair Projectile Spread
- It probably looks realistic but as a sniper weapon for a sci-fi game, it simply should not be there.
At certain ranges, the plasma beams will shoot around an interceptor and not a single one will hit because of this
I wouldn’t even mind if you made the mechanics similar to Interceptor’s Plasma Gun. More Charge, Higher Accuracy
I don’t know how some people can play with it.
Slow barrel / Insane spread (in fact when you equip this weapon, you also equip a drunked artillor, for each charge, he drinks one bottle of vodka)
Positron canon user here. The trick is keep firing after the first shot (keep the gun the active mode), you won’t have any problem with spread, I always fire a few shots before actually having the lock on or sight of target to get the spread reduction.
Slow barrel is so-so, the only problem I have with it is when someone is too close to you, the projectiles come out behind them, and you can’t hit them anymore.
As it stands right now, the frigate hails are massively OP, far more so than singularity. ESB engineers typically snipe about 2 maniac medals worth of points per game with them.
They really need a range/projectile speed nerf at the very least.
Stop being mean to frigates, they have nothing to defense themselves with, at least give them something to be able to do something at long range.
And to have a decent projectile speed + range, you have to sacrifice defense boost modules. So it’s just equivalent exchange. You can just screw them up at close range like usual.
The problems with this weapon are :
_Laser —> Maximal and Optimal range as to be use correctly
_Slow barrel ----> enough said for something that looks like a AAA cannon.
_Spread —> Huge spread for 4000m range.
The other solution is to keep the thermal dammage, reduce a little bit the spread and change the type to “Railgun”, I mean : Heavy Blaster —> Heavy Gatling.
That will correct the loose of efficiency after 2500 m for a 4k range weapon.
This Gun has gender issues. It doesn’t know if it’s a medium range support or a close range high damage weapon. It does both badly.
At medium range (between max-optimal band) where support ships tend to operate the spread is too high.
Effective optimal is much less than advertised optimal so wth??
At close range (actual optimal) where it does maximum damage, the darn thing has slow barrels and will not even consistently kill a fast moving frigate let alone inties.
Something’s gotta give, either make it a med range support (better spread + slow barrels) or close range damage gun (keep spread + remove slows)
Making it med range support will overlap Assault Laser’s function.
I don’t see why people would want to permanently gimp themselves if they made it a close range hi dmg gun either.
My suggestion is to make it into a hi spread AoE suppression gun, something where 3 guards can use to spray in the general direction of beacons and create a minefield effect kinda thang.
If you reduce the dammage, you will kill this weapon.
The actual Firing rotation make already this weapon harder to use than most of people think.
The projectile speed is slow, really slow, super slow…
The rof is so slow, you can’t shutdown a command’s diffusion shield, It just regen it energy between each shot.
The mortar have more restriction than the Singularity cannon, for what? a little AoE and 650m more range?
I think the per shot damage is at a good place right now but low RoF is limiting this gun from scoring serious ‘multi-purpose’ medals
Increasing RoF not compensated by DMG per shot reduction ‘might’ make this gun too strong DPS wise. (guessing - no actual calculation done)
Overall this gun is balanced but too role specific by only just. If it had faster RoF you can consider this gun all nice and done
if it’s an issue, don’t tweak anything with Coil Mortar. Good enough already.
As it stands right now, the frigate hails are massively OP, far more so than singularity. ESB engineers typically snipe about 2 maniac medals worth of points per game with them. They really need a range/projectile speed nerf at the very least.
Aye it shoots like a rail gun at times - but I considered the fact that it will incite unrest, nay Anarchy among Frigateers if projectile speed is nerfed. I blame the upper tier bonus to projectile speed if anything. At lower tiers (T1 - T3) it still shoots like plasma.
Positron canon user here. The trick is keep firing after the first shot (keep the gun the active mode), you won’t have any problem with spread, I always fire a few shots before actually having the lock on or sight of target to get the spread reduction.
Slow barrel is so-so, the only problem I have with it is when someone is too close to you, the projectiles come out behind them, and you can’t hit them anymore.
Keeping it active also means turning on slow barrels and at that med - optimal range where most of your fights against interceptors will be, the improved accuracy is undone by the fact that inties are small enough to go in-between your projectiles. The gun is just plain acting weird and unnecessary since it adds no extra fun for being eccentric. Plus the improved accuracy is probably a random thing and not tied to having it charged in the first place … try shooting it in practice mode - it’s random as far as I can tell (although good spread happen at 2 charge more often than 3 or 1, coincidence?)
There is also aim assist present in the reticle. Add to the fact that lead target indicator is wrong at close range (or on wild and fast moving inties at range) this gun fails to perform as a sniper weapon. It could be an intended feature though, something along the lines of newbie friendly long range sniper that cannot hit easily at close range? But for the love of Plasma …why lol ? - it doesn’t add to the fun and takes a chunk out of technical shooting. I suspect they tried to ‘fix’ the Hail Gun by making it worse rather than make the other options better …
Aye it shoots like a rail gun at times - but I considered the fact that it will incite unrest, nay Anarchy among Frigateers if projectile speed is nerfed. I blame the upper tier bonus to projectile speed if anything. At lower tiers (T1 - T3) it still shoots like plasma.
As we have already seen in 0.9.0, anything that adds skill requirement or balance to wildly overpowered aspects of frigates causes “anarchy among frigateers”. As as a result, most of us now view “anarchy among frigateers” as a sign of a necessary balance change, and seeing “anarchy among frigateers” after a balance change as proof that change was warranted and executed well.
Anyway, hails are far too powerful and engineers routinely top kill scores, not to even mention assists, on which they are automatically #1 because of auras, but with added damage assists they go nuts. ESB knows this, that means devs know this. Considering that ESB’s engineers are abusing them like there’s no tomorrow, I’m expecting appropriate nerfs with the next balancing batch. As we have already seen, “anarchy among frigateers” or any class for that matter, is not going to get devs to return to state where they think balance was broken. 0.8.0 “play frigate or piss off” patch, I’m looking at you.
Other weapons that they will likely fix is singularity (hopefully by adding damage but making them have slow barrels so that gunships with singularity will break frig balls which they currently appear to fail to do in T4/T5 CR games but become exceptionally vulnerable to light ships and need a lot of defense from other ships), all laser weapons in the game (improve them in some way), interceptor weapons other than shrapnel cannon (improve them in some way).
Fighters are arguably well off right now. I like both railguns, I like singularity and lasers suck but that seems to be a near universal problem with lasers as a weapon type at the moment. Ints are basically screwed with just one viable weapon at the moment, and frigates have at least one wildly overpowered weapon and 2 functional ones (blaster and mortar).
I’m rather worried that devs won’t buff other int weapons while nerfing ECM class, which may cause ints to largely die out as a class for a while even with hail nerf.
Keeping it active also means turning on slow barrels and at that med - optimal range where most of your fights against interceptors will be, the improved accuracy is undone by the fact that inties are small enough to go in-between your projectiles. The gun is just plain acting weird and unnecessary since it adds no extra fun for being eccentric. Plus the improved accuracy is probably a random thing and not tied to having it charged in the first place … try shooting it in practice mode - it’s random as far as I can tell (although good spread happen at 2 charge more often than 3 or 1, coincidence?)
There is also aim assist present in the reticle. Add to the fact that lead target indicator is wrong at close range (or on wild and fast moving inties at range) this gun fails to perform as a sniper weapon. It could be an intended feature though, something along the lines of newbie friendly long range sniper that cannot hit easily at close range? But for the love of Plasma …why lol ? - it doesn’t add to the fun and takes a chunk out of technical shooting. I suspect they tried to ‘fix’ the Hail Gun by making it worse rather than make the other options better …
Well, theorize however you want , I use it in practical match (practice mode?, dude, I shoot it thousands times in matches), and don’t have much problem with it, I find it quite fun and it is now my No1 choice for my frigates, Mortar is second.
@Luckyo: I mean no offense, but your first paragraph gave me headache.
Ignore width of each jaggid point, I didn’t account for how long it actually takes between each rank, because I don’t even know this. Mainly focused on how much stronger or weaker you feel at each rank. As for T5, meh… ESB has just as much chance to be on your team as your opponents…
EDIT: So if it was realllly accurate, stretch out the latter half of the graph x3 or x5 lol
Just hope you get a 3v3 match with bots, no ESB squad! Depending on the time of day, you just have to hope for 12v12 in T3. It doesn’t always work. I have seen more 5v5’s lately compared to before.
Acceleration coils + electronic guidance and you start sniping ceptors like there’s no tomorrow. I used to go with dual coils but since they buffed the gun recently that’s no longer needed. Without sacrificing that much tank it’s pretty limited though I agree.
Goes for all frigate weapons except the beam cannon though, you need to compensate for their weaknesses (unless your ship is bonused - coil mortar works extremely well out of the box on a Templar, for example).
And Jericho R6 implant. Except for lasers, the speed effects of anything are worth it against a dodging target.