+1 Kine, however about the frigate tankyness…
I don’t know, I have fun playing my fed engy, and it is quite tanky, but of course, it’s not so tanky you can move across the enemy unharmed if you have the right fit anymore (or ElMustacho Class Frigates, as I called them in 0.7). I actually find it quite fair at the moment. As Ceptor, you can often barely kill one Frigate alone, if the Frigate player is any good. While my engi is fitted to be a secondary or frontline engineer, I can sometimes even be the “healer” with it, which sits at home like a mothership and positrons anything coming close. My experience against Frigates with a ceptor is, that actually ceptors now fullfill their role even better. In bigger fights, you have the ability to take on Frigs and make serious damage. You can kill those Archers in the background if you get to them. You loathe Guards, and hope the Gunships will take care of them.
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I really feel, the biggest problem is not with frigs and ceptors being the way they are. I have more concerns about Tacklers and ECMs in their roles. Tacklers feel underpowered first, while ECMs feel a bit overpowered, but both in relation to the way tackling is done atm. And it is not easy to describe, because at a certain level, it also feels right, the way the ships are, but the modules feel a bit too powerful at times.
Their abilities scale too much if a team is involved. Given a lonely ECM can make you a sitting duck for 3 secs, no biggie, but if they come together, they can basicly render a ship without movement for a way too long time. Supported by a group of ECMs or a generally strong team, the Tackler becomes almost hardcore.
Also, some weapons are weaker than others, and need some changes, while some other weapons only turned out to be effective, if you find the right fit for them; most of which I actually picked up in this thread. I did not like Positrons at start, I start to love them. I did not like the Ceptor Mid Range Plasma Guns, but actually they turn out to be quite decent.
RF Plasma however stays crap no matter what, and atm. lack of RFP makes ceptor-counter-ceptor fits weaker, resulting in too many shotguns equipped;
(the purpose of RFP was actually to hunt ceptors primarily with a ceptor, and I think, this was hiding the strength of ECMs, which e.g. me (but many others often simply by flying that fit) used to pick with the RFP; my strongest nerf on the covops was, that you have to use it as railfit; and yes, I know, atm. I constantly miss, because I still use them like RFR, dont laugh at me if I fly after you; point being, ECMs lost a predator, by the lack of any RFP CovOps/Recon ship (the CO in this case without bombs), and most ceptors dont engage too fast ceptors anymore, or it turns into a shotgun fight - while RFP vs. RFR/Shotgun mostly was lethal for the RFR; In CS terms: I miss my P90/Mp5 and feel like I have to play now with a Defender)
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I cannot compare mobas to SC completely. mobas are RTS games with auto attack. dota/aos style mobas like lol have lanes and ingame progression. SC offers switching ships for this. If compared to any moba, StarBattle is way closer, offering ships being able to be used in different ways, depending on the upgrade route you take and which abilities you unlock during a match - each class can serve as base for basicly any general role, but not all ships are good in it. It clearly demonstrates in its gameplay, that moba can be played with a different ruleset too, you just have to find the balance. I didn’t understand it back then, but the map creator introduced an achievement which you could get if any other player typed a sentence containing your name, your ship and the word “OP”. Since after 3 years of development, the map is almost completely balanced out for every ship, the sentence “it is OP” became the known short version for “I don’t play this game long enough to understand it therally”.
When talking about balance, it should not be the first consideration to make a certain ship unbeatable by another certain ship, while making another certain ship basicly always lose against you. That’s hardly good rock-paper-scissors based balance as we expect them from games. That would be actually rock-paper-scissors, which we dont play all day around the world with strangers all the time nonstop for a reason.
I think most people have ideas what balancing means, including me, and I would say, if you think you know how to balance, either try it or guess, but at all times accept, that what you still don’t know about balancing, is actually, the balancing. Which means, it is actually a case of “Nobody knows!”, and it is partly the fascination about it.
