Topic: Escorts

[Gook]

Nice and simple

[Kroma BaSyl]

yup again

[madelf]

If droners and carriers are unrestricted, then escorts need to be too.

[FPF-DieHard]

If droners and carriers are unrestricted, then escorts need to be too.

What he said, I have changed my opinion on this. 

[GDA-S'Cipio]

If droners and carriers are unrestricted, then escorts need to be too.

What he said, I have changed my opinion on this. 

<Ahem!>  There is an easy fix to that conundrum......

I vote no.

-S'Cipio

[C-Los]

             More "TOYS"  =  More "FUN"


                       

[el-Karnak]

If droners and carriers are unrestricted, then escorts need to be too.

What he said, I have changed my opinion on this. 

<Ahem!>  There is an easy fix to that conundrum......

I vote no.

-S'Cipio

My answer is typical from a Software Engineer:   it depends.  Since, we don't have Escorts under certain conditions option in the poll, I voted no.

Escorts solo flying do not make sense.  There purpose is a defensive one. They are supposed to be guarding bigger ships so they belong as auxiliaries in fleets.  Whether these fleets are player designed by allowing multiple ship fleets on the dyna or by design as AI allies in the mission scripts is neither here nor there.  They are escorts, bodyguards, and they don't belong out there all alone.  They also got gobs on specialized weaponry.  And, we have no rules to control them.  

For droners, we have the disengagement rule. Plus, their bombardment role is an offensive one. They don't need to be guarding anyone. If they want to do PvP in solo flying and take that risk then so be it.  CV roles are offensive too and could hold their own in PvP in solo flying. The fighter squadron can constitute a second ship in BPV terms so the CVs are largely controlled as restricted ships when they hit near-BCH classes and up.

There are no such restrictions for escorts.

[Lepton]

Voted no. Must be used within the context of a fleeting system.  By the way these unqualified polls are not the best way to go about things.  If you want people to have an honest choice, I would put up a poll like this, then ask one or two people to present their best arguements for and against.  You need an informed set of voters if you want a meaningful poll.

[Julin Eurthyr]

I vote no, at least under the current situation.

Basically because the escort situation, in and of itself, is unbalanced.

Consider:

3 race's escorts are nothing more than glorified phaserboats with an automated plasma-shooting AMD-like device.
2 race's escorts are, due to the gatlings / ESG they use, are either offensive or defensive fighters.  Use the gat / ESG for an offensive strike, their primary defenses are down for 1 to 2 turns...
3 race's escorts are both offensive and defense machines, due to the mechanic of the G-rack.  Some of them are extra-powerful due to the limited inculsion of Gatling phasers on top of their bombardment-level drone racks & extravigant AMD counts.

Unless something is done to make all escorts either offensive & defensive machines, or the same choice (offense or defense, not both at once) are granted to all escorts, I can't see them being used.

My quickie solution would be to remove the "drone" racks from the G-rack bearing escorts.  Therefore, the affected escorts become super-defensive machines like the Plasma escorts, but aren't super-offensive machines at the same time.  If a player wants a super-offensive "escort", they can buy already-available drone bombardment ships...

Otherwise, we need to do a major "buffing" to the rest of the escorts.  With a simple rule that carries harsh penalties, the Dro-D can be used as an offensive weapon.
The rule that I envision making the Dro-D useful: Plasma players are expressly prohibited from using any drone speed but slow on their Dro-D carrying ships.  If a player is cought using faster drones, in addition to being forced to immediately disengage with all associated disengagement penalties, the user will suffer the following additional penalty:  1st Offense: -XX VCs (where XX = 1/4 to 1/2 of a standard VC award or is equal to a large-ship kill).  2nd Offense: double or triple the 1st Offence VC penalty.  3rd Offense:  Deletion of account (with all PP gone, back to starting ship & rank) and possible ban from remainder of server.
By using the Dro-D to go with the Pl-D, much like the G-rack and AMD 6 work together, plasma gets super offensive and defensive escorts like the G-rack users.  Also, with the Dro-D, it's possible to build "plasma bombardment" ships, FFs, DDs, maybe even CLs or a CA, with 6 Dro-D racks.  The Dro-D copies the offensive drone rack's capabilities exactly, to the creation of scatterpacks.  Therefore, a 6xDro-D ship can put out, with the racks and scatterpack, identical damage amounts that the hex-flipping Drone ships are doing, and therefore can theoretically enjoy the exact same mission-times (with the handicap of an extremely short-ranged weapon) droners are getting.

I'm not a super-fan of the second proposal, as that makes plasma nothing more than blue-glowie short-range drone users.  However, it might be the only way possible to make the game balanced, on just about all fronts.  Then there's just the issue getting the Mirak up to better PvP snuff...

[SPQR Renegade]

Only bitch I have about escorts: Plas-D vs Dro-G. K-AD5, F-NAC, R-KDA, G-HDE. Any of these ships should be able to meet any other in battle and have a good chance of victory. With no Dro-D, there's no contest.
Level the playing field. Take the Dro-G off the drone based escorts and let them fly as solo ships for a campaign, or add a 180 swivel plas-F for each plas-D to the plasma escorts.
Then we might have something close to parity.

(edit: yeah, what he ^^^ said)

[Rod ONeal]

Only bitch I have about escorts: Plas-D vs Dro-G. K-AD5, F-NAC, R-KDA, G-HDE. Any of these ships should be able to meet any other in battle and have a good chance of victory. With no Dro-D, there's no contest.
Level the playing field. Take the Dro-G off the drone based escorts and let them fly as solo ships for a campaign, or add a 180 swivel plas-F for each plas-D to the plasma escorts.
Then we might have something close to parity.

(edit: yeah, what he ^^^ said)

This sounds fair to me.

Question: What bugs, if any, exist with the *slow* Dro-D?

In leu of more rules/penalties for the Dro-D it can be scripted in for the plasma races to only be able to use slow drones. I've been kicking this around in my head anyway. The Plasma races get a screwing. No plasma bolts is similar to taking away proximity photons or making all disruptors type1, tactically. I personally don't know how plasma captains can win with the current setup. My hat's off to you all. Add to that the loss of offensive firepower in the later years (BCH's, etc...) from the loss of the offensive mode of the Pla-D. The way it is now surely doesn't seem fair.

If the *slow* Dro-D has bugs that make it unbalancing or unusable, then a reduction of drone/ADD capability for Grack equipped ships would be a good alternative, regardless if Escorts are made Gen. Available or not.

I know that Dizzy was working on something along these very lines.
Where the heck is Dizzy, anyhow?

[Lepton]

Is drone D the same as offensive plasma D?  If so, off. plasma D apparently ignores shields if I remember correctly.

[Rod ONeal]

From what I know:

The "speed" setting has nothing to do with the actual speed of the torp, but affects it as below.

slow=10pts dam. does not envelope or ignore shields.
med=20pts dam. enveloping does not ignore shields.
fast=20pts dam. enveloping ignores shields.


They can be used in a scatterpack which is against the regular rules.

Anything else? Do they degrade properly with range? does the DroD have the correct (1 turn) firing rate, etc...

[Soreyes]

Surething.   I'll take two

[Lepton]

From what I know:

The "speed" setting has nothing to do with the actual speed of the torp, but affects it as below.

slow=10pts dam. does not envelope or ignore shields.
med=20pts dam. enveloping does not ignore shields.
fast=20pts dam. enveloping ignores shields.


They can be used in a scatterpack which is against the regular rules.

Anything else? Do they degrade properly with range? does the DroD have the correct (1 turn) firing rate, etc...

How is it supposed to work?  If it is anything like the slow version here, sounds viable to me.

[FPF-DieHard]

In the SGODev mod, the G-racks in Escort ships have been replaced with F-Racks (AMD count stays the same).  Ships are a lot more balanced that way as they ships better fit the defensive role.

For GW3, I removed my objection to the Escort ships as they were no cheesier than some of the ships that were already legal.  Maybe we need a server with them included every once in a while to rember why they were left out in the first place.

An overall cheese reduction, whether it be though strict OOB or a trimming the shiplist, is needed.

[Laflin]

In the SGODev mod, the G-racks in Escort ships have been replaced with F-Racks (AMD count stays the same).  Ships are a lot more balanced that way as they ships better fit the defensive role.

For GW3, I removed my objection to the Escort ships as they were no cheesier than some of the ships that were already legal.  Maybe we need a server with them included every once in a while to rember why they were left out in the first place.

An overall cheese reduction, whether it be though strict OOB or a trimming the shiplist, is needed.

LOL Take the AMD out completely - who needs it?

[Kroma BaSyl]

LOL Take the AMD out completely - who needs it?

Apparently, wussie Fed pilots. 

[el-Karnak]

Maybe we need a server with them included every once in a while to rember why they were left out in the first place.

This is not exactly a good PR message for GW3, hehe.

[Vorcha]

Take the offending ships and create specific variants. 

Example the AD5....remove the drones in lieu of 2 or 3 gatlings.  PH-G's can be deadly at close range in an offensive capacity but are really designed as excellent point defense weapons.  Not having drones limits this ships offensive capability but doesn't cripple it w/ the addition of Ph-G's.

To make this ship an offensive variant, reduce the ADD's to say 1 or 2 (enough for AD5 defense but no more) and add in 1 or 2 wide arc dizzy's.  Another solution is to reduce the cost of the AD6.  AD5 = Defense and AD6 = Offense.

I think we make mistakes thinking in a pre-defined box in terms of "era and race" specific weapons and defenses.  You can't tell me that after years of war...the Klinks wouldn't have Gatlings or anything else they wanted haha. 

I would take what I want and force the Fed's to watch as thier homeworld burned....