@delpino
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Here’s a screenshot of two broadside variants I was messing with.
From a game balance standpoint, one of the advantages of the hybrid (especially the fragmentary-hybrid in the screenshot) system is that the PD can be nerfed at will. 360° is too bad? Great, either cut the angles or increase the cycle times to compensate. Those 90° arcs are meant so that you can’t catch more than one drone from a volley. You’re catching drones too easily? Again, cut cycletime in the single beam variant, or even remove some beams in the fragmentary variant. I don’t think the risk of catching unintended targets with a slow-loading PD is a bad thing. It just makes it more of a compensation for the small beam arcs that isn’t meant to make the ship impervious, just on par with the others.
I do like the chasers and carronades. In fact, one of my variants I didn’t post (because it was meant to be dreadnought-equivalent) uses at least a forward chaser with a slightly increased range, a 1° 48′ arc and nearly twice the damage of a standard beam with a cycletime that made the actual DPS slighly below standard. I envisioned its standard use as a beam that would be fired on approach as you turn to bear the main broadside.
One of the reasons I didn’t include them in the proposal was that, especially the carronada, they would be in fact difficult to balance. I fear in particular that, for example, the chaser would be calculated in our total DPS count resulting in the main broadside being nerfed too severely; or that my arguments against destroyer-Ares would still apply to the carronade in a siege ship. As for a carronade in a general combat ship, I’m in love with the idea so long as the main beams have their range slightly increased to compensate for the ammount of fire the ship would have to accept in order to use them.
I really don’t see how your idea of Ares difers from a destroyer with LC engines, @admin
In combat, I also disagree with siege being consistant with short bursts. If you want to destroy a station, and only the station (that is, not touching the supporting fleet), it all boils down to exploting small windows caused by the enemy moving aside. That being so, a slow cannon might not be able to use all of its firepower (say, you need to retreat a full second before the damned thing loads), while behind enemy lines your room for flexible positioning goes to hell very quick. It’s not that your conception is unworkable, it’s just more suited for a missile cruiser; or at least the way I’d fly one.
That said, the broadside ship is not that different in capacity from any other cruiser. With a skilled helm the damage output is more or less equivalent, while the reduced endurance is a welcome challenge for a crew with the experience the Phoenix has.
But most importantly, I strongly disagree that Ares and Artemis being similar will be good at all. Over the last nine months the Phoenix exhausted all the Artemis class has to offer. If we didn’t, the other six months I spent commanding an Artemis class for the USN surely did. The scope for further progress and learning in such a ship is too limited after this time, so I personally have no interest left, at all, in a ship class that’s too similar in style and handling. Fish’s work on redesigning the ship is something I’m grateful for because it allows for some new, exciting possiblilities, so an excess of similarity would be a huge step in the wrong direction.
Yeah, your method doesn’t come naturally to me. My preferred approach is to do a delta-1 pass to concentrate them into a tight ball of ships and fire an EMP if I feel they’re too heavy, otherwise begin by the rear and leave it to helm (or to my XO if our helm for the night is unexperienced) to expose as little as possible.
About 45/45 being too little, you’re most likely right. Still, I’d rather start with a weak ship knowing it can be improved than going the opposite way, where it’d be too difficult to say if it’s just the shields that are too high or the broadside system is inherently broken.
I don’t think that a pure broadside model will be approved because any ammount of drones will expose her weakness: shield strength will be too little to absorb drones effectively, so you need to somehow use those tiny arcs for defense, adding another layer of difficulty. The hybrid model is the best, I think, as it avoids making it too easy on helm while also being defensible in combat. The issue is setting an appropiate point defense beam. The one from my original proposal is a short-range version of the missile cruiser PD system, but I considered another option that offers 360° protection in segments with a high cycletime, so that you can protect against small swarms but sustained defense becomes impossible. The idea is making it so the PD beam is as small a concesion as possible.
I’m not in love with increasing the shield nodes, as well. It’s a good concept for developing a tank, but I find the idea boring. It’s just inespecific protection you can abuse by diving right in the middle of a heavy fleet, so it doesn’t fit any role unless you nerf beams a lot; and the way aggro works in Artemis means that you won’t really gain a lot strategically by having such a ship help you in a battlegroup.
My main interest as a captain is having an interesting ship, but I’m also curious as to the reactions to the broadside idea. Here’s the one point I disagree with, though.
Tempts crew to play fleet cracker by barreling into the middle of a fleet to utilize both port and starboard guns. (Some say manual beams with shorter cycle time would approximate the gain of firing both sides and reduce temptation and efficacy of attempting to fire both. I disagree at present.).
What I dislike about that is that you can’t select multiple targets. So in barging to the centre of an enemy fleet I accept fire from every direction in exchange for only being to fire in one. It’s much simpler to engage from the outside.
As the one responsible for preparing the State of the Division report, I too would like to know what kind of stuff do people want to know.
I think that if someone at ONI, or even the command staff, could write short reports about what the hell are we doing at the campaign or about our status, it’d clarify a bit for people are somewhat lost.
Also, if there’s other information junior officers need to be aware of (I tend to forget, I left the lower deks myself a long time ago), such as DO periods, I’ll be glad to include it.
Oh, no, Draeco, I agree with you! I love challenges. Having a Kralien beat the everloving snot of my shields is, once you get pass the “fuck it, maybe I went the wrong way about this one” stage, a fun thing.
I guess I’m getting a bit too used to the feeling of being able to beat the map as easily as we usually do.
I’m up for an increase on difficulty, but I think that if we ramp it up that much in one go we’d probably break the standard sims.
Specifically, I recall some instances lately in which, during sims or simulated missions, Kraliens seemed to hit much harder than expected. We managed, but encountering something unexpected like that managed to throw us off balance.
Before Fish replied here I considered to just let this message go, as there were very few answers that wouldn’t be confrontational, and those would be way too noncommittal. I’m not fine with that, and I most definetely don’t agree with what you wrote; but now that we have a proper, messured response by someone else I can build with that.
I was one of the founders of the old USN, the group that split from the TSN. That gives me a different perspective on some things, from combat doctrine to the value of roleplay, and what keeps the community running. The USN succeeded in what we wanted to do: to beat the game, to find new ways of doing stuff, and to bring a change in the way some things were done in the TSN that we didn’t agree on, but this is not the place to discuss this one.
I firmly believe that the TSN wouldn’t be here today if Xavier had an habit of killing dissent. I’m pretty vocal about my many, many disagreements with him, and my ego is big enough to assume my tactical and strategic theories are more valid; but there’s one thing to be said about the fleet captain: he always respected my way of doing things. He didn’t shoot down my promotion into command because of those arguments, and he gives some genuine thought to my ideas even though he has something else in mind, even when I’m being an ass about it.
All ships have their own way of running. The group as a whole gets a lot from that. This allows the more relaxed people to be on a friendly environment without ruinning your fun; and it also prevents the most heavy roleplayers to play as they want without killing the mood for the less RP oriented. This system works much better than just telling half the group, whichever half, to suck it; and the proof is that nowadays we have the TSN; while the USN came and went once its main mission was accomplished.
I’m proud of my relaxed crew. Phoenix is a place to joke around with friends. We will mess around, and we still will manage to pull as much weight as any other ship. If someone who doesn’t share our inclinations comes to our ship we can try and make it less painful for them, but our bridge crew ought to remain our dear ragtag buch of misfits, because that’s our way to roll.
I also believe that one of my duties as a captain is to protect my crew. If we get out of hand, as we did during the FF incident a long time ago, it is my personal responsibility and not that of my crew, and that’s why I apologized about it, publicly, during the next shift’s debrief. And we totally stepped out of line, because our messing around started to affect other ships.
But the crew tags? So far, none of us used a fake tag outside the ship. I really don’t see an internal joke becoming a division wide issue. None of us was forced into it, and my crew is always welcome to raise their objections to me, or even to present a transfer request, should they feel that our bridge is not their place.
How do you run away in space, without kidnapping a whole space ship, like what happened to TSN Hydra. And after suffering such a loss, why would we allow anything other than complete discipline?
Because it’d be allowing storyline to take precedence over group leadership when establishing policy. The stricter discipline was part of the arc where Cessna and I stole the Hydra, embodied in the NSD.
Do we punish Slate for never stating her rank?
This can be addressed by the DO during the briefing, as that’s the officer in charge on enforcing protocol. But, don’t you think you’re going a tad too far, recommending a punishment in the same post you considered a temporary demotion a valid option? Even in character, that’s a tiny thing. When I, in character, caused a security breach, I only got a temporary loss of seniority, so the scale doesn’t work. At all.
Do we punish Allard for behaving the way he does? Performing Allard manouvers, picking up mines and endagering the crew, ignoring DO’s instructions.
The evaluation of what constitutes danger to the crew is largely Captain’s prerrogative; and if his CO is fine with letting him on helm, it is beyond my rights to mess with that. As per his ignoring the Duty Officer, it was adressed. I don’t believe there was a new instance of the DO’s authority being breached, but if there is, as I already said when this was raised, feel free to bring it up to my attention, that of the fleet captain, or to the acting division commander.
Do we require from every Commander to be reevaluated after taking a long break? Do we demote some people if they are not up to par with others of their rank?
This was discussed, in lenght, about half a year ago, when we reformed the rank system. The post in question should still be hanging around the Div Development forums, and it’s public access.
Also, if a senior officer doesn’t feel like being CO or XO for a particular shift, that person can always RP as another character of a lower rank.
We do that, a lot. Xavier has his Turnez alt. When I was a prisoner during the NSD arc, I created an alt, Ensign Ricky, and nobody raised any eyebrows. We could write more formal guidelines for the creation of alts, but this isn’t urgent enough to deserve inmediate attention.
To top this off, I believe the most important thing you wrote is actually this:
If that’s something we tolerate or not is decided by the group and by it’s leader. Currently, we tolerate it, laugh at it, go with it.
If my personal actions affect the experience other people get from the group, I’m open to hear about my “general annoyances”. But I think that my way of running the Phoenix works, and I don’t plan on sacrificing our goofiness. As Slate said, and I think she described the spirit of our crew just fine, we’re here for the people and friendships. I’m not in for the RP, but I know and accept that most people actually are, and I have no right to ruin their fun. If my way of doing things actually is hurting the community, the fleet captain is free to dismiss me from command and I’ll be OK with it, but right now my job is to protect my crew’s place.
As a matter of fact, this is actually fairly simple to do. The issue is with doing it retroactively, and I’m not sure if the instructors have their own registry.
There is no official group other than this website
and the super secret steam group that’s been taken over by a pastafarian cultNhaima managed to invent a workaround until Jemel fixes this server-side
I’ll spend the night drinking coffee, so if you need me to set up your permissions you can PM me over teamspeak.
Long, long ago I remember something like that. Really long ago. For some time we used a Google+ thing instead of a website, and I think that Brenner’s first attempts to create the website had a .info suffix. Could be wrong, though.
Thanks for the offer, Donovan!
However, you just finished an ADO term, and an extended one at that. This policy is informal, but still: as we have other candidates on our waiting list your application won’t have as much priority for us. Maybe another time.
At any rate, I generally agree with your idea. We should include a comment on the update before the shift, it’ll make our lives easier.