But what about new users... are you trying to make the learning curve even higher?

its not about it getting harder its the fact that people have spent a lot of time and effort on their setups and now with such a change will make it worse, sure my setup isnt as expensive as some peoples but it took me a lot of time as i dont have time to play on this alot

You guys are making a big deal out of nothing...

This reminds me of Escape Velocity Nova, where if you get hit by a stray nuclear missile and your in a light fighter you can kiss your ass goodbye.

Hopefully the admins will be reducing the big weapons RoF.

Now, what i would like is for that most weapons, speed be cut and give them some tracking, so when they are fired they will tend to shoot towards the target if you are 5-10 degree's off.

But i can already see the benefits to this, the only thing is Squads and Team Mates, and Sol and other places.

Think about bana. When it first was added no one complained it was too "easy". In fact, no one even attempted a bana run for 6 months as players were that poorly equipped. Same thing goes for UZ, for the longest time UZ ubers were out of reach for most players.

The game got easy because of the inevitable growth of the player base, not because it's fundamentally easy. A logical solution to this would be providing players with new things to do - like adding more content. WoW released it's second expansion pack for this reason setting new goals for players to accomplish. Why SS can't follow the same path, I do not know.

Ivelios, you have any idea how much work it is making a area like UZ? We're talking several months of hard work. Who's gonna keep doing them? WoW has a shitload of people who gets paid very well to do nothing but create new content. SS has Cael....

People are totally over reacting about this change. Making it sound like their ships is gonna take a lot more damage. It's simply not true, in reality you're not gonna be that much effected by it at all. Other then in positive ways in form of new tactics to use in combat.

This actually makes it much easier for very new users, since the target before you shoot system is kind of strange when you start out. This way, they can just start shooting and it will kill things even if they aren't targeted.

OOH ME LIKES this going to be fun get to pick off multi angry ai (volcoms) and not have to target each 1 ME HAPPY!

Just a couple of things.

Now we can kill without targetting the opponent, can you make it so that you can hold down spacebar and keep shooting even if you didnt have something targetted in the first place. This would allow zerkers to spray excomms etc

Thoraxe, fists and torpedoes: Will they be nullified by every hostile target? If so then congratulations for making them completely useless.

Were they not already?

PS. Lions are going to be a bitch once this goes in

indeed. oh god that will be fun. INCOMING! *cloud of players scatter* Muhahaha love everything about these updates except its effect on drones, they have always had shield issues for as long as i can remember and now its that much easier for em to die to a stray shot.

id make an exception for drones and just let shit go through em. but thats just my opinion, eventually it will be balanced out right so the system works without screwing people over.

actually, idea for you. temp drones that make an aura like those cool little envelopments with shields that are decent and resists. that way it takes drone slots, cant be spammed too badly (whole drone slot thing) and when they run out of shields they can either pop or their little aura thing dies and you gota scoop em to recharge them again.

No, thoraxes, fists, and torpedoes where only canceled by the target you were aiming at iirc.

Shield drones were part of the plan, as HAL mentioned. They'll have a ton of shields and a decent area of cover, which will give you a lot more options for fighting with drones.

The difference is, EVERYONE will take less damage, not just us cap ships. And I am sure that no matter how large the damage reduction, it will not be enough to account for my halved shields. That is not just a messed-up number due to a balancesheet, that is caused by my augs not stacking with the 600% shield bonus I get. My setup is PtE, Gunner Mastery, so no augs stack, yet I still lose more than anyone.

I think the argument against this isn’t that space is 3D (this is a proclaimed 2d game) but rather that space is really big. True it’s just a game but even games are supposed to simulate reality to at least some degree. Having to target what you hit seems a much more elegant approach to combat than the proposed change.

On the other hand, being able to take a shot for teammate is a pretty cool concept. If only there were some way to selectively turn this feature off and on...



I like this idea. So long as the chance to dodge was relatively high for all ship. Sounds of the "Golden BB" concept combat pilots speak of.

Hi all,

I do like most of the new things that HAL and the other admins have mentioned.

You've still not mentioned whether or not stealth will effect being hit by stray projectiles, 'cause it really will make stealth rather less useful in many situations.

I love the idea of shield drones. Perhaps different shaped ones would be possible...and perma ones for galaxy defence, perhaps? Meh.

You (the admins) keep saying that it won't be as bad as we think, and I hope that we are all just overreacting.

Now - About drones - You're nerfing DM further, and drones stats too perhaps. And now we learn that we can easily lose our drones if we cannot sit inbetween the AI and ours, and if we dodge the projectiles, our drones get hit regardless of our efforts.
What about if we fight AI which have strong push tractors, e.g. groups of Forgones and Picks ? If we cannot sit near our drones to defend them, how can we possibly stop their deaths, which, in the case of MF AI firing multiple bullets and damaging multiple drones per shot, will be difficult for a healer drone / ShM to heal, while it will indeed make ShM a more active class, instead of point and hold space.

If you are planning to make drones so much easier to kill, then I hope you are planning to scale their cost / rarity accordingly.
If I took some BFDs into the Serengeti Nebula level of the Serengeti, deployed an Armada Charge Drone, the Panthers with their MF'd paws would quickly overwhelm their weak shields and destroy them. Barriers will have little use in PvP and against massed MF AI, especially if they don't cover the area completely. (The same is true of other AI. I don't want to hear 'Oh noes! You shouldn't be in UZ!! Rawr!' or anything similar, please)
Therefore : Boom! 4 BFDs and a charge dead, in mere seconds. Good bye 4-5b of drones. Which, due to the RoF, stealth, and speed of AI such as panthers, will be impossible to save.
So yeah...please scale the cost / rarity. Your nerfs to the DM Class will make it unplayable / unlikely to be played, unless your ideas with the support drones actually work well.

But yeah - aside from the above outlined points, it looks good. I hope you will solve the problems that I, and others, have talked about in this post, and do something about the players who will quit in the future due to these changes.

The knockback effect sounds good. I hope you do something to make it inversely proportional to RoF, else high-rof bases / drones / slaves / whatever will be able to easily knock enemies around, rendering them unable to aim effectively. (Not saying this shouldn't occur. But not too much, people should still have the ability to fight back despite this, without requiring 100% tracking weaponry)

Thanks for your time,

-The Paladin-