I have to rebuild my ship for every major task.

Take a planet? remove all energy and install guns. Hope its not a ffa, or you are automatically too slow.
About to level? remove everything and install energy.
Doing missions? generally, remove defence and install scanners.
Hitting a base? remove defence and add weapons /base sepecific gear.
Killing npc's? remove EVERYTHING, max energy, scan 4.5k. remaining space goes to weapons.
Finished doing a specific task? put everything back to "average" levels, so you can respond more quickly if something unexpected comes up.

Not only is it time consuming, but also costly, especially if i touch my cloak.

Remember how you felt at level 150 trying to do a scan run? Thats me, 4 times a day.

ok ........

You said :

First, you don't have more defense. After mods, the defense of a ship is then based upon helmsman, which means the number is variable. Size of ship does not determine defense of ship. That said, compare a ship with 5,000 decks to 2,000 decks. With comparative defensive stats, around the gravitational pull of a planet, the smaller ship beats you hands down, since the gravity affects your movement based upon size and thrust. This is somewhat corrected in a vacuum, but even still, size still does play a part.

But we do have more defense because we did the research and can fit all the defense modules that the game has where a smaller ship can not. I've done all the research in the entire tech tree and installed all of the modules in the game including defense.
A small ship could research all it wants but it can't fit every module in it to make it as strong. It would have to rely on maneuverability completely.
There is no tech for that in this game or is that the equation ? If it is I'd like to see that in writing.

The size does determine the defense of the ship just like a Tiger tank in WWII could take multiple hits from the smaller but faster Sherman tanks and the shells would bounce off them because the shells from the Sherman weren't strong enough to penetrate the thicker armor that it had. It took quite a few of the smaller tanks to confuse the Tiger tanks enough that they could flank them and get behind them to hit them in the back where the gas tanks were.
In this case,one little Sherman tank going up against a bunch of Tiger tanks is a joke.

The armor is the defense in this case right ? This is where it gets a little confusing to me. Hull is armor which gives a ship defense but there are modules that also give a ship more defense.
That's two pluses to a bigger ship.

So there is three legions of huge ships outside of a planet where a little scout is guarding. You're telling me that it will out maneuver all of those bigger ships and some small ones ?
Something is clearly wrong here and it's not just gravity on the outer part of a planet where it get's thinner anyways.


You also said that a smaller ship can't fit the Heavy Quasi's to give the same amount of power that the bigger ship has but yet it does more damage to the larger ship. How is that ?
I need to get those extra powerful cheap weapons in my ship that take up less space too but there is no such thing.


In the Star Wars movies they had huge Star Destroyers and they had smaller fighters like the Tie fighters and X-Wings for instance. The smaller fighters could hit the larger Destroyers but it wouldn't even phase them. It might chip the paint on them at best. They had to find a vulnerable spot but they also had to know where it was.
The fighters couldn't do more damage on those Destroyers at all. They couldn't fit the same larger more powerful weapons in them to do it.
Smaller weaker weapons don't equal more damage on something that has more hull and defense.

One last thing. One blast from one of those Destroyers would obliterate a smaller ship and it wouldn't matter how tight anything was wrapped around it.
All it would have to do is have higher scan to lock it and fire. It might take a few shots but when it did hit, it would be all she wrote.

And this is exactly why I said hull NEEDS to be considered in the damage cap.

No I don't mind the amount of crew at all. We all need them to prevent raids and I mentioned earlier that it's one way Dan can make money to sell some to some of the newer guys.
I'm not disputing that at all.

And I know you have good stats but you know as well as I do that their not better than most attacking you.
We also spammed Emp's at you that should have reduced your defense to nothing but it's true that we only could do a little over 300 damage no matter what debuff was put on you.
We all talked about it and couldn't believe it.

When people level fast, they make themselves weaker at first. We call them tin cans but over a short period of time they are able to have more planets that in turn give them more artifact production that in turn gives them more crew, hull and prisoners to have more engineers and tactical officers that increase attack and energy. If these tin cans decide to keep putting their skill points in energy then they will continue to be weaker in attack but their defense will get stronger because of the helmsman draws.
They will soon become more powerful than the ships they passed up because of their increased productions.

I've seen it and continue to see it but you won't see me level up too fast because I'm not in a hurry to pass up all the NPC's that we have that the rank 2k guys can't see now and maybe even 1500.
I don't want to know because I'm slowly approaching 1500 so I better not be missing anymore important npc drops.

Ok, we are using old war technology to compare science fiction ships, but sure.
This is silly, because the issue here is that technology is meaningless because of the entire crew thing even existing, but sure.

Your size argument

The issue here is that we are all running the pinacle of technology. Every thing your computers do, mine can counter. Everything that mine do, yours can counter. I pop into a dimension, you are already there, etc etc.
Your argument is that because you have a commodore 64 and an atari plugged into your super computers, with their own room for cooling purposes (Your old, inefficient, oversized artifacts) your ship is more powerful. Not so. They are so pointless that having a room for them is actually a liability, and this is the case with your ship as well.

Your defence argument

What made tiger tanks strong was the Thickness of their armour, and i beleive the fact that it was angled. That has two aspects - the technology was superior, and the quantity was superior.
Compare that to our ships. Our technology is equal (we both have "angled plates") and 500 tons of armour. However, yours is 500 tons stretched over 500 decks, and i have 500 tons layered 5 times over 100 decks. Therefore, i have the thicker armour. Your shells bounce off of my tank.
I am not a sherman tank vs tigers, i am a Super efficient Tiger lord vs many old, outdated designed tigers.

Gravity doesnt really have anything to do with the argument, in all honesty. Its another thing we conquered with our technology early on..
Also, star wars technology is horribly dated compared to galaxy legions technology. Any one of our ships would conquer the empire with ease. Further, the fighters did not run the same level of technology as the battleships. Finally, i would be a rebel capital ship vs a empire capital ship, not a fighter vs a capital ship

Your weapon argument
For whatever reason, we are still using real life science fiction to debate this, where the real answer is that all that matters is that tactical offcers = attack just as much as an installed gun does. In the end, all that matters is that my attack score is superior to your defence score per deck. It doesnt matter if you imagine tactical officers as psycics throwing beams of pure force from their heads, or if they just each install personal weaponry in phase space, or whatever.


But in the end, i need LESS force to do the SAME damage, because your ship's defence is spread over a wider area than mine is. Lets try a different analogy. We are playing a game of football. We have the same amount of players on each side. However, the goals i am defending are one third of the size of yours.
WHich team do you expect to win?

And while i know your score is slightly higher, as konqul i run about 32k unbuffed attack man. My weapons are far from small and weak...

Man, the problem has to be fixed, yes, but it cant be done by artificially making everyone with extra health weaker. As i explained earlier, this would make everyone over 75k hull forever take more damage than a full sized ship. (6k decks)

There have been many suggestions for solving the problem, but brute force changing everyone to just take more damage the stronger they are is not a good solution.

Weapons that do a percentage of their hull in damage, reduced effectiveness of spammed repair artifacts, a greater critical hit range that ignores damage caps, weapons that gain in power after increased useages.. there are tons of ways it could be fixed. But that shouldnt be one of them. Trust me, you will be hurting yourself more in the long run...

Ok you wrote :

Your weapon argument
For whatever reason, we are still using real life science fiction to debate this, where the real answer is that all that matters is that tactical offcers = attack just as much as an installed gun does. In the end, all that matters is that my attack score is superior to your defence score per deck. It doesnt matter if you imagine tactical officers as psycics throwing beams of pure force from their heads, or if they just each install personal weaponry in phase space, or whatever.


But in the end, i need LESS force to do the SAME damage, because your ship's defence is spread over a wider area than mine is. Lets try a different analogy. We are playing a game of football. We have the same amount of players on each side. However, the goals i am defending are one third of the size of yours.
WHich team do you expect to win?

And while i know your score is slightly higher, as konqul i run about 32k unbuffed attack man. My weapons are far from small and weak...


My team would win because we would step on your goals on accident too often and you couldn't kick any extra points or field goals

you are arguing equal tech for defenses and guns and hull. fine that makes sense, but then what doesn't is why the small ship can have the exact same amount of guns as the big ship.
a small ship having 8 researched thrusters/dampners then a ship with 3x as many decks (meaning well over 3x as big) can only have 8 as well?
doesnt make any sense.

Because thats how defences work. 4 thrusters max. 4 dampners max. Presumably any more and they start interfering with each other.

When i was tanking, this is exactly what i had installed - EVERYTHING DEFENCE.
I had just as many defences installed as a full sized ship, just nothing else.

KJ, you have to remember, i have 2k decks. its enough to have most of the researched tech installed (except scan/cloak, i think), if you do not install any artifacts. I am a full sized capital ship - i just dont have the huge amount of optional extras that the hulking space mammoths have.

However, you could always petition dan, make a suggestion, that the current "max" module is outdated, and larger ships should have more - but then you run into the same arguments over if they should be able to have more scan modules as well and thats a taboo

So? You're telling me that it makes perfect sense that a ship can stop adding decks and therefore stop the rising damage cap but at the same time add brackets ad infinitum? You admitted yourself that our onslaught on your ship didn't even get you past half hull, with your crap net response, many debuffs, and many people hitting you. Attack strength is infinite but limited by modules and artifact production. Hull and defense are not. I know exactly what I would do if I ever hit the lottery. GP enough helmsmen and brackets that would make even Mento say "Eff this, that's too much bloody hull."

You said it "hurts" anyone above ~75k hull. Not really. First that number is based on a suggested multiplier. Second, even that is LESS of an increase than the deck formula. Based solely on decks, your damage cap increases at a rate of 1 point per ship bot. Based on hull, your cap would increase 1 point per 2.5 brackets (using 4%). To me that is completely acceptable because you're also gaining "hit points" from XCharge cells at the same time. The problem with the original original damage cap was that it totaled hull + shield. And THAT is why it was a bad formula. As things are now, there is a fairly firm ceiling on the damcap. That is just wrong. I'll say it again, the damage cap needs to be dynamic just like matched NPCs.

Look at it like this... Take a RANKED NPC. It has a damage cap of 2.5x it's rank. Now double the hull on it without increasing the rank. Now double it again, and again, and again and so on. That is the exact same situation we have with a static player damage cap with infinitely increasing hull strength.

I agree that there is no "perfect" solution. Game mechanics call for some compromise and suspension of reality. Having a Deck or Hull calculation or a combination of both in one formula would be a balancing aspect to prevent "God" ships.

As I'm cetain you're aware, it used to be like this. Simply, hull becomes a moot point and hull modules worthless. People will have minimum hull and maximum shields. Nerf shields and they'll just go to defence alone. This will not work.

Krionite Torpedoes make your argument invalid.

strm isnt completly wrong though. if the cap is based on solely your hull who needs more hull?
we'd need something that considers more than just hull.
i wouldnt say take decks out of the equation. ssbs can still have benefits for their work, but the formula needs another factor.

And none of any of the suggestions i have made get a glance at?

Ok, let me rephrase myself.
Under your proposed system, adding hull past the 75k mark does not simply hurt. It becomes utterly pointless, equivilent of adding decks without even having modules to fill it with. From that point onwards, all damage taken increases at the same rate that your hull does. It caps, utterly and absolutly, the durability of your ship ever. Because what you are arguing is that no ship should ever have more than "x" durability, though the exact 'x' mark is debatable.

I say thats a horrible idea, and instead give players ways of dealing with increasingly durable ships, not soft-capping their ability to grow!

The issue here isnt even a ships durability per se- its enemy ships ability to completly destroy them in the time it takes that person to use one singular artifact.
ONE ARTIFACT prevents being disabled. ONE. Your solution is to make sure all ships are forever weak enough that they do not have time to press one single button before being destroyed.


Under the current system my damage cap could be 500, and even if i got 50 dutranium brackets a day, you would simply need 15-20 energy more a day to disable me. (Generally, when attack and defence are equal, you deal 1/3rd of their damage cap. roughly roughly)
IF we have equivilent ship stats otherwise, that means i need 50 artifacts to keep pace with your 3 on a daily basis.

Therefore, the issue is the invincibility of a repairing, active defence, not the increasing durability of a ship.

I kinda liked the idea of scan and cloak playing a more "visible" role in combat.. SSB's should have advantages just as LSB's should have advantages as well.. and I don't consider having to swap out modules to be a significant "disadvantage"

Preface to say you that even though obvious it should be noted you can not increase scan/cloak with anything other than modules and buffs.. so this advantage would be for everyone equally not just those with superior arti pulls or high rankers

First- Crits should be reworked to something similar to a gemini cannon .. maybe do 5% damage of max hull+shields

Scan - obviously it is said it increases critical hit percentage.. but no one has any idea by how much.. but I suggest
.001% crit chance per scan point (1000 scan = 1% crit %)
20% of scan added to attack (5k scan = 1k attack)

Cloak
.001% crit chance reduced (1000 cloak = 1% crit % reduced)
20% of cloak added to defense (5k cloak = 1k defense)

I think this is the exact kind of idea we need.

Not only does is it a fair balance, as a ssb could have scan/cloak, but only if they sacrificed everything else, but it adds something more dynamic and exciting to combat.
At the moment, those little red screens are nothing but hate. Perhaps a succesfull critical hit should give a blue box?

This helps solve the perceived "unfair" advantage of a smaller ship, as well as help destroy active defenders. Now, they can not only be emp bombed to hit damage cap, but scan/cloak destroyed to allow criticals. 20 crits, and they die.

Might i suggest that the bonus attack/defence be added after all normal attack/defence buffs (and thus not improved by them) and that also the critical hit does 5% of total hull, not total hull+shields? Suddenly explorers are more deadly than konquls at high levels!

I do not think it would be sufficient to completly solve the active defender problem, but it would go a long way towards helping.

At the very least, they need to go past the damage cap.

Yep

How is this for a dynamic DC formula. One that is based on hull/deck/rank but the cap is shared between the ships, the less damage cap is used.

so a rank 500 with 2k deck and 15k hull might a damage cap of 1k
while a rank 900 with 5.5k decks and 35k hull has a damage cap of 2750.

It would use the 1k for both of them.
For a more equally matched one such as
a rank 900 with 5.5k decks and 35k hull has a damage cap of 2750.
versus a rank 1k with 6k decks and 50k hull having a damage cap of 3k
both use 2750.

For an extreme case of that
lazuli fixer mento versus lazuli fixer mojo
instead of having the 3k damage cap it would be a higher one since their hulls are both ridiculously high.
pretty sure mojo has less hull so his damage cap would be used in this battle, but it would be higher than 3k because of the extra hull. It can be a straight % so say mojo has 150k hull vs Mentos, 200k and the formula used 4% their caps would be 6k each.

Adding hull still has meaning, but less so when going against other insane ships.

hurts lower ranks with low damage caps alot. means they cant do hardly any damage at all to higher ranking ships.