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General Discussion / Re: Questions and comments
« on: May 05, 2011, 11:37:27 AM »
I went through and tried again with the Conquest, and have finally beaten The Last Hurrah. I revise my opinion of it slightly--it's a wonderfully entertaining ship, but I remain convinced that in its role as a cruiser killer the broadside guns are almost useless. Other ships won't line up nicely for you to gun down, so as an anti-cruiser ship I find myself limited to putting the shields up, putting battery no. 4 on autofire, and letting that burn the cruisers down.
The Hellbore cannons proved useful when I had to duel the last remaining Onslaught when the rest of my battlegroup ate it, but only in that instance--zipping around something large and slow and unmaneuverable at close to medium range with nothing else to distract me, and even in that case he died a lot quicker when I moved into range of the fourth weapon group. I think that, as it stands, the heavy missile load and the great secondary battery (particularly the gauss cannon) are what makes the Conquest good right now, because it doesn't have anything like the maneuverability it would need to use the broadside guns in anything beyond a one-on-one situation with a similarly-unmaneuverable opponent (relative to cruisers and below, anyway).
I think it's just that broadside guns feel really, really clumsy to me in a Newtonian-mechanics game--unless you're at point-blank range, you can't circle a foe and keep them trained, and all it takes for an enemy to avoid them is to not sail directly alongside you, If they do that, you're limited to firing them in passing, and in a ship that takes as long to turn around as a capital ship, you're better off just letting the missiles and secondaries do their work.
On another note, are there any plans to have more than four weapon groups? I feel like using all the number keys might be a nice option to have even if none of the default configurations take advantage of it.
The Hellbore cannons proved useful when I had to duel the last remaining Onslaught when the rest of my battlegroup ate it, but only in that instance--zipping around something large and slow and unmaneuverable at close to medium range with nothing else to distract me, and even in that case he died a lot quicker when I moved into range of the fourth weapon group. I think that, as it stands, the heavy missile load and the great secondary battery (particularly the gauss cannon) are what makes the Conquest good right now, because it doesn't have anything like the maneuverability it would need to use the broadside guns in anything beyond a one-on-one situation with a similarly-unmaneuverable opponent (relative to cruisers and below, anyway).
I think it's just that broadside guns feel really, really clumsy to me in a Newtonian-mechanics game--unless you're at point-blank range, you can't circle a foe and keep them trained, and all it takes for an enemy to avoid them is to not sail directly alongside you, If they do that, you're limited to firing them in passing, and in a ship that takes as long to turn around as a capital ship, you're better off just letting the missiles and secondaries do their work.
On another note, are there any plans to have more than four weapon groups? I feel like using all the number keys might be a nice option to have even if none of the default configurations take advantage of it.