I wouldn't really like to see falcon (P) nerfed or banned next tournament. I think a lot of rule changes could've made the falconP weaker, for example unlimited fighter wings (if 7wasp wings can't stop missile spam then maybe 13 could!) also the banning of a second capital. Two capitals that covered each other's back's could've in theory been pretty strong against missile spam too.
Also most tournaments include mods, even if the falconP was the best vanilla ship, a lot of mod ships I feel can compete with it. Additionally a lot of mods have worse ships, but better missiles.
Also, also, in an endurance fight the fact you don't fully refill missiles between waves would... as usual... render falconP's worthless (like in the previous tournament where not a single falconP was fielded despite them being allowed).
Another REALLY good rule change to stop falconP spam would be one that's been used in past tournaments. In past tournaments that were based on credit cost, sometimes fielding a large number of duplicate hulls had a cost penalty of oh I don't remember, maybe 5% or some such. While 7 falconP's were unbeatable, how would 6falconP's fair against 1falconP and 6 not-falconP's? I think all of these are really interesting questions. Although if for some reason you wanted to run another vanilla heavy 15 ship ruleset tournament, you could either ban the falconP or ban expanded missile racks, or ban sabots.
One thing that needs nerfed I think is the sabot shotgun effect. Specifically the AI doesn't seem aware of how fast a sabot shotgun occurs. In fact I don't think the ai even gets a single ai cycle to even consider raising or lowering it's shields in the duration between a sabot mirv'ing and hitting. So either the ai needs to be reworked to be able to predict when a sabot will mirv and consider the mirv shotgun effect.... OR the shotgun needs to take longer and be slower and as such a) give the ai a chance to think for 1 tick about raising or lowering it's shields or b) allow a greater than 0% chance for the shotgun to face PD. As is without a fleet admiral the sabot's gimmick of moving slow, until it hits PD range, then instantly applying it's damage, without taking time to travel the gap... it seems to trick the ai pilots quite badly.
I guess another another option in tournaments is just to ban sabots until they're more AI friendly (the ai is great at knowing when to fire them, but not so great in attempting to lower it's shields for 50% of sabot hits, in order to attempt to avoid overloads. Although the sabot is brilliantly designed to still emp out a ship that dodges the overload, which I don't really want it to lose, it's really cool, but watching this tournament's it's become clear that ai pilots don't fully consider this shotgun effect... really at all ever.
For example: consider how often the caster would refer to omen's or wasps stopping harpoons in their tracks? yet sabots? nothing ever stopped them except hardened shields, and then only rarely.
Look at Czar Nicholas II over here wanting to ban the technology he can't keep up with. 
Fact of the matter is, Vayra just blindsided the field by finding a very effective ship layout. That's what you'd expect of a tournament, though, for players to find the strongest possible layouts and fleets. I am convinced this can be countered, it's just that before the tourney, nobody else seemed to have thought of it. Most players went with SO which gets shredded by missiles and most other fleets didn't have all that much PD.
Outright banning a succesful design midway through the tournament would be a bit harsh and shortsighted.
And nerfing Sabots would be just as reactonary.
In the same vein, one might ban the Apogee as well for being OP due its incredibly tanky shield and weapon mounts.
I would advise just chilling and seeing where this tourney goes.
Actually I didn't want to ban sabot's ... you're agreeing with me. I guess the reason you think I want to ban sabots is that I defended them when no one was saying anything. Thing is? For the entirety of the past two streams everyone in chat has being saying the falconP is insanely OP and alex better nerf it, my post was sort of a replye to that. So, uh, yeah, I 100% agree with you. My main point was to say that I think sabot's are what's been OP moreso than falconP's (although the falconP is the best sabot carrier and the best sabot tanker both at once it seems). I don't think the sabot's need to be made less effective or worse, but there is straight up something wrong with the ai as it relates to defending against sabots.
I remember seeing the paragon trying to deal with sabots in the tournament. It took a hit on shields, then turned on fortress shield right after (while nothing was happening) and then turn it off just in time to take another sabot hit. It was totally out of phase with the incoming sabots. I wonder if there's some intentional delay (intended to make the AI react slower so it's less difficult for humans) that is causing this. This could be an issue specifically with fortress shield AI though, I'm not sure.
for reference
https://clips.twitch.tv/EnergeticThoughtfulShingleGingerPower
Interestingly, it is able to turn the fortress shield on in time to deal with reapers, and that saves it from a lot of sabots that were synced with reapers.
I'm not sure if it is better to ban/limit falcon p's or ban/limit sabots. Neither option seems great.
This is an even better example than what I was talking about. Straight up if an ai pilot is turning his fortress shield on, right after the sabot hit, when nothing is happening... yet properly manages to fortress tank reapers... That's a problem, a bug level problem. Either it's a mistake in the AI, OR the sabot's are literally just so fast the ai can't react (but like I said before, maybe it could pre-plan better for the moment the shotgun will go off).
Think about the retreat tournament issue. The tournament mod makes it impossible for ships to retreat, HOWEVER if a ship is within the retreat section of the map, and it decides it wants to retreat, it instantly leaves the battle before the code can use the next tick of ai maths to tell itself it doesn't want to retreat. It's possible a similar issue exists for sabots, or maybe alex did it on purpose, but I don't see why he would, fortress shield is really the only effective way to tank sabots and fortress shield is a rare special ability.
In my original point, I was just saying if a ship gets shotgunned two times in a row, ideally it would try to take one hit on armor and one on shields so as to avoid overloading (if that's how that math works and it would take two bursts to overload it for example).... but the fortress shield situation is much much simpler, it's objective, not subjective, the math is clear, it's not EMP versus overload, it's nothing versus disaster. So, yeah. The ai needs to be able to react to the sabot shotgun, the ai already knows how to react to most slow mirvs that I've seen in mods and such... so IMO if the ai cannot be improved maybe the shotgun effect needs to go from like 0.1 seconds to 0.2 seconds or however long is needed for the ai to notice (but ideally without ruining the cool shotgun effect).
tl;dr if fortress shield is the only counter in the game to sabot's, then fortress shield should work against sabots.
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Topic: 7th Starsector Fleet Building Tournament (Read 19541 times)