I just find this kiting rear firing slow chip damage meta incredibly dull - one 1hr + fleet fight is fun once per week tops, then it just gets frustrating am I the only one? And it's not about this patch but last one too

I will approach the rear-facing BFG from a perspective different from balance and META, which is simple logic.

A setting is conducive to play when a certain threshold of "believability" is crossed. It is subjective and different for various kinds of players, yet still. I dislike settings where a curvy girl with hardly any armour on is swinging a sword twice her size mid-air at the second escape velocity as if it were a feather and then delivers a one-hit kill to a huge like a truck monster with a wimping sound as if getting shy because senpai saw her panties (because the lack of armour). I dislike DnD rules where armour does not give damage mitigation but gives AC, resulting in rogues sporting exorbitant defence while heavy plate armour, the Chaddicus Maximus of rl, is regarded as the worst possible option for defence and when a dude with a dagger pumps up higher damage than a dude with a longsword or a Danish axe. Maybe, there is a logic behind such settings, DnD after all is a well thought system of rules (although, archery should require more strength and fencing more dexterity). But at certain point, there is a threshold when all goes to hell and turns into a Korean MMORPG.

Why do I write about some swords and skinny maidens with oversized swords? Well, because the cruisers and battlecruisers with the hardest hitting gun turned backwards is exactly this skinny girl. The choice is not devoid of logic: I understand the gameplay points brought up above for the sake of balance. Is it aesthetically pleasing or logically believable? Hardly. With RP and story issues as they are already, further erosion of believability though such treatment is hardly a motivation to hop back on the game and try out the changes. Maybe even if they are mechanically OK and balanced, some people simply seeing logic cast away won't feel good playing the game.

If you enjoy the changes, tho - good for you, not gonna bash you for your preferences.

P.S. My SRP Takeda "Mizu" is broken, so even if I wanted to test the new guns - I cannot anyway.

Tl;DR big guns facing backwards are illogical and break immersion.

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Why not add an option to revert changes to before 5.0 or even before the very first cruiser rework.

(06-03-2024, 09:29 AM)Corvo Gotti Wrote: In a nutshell, I think Discovery suffers from treating its capital ships like oversized smallcraft. Primarily forward facing guns, some restricted arcs here and there, with slower fire rates and projectile speeds to balance out their loadouts against smallcraft, but ultimately just bulky smallcraft with restrictive turn rates. The problem with this is that it creates the aforementioned stale gameplay of "fly straight at enemy and hold right click". This is okay to have, to a degree, with smallcraft because the goal is to strike hard and fast and then quickly get away. Capital ships do not have this maneuverability nor should they have it. Discovery's attempts to change this do not actually change it, because you have positioned the weapon arcs all over the ship, making the gameplay loop the same - fly at enemy (to fire mortars, etc.), turn (maybe fire a few broadside shots), then kite and try to out-range as much as possible.

I'm just gonna quote this instead of quoting your entire post, as it makes a better tldr in my opinion, and say that you clearly aren't "back into the game" enough. The stuff that you list that should be done to cap ships and everything you list as what discovery does wrong are all things already realized by Haste.

It makes reading your post really funny when you make all those remarks about how broadside combat with powerful broadside guns is what capships need - and not powerful front guns to reinforce a chasing playstyle - when that's literally how the game is already played. Try Battlecruisers if you haven't already and you'll see all those things in effect.

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I didn't really want to be the one posting it but, yes. A ton of the work going into capital ships since about 2021 has been about trying to move them away from just very large snubcraft with turretsteer (and -zoom) and giving them playstyles and identities of their own. The most snublike capitals by far are Gunboats, for somewhat obvious reasons (FWGs and mines creating similar movement patterns, but in TS). Ships with flawless 360 arcs everywhere and their smallest profile being their front/back will basically always resolve into chasing and kiting gameplay, which is precisely why we don't want that kind of perfect turret coverage.

(06-03-2024, 09:32 AM)Czechmate Wrote: I just find this kiting rear firing slow chip damage meta incredibly dull - one 1hr + fleet fight is fun once per week tops, then it just gets frustrating am I the only one? And it's not about this patch but last one too

This is an opinion you are obviously entitled to, but one of the most cited complaints about capital ship combat pre-5.0 was the fact that half the time you couldn't log in and lane/cruise over to a 10v10 fleet fight before it was over. It's far too early to tell how short or long TTK in 5.1 really is, but I'm personally quite happy with how it looks initially. Cruisers might be a tad explosive with their engine health, but that's also kind of the point. They're a very volatile class.

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Oh, and in general, I don't really agree with the sentiment that Cruisers' strongest guns are backwards. Their most efficient ones are, which is very important, but their offensively strongest turrets are very clearly forward-facing.

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it is nice to see devs so interested in the opinion of some about a change, but completely ignore an unannounced change of a rule that affects several players, and makes them play against the rules of the game kie thos one.. oh well priorities

(06-03-2024, 11:12 AM)Haste Wrote: Oh, and in general, I don't really agree with the sentiment that Cruisers' strongest guns are backwards. Their most efficient ones are, which is very important, but their offensively strongest turrets are very clearly forward-facing.

Efficiency is by definition the maximum output with minimum input. i.e. the best or the strongest. Whatever word you use, having the most efficient/strongest/optimal/best gun of an assault ship (which cruisers in your own word "explosive" are) makes no sense from a ship design point of view.
Imaging making the pommel of a sword an actual mace that will be hitting much harder than the cutting swings of the blade. At that point, it is just easier using an actual mace or a warhammer. Pommel still can be used as a blunt weapon but in situations when there are no other options as the last resort. Similarly, if the tactical role of a destroyer/cruiser is to break enemy lines, what is the design point of allocating power core and putting a viable gun to shoot backwards only. instead, it is better either to allow versatility to the whole ship akin to usung a poleaxe that can be a sword, a pike, and a hammer, (give cruisers 360 degree weapons) or specialise on its primary purpose of breaking the lines with extreme firepower without wasting "efficiency" on a backwatds facing gun and turn the pommel into an actual Warhammer for smashing the front lines (putting the hardest hitting weapon up front).

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People that bring as an argument that something is not logical from a design point of view forget that this is a game and not real life. No everything has to follow the logic of how one would design stuff outside the pixel world. Sometimes balance and game mechanics must override real life logic for the sake of keeping things interesting in a game.

Am not a big capital ship player, but since 5.0 dropped the only cap I played was a BC and spent quite a good few hours in fleet battles. I can say that the BC main gun is perfect as it is being broadside and back firing only. The way this class seems (at least from my pov) to be meant to be played is as a support or defensively not mindless charge. You want to charge? Still have 4 heavy cruiser guns that can pack quite a punch given the power core of a BC

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(06-03-2024, 01:15 PM)Nepotu Wrote: People that bring as an argument that something is not logical from a design point of view forget that this is a game and not real life. No everything has to follow the logic of how one would design stuff outside the pixel world. Sometimes balance and game mechanics must override real life logic for the sake of keeping things interesting in a game.

Am not a big capital ship player, but since 5.0 dropped the only cap I played was a BC and spent quite a good few hours in fleet battles. I can say that the BC main gun is perfect as it is being broadside and back firing only. The way this class seems (at least from my pov) to be meant to be played is as a support or defensively not mindless charge. You want to charge? Still have 4 heavy cruiser guns that can pack quite a punch given the power core of a BC

Yes, it is a game. And this is why the logic applied here is not taking into consideration the angular momentum that would turn the ship crew into a gelly with the turn speed of caps that by irl logic should not be moving much but instead have turrets covering as much area as possible. The bare logic of BFG shooting forward is not that much of an irl logic imposed but more of a common sense. It is not aesthetically pleasing. It is not conducive to a "believable" setting, it looks exactly like "gameplay reasons for the god of gameplay reasons" leaving everything else aside.

As I said before: if you like it - all power to you. I just want the devs to see the alternative angles presented in this topic to take into consideration when making changes. Changes cannot make everyone happy. Right now, I am not on the happy side. Perhaps, I represent the minority and people will enjoy the cruisers. But also the devs should not be surprised if these balance changes alone motivated some people to vote with the door.

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Frankly I think there's bigger fish to worry about if a singular cruiser arc change is enough to make you leave the game for good.