On 2005-07-23 18:47, Specterx wrote:
Not to gloat... but it's fascinating to see that, at least with regards to the Kluth, Faustus seems to be more or less returning them to the way they worked before the Infamous Cloak Change Patch. It seems all records of that blissful time have been erased (dev log and forum posts), but for those who weren't around, the kluth worked like this:

- Kluth ships had no armor
- The cloak was perfect (like now)
- Kluth could fire while cloaked (unlike now)
- While cloaked, ECCM usage by enemy forces increased the energy usage of the cloak and thus drained your energy. Prolonged exposure to ECCM would drain all your energy and leave you visible.

It is my belief (whether true or not) that the cloak was nerfed - and the fundamental dynamics of the game horribly distorted - because of "popular demand", i.e. the ICC and UGTO players complaining. Were the Kluth to be returned to the 1.351 state now, we wouldn't see the same problems, because the playerbase as a whole now routinely practices the very things that I and the other tooth-and-nail defenders of the orginal cloak had been telling them to practice all along.

For those who remember the MV of 2002, to see 30 players in the whole thing was nearly unheard of. Only the most well-organized fleets - GTN and PB - could ever manage to get a group together. Playing in the MV was a long, tedious and expensive affair. Everyone started in their home system when you logged in, and you had to warp to the action through a number of systems using the old, very slow jumpdrive (I think it was one-tenth the speed of the current JDs). Very few players (like, five) had the rank for stations, and perhaps a few dozen had the rank for the better dreadnoughts. The problem for Kluth was that we were too well-organized for our own good - we'd constantly encounter situations where a large, well-rounded fleet would square off against ICC or UGTO forces that came at us in a trickle, in ships ill-suited to the job, without the proper weaponry and using extremely poor tactics. Take interdictors - they're a staple of every fleet now. It was extremely rare to see an interdictor as part of human fleets in those days (the Kluth didn't even have one), but merely having one present would inevitably double the damage/casualties taken by the Kluth, and unless the latter simply had overwhelming numbers we wouldn't dare go near a dictor. I must have fought a thousand engagements where I jumped near a human fleet, spent twenty seconds focusing on and killing a single ship while never taking fire from any of the others, and then ejumped out to autorepair in safety.

To top it all off, ICC and UGTO gains each day would simply be erased during the night by Coombie, who could single-handedly - or with just a couple of others - spend countless hours recapping completely undefended systems without seeing a single human ship. This was of course incredibly discouraging and meant that GTN or Agents had to mount a huge effort to capture and hold the frontline systems - in the face of resistance from the Kluth North American players - while they appeared to revert to Kluth control almost by magic when we deployed our Australian secret weapons.

Note that, even at the time, when encountering a well-rounded human fleet that kept a close formation to maximize ECCM coverage and damage potential within a 200gu 'kill radius', the Kluth could cause some damage but would only actually win such a battle if they had more/better ships - as it should be.

So - why are things different now? Simply put, the dynamics of the MV have changed. There are far more players, such that now every faction can almost always come up with at least a decent-sized fleet. The MV has been made so much 'smaller', in terms of travel times, that you don't have a trickle of ships arriving in a system only to be destroyed piecemeal by whatever well-organized enemy fleet happens to be there. From what I've observed, if anything it is now the Kluth themselves that are lacking in numbers and tactics, whereas human capping fleets have become very numerous and extraordinarily large and deadly.

I'm not optimistic this will even be read - but if I had my way Faustus would take all the good things from 1.351 or so (essentially all the combat dynamics and ship stats) and combine them with the good things that have come since then - wormholes, shipyards, faster JD speeds, and minor corrections to obvious imbalances (like the weak old ICC missile dread and the multiple reloads/builds the ganglia could mount). From there, add more ships, weapons, and other goodies in to the structure as it existed then, rather than screwing around with all the stats and spending another two years trying to figure out what you've done. I even miss the small things that it now seems made the game so much better - like having to stop in order to make a normal jump (as opposed to an E-jump). I can't tell you how many tense moments I had, hoping that my crippled engines could slow my ship down to 0 before my jump drive got knocked out....

I suppose the next best thing would be to increase the offensive power and stealth of the Kluth - perhaps not to 1.351 levels, but pretty close to that, after taking into account their meager defensive abilities and reduced capabilities on ships like the Ganglia.

One thing that I'd definitely do away with are "device levels". Can't see the point of this other than as yet another sink for cash that's getting harder and harder to come by, and rendering comparisons between any two ships meaningless without correcting for yet another variable. I find it absolutely absurd that an engineer with high level armor can stand up to a multiminute bombardment from a dozen low-level disruptors and torpedo launchers. It certainly doesn't make the game more interesting - just more needlessly complex. If I wanted to play a mining sim with ten different stats for each device I'd go play EVE.

Anyway....

[ This Message was edited by: Specterx on 2005-07-23 19:02 ]

On 2005-07-23 16:16, Ramius {C?} wrote:
Ok, so after all this yelling at each other is over. Let's look at the major K'luth issues facing them.

"OMG, You're an ICC player! You can't comment on this!" Well to that, I say, I have been fighting K'luth virtually the entire time that 483 has been released. I think I've seen a lot of their trials and tribulations. To me, there are four major issues with K'luth, let's begin, shall we?

1. Assault disruptors and alpha strikes
Are K'luth assault disruptors fine? YES! No, just joking (hey I'm trying to keep this upbeat). The assault disruptors have issues. I run 4 ships out of my garage, a Bomber Dread, an Assault Dread, a Supply Station, and a Command Carrier. With every single dread I've taken out, not a single Kluth alpha has ever broken my armor (most of the times not even shields, with rotation). For example, in Proc the other day, I think I went up against Unknown Warrior (?) in a siphon. We sat at about 120 gu distance, just staring directly at each other firing back and forth. Im sure his ship was modded fully, as was mine. The result? He jumped away with 67% hull. And me? It never even broke my armor.