Pub cloakers are broken, please fix soon.

[bkgmjo]

Hm,
when weasels turned small...

- Pub squads disappeared.
- Most baselevs with aim disappeared.
- The frequent freq macros disappeared. (not enough time to warn of cloaks or react to them anymore)
- Lots of old pub basers disappeared.
- Basers with high bounties disappeared.
- Many lt hunters disappeared as most were busy defending from cloaks.
- Sitting in base cloaked on private freq is now impossible as everyone with radar sees you as flag stealer, not just weirdo anymore.

on the good side:
- I can now hunt lancs and terrs with weasel instead of being hunted, also duel javs even inside flagroom since I am mobile enough to evade any bomb.
- I now get a k/d of at least 5:1 against any other ship in weasel uncloaked. usually even when getting teamed.
- I get lots of LT kills with it. Seemed impossible to do such a thing with fat weasel.
- With this new buy system and super combined with rocket and repel buys I can blow up a 15 ppl freq in base by myself.
- When I have up/downloads running at the same time (which is now pretty legal since there is no more lag limit in pub since it is "just pub") I am invincible.
- Since small weasel showed to be so valuable lately the bot rewards it for stealing the flag and finances more buys yay!

So after all I think the small weasel is a nice addition to pub basing and the whole game and I really wonder why it has not been introduced to TWD/TWL yet since it can really spice up the game and make everyone happy!

[Left_Eye]

Since my time being back, I have noticed a significant change in the weasels. Back in the day, they were used for spawning and laming levis in pub (keeping leviterrs down and harder to protect since only terr could have x-radar. Even though it wasn't used for basing, it really kept the leviterr bombs from bombing flagroom constantly. Plus, levis were given multiple repels and portals to survive such attacks.

After being back though, and after playing pub constantly, I have to say that cloaks are superior to any ship available, and completely overpowered. They are extremely mobile and because of their small size and high recharge rate, they are able to shoot multifire quite quickly (even surpassing the amount of range a warbird bullet could be). They can also fit through small holes, and I have noticed that when a team is about to lose, a lot of them switch to cloakers just hold flag for a second to stall the game even more, where otherwise no other ship can compete with it. People suggest that others actually have use or purchase x-radar, but when a normal ship besides terr uses it, it decreases the energy. Why would we have to do it just to defend against cloakers invading from all the small holes that our base has to offer? It makes no sense. Honestly, if cloakers were the size of normal ships, it really would affect their status a lot, and bring them down to the level of normal ships. I don't know of any other ship that is able to have such power. The only ship that I do like (that was improved upon back in the day) is the lanc. If you look at it, it was changed to actually improve it's basing aspect. Cloakers were changed, but without any implications of how their size and recharge rate (when uncloaked) can compare to those of lanc or warbird.

I suggest making them big ships again.

Lefty

[Quil]

I don't deny weasels can be OP, especially with an experienced player on them. That said.. when you did have "fat x's", even with cloak and stealth together, they were unable to kill much, and no role in the flag room. pretty much were only good for cheap spawn killing.

Not to derail the thread, but... what's broken IMO, is levs/LTs tking their entire team, and the mods won't do anything.
I think I am smart enough to avoid their bombs, most of the time.. but it's getting ridiculous, where the levs don't care who they kill.

-Quil
SS since '97

[Rab]

Put it this way... I can make pub rounds never end if I want. That's why it's broken.

[Spock!]

No one can kill me... except day 1 pubbies that press the cloak button before pressing control.

Lol, all these noobs bitch about the cloakers cause they are too idiotic to glance at the radar one in a while.....

[PH]

pub warbirds are broken

take repels away

[PaulOakenfold]

No one can kill me... except day 1 pubbies that press the cloak button before pressing control.

[i'm nobody]

I also agree the weasel is just a little too powerful overall, and something does need to be done about it to somewhat balance things out again really. Removing Rep seems the best suggestion upto now, but would still maybe send the balance a little too much the opposite way.

ctdrmz - "Give war a chance"

[Spock!]

Just go back to the Fat X with Stealth. Would solve most of our problems.

All one needs to counteract a FatX is a non-noob terr, and really, what halfway decent basing game does not have a terr? Much more easy to hit a fat x in any ship, and it is alot harder to dodge in one, while it still can't go through all the little cracks in base to suprise Basers.

BRING THE FATTY x BACK! AND KILL LT'S, FOR THE COMMON GOOD OF TRENCHWARS!

THE NEEDS OF THE MANY OUT WEIGH THE NEEDS OF THE FEW.

Live Long and Prosper.

[Viruk]

I like the challenge of sometimes having to chase and shoot at a tiny ship or a dot on my radar coming rapidly from unusual directions so prefer to keep them small and cloaky.
As for going back to the old (cloak + stealth) weasel: we just don't have the basing population to rely on there being ships with xradar available to combat otherwise-indetectable foes. Do we want to give lots of ships low-drain xradar?

I don't like it that a weasel that makes it to the flag can rep me or my shots away and guarantee a flag reset. Changing the flag timing to avoid this would spoil the fun of resetting for all lone ships that make it through an enemy freq.
We already have a shark. The game doesn't need a minishark as well. Make it so weasels can never get reps!

Even without reps I suspect that - when there are few basers - weasels would still be an overpowered flag resetter simply because hitting a small, fast, cloaked ship from any distance is unreliable and ships can't always be spared to sit on the flag. I am not sure what to do about this but perhaps the bot could change shiplimits/starting specials/buy limits/priv freqs depending on player numbers?

[Spock!]

Go back to the old weasel. AMEN BROTHER. GIMME SOME STEALTH OWNAGE!

(I can't remember if that's possible for an individual ship.)
yes.....you can infact green repels.......

There is that.

[Vehicle]

I think the current weasel is fine. I look at it like this:

Strengths: Small size, rep, rocket, fast recharge and ability to shoot pretty quickly using single-fire if uncloaked, ability to own using !buy
Weaknesses: Very low energy, not very mobile, relatively slow bullets

On balance the current weasel is not overpowered because it dies to two L1 bullets or one L2. A pub team who is actually trying to proactively win a basing game will decimate a couple of weasels with simply a terr who calls out 'x,' a lancaster or even a halfway decent shark protecting the flag. There are 4 ships with x radar if I'm not mistaken and, so long as the terr calls 'x,' a flagroom full of players should be able to cope.

I have made a number of private freqs in pub with 1 terr and 3-4 weasels and have won pub games. But, the thing is, it takes forever (often over an hour.) I personally think this is a good thing. Pub games shouldn't last the 5-15 minutes they generally do, it gets boring because there is no competition. A good pub game for me is one that goes over 45 minutes where teams are seriously fighting for control of the flag and, yes, this often involves a couple lame flag claims from weasels. (As a side note I also think the pubbucks awards for long flag games are not worth the effort put in. If it were up to me, after 45 minutes the winning team should get +500 on top of what they currently earn, after an hour in a half it should be 1000.)

With that being said I'd be fine with a couple of solutions:
Go back to the old weasel. Otherwise just take away the weasels ability to !buy to eliminate lame !buy fullcharge's and !buy repel's. And don't change the actual weasel settings but lower it's ability to green reps (I can't remember if that's possible for an individual ship.)

[Spock!]

what would a wzl league look like?

LIKE SPOCK OWNAGE

[roxxkatt]

what would a wzl league look like?

[WillBy]

Hi Spock, hi bcg. I still stand by all of my above statements, because "my opinion matters". Weasels are just considered OP because the good weasel players are all in pub (lacking a competitive weasel league, this is their home.) Or maybe I just continue to contradict you all for the sake of contradiction and im just spewing useless garbage arguments because in my mind, these are equally reputable and superior to your own.