Cloakers. What is the problem?

[inaphyt]

Could you please just straight up BUFF the cloaker? it's useless for many reasons, half the ships in trench wars have xradar; shark, jav, terr and lanc. 2 of these render the cloaker unplayable (terr/lanc), Now i just played pub again? the one thing weasel is good at (killing warbirds?) guess what warbird now has xradar too if you buy it in pub? You just reverted the weasel to it's old crap settings aswell.

Really just buff the ship, 100 extra health, faster bullets, 2 repels, maybe even give it a mine? or a brick? and reduce it's size and it would still be underpowered.

As for the leviathon? just change it! wow of course nobodies going to be happy with it because the core community is old school people that fear change, (which is why the old crap cloaker came back in the first place) of course they will request the shitty old cloaker, infact i'm surprised due to the overwhelming warbird population about the "lamecaster" the old crap single bullet lancaster hasn't came back.

No change the levi so it's suitable for base give it a level 1 bomb increase it's speed make it suitable for basing maybe even keep it's portal to add a truly unique dynamic to the ship, as for weasel this too should be changed around basing.

As it stands even the ship you are meant to be countering in weasel can find and kill you you may aswell just remove the ship.

[Spock!]

I thought the last leviathans where actually pretty cool and fun. (though the 5 hour long emp was annoying) I actually played the levi from time to time, and that is something I never did in the L3 bomb version.

I think there is still a place in pub for weasel......

My Break Down of the Weasels over the span of of my time at subspace:

The Tiny Weasel: (The one with rocket+repel) This ship was craploads of fun to fly. Escape was easy through the tiny whole in base, which also merited easy access to the flag. Being tiny, it was hard to hit and was easy to dodge in it. But, in my opinion it was overpowered. Stealing flag (especially in smaller games) was way too easy, and if you where not flying it it was a major pain in the ass to hit, especially in a warbird.

The Large #1 (Stealth + Cloak) This one, in my opinion is boring and frustrating to fly. It is either way too easy to get kills or way to hard to stay alive. Either way its not much fun. Oblivious ships like WB and spider are helpless unless they buy x-radar (and who really does that with any regularity?) But if a vigilant lanc or Terr want you dead, you are pretty much dead. The ship's lev-like maneuverability and speed makes rocket attacks a pain to aim, and dodging is out of the question. Its almost impossible to get into the flag room if a terr has x-radar on, but at the same time its way too easy if there is not terr. (ez flag steals) Its just a plain unbalanced ship. Overpowered in some cases, an EZ POS in others. Its so lame even I stopped playing it. That saying alot.

The Large #2: This Weasel was a step in the right direction. It had the speed an maneuverability to dodge and helped greatly in rocket attacks along with dodging. If you bossted+bullet you could get your bullets almost to warbird speed. It was alot like a fighter ship. But, as it is, it was just too slow in the open spaces to really catch on, and being large and no stealth it had almost no business in base. It was best in mid-base, with space to maneuver but not so open that people can just snipe away at you as you try to close the distance to make a shot. It was just a square peg in a round hole. No real purpose, it really didn't perform any duty exceptionally well. it was an OK fighter in midbase, a sub-par basing ship and a crappy spawn-fighter. This resulted in nobody really using it. (besides myself)

The Large #3 (The Concept) This one would be just like the one above (Large #2) but with the addition of Stealth that used energy. It would be able to get away from warbird/spid attackers in the open (due to stealth) but be able to dodge attack by lancs and Terrs. But, since stealth would use up energy, it would have to turn it on strategically. It l wouldn't be OP in base, since if you masked your approach into base with stealth you wouldn't have the energy to fire by the time you got there. It wouldn't just be a lame camping ship, since anybody would be able to see you on radar (most of the time)

Another option would be to make turning on stealth take away energy, but not keep on reducing it. Like, just take away enough energy so that it can't fire with stealth on. So, you could remain invisible as long as you like, just you can't make an attack with stealth on. It would be more of a defensive measure than a offensive one.

So there....I have a couple other theories involving x development....might post em later.

[Spock!]

Oh, and my apologies to staff. I can see how it would be frustrating to have a bunch of bitching players complaining about pub, then staff makes changes, then we complain more. But, we the players are just trying to make the game a bit better for all. It might just take a few tries and test runs, but we can get pub up to snuff and well balanced eventually.......

[Kahlan]

Since when did Inaphyt still play ss?

[Shaddowknight]

Im hoping we can slowly work on both weasel and levi, tuning them for a better overall play experiece for everyone. I am not sure if KrynetiX has plans for this, but I am more than willing help try out some ideas in private arenas where we can change settings easily.

[KrynetiX]

I'll be playing pub, and monitoring it closely. We seem to have lost all of our dedicated LT's, which I'm not too happy about.. The previous changes to Leviathan IMO were not the right way to go. Weasel might need a small change to ship settings - but I don't see myself changing Leviathan settings. If LT's return and become too powerful we'll simply change the holes that are overpowering - which IMO is what should have been done in the first place if LT's were too powerful and dominating basing games. There's got to be a balance. LT's are part of the game. Always have been and always will be.

Changing the Leviathan back to normal is a step in the right direction - now we just have to gauge how dominant LT's become once again and deal with the problem from there with an edit to the map, not an edit to ship settings.

If anyone has suggestions or concerns I'm all ears. I won't however be making changes to public that are not warranted.

[inaphyt]

Warranted changes? buff the weasel, remove warbird/spider ability to buy xradar, buff everything, life, speed, acceleration, thrust, bullet speed, recharge and keep doing it until the weasel can actually survive a terrier or a lanc given a bit of dodging and skill, and not just because another person picks another ship to you. (warbird LOL).

As for leviathon, it kills pub games you pull people away from base in order to hunt / be levterrs, in the past the lev might have been necessary to break the cram for the team, but now with 5 entrances there is no purpose for a lev, change it make it more of an emp bomber like in distension maybe even make it really really quick like terrier? The level 3 bomb is cheap and ruins the game for everyone, and is fun for the few, takes away skill in the game besides pressing warp if you have full energy to survive. Fun for the minority, a pain for the majority.

[Shaddowknight]

lts used to be fine when we had 3 pubs and you could jump from pub to pub to keep from dealing with them. That is no longer an option. If there is an lt, everyone has to deal with it. The game dgnamic has changed when we moved to single pub, you cant use the old standard of how things used to be for everything when the formula had changed slightly by sheer population decline.

[Izor]

To go kinda reiterate my other post, what was unbalanced with the DoCk> changes? So far the lanc change has stood and the weasel was changed because you had someone in charge who thought ship setting changes that had stood for a very, very long time was the way to balance things. And she also liked to base, but was too lazy to watch radar for flag steals. Nothing that DoCk> did was half speed, and those changes were not contested for literally years. He took a ship that was really useless in a lot of situations that left the people it assassinating feeling like they were cheated, and turned it into a utility ship that could harass the flag in a pub game. Maybe buying rockets and repels in the pub store without being anywhere near a safe is what truly broke that ship and you should fix the cause of it being broken instead of completely removing a ship that at least one player used to enjoy.

The community has also tried changing the pub map specifically with the intent of blocking huge lev shots and that also didnt work. If there is any possible angle the better players will figure it out and exploit it. With the lev's huge bomb speed timing shots are going to be an issue and a LOT of angles can be hit through small openings. Taking away straight-away shots will only prove to be a nuissance for a short time. This type of reactive change is going to be very tedious for you.

The bot store is leading to an exaggerated effect on these 'broken' things in pub but a lot of people arent talking about it for some reason. "LTs are broken" when they are manageable without spamming buy rep/portal/burst/fc, and have a much easier time getting to safe/greening when they have 2 rockets, 2 portals, 6 repels, and double shots. "The small weasel can grab flag too easily" when the small weasel has only recently been a problem because of rocket/repel spam. Even in the basing game I used to see whining about burst spam.

[Spock!]

I agree with you about 100% Izor. If terra couldn't buy ports and repels every minute then LT's would be a helluva lot easier to hunt. And really, the !buy system only favors the rich and the veteran players.
Removing !buy could really limit the LT without removing it completely.......

Amen Izor.
+1 Spock Points.

[Pressure]

Im hoping we can slowly work on both weasel and levi, tuning them for a better overall play experiece for everyone. I am not sure if KrynetiX has plans for this, but I am more than willing help try out some ideas in private arenas where we can change settings easily.

There is not a single change you can make to the lev or weasel that will tune them for a better "overall play experience for everyone" without damaging the integrity of those ships.

Right now, the biggest change that should be made in pub is to COMPLETELY REMOVE anti-warp purchasing/utilizing capabilities. What does this add to the game? Oh, right, the terr on the other team can't even use ports to break entrance. Who's idiotic idea was it to add anti-warp to pub anyway? Jesus.

[Shaddowknight]

antiwarp is the sole thing that makes a highly skilled lt killable.

[Wazzaaa.nl]

Would be cool to create anti that only has effect on terriers with a levi on board,
but i guess our dev team isnt that good

[roxxkatt]

fat wzl has always been shit
small wzl with no rep no rocket was best, and was in tw for years for a reason


alternatively theres nightwasp settings with multi lv1 bullets, which hasnt been tried in over a decade

[Spock!]

OR, we can just remove the !buy system like izor said. That way, you actually have to be skilled, not rich.
!buy only favors the Rich and Vet players really, and people can still LT all they want, they just can't depend on warping 50 million times to get away....they should try dodging for once.

"highly Skilled LT's" are just the ones that have !buy macros.....thats not how skill should be defined in pub....