Since "fight me" wasn't explanatory enough and because I just hate letting Veilith have the last word, let me elaborate some. Fighting you is educating you - it's far easier for both parties for someone to be shown than to be told. I could quote a shit ton of dumb educational studies on the huge merits of hands on education over book studies and tests, but I respect everyone enough to assume that we all understand the point.
I agree with you on education, but find it hard to believe you were so excited to educate me that you sent me a private message, friended me on steam, and even sent a message to one of my friends on steam. Under the circumstances you'll forgive my skepticism.
Word walls aren't captivating to read unless they're funny or you're mad, and I'm not narcissistic enough yet to pretend that I can make the equivalent of a StarMade textbook lesson amusing. I can, however, probably upset you; that was the aim of fighting, so that when you get told why you lost you pay attention because you want payback. Anyways.
Haha, I disagree with you there, some of us are studious. Though I actually learn much faster through hands on I feel it is a point of respect that if someone takes the time to read and respond to something I posted I am obligated to read it thoroughly and respond, especially if they are doing me the incredible favor of educating me.
1) You can't argue both sides of the fence, saying "my proposal would stop people from shooting and scooting with no danger, also small ships aren't feared by large ships" as well as "well, if inhibitors and offense massively outpace jump drives and defense, stopping shoot and scoot in its tracks and giving small ships the means and motivation to kill larger ships, we should change that" and still have your idea tread water. Either you support small ships killing big ships or you don't, switching sides based on how the discussion has proceeded is a glaring sign of being unable to defend your point.
My aim is balance first, no one strategy above the other, but as much strategic variety as possible. Yes I wanted small ships to be able to kill large ships (which I now believe can) but the right way. Inhibitors being unbalanced isn't the way it should be done imo.
It's not even that it's balanced in favour of people "speed tanking", it's balanced in favor of people who design stuff reasonably. Even if you were facing a big, fat, slow ship that vomits missiles and sits there like a bump on a log while doing it, your opponent automatically will beat you even at a lower mass, even trading blow for blow, because your investment in JD modules compared to their investment in literally any other block is in their favor. This doesn't even expand into more subtle nuance with power management and EMP, OR the cataclysmic client and server lag that can stem from two massive ships doing a shit ton of damage to each other, especially when shields drop and blocks start dying. Logic jumpdrives and even manual jump drives don't always activate reliably under those circumstances, whereas some weapons still will.
I'd like to know why you're saying speed tanking isn't the greatest choice, what countermeasures are used.
So you're saying the most well balanced ship wins? Not the biggest, fastest, etc. I don't understand how this is possible. If two ships both have 25% of their mass devoted to weapons but one ship is twice as big doesn't the larger ship have twice the damage of the smaller?
Definitely not disagreeing with you there, about the lag, I take it into account as much as I can
2) Running away isn't as effective either - stop weapons also scale somewhat unreasonably, allowing a small ship to pin down a much smaller opponent with relative ease compared to power cost and mass/entity cost. So now you'd be down the ability to jump out, and the ability to physically run away, what can you do? A smaller ship flies circles around you, poking you to death patiently, or a larger ship can trade with you and, as mentioned before, likely kill you because you now have an absolute ton of wasted mass in jump drives and perhaps thrusters.
If I had a speed tank I wouldn't use a large JD, my escape would utilize speed to get out of inhibitor range. Being as how I'd need to make sure I always have speed I'd have a explosive computer to counter movement effect weapons.
If I was using a large JD setup I wouldn't need a lot of thrusters, so I suppose I could take that route if wasting space on JD's is going to make that much a difference.
You could even add EMP into the mix, which will shut off your passives, shut down your ability to return fire, shut down your ability even to regenerate your shields. So now you can't move, can't jump, can't shoot (very well), can't keep passives, can't regenerate shields. Where then do you go from here? All of these things you can quite comfortably fit into a ship much smaller than 2 million mass.
Is there a reason I can't have EMP effect defensively to counter this? I don't know enough about EMP I'll admit.
3)
Even if we assume that none of the above is viable, that they don't stop you, don't inhibit you, don't EMP you, you're
still at a disadvantage, especially against a smaller ship, especially if it can move fast. Even if you jump in, shoot and then run, you'll hit them maybe once in a hundred tries, if that. On the flip side, as Veilith mentioned, a ship at a quarter of your mass can instantly zap your shields, and smaller can still do damage to them very very quickly. In all likelihood, you and your opponent trade blows, and you lose shields and a pitiful amount of AHP/SHP and blocks before you leave while they lose nothing, which is repeated until one of you leaves. If you're the one jumping out and they're the ones chasing, you will
always be on the back foot.
I don't understand again this one either. I don't jump shoot and run, I surprise attack if possible and do as much burst damage as I can. If they survive my initial assault or give me much trouble I may leave. Usually people get taken out before they can react, or at least I gain a huge advantage.
If someone with crazy weapons catches me unaware I'm at a disadvantage no matter what ship I'm in. I've got to find them and point my ship at them at the very least. Even in a large ship verses another of equal size I lost precious time in bringing my weapons to bear. All this time has given me a massive disadvantage, if the ship has even half-way decent weapons I'm already too far behind to be able to be certain that I can win. Logic dictates I retreat until it's me who has that first attack advantage.
Why would I wait until my shields drop to warp out? I use a logic system+sensors to keep my chain drive always charged at 95%. After activating warp it almost always instantly fires. I have it balanced in such a way that I can jump forever, being as how the first drive recharges by the time the last one is activated. I have one big one to combat inhibitors, which is only if someone gets the drop on me, in which case I leave immediately, so my other 7 don't lose much charge. I think this is pretty good as is but I'm going to do more testing with this system to see if I can improve it further.
EVEN if we assume the
worst possible scenario for the small ship, getting smacked and dying, the amount of resources they have lost from dying in a smaller ship is easy to replace and less than what you would lose should you die, which is a more likely scenario in this case.
If I get the first attack it is highly unlikely the ship isn't instantly done which is the whole reasoning behind my strategy. A lot of people didn't get that. Your second statement is definitely true, but I don't prefer it. I just enjoy amassing more and more strength. If fleets worked better I'd go that route for sure, and I can't wait until they do. I already have designs ready lol.
4) If we move the goalposts back even further, hell, almost onto a different football field, and say that you kill your enemy when they're not fighting back, AFK, offline or what have you, when they otherwise aren't returning fire, what does that prove? That a much larger ship can kill another one when it isn't shooting? It's no different than hitting a punching bag, you're only confirming that you can kill a practice target.
No one has ever played World of Warcraft? No one says Rouges are unfair lol, it's weird to me more people don't ambush. Most people are in their ships though, like I said, most of the time it's a short battle if there is one.
This line alone is what gets me the most. What did you mean by this? Is combat philosophically motivated for you, like "the means justify the ends" and "rationale trumps results" or something? I can't wrap my head around this, sorry. Doesn't that violate what you just said here?
I'm not really getting what you're saying here or what it has to do with the next line. I do test things, if that's what you mean. Not on a survival server where I'd actually lose something if that's what you're wondering. Of course not.
Any means necessary, right? You say here you don't care about honor, so why would it matter to you at all why people want to shoot at you? Or is it more that you don't want to lose in a "pissing contest", as you call it? I suppose the "any means necessary" is about winning, so why would it be worthwhile to use any means and then lose, I suppose? This seems to be the underlying point; why else would you mention that you and your specifically mentioned ship aren't all that good after being asked to fight? It seems strange to me that it would be brought up not once, not twice but three times for any other reason.
Again I'm not really understanding you fully here, maybe I am I'm not sure.
I was actually pretty excited about my idea. I overcame my fear of rejection by telling myself that even if it is a terrible idea at the very least maybe some part of it might be worthwhile to someone. Went through all the effort to make an account and think it all through, write it all out. I thought "I know I might be wrong but if I'm as polite as possible and admit I don't know anything no one will have any reason to bash me" Nope. I even pleaded to be educated.
But that's not what everyone wanted to see, they wanted me to be this arrogant person that thought his big bad 2 mil ship was the strongest and was talking big game to the veteran players. Then a hero swoops in and says "fight me". Which was, I thought pretty obviously, to put me in my place. Other people were even talking about recording the fight, putting music to it and making a meme out of it ffs.
That's fair enough, I guess. Losing in a game after some high profile arguments can be shameful if you make it that way. All the same, I feel like we've all wasted time and precious forum messages doing this instead of booting up the game and left clicking at each other.
Well I at least learned a great many things, so it wasn't a waste for me. Both about the game, and social interaction. I appreciate those who spent the time to educate me. After I come up with some strategy to counter the strategies that were mentioned and put it into a ship, if you still want to 1v1 I'd be down. Now that I have the basic idea I can at least come up with something, which with your help could be honed. If not, no worries, it's all good.