Has anyone found the TTK is incredibly low in "Crusader" ? It's so hard to judge as i often get jumped with my pants down whilst EVA'ing etc... it still seems no one wants to actually fight around the designated PvP zone :sad: ... but today i took the Lancer out for a spin, with a friend in the turret, at one point we Quantum jumped in to a Comm Relay to be confronted with a non friendly player right in my face who just unloaded on us and "poof" full shields/hull to dead in around 2-3 seconds, very frustrating.
It feels especially short coming from Elite where you know from visual/audio clues your up sh*t creek and can pile power to shields and attempt to disengage etc... i'm not saying it's "wrong", just wondering your views on this, do you think this is how CR wants it to be in the PU ? is it just a balance issue currently with multi-player ships being new ? or am i just being unlucky and crying about it ?:ranting2:
I agree and I think they need to do something about this. I've been trying to vary my combat and incorporate the cruise speed. This tends to allow me to zip in and out of combat if I feel I'm losing because as you say you just can't tell how clos you are to exploding. To practice cruise combat I've been circling Yala? at around 460 (any faster and maneuverability is hindered) with a friend dog fighting as we go around.
The benifit of combat at this speed is that it's tough getting clear shots on target. And forcing the better pilot into a style most players are not used to. Also it's harder for bigger ships as the maneuverability is harder the bigger you are at higher speeds. If they don't enter into this style of play, I generally keep booming and zooming on flybys until I have the upper hand, at which point I'll return to normal combat. Doesn't always works but it will extend the combat time and stop short battles, which really frustrate good players.
TTK is something that the devs are painfully aware of is currently far too short for the medium sized ships.
They have said that they want the bigger ships to hold their own against single fighters and to go down slow enough that the crew can actually make it to the escape pods and eject before it blows. At the moment, a single Hornet can decimate a Constellation, and the devs have said that this should not be the case (unless the Connie's shields are down, I guess!) and that it should take a good three or four Hornets to kill a Connie.
It's just a matter of waiting until they get the time to apply another balance pass to these ships, but I suspect that they are holding off on that until more of the component system is implemented across all ships.
Yeah I'm sure they're aware of it, but it must be a priority surely ? It's just impossible to test multi crew ships properly at the minute..... I've been back n Elite a bit lately and combat there is exactly as you just said, not that we have to run to escape pods in Elite, but the feeling of "ohh crap this is going to end badly" and turning to run, stowing weapons, boosting, putting power to engine/shields and desperately hoping you can engage your jumpdrive before the killing blow lands... I know they're 2 different games, but really they need to suck it up and take some pointers from E: D in my opinion....
I don't think it's a matter of if, but when. They will address TTK, but like a lot of things that people are clamouring for, sometimes it's more efficient to hold off until some other things are in place first, so as to not keep having to re-do stuff over and over again.
I believe the component system is one of those things: they could do a balance pass on the Connie and frig some arbitrary stats to perform like one of the component systems that will later be plugged in, but they will have to go back and remove that frig and then plug in the relevant component and adjust its stats to compensate. With there being quite a number of these component systems, it would be better to wait until they're in a workable state, plug them all in and then do a first pass at getting the stats in an approximation of what they expect.
Its a little frustrating to have your Connie shot out from under you, but there are other changes coming in the meantime that should help some.