No, you misunderstand.

The way I see it is you guys want to add alot of variety to gameplay. But you are going about it wrong. To do any significant damage you still need to be built for damage.

You want people that are not DM or FC to use drones and slaves. You want monkeys and DMs to use real weapons. You want people to think instead of squishing the space bar? correct? You adding mines at some point for more cool FX.

Problem is that to use drones you need hull, to get hull you loose damage and everything else. A rather steep tradeoff for very little or no gain.

What this DoT that you have in mind does is create more of THE SAME THING. We still gonna need to squish the space bar, and still gonna need to do everything that we do now... only it will take longer.

Parasites expire right, and are eaten... and don't do the full damage... or do it over X amount of time, while you still need to do additional damage etc. So how is this different to what we do now? Need to switch weapons more often? You add extra "e" pressing task... man... that's like such an innovation.. (and good thing we can't actually pic what we need off the bat, rather cycle... )

When playing quake I use 4-5 different weapons over 10 seconds...

What you have in mind is not what it will be.

I wasn't answering your 2nd to last post with my post, since i typed it up while you were posting yours. I was answering the previous stuff.

Still seems that it's not completely thought through.

The biggest thing is trying to introduce a true difference between weapon types, other then just knowing the resistances of the ships your fighting. Fire burns, so it should do DOT. Lasers hit every time. Energy pulse guns do a ton of damage but are hard to hit with. Ethereal go through things, but are weaker cause of it. Etc etc... Without that, Fire and Energy pulses are exactly the same (other then resistances, like previously stated).

Pip I am not against damage over time. I am not against variety.

I am against you changing things to suit your view of the game, whichever view that happens to be on any given day.
The whole Damage Over Time thing is a completely new concept in StarSonata, so why try and squeeze old content into a new concept? People are always going to complain when their tried and tested setups get thrown out the window by admins changing the stats.
If you added a new Bana drop which was a DoT weapon then that pushes you to make it competitive with the current weapons. But, as you intend to simply replace the currently used weapons the playerbase has no guarantee it is going to be as effective and also no alternatives until the admins have got their stats right to make it as effective.

By replacing old weapons with the new Damage over Time stats you are not adding a new element to the gameplay, you are just completely changing the old. People wont have to make a decision over what weapon to choose, that decision has already been made.

Why couldnt Damage Over Time wait til the new UZ. If it came in as part of the drop tables then people would be hailing it as a brilliant idea because it gives them options. Overwriting old setups removes options.

Stop changing old things to suit new content. Make new content to use new content.

I'm just arguing Jeff's point, after all, its his decision. I'm pretty sure he's pretty set on it, and I sort of agree with him that fire should do burn damage to a target over a certain amount of time. It would be even cooler if the damage gets greater over time (since fire spreads), but that would probably be broken. We'll see what he says once he wakes up (he lives on the pacific coast).

Ok, here's my vision of a working DoT weapon for SS.

Base damage 100+ 100 over 10 sec. Both tweakable by augs and skills. Shots stack. So if you hit something with a rack of gimmos (15 shots) you get 100x15 damage+ 15x100 over 10 sec. Basically that you wouldn't get wasted shots like we have currently with the tweaks on the guns.

If this is the case, and you really wanna give a different "feel" to guns, then heat should do 20% base + 80% DoT. Both tweakable, both stacking and both after resists.

I think it is a valid point that we shouldn't be changing existing weapons so drastically. Leaving the current heat weapons as they are and adding new heat DoT weapons could be a possibility. The thing I don't like about that, though, is lack of consistency. Maybe it would be better to just change the current heat weapons to be energy and laser type, but that isn't a great solution, either.

The DoT from heat weapons do damage with the parasites, which do stack. If your target has no pest control/fire extinguisher, then there are in fact no wasted shots. They don't currently get buffed from augs and class skills, but I intend to add that.

And I think most current AI/ubers should not have parasite control, in that case, so that way the changes to the fire weapons will really only affect PVP and future AIs/ubers. In fact, they would probably make some ubers easier since overall damage will be higher.

Will parasites take up hull space post rebalance? It seems odd that a fire in an empty cargo ship is more dangerous than a fire in a cramped fighter.

I think they dont, but that's definitely a good point. Fighters should not be immune to parasites just cause they dont have room. We could also make it so parasites can go over hull limit, but that makes less sense. Thanks for pointing it out.

Ugh, I just got on the test client, my SD pax lost about 50 speed, and I only have 1 aug giving me +speed. That is nothing, however, compared to the fact that MY RHINO CANNON LOST OVER 2/3 DPS! Also, it no longer even acts like a magcannon, it is more like a pulse with tracking, making it fairly useless for fighting as an SD. I can no longer kite or fly circles around my enemy while firing, I now need to head straight towards them suicidally. Come on, what the fuck is up with that? My setup is based around that wep, I am not some richass who can afford to make a new high-end setup every nerf, and now all my work in getting the money for this pax turns out to be for NOTHING! And if that weren't bad enough, my Astronomica's Mod now gives +15% damage, -25% RoF. That is LESS DAMAGE THAN WITHOUT AN OL! Added to the fact that it stops me from equipping a real one..........why do you hate me so much?



Now, my gunner main. The weps got a huge size boost, which is VERY annoying considering how much hull we have, but not quite crippling....what IS crippling is the fact that well over half of my shields are gone. I had one aug increasing shields, a PtE. Now, instead of multiplying with the inbuilt bonuses, it adds. I am fairly sure someone said that even the shields gunner gains from the skills is added instead of multiplied, which is very damned stupid seeing as how gunners are meant to use cap ships. Also, lion heart got nerfed, that is not a huge problem but it is yet another hit to my main.

Honestly, what did I ever do to you? Both my chars in T20 ships, that I spent over two years making, are now practically useless. Do you really have to destroy any chance I have of winning a fight? I have no money to make an entirely new setup, and I don't really think I would if I could, seeing as how you would just go and fucking ruin it again a few months later.......

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Jesus christ people. STOP posting these stupid 'rant' posts about your crappy gear. The admins ARE NOT FINISHED. Don't know how many times people have to tell you.

Oh really? Fairly sure that an admin already said that the physical weapons were done and added to test, which includes Rhino Cannon. Also, the cap ship nerf has been here since they started, it is at the very core of the nerf.

If Section A is balanced, and section B, C, and D are not at all balanced, how can you compare anything to anything? There's no point in even trying to run numbers, because everything in the game is being looked at.

Everyone else will 'suffer' from the same 'nerf' too. So you'll be virtually the same rank as you are now. By rank, i mean on a linear scale of usefulness. Every class will have similar changes, so it's not a big deal right now.

You can rant however, only once admins have announced that they have finished re-balancing everything.

After which, we will have ample time to test the changes and express our views. So until that day, stfu about losing stats and playability.