Canaveral Sensor Blackout and Borg

posted on January 3rd, 2010, 4:08 pm

It is very well known that in 3.08, the canaveral sensor blackout is only going to affect 5 ships or so, but I was wondering, what about the Borg? Is anything special going to be done for them as 5 ships is considered deadly when it comes to Borg.

posted on January 3rd, 2010, 4:10 pm

Doubt it, what could be done? 

I suppose they could increase the time that Blackout effects Borg ships, but I wouldn't count on it...

posted on January 3rd, 2010, 4:26 pm

Doubt it, what could be done? 

I suppose they could increase the time that Blackout effects Borg ships, but I wouldn't count on it...

Adapt

posted on January 3rd, 2010, 4:49 pm

Sadly, reducing the number of ships affected will be just as bad for everyone as it will be for the borg.  It won't be long before you can use it twice, so 10-12 ships will be affected, which is pretty much everyone's early game fleet.  We'll see a lot of canaveral spam.  I think that for the borg and everybody, the amount of time the ability is active should be significantly reduced.  Maybe to about 10 seconds.  Then you can spam to your heart's delight and it won't kill the other player.  It kills gameplay, and makes you feel like a cheater if you use it.

As far as the Borg go, maybe system value will have more of an impact on special weapon reduction.  It didn't seem like there was any bonus to system value this patch.  Borg Spheres and Cubes always seemed to be highly affected by specials.

posted on January 3rd, 2010, 5:00 pm

If you check how long special weapons (like Generix Plasma) effected the Cube or Sphere it was usually an enormous reduction (if a weapon affected for 10 seconds normally, it would drop to 3-4 seconds). That doesn't count AoE weapons though... as it is hard for me to tell how long they effect a unit, and if that changes at all (aka Sensor Blackout...).

posted on January 3rd, 2010, 5:14 pm

I see now.  It's calculated before hand, like most of the things in the game.  the rom_plasmabolto odf deals with percentages, I'm assuming percentage of the full time.  So cubes get about a 40% reduction or something.  I only glanced at the values, but they didn't look particularly strong until you got to cubes.

posted on January 3rd, 2010, 6:41 pm

sensor blackout has receive other changes besides the limit of affected targets. all special weapons that affect an area have now a limited target count (with a few, rare exceptions like ion storm)

posted on January 3rd, 2010, 7:08 pm

sensor blackout has receive other changes besides the limit of affected targets. all special weapons that affect an area have now a limited target count (with a few, rare exceptions like ion storm)

Yay!  You've made my day!

posted on January 3rd, 2010, 7:16 pm

Hopefully those changes extend to Veteran Area of Attack weapons too Optec

posted on January 3rd, 2010, 8:53 pm

Hopefully those changes extend to Veteran Area of Attack weapons too Optec

  The Akira and the Sang both.  The Akira more-so though because the area hull damage kills too fast with even 2.

posted on January 3rd, 2010, 9:20 pm

Veqlaragh also has the same abilities as the Sang' (even though less durable and fast... still can be quite bad).

posted on January 4th, 2010, 2:34 am

Maybe we could make it so there are a limited amount of canaverals that can be built. Like the Bortas and repair ships.

posted on January 4th, 2010, 2:36 am

I'd be pleased with either a shorter duration for sensor blackout, or a less...impressive reduction in RoF.

Should see what Sensor Blackout does to K'vort and Negh'var.  They damned near just stop fighting altogether.

posted on January 4th, 2010, 6:37 am

Maybe we could make it so there are a limited amount of canaverals that can be built. Like the Bortas and repair ships.

  Nein nein nein.  The problem is the strength of it and duration.  To be honest it can affect as many ships as it wants as far as I care - the problem is that the effect is too strong and it's duration is too long.

  It only needs to be used once at the moment to incapacitate a fleet for an entire battle.  It SHOULD do something like 15-25% reduction for 10-15 seconds.  For a comparison, the D'Deridex removes 25% dps for 15 seconds and it's a late game vessel.  Keep that in mind.  The Canaveral is much cheaper, faster to get, and faster moving.

posted on January 4th, 2010, 2:48 pm

Is it possible to make the time of the effect depend on the system value?