Descent Class, becoming useless?
posted on February 17th, 2010, 3:20 am
It certainly seems like its no longer worth having. Its a powerful ship, but I rarely see it used, and it seems that three less powerful ships are more powerful than the one.
If you think about it, even if it had the firepower of all three other warpin ships, it is still easer to kill one ship, than three.
Also, I find its special extremely helpful to support a large fleet, but when you warp it in, it reduces your fleet significantly.
Now, I don't know if I am right or if anyone else even agrees with me, thus I will purpose a solution to this hypothetical problem. What if the ship only took up 2 warpin slots once achieving 1 gold bar status(rank 4)? This way, once its killed several ships, you can replenish your fleet. It would really help, mainly because by the time your ship has gained that many kills, you would have lost several ships, and the descent is very useless in a small numbered fleet.
Another problem is with its special weapon. It is not often that more than one ship is targeted at a time, therefore a weapon that charges an entire fleets shields is somewhat useless. Now, on many ocaisions I will have two or three other ships with low shields, but it really seems like a waist of energy when it could be used to charge a whole fleet. So what if instead of just charging shields, it boosted them. So now, if a ship has lost its shields, it would recharge them, but if the effected ship had full shields, it would give them a slight boost, maybe making them more resistant to photons or something.
Now just to be clear, none of these are bases on anything but my opinion form playing. It just seems that the Descent is no longer worth 4 warpin slots to most players.
If you think about it, even if it had the firepower of all three other warpin ships, it is still easer to kill one ship, than three.
Also, I find its special extremely helpful to support a large fleet, but when you warp it in, it reduces your fleet significantly.
Now, I don't know if I am right or if anyone else even agrees with me, thus I will purpose a solution to this hypothetical problem. What if the ship only took up 2 warpin slots once achieving 1 gold bar status(rank 4)? This way, once its killed several ships, you can replenish your fleet. It would really help, mainly because by the time your ship has gained that many kills, you would have lost several ships, and the descent is very useless in a small numbered fleet.
Another problem is with its special weapon. It is not often that more than one ship is targeted at a time, therefore a weapon that charges an entire fleets shields is somewhat useless. Now, on many ocaisions I will have two or three other ships with low shields, but it really seems like a waist of energy when it could be used to charge a whole fleet. So what if instead of just charging shields, it boosted them. So now, if a ship has lost its shields, it would recharge them, but if the effected ship had full shields, it would give them a slight boost, maybe making them more resistant to photons or something.
Now just to be clear, none of these are bases on anything but my opinion form playing. It just seems that the Descent is no longer worth 4 warpin slots to most players.
posted on February 17th, 2010, 3:35 am
Last edited by Anonymous on February 17th, 2010, 3:37 am, edited 1 time in total.
It's worth it, but it's situational. Everytime the global cost of ships go up, Warp ins become more valuable. Why? Because the fewer ships your enemy is fielding means that the contribution of your 3 free ships becomes higher! It's basic economics! Exciting! 
So while normal warp in is what you'll choose, the Descent and it's ability is amazing. Because the feds have higher shielding, it's much easier to pull ships off the line and in the rear, especially with field medics (repair ships) making sure they get to the back. When you have enough ships, you send the decent there and recharge a whole group.
I had a game once where I was against a team that had a dominion player spamming breen cruisers and battleships. Surprise surprise.
He also had a hyperspace artillery. There was some lag, so I was constantly getting hounded by this artillery. One in particular took my shields very low on my fleet, and with cruisers chasing me, I retreated, to the spot where I had just clicked to warp in a descent. By the time my fleet got there, my decent showed up right as I get pounded by breen. One click of shield recharge and the breen player was the one 'a runnin'. 
So think of it like the S-2 or similar vessel. It is a support battleship, not a dps ship. It's still useful to me.
So while normal warp in is what you'll choose, the Descent and it's ability is amazing. Because the feds have higher shielding, it's much easier to pull ships off the line and in the rear, especially with field medics (repair ships) making sure they get to the back. When you have enough ships, you send the decent there and recharge a whole group.
I had a game once where I was against a team that had a dominion player spamming breen cruisers and battleships. Surprise surprise.
He also had a hyperspace artillery. There was some lag, so I was constantly getting hounded by this artillery. One in particular took my shields very low on my fleet, and with cruisers chasing me, I retreated, to the spot where I had just clicked to warp in a descent. By the time my fleet got there, my decent showed up right as I get pounded by breen. One click of shield recharge and the breen player was the one 'a runnin'. So think of it like the S-2 or similar vessel. It is a support battleship, not a dps ship. It's still useful to me.
posted on February 17th, 2010, 3:48 am
Last edited by Anonymous on February 17th, 2010, 3:52 am, edited 1 time in total.
posted on February 17th, 2010, 3:53 am
Mal gave a great example with which I can't hope to compete.
However I do see what you mean. The Descent certainly doesn't really have the same destructive power that a normal warpin does. You don't get any torpedo-flinging Excelciors or Steamrunners, no damage-soaking Nebula's or Ambassadors, and no sweet sweet Galaxy
.
But you DO get a mountainous battleship that can almost laugh off the early destroyers your opponent should have by the time a Descent can arrive. I would say the the normal warp-in is a very offensive choice while the Descent is a very defensive one. For sure the normal warpin has more firepower, but the Descent can't be destroyed one at a time, either
.
Think of it this way: A descent represents a MAJOR problem for someone attacking your expansion. They're clearly not going to kill it with Bugs or B'rels, not even likely with Leahvals unless they've got more than 3 by the time your first WI is ready. If it even comes close to dying you can completely replenish it (or a dying mining station/shipyard) and keep on fighting. It's torpedoes will miss a lot of the destroyers, but it will still hit them 60% of the time
. You should by then be able to arrive with some reinforcements (unless you're one of those nasty Fed players that doesn't build anything but Warpins ).
However I do see what you mean. The Descent certainly doesn't really have the same destructive power that a normal warpin does. You don't get any torpedo-flinging Excelciors or Steamrunners, no damage-soaking Nebula's or Ambassadors, and no sweet sweet Galaxy
.But you DO get a mountainous battleship that can almost laugh off the early destroyers your opponent should have by the time a Descent can arrive. I would say the the normal warp-in is a very offensive choice while the Descent is a very defensive one. For sure the normal warpin has more firepower, but the Descent can't be destroyed one at a time, either
.Think of it this way: A descent represents a MAJOR problem for someone attacking your expansion. They're clearly not going to kill it with Bugs or B'rels, not even likely with Leahvals unless they've got more than 3 by the time your first WI is ready. If it even comes close to dying you can completely replenish it (or a dying mining station/shipyard) and keep on fighting. It's torpedoes will miss a lot of the destroyers, but it will still hit them 60% of the time
. You should by then be able to arrive with some reinforcements (unless you're one of those nasty Fed players that doesn't build anything but Warpins ).posted on February 17th, 2010, 3:57 am
Last edited by Anonymous on February 17th, 2010, 4:11 am, edited 1 time in total.
It's also one of those no brainer ships where you can slap the remore's vector calc on it and know you made a good choice.
Edit: Somehow I didn't see your reply, Z. Usually I do 2 warp ins and 1 descent. That's 7 ships, and by the time you get the descent you have a nice fleet. Yep, the dps from normal warp in is nice, but sometimes you don't want dps. Also, it can really ignore defenses, such as turrets, where if you send some warp ins to harass they might not fair so well. The shield recharge can be amazing if you pull multiple damaged ships off the line, because then you don't have to go back to a shipyard to repair.
As before, it's situational. Do you want more dps or do you want a mobile green nebula during a game deciding battle?
Edit: Somehow I didn't see your reply, Z. Usually I do 2 warp ins and 1 descent. That's 7 ships, and by the time you get the descent you have a nice fleet. Yep, the dps from normal warp in is nice, but sometimes you don't want dps. Also, it can really ignore defenses, such as turrets, where if you send some warp ins to harass they might not fair so well. The shield recharge can be amazing if you pull multiple damaged ships off the line, because then you don't have to go back to a shipyard to repair.
As before, it's situational. Do you want more dps or do you want a mobile green nebula during a game deciding battle?
posted on February 17th, 2010, 4:07 am
Mal wrote:It's also one of those no brainer ships where you can slap the remore's vector calc on it and know you made a good choice.
TOTALLY. It responds very well to ships making it a beast
.
posted on February 17th, 2010, 4:10 am
posted on February 17th, 2010, 6:01 am
The many taken Warpin-slots are the only problem I see with early Descents.
Personally I love to have two of them as non-warp-support-counting veterans
Getting to that is hard enough in MP. But it is awsome to get the shieldreset back faster and having three shield-phases possible with two Descents.
Personally I love to have two of them as non-warp-support-counting veterans
Getting to that is hard enough in MP. But it is awsome to get the shieldreset back faster and having three shield-phases possible with two Descents.
posted on February 17th, 2010, 10:52 am
well basically its not the Descent thats too weak, its the normal warp-in (or warp-in in general) thats to powerful weill be addressed in the next patch
weill be addressed in the next patchposted on February 17th, 2010, 4:20 pm
awe, darnit 
I was trying to avoid that point...
I was trying to avoid that point...
posted on February 17th, 2010, 6:35 pm
Optec wrote:well basically its not the Descent thats too weak, its the normal warp-in (or warp-in in general) thats to powerful
That doesn't include the Galaxy, right?
posted on February 17th, 2010, 6:38 pm
posted on February 17th, 2010, 6:39 pm
This is really good to hear.
posted on February 17th, 2010, 8:38 pm
Great news indeed. We might actually see Sabers and Monsoons again!
posted on February 18th, 2010, 7:19 am
Who is online
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 4 guests