Frequently Unused Starships

[Nebula_Class_Ftw]

posted on October 8th, 2011, 8:02 am

Last edited by Nebula_Class_Ftw on October 8th, 2011, 8:12 am, edited 1 time in total.

The Vutpa' tech requirements being changed so that it is an alternative path to the Vor'cha is something I hav asked for, and IIRC Dominus an at least one other asked for it as well before then. Optec said he would take a look at what they can do with the tech tree, so it seems like we won't see it anytime soon.

Remore is amazing. It and chassis 3 are pretty much the only things that ever make me want chassis 2. Unfortunately Fed playing style and chassis levels above one don't seem to mesh well until lategame.

Siege Cruiser as in the C17? You've never seen a late-game Dominion fleet? The pink beam of death is called that for a reason.

Teutoburg is still beating the Descent for utility, and I think it's supposed to be infrequently used. The Feds have quite a few more ships than the other factions IIRC, so having some be infrequent is less of an issue, especially for ships you don't build from yards.

posted on October 9th, 2011, 12:41 am

We decided against changing the Vutpa' techtree location due to balancing problems etc I'm afraid 

posted on October 9th, 2011, 12:51 am

We decided against changing the Vutpa' techtree location due to balancing problems etc I'm afraid 

Understandable, but still too bad

posted on October 9th, 2011, 10:28 pm

We decided against changing the Vutpa' techtree location due to balancing problems etc I'm afraid 

Because of the cloak detect or the troop upgrade.

posted on October 10th, 2011, 3:54 pm

We decided against changing the Vutpa' techtree location due to balancing problems etc I'm afraid 

Is the Vutpa really that useful? I like that ship, it is one of the few defense counters the Klingons have, nevertheless it's quite fragile against anything else than torps. And if you'd leave all her specials and upgrades in the depot, you'd only get a naked Vutpa which I doubt would be stronger/more used than a Vor'cha. Or is it because of the possibility one would get to switch between the two easily?

posted on October 10th, 2011, 5:39 pm

@ Marion

  The Vutpa is one of those other ships like the Defiant, Phalanx, or Negh'var in my opinion.

  ---- It's stats aren't bad, but in practical terms it's just simply not as feasible an in-game ship as Vorcha, KBQ, or Sang.  The extra teching hurts it, the low defense hurts it, and the inability to aim it's torpedoes REALLY hurts it in terms of non-situational uses.

  On the other hand, the fact that it auto-targets it's torps can be very useful when going after cloakers as it's manual targetting will totally swing a game for you if you're facing a cloaker who is trying to get away.  It's really one of those "If you haven't won yet, this MIGHT be the victory-clincher you need" ships....

posted on October 11th, 2011, 7:41 am

I totally agree with you, that's why I asked if changing her position in the tech tree changed that much/ was unbalanced. Unlike the Defiant and Phalanx one can easily counter the Vutpa with anti medium/beam weaponry. If the Fed is left with that much time to build a considerable amount of Defiants, that ship can really become a game breaker(viking showed that in the last tourney quite impressive). I don't think the Vutpa could do that, it can easily be countered.

posted on October 11th, 2011, 3:59 pm

The Vutpa' has 3.1.0 Spectre-esque qualities - very strong torpedo avoidance, 360- never missing weaponry, medium sized battleship (reduced damage from Scubes and Dodes). It's multi-damage component means it has a very high DPS output compared to single target units and thus also means you force a number of ships to retreat at once. When at the same tech level as a Vor'cha it is not easily countered and is much too effective, partly because of the types of ships you can mix it with.

posted on October 12th, 2011, 3:31 am

I think the Vutpa' could work well if it required the field research (as well as ordnance depot.) That would put it at a higher tech level than Vor'cha (and hard to mix with Vor'cha) but still not as high as it is now. Probably still would need other adjustments for balance, but I really feel like it needs something to get it so that there's less overwhelming preference for Vor'chas in both teching and fleet composition.
I haven't been playing much lately tho, people still rarely use Vutpa's and tend to do Vor'cha starts a third of the time and only bother to tech beyond Vor'chas for Negh'vars and BortaSs right?

posted on October 12th, 2011, 3:47 am

Dom makes a good point about the overall proportionally higher damage output of the Vutpa.  It's multi-shot allows it to do more damage than it "should" (so to speak), but at the cost of not being able to aim the shots .

  I'm certainly not saying that mechanic needs to change, just saying there's a catch - that DPS in most cases is better used to focus-fire a single target, not spread around.

posted on October 12th, 2011, 8:27 am

The Vutpa' has 3.1.0 Spectre-esque qualities - very strong torpedo avoidance, 360- never missing weaponry, medium sized battleship (reduced damage from Scubes and Dodes). It's multi-damage component means it has a very high DPS output compared to single target units and thus also means you force a number of ships to retreat at once. When at the same tech level as a Vor'cha it is not easily countered and is much too effective, partly because of the types of ships you can mix it with.

Okay, so the problem is that you can easily switch between vutpa and vor'cha then, as I thought. How about changing the tech tree then in a way that you can choose after the battle yard to build either an armory or a weapons depot? That way it would be pretty expensive to mix Vor'cha/Vutpa.

[Nebula_Class_Ftw]

posted on October 12th, 2011, 9:02 am

Last edited by Nebula_Class_Ftw on October 12th, 2011, 9:07 am, edited 1 time in total.

Okay, so the problem is that you can easily switch between vutpa and vor'cha then, as I thought. How about changing the tech tree then in a way that you can choose after the battle yard to build either an armory or a weapons depot? That way it would be pretty expensive to mix Vor'cha/Vutpa.

That was the idea that was rejected. The problem is that having the Vutpa' available as early as the Vor'cha, even if you need to tech up (across?) to get the Vor'cha later, would be OP as the Vutpa' is more powerful than the Vor'cha for most situations and way better on cloakers.
...and an early lead like that plus no field research could mean you can tech to Vor'cha relatively soon after  so that you can stop the Vutpa' counters.

posted on October 12th, 2011, 8:19 pm

Well, people rarely tech to Vutpa in order to stop the Vor'cha counters, right? I really doubt that the Vutpa would be that strong, since her decloaking abilities would stay restricted to the expensive troop upgrade that's hidden in the weapons depot(following my idea that is). If the Vutpa is that strong you can still tweak her with slightly higher costs, right now it's cheaper than the Vor'cha(which is okay imo).

posted on October 13th, 2011, 12:08 am

I am and always have been very interested in structuring the Klingon Tech tree so that the Ordnance Depot and Armory are interchangeable.

  I.E. - Once you've got the Battle Yard you can either choose to build the O Depot for Vutpa or the Armory for Vorcha, as both are vessels with defensive abilities.

 
  A Peripheral change of course would have to be that Luspet and Negh'var require both the Armory and the ODepot to be built so that foregoing the Armory wouldn't speed up the Negh'var tech-tree (it really is a huge bitch to be rushed by Negh'vars - Dom isn't making that up ).

  I think the choice of Vorcha/Vutpa would be very interesting and bring with it a lot of new ways for Klingons to handle some of their problem matchups right now.  Rhienn Spam would be a MUCH different thing if they had slightly earlier access to the Vutpa and it's Manual Targetting abilities.