Draconomicon:
I've always felt the numbers for Drac were way out of left field. I appreciate some of the interesting things TA was trying to do with the faction, but I wonder if there weren't better ways to do it. First, I find that their hull is incredibly high. At 1.15 hull, their adv figs have 517 HP. They also have 213 shields for a combined value of 730 HP on their figs. Most Hvy Ints are at 750 or less (IC hvy int is at 712, Giga and Dreg are 637). Most faction's figs on the other hand are at 675 total HP (450 hull, 225 shield).
What's more damning is their hvy int's HP. At a whopping 860 HP, they blow the next best (Belters at 787) out of the water. But Belters hvy ints have something special: they have 50% more mass. Now the thing to understand about ints is that they're all about the acceleration impact from their boosters as just about any experienced int pilot will tell you. Lt Booster was never a serious option on hvies because it doesn't have the "we're going there NOW" effect of afterburner. The problem is; however, that you don't have a specific afterburner for each faction. That means that a Belters int has boosters that are only 66% as effective as other hvy ints. In addition, while they do have a max thrust bonus, it's only a 33% increase, so their acceleration suffers as a result. Specifically, they have about 73% of the acceleration other hvy interceptors have.
This comes with the advantages of carrying dumbfires, a nan in the first slot, and a pile of HP. Also with being absolutely huge and nearly impossible to miss, even for someone with middling aim like myself.
Now let's look at what Mr. Vogue said about the enh miners. Enh miners use MEd shield and have 1320 HP normally. We'll assume it's med shield 2 which has 400 HP. With Drac modifiers, the Miner had 1900 HP. Mini1 has a dm class of .5 vs med shield and .2 vs utility. Hvy ints have 450 ammo and PW mini1 fires projectile 49, using 1 ammo per shot. Projectile 49 deals 4 damage per shot meaning that Vogue's hvy int, before faction modifiers, GAs, or KB, can deal 5400 raw damage with one ammo rack. Vogue said he had damage 2 and we'll assume he has a 30 kb because Vogue is an excellent int pilot, meaning that he dealt 8500 raw damage if he landed every shot. The miner can take a raw 8350 damage. So now our question as to whether or not Vogue landed *every* bullet adds some questions:
Was this a Drac sup team? (Then we can include shield GA and hull GA and it stops being close)
What's the regen rate for med shield 2 and how long does it take for mini1 to run out of ammo?
The answer to the second question is med shield 2 for drac has a regen rate of 6.65/second which would take it 23 seconds to regen 150 HP of damage. Question is then, does it take longer than 23 seconds to empty a hvy int of ammo?
A hvy int with mini1 has 450 ammo (previously established) and fires 37.5 times per second. It also takes 5 seconds to reload, which Vogue will have to do twice. It takes a hvy int 12 seconds to unload its ammo reserves, so Vogue was shooting at this thing for 46 seconds... plenty of time. It's established then that with a 30 kb and damage 2, a hvy int cannot kill an enh drac miner. Specifically, Vogue deals 8500 damage but needs to deal 8655 damage to kill the miner.
So what offsets this incredible Drac toughness? The answer is a slightly lower PW damage (.9) and slightly longer ripcord time (5%).
Oh also their econ is bad. They need to mine more money than anyone except Dreg... and actually need to mine the most helium. This disadvantage actually goes away as money is lowered (on 1/1 settings they are tied with Rix and Dreg at needing 10 rocks mined for TP/Ref + Op + mini1 hvy ints), but either way Drac has a pretty poor economy.
But what does .9 PW damage really mean? Before we discussed Vogue's hvy int as dealing 8500 total damage. Drac hvy ints only deal 7650 damage. A normal enh miner (1320 util hull, 400 med shield 2, 7 regen per second) would need 77222 damage from the Drac hvy before being destroyed.
Another IMPORTANT thing to look at in terms of hull is how tough the bbrs are. Most bbrs can kill an OP with 3 missiles assuming 0 KB. The math here is somewhat complicated but the first missile mostly blows the shields, the second missile blows the shields and a significant portion of the hull, and the third missile blows the hull. Drac can also do it in 3 AB1 missiles, which I think is a small problem. If you dropped their missile damage to .9; however, 0 KB bbrs would only be able to blow up an outpost in 4 missiles rather than the normal 3, which would give defenders a bit more time to deal with the thick-as-$#@! hull they have to chew through.
If I were in charge of the core, I'd drop Drac's damage levels to .85 PW and .9 missile. The whole point, as far as I can tell, of Draconium is that they're hard as hell to kill but it's also hard as hell to kill anything with them. I like that tradeoff of damage for hull... but the trade has to be roughly equivalent which it currently is not. Ducking some more damage off the top would, IMO, preserve the faction's flavor while bringing them in line with other factions.
EDIT:
qqqqqq wrote:QUOTE (qqqqqq @ Sep 29 2014, 07:20 PM) Lets not forget our dear OH faction starts with figs and not lt ints!
This has to do with their econ how exactly? Because they defend "less well" than other factions? I feel like the last two times Xexy went up against Element we started with patties and lost 0 miners to your dreg lt ints.
The point is that OH isn't necessarily undercosted, they're just a little too powerful and efficient in the econ department. They cost the same as IC but they don't have IC's econ disadvantages.
