Ripcord GA

[zombywoof]

Ripcord GA is fine where it is, and is fine doing what it does. It is not broken and it is specifically designed for Supremacy. The supposed "point" to supremacy is the balance between offense (supposedly Tac, with its weak defensive tech) and defense (supposedly Exp, with its ships that aren't supposed to be able to go very far). I think of sup as the "quick response time" techpath. "OH @#(! BBR SIGHTED!" and ten figs are there in ten seconds because the stragglers are the ones who had to actually launch from base. Compare that to Exp, which is more, "OH @#(! BBR SIGHTED!" and then ten ints boost back from whatever they're doing, dock, and launch, and tac which is "OH @#(! BBR SIGHTED either we have two sector's notice or don't bother Ding because it's dead."

In that sense, rip GA makes the most sense in sup. All it does is passively make everything sup needs to do a little bit better: +10% expanding speed, -10% response time. It's perfect, because it doesn't turn figs into interceptors (like say, heavy booster did) but it does showcase the difference between figs and ints; namely the ability to get to any sector on the map in less than a minute no matter where you launch from, get the job done, and then get your ass back home because there's something else you need to do.

So yeah, just leave ripcord GA where it is and don't touch it. It's the ideal GA for sup, and that's a good thing rather than a bad thing.

@Ada: alternate GAs have been explored by at least Andon in particular. From what I recall, they don't work. Like, +10% fuel doesn't break the game, the game just doesn't realize that you have +10% fuel. I know that's the case for miner capacity (which you think would work since it's something we can change with faction modifiers) in particular.

@Drizzo: I agree that ship hull makes less sense for sup to have than ripcord GA but I'm not sure where to put it. Switching shield and hull GA makes some sense to me because it strengthens the natural combination of tacspansion; the hull GA really helps expansion while the sig GA really helps tac. I disagree that hull GA would make belters tac a monster though... belters SFs are unusually tough but I don't think giving it access to hull GA will break the techpath. If it does, I'll gladly admit I was wrong, but it's not something I worry about.

@Clay_Pidgeon: The GAs we have are the GAs we have, that is correct. You can (iirc) make a GA for anything, but it just won't work. Like, nothing will happen when you research it. There is a code change that's required somewhere for that to work.

@Troy: pw/ew damage cannot be unbound in ICE, iirc.

@Freyja:
QUOTE The problem SpkWill is that again, both are complete no brainers to get as TAC if those GAs where there, a must have RFN type of thing- I personally really hate that kind of thing. Having them in SUP, sure, SUP teams want to get Damage pretty quick and Tracking at some point, though again it's the nice tie in with TAC that makes it sort of a nice side GA for a TAC team to get a SUP and pretty important in SUP for bomb runs and related fighter fun.[/quote]

Which sup GAs aren't currently no brainers to purchase, though?
Agility GA helps you turn faster which helps you aim better, which is nice to have but infrequently bought
Sensor GA is almost never bought but at the same time it makes probes better, it makes it easier for scouts and figs to eye stuff, for bases to eye stuff... etc. All of the reasons that you would buy sig GA are exactly the same reasons your opponent would buy sensor GA, and more because it makes probing better/easier.
Hull GA lets your fighters, nans, bombers, cons, and miners live longer. Buy it.
Ripcord GA lets your fighters be better fighters and helps you expand faster. Buy it. If you're IC, it lets you mine faster and safer. Buy it twice; it's worth it.
Missile Damage GA lets your dumbfires hit harder and your ABs hit harder. Buy it.
Missile Track GA lets your quickfires and seekers hit more often, which is silly because you should be using dumbfires anyways.

Comparatively, look at exp:
He Speed is infrequently bought because it just means you run out of He3 faster
He Yield is a no-brainer because FREE MONEY YOU DOLT. Coms who do not buy this get mutiny-booted.
Base Shield/Hull is infrequently bought because it usually doesn't make all that much of a difference. 3 missiles kills an op with or without those GAs, iirc.
Accel GA is really good but not something to break the bank on
PW/EW Damage is crazy $#@!ing good because not only do your ints kill @#(! faster but your nans heal @#(! better too. Coms who do not buy this get mutiny-booted.
PW Range is bought whenever Brood is playing to lower his number of complaints. But seriously it makes your bullets travel faster which makes dodging more difficult for the enemy, which means more of your bullets hit the enemy, which means they die faster, which is a decidedly good thing.

Or tac:
Energy is bought because it makes SBs/SFs have longer cloak times and more firing time with snipers/utils
Ship Shield is infrequently bought because "sfs shouldn't have shields mounted." I guess it makes miners and cons a bit tougher. It's pretty good for giga tac; though, because it makes lxy sfs even tougher.
EW Range is infrequently bought because most of tac's power comes from hunter 3 not sniper 2.

From what I can see, sup has a lot more "really good" GAs than any other techpath, so I don't see what your problem is with having Tac have GAs that are "must buy" since every other techpath has at least 2.

@Spidey: If I had to change 1 GA, I would put missile track into tac. It just feels useless in sup, and sup gives so much to the tac techpath without it (ab2, minepack/df2 figs for D, missile damage, ews2).

p.s. I wish we were using one of those forums with collapsible spoilers so I could shorten the length of this post.

[Andon]

To clarify:

You can make a research time, research cost, Miner Capacity, and one other GA. They don't work because the associated code is not in place - They're essentially read as "Blank Data" and do nothing. I'm not sure about others - There may be a few that just aren't used, but I doubt it.

[TurkeyXIII]

Please don't swap shield and hull GAs. Tac would lose a little bit of whoretech for giga, tf, GT, and arguably IC and dreg, meanwhile gain something that's maybe justifiable for belters but flat out worthless for anybody else. Unless you go tacspan of course.

Edit: Forgot about gauss.

[Drizzo]

QUOTE (TurkeyXIII @ May 16 2010, 03:52 AM) Please don't swap shield and hull GAs. Tac would lose a little bit of whoretech for giga and tf, and arguably IC and dreg, meanwhile gain something that's maybe justifiable for belters but flat out worthless for anybody else. Unless you go tacspan of course.

Wait I'm confused, how does increasing the survivability of every ship that a tac team produces by 20% worthless? I am $#@!ing baffled.

90% of the time with Tac you fly without shields. 100% of the time with sup you fly with shields.

What is worthless about a stealth fighter/stealth bomber that survives for 1-2 seconds more to put the final missile into something?

[TurkeyXIII]

If you start taking hull damage in a stealth you're already dead. It's not 1-2 seconds extra survivability, it's... *grabs ICE*

Edit: Consider the lifetime of an adv sf getting shot by a gatt 1 basic fig with no KB. If the asf has both hull GAs, it lives 0.65 seconds longer than if it has none. That's about the biggest difference I can give you; fly a basic stealth, or get shot by anything else and the difference plummets below half a second.

[Xeretov]

QUOTE (TurkeyXIII @ May 16 2010, 08:15 AM) *grabs ICE*

This should have been the first thing you did.

Regarding survivability: You don't seem to have taken into account that most people can't aim very well. The average SF does live longer than pure numbers suggest because people will miss around half their shots in most cases. I know I've killed a miner that had a fig or int defending it and gotten away with a kill and a sliver of hull left.

That said, hull will flat out benefit Tac more than shield will benefit Tac. It'd be a slight difference but when you have that little hull to begin with, even a small bonus would help. And remember that hull applies to everything else too: Cons, miners, scouts, ints, carriers, etc. Pretty much everyone can benefit from hull in some way. And more hull is more buffer for nans, but the same is not true for shields.

But the point of this topic isn't how much hull will benefit Tac. Its whether or not that GA (or Ripcord) should be in Tac to begin with.

[Freyja]

QUOTE (phoenix1 @ May 16 2010, 04:01 AM) @Freyja:
...

From what I can see, sup has a lot more "really good" GAs than any other techpath, so I don't see what your problem is with having Tac have GAs that are "must buy" since every other techpath has at least 2.

Every GA is worth getting if you have the money and aren't using the money, what I mean for 'must buy' GAs are those that you have to get immediately without regard for anything else that may be happening. So if TAC got the missile damage and tracking GA, those would be more of a 'must buy' then if the GAs were in SUP and from a SUP team persepective.

[TurkeyXIII]

QUOTE (Xeretov @ May 17 2010, 04:22 AM) This should have been the first thing you did.

It was. I just needed some extra data.

Did you know that ripcord GA is the only GA to give a 15% perk? All the others give only 10%, but the agility GA twists its definition to give a bigger bonus than you'd expect.
Also the perk was only 14% in MS 1.25, but there was a mistake in the description that said it was 15%. At some point during DN it was perked to make the description accurate.

I still can't believe you seriously think people will pay money for 15 extra hitpoints.

[Xeretov]

QUOTE (TurkeyXIII @ May 16 2010, 04:22 PM) I still can't believe you seriously think people will pay money for 15 extra hitpoints.

QUOTE (Xeretov @ May 16 2010, 02:22 PM) And remember that hull applies to everything else too: Cons, miners, scouts, ints, carriers, etc. Pretty much everyone can benefit from hull in some way. And more hull is more buffer for nans, but the same is not true for shields.

I am $#@!ing amazed that you think hull in tac would only improve their SFs.

[Compellor]

Hull ups are enormously better for cons and miners, unless you allow for more than two minutes of shield recharge time and ignore nans, and that's a basic miner vs gats. Scouts would rather have shield ups, but just about everything else prefers hull. Well, the smaller capships also benefit more from shield GA against dis, killers, and galv, but that's not much to recommend it. An SF with it's shields up and charged benefits much more from shield GA than hull GA, but that only happens if you have gauss or med shield or something like that.

So, replacing sniper with something high sig that does more damage is apparently sufficient, as is just having good enough shields that it's worth being visible. I'm not sure where TF tac fits in with that, because they have 1.3 shield recharge, but they also have to engage at close range unless they're leaving a trail of plas gens or something. I don't think I see Rix going shields up in spite of their gun damage, but they've also got enough range to stay sneaky when firing sniper, and their lack of pitch agility makes dogfighting even more difficult.

Random thought experiment: If you wanted Sm Shield 3 with Shield GA 2 to be just as good as Med shield 1, each shield GA would have to be 1.155 instead of 1.1 (hitpoints and recharge).