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I don't have a suggestion for countermeasures because by themselves they're not a problem. The problem with hunter 3 is that there is no way to play around them. My point is that countermeasures don't count and I explained why they don't count. And I'm also constrained by the limitations of the code and the expectations of the average player.

Basically what I'm given to work with, as a designer, is this:

Countermeasures are a thing and I can't change how they work on a fundamental level.

Hunters are an ingrained aspect of Allegiance stealth fire culture and while I could change the way they work on a fundamental level, too many people would miss the point (see this thread) to make that a worthwhile endeavor.

Inside these constraints, what can be done to make flying against hunter3 more fun? The answer: give players a reasonable answer to hunter 3. In this case the reasonable answer could be "massive, fatty pulse probes" which don't work because that screws up other aspects of the game, "screw around with the sig values to make SFs using hunters much easier to find" which wouldn't work because the sfs would still safely be out of the range of the bbr's turrets, "make countermeasures better" which doesn't address the problem in any way shape or form, or "provide a way for scouts to actively counteract the effect of getting hit by hunter 3."

Now, why do I focus on countermeasures? Because everyone and their mother encounters tac and responds to any complaints about it with "just buy countermeasure 2/3!" like it's some magical cure-all and not endemic of the problem.

If you could effectively cross-nan off the damage then the RNG nature of countermeasures would cease to be a problem because the RNG would simply augment how often you needed to xnan as opposed to deciding whether you live or die.

And, pray tell, how did I miss the point of this sentence:

cashto wrote:QUOTE (cashto @ Nov 25 2014, 12:13 PM) The truth is, there is a skill check against SF. It is, and has always been since day 1, sig management and cross nanning.

Cross nanning straight up doesn't work. I can also, if you'd like, demonstrate why scout sig management doesn't work either. And that's my point: if these things don't work, hunter3 is fundamentally flawed.

But if you MAKE ONE OR MORE OF THEM WORK then hunter3 is no longer flawed.

EDIT:

Phantom032 wrote:QUOTE (Phantom032 @ Nov 25 2014, 01:14 PM) So tone down the attacks, argue the point back and forth all you want (tip: it likely won't make a difference, as I already have some plans),

That's... really? So are you saying that there's nothing we can say that wouldn't be something you've already thought of, considered, and rejected? That seems... unusually arrogant. Maybe it's just a language barrier thing.

BTW if I were to redo this game from scratch I would simply remove countermeasures from the game entirely. I honestly don't see much of a point. I'd also WAY scale back hunter damage to 50% of what it is now but let SFs carry 200% as many hunters as they currently do. Snipers would be longer range and louder and behave more like Gauss so they feel like a real "sniper" weapon. The idea would be to use hunters to drop shields and a little bit of hull on your target and then use the sniper as a "finish-him" style of gun. Cross-nanning would be played around by people who could actually get their hunters and bullets to hit at exactly the same time or by having high KB. The missiles would also be larger and have larger hitboxes so they're easier to shoot down... and probably a touch slower.

Not enough whore oriented.
Why not have your thrusters randomly change keybinds every 3 seconds, and the only way to win is to get a 51kb?

phoenix1 wrote:QUOTE (phoenix1 @ Nov 25 2014, 10:09 PM) BTW let's chat about "sig management" for a second.

A hunt 3 mounted SF with sig 3 active has a signature of about 46%. A scout's scan range is 2400m meaning that the scout can see the SF who has hunt3 mounted at about 1100m range.

Fun fact: the range of hunter3 is ~2040m.

Fun fact the second: AC1 range is 1500m.

Fun fact the third: if we had adv/hvy scouts, we'd be seeing this SF (who has their hunters mounted) at 1360m.

I mean I guess if by "sig management" you mean "not shooting your guns or mounting shields on SFs and remembering to cloak" then sure that skill is very important in this situation.

I hate seeing wrong math. If you do math, please get your facts right. Just typed this up quickly, read at your own risk

First of all lets start with some inaccurate statement:
"ac1" range default range is 1500m, but effetively it ranges from 1350 (OH, ew turret with 0.9 range) over 1800 (tf and rix base range) to 2658 (TF, PE with all ew range and pw range GAs (1500*1.2*1.1*1.1*1.1*1.1))
Going with ranges as the main balance point (like "using this missile/weapon they can/can not stay out of range") is not a good way to balance (another point why im doing a bigger change for tac instead of slight adjustment)

standard sfs with hunter mounted have 150% sig, with sig3 active this drops to 33.75%, not 46%. Even sig2 already cloaks a normal sf with hunters down to 45%. Depending on factions and gas sig 3 can take sfs with hunters as low as 24.25% (bios with sig GAs)
with default values basic scouts see this at 810m, adv and hvy scouts at 1012 - the worst case (dreg looking for bios with sig GAs) means basic scouts only see sfs (with hunters UP!) at 523m away. With hunters down you could be 175m from a dreg scout and be uneyed. The only reason counterplay against sfs works is that only sig3 is so utterly strong - and there is the eye on entry bug: your game always assumes someone who just entered just started cloaking instead of entering fully cloaked. So you have a couple seconds of seeing sfs starting at 50% sig, allowing to dispatch them before cloak fully activates. With sbs this doesnt give a "station at risk" warning because these warning are issued by the server - and the server thinks your team did not see that sb enter, just like that sb will not get a symbol for being eyed even though he was effectively seen.

Tacs cloaking power could still be fine, if adv sf sig3 cloak energy didnt last for 4 minutes and recharged in around 30s once empty. (without GAs)
As I've said, getting those values to work out, possibly adding a lt cloak for flying and make sig2-3 into a combat cloak (more energy needed, but better cloak than lt cloak) will be some work. NOW back to my project for real.

Seriously though, as only a moderately related side-note, this game has enough mechanisms in it already to separate a regular pilot for a truly great one.
Not everything needs to be broken down to require hyper-finesse.

I would very much like to see Mini-AC brought back on Heavy Scouts, and it has absolutely nothing to do with balance.
I think its a great, great, way for new players to get engaged, learn the game, and have fun.

If we can find some way to incorporate that back into PCore, I would be very happy.

Phantom032 wrote:QUOTE (Phantom032 @ Nov 25 2014, 01:46 PM) I hate seeing wrong math. If you do math, please get your facts right. Just typed this up quickly, read at your own risk

Ok but really.

QUOTE First of all lets start with some inaccurate statement:
"ac1" range default range is 1500m, but effetively it ranges from 1350 (OH, ew turret with 0.9 range) over 1800 (tf and rix base range) to 2658 (TF, PE with all ew range and pw range GAs (1500*1.2*1.1*1.1*1.1*1.1))
Going with ranges as the main balance point (like "using this missile/weapon they can/can not stay out of range") is not a good way to balance (another point why im doing a bigger change for tac instead of slight adjustment)[/quote]
Wut.

First of all, Im pretty sure that PE weapons don't get the benefits of both PE range and PW range. I am willing to be wrong on that part.

But second of all, the effective range doesn't change that much. You're talking about a TF team that is doing regular bomb runs after having advanced both their tac and expansion. That's not even a remotely useful statement to make.

Finally, going with the ranges as a balance point is very important to balance. Like, that's literally why you took Skycap off of gunships. Because their range is too long. I remember that conversation in game. You yourself said that Skycap's DPS was the same as AC1.

QUOTE standard sfs with hunter mounted have 150% sig, with sig3 active this drops to 33.75%, not 46%. Even sig2 already cloaks a normal sf with hunters down to 45%. Depending on factions and gas sig 3 can take sfs with hunters as low as 24.25% (bios with sig GAs)
with default values basic scouts see this at 810m, adv and hvy scouts at 1012 - the worst case (dreg looking for bios with sig GAs) means basic scouts only see sfs (with hunters UP!) at 523m away. With hunters down you could be 175m from a dreg scout and be uneyed. The only reason counterplay against sfs works is that only sig3 is so utterly strong - and there is the eye on entry bug: your game always assumes someone who just entered just started cloaking instead of entering fully cloaked. So you have a couple seconds of seeing sfs starting at 50% sig, allowing to dispatch them before cloak fully activates. With sbs this doesnt give a "station at risk" warning because these warning are issued by the server - and the server thinks your team did not see that sb enter, just like that sb will not get a symbol for being eyed even though he was effectively seen.[/quote]
My mistake. I was using TEK which accidentally had shield on. I'm at work and you can't use ICE without having Allegiance installed AFAIK so I had to hunt down a version of the .igc file to stick on my computer and use TEK.

I also didn't go through the extremes on purpose.

This is even more damning for hunter 3 so I'm not entirely sure what the point of correcting me is.

Also eye-on-entry bug has literally nothing to do with anything I'm talking about here so I'm not sure why you'd bring it up.

BTW on an equally salient and important and relevant note:

$#@! you sharepoint designer. I can't save a string variable as a single character of whitespace, but I *can* save the variable as a single character 'k' and then have it replace the variable 'k' with a single character of whitespace.

And here's the lovely error message it gives you when you try to do the former:

Microsoft.Workflow.Client.ActivityValidationException: Workflow XAML failed validation due to the following errors:
The private implementation of activity '1: DynamicActivity' has the following validation error: Value for a required activity argument 'Value' was not supplied.
HTTP headers received from the server - ActivityId: d92a76f2-8166-4941-ba4d-5c47053dd3a1. NodeId: . Scope: . Client ActivityId : acaccf9c-0082-1000-a3f3-e1f4443428a7. ---> System.Net.WebException: The remote server retur

phoenix1 wrote:QUOTE (phoenix1 @ Nov 25 2014, 11:02 PM) First of all, Im pretty sure that PE weapons don't get the benefits of both PE range and PW range. I am willing to be wrong on that part.

You are. There was (or still is?) a bug where the description of the range in F4 is wrong, but both are applied. That is because PW range increases particle speed, and EW range increases particle lifetime.

phoenix1 wrote:QUOTE (phoenix1 @ Nov 25 2014, 11:02 PM) Ok but really.
Finally, going with the ranges as a balance point is very important to balance. Like, that's literally why you took Skycap off of gunships. Because their range is too long. I remember that conversation in game. You yourself said that Skycap's DPS was the same as AC1.

The range isnt the issue with skycap. Its the particle speed and spread (same problem miniac had) combined with 50% AoE damage. AC1 shots could go 10k far and noone would care because by the time they reach that distance the target is long gone if your shot isnt off by 1k anyway.
Which is why using range to balance makes no sense.

phoenix1 wrote:QUOTE (phoenix1 @ Nov 25 2014, 11:02 PM) This is even more damning for hunter 3 so I'm not entirely sure what the point of correcting me is.

Correcting for using wrong math, not a wrong point. Kinda important for me to work with the correct values you know

phoenix1 wrote:QUOTE (phoenix1 @ Nov 25 2014, 11:02 PM) Also eye-on-entry bug has literally nothing to do with anything I'm talking about here so I'm not sure why you'd bring it up.

Eye on entry bug is a major reason why tac being OP only comes up now. The accepted strategy against adv tac is to probe and camp all the important alephs. If sfs actually entered at 11.25% sig (sbs 22.5) as they should camping alephs would be much much harder. If this worked as it should people would have noticed much earlier that there is no counterplay to adv tac at all (aside from all out bombing and hoping on the cms).

All I really wanted to say is this:

People in this forum have a real short fuse, in that any disagreement, any misunderstanding, any difference in priorities is readily interpreted as a mental deficiency on the part of the other person.

If you feel you're not getting your point across, look at how you're phrasing and framing things, try to figure out if there's something they're getting hung up on. Getting frustrated and just repeating yourself over and over again is not going to help.

On the receiving end ... be charitable and assume that the other person has an idea that maybe they just aren't expressing clearly enough. Don't just leap to the conclusion that they're a moron.

P1, in your case I was trying to explain that people are getting hung up on a) your statement that there's no counter to tac (which makes it sounds like an unfixable problem; really, the best way to phrase it is "this is how tac should be countered, this is why it's not working, this is how to make it work") and b) your opposition to countermeasures, which is valid to a large degree, but also it comes off as argument against CM even being in the game, when that's not at all what you're trying to argue for.

In your last post you've done a good job of clarifying these two points.

And finally, no one has to "win" any arguments in here. Maybe you really are talking to a noob who only believes what they do because they don't have enough experience. Fine then. Why waste any energy on them? Just lay out the facts, smile, and move on. Are you afraid P32 is going to see things the same way?

Phantom032 wrote:QUOTE (Phantom032 @ Nov 25 2014, 02:18 PM) You are. There was (or still is?) a bug where the description of the range in F4 is wrong, but both are applied. That is because PW range increases particle speed, and EW range increases particle lifetime.

Why doesn't this affect all PW weapons then?