Colliding ships, mortars, messaging.

Love the game but there are few things I would like to see.
I would like to see ships not go through each other. Possibly small amount of damage when they do. If you add damage then possibly something along the line like the bow of the ship not take any damage so you can Ram unfriendly. With this it would be nice to be able to raise the camera up a smidgen to be able to see more of your surroundings. Maybe make this into a different play mode or an event but I truly would like to see ships that Collide receive damage.
Not all weapons tell on Friendly's where they are headed except what would you call them indirect weapons. With Rudder and gear lube disappearing everybody has a max agility and everybody has a turbo which makes it very easy to maneuver out of a mortar targeting area. It would be nice if unFriendly's do not see where it's going to land. Maybe making the projectile louder and fainter the closer or further you are from Center can replace the visual.
The above two suggestions might give an idea of what to add to the blue slots to make important again. As it is now everybody has the same thing. Everybody has a turbo and only one of them because two put you over Max( getting rid of maxing out on Turbo would be nice) and the rest of the slots are Shields with maybe a bandage thrown in the mix. You can add anti ramming armor or battering ram. You can add an indicator of some sort letting you know you are in range of a mortar.
The last thing I would like to see is to be able to private message somebody whom you are not friends with.

 

completely getting rid of visual would be bad. Maybe just make it very hard to spot?

 

True, but that's why I suggest maybe making a mortar sensor for a blue spot item. Or they could lower the damage on the motors but being able to see where they land is kind of silly if you ask me.

 

The anti-mortar spam crowd would die if this was implemented.

Although I do think getting rid of turbos (and capping speeds) would be a huge step towards game balance ..

Early game mortars are OP on the 1.1x speed boats and they're underpowered late game against 1.5-1.7 speed boats ..

Obviously adjustments could be made to mortars so they're not underpowered throughout the game afterwards.

 

Since the 10% projectile speed buff, mortars have definitely become more powerful.

Having, now experienced the game with buffed mortars, I definitely prefer the game where they take a backseat. They’re a pretty low skill and spammable weapon. I think it’s better that they’re relegated to crowd control, and forcing people out of cover, rather than inflicting huge unavoidable damage.

 

What's your speed? Bc speeders love mortar spammers. I saw a guy earlier with 4 FBs .. a speeder's moist dream

 

My speed is 1.7, but that doesn’t mean I always want to be doing 1.7

A moving Speeder is hard to hit, but not impossible, and the more time you spend in the open, the more likely it is that someone is going to land that Sniper Crit, or Flare (etc...). I like to hide and use cover as much as any other ship, but when mortars come down, I have to move. If I’m stopped, or reversing at the time, then it’s a cold start, and I won’t be able to accelerate out the way fast enough, without Nitro. However, the air time for many mortars is now faster than GCD, so if I’ve just fired a shot, and started to reverse back into cover, then I won’t be able to Nitro away.

Speeders get hit by stuff too. Bdzarian doesn’t opt to run double bandages instead of a turbo, because he’s not taking hits

 

Obviously, it's possible .. just not likely. And it's not mortar vs no weapon, it's mortar vs something that has a higher hit rate against speeders. So, you'd think the mortar would be preferable.

 

In a 1v1 yes, but against a whole team, which probably includes at least three Shooters or Enforcers, there will be more than enough point damage weapons to kill me ten times over. So also having a torrent of fast mortars that effectively deny cover, absolutely makes life more difficult. And that’s to say nothing of Mines/Torps, and the threat they pose when you’re forced to keep moving all the time.

 

The suggestion was to cap ship speed and remove turbos so that the effectiveness of certain items didn't vary as wildly from early to late game ..

I merely mentioned that mortars could be balanced to avoid making them as useless in the early game as they are in the late game, if need be.



Off topic portion:

@ViscountSniffit and I are not going to agree on this, so this is for everyone else.

IMO double bubble enfos are the biggest threat to speeders bc it's a little difficult to beat something that can absorb both of your shots.

VS believes it's shooters. And that shooters with mortars are more difficult to beat than shooters with 5 snipers or blast cannons. I disagree. I haven't ever used a mortar in an anti-speeder build. And, since they'll barely hit a shooter or defender for any meaningful damage, I feel that speeders would be better off if shooters had fewer weapons that could hit them at high rates - especially under the large number of covered areas in the maps.

In VS's experience, his speeder is constantly being shot at by 3 to 5 enemies for the majority of his match. He lives in fear. A single shooter will kill him in 3-5 seconds, as will torpedoes, mines, mortars, etc, etc, etc.

In my view, NML speeders have a bit different of an experience. They're not exactly fearful of exposing themselves to enemy fire; they'll even come to a dead stop in front of multiple enemies just to finish off a fixer - before jetting away with barely a scratch. They excel at fighting basically anything other than a bubble.

These are from last night. These are obviously losses so they're not worth watching from my perspective - switch over to the speeders.



https://replay.battlebay.net/WWRQXYHF#QGRWLZRM


Replace the green part with the #letters in the top right of the screenshots to watch the others.

 

To clarify. I believe that ‘teams’ with a mixture of indirect and point damage weapons, are obviously more versatile and potent than teams with only point damage. Not specifically against me, but against my team, and me by extension. The 10% projectile speed increase was a significant buff for indirect users.

TBH, a Shooter with three Blast Cannons, is probably going to be every bit as dangerous to me as a Shooter with five. The extra two cannons will largely be superfluous, so it’s not significant to me if people choose to run them. Spending two slots on indirect weapons, such as FB and Mortars is, however, annoying for my team, and denies them (and me) cover, which would be significant.

Yes, that’s actually a pretty accurate summary. Perhaps when I can prop up my infamy with OP items like Epic TS, instead of having to depend on the abilities of my ‘actual ship’, then I’ll be able to loiter in front of entire teams too.

But there is a naunced difference between OP items and OP ship. I am concerned that as the devs try to rein in TS Enforcers, Speeders will end up as collateral, and TS will prove to be a crutch, that it struggles to walk without (which is already the case at lower infamies).

Just thinking ahead here.