M6 what to do about them?

[blightedmarsh]

I see that people are asking for more powerful M6's (M6M's) over and over again. thing is what are you using them for that you would kneed this, isn't the role of the M6M replaced by the M7?

what follows is a list of what I use M6's for and how and why.

Point patrol.

basically you use it at the lead of an M3 fighter patrol. Its shields should allow you fighters to live a lot longer and thus save cost. It can also act to give a heaver punch to the squadron. In this role shields are all important.

Escort

you give it lots of anti fighter turrets and tell it to follow your prize UT or carrier to help keep the decks clear.

Heavy trader

with the right scrips you can have a trader that can handle trouble. only worthwhile for high value cargo in dangerous space, or smuggling illegals.

Picket

for guarding stations in secure locations.

Wing

they provide additional firepower when placed escorting destroyers or frigates. they as lead draw most of the fire and their shields allow them to survive where an M6 could not. M7's are better at this but not always available.

Pirate

faster than trade ships, they can destroy escorts and cap the trader. they have enough cargo space to acquire lots of choice loot.

this list is in no way definitive, tell me what do you or would like to use your M6s for and what would you change or add to make them better at this, bearing in mind the existence of the M7

[Aragon Speed]

How about M6's being tuned more towards fighter defence and M6M's tuned more towards taking out M7's (In M6M groups, like a bunch of fighters would gang up on an M6)?

[blightedmarsh]

exactly the sort of thing I had in mind.

return of the striped out trade M6's for trade.

and what about this for a crazy idea, a very slow and unmaneuverable corvette with an anti capitol spine mounted beam laser with 3 forward anti fighter beam turrets. this would act as a semi mobile hyperspace capable laser tower or siege cannon.

corvettes with a novel use that excel in that area.

[H-K]

I'd like to see the M6 become a gunship again, good for swatting fighters but when fighting an M7 or Capship it shouldn't be able to serious damage.

It's unrealistic to have that much anti capship lasers on such a small boat.

Flown the TC hyperion for a while, 5 x 200 mj shields is 1G.

Together with the small profile and 8 CIG's in front Capships die way too easily.

So I'd like to see M6's with lots of turrets that can only mount anti fighter weapons, their job is to vaporise M5's and M4's and M3's get taken out by the front guns.

For hurting Capships there's Bombers, M7's and other capships imo.

[Tyrell]

Bring back the good ol' X2 Osprey with the shields of a small capitol ship and the speed of a m3. It's balanced. Really.

Well it did look totally awesome anyways

Personally I liked the various roles that M6's slotted into in XTM - some with the firepower to deal with capitol ships when skillfully piloted some more in the role of really huge M3+++, others very good as OOS patrol ships, escort ships etc.

I blame all the new stupid weapons in TC for lots of things, but I'm old and set in my ways. Where are my Gamma IRIs, PACs, and HEPTs?

And My Map

-Tyrell

[blightedmarsh]

You might like apricots gunbus then (fun not balance)

So what we would like is some stuff that works well OOS then.
for an avatar (this is the name i always give to my personal boat thingy) M6's are good as you can often dock them to bigger things, have a fast skiff dock to them, be fast and maneuverable whilst at the same time have better than paper thin amour or water pistols, all with cargo enough to do some serious trading.

[Galder]

The problem about this class is, that it's hybrid class. It's the link between capships and fighters. All users are looking at it from a different angle... what it should be. There's no other class which is so "hybrid". One user looks at it as a thing against weaker classes, meaning it should take out fighters mainly, the other one looks at it as an extension from the caps, so he'll expect it to behave like a heavy armed gunship. Something above M3+ with enough firepower to hurt a real cap.

This is the reason why it can't satisfy all preferences. The strength of this class is not to fulfill a specific role, the strength is its hybrid existence. It's a Jack-of-all-trades. It can pose a threat to any real cap, but will never take down one on its own. It's a threat to every fighter class with its heavy weapons, it can take down any fighter class with some volleys, but it's not supposed to cut through a whole wing of fighters. It's the backbone of a M3 sector patrol, giving it a bit more punch. It's a suitable backup for a M2 to add more firepower while maintaining the range advantage due to its higher speed.

Due to some issues, they weren't able to perform their hybrid role. This is mainly due to the ES settings. There are several rebalance scripts out there, but none has solved this problem as you can see, if you're testing them. There are so many issues in the gameplay, like wrong weapons, that something like this is often overlooked. Everything is centered around the player, and almost nothing around the enemies.

But AS stated earlier, we're spending a lot of time on rebalancing, and this is one point of a whole bunch of rebalancing issues.

[blightedmarsh]

I must agree that the class as a whole is most defiantly hybrid. that however dose not mean to say that individual classes cannot me more suited to one particular role or another. Nor dos this mean that the player should not optimize the ship to suit their intended function.

For example an anti fighter M6 cant go far wrong having PBE point defense turrets.

[Tyrell]

A lot of people here have played the various X games, or at least I get that impression, and the problem is that throughout things have changed. And of course everyone has their own vision of how things should be

In X:BTF you could take on the entire known universe in your X-Perimental shuttle with 2 125mj shields and 2 forward mounted Gamma High Energy Plasma Throwers really ripping it up. And Xenon Destroyers moved at about 600 m/s...

In X2 most of the Corvettes were alright and had roles they could be used in, though they had rather a capitol craft feel (urh handling and speed but OTOH comparable shields) except for the Osprey which was the ultimate bane of the universe. That baby flew like a M3 and hit like a M2 with shielding much more in line with the latter They functioned well to provide a stopgap / reward for players who had worked to earn some money but didn't yet have the ~100 million to buy and equip a capitol ship.

In X3:R corvettes were too big, too ugly and too slow to be good for anything, with massive turret blackspots and the ever increating amount of weaponry being mounted on the far cheaper to buy and equip M3's, M6's were sitting ducks. You either stayed in a M3(+) or traded / whatever till you could get a destroyer. Or you played with the Bala Gi missions and got the UltimaMegaGigaTetra(other prefixes of power here)Hyperion and pretty much stuck it to the entire known universe, Osprey style, but more.

XTM made big steps to restor the blance and gave M6's a veriety of hybrid roles aswell as some more specialised ones too. They were viable ships to pilot but still had a big ass. MM6's were more specialised and typically more powerful (I love you Krait) while also being more expensive / hard to obtain and more specialised. I was very happy with this, as some of you may know, I am not adverse to flying overpowered ships, especially if I think I've earned them. And anyway, there's only one player and a heck of a lot of universe to cru.. I mean enemies to fight These M6/MM6's were versatile and useful and felt like an upgrade to the M3 which is a typical progression. They were still vulnerable and not at all invincible, however.

If I could have one M6 related request for XTC it'd be that the Osprey gets a totally new look, so it looks like it did back in X2 (or rather the X2 look with awesome X3 graphics) rather than the nasty new look that the teladi ships got lumbered with. Or you could just change all the teladi ships back to the X2 look of awesome instead of the X3 look of "half finished construction project with pipes hanging off". I mean I understand and it makes sense for the Teladi ships to look that way, but I can't even bear to look at ships from what used to be my favourite race any more.

-Poobs

Edit to clarify : M6's mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people, and it's difficult because of where they are both in terms of progression of the player ship and how they stand cost/power-wise (Between the M2 and M3, or rather now the M3 and M7 I guess though personally I think that the M7 should follow more in line with the "Capitol Ship" design/balance philosophy and the M6 more towards the "fighter" side of the M3-M7 balance scale). Also I'm not asking for overpowered ships that make the game easy, or elsewhere posting to complain about weapons (I'm looking at PBE's and PBG's) because they make the game 'hard' but I'd like a balanced and fun game which is challenging and where the player is free to make his own choices, not forced to play in a certain way or abuse missions for mass money in order to get to the "lategame" / big ships at double speed because the game is designed with that in mind.

[aka1nas]

If you're going to keep the front-mounted gun aspect of the M6, then I would suggest the following:

1) Slightly increase the turn rates across the board so they are at least a little more agile than an M7.

2) If you want them to actually be effective vs fighters, consider adding an extra weapon slot to each turret. Alternately, keep the turret slot count the same and let them mount FAAs(hmm, or maybe add a lighter Flak weapon or mod CFAA or FBL into something suitable). One FAA on a few turrets would make them a credible threat to fighters, but not to the extent of a capital ship as the M6 doesn't have the energy to sustain FAA for very long.

3) I don't think there is any point to try to make them capital-killers in packs. They'll never have the shields to slug it out with M7s/M2s, and IMO shouldn't be as agile as fighters and thus shouldn't be able to dodge all that much.