Light Transports Overpowered

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Light Transports Overpowered

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Mark_Farlander
Rebel Alliance
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Post by Mark_Farlander » Tue Feb 13, 2018 2:05 pm

Hello pilots. I know you only accept to fly hard missions where the probability that you can safely return to the MC80 Independence is lower than 1%, but I thought you need to be aware there are also many people in the galaxy who only fly overpowered crafts to accomplish the missions you were able to complete during your second training day.
However, due to your long experience in the deep space, you already know which ships I'm talking about: the light transports.
The Corellian transports YT-1300, YT-2000 and the Millennium Falcon are overpowered in X-Wing Alliance because they have autofire capable turrets powered by a secondary generator. This means those mediocre pilots can shoot at the target in autofire mod and avoid defensive fire while flying at 125% maintenance speed.
80% of the campaign missions where you fly a transport are much easier than any starfighter mission.
A rebalance is absolutely needed.

The following actions should be done:
1) Decreasing the speed of the YT-1300 (89 MGLT) and the Millennium Falcon (102 MGLT) to 75 MGLT, as it should be according to both the Canon universe and the Legends continuity.
As for the YT-2000, I would not put my hands on it, since the Otana is a Wookieepedia Featured Article with its usual stats: Shields 320 SBD, Hull 114 RU, speed 96 MGLT. The YT-2000 is also a more recent model comparing to the Falcon, which is an old YT-1300.
The YT-2400 is not flyable in the campaign missions, so it can stay as it is.
The Muurian transport is already balanced with its poor shielding and weak hull for a craft of its size.
2) Increasing by 1 level the AI of all the enemies in the missions where you fly a YT-1300, maybe even 2 levels in the missions with the Otana, since the YT-2000 stats are left untouched, and also 2 levels for all the enemies in the Battle of Endor to make it the true final battle of the game. I've always found the TIEs in the Battle of Endor weaker comparing to the other TIEs you face during the rest of the campaign.

Let me know your opinions.
I really appreciate any advice to punish those incompetent pilots who love flying Corellian transports.
I don't judge tactics. The Battle is the best and only Judge.

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Kath Leader
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Post by Kath Leader » Wed Feb 14, 2018 5:00 am

On a related note of the YT Transports, I never got over how Emon in family mission 2 (the gunnery one) of the campaign says in briefing "For a transport, the YT-1300 is fast and light maneuverable, but you wouldn't want to go up against a Imperial TIE fighter in one" and then fast forward to like mission 4 (Delivering spice to Viraxo) and its just fly evasive and spam the "r" and "f" keys and laying devastation to waves of enemy fighters then thinking like really Emon...I can own an entire wing of fighters in this thing.

I do agree that they take much less skill to master and comparing your stats in a transport vs a fighter are not comparable as a fighter pilot doesnt have a 360 degree auto fire turret or even a 360 degree firing arc, so the judgement of flying offensive or defensive and power management is key for the success and survivability of a fighter pilot. Likewise a transport can stay in defensive and use the 360 arc. However I have not really ever thought of this as a balance issue, in universe it shows how transports handle differently then fighters, and for me made sense, the galaxy is full of transport and freighter pilots, but being fighter jockey is a coveted and special accomplishment. I always saw this because the transports are slightly bigger then a fighter there fore have more room for systems that aid the pilot in being good, and fighter pilot has only his skills and ability to fly to rely on, no room in those small space frames for advanced targeting computers or in some cases even nav computers. If I remember right the "f" key was also designed to simulate EMKAYs (co-pilot), when your in the gunner seat, hit "f" the EMKAY in the cockpit would fly to the ship you have targeted and if your in the cockpit and hit "f" EMKAY goes to the guns and begins shooting at ships you have targeted.

If that is the case, I think if a attempt was made to rebalance the YTs, it would be interesting if you are in the cockpit and hit "f", targeting data is fed to you from the AI gunner and you have to fly and line up the shot for the gunner. (I know how complicated such a script would be to not only make but also implement so this is not a serious request lol.)

In game iv also seen the CORTs as entry level ships (designed for those who didnt have any experiance with X-wing, TIE Fighter or XvT) since you fly them exclusively in the first battle of the campaign which is mostly tutorial mixed with mission that lead Ace into joining the alliance.

The Saxman
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Post by The Saxman » Wed Feb 14, 2018 12:36 pm

Keep in mind that it's not impossible to rack up over 1000 kills by the end of the campaign. The AI in XWA leaves a LOT to be desired, and that definitely affects ships like the CORTs.

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Mark_Farlander
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Post by Mark_Farlander » Wed Feb 14, 2018 2:17 pm

Kath Leader wrote:
On a related note of the YT Transports, I never got over how Emon in family mission 2 (the gunnery one) of the campaign says in briefing "For a transport, the YT-1300 is fast and light maneuverable, but you wouldn't want to go up against a Imperial TIE fighter in one" and then fast forward to like mission 4 (Delivering spice to Viraxo) and its just fly evasive and spam the "r" and "f" keys and laying devastation to waves of enemy fighters then thinking like really Emon...I can own an entire wing of fighters in this thing.
I guess Emon is one of those "brave" pilots I mentioned before.
Kath Leader wrote:
I do agree that they take much less skill to master and comparing your stats in a transport vs a fighter are not comparable as a fighter pilot doesnt have a 360 degree auto fire turret or even a 360 degree firing arc, so the judgement of flying offensive or defensive and power management is key for the success and survivability of a fighter pilot. Likewise a transport can stay in defensive and use the 360 arc.
I didn't say autofire is overpowered, I said that secondary generator powering turrets is unbalanced, because if you fully redirect cannon recharge to engines, you can fly at 125% speed while not losing energy from shields and from turrets. That's why I suggested lowering the speed of the Millennium Falcon to 75 MGLT, as it is according to both the Canon universe and the Legends continuity.
You only lose energy from forward mounted cannons, but of course you don't even need them and secondly, considering how powerful the shields of the Corellian transports are, an energy transfer from shields to cannons quickly replenishes them without losing too much shield percentage.
However, the Totally Games applied a minor rebalance to this by lowering the energy transfer efficiency for transports: light transports in general have a much lower energy transfer efficiency than starfighters.
Kath Leader wrote:

If I remember right the "f" key was also designed to simulate EMKAYs (co-pilot), when your in the gunner seat, hit "f" the EMKAY in the cockpit would fly to the ship you have targeted
Don't do that! That's suicidal!
Think to what Admiral Saxman said.
Last edited by Mark_Farlander on Wed Feb 14, 2018 4:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I don't judge tactics. The Battle is the best and only Judge.

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Mark_Farlander
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Post by Mark_Farlander » Wed Feb 14, 2018 2:22 pm

Kath Leader wrote:
In game iv also seen the CORTs as entry level ships (designed for those who didnt have any experiance with X-wing, TIE Fighter or XvT) since you fly them exclusively in the first battle of the campaign which is mostly tutorial mixed with mission that lead Ace into joining the alliance.
There are 53 missions in X-Wing Alliance campaign. You're flying transports in 23 of them, Endor missions included.
I don't judge tactics. The Battle is the best and only Judge.

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keiranhalcyon7
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Post by keiranhalcyon7 » Thu Feb 15, 2018 12:49 am

Mark_Farlander wrote:
Kath Leader wrote:I do agree that they take much less skill to master and comparing your stats in a transport vs a fighter are not comparable as a fighter pilot doesnt have a 360 degree auto fire turret or even a 360 degree firing arc, so the judgement of flying offensive or defensive and power management is key for the success and survivability of a fighter pilot. Likewise a transport can stay in defensive and use the 360 arc.
I didn't say autofire is overpowered, I said that secondary generator powering turrets is unbalanced, because if you fully redirect cannon recharge to engines, you can fly at 125% speed while not losing energy from shields and from turrets. That's why I suggested lowering the speed of the Millennium Falcon to 75 MGLT, as it is according to both the Canon universe and the Legends continuity.
You only lose energy from forward mounted cannons, but of course you don't even need them and secondly, considering how powerful the shields of the Corellian transports are, an energy transfer from shields to cannons quickly replenishes them without losing too much shield percentage.
If that's the reason for the imbalance, then the correct remedy is to tie the turrets into the main power system so that you need to pay power to replenish them just like the fixed guns, no? I mean, I know that's probably not something we're able to do, so as a suggestion it's not helpful, but no one's mentioned it so far.

If I were designing the game from scratch, I'd rebuild the energy management system from fundamentals - ship mass, propulsion power requirements proportional to that mass and target top speed, weapon and shield power requirements proportional to the size of the weapon/shield capacitors and desired recharge rates, and then mathematically determine the impact to top speed resulting from the various power settings. This almost certainly would result in different crafts having different incremental impacts instead of the constant 12.5% impact per increment that we have now (TIE bomber excepted), especially for the transports, which, having a much lower armament-to-weight ratio than starfighters, would see a much smaller speed difference from changing power settings. (I'd also pool all energy weapons into a single capacitor; I really hate the back-and-forth transfer hack used to rebalance energy between the lasers and ions. Or at least give a key to balance laser/ion energy in a manner similar to the shield fore/aft/balanced function.)

As to speed, Han told Lando in RotJ that the Falcon was the fastest ship in the fleet. While that's probably true of the hyperdrive, they weren't talking about beating the fleet to Endor, they were talking about the space battle, so Han must have been talking about the sublight engines. If we take Han's statement at face value, the Falcon would be faster than an A-wing; this is both ludicrous and contradicted by other onscreen evidence, when the Falcon was unable to simply outrun the TIE fighters chasing it during the escape from Hoth. It's possible then that he meant that it's the fastest non-fighter in the fleet, which I think would be true at either 75 or 102 MGLT. (So before Han offered him the Falcon, what was Lando planning to fly to lead the starfighter assault, I wonder? The Lady Luck? :? )

Questionable movie quotes aside, I think Han would have modified the Falcon to be somewhat faster than a stock YT-1300. 102/89 is about 1.15, and 15% faster sounds reasonable to me.
Mark_Farlander wrote:However, the Totally Games applied a minor rebalance to this by lowering the energy transfer efficiency for transports: light transports in general have a much lower energy transfer efficiency than starfighters.
Say what now? ... I'm not sure I believe you, but I'm at work right now so I can't test it, and my memory of flying the transports is fuzzy. Or I'm just not understanding your meaning.
Mark_Farlander wrote:
Kath Leader wrote:In game iv also seen the CORTs as entry level ships (designed for those who didnt have any experiance with X-wing, TIE Fighter or XvT) since you fly them exclusively in the first battle of the campaign which is mostly tutorial mixed with mission that lead Ace into joining the alliance.
There are 53 missions in X-Wing Alliance campaign. You're flying transports in 23 of them, Endor missions included.
I think Kath meant that in the prologue, you fly transports exclusively, not that the transports are exclusive to the prologue (though 23/53 is higher than I would have guessed). And you really gotta learn how to multi-quote.

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Kath Leader
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Post by Kath Leader » Thu Feb 15, 2018 7:19 am

And yes, I was referring to the prologue, I just figured the other family missions sprinkled in were just to not waste the assets they created for the Prologue and also 23/53 is a lot higher then I thought as well. May need to go play through the actual campaign again and take a break from allied to refresh my memory.

CIDlord_1973
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Post by CIDlord_1973 » Fri Feb 16, 2018 12:23 am

Hmmm when i play on hard mode the YT's are not so much overpowered.

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Mark_Farlander
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Post by Mark_Farlander » Fri Feb 16, 2018 8:47 am

During the last 3 years I've always played on hard mode and I can assure the YT-1300 is not so much overpowered compared to the more advanced YT-2000 because
1) has way less shielding (120 SBD vs 320 SBD)
2) is slightly slower (89 MGLT vs 96 MGLT)
3) is less maneuverable
4) has only 1 turret
5) lacks the ion cannon
I don't judge tactics. The Battle is the best and only Judge.

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