Improving the Teutoburg

posted on May 11th, 2013, 2:08 pm

So if I have to decide: Descent or Teutoburg, I would probably choose the Descent. Put the two in a battle between each other and watch, Descent wins (just tried that, Teutoburg destroyed, Descent still has 66% shields).
One possible way to solve this would be too increase the Teutoburgs shields, but I think I there is a better way than that.

The Teutoburg is a torpedo cruiser, it has no phasers and relatively weak shields. To make up for this, I would add pinpoint defense. It existed in the original armada (2) if I remember correctly. Maybe it wouldn't destroy all torpedoes, but 90 % of all enemy torpedoes near the Teutoburg (so it can, to same extent, protect allied vessels as well).

Now the Descents weapons except for the Phasers (pulsephasers, disruptors etc. are not affected) are pretty much useless against the Teutoburg. It makes the Teutoburg less squishy without overpowering it's shields. And as it is a torpedo cruiser, it would make sense for it to have torpedo defense.

What do you think?

posted on May 11th, 2013, 2:17 pm

i think it's not a torpedo cruiser

the teutoburg is an artillery ship, it's gameplay role is to counter turtling, it has very long range weapons, designed for outranging turrets. if the enemy lets you shoot their turrets, then turrets always die, your real aim is to force them to confront your fleet with their fleet, out of range of the turrets, which you will win because you didn't spam turrets.

it is useless in fleet combat, and that's exactly how it should be. just like dominion hyperspace arty (in the current patch).

in a 1v1 against a descent of course the descent should win, that's perfectly as expected.

comparing it to the descent makes no sense, they have different roles.

also the remore already has point defence phasers.

posted on May 11th, 2013, 8:08 pm

Hi.

Teutoburg need some remake, its useles ship.... its special ability is to die fast.

I trade it for Ambasador any time.

btw never seen it used online - correction twice

1. by totaly new guy as last resort.....
2. by accidend as player called Descent and missclick..

posted on May 11th, 2013, 8:20 pm

I'd agree with a Point-defense, give the thing a chance to actually escape if things go south...

posted on May 11th, 2013, 8:27 pm

btw never seen it used online - correction twice

1. by totaly new guy as last resort.....
2. by accidend as player called Descent and missclick..

it's not a commonly used ship because its main use is niche. if your opponent doesn't go turtle mad then there's no real need for the teutoburg. it can't just be removed from the game because everyone needs a way to punish heavy turtling.

and making it more useful for fleet combat oversteps its unique purpose.

those 2 examples aren't uses of the teutoburg, they are misuses.

your ambassador has short range weapons and would be absolutely eviscerated by a wall of fed torp turrets. i love the ambassador, it's my favourite warpin, but in fleetops ships have specific roles to fill.

I'd agree with a Point-defense, give the thing a chance to actually escape if things go south...

it could only dodge torps. if i was trying to kill a teutoburg i wouldn't be using torps. teutoburgs should only be built to face down turret spam, which is rarely combined with expensive ships. turret spam matches up with cheaper early game ships used to stopgap until the turrets can be built.

also if you really want pd, buy a remore. if you have sfc up, and are in a position to be able to pull in a teutoburg without too much risk, then a remore isn't exactly far over the horizon.

the loss of a teuto should usually be matched by more enemy losses, because to kill it the enemy would need to bring their fleet out of their turret range to fight it. have decloak nearby to catch them early or stop them running. sovvies or an ally with is bomb/combat tractor/polaron field/nanites will help. when their fleet engages yours, their fleet will be outmatched.

posted on May 12th, 2013, 5:29 am

Just for giggles I warped in 3 Teutorburgs ranked them up and made the veterans and then had them attack a shipyard. For cost of using up your slots you got a measley return. They are slow, easy to kill, useless against most other ships and three of them ranked up don't do enough damage fast enough to make it worthwhile. I tried them against turrets and except for the crappy Romulan or Dominion turrets (until the Romulans cloak that is) they take too long to kill anything and since they are so easy to kill they are gone as soon as the enemy gets a couple of ships nearby.

I do happen to like the design of the ship though. Its compact and "beefy" looking. Sort of like a pumped up Sovereign class and it looks like it would make a great replacement for the Phalanx model.

Bottom line there is literally no reason whatsoever to pick a Teutoburg over a Descent.

posted on May 12th, 2013, 6:21 am

The problem with the Teuto is that it can't destroy turrets faster than a single constructor can build them, and in a mirror match a Newton or two will completely negate its output.

To keep its flavour, and to make the turtling player feel a greater sense of need to come out and deal with it, I would suggest that it gets a +100% or +200% bonus to damage against turrets.

posted on May 12th, 2013, 9:26 am

The problem with the Teuto is that it can't destroy turrets faster than a single constructor can build them, and in a mirror match a Newton or two will completely negate its output.

To keep its flavour, and to make the turtling player feel a greater sense of need to come out and deal with it, I would suggest that it gets a +100% or +200% bonus to damage against turrets.

let them rebuild their turret, it costs them huge amounts of money to do so, and your teutoburg doesn't charge you resources to destroy the next one. eventually they'll have spent >2000 dil on replacing 1 turret over and over, and you'll have spent it on a wall of e2s, whose main weakness (slow as fuck) doesn't hurt when you have the enemy pinned against a wall.

i would perhaps support making the teuto more damaging specifically to stations. currently its torps miss ships more frequently, but when firing at closer range they fire more torps per volley. i'd suggest removing the extra torps at close range and increasing damage dealt per torp accordingly. powerful torps with more miss rates against ships. but turrets are always hit, so the teutoburg excels a bit more against turrets.

we have to be careful not to end up with something too powerful, though. many patches ago, the steamrunner was in warpin, getting a 2 steamrunner warpin on your first call basically let you pick an enemy yard to destroy. and the teutoburg has its own button so you can guarantee getting one.

posted on May 12th, 2013, 9:26 am

Huh, until this post I almost forgot that ship existed at all.

I would argument as well that the Teuto is pretty much unnecessary atm. Really, feds are the only faction that can reasonably build turrets to overcome the firepower of a roughly equal foe anyway and are therfore the only race having to counter the Teuto, and Monsoons and Ambassadors are already doing a good job tanking fire in that department.
Even with the long range, since the ship is so slow, it can easily be picked off in any retret. And, if you are being attacked, you can force a retreat by wearing down ship by ship with small attacks from your cover. (If you can't attack in any way, you have lost already. Should probably have invested in guns mounted to engines.)
Say this takes a long time and your turrets are actually taking damage, you are still able to repair/replace them with much greater speed then a Teuto or two can take them down. If they had a serious damage bonus versus turrets that might not so much be the case.
The only case in which this scenario wouldn't work and the Teuto can actually be useful is trench warfare. I played a game of asteroid halma once and the expansions were close enough together for us to shoot from one fortified expansion to the other, and even here, where the Teuto stood in a position where it couldn't be interrupted for a long, long time, it didn't to anything but bind some resources in a Newton and annoy the players.

I still like the concept of a strategic artillery vessel, but with the current implementation it's not really useful. The steamrunner was well liked because of it's super-burst damage long-range special, and the Teuto just doesn't work against other ships. You could argument that it can disable an important ships weapon systems, however the disabled ship will either be far out of range to be shooting anyway (and won't be moving in if microed properly) and, while it turns to shoot at the forces that are closing in, it will stay in one place and fall behind in its retreat, leading to its eventual destruction.
Then, if cloakers are involved on the enemy team, it can't stay behind or even seperate without expecting a wing of K'Vorts or Romulan nastiness, making its only possible place your base/expansion, where it just becomes another turret with longer range and horrible defense, or in the midst of the protection of your fleet, where any engaging forces can focus their fire for a few seconds for a juicy kill.
Here, a Defensive ability might be nice to have, but short from making it a dreadnought or giving it phaseplates/shields-like abilities, I don't know how that would work out. Point defense would be too specific to increase general survivability.

Another thing about the feel of the Teuto is that it's base torpedo damage seems very low to me. It spams torps in volleys, but they don't seem nearly as dangerous as they should feel, even if they are most likely used against high defense targets like turrets or big ships.

posted on May 12th, 2013, 11:12 am

Another thing about the feel of the Teuto is that it's base torpedo damage seems very low to me. It spams torps in volleys, but they don't seem nearly as dangerous as they should feel, even if they are most likely used against high defense targets like turrets or big ships.

That's right, it could need some more damage. It relies on it's torpedos, so these should do real damage. Some of the torps already miss, so I don't think that would be overpowered.

posted on May 12th, 2013, 6:42 pm

Also, keep in mind, were "close" to a big patch release, theyve been working on it for a while, Its bigger then 3.0 was I believe. There will be alot of changes. The devs had said earlier they were looking at warpin, there may be new ships added to the common, and the special may be tweaked. Reguardless we know the feds are getting alot of work done just from the posts. Synergy, starbases, trading, platforms, support ships, the akira, steamruner, the ships specials, fighter changes, the calypso, map objects, profiles, etc. The point is this patch is going to be very different for the feds and everyone else. Its not going to play like the old fleetops, there will be more way to customize your gameplay, and youll probably have to relearn most of the game.

posted on May 13th, 2013, 12:46 am

Also, keep in mind, were "close" to a big patch release, theyve been working on it for a while, Its bigger then 3.0 was I believe. There will be alot of changes.

We know that big changes are coming; we also know that there's a substantial amount of work yet to do and there is still time to influence the work through discussions like these, so there is constructive work to be done here.

posted on May 13th, 2013, 1:38 am

I think your missing my point just a wee bit. Getting together and coming up with ideas is a great thing, which I indulge in often and is a great way to build the community and come up with new ideas, many of which have been implemented.

However, what I am trying to point out, is that the next patch will be changed in many ways. Firstly the Teuto istelf may be changed, also warpin may have been changed in ways we dont yet know. I think that at the moment the ideas for the next patch have already been for the most part come up with. So we have no idea how it will look next patch, and many things you have stated will be fixed. It is a totally new game that will be released, and I feel that this conversation is coming up with fixes for the current patch, which again, is way different then the next patch.

Just think of the profiles of fed ships, synergies, the new station variants, and the new turrets. These things all affect how the Teuto will operate, (assuming its still long range). Take that into account when you are brainstorming ideas.

posted on May 13th, 2013, 1:46 am

I think there's no need for anybody to take into consideration all the future possibilities in feature requests etc - on the development side we tend not to step into these discussions precisely so as not to shut down discussion of ideas by saying "no, we've already done X" or "yup, but we like it this way".

There are many ideas out there, and just because we might have come up with XYZ already doesn't mean that a new idea on the forum or elsewhere won't catch our attention and change the way Fleet Ops is structured

posted on May 13th, 2013, 5:46 pm

Again, I feel like im perhaps muddling my words. What Im trying to get at, is take into account more then just the ship itself. Other things that might affect it. The newsposts so far have provided information about new things, which I think could potentially bring forth new ideas. Such as the profiles, and the synergies, use that when your thinking about new ideas and fixes, because that bring about more possibilities. I hope thats a bit clearer.