[Balance] Covenant ship vs UNSC ship

[Terror4000rus]

Airlocks

Covenant: Has access restricted airlocks, so an unga with C4 cannot blow up the shield generator. Light Brigade/any other ship. have the most of its airlocks free-accessed. So, any boarder may detonate the slipspace engine, reactors and so.
3.5 hours ago I had a round, where covenant borders: Dropped bolts on our engineering section, Blocked both airlockes with reinforced walls, Activated the core's detonation, Blocked the core with more reinforced walls.
And they ran around the ship as if they were marines. Or innies.

Damage

Covenant Cannot get a damage to its systems. Yes, you can damage a thruster - with direct hit - or blow up the glass cannon - which is in the middle of ship. You cannot destroy its bridge - it hasn't APC. You cannot destroy its thrusters - they haven't APC. You cannot blow up an APC in hallway and get in unpowered - it doesn't exists. Light Brigade A place where real enginners have the all posibilities to fight for their ship's surviving - power grids, APCs, bugs with power, lack of shields - prepare yourself, little boiii.

Hull

Covenant Has from 3 to 5 layers of hull at most sides of the ship and power shield with infinity power in the debug reactor. Light Brigade, destroyer Has 2-3 layers of plasteel, lack of shields, very sensitive APCs placement (I repair my thrusters almost each round).

Speed

Covenant Has more armor, more useless vehicles, better (I actually believe just WIP) power system which isn't exists... And they still move as fast as your destroyer. And they have slipspace, yes. Light Brigade You know, thrusters may be blow up in any moment and it takes some time to repair them in the middle of space combat.

Crew

As a crewman, I've roleplayed 7 rounds of 9 - didn't dressed up in EVA armor at the start of round, didn't took a gun, you know - "I'm just an operator of consoles at bridge, I don't need it." I think I shouldn't say a thing about our XOs and COs, who don't wear anything heavier than a pistol and bulletproff vest. Most of rounds. Let's take a look at covenant crew... Uhum, they all are armed, in space-proff suits, with good (big question) weapon and some of them wear almost impenetrable armor (you cannot kill Elite Major with anything but marksman rifle or something heavier - most of shoot will be blocked... By armor. Not shield. Armor. I cannot penetrait it with a magnum pistol and its AP bullets). Everything in red zone cannot kill it in real combat.

Scanning

It's trap for newbies. You have 1 shoot from 18 (I counted) which hit... the hull. Not even the middle of section (what would be very awful). And it was missiles. And even more - there is no information at wiki about "you cannot hit the ship if don't click at it. With any weapon - even deck guns."

[X0-11]

A large portion of our mechanics are obscurr and undocumented due to the lack of a wiki team. The covenant boarders sound like they had an AI on their side. A human team would have the same access advantages. Power grid setup is a mapping issue that, iirc, was being worked on. The covenant ship does not have reinforced walls and due to this, the armor is much less effective than the UNSC ship. The shielding is the main defense of the Covenant ship You're mistaken when you say that much of the ammunition is incapable of killing certain roles. What you're encountering is the armor degredation system, which causes armor to become less effective as it takes damage. AP rounds essentially lower the time it takes for armor to reach the state where it is not greater than 100 armour value, therefore allowing a chance for damage to go through earlier than other weapons.

[Terror4000rus]

> A large portion of our mechanics are obscurr and undocumented due to the lack of a wiki team. Could you add it (and announce in discord?), please? Most of players think they may just click at space tiles at global map in middle of space combat to damage hostile ship. > The covenant boarders sound like they had an AI on their side. A human team would have the same access advantages. They had no AI with boarders - airlocks were simply hacked (with screwdriver and multitool) to drop down bolts. I'm not writing about forbidding hacking or so - but about overal access around the ship. Most of UNSC airlocks, exclude ODST rooms and armory, haven't filled access var, which makes counter-boarding even harder. > The covenant ship does not have reinforced walls and due to this, the armor is much less effective than the UNSC ship. The shielding is the main defense of the Covenant ship MAC shoot at UNSC ship:


Covenant ship... ...Before MAC shoot:


And after it:


Damage is almost the same. > You're mistaken when you say that much of the ammunition is incapable of killing certain roles. What you're encountering is the armor degredation system, which causes armor to become less effective as it takes damage. AP rounds essentially lower the time it takes for armor to reach the state where it is not greater than 100 armour value, therefore allowing a chance for damage to go through earlier than other weapons. You haven't time in combat to lower foe's armor - you need: Evade plasma bursts, which don't count your armor as one at all, Shoot and hit it to destroy shield after 5-6 hits, and then, you may... Try to give some damage. Try because the all bullets have as poor accuracy as my english. If you get a shoot, you get pain, burns, burned blood, infected wounds. And again - **with armor and shield**, you almost don't have a chance to kill an elite in combat with majority of weaponry, while you need just 4-5 hits to fall down in pain. If marines should play on time and do supressive fire at covenant, so make the armor stronger to burns? You cannot survive long enought to kill a foe, who even runs faster than you and may retreat or catch you on retreating.

[X0-11]

I'd like to say thank you for the feedback, just to ensure that you know your suggestions are actually being listened to. Onto counterpoints:

Most covenant doors also have no access restrictions, as far as I've been told. Whilst room placement is a mapping issue, the screenshot representing the covenant damage is showing one of the more armored areas of the ship and isn't really representative. You have also not stated which MAC this is, as each one has differing damage radii. Comparing MAC damage is also not really representative, due to the MAC being balanced differently from the Energy Projector. Covenant will very rarely, if ever, be firing a MAC at a UNSC ship.

Marine armor utilises the armor degredation system too, and in fact has similar or the same grace shots as most others. A marine should, frankly, not be engaging an elite in a 1v1 unless they have utmost confidence in their skill or are able to acquire heavy ordinance.

Shots from human weapons are capable of severing arteries, causing bleeding, embedding shrapnel and a host of other effects. Burn weapons cause burn damage, and vaporise an amount of blood. Improving marine armor is something I've been looking at, due to the general armor nerf a while back making them much less effective. In combat, everyone has time to lower the foes armor because that is one of the main goals of combat.

[Terror4000rus]

> Most covenant doors also have no access restrictions, as far as I've been told. I also didn't noticed that LB also have access, but not in main hallway. > Whilst room placement is a mapping issue, the screenshot representing the covenant damage is showing one of the more armored areas of the ship and isn't really representative. You have also not stated which MAC this is, as each one has differing damage radii. I didn't knew about different MACs, but this one was from LB. > Comparing MAC damage is also not really representative, due to the MAC being balanced differently from the Energy Projector. Covenant will very rarely, if ever, be firing a MAC at a UNSC ship. I see its usage in each space combat as frequently as MAC. > Marine armor utilises the armor degredation system too, and in fact has similar or the same grace shots as most others. A marine should, frankly, not be engaging an elite in a 1v1 unless they have utmost confidence in their skill or are able to acquire heavy ordinance. I had a fight with 1 Elite Ultra and one Kyg-Yar (with huragok, but I think we shouldn't count it as combat unit... Or should :?). In squad with 3 other marines and one ODST at ONI base. We all sucked from access requirments (the elite had access, IDK from where), because only ODST can open doors around the base. "But alright - we have 5 soldiers and there just 2 covies. What can happend?" `We all sucked.` Maybe we were too unrobust, maybe doors did everyhing - but in each fight I see the same, covenant kill humans without visible wounds. > Shots from human weapons are capable of severing arteries, causing bleeding, embedding shrapnel and a host of other effects. Burn weapons cause burn damage, and vaporise an amount of blood. `but in each fight I see the same, covenant kill humans without visible wounds.` > In combat, everyone has time to lower the foes armor because that is one of the main goals of combat. ...But as I said above, in most cases, humans cannot even damage covenant - something broken. They make have advantages like shields and better armor, but they shouldn't end CQC combat without wounds at all.

[X0-11]

Whilst I can't comment on space combat because a large bug was reported to me that caused things to spawn inside the armor of ships and as such I need to watch more to see how it is now, I can still respond to the combat portion of your comment.

The elite was either opening doors through the use of their strength to open doors, or the Huragok was opening the doors. You fought an elite ultra and a Kig-Yar. Without further information, I'll assume standard loadouts. The Kig-Yar was likely to use their shield, which is capable of absorbing a massive amount of damage due to it's directional restrictions. I would recommend judicious grenade usage. Any foe with a full body shield is someone you should never let retreat. If they retreat successfully, their shield recharges whilst your armor does not. Elites must have pressure maintained on them. If they are able to retreat, take the time to secure the area ASAP and to seal off any entry routes they may use. I would recommend carrying a welding tool for this.

Humans are fully capable of damaging covenant troops.

[FGRSentinel]

I feel it needs to be stressed that there's areas where the UNSC ship is superior to the Covenant ship. Namely, breach management, armor, and (theoretically) firepower.

1. Breach management: The Light Brigade has specialized airlocks capable of sealing breached areas to prevent additional depressurization. This both makes it easy to contain and locate a breach. It also comes with inflatable doors and walls to reduce air loss when opening the doorways leading into a breached/depressurized area. The Covenant has neither of these things. In fact, due to the existence of the Yanme'e NPCs and the Covenant ship serving as both transport and spawn point, breaches can be far more disasterous on the Covenant ship than the UNSC ship as the Covenant ship is larger, has more expansive rooms, and has NPCs that go around haplessly opening doors while the Covenant players can't find a breach without opening the door and venting another part of their ship. Not only that, but the larger amount of space inside the ship means it takes far more air to repressurize the ship, if it can even practically be done in the first place. It's common for people on the bridge to need emergency oxygen tanks for the entire round after a battle depressurizes one of the hangars, for instance

2. Armor: you touched upon this briefly and XO mentioned it. The Covenant ship has 3-5 wall thick armor to the LB's 2-3 wall thick armor. The thing is, the Covenant ship has weaker walls used as their hull armor and, therefore, are more easily breached. Depending on how you want to cut it, that 3-5 wall thick Covenant hull is about as durable as a 2 layer thick hull of plasteel. Not only that, but it takes more resources to repair and few crews are willing to waste all the resources on repairing the full hull if the shipyard's gone, resulting in previously-breached areas only having a 1-2 layer thick hull that instantly gets breached if hit again. When you combine this with the above, it often results in Covenant players spawning in with popped lungs or even dying from depressurization in their own quarters, something the UNSC rarely (if ever) has to worry about.

3. Firepower: this one is the most debatable point on here, but the LB has two MAC guns to the Covenant ship's one projector. As someone who's played as both UNSC and Covenant, I can tell you without a doubt that the two have roughly the same destructive potential, but even one MAC gun can fire faster than the Projector can. This is a serious issue when a single MAC shot from the LB can vaporize half of the Unyielding Transgression's Medical bay and we only have the one autosurgeon, as well as our medicine production being localized to that one room.

[CdrRiley]

1: in breach menagment we have ermgerncy airlocks cuse its human tehc and im pretty sure covis do get inflatble walls and backup emgerncy oyxgen tanks

2: the Armor.... the covernant have a shield genrator and the hull vaule should be the same as LBs one

3: yes the UNSC has 2 MACs they do only smaller damge for faster speed i dont know the correct vaules tho so far i ve seen it takes IF your only USING macs about 4 rounds without any good hits from the Rockest / deck guns. meanhwile your projector if hits something VITAL will make a nice hole in it

[SifMunaDCSS]

Regarding Riley's comments:

1. No, we don't get any sort of inflatable walls. The only means of compartmentalization we get are an AI locking down doors so people don't wander through them and breach the ship. Air shields are coded in but not mapped for some reason.

2. The cruiser has a shield generator, but nanolaminate walls are paper thin. You can destroy them by hitting them with a welder.

3. The MAC guns are smaller, but when machinecode breaks we (often) can't rely on shields, and end up losing vital areas like spawn rooms or the medbay.

[bloxgate]

1. Are you sure it's that they're not mapped in? I'm thinking they might have been put in, but without air alarms to trigger them.

   3. It's being worked on, we'll track that down eventually.

[SifMunaDCSS]

1. I'm entirely certain we've no proper means of emergency damage control, at least I've never seen them in all the times the cruiser has been breached. It's always bolted doors or walling things off.