what if they just threw the ships and weapons and tools that they already have in alliance (crusader, failsafe buff kit, heyoke, zeus, corsair, etc) into skirmish?
thoughts being:
1) skirmish is DESPERATE for new content, this would be a whole lot of that.
2) the new weapons and ships are really really cool!
3) oh but helios they arent balanced for PvP! yeah i know that, but muse isnt going to balance them with a dozen people faster and better than 300+ people all racking up game play experience with these ships and weapons (and tools) will.
compromises:
make the new stuff only available in veteran matches: this will limit their use to people who already know the game, and if the spire nerf taught us anything its that using the population at large is a mistake when it comes to balance. it also might cause vet games to actually get people invested and interested in playing them, which is important.
introduce them one at a time over the course of a month or so, let people get used to each separately and get a feel for them before throwing in more features. HOWEVER given that all the vets have climbed the intensely steep learning curve and survived it, i feel like we are well equipped and mentally conditioned to grueling punishment more than most communities are.
oh, but we just added VIP and skyball is in the pipeline! OK, but that's just another way to play the same ships with the same loadouts with MINOR modifications for new gametypes. if we see any changes further than MAYBE a mino-fish on skyball i will be VERY surprised
the ships and weapons are designed to combat huge groups of weaker enemies, not other player ships! any alliance ship loadout worth its salt has to balance the dangers of airplanes on the one hand and boss ships on the other, and all the weapons are perfectly adequate in fighting single opponents. if they are OP, balance them. in the alliance modes we are seeing ships with as many of the new guns as possible, and this is probably because they are unbalanced, and need to be brought back into a reasonable power range (remember when the only reason everyone didnt have a 300-ammo-lethal-at-any-range Apollo was it blew your eardrums out?)
we want new things but not to completely replace the old ones. these weapons fill new niches in interesting and cool ways, lets balance them and use them, or the faster method of course is: use them, and with good feedback, balance them. basically i want to see the new ships in skirmish, and i think the value of having the community at large get to play with these cool NEW ships and weapons, and get SO much more feedback than can be gained with 3 hours of testing a week. its gonna be a weird couple weeks, but we survived the flamethrower bug/buff without too much lasting damage (lots of interesting burn scars, but they add character!)
