As an offshoot of the discussion about the TIE Advanced, we pushed outside the scope of the suggestion and pretty much derailed the discussion. I suggested starting a new thread, and here's where I'm going to start.
I have far too much material to cover in my thoughts on this, so I'm going to start with a look at the current system and where I think it fails us. After that, I have two primary ideas for what I think the system should be and how it should work. Those will be separate posts, again because there's that much information to cover.
Here, at the beginning, I want to be clear: I don't know what the limits are as far as what can be done, how it'll impact the existing mission and progression framework, or if even that the code will permit any of what I have in mind. I also don't know how much will or enthusiasm there is from our server developers to do anything at all with it - making this entire process a probable flight of fancy. But that's okay. Imagining what could be is fun too.
As I see it, there are numerous problems in many different areas. The chief areas, as I see it, is the meta that is lent to us by the parts system as it exists, balance, and finally the design choices that were made. I'm going to address all of these purely on their own, outside of any lore or timeline issues as much so as possible.
Balance-wise, the Imperials get the short end of the stick in a big way. By Tier Two, Rebels and Neutrals have multi-gun ship options - the Neuts even get a three-gun option in the Kimo. Imperials are stuck with single-gun ships until Tier 3, with that being the TIE Bomber - maneuverable as a flying brick. They don't get any three-gun options until Master. This puts them three and two Tiers behind their Neutral and Rebel counterparts. Adding to that issue, two of their three pilot branches are the most difficult of all 9. Granted, they do get the most powerful pilot ability (the Bomber Strike line), but I think this grossly fails to make up for the enormous difficulty penalty that they're under.
Our parts and ship-composition system, while it gives us incredible flexibility, doesn't give the different ship chassis any kind of fairness. While I talk about this area, I'm going to be leaning on the lore-reputations of some of the Rebel ships heavily to help communicate my point, but please understand that this isn't a point about the lore itself.
Take the Y-wing in this example. It has a reputation as a very tough yet sluggish ship that can mete out impressive damage. Follow that with the A-wing, as a very fast, nimble, but fragile ship. Then, between them, you have the X-wing, a jack of all trades, and basically the happy medium - perhaps even a pinnacle between them. But how different are all three ships in JTL? How fast is the Y-wing, X-wing, and A-wing using the exact same engine? I haven't been able to test this for hard numbers for purpose of this discussion (and won't for a couple of weeks due to an unrelated issue), but, maybe 15-20 meters per second difference between them? The mass difference between these three ships is E-NOR-MOUS. The same engine in a Y-wing that pushes it to 90 meters per second should push an A-wing to well beyond 150% of that. The Y-wing has a maximum mass well in excess of double that of the A-wing. The X-wing masses around two-thirds of the Y-wing, but doesn't see anywhere near the performance increase that it should with the same engine. An A-wing, with an engine that pushes an X-wing to 100 meters per second loaded, should absolutely scream across the map -=before overloads.=-
The system, as it stands, makes it a mass & hardpoint matter, completely ignoring the lore, the specializations, and the niches that each of these three ships are supposed to fill. All of these three ships are victims of those choices by SOE, but they are not the only ones.
This final part, the design choices that were made, is going to partly embrace the parts system as well. At the outset, I want to make it clear that I understand that there were limits of the time that we no longer have or are far less constraining than they once were. That said, there are some real head-scratchers here.
To a degree, I understand why there are the range-limitations put onto the weapons that there are. Each space zone is made up of 4096 cubic kilometers... Sounds like a bunch, right? 16km X 16km X 16km. Until you consider that you can see all of that distance and beyond standing on flat ground. 8km in front, behind, left, and right, then 16km straight up. With good weather, you can see that far with the naked eye and more. I'm amazed that they did as good of a job as they did of making that little space feel as large as they managed to.
Starfighter guns are supposed to be able to hit out to 1km. Missile weapons, utter joke that they are in JTL, should be able to hit out to a minimum of 2km guided, and far greater than that if dumb-fired (in other play environments and lore. Missile Weapons cannot fire without a lock in the JTL environment). Call it 5km, just to put a solid number on it that I know is good. Being able to fire anything that far in such a small-relative space is a problem... It shrinks the play-area in a way that can't be countered. Also, the opposition NPCs are tuned for that same distance-scale - likely to save on processing resources. For example, the Tier-6 Mercenaries in Ord Mantel - a popular set of spawns to camp and farm for parts - don't actively engage until you are within 900 meters of them. If guns had the range that they "should," a player would be able to blast them without any threat to themselves. This applies in most aspects of space.
I do not see this particular matter of weapon ranges as being something that can be addressed without rebuilding the entirety of JTL from top to bottom. Too many things depend on the scale as it was implemented. Changes in this regard can and would wreck everything about space.
But there's the matter of ships... Overall, I think SOE did a pretty good job with the Rebels. What they did with the B-wing is something they should be tarred, feathered, and flogged for, but the rest, they did a pretty good job. My problems with what they did start with the Neutrals... Between the big four - X-wing, TIE Fighter, X-wing Vs. TIE, and X-wing: Alliance - there's a huge and diverse spread of well-developed ships to have drawn from. The ships they made aren't bad, but they put in a ton of extra work that was already done for them here. Cloak-Shape Fighters, Preybirds, Daavab Starfighters... The list goes on. But nothing they did matches the complete BS of what they did with the Imperial fighters. Three "different" TIEs with the same hardpoint configuration for their first three ships?!? W H Y????? Nevermind their total ignoring of the Assault Gunboat (also known as the Starwing, first appeared in TIE Fighter, roughly compareble to a mating between the X- and Y-wings in terms of performance and armament), but there were still options. By including the TIE Bomber, they'd already blown the timeline. Why not include the TIE Avenger? Or one of the early prototypes of the Defender - which saw use in the battle of Hoth. Or any of the M A N Y other prototypes of different TIEs? This is a large part of why I think the Imperial Pilot Trees were last in the development pipeline, and either their people were burned out from the crunch or they just plain half-assed it to save time.
But that's enough of me on the soap box. I think I've laid out enough of a rough shape of where we are -as I see it- to give us a starting point. Please feel free to add your own thoughts of where JTL fell short, expand on mine, or even disagree. We can disagree and still talk this through.
Thanks for reading. More to follow at a later time, starting with what I think is the best route to balance, followed with a revamp, followed by a real pie-in-the-sky take of what it could be.
Until next time...
Edit: Spelling
I have far too much material to cover in my thoughts on this, so I'm going to start with a look at the current system and where I think it fails us. After that, I have two primary ideas for what I think the system should be and how it should work. Those will be separate posts, again because there's that much information to cover.
Here, at the beginning, I want to be clear: I don't know what the limits are as far as what can be done, how it'll impact the existing mission and progression framework, or if even that the code will permit any of what I have in mind. I also don't know how much will or enthusiasm there is from our server developers to do anything at all with it - making this entire process a probable flight of fancy. But that's okay. Imagining what could be is fun too.
As I see it, there are numerous problems in many different areas. The chief areas, as I see it, is the meta that is lent to us by the parts system as it exists, balance, and finally the design choices that were made. I'm going to address all of these purely on their own, outside of any lore or timeline issues as much so as possible.
Balance-wise, the Imperials get the short end of the stick in a big way. By Tier Two, Rebels and Neutrals have multi-gun ship options - the Neuts even get a three-gun option in the Kimo. Imperials are stuck with single-gun ships until Tier 3, with that being the TIE Bomber - maneuverable as a flying brick. They don't get any three-gun options until Master. This puts them three and two Tiers behind their Neutral and Rebel counterparts. Adding to that issue, two of their three pilot branches are the most difficult of all 9. Granted, they do get the most powerful pilot ability (the Bomber Strike line), but I think this grossly fails to make up for the enormous difficulty penalty that they're under.
Our parts and ship-composition system, while it gives us incredible flexibility, doesn't give the different ship chassis any kind of fairness. While I talk about this area, I'm going to be leaning on the lore-reputations of some of the Rebel ships heavily to help communicate my point, but please understand that this isn't a point about the lore itself.
Take the Y-wing in this example. It has a reputation as a very tough yet sluggish ship that can mete out impressive damage. Follow that with the A-wing, as a very fast, nimble, but fragile ship. Then, between them, you have the X-wing, a jack of all trades, and basically the happy medium - perhaps even a pinnacle between them. But how different are all three ships in JTL? How fast is the Y-wing, X-wing, and A-wing using the exact same engine? I haven't been able to test this for hard numbers for purpose of this discussion (and won't for a couple of weeks due to an unrelated issue), but, maybe 15-20 meters per second difference between them? The mass difference between these three ships is E-NOR-MOUS. The same engine in a Y-wing that pushes it to 90 meters per second should push an A-wing to well beyond 150% of that. The Y-wing has a maximum mass well in excess of double that of the A-wing. The X-wing masses around two-thirds of the Y-wing, but doesn't see anywhere near the performance increase that it should with the same engine. An A-wing, with an engine that pushes an X-wing to 100 meters per second loaded, should absolutely scream across the map -=before overloads.=-
The system, as it stands, makes it a mass & hardpoint matter, completely ignoring the lore, the specializations, and the niches that each of these three ships are supposed to fill. All of these three ships are victims of those choices by SOE, but they are not the only ones.
This final part, the design choices that were made, is going to partly embrace the parts system as well. At the outset, I want to make it clear that I understand that there were limits of the time that we no longer have or are far less constraining than they once were. That said, there are some real head-scratchers here.
To a degree, I understand why there are the range-limitations put onto the weapons that there are. Each space zone is made up of 4096 cubic kilometers... Sounds like a bunch, right? 16km X 16km X 16km. Until you consider that you can see all of that distance and beyond standing on flat ground. 8km in front, behind, left, and right, then 16km straight up. With good weather, you can see that far with the naked eye and more. I'm amazed that they did as good of a job as they did of making that little space feel as large as they managed to.
Starfighter guns are supposed to be able to hit out to 1km. Missile weapons, utter joke that they are in JTL, should be able to hit out to a minimum of 2km guided, and far greater than that if dumb-fired (in other play environments and lore. Missile Weapons cannot fire without a lock in the JTL environment). Call it 5km, just to put a solid number on it that I know is good. Being able to fire anything that far in such a small-relative space is a problem... It shrinks the play-area in a way that can't be countered. Also, the opposition NPCs are tuned for that same distance-scale - likely to save on processing resources. For example, the Tier-6 Mercenaries in Ord Mantel - a popular set of spawns to camp and farm for parts - don't actively engage until you are within 900 meters of them. If guns had the range that they "should," a player would be able to blast them without any threat to themselves. This applies in most aspects of space.
I do not see this particular matter of weapon ranges as being something that can be addressed without rebuilding the entirety of JTL from top to bottom. Too many things depend on the scale as it was implemented. Changes in this regard can and would wreck everything about space.
But there's the matter of ships... Overall, I think SOE did a pretty good job with the Rebels. What they did with the B-wing is something they should be tarred, feathered, and flogged for, but the rest, they did a pretty good job. My problems with what they did start with the Neutrals... Between the big four - X-wing, TIE Fighter, X-wing Vs. TIE, and X-wing: Alliance - there's a huge and diverse spread of well-developed ships to have drawn from. The ships they made aren't bad, but they put in a ton of extra work that was already done for them here. Cloak-Shape Fighters, Preybirds, Daavab Starfighters... The list goes on. But nothing they did matches the complete BS of what they did with the Imperial fighters. Three "different" TIEs with the same hardpoint configuration for their first three ships?!? W H Y????? Nevermind their total ignoring of the Assault Gunboat (also known as the Starwing, first appeared in TIE Fighter, roughly compareble to a mating between the X- and Y-wings in terms of performance and armament), but there were still options. By including the TIE Bomber, they'd already blown the timeline. Why not include the TIE Avenger? Or one of the early prototypes of the Defender - which saw use in the battle of Hoth. Or any of the M A N Y other prototypes of different TIEs? This is a large part of why I think the Imperial Pilot Trees were last in the development pipeline, and either their people were burned out from the crunch or they just plain half-assed it to save time.
But that's enough of me on the soap box. I think I've laid out enough of a rough shape of where we are -as I see it- to give us a starting point. Please feel free to add your own thoughts of where JTL fell short, expand on mine, or even disagree. We can disagree and still talk this through.
Thanks for reading. More to follow at a later time, starting with what I think is the best route to balance, followed with a revamp, followed by a real pie-in-the-sky take of what it could be.
Until next time...
Edit: Spelling
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Last part for this section, I promise. 
