That's my impression too. I sometimes feel that my Python has even more fire power than my well engineered Federal Corvette, where the only benefit of the Corvette is that it can do continous fire while the Python needs a little break now and then to cool down or to get its weapons capacitor recharged.
Yep, a 7A unmodded distro with 2 pips puts out 3.05 Mw, an 8A ... 3.60 Mw. That's it.
My 1.3 and 1.4 Anaconda was undefeated 1v1 but against the best Pythons, merely by virtue of longevity. We usually had more or less the same loadouts (predominantly fixed pulses lasers, occasionally supplemented by rails or multis). Once all their SCB's had run out I had a few left, that was all. This was so even in one 'memorable' encounter outside Ackerman Market in Eravate, when my opponent and I eventually both tacitly agreed to stop moving due to pilot fatigue, and merely sat facing each other until it was finally over.
Some questions I have:
- Back some time ago we had those combat Betas where the large ship Hardness values were increased. Would increasing the Hardness values for these ships help put them in a better position or would this simply result in shifting the massive HP pool into the hull?
Fighting with hull focused setups, especially ones that are slower than their opponents, is a lot more fun and a lot more risky than a shield focused setup. Positioning is important because some modules are more vulnerable from certain angles and one mistake, or one lucky shot, can force one to change one's plans or turn a sure victory into a fight for survival.
I totally agree with @Morbad about the fun to be had here, and Morbad puts his money where his mouth is by running pretty much serious PvP's only hull-orientated Corvette in Live.
I'm afraid though, that against the right weapon setup, even with the Beta 2.3 hull hardnesses of 210, the 'massive HP pool' just isn't that massive.
Plasma and rails have APV of 100. Current HH for the Corvette and Cutter is 70. In other words, plasma and rails currently do full damage to every ship's hull but under the proposed change would do half damage (this is the same to modules).
The problem though is that half damage of a lot of damage is still a lot of damage. A meta-FdL-wing running all plasma'n'rails is going to kill a huge ship quickly regardless. One partial fix might be for Frontier to release the size 6, 7 and 8 HRP's, scaled in an exponential like SCB's. At present a hull-tanked Corvette has not much more than double the hp of a hull-tanked Viper IV or Cobra III, which is kind of crazy.
- Would increasing the charge rate/capacity of the Engine capacitor lead to permaboosting more than it already does? (Thinking a Cutter here boosting continuously at 515 m/s in the Beyond Beta, a Corvette with a boost pitch rate beyond that of an A-rated iEagle's normal pitch rate.)
Potentially, I suppose. Perma-boost isn't possible with 4 pips to Sys. But if other changes moved pips out of Sys, maybe yes. A good question for sure, but I think the sort of tuning issue that would become relevant in a Beta if Frontier ever went down this route.
- Does a 3500 MJ Prismatic shield (4 HD boosters, no mods on the generator itself) fall into the "overinflated range?" (I know Prismatics can be boosted to truly silly levels, but I run Armored Powerplants so I don't have much spare power to work with - even with a +7% Power secondary. Just asking out of curiosity.)
Do you mean on Corvette? If so, I hope you won't mind me being candid, but assuming that you're other 4 utilities don't have boosters in, I'm afraid that in serious PvP you're into vulnerable territory here. Your unmodded prismatic with only HD boosters has stock thermal resists (i.e. bad) meaning you'll take major damage from the 66.6% thermal component of rail gun fire and (admittedly less) the 20% plasma component. That's not a problem provided you have the raw Mj to make up for it - but think 10,000 Mj Cutter if you want to go down that route. If you want to run a small shield, at least make it one with high resists ... although you'll then have to be very wary of plasma and ramming.
- Assuming that these proposals are implemented, would TLB need adjusting or should it be left alone as it is now?
TLB should be adjusted regardless, probably imo to make it have somewhat reduced uptime against larger ships, mediums roughly as now, and somewhat increased uptime against smaller ships.
The issue with TLB is not so much it's outcome - I hope that (e.g.) Morbad and myself have made it clear that the big ship can win suitable fights regardless - it's that it raises the 'red balance flag' of any special that's out of line with the effectiveness of all the others ... in that you have to build most of the gameplan around dealing with it. That's disproportionate.
Precisely the same applied to the infamous heat meta. It wasn't a fight-winner 1v1 ... in fact if fully stacked it was actually quite laughably easy to beat 1v1, in every single stage of its development, right from the initial Beta 2.1 incarnation, when 8,000%+ heat was possible. I beat
every guy who jumped me with heat in the first and worst Beta incarnation, except for one Gunship who caught me while I was typing to someone, who I then got on the rebound. You just needed to base your gameplan around dealing with this one type of special. But that was disproportionate.
