Shields are not the real issue, an edge case does not define the entire state of the game. Pvp is never going to be fair in a game like Elite, there is no fair when ganked 4-1, nor fair flying a hauler attacked by a combat ship; fair is an unrealistic pipe dream. All we can hope for is a reasonable level of balance. We don't have player classes, we use ships and weapons of different cost, size, strengths, and weaknesses. If you want fair pvp, go play cqc, join an in game fight club, or play a first person shooter.
A single ship has been used as an example for how overpowered shields are, yet everyone knows the balance of this ship is out of whack, personally I wont use it. Able to mount a much larger effective shield pool, bringing decent firepower to bear, and having the second highest boost speed of the large ships, faster even than the "combat" focused corvette, it is a combination of the three that skews balance. There are numerous ways to address that issue, and hopefully FD get round to much needed re balancing of the Cutter, I am a fan of reducing the size 8 internals to 7's and nerfing turrets, but whatever. FWIW, I have never thought smaller ships should have a real chance against larger ships, except in the hands of vastly different player ability, anything more is a silly notion. I would rather see the firepower disparity between small, medium, and large increase further, perhaps not a popular opinion, but the cost of buying and outfitting a ship should count for something and offer some advantage.
A real issue however, is how ineffective current NPC are, particularity at higher levels, I have not been killed by an NPC since Jan/Feb 2015, and it's not like I am avoiding NPC, my only Elite rank is combat as that's been the focus for most of my play. I can still go to a haz res in a viper or Asp and kill any of the npc there, ironic given my feelings on small v large ships. Most of my ships do not even have engineering, it's simply not needed when I pve; engineered fits I save for open. Unfortunately, we all saw what happened when NPC received what was overall a minor buff. All the folks who had never had to pay attention to combat, or the fit of their ships raged until they wore Frontier down and they were forced to back track.
Sure, there are a wide range of player abilities and interests within the community, but when players are taking on Dangerous, Deadly or Elite ranked missions, flying in Haz res, conflict zones or Anarchy systems there should be an expectation of failure which simply does not exist at present. Although, that would require a re balance of the potential reward for some of these things, it seems too many folks want reward after reward with as little risk or attrition as possible. It is no wonder those same players whine about or boredom or having too many credits with nothing to spend them on.
There are also some problems with the balance between different weapons platforms, as a result some are hardly used expect as novelty fits or simply because they happen to be in the game. But that's for an entirely different thread.
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