Making small ships relevant - Carriers

[Chaffers]

Don't think we've had any details, barring that they are very much a WIP and unlikely to be released anytime soon..

So just a barebones suggestion rather than something truly fleshed out... Make them only capable of landing and supporting small ships. Maybe not even all small ships...

My thinking here is that two aspects of gameplay sorely need some love in the wider game. One being teamwork and the second being the absolute certainty that all ship classes are not equal, regardless of pilot skill, due to power creep and the magnified effects of engineering.

So making them a squadron asset but one that can only directly support small tubs would bring an interesting aspect to PvP, exploration, mining and even trading or community goals. Which isn't to say that small tubs can't rat or repair larger ones..

Suspect it would save a lot of headaches trying to balance them... And the smaller ships are far more fun.

 

[Killnine]

Interesting thought. Definitely the small ships become almost useless once you get your hands on bigger ones.

I wouldn't go as far as have only small ships be able to dock with fleet carriers. But perhaps unlocking docking facilities for medium ships would be something that takes time and effort (ie. money, material grind and what not), or there could be different classes of fleet carriers, with the bigger ones being excessively expensive to acquire and operate. For the sake of fairness, at least there should be a "refuel port" of some sort, so that larger ships would at least be able to refuel.

 

[RamirezKurita]

I don't agree with making them exclusively small ship content, however I do agree that they are a good opportunity to encourage small ship usage and give them their own logistical footprint.

For example, they could design them to be modular and allow for customisation of different ship types, while squadron officers can allocate hangar slots out to squadron members. Small ship hangars would be much smaller/cheaper to install than large and medium slots, as you can almost fit 4x small slots in the footprint of a single medium one. For example, different hangar modules for a squadron carrier could be 1x large, 3x medium or 12x small landing pads, giving squadron leaders a strong incentive to bulk out their fleets with small ships as the costs would be prohibitive for them to build a large enough carrier to provide sufficient large and medium slots for all their members.

 

[Chaffers]

Hmmm... Why would large or medium ships need a carrier?

Granted this is space, which is big apparently, but if FDev want to retain any of the flavour of Naval carriers then space is always at a premium. The Vigilante and a few modern exceptions of course but small does tend to equal beautiful with carriers.

This of course is not just about combat or major fleet actions should PMFs decide to bang their heads together. Carriers should also be useful for such things as mining and exploration... Which the medium and large ships don't really need a hand with. Parking a carrier near rich deposits could give the smaller craft an interesting time advantage. Big tub and long trip or small tub and short trip. Same with exploration.. Currently going into the black requires a very large FSD range, scoop and a good pair of danglies. Whereas how many more people would be tempted to give it a go if a squadron decided they were going to map a large expanse with rats on hand and relatively low tech requirements? Might make exploration a bit less of a solo pastime.

Medium and large tubs are already mini carriers with SLFs, small ships on the other hand could certainly do with some love. And in volumetric terms a Beluga or Type 10 is probably more like 200 times the size of a Viper, it simply isn't a sensible design decision for a low end semi-capital ship where space is traditionally at a premium.

Course they could go the opposite route and allow large and medium ships to dock but would that make any sense whatsoever when even outposts don't allow it? Even megaships have a single large pad if memory serves.

Personally I think everything should have it's own use and niche so unless the devs want the entire Universe to eventally be populated by Corvettes and Anacondas, which is a logical outcome, giving the more space efficient ships their role on board carriers would appear to make a lot of sense.

 

[RamirezKurita]

Hmmm... Why would large or medium ships need a carrier?

Granted this is space, which is big apparently, but if FDev want to retain any of the flavour of Naval carriers then space is always at a premium. The Vigilante and a few modern exceptions of course but small does tend to equal beautiful with carriers.

This of course is not just about combat or major fleet actions should PMFs decide to bang their heads together. Carriers should also be useful for such things as mining and exploration... Which the medium and large ships don't really need a hand with. Parking a carrier near rich deposits could give the smaller craft an interesting time advantage. Big tub and long trip or small tub and short trip. Same with exploration.. Currently going into the black requires a very large FSD range, scoop and a good pair of danglies. Whereas how many more people would be tempted to give it a go if a squadron decided they were going to map a large expanse with rats on hand and relatively low tech requirements? Might make exploration a bit less of a solo pastime.

Medium and large tubs are already mini carriers with SLFs, small ships on the other hand could certainly do with some love. And in volumetric terms a Beluga or Type 10 is probably more like 200 times the size of a Viper, it simply isn't a sensible design decision for a low end semi-capital ship where space is traditionally at a premium.

Course they could go the opposite route and allow large and medium ships to dock but would that make any sense whatsoever when even outposts don't allow it? Even megaships have a single large pad if memory serves.

Personally I think everything should have it's own use and niche so unless the devs want the entire Universe to eventally be populated by Corvettes and Anacondas, which is a logical outcome, giving the more space efficient ships their role on board carriers would appear to make a lot of sense.

Not only is space itself big, but Sci-Fi capital ships are incredibly big in general and Elite is no exception. A Farragut has approximately 1000x the internal volume of a Corvette and is even stated in the lore to have contain facilities for entire wings of corvettes to operate out of it, so it's not unfeasible for a carrier of the size and capability of a Farragut to have docking space for dozens of large ships. That's even without going into the possibility for some supercarriers to appear that dwarfs the existing capitals if players are willing to pay for them.

The Corvettes and Cutters aren't "semi-capital" ships, they are explicitly stated to be the smallest warships in their respective navies. They are tiny little escorts in the grand scheme of things, a throwaway ship to be deployed for low intensity combat or to be deployed en masse as a screen to protect the actual capitals.

Big ships still have the logistical issues you have stated, in fact I'd argue that they need more help with mining and exploration than the small ones. They are better than the small ships, yes, but their performance at mining and exploration doesn't scale as well as their general trading efficiency at the moment. There's already a massive lack of high-end explorer components and terrible scaling on mining modules to make larger ships almost a waste at those activities.

Assuming carriers don't have infinite capacity, I'm sure that simply costing large ship docks at 10-20x that of a small ship dock would allow for economics to take over, as well as promoting activity within the squadron so that people can buy their way into large ship landing permissions. Alternatively, they could just include small ship docks for free alongside others, so you get a couple of small ship docks for every large ship dock; alternatively, they could simply make the carriers into standardised hangar modules that contain a fixed set of docks (such as 1x large, 3x medium and 10x small for each module), or they could even make them manufacturer specific (so Core Dynamics carriers would have significant numbers of small and mediums, a Gutamaaya carrier would be near devoid of medium ship slots, Delacey would be an overall mix while Lakon would be almost missing small ships) This would also work quite nicely if squadron carriers follows a non-linear costing path, so that they remain accessible for those that simply want to cart around their own fleet of half a dozen ships while providing the long-term upgrade potential for larger squadrons.

 

[Marra Morgan]

Definitely the small ships become almost useless once you get your hands on bigger ones.

The smaller ships actually provide a fun challenge for those who don't want an I-Win big ship.

 

[Azmuth Divarchchron]

Don't think we've had any details, barring that they are very much a WIP and unlikely to be released anytime soon..

So just a barebones suggestion rather than something truly fleshed out... Make them only capable of landing and supporting small ships. Maybe not even all small ships...

My thinking here is that two aspects of gameplay sorely need some love in the wider game. One being teamwork and the second being the absolute certainty that all ship classes are not equal, regardless of pilot skill, due to power creep and the magnified effects of engineering.

So making them a squadron asset but one that can only directly support small tubs would bring an interesting aspect to PvP, exploration, mining and even trading or community goals. Which isn't to say that small tubs can't rat or repair larger ones..

Suspect it would save a lot of headaches trying to balance them... And the smaller ships are far more fun.

I acutaly outfitted an I-eagle before fighters were implemented because I wanted to be able to take it with me on my conda. with the whole "side-winder sized ship" hype
But alas it can only use the same fighters as all the other ships. which in the end was probably for the best if they weren't going to afford the other player-owned vessels the same opportunity. even though the conda's doors were specificaly designed for it.

I imagine that when frontier introduces Class 4 (Huge) ships to the game is when we will actually get player-owned vessels capable of carrying smaller ships.
But I also wouldnt be surprised if frontier just makes it so that Huge vessels can have all 3 NPC slots active and have 3 of the normal fighters deployed.

Untill then, atleast we will have the fleet carriers right?

 

[Chaffers]

A Farragut has approximately 1000x the internal volume of a Corvette and is even stated in the lore to have contain facilities for entire wings of corvettes to operate out of it, so it's not unfeasible for a carrier of the size and capability of a Farragut to have docking space for dozens of large ships.

About 12,000x though as the Feds only have a dozen or so, despite several thousand systems, the devs would be mad to allow them to be smeaton specials.

When even outposts, which don't allow large tubs to dock, require thousands of people and millions of tonnes to build through community goals the idea of giving something equivalent to player groups for a few hours grinding seems rather ridiculous.

 

[Killnine]

The smaller ships actually provide a fun challenge for those who don't want an I-Win big ship.

Absolutely true, but it doesn't change the fact that the small ships don't really have an actual use. Partly, because regardless of their small size, they're not that much more nimble or good at avoiding being hit (against a human player with fixed weapons there's a slight advantage, but NPCs don't seem to have trouble hitting them), and partly because medium and large ships are so common. With the wing limits and generally small or small-ish battles, there's no strength in numbers for the small ships.

In fact, the big ships are very much the go-to option and I suspect the player base is quite polarised wrt. available assets and invested play time. Seems to me the active players are almost solely big ships, with the occasional Fer-de-Lance, Krait or Challenger thrown into the mix. It would be interesting to see statistics, though.

 

[Mo Ronik]

Hmmm, my biggest ship is a T6. All the others I have are small ships and each one is built for a specific purpose except for my Cobra. She's bouncing around right now doing different roles until I get the last two on my want's list then she'll be a dedicated use ship like the rest. Dunno which one I like flying the most but right now I'm having a blast flying my Hauler. The Cobra engines have a really sweet sound to them but the Hauler engine sound is awesome. I've looked at all the other medium and large ships and personally I just can't see the attraction with the exception of the Keelback, only if my T6 becomes an issue with her intended role.

 

[AdmiralXanos]

I like the idea of high cost to add medium and large pads with the small pads being default/cheap. Give the billionaires something to work toward.

 

[Chaffers]

Absolutely true, but it doesn't change the fact that the small ships don't really have an actual use.

Worth pointing out that small tubs really aren't much cheaper in the long run, when you consider that the effort required to engineer them is little less than that for bigger ships. Credits have been irrelevant for quite some time as mats become the real currency..

There is however no niche or use at which they excel.

At least if carriers offered a shorter path to refueling and rearming then some of the higher impact but lower ammo weapons would become more viable, especially on tubs lacking a huge number of slots.

Consider for instance the strange abomination which is powerplay... Though with one faction parking some of it's carriers on a system it was trying to... do whatever ungodly things they do... whilst the defending faction brought Cutters and Corvettes to bear upon a legion of small ships to take the carriers out. Carrier defence would likely be torps, missiles and other high alpha but low ammo weapons, carrier attack requiring new builds.

Hell it might even be.... fun. A bit asymetric. Non linear.. different.

Though the only thing guaranteed is that if carriers could operate all types nothing would really change, certainly not for the better.

 

[Sylow]

Absolutely true, but it doesn't change the fact that the small ships don't really have an actual use.

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I think you nailed it. No matter if we have any carriers, small-pad-only stations or other obscure ideas about the topic, none of them will fix the underlying problem: small ships just can't compete with big ones on so many levels by now. Engineering them up is almost as much effort as for bigger ships. You only save a tiny bit of material on weapons, due to less hardpoints. But they in turn have less firepower and durability. And their theoretical advantage of speed and agility is mostly theoretical. FAOff and reverski, in the hands of a halfway competent pilot, are enough to more than compensate the combat advantages of small fighters.
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Unfortunately we're at a bit of a philosophical problem here. I am one of those, who think along the lines of "bring the player, not the ship". But a significant part of the playerbase, as well as FD, seem to think otherwise. They rather believe that grind and credit investment should be a significant factor, more important than "mere" player skill. The battle was fought a long time ago, small ship friends lost.
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I just don't see how small ships could be made relevant again. It's obvious that FD does not intend to implement any changes which could be in favour of small ships. Any extrinsic push towards small ships, e.g. the mentioned carriers or small-pad-only bases don't really work, either. If the ship is inherently inferior, all those pushes and nudges won't help. Even creating scenarios which would require small ships, e.g. combat scenarios around structures are not the answer any more. At some time, having the CQC structures and requiring ships to go inside to achieve some goals would've still helped small ships. But by now, people would still not go for small ships, but simply use the SLFs.
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I'd yet have to see any suggestion which would make small ships worth it again, which would not require noticeable changes to the flight model. As long as even significant advantages in speed and agility can be so easily countered by FAOff and reverse thrust as in the current system, small ships can't be more than stepping stones in the game. (Which I btw also find a financial folly. There are so many skins and ship kits for small ships in the store. Which i believe that few people buy, as they just outgrow small ships too quickly. Would small ships actually remain relevant, those skins and kits would probably see much better sales. )
.

 

[Marra Morgan]

The thing I like about small ships is how the pilots of big ships grossly underestimate them

 

[slepow]

I would like to see the exclusively small landing outposts in asteroids or bases on planets in addition to only M and S pad outposts. They are already there actually just not used.

Another purpose would be to give some missions or wing missions where you have to fly into some narrow bay, mail-slot, maintenance tunnel, canyon to destroy or repair or scan or steal sth from within bigger structure (star-port, base, capital ship) or in difficult accessible place.

 

[Chaffers]

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I think you nailed it. No matter if we have any carriers, small-pad-only stations or other obscure ideas about the topic, none of them will fix the underlying problem: small ships just can't compete with big ones on so many levels by now. Engineering them up is almost as much effort as for bigger ships. You only save a tiny bit of material on weapons, due to less hardpoints. But they in turn have less firepower and durability. And their theoretical advantage of speed and agility is mostly theoretical. FAOff and reverski, in the hands of a halfway competent pilot, are enough to more than compensate the combat advantages of small fighters.
.
Unfortunately we're at a bit of a philosophical problem here. I am one of those, who think along the lines of "bring the player, not the ship". But a significant part of the playerbase, as well as FD, seem to think otherwise. They rather believe that grind and credit investment should be a significant factor, more important than "mere" player skill. The battle was fought a long time ago, small ship friends lost.
.

Which is a bit odd as I recall David Braben saying that they'd ensure large ships were not more powerful, and seems particularly strange as you'd expect some form of emotional attachment to the Cobra III at least... But it is wayyy too late to upset all the Smeaton specials out there.

I intended to do a bit of everything, preferably in a Cobra, though having to grind for the lastest Sword of Awesomeness gets in the way of this rather than facilitating it. Whilst I never wanted them I've ended up buying a Lakon for trading, a Fer de Lance for combat, a Diamondback for exploring etc.. Yes I could have done it all in a Cobra just with a lot of extra hassle for no more reward. There is no advantage to jumping 30ly when you can jump 50ly.

It's all a bit immersion breaking, unless the intended effect is to make us feel like millionaires collecting niche cars.. then pimping them out like chavs in a carpark. Showponies only useful for one thing... Which then means you carry on grinding that one thing.. because..

And yes they could turn us all in the Thai king with his own personal aircraft carrier stuffed with single purpose ships.. Or they could facilitate a more general purpose play style with some reasonable design decisions, one that rewarded cooperation and made extremes of outfitting less necessary.

Personally I'd prefer to have somewhere to call home... Thought that would be a particular ship but.. Fdev didn't seem to like that idea. Ok so maybe a PMF then? Nice try but theres an 200+ member PMF who would rather this didn't happen.. A carrier or squadron maybe? One may hope.

 

[RamirezKurita]

.
I think you nailed it. No matter if we have any carriers, small-pad-only stations or other obscure ideas about the topic, none of them will fix the underlying problem: small ships just can't compete with big ones on so many levels by now. Engineering them up is almost as much effort as for bigger ships. You only save a tiny bit of material on weapons, due to less hardpoints. But they in turn have less firepower and durability. And their theoretical advantage of speed and agility is mostly theoretical. FAOff and reverski, in the hands of a halfway competent pilot, are enough to more than compensate the combat advantages of small fighters.
.
Unfortunately we're at a bit of a philosophical problem here. I am one of those, who think along the lines of "bring the player, not the ship". But a significant part of the playerbase, as well as FD, seem to think otherwise. They rather believe that grind and credit investment should be a significant factor, more important than "mere" player skill. The battle was fought a long time ago, small ship friends lost.
.
I just don't see how small ships could be made relevant again. It's obvious that FD does not intend to implement any changes which could be in favour of small ships. Any extrinsic push towards small ships, e.g. the mentioned carriers or small-pad-only bases don't really work, either. If the ship is inherently inferior, all those pushes and nudges won't help. Even creating scenarios which would require small ships, e.g. combat scenarios around structures are not the answer any more. At some time, having the CQC structures and requiring ships to go inside to achieve some goals would've still helped small ships. But by now, people would still not go for small ships, but simply use the SLFs.
.
I'd yet have to see any suggestion which would make small ships worth it again, which would not require noticeable changes to the flight model. As long as even significant advantages in speed and agility can be so easily countered by FAOff and reverse thrust as in the current system, small ships can't be more than stepping stones in the game. (Which I btw also find a financial folly. There are so many skins and ship kits for small ships in the store. Which i believe that few people buy, as they just outgrow small ships too quickly. Would small ships actually remain relevant, those skins and kits would probably see much better sales. )
.

The investment issue I feel is a big one for small ships vs large ships. The small ship brigade sees it as ships should all be balanced against each other without factoring in their relative costs, while the rest of us see credit investment as being a relevant variable for balance similar to how players expect a piece of A-grade equipment to perform better than an E-grade. It is true that there have been issues with regards to credit income (and still are) but that's no reason to disregard them as a currency as that would cause more issues further down the line, but instead is a good reason for why FD need to clamp down on out of control earnings, balance income and add in some gradual credit sinks so that they can once again become an actual consideration. From a credit investment perspective, a fully A-rated Vulture is the same cost as an E-rated FAS, yet in practice I'm pretty sure the Vulture is much more powerful.

Ultimately, I see that issue as continuing regardless as there is no reconciliation between those viewpoints with the current crop of ships as expensive = big, there's no room for minimalist and cost efficient big ships nor is there any way to invest hundreds of millions of credits into a small ship. This is largely why I am an advocate for more ships like the Clipper and T7, ships that offer big ship gameplay on a budget; but in addition to that I do feel that the game should have some way of spending hundreds of millions on a small ship, although I'm not sure how such a thing could be implemented in a consistent manner without allowing too much of that extra investment opportunity to bleed through to power creep the top end too much.

 

[MK Regular]

...
in addition to that I do feel that the game should have some way of spending hundreds of millions on a small ship, although I'm not sure how such a thing could be implemented in a consistent manner without allowing too much of that extra investment opportunity to bleed through to power creep the top end too much.

I would love to see some credit sinks for small ships that would allow them to be competitive with larger ships, especially if the credit sink increases their value to similar levels as said larger ships. I would love to be able to kit out a Cobra to have similar overall cost to a good FDL build if spending the extra cash would allow the Cobra to be able to reliably take on the FDL.

EPTs already do this, to an extent. A decent Viper build will set you back anywhere up to around 4M CR, but adding EPTs into the mix can quite easily double, triple, or even quadruple the cost of your ship. That said, EPTs don't really fill the role of a "hundred million credit+" money sink, and while they do provide a good performance increase, the improved speed maneuverability alone is not enough to make small ships truly competitive. I would say that EPTs are really only the start for the multi-million credit sink you have in mind for small ships. A new set of enhanced modules could be introduced some of the smaller class sizes (say sizes 1 through 4), things like military FSDs, enhanced shields, etc. However, if you want the credit sink to only apply to small ships (no medium/large ships), you will be quite limited in what you can introduce since many of the smaller medium ships can use modules from small ships. For example, a few medium ships (AspS, Type 6, Keelback, FDL) use size 4 FSDs, and many other ships (including the conda) can make use of size 3 shield generators.

I'll try to think of a few ideas for credit sinks and come back later.

 

[Mo Ronik]

There could be engineering that would increase the hard point size on a small ship. A Sidewinder has two small hard points. Engineering them to a medium size would put some bite in that tiny ship. You can engineer the weapons now but they are still a small size. Personally I'd love to see this for my T6 mining ship and be able to up the mining lasers to a medium size. For those that don't like small ships then there is no issue but those of us that do, I'm one of them, I'd pay a hefty price for this.

 

[Shir]

The whole point of small ships is dogfighting. No ship matches the fun i have in a Vulture or Viper MKIII. Changing to a medium ship afterwards feels like the ship is broken and can't really fly

Wish there was more gameplay for them, like stealth or smuggling missions where they would have an edge, but unfortunately that 's not the case..