Hey Sovapid, I know your into the pvp side of this, would you be able to give a current synopsis of how engaging the pvp is? Is it skill based and how much is pay to win a factor? Do you like the direction its going in?
Do you have any particular videos where you take on the most expensive ships in the game with something entry level?
It can be, but is usually pretty unbalanced.
The changes to the flight model (since 3.5) have made it less fun/skill based. It is not easy to fly evasively to avoid shots so combat can devolve to face tanking each other. Or because ships can go so fast it devolves into high speed joust. At high speed ship control is not good.
They have also been messing with shields. Shields on mediums size ships and up have been buffed quite a bit. So fighter size ships can struggle to bring down the shields of medium and bigger size ships. A way around this is to use ballistic ammo, as some ballistic damage pass through shields. However the Banu Defender and Prowler have an "alien" shield which blocks ballistic damage. Only way to get the shield is to own the ship. It does have the downside of very slow recharge when taking damage. However many mediums ships have two shields so it can be paired with a normal shield.
Also, right now missiles and torpedoes are horribly overpowered. The big torpedoes one shot just about everything. They are somewhat slow so you can out run them in space. If you get caught in atmosphere now and have one launched at you, you are pretty much screwed. But there isnt a way to tell the difference between torps and missiles launched at you. There are three types of "tracking" in SC, IR (tracks your heat), EM (tracks your electronic emissions) CS (tracks your size/cross section). Counter measures sorta work for IR, don't work for EM and dont exist for EM.
If just doing straight dog fight against other people who want to dog fight, the Arrow (cheapest effective fighter) is competitive. Can also buy it in game.
A big part of PVP is also have a properly outfit ship. Some of the parts you want are only available to buy in game.
In terms of small ships taking down big ships, the ability to do that is pretty low right now compared to other patches.
Prison is also a decent deterrent to PVP in the PU right now. Generally someone has to be the bad guy. And now that person is risking up to 12 hours in prison. There is a tiny lawless area around Grim Hex. So can just sit and wait for PVP there. Also Arena Commander.
As far as direction, I have not liked the direction things were headed from 3.5 to maybe 3.8. CIG has a new team focused on ships/combat. The main developer, Yogi, has been very engaged and says the right things. They havent actually done much yet, but the things they have done are positive.
