Anyone else think fixed weapons on large ships should point slightly inward?
- Thread starter Rexoplex
- Start date
I disagree that it would be overpowered after a change simply because, in any fight between two large ships, it already is. I used to run an entirely fixed overcharged multicannon build on an anaconda for pvp, and it was horribly unfair against other condas, corvettes, and cutters as it had superior dps, required very little power from my distributor, and all 8 of my hardpoints could hit other large ships despite spacing. However, against small ships, it is already very difficult to constantly aim at them while they're darting all over and trying to get behind me, let alone lead on them with kinetics as they constantly change direction. However, that didn't bother me, because that is an advantage of small ships, a disadvantage of larger ships, and a disadvantage of fixed weapons. What I dislike is that even when I managed to get a temporary lead on a small ship with my fixed weapons, only about 1-3 of my 8 guns could even deal damage at any one time due to the spacing. I don't feel like that problem should occur to begin with, as it is already stacked on top of numerous other problems with an all fixed build anyway and removing it would have no effect on fights between any two ships larger than a vulture since spacing only really matters currently if you're using a large ship against a small ship, which is already unfair with most currently meta loadouts anyway.
While I sort of imagined fixed weapons auto converging on targets based on their range, I actually love the idea some people here had of being able to edit a sort of convergence distance while outfitting or in a menu somewhere in the cockpit, but not really during a fight. For example, you could set all your fixed weapons to shoot the same spot at 2 kilometers, but if something got closer you'd have convergence issues like we already do, and if something was further away, your lines of fire would awkwardly cross and cause other problems. This way you could have a fixed build be viable and quite scary at a specific range, but not be able to adjust for different ranges on the fly. Or perhaps you could adjust, but the weapons would take like 30 seconds to re position or something.
I'm actually kinda surprised by the number of people worried about throwing off the balance of weapons with something like this. The point of doing it would not be to make fixed weapons any stronger or give them more time on target like gimbals, but rather to give some ships a better choice of weapon loadouts. Some things come in fixed only (PA, rails) and thus you are limited to only one on certain ships simply because you can't set them to converge at any kind of reasonable distance.
Now I get the argument that some ships are designed with better hardpoint placement in mind, and thus not all hardpoints are created equal. Sure, it could make sense that a military vessel would have more center-line placements than something like a Clipper (which lore-wise is kind of a luxury ship). But the thing is, military ships with central placements would *still* have the advantage since they would have a much greater window at which their fixed weapons could effectively hit, whereas even with a convergence setting in outfitting, the Clipper would have to try to maintain a very specific range. That is fine I think, it just adds to the depth of strategy for good pilots to master.
Basically, PA's and rails are awesome. All I really want is to be able to use them on ships that have wide hardpoints. There would still obviously be drawbacks to such a loadout, thus keeping things more or less balanced (or at least similar to the current meta).
Now I get the argument that some ships are designed with better hardpoint placement in mind, and thus not all hardpoints are created equal. Sure, it could make sense that a military vessel would have more center-line placements than something like a Clipper (which lore-wise is kind of a luxury ship). But the thing is, military ships with central placements would *still* have the advantage since they would have a much greater window at which their fixed weapons could effectively hit, whereas even with a convergence setting in outfitting, the Clipper would have to try to maintain a very specific range. That is fine I think, it just adds to the depth of strategy for good pilots to master.
Basically, PA's and rails are awesome. All I really want is to be able to use them on ships that have wide hardpoints. There would still obviously be drawbacks to such a loadout, thus keeping things more or less balanced (or at least similar to the current meta).
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Not at all. It's a design choice, yes. Just not one that was conscious of non-gimbal convergence. Shields and other defensive stats sure. But actual ability to use fixed weapons or not? No. Frontier just stuffed up and don't seem interested in solving it. You don't have ships that can fit fixed weapons that never converge. You fire that engineer and hire one that can design weapon hardpoints that converge.
In short; frontier did what they did because it looks cool. And to move clipper's nacelle hardpoints now, means a model rebuild.
The clipper can use *a* fixed weapon. Just saiyan'
Yes, and if it's not supposed to, it wouldn't. This is just a circular and rather silly thing to say v'larr, even if in jest.
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Not at all. It's a design choice, yes. Just not one that was conscious of non-gimbal convergence. Shields and other defensive stats sure. But actual ability to use fixed weapons or not? No. Frontier just stuffed up and don't seem interested in solving it. You don't have ships that can fit fixed weapons that never converge. You fire that engineer and hire one that can design weapon hardpoints that converge.
In short; frontier did what they did because it looks cool. And to move clipper's nacelle hardpoints now, means a model rebuild.
The clippers main advantage is high speed, the downside is wide hardpoint placement. The big engines out on the nacelles cause both, I think as a deliberate balance thing. If it was fast and deadly it might be a little OP for a non dedicated combat ship. Hardpoint placement is one of the things you need to consider when selecting and arming a ship.
Imagine the alpha strike damage I could get with converging PA's in a corvette. As I mentioned above asps and below the shields are gone in one shot from twin huge, add another 2 small, 2 medium and 1 large PA and that becomes a guaranteed 1 shot kill (or crippled) on most of the ships in the game.
Theres an argument to be made that the anaconda has higher firepower than the corvette because of hardpoint sizes. But when you take into account that some are underneath the anaconda and it turns slower that makes it harder to get them on target, the advantage then goes to the corvette (which is a dedicated combat ship).
The balance seems good to me, convergence would break it.
Personally, I think the weapon positions on those ships HAVE been chosen for balance reasons taking into consideration the likely use of fixed/gimbal. A LOT of outside the box thinking went into the ships in Elite, that's why new ones are a trickle. They didn't overlook anything, I believe it is all intended.
No-one intentionally fits hardpoints so far apart that the largest combat ship available at the time - anaconda - can face you head on and the large hardpoints can't hit it with fixed weapons. Not when you have an FDL with higher DPS potential with optimal hardpoint placement. Cutter had the same issue - they actually moved the outermost hardpoints because you could park a type-9 directly in front of it and the outer-most hardpoints with fixed weapons missed.
The only intentional part of those designs is that "it looks cool". The argument falls flat when actually comparing combat ships like-for-like. And if the game is balancing around "make the guns miss on purpose" then I think we've got a serious problem, don't you?
I would like to see convergence (only a slight, symmetrical, horizontal swivel inwards, just base it on the lead indicator). It's not just an issue on the "large" ships, even the Cobra Mk3 has issues hitting stuff with fixies on the medium hardpoints
FDL, FAS, all have superior hardpoint placement. Both are very quick. FDL has more shields and can hit with about the same DPS. FAS has identical DPS potential, much tighter hardpoints and is also stupid fast. Argue this all you like, but it's ignoring that the designs of the ship have ostensibly ignored the practicalities of hardpoint placement.
The empire ships were designed to be sexy and cool and have funky hardpoint placement because it seems sexy and cool. The fact that Frontier actually had to move the outer-most hardpoints on the cutter, because even gimballed weapons had problems tracking, let alone converging kind of speaks volumes.
The developer is amazing, and they have done amazing things. But they aren't perfect and have let design ethos overrule practicality on more than one occasion. Clipper is just an example. One of oh-so-many.
edit: frankly engineering has a far far greater impact on damage potential than simply swapping between gimbal and fixed; whatever balance people assume hardpoint placement brings, is just irrelevant at this point.
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All those ships are dedicated combat vessels, of course they have better hardpoint placement than a swanky fast space yacht designed primarily for running away in safety. Think way back before engineering when the clipper could outrun everything, that was it's main advantage. Wide hardpoints (and no outposts) was the tradeoff you made in ship selection.
Look at the FDL for sensible balancing with it's underslung huge hardpoint, it would be OP if you could both gimbal that and bring it to bear all the time. They stuck it where you have to pick your shots due to target visibility or use fixed, not just blaze away with it.
Another example is the DBS it's a great little ship it's not the fastest or the toughest, but it's hardpoints mean it can hit almost anything you can see.
When I chose between the corvette and the cutter one of the first things I did was find out about hardpoint placement, I do lots of shooting so to me it's far more important than jump-range or cargo-space.
No, I think it's appropriate that the go-to large ship in the game does not have as optimal hardpoint placement as the one most dedicated to combat. You are required to use gimbals, due to the size of the ship and hardpoint placement. I don't think you can prove that there was no forethought to this (except looking cool) any more than I can prove that there was.
Also, I don't think I want guns placed willy nilly all around the cockpits on all ships just so some pilots can feel happy that their gun placement is optimal or convergence is optimal. I think hardpoint placement IS a big point in ship selection and I maintain that I think this is (to a degree) intended, but I respect you have a different opinion. I don't fly large ships anyway, the inability to dock at outposts makes them non-interesting to me, so my opinion should definitely be weighted LESS than yours, no doubt.
.. the notion that making hardpoints unusable for fixed weapons is a great way to balance is a fundamentally broken thought process from a balance perspective and I am sorry, I just can't agree. So I shall agree to disagree. Frontier are many things, but they are simply not that stupid. The simplest explanation is that it simply wasn't recognised as a problem at the time. Fly safe. o7
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One part of me says that ships should have varying ease of use/effectiveness in hardpoint location...or there's no reason to actually have multiple ships in the game.
The other part of me says that gimballed weapons get enough advantages as it is, that poor hardpoint convergence can be far more crippling to fixed weapons, and using fixed weapons on an iCutter is surprisingly fun...
*shrugs* all outta opinion here guys.
The other part of me says that gimballed weapons get enough advantages as it is, that poor hardpoint convergence can be far more crippling to fixed weapons, and using fixed weapons on an iCutter is surprisingly fun...
*shrugs* all outta opinion here guys.
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Nope they are not unusable, you can use fixed weps in a clipper easily by having one large fixed and a gimbal on the other, or 2 medium fixed and 2 large gimbals, or 2 fixed firing them on separate triggers.
You just can't fire an all fixed alpha strike salvo of doom.
Being able to set a convergence point for fixed weapons at ports would be awesome. It would really reward pilots able to to maintain their optimal engagement range while simultaneous introducing difficult choices. At what rage to I converge? Do I have all weapons converge at the same point maximizing fire power or individual weapons set at intervals and spread out my firepower?
See links to google images showing some of the possibilities.
http://theairtacticalassaultgroup.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=2466&d=1364463729
http://trainers.hitechcreations.com/images/trainers/gunnery_concepts/schatzi_convergence/Image7.jpg
See links to google images showing some of the possibilities.
http://theairtacticalassaultgroup.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=2466&d=1364463729
http://trainers.hitechcreations.com/images/trainers/gunnery_concepts/schatzi_convergence/Image7.jpg
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