Explorers got their cookies finally. Its time for Combat players to receive some love now.
I want to discuss with you about the design philosophy for certain weapons and ships, as well as combat scenarios.
There is still much potential Frontier didnt make use of and plenty modules and ships that fall behind.
Lets talk about what the average Player thinks:
1. When I fight, I want to be as effective as possible
This thinking leads players to use certain ship and weapon Metas.
For PVP this is perfectly acceptable - the Meta is fixed weapons, mostly PA and Rail. Only skill determines which player will win.
PVP Meta ships are mostly FAS, Fer De Lance, Krait Mk2
Great!
How about PVE?
The Meta is gimbal weapons preferable Lasers and Multicannons - fixed weapons require much more effort then is actually needed to fight NPC, thus they should be a dedicated PVP choice only.
You can use almost every ship to engange in PVE, but for sustained combat preferable choices are Anaconda, Fer de Lance, Corvette, maybe Python and Krait too. Most other ships are not tanky enough, lack in DPS, or require much more use of skill.
Turret use is not encouraged as their DPS is just way to low!
In my opinion this is a major design flaw, as combat against NPCs should force you to engange many enemies at once.
Turrets should be a help to fight off small annoying ships, while you can stay focused on the bigger threats. The best example are the two small weapon slots of the Anaconda. They are placed so that they have a very limited fire arc and are therefore the best place to use turrets for. Other ships have these options as well and turret use should be encouraged while fighting NPCs.
Another example are mining ships. A Lakon type 9 miner should not be forced to stop his mining operations just because some nasty sidey or eagle is poking him from behind. Chasing them can be very annoying! Turrets should help to kill of the small threats, but at the same time they should not be completly useless if an Anaconda starts to look what you have in your cargo.
2. My ship is too strong. PVE is boring
The consequence of beeing as effective as possible leads ultimatly to this.
Enemies in Elite Dangerous do not scale. First, this is a good decision!
But fighting NPC in maximum engineered ships gets very boring over time unless you are doing it for the money and materials.
WE NEED BOSS FIGHTS AND REAL ELITE ENEMIES!
Players should be able to find at least equal Elite Enemies with engineered ships, if they want to. From missions, POIs, etc. Those should be a lot harder to deal with it (like when fighting Thargoid ships) and be very rewarding in terms of money or special itmes. You can decide what would be a good drop from such an enemy.
There also should be boss fights that you can not take on on your own, no matter how skilled you are. You need the help of other pilots to kill those mighty pirate lords, Mafia, Drug Lords, desperated military officers, Thargoid motherships and so on.
3. Why should I fly with a small ship when I can have a big one?
So true.. There is no reason unless you want to make combat artifically difficult for you, or simply because you dont have the credits.
Maybe they are good for smuggling, but why should they be restricted to just one activity?
What is the major difference between small ships and big ships? Its their manouverbility and speed.
Why not introduce high speed pursuits where big ships are completly useless but small and nimble ships can chase some robbers that stole the Mona Lisa from XY Station?
They dont want to fight, they just want to get away with it and you must chase them as fast as possible. They try to get off your rader by trying to fly through a small canyon or a very dense asteroid field. Who has the better control over their ship when flying at high speeds, avoiding obstacles, fighting gravitaional effects? And then they launch a rocket or EMP mine to stop you from chasing them.
Another thing is interdicting. It should be significantly harder to interdict a small ship with a big ship as they should have a much easier time to avoid interdiction. Give the interdictor role to the dedicated fighter. They should be your choice for 1v1 engagements. Big ships should be your dedicated assault ship to fight waves of enemies.
4. I dont use missles/torpedos. I cant kill even one enemy with a full load of ammo
Missles have been the weapon of choice for griefers. One or two volleys and most ships go down. The nerf was necessary, but rendered this weapon type completly useless.
The damage output vs ammo is the worst out of all weapons.
Im not sure how to adress this, but a possibility would be to siginificantly buff the damage of missles against NPCs, or make it harder to lock on the target.
Another possibility could be specialized types of missles that serve less as a weapon, but more as a utility for example shield breakers for resistance debuffs, hull crackers for armer resistace debuffs, disruptor for module malfuction or temporay shut downs (like thargoid), caustic for applied damage over time once the shields are down, high explosives for trajectory disruptions, Napalm for overheating and so on.
How would YOU improve todays combat mechanics of Elite Dangerous?
