Buff the Federal Dropship

[DemiserofD]

That is very optimistic. I have tooled around a lot with PDs some years ago, during one beta. And it did not make PDs shine in a too good light. Indeed, a single PD has about a 50% chance to shoot down a single missile fired at you from almost 2.5km away. If the attacker fires from an angle where the PD can shoot at the missile during the complete flight time.

But fights in ED usually are at shorter range and the rarely will an attacker permanently stay in a PDs firing arc. And that's before even looking at the situation of an attacker having two missile launchers. So unless PDs get miracle-buffed, you'd at most ships have to run at least 3 of them to compensate for the resist gap.

Which means that smaller ships take the beating, while big ships with their 6 or 8 utility slots might actually combine both, to get maximum resists and have the necessary number of PDs. Mind you, i'd appreciate missiles being made more useful, but in no way would your proposed change ever fix the current issue of resist stacking.

Only if PDs would be made extremely powerful, it would make sense to replace a fully engineered SB with a PD. Which then would make missiles worthless again. As long as engineering is as powerful as it is, we're at a deadlock here. No way to solve this problem by just making something stronger. It merely would hurt all the ships with less than at least six utility slots and thus even more reinforce the domination of the already now most prominent ships.

On why i have not even spoken about ECM yet: you ever tried to use them against missiles? A good pilot might use it to fend of the first volley of missiles, despite it being extermely clumsy to use with its chargeup time. (I really would expect a defensive system to charge up and be ready for when you need it... ) But even worse, it has quite a long recharge time. So the best it can do is to fend off one volley of missiles, then takes quite a long break, where your shields have to absorb them. Hope you did your engineering there... better to have more SBs with explosive resists, if the shields would be changed according to your idea and perhaps don't waste the precious utility slots on ECM.

In the hands of an excellent pilot, who can reliably control the distance to an attacker and keep the incoming missiles in the firing arc, the PDs can at least theoretically be a valuable tool. Not so for the ECM. As long as it has the charge-up mechanic and the long recharge, carrying it is quite pointless. (Unless you expect to be attacked by reverb cascade torpedoes, that is. But i could not remember having ever been attacked by those, i only destroyed my own shields a few times when learning how to use reverb mines... ) The buff it would need to be more valuable than fully engineered SBs would have to be huge. Which again would invalidate start of this line of thought: boosting missiles.

My viewpoint on PD comes from using Advanced Missile Racks fairly regularly in CZs and such. What I've found is that if an enemy NPC has point defense, then even two missile racks will not typically get through, beyond point-blank range, or unless fired outside the PD firing arc. Which seems about right, to me. I'm not sure if something has changed since those tests were carried out, as I saw a video a while ago showing closer to what you've described, but my recent experience hasn't gelled with it. On the whole, I've experienced well over 50% PD success rates, and given it only really needs to be over 33% to beat out a dedicated shield booster, that's all they really need.

The biggest reason small ships would have an advantage against missiles is the fact that an enemy would basically need to use seekers, which have much lower DPS, and the fact that smaller ships are much faster and more agile. A skilled pilot should be able to turn and boost away more quickly, thereby multiplying the time they have to use other defenses. Of course, FDLs would probably still be OP, but that's got more to do with them inexplicably having six utilities and insane maneuverability than anything.

ECM IS mostly useless, but I'd argue that's largely because of the way HOW missiles are used. ECM is great if you're under attack by a lot of missiles at once, we just tend to get attacked by just one at a time, because that's all that's necessary to take out their engines and external modules in no time flat. While I could definitely see some improvements being in order - being pre-charged being a particularly excellent one - I also think they're almost as much victims of the current meta as missiles in general are. If missiles were used more, ECM would be equipped more, and players would get better at using them. Only once players have really reached the limits of their potential do I think you could really look into the best ways to buff them.