Arguably a larger PD wouldn't actually have much effect balance wise. Slightly more weapons/boost sustainability at the cost of slightly less speed/jump range which could situationally aid it in the multipurpose category but certainly won't change it's identity. It's not stepping on the Corvette's toes with that drift and turn rate. It's priced in such a way that being a step up from the Conda for armed shipping is a complete non-issue. There's not really anyone's toes for it to step on with this change.
Class 7 FSD for Federal Corvette
- Thread starter RevenantFallout
- Start date
My problem with this idea is the cutter is already the preferred big ship for ganker scrubs. This change would just make them all the more intolerable.
what identical range? did you miss my post about the jump ranges on stock fully combat focused Cutter, Corvette and Anaconda? they are not that much different. Where Anaconda pulls ahead, is when you shed weight, that favours the Anaconda the most.
It's interesting that the distro is thought of as one of the thinks holding it in check there, but I'll defer to your judgement for lack of experience there.
You said it yourself, improved sustainability on weapons, engines and shields. That's a nice combat buff. As a scrub myself, I'm already thinking of ways I would keep 4 pips to sys and manage 2 pips elsewhere with bigger distro on my cutter.
Proof of this? The Corvette is a whopping 500 tons heavier than the Anaconda, in addition to having larger optional internals.
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My own similar fits for the Corvette/Conda got 12/18LY unengineered, 19/28LY engineered. Cutter gets 17/25LY. That's before boosters. So without shedding weight an FSD booster more or less is the difference between a Corvette and a Conda FSD engineered and armored.
At the cost of additional mass, no increase in speed or DPS potential, and a distro which can already wipe out a small or non-pvp kitted/engineered ship on 2 pips. It's more matter of once you can club seals with impunity clubbing seals with more impunity is kind of meaningless.
Edit: That was my reasoning anyways, but if the case is such that it would make a great difference I'll gladly concede the point.
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It's when my crew of lawfuls faces a wanted cutter and his boys (FDL/Krait/Chief) that we might not appreciate that Class 8 distro is what I'm talking about
It's still an improvement to a ship that doesn't need any improvements to appeal to those it's ever going to appeal to. It's also a step, even if it's a small one, closer to similarity between these vessels.
The Cutter doesn't need a C8 distributor for the same reason the Corvette doesn't need a C7 FSD...they are different ships with different niches and not everyone needs to like them.
As expected, the cutter "envy" threads return periodically. The best 'cure' for those new to the corvette or cutter is to eventually just get them both and appreciate the differences. From a lore perspective, bear in mind the corvette and cutter are just the current available biggest ships for pilots federation cmdrs. They would probably be only classed as small frigates in the gamut of a space navy. Eventually FD may come up with even bigger ships (pantherclipper,Turner Argent, etc.), maybe heavy frigates or cruisers for cmdrs then the misperceived inequity between cutter/corvette/ana will become even more moot.
Going by sci-fi media lore, for example in Babylon 5, the battle cruisers of all the races never fit in the B5 "slot" as they were always parking somewhere in the vicinity. The cutter & corvette are still each about 1/4 the size of the Enterprise refit in Star Trek:TMP. The current orbis & coriolis slots probably wouldn't be big enough for future ED cruisers flyable by cmdrs, so it would probably require docking at some structure outside, maybe some of those new structures seen in many systems, or maybe some future giant "spacedock", able to house cruisers like first seen in Star Trek III:TSFS.
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What weapons are you using for that? I can't find any loadout that gives those numbers.
Going with full fixed pulses has the Corvette leading by 111.9 to 111.5, with gimballed at 89.9 for the Corvette and 89.6 for the Cutter. With bursts, the Vette leads 127.8 to 126.2 for fixed and 101.8 to 100.0 for gimballed. Same thing with beams, the Corvette gets more DPS. A full laser build on a Vette will do more damage than a Cutter
Admittedly, The Cutter does get more DPS for multicannons, although as soon as you start shooting at anything thicker than a T-9, the piercing values on the Corvette's huge hardpoints gives it the superior DPS. The Cutter also does slightly better with cannons too (raw DPS is a 2-3 points higher), although you still don't get the numbers that you cited.
I'm not going to count loadouts for full mines, frags, missiles, or torps, since none of these come in huge hardpoints and you would need to be missing most of your brain to think that they would be a good idea on a ship that has a main selling point of twin huge hardpoints. Besides that, mines/frags are pretty useless on large ships and torps/missiles have severely limited ammo counts. I would avoid these weapons on a Cutter or Corvette wherever possible.
PAs skew the DPS in favour of the Cutter, but that is because there are no small PAs. If we remove 2 of the PAs from the Cutter to even out the loadout, the Corvette pulls ahead. If we add railguns to the 2 remaining slots on each ship, the Cutter is back in the lead (although good luck landing railgun shots in a Cutter).
None of this takes into account the Corvette's better power distributor, or the fact that the Corvette does not need to rely on turrets and gimbals to do damage. While in certain situations the Cutter appears to have superior firepower, it will struggle to fully utilize it in situations where as the Vette will have far fewer problems.
Just because I'm curious, where did you get the 121 and 119 figures from? What weapon types were you using, and were they fixed or gimballed?
This doesn't strike me as a specifically good reason for doing or not doing anything balance wise. An incredibly weak ship could be left as such because "not everyone needs to like them."
Given that for that specific tweak there are 8 possible PD values and 7 FSD values a game with 30+ ships will have overlap, and since those stats aren't individually performance determinant the appearance of similarity is largely superficial anyways. Only issue this might create is the Corvette jumping too far compared to the Cutter given it's mass being lower. There are some knobs in this game that don't allow for fine tuning.
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I know nobody was asking my opinion, but still...
As a rule of thumb, I just use Coriolis to stick, say, MC's or FC's in every slot a ship has to get a comparison of their relative DPS.
On that basis, the Cutter does have roughly 5% more DPS than the 'vette.
Course, it then depends on stuff like how you divide that up into FG's, weapons position and convergence too.
The T10, for example, has (using the method I use) roughly 25% more potential DPS than a 'vette and 10% more than a Cutter but, once you divide it up into fire-groups, especially ones with useful convergence, you tend to find that you've got 2 or more FG's with mediocre performance or 1 devastating FG and one or more puny ones.
And, besides, you still need a calendar and an anchor to get the Cutter to turn.
Not much use having powerful guns if you can't keep 'em pointed at your target.
Balance exists largely to give everything some sort of niche. You can tell what needs to be changed by seeing what is used and what is not, and why.
The big three are about as balanced against each other as any segment of ships gets. There are good reasons to use all of them and none of them need to be made more appealing relative to the others.
If anything, they are all too popular, too easy to get and maintain (with the same experience I have now, it would take me less time to get a Cutter in 3.3 than it would have taken me to get a Vulture in 1.2), too appealing. The Anaconda is omnipresent because it does so many things well. Any time you see a trade CG, major PP hub, or a 'gold rush' system, the traffic boards are filled with Cutters. If it's a combat CG, often the Federal Corvette is the most popular ship in the system.
We aren't talking about 30 different ships, we are talking about the small handful of ships in big 'end-game' ship niches, which are naturally compared with each other.
And that's a big issue.
When setting seven is too much, setting six is better.
Add one to the Cutter and you can see why he might still have an issue with the Corvette by default.
Also, if one doesn't have Horizons, then how do they gain the FSD Booster
The Vette is garbage without Engineers and FSD boosters where her jump range is concerned. Absolute unacceptable garbage. I remember before Engineers and Guardians came along, it took ridiculous amounts of jumping in the Vette because you had to go around systems to close in on one. Absurd!
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As a corvette pilot, I say.
Stop your crying. Yes it is fair, you can't expect a warship to be on par on jump ranges as a jumpconda while still being able to be the most agile big ship in the entire game, as well as having one of the best hull tanks. You don't have anymore room, it's all for armor and shiz.
Go back and read my post. If you are too lazy to do that, then what is the point?
People who argue pro/con against ships in the current state of the game excluding horizons I cannot take serious any more.
Sorry, the game is way beyond (pun intended) playable without horizons. FD should include horizons in the next patch for everyone.
That's not funny any more.
Everything is garbage without Engineers. Anyone who doesn't yet have Horizons can currently buy it for as little as 6€.
I hated the Vette's initial jumprange of 10-11LY myself and virtually never used it because of this. Luckily the engineers fixed it and brought it up to an acceptable 17LY. The FSD boosters improved it to 27LY.... wow... before the advent of the engineers that would have been a good range for an Exploration-AspX. What else are you asking for?
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It’s actually only one C2 hardpoint’s worth of extra firepower but means you can still have decent shield stripping ability if using the C4s as “big hitter” weapons. I “want” to use the C4s for Plasma Accelerators, because they’re fun and good for hitting big ships hard. But if I do that, my standard lasers become 2x C2 and 2x C1 which is the same firepower as a Cobra or Viper. The underside C3 simply doesn’t have enough convergence to (reliably) help out. Frankly, that’s laughable on a ship this big, this expensive and with its claimed “large combat ship” specialism. So, I end up using 2x C4 beams which is (a) boring and (b) a waste of the large hardpoints in many ways.
Actually, what I end up doing is running my Krait with 2x C3 PAs, 1x C3 Beam and 2x C2 Beams ... all top side or front mounted with great convergence and FAR more fun.
Or my FDL ... which at least gets 4x C2 Beams to run alongside its (admittedly, solo) C4 “specialist” weapon.
Not counting the highly situational C4s, the Corvette is simply outgunned by too many alternatives to be worth the compromise, IMO.
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