As the Title says.
Combat in ED is Seriously Horrible.
I dont talk about Difficulty or any of that. Or about Weapons Balance (albeit that is fairly Bad as well)
But about Combat Mechanics in General.
The Game Generally only offers 2 Methods of Fighting. By name being Jousting and Circling.
You either Boost with FA Off to get a Bearing at the Enemy. Or you just try to turn as tight a Circle around him as you can.
All of that is done while constantly playing the Pips Minigame and Spamming Chaffs.
And sorry but its Incredible Boring and completely Devoid of Skill.
The Winner is rarely Decided by Piloting Skill or the Correct Decisions. But instead most of the time by how much willingness he has to micromanage his Ship during Battle...
Suggestion to Improve this.
1.
Pip Management should depend on Ship Types and Sizes.
The Smaller Fighters should have no Pips Management at all. They from the Start should have an Preset Setting of 2 Eng 1 Sys 1 Wep. Thus doing pure Piloting and not Micromanagement.
The Medium and Heavy Fighters should only have Engine and Weapon Pips. While Shields are Confined to 2 Pips all the Time. Which means he can Choose between Power to Weapons, Power to Engines or Power Balanced.
Only the Bigger Ships like Heavy Multipurpose Ships and Corvettes. Should have the Full Pip Management available to Them as they are not doing as much Maneuvering in the First Place and thus pay more Time adjusting their Systems rather than Piloting.
This would Reduce the Micromanagement Tremendously. Allowing for more Attention to the Actual Combat. Except for the Bigger Ships which are actually Big enough to Spend time on Engineering rather than on Piloting.
And which will later on be Multi Crew thus having a Dedicated Engineer doing this Task.
2.
The Flight Assist and Flight Assist Off should be Removed.
The Flight Assist should be Set down to a level where its Capable of Keeping the Ship Stable in the Blue Thrust Area.
And would start Sliding if your Faster than that. Because the Flight Assist while still being active would not use Full Power to Adjust your Course. Thus not getting in your way when Maneuvering.
This would mean instead of Switching FA Off and On you could do Maneuvers by using your Speed and Thrust. Which would make Combat far more Dynamic and Allow Fast Maneuver Combat Without the Annoying Micromanagement.
3.
We need to have at least 4 Keys Definable for Weapons. Not only 2!
Seriously. Right now its Impossible to do a Proper Weapon Setup without Micromanaging.
Because you have to constantly Switch between Firing Groups as you can only Define 2 Keys per Group.
My Standart Setup from other Games doesnt even Work.
Because I usually have
1 Key for Rockets and other Guided or Unguided Weapons which got a Large Time Lag between Firing and Impact.
1 Key for my Basic Weaponry I am Firing at the Enemy to keep him under Fire.
And 1 Key for my Heavy Weaponry which I use when I get the Opportunity to land Good Hits.
Additionally to this I usually tend to have 1 Key for Long Range Weapons to not waste Ammo/Energy on an Enemy Further Out.
In the Game this is pretty much Impossible Because this would mean I would constantly need to Swap my Weapon Groups making it Impossible to Fire all Weapons if the opportunity arises.
And also being Extremely Annoying if you got anything in the Groups thats not a Weapon cause you have to Switch over it.
And even worse. Your Scanners have to bound to Fire Keys. Which means you cannot even use these during Combat Properly either...
This needs to be Fixed.
We need at least 4 Keys per Firing Group.
And we need to be able of Defining Keys for Scanners and all other non Combat Modules. So these stop blocking our Firing Groups!!!
4.
Weak Turrets, Strange Gimballed Mounts. And Hardpoints which are Mounting Weapons that cannot fire due to colliding with the Hull.
This is a forever.
I wonder why FD is making it so hard on themselves to Balance this by Damage alone.
Hard Points should have Preset Rules.
There should be.
Fixed Hard Points which can only Carry Fixed Weapons and Rockets.
Frontal Hard Points which can Carry either Fixed or Gimballed Weapons
Turret Hard Points which can Carry Turrets or Mines
And Heavy Hardpoints (C4 can stay as they are)
Smaller Fighters should not have Turret Hard Points and at least half their Hard Points should be Fixed Hard Points.
Heavy Fighters should have few Fixed and instead more Frontal Hard Points and maybe 1 Rear Turret Hardpoint for Mounting either a Turret or Mines.
Transports and Multi Purpose Ships should have a mix of Frontal and Turret Hardpoints depending on the Suited Role. (A T9 would have only Turrets while an Python would have several Frontal Slots)
And Corvettes should have pretty much only Turrets and the Heavy Hardpoints.
Meanwhile Turrets and Gimballed Weapons should Deal the same Damage as Fixed Weapons.
But Gimballed and Turrets should Require more Energy due to the Turret movement and Target Tracking Sensors.
Which means that a Corvette for example would need to keep Energy in Weapons if it wanted to Continuesly Fire all of its Turrets.
Most of the time it would likely not be able to get more than 1 or 2 Turrets on Target anyways tough.
As some Weapons like Rail and Plasma Guns. Are from the Start Fixed Only. This would also mean that some of the Bigger Ships are almost entirely Excluded from these Weapons.
For example as there is no C3 Multi Cannons. These would be Exclusives to Heavy Fighters and Multi Purpose Ships.
Corvettes would not have C3 Multi Cannons meaning they miss out on this really Energy Efficient Gun.
These Changes would bring back some Action to Combat.
They would give Different Ship Roles a Sense and would allow Players to Choose a Ship Suiting their Flight Style. Rather than Forcing a Jousting Tournament unto everyone regardless of their Ship.
Combat in ED is Seriously Horrible.
I dont talk about Difficulty or any of that. Or about Weapons Balance (albeit that is fairly Bad as well)
But about Combat Mechanics in General.
The Game Generally only offers 2 Methods of Fighting. By name being Jousting and Circling.
You either Boost with FA Off to get a Bearing at the Enemy. Or you just try to turn as tight a Circle around him as you can.
All of that is done while constantly playing the Pips Minigame and Spamming Chaffs.
And sorry but its Incredible Boring and completely Devoid of Skill.
The Winner is rarely Decided by Piloting Skill or the Correct Decisions. But instead most of the time by how much willingness he has to micromanage his Ship during Battle...
Suggestion to Improve this.
1.
Pip Management should depend on Ship Types and Sizes.
The Smaller Fighters should have no Pips Management at all. They from the Start should have an Preset Setting of 2 Eng 1 Sys 1 Wep. Thus doing pure Piloting and not Micromanagement.
The Medium and Heavy Fighters should only have Engine and Weapon Pips. While Shields are Confined to 2 Pips all the Time. Which means he can Choose between Power to Weapons, Power to Engines or Power Balanced.
Only the Bigger Ships like Heavy Multipurpose Ships and Corvettes. Should have the Full Pip Management available to Them as they are not doing as much Maneuvering in the First Place and thus pay more Time adjusting their Systems rather than Piloting.
This would Reduce the Micromanagement Tremendously. Allowing for more Attention to the Actual Combat. Except for the Bigger Ships which are actually Big enough to Spend time on Engineering rather than on Piloting.
And which will later on be Multi Crew thus having a Dedicated Engineer doing this Task.
2.
The Flight Assist and Flight Assist Off should be Removed.
The Flight Assist should be Set down to a level where its Capable of Keeping the Ship Stable in the Blue Thrust Area.
And would start Sliding if your Faster than that. Because the Flight Assist while still being active would not use Full Power to Adjust your Course. Thus not getting in your way when Maneuvering.
This would mean instead of Switching FA Off and On you could do Maneuvers by using your Speed and Thrust. Which would make Combat far more Dynamic and Allow Fast Maneuver Combat Without the Annoying Micromanagement.
3.
We need to have at least 4 Keys Definable for Weapons. Not only 2!
Seriously. Right now its Impossible to do a Proper Weapon Setup without Micromanaging.
Because you have to constantly Switch between Firing Groups as you can only Define 2 Keys per Group.
My Standart Setup from other Games doesnt even Work.
Because I usually have
1 Key for Rockets and other Guided or Unguided Weapons which got a Large Time Lag between Firing and Impact.
1 Key for my Basic Weaponry I am Firing at the Enemy to keep him under Fire.
And 1 Key for my Heavy Weaponry which I use when I get the Opportunity to land Good Hits.
Additionally to this I usually tend to have 1 Key for Long Range Weapons to not waste Ammo/Energy on an Enemy Further Out.
In the Game this is pretty much Impossible Because this would mean I would constantly need to Swap my Weapon Groups making it Impossible to Fire all Weapons if the opportunity arises.
And also being Extremely Annoying if you got anything in the Groups thats not a Weapon cause you have to Switch over it.
And even worse. Your Scanners have to bound to Fire Keys. Which means you cannot even use these during Combat Properly either...
This needs to be Fixed.
We need at least 4 Keys per Firing Group.
And we need to be able of Defining Keys for Scanners and all other non Combat Modules. So these stop blocking our Firing Groups!!!
4.
Weak Turrets, Strange Gimballed Mounts. And Hardpoints which are Mounting Weapons that cannot fire due to colliding with the Hull.
This is a forever.
I wonder why FD is making it so hard on themselves to Balance this by Damage alone.
Hard Points should have Preset Rules.
There should be.
Fixed Hard Points which can only Carry Fixed Weapons and Rockets.
Frontal Hard Points which can Carry either Fixed or Gimballed Weapons
Turret Hard Points which can Carry Turrets or Mines
And Heavy Hardpoints (C4 can stay as they are)
Smaller Fighters should not have Turret Hard Points and at least half their Hard Points should be Fixed Hard Points.
Heavy Fighters should have few Fixed and instead more Frontal Hard Points and maybe 1 Rear Turret Hardpoint for Mounting either a Turret or Mines.
Transports and Multi Purpose Ships should have a mix of Frontal and Turret Hardpoints depending on the Suited Role. (A T9 would have only Turrets while an Python would have several Frontal Slots)
And Corvettes should have pretty much only Turrets and the Heavy Hardpoints.
Meanwhile Turrets and Gimballed Weapons should Deal the same Damage as Fixed Weapons.
But Gimballed and Turrets should Require more Energy due to the Turret movement and Target Tracking Sensors.
Which means that a Corvette for example would need to keep Energy in Weapons if it wanted to Continuesly Fire all of its Turrets.
Most of the time it would likely not be able to get more than 1 or 2 Turrets on Target anyways tough.
As some Weapons like Rail and Plasma Guns. Are from the Start Fixed Only. This would also mean that some of the Bigger Ships are almost entirely Excluded from these Weapons.
For example as there is no C3 Multi Cannons. These would be Exclusives to Heavy Fighters and Multi Purpose Ships.
Corvettes would not have C3 Multi Cannons meaning they miss out on this really Energy Efficient Gun.
These Changes would bring back some Action to Combat.
They would give Different Ship Roles a Sense and would allow Players to Choose a Ship Suiting their Flight Style. Rather than Forcing a Jousting Tournament unto everyone regardless of their Ship.
