What can I say, I have been looking forward to the new Federal Assault Ship. I like the handling, like the speed, I like the hard points, I like pretty much everything about it, except the wimpy shields. Fun to fly, and fun to battle PVE, but you really need to be careful even when flying with a couple SB and SBC, because you can literally blink and the next thing you know your shields are stripped and you are taking hull damage. Good thing this baby has some speed to get away, because last night I would have died twice without that awesome boost speed.
I had an a-rated Asp I flew for a long time, and I swear that thing could take a beating compared to the FAS.
Talked about this a lot when 1.4 was in beta. "Nope, got plenty of shields, blah blah hull strength compensates, blah blah blah, can't hear you"
It's just silly how little shielding all the Fed ships have. The problem is worse on the gunship. The root of it is that these are very heavy ships with very underpowered shield generators. If it were up-classed to class 6 (or even class 7) the problem would pretty much go away. No one can say that this would make these ships too powerful for their price range (as if they would be anyhow), because the mere act of adding the bigger shield generator would increase their total cost while simultaneously creating power issues.
Don't get me wrong though, it is a very good ship in most respects. I just want a little bit of survivability, particularly in PvP. Even if it means I have to pay a bit more for it!
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They say that it needs the plastic princesses pretty shields to really make it work. It took out a same ranked NPC FAS the other day in my Courier. I use beams and so the shields just melted in seconds, the hull was another matter. I had to use all of my SCBs (4) and took some damage, as they can really dance. I would say that the FAS is on a par with the Clipper, not an identical fight, but very similar opposition.
Which is just silly. Not to mention extremely bad for RP. I shouldn't have to join a supposedly enemy power for four weeks just to get a module that makes my ship's shields halfway decent.
It's on par with the clipper in most respects; the clipper has an edge in terms of speed, but the FAS has better hardpoint placement and somewhat better armor. But despite it's speed (translating to the ability to dictate the terms of any fight) even the Imperial Clipper has better shields than the Federal Assault Ship or even the Federal Gunship (tried it in the beta, not buying this one). And that's saying something. Were it not for this and for the clipper's ability to fit an insane number of SCBs in PvP builds I would agree that Federal Assault Ship is mostly on par with the Imperial Clipper.
It really fires indefinitely when upgraded to 6A
