Fix the Federal Corvette

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I would change the size 3 hardpoint position, from below the ship to just in front of the cockpit, It would change the effective firepower of the ship.
 
I'd put the two C4 hardpoints at the front instead of the back. The corvette has a bigger power distributor than the cutter, so it makes lore sense to be able to have them in front. Then put the underside C3 hardpoint to the old C4s' location. Maybe buff up the jumprange +3 to +5 LY with additional credit cost. That's about it, and I mainly fly my cutter and just occasionally take out the corvette from the musty hangar. I'd noticed the corvette also has better interdiction and supercruise agility than the cutter besides better maneuverability and little drift.
I agree with above and a LOT of the other suggestions to improve the Vette.. I achieved the fed rank recently; slowly, after becoming a power player for Hudson, and got the Vette and "new" Injuneared all the modules for a "FNS Pittburgh" style PvP grade battle ship; but it's more like an oversized and short-range Undermining ship! I went back to my hardened Cutter and fast Hull-tank Clipper for the majority of my Game time; and only use the Corvette for CZ's..not CG's where it's rebuy cost and Player battle disadvantages are a risk. Jump range and maneuverability require use of weakened FSD and only Gr5Dirty Drag Drives to get the same performance as a lightweight Cutter with Size 7 Thrusters! You know what to do Frontier Buds...just now go and do it! [yesnod]
.....From a 65-year old Old Fart Sim Gamer with almost 5K Hours played; Thanks for Elite Dangerous!!!...it's "Our Only Hope" for escape from a ever-disheartening Real World of Political Turmoil and Fake-Alt News and Fart-Of-The-Deal Global collusion...:D
 
Totally agree with the OP, FDev should really consider his options. I'm into the first one, but second could fiy some things also.
 
I think the option to change hard points is valid change.


I have really big problem to figure out a good way to outfit my corvette for multicrew.. As what turns out to be the best option is to put turrets in small and medium. Large does not matter, as its time on target is terrible most of the time. And there are no good turrets to put in the huge, unless you go for large there, and then we are missing the point of having two huge to begin with...



I do not feel the speed is that huge of an issue. And now with the Guardian FSD booster, that gives us the option to boost the jump range, although both the Anaconda and Cutter also got the same option...
 
I quite like the 'Vette as it is right now, that said it's the only of the big 3 I have and I'm also a pure PvE player.

If we could have changes made though...
- Remove the C3 and replace it with 2 C2's on the underside of the hull, gives you the option for turrets to cover the blindside or decent sized missile racks/rail guns for longer ranged engagements where the hull blocking them during pitch maneuvers doesn't matter.
- Upgrade the 2 C2's on the sides to C3's, I've rarely had trouble with gimbal weapons in these spots being able to hit the same target as the C4's.
- Upgrade the 2 C1's to C2's.

This would give you a 2 C4 & 2 C3 main punch, with 2 C2's each above and below the hull for turret cover or experimental debuff effects.

Outside of that a drop in hull weight to give it a couple more m/s, a smidge more agility and 3-5 more ly jump range.

As I said though I'm pretty happy with my current 'Vette but if we're gonna ask for buffs I figured I'd throw in my 0.02 creds.
 
Heres an idea I have not seen in the thread yet: Add the ability fly an additional fighter without multicrew.

Two NPC fighters would make it that more formidable, especially against small fast ships. Maybe even add a larger fighter hanger so you can fly two NPC and one player fighter.

Of course changing the size-1 to size-2 hardpoints would also be a welcome change.
 
I feel if anything was to be changed about the current Federal Corvette, it ought to be a relatively minor thing like changing the small hardpoints to mediums - and nothing more than that, anything more isn't reasonable, I feel.

And the Anaconda ought to be given a realistic hull mass and have its strap-on huge hardpoint removed...in my personal and likely to be unpopular opinion, at least. :p
 
This is silly.

A Federal Corvette intelligently outfitted and skillfully flown is a serious threat. Maybe all the trash Corvette pilots have skewed your view, somewhat?

Totally agree, I've had Corvettes for over two years and never been killed in one, I can't say this for any of the other ships, at one time I had four Corvettes all A rated and fully engineered, now I just have one ( I just change the modules as required for each job I take on, Combat, Trade, Mining or Passengers) I use an Asp Explorer for Exploration (Obviously) and my trusty Python for everything else, so Frontier, leave it alone! If you mess with it, it surely will end up bugged or nerfed!!!
 
Here we go again! xD

The 'vette is fine. Combat ability lays outside more than just hardpoints. FD know not to turn the 'vette into a "point and win" ship, and that's because they do get things right :)

Anyone that thinks the 'vette is useless - try to shoot out the power plant against a competent pilot and tell me what happens.
 
Ah, yet another "i want MOOOOOOOOAAARRRRRRR" thread.

Ship builds are about choices and the consequences of those choices.

There is a subset of the community that seem to be locked into the belief every single new ship release shoud be better than the previous one, and the response is then that existing ships need to be tweaked to 'be competitive'.

All this is doing is fuelling power creep.
 
Well, I do love my corvette, and hey, I won't complain if it got a hardpoint boost either, as you said, it's THE combat biased of the big 3. :D

However, changing it's performance is a bit of a worry, unless is got a size 8 Powerplant with all those features you suggested. even then, it would throw off all the other parts of the vessel like mass, jump range, distributor... it's going to be hard to actually arm the thing. A hardpoint boost like 1 or 2 extra size 3's would be nice enough. although I am questioning whether the Powerplant will handle that....
 
Just having those 2 smalls converted to larges would do... Fine, take away something in return, shield strentgh or internal compartments, but make Corvette feel like actual combat dedicated warship it should be. This giant armored ship (from it's looks) has lowest HP among Conda and Cutter.

Plus that unexplicable mistake when it was first announced with 2H 3L 2M set and later changed to 2H 1L 2M 2S set.
 
I did the federal grind only to find the Corvette just absolutely pants in comparison to my Anaconda.

Admittedly I hadn't spent a huge time engineering it, but I did temporarily swap out my Anacondas modules to give it a decent field test.

I found it slow (but a tad faster than my Anaconda), TTK was lower than my Anaconda, jump range made it useless for my lifestyle (of wandering around).

I quickly just went back to my Anaconda, then eventually sold the Corvette.

That said, I couldn't really tell you how to fix it, because it's likely just my play style that it doesn't fit.

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead
 
I too spent months grinding for a Corvette then engineering it only to give up on it and park it in my hanger because my FDL was better
 
+1 to upgrading the 2 Small hardpoints to Med or Large.
I too have suffered the grind for this ship to find it underwhelming. A little more usable firepower will give it the edge it currently lacks.
 
I agree that something has to be done to the Corvette. The c3 is Most of the Time useless, thats a fact.
Further more, a quick ship easily fights down a corvette, but have a Look on the cots of the ships. In my feeling of fairness it is unreal, that a 500 mio ship with 50 mio rebuy,has lost against a 50 mio ship with 3 mio rebuy bevor it starts fighting.
So here are my suggestions:
Put the c3 direct under the nose.
Switch the c1 to c2. ( including 10% more capacitor-volume)
10% more manovebility.( by mass reduction f.e.)
Add 5ly of jumprange

I think, that would solve Most of the disadvantages against smaller ships, that easily dance you out By movability.

Fly Save cmdrs
 
Is there any hull hardness parameter in the game? Or Corvette hull is just straight out worse than Conda's?
 
The Federal Corvette needs a fix, and now is the time to do it.

This sounds strange. The ship is big. The ship is shiney. The ship is incredibly popular to grind for. What could possibly be wrong?

The game evolved, and the Corvette didn't. Bear with me, or skip to the TLDR at the bottom.

The Corvette is a heavy ship capable of mostly holding down a position, but totally incapable of chasing most other ships. It's not a dedicated hauler (lack of Size 8 internals), and it's not a dedicated explorer (high weight). It's an easy target with lots of shields, and enough armour to stand up to phasing damage for an extended period of time, and maybe even escape via highwake after shields go down. This is fine, and allows us to define the ship's role very cleanly: it's a big area-controlling tank.

So where's the problem?

The Corvette may be well-defined as a true specialist, but it is not performant, and has been substantially hurt by recent (valid) design decisions regarding weapon balance. Despite the grind and downsides built into the ship, it is not the best at its dedicated specialised role.

The Imperial Cutter actually represents a substantially better tank, despite being an amazing multi-role ship (combat or trade). With the potential for an 8A generator + 8 shield cell bank (plus miscellaneous smaller sizes) or 2x Size 8 shield cell banks on a 6A generator, it really shines as the shield tank king. Well that's fine, one might argue. The Cutter has roughly 8% less DPS***, and the convergence on a couple of the medium hardpoints (far off-center) are awful.

Meanwhile, the Anaconda does almost 10% more DPS***, despite being a multi-role ship (exploration, combat, or reasonable trade). Well that's fine, one might argue, it's a slightly worse tank.

This positions the Corvette as a the middle-of-the-road big 3 for DPS and for tankiness. It's not the best at either, but it can do both reasonably well. But the DPS and tankiness numbers don't tell the whole story:
  • The Corvette comes in dead last in jump range, despite not being the most survivable.
  • Its speed suffers from excessive weight (again, despite not being the best tank), making it even more difficult to keep targets in range with 400+ m/s boost speeds.
  • Its large and medium hardpoints have genuinely awful positioning/convergence, making them difficult to use effectively while using the huge hardpoints.

But the sleeper issue is that the majority of the Corvette's DPS is tied up in the Huge hardpoints, necessitating high-damage choices in those slots that can constantly fire on your target. If the 2x huge aren't continuously firing, the Corvette does substantially less damage than a Fer De Lance.

This means Corvette build variety is at an all-time low, with few options existing to do interesting things, and even fewer that can utilize the hardpoints effectively to bring good DPS or reasonable utility. Huge cannons are almost unused, as missing shots results in sub-FDL damage levels with your other hardpoints. Huge Plasma Accelerators, a true trademark Corvette build, are used solely because of the absolute damage type when they manage to land creating a more compelling risk/reward situation.

TLDR: So what can Frontier do? What should they do?

Option 1:
Change the Corvette’s hardpoints to create build variety, and make it the true combat king of the big 3. How? By swapping the two small hardpoints for Large hardpoints, mounted on top of the hull in front of the cockpit. This would give the Corvette the ability to run 3x large + 2x medium hardpoints as a source of DPS, and allow the 2x Huge more fun/flexibility. The ship build goes from being forced to focus on huge hardpoint DPS, to having the ability to do valid DPS via the 3x large + 2x medium combination, with the 2x huge as a wildcard. Or a player could go all-in on damage hardpoints at the cost of becoming a power-distributor-dry ez-bake oven.

TLDR Option 1: Allow for more builds that do valid DPS, leading to more fun gameplay choices by swapping 2x small for 2x large hardpoints. Let Corvette pilots better capitalize on our extremely limited time on target, and let the ship fulfill its current role (as well as be a much more effective anti-Thargoid ship).

Option 2: Dramatically increase the Corvette’s top speed and boost speed. Leave the guns mediocre compared to the Anaconda, force us to cope with a large hardpoint of damage that’s often unuseable, but make the Corvette capable of fighting more effectively in a universe where mediums fly at 500m/s+.

TLDR Option 2: Give us more time on target by bringing boost speeds nearly in line with the Imperial Cutter. Give both a big mass reduction and Thruster up-size to 8, forcing Corvette players to make hard choices about power consumption, even with Overcharged 5 and Monstered power plants. Make the Vette more “meta,” and tweak the role to allow it to chase targets with its huge hardpoints.

Please, Frontier, consider one of these options! Particularly in light of attempting to add more ships to the game, making some relatively minor tweaks to the Corvette could really improve player quality of life, and really make the ship shine.


*** Raw damage calculation done via multicannon loadout for simplicity in this post.

I would agree with Option 2, mostly as that I have played elite and worked up in both factions to get cutter and corvette, wanting to kit my corvette out for combat, yet it is only really ever useful in PvE over PvP. In almost every circumstance, if you are fighting a faster ship (especially the cutter) you can never maneuver enough to deal damage before losing shields and hull simply because the faster ships, whilke doing less damage, can kill you faster simply because they are constantly out maneuvering your own speed. Even if you got all turreted weapons to be able to fire in most directions, that sacrifices DPS and counts for very little. The cutters, even though are not called the combat vessel out of the big three, simply dominates in PvP because of its ridiculous speed and DPS. I will not say make the corvette as fast as the more speed built ships, but certainly fast enough to present more of a challenge to the ones who could dance around it and make a 20 minute battle less one sided just because they are able to out maneuver and run away from the corvette to heal and com back again and outlast a ship designed to be made for a one-man-stand combat.
 
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