This is something that's been bugging me more and more with every patch, but the addition of the chieftain has finally given me the frustration-induced motivation to write this up:
Take a moment to recall the original design direction of the flight model in ED:
- Capped top speeds.
- Heavily limited yaw.
- Quicker (than yaw), but still fairly limited pitch.
- Acceleration rates high enough for ships to change their velocity vector as they rotate, like a plane does in atmosphere.
- Short range weapons, slow projectiles.
- Weapons doing more damage the more manual they are. Fixed > gimballed > turreted
- Blue Zone mechanic:
- Need to be at half speed to get full maneuverability, going too slow or too fast leads to reductions in acceleration, and major reductions in rotation rates.
- Boost mechanic:
- Can push you beyond the normal speed cap, and gives you a temporary big increase in rotation and acceleration performance.
- Fires for a fixed time, so requires good timing. Effectively on a long cooldown, as it draws a lot of ENG cap which doesn't come back that fast.
These various mechanics are not a terribly "realistic" depiction of space combat, but that wasn't the objective. David Braben tried a realistic Newtonian physics approach in some of his previous games, and found it to not be terribly fun. Fights tended to go in one of two ways:
- High-speed jousts, where the opponents close at very high velocities, take a few shots, zoom past each other, flip over, and repeat
- "Turrets in space" with both opponents easily keeping the other in front of them, floating around fairly fruitlessly, constantly firing on the enemy while face-tanking their shots.
Neither one of these outcomes are particularly exciting. The collection of design decisions above were made
specifically to avoid these kinds of combat, and instead lead to more exciting, cinematic, and dynamic dogfights. The idea was to make dogfights more like the ones depicted in movies like star wars- similar to WWII dogfights. And hey, it worked! Getting on someone's tail meant something, as they coudln't just flip over and face you. Vying for position, trying to shake baddies off your tail (or get on to theirs), awesome chases through asteroids, all that cinematic action-packed bobbing and weaving... The flight model did well.
Balance between ships was also pretty good at the time. Consider the cobra III and the viper III: The classic multirole vs. the classic combat ship. The cobra actually pitches slightly
faster than the viper in the blue zone, but the viper handles a bit better when at top speed. The cobra has a slightly higher boost speed, but the viper has a higher top cruise speed- and thus a higher blue zone speed. The cobra has more armour, but the viper has much higher acceleration, giving it better control over its physical position and thus has a better ability to dodge incoming fire.
-THE PROBLEM-
Now here's the problem: you guys have kept adding ships or changing mechanics that undermine those original design choices.
- Many ships added later in the game can boost almost constantly when equipped with an grade-A power distributor
- With engineering, almost any ship can boost constantly, some without even needing a full 4 pips in ENG
- Ships getting better and better pitch, without corresponding increases in speed and acceleration
What this leads to is it being increasingly impossible to get, and stay, on someone's tail. It is basically meaningless at this point. The chieftain is a fantastic example of this. It's specifically a combat ship, billed as "
more manoeuvrable than ships of similar size and weight", and "
designed not only to dish out punishment, but to avoid it". In reality though, what are its most stand-out traits?
- Amazing pitch
- Pitch rate is barely affected by the blue zone at all
- Can perma-boost (boost limited only by cooldown, not by ENG at 4 pips) without any engineering
- Middling speed
- Poor acceleration, both lateral and linear
This is just
everything wrong with how the flight model has moved. There is no challenge to pointing the chieftain at something. It doesn't matter how fast you're going, you just whip around with your godly rotation, and point at the thing. Likewise, if something gets on your tail, it doesn't matter in the slightest; you can flip over-without really changing your velocity at all- in a few seconds and be facing them. There is absolutely no way something can stay behind you because of how fast you can rotate regardless of your speed. In order to draw a circle around your ship as you were rapidly rotating while traveling at full speed, the enemy would have to move
absurdly fast, with
ludicrous acceleration .It's not all good for the chieftain, though- because of its terribly weak acceleration and mediocre speed, it also has very little hope staying one something's tail. Despite what its description implies, the chieftain's weak acceleration actually makes it
horrible at
actually avoiding getting shot. Its quick-charge shield and solid armour make it good at
absorbing damage, but that's
not the same thing.
So let's look at the summary of the chieftain:
- Can't be avoided, as it rotates far faster than anything could orbit it
- Can't effectively avoid being shot, as its weak thrusters prevent it from circling and keeping close to even ships with fairly modest rotation rates.
- Net effect: Excels at either BEING A TURRET IN SPACE, OR HIGH SPEED JOUSTING- those things the flight model was specifically designed to avoid.
The chieftain isn't the only ship that's like this, it's just the most recent and egregious. The clipper was the first one to start pushing this line, but didn't go too crazy far. The FDL when first added was also pushing it a bit, but it's lower and very blue-zone-sensitive pitch kept it in check. Unfortunately, it later got a massive pitch buff and engineers allowed it to perma-boost, eliminating the weakness of blue-zone-sensitivity. The FAS was
terrible addition in this regard, which is no surprised considering how similar it is to the chieftain- low cruise speed but high boost speed, very high pitch that's blue-zone-independent, super weak thrusters. Its options are to turret-in-space face tank, or use its high boost speed to do high-speed jousting. Just like the chieftain, there's nothing the opponent can do to avoid the fight devolving into one of these two things, either- the high pitch speed makes getting in the FAS blindspot pointless.
-CONCLUSION-
Please just take a moment to reflect on what makes the Elite: Dangerous model unique and fun, and stop designing ships and mechanics that undermine it. Fighting NPC FAS, clippers, and chieftains is not fun. The fight just devolves into a face-tanking DPS race, and is really lame. Fighting against players in the ships discussed above is even less fun, as player generally know how to abuse the problematic aspects far more effectively. Just take a look at any current FDL vs. FDL fights- they're almost all high-speed jousting, or floating around turrets-in-space. Hell, check this fight that was posted the other day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIK2d8pl5Cw It's exraordinarily dull.
Please consider reworking the flight characteristics of some ships, and addressing some of the other issues such as perma-boosting. I really want combat to go back to being the exciting, cinematic, "it's like I'm in star wars" sort of experience that it used to be, instead of drifting further and further into the territory it explicitly set out to avoid.
-Frenotx
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