Is Cobra mk5 op?

[Alien]

This is what happens when you're a company that's addicted to milking as much cash out of the players as possible. Frontier will make ships that players will sell a kidney for and then make it so you can only access it by buying Arx.

How do you reverse this trend by Frontier? Simple, don't pay Arx for ships. If the sales of ships for Arx are low enough, Frontier will stop this ridiculous obsession with seeing the players as an ATM.

 

[DemiserofD]

This is what happens when you're a company that's addicted to milking as much cash out of the players as possible. Frontier will make ships that players will sell a kidney for and then make it so you can only access it by buying Arx.

How do you reverse this trend by Frontier? Simple, don't pay Arx for ships. If the sales of ships for Arx are low enough, Frontier will stop this ridiculous obsession with seeing the players as an ATM.

I'm fine with the early access as long as the ships are reasonably balanced, which so far, they've broadly been.

The Cobra though, is something of an exception. Hence my desire for it to have its price revised upwards.

Heck, that'd actually make the ARX purchase worth MORE, as it'd save you the rebuy!

 

[galahad2069]

Thing is, amazing as the CM5 is, there are always better ships for the job so I don't think it's game-breakingly OP.

Sure, it makes things like the T6 and the AspS look a bit pathetic but, honestly, they always were.

It's literally better than other small ships in every possible way. It's faster, more agile, has more hitpoints and firepower. Can you name a single small ship that beats the Cobra Mk5 in anything?

It's even better than a lot of medium ships in many ways.

 

[Urbanski101]

As a counter argument...a new ford Mustang is better than the Model T Ford...technology moves on.

Another counter argument, the Cobra MkIV and the Asp Scout...both were pretty terrible and were largely derided by the community. Those ships represent a decent investment in dev hours and nobody wants to fly them (yes, some ppl do fly them but it's more for the 'look at me I fly the worst ship in the game and I don't care').

FDev are really trying to switch things up a gear and they need to given the financial performance over the past 2 years. They have made 4 slightly OP ships for our pleasure, I don't think any of them are game breaking good but certainly represent a step up in performance / utility and all have been well received. Personally I'm all for this new FD approach, give us fun new toys and fun things to do in them. Get players spending ARX to unlock them...it's a good plan but it only works if the ships are actually worth getting.

 

[Jinx Chrome]

This is what happens when you're a company that's addicted to milking as much cash out of the players as possible. Frontier will make ships that players will sell a kidney for and then make it so you can only access it by buying Arx.

How do you reverse this trend by Frontier? Simple, don't pay Arx for ships. If the sales of ships for Arx are low enough, Frontier will stop this ridiculous obsession with seeing the players as an ATM.

"Frontier will make..." - this is merely an assumption without any proof behind it unless you are working for FDEV and have insights in their plans.

Edit: I deliberately buy ARX to support the game! For those people who complain: You don't understand how hard it is to keep the lights on over a time span of 10 years and make updates!

 

[Rebel Yell]

All of these SCO-ready ships are obsoleting the previous offerings anyway. Look at the Mandalay's jump and speed verses any other medium ship. The T-8 crushes on cargo. And the P2 is right up there with the FdL. All designed for the SCO drive. Why anyone is concerned with the old ships surprises me.

Exactly, we just need to wait for the next one... the definitive long range hauling flying fortress... agile like a Vulture but with 800t cargo, 15k mj shields, 560m/s boost and 40ly jump laden.

 

[Alien]

this is merely an assumption without any proof behind it

Yeah no proof at all

 

[Dormant account - pls delete]

@kofeyh 's reply sort of goes in this direction, but I had a similar thought:

The new ships are balanced for the 2025 / 3311 Ascendancy universe, whatever that is going to look like. Ascendancy should change things as much as Odyssey did, but we haven't seen a good chunk of it yet (and the part we have seen is held back by significant bugs.) The question OP should be asking is why the as-is ships have never had a rebalance, apart from the hideous fudge with the Planetary Approach Suite and multiple goes at fudging scanners into the module lineup.

 

[Mohrgan]

Right up there with, not surpassing it…

The Mandalay does out do all the competition for exploration activities for sure.

The T8 does carry more cargo, but is an inferior miner compared to the Python and the Python is nicer to fly.

The Krait is still the king of multipurpose AX, and the Chieftain is still the best dedicated Interceptor build. - although I’m looking forward to testing the Cobra Mk5 as an AX build, it looks promising…

The P2 excels as a Titan bomber and a few combat builds but its scope is limited from what I can tell by what people say.

I was never able to form a relationship with the FdL nor the Mamba. So I tempered my comparison in deference to anyone with more experience in the FdL/Mamba.

The new wave of ships being released are, just by virtue of the SCO, far better than older options. Spot builds for focused purposes aside, some 30+ ships were sent to the scrapyard figuratively, and literally with the introduction of SCO tuned ships.

 

[Dormant account - pls delete]

The radically improved yaw is annoying though, to me it's an essential part of Elite lore that a Cmdr has to use aerobatic-like banked turns to get anywhere. I like how the Mk III and the Python really do feel like you're turning on the gyros when you use yaw. Would have been fun to have a new Settlement-hopper that was almost spherical with incredible yaw and laterals but terrible hardpoints.

 

[Rat Catcher]

Yeah no proof at all

So, a bunch of ships that are currently in game and might be put together easily by most players, and the latest ships that will become available for credits in game in due course?

This is what happens when you're a company that's addicted to milking as much cash out of the players as possible. Frontier will make ships that players will sell a kidney for and then make it so you can only access it by buying Arx.

I don't think many folk will be selling a kidney for £25 worth of Arx (you may, naturally), to buy the old ships, and those that like having both kidneys can wait a few weeks...


Now if FD were charging thousands of pounds for ships, as is done with a famous alpha, then, maybe there would be something to complain about, as a pizza costs more than an early access ship...

 

[kofeyh]

The radically improved yaw is annoying though, to me it's an essential part of Elite lore that a Cmdr has to use aerobatic-like banked turns to get anywhere. I like how the Mk III and the Python really do feel like you're turning on the gyros when you use yaw. Would have been fun to have a new Settlement-hopper that was almost spherical with incredible yaw and laterals but terrible hardpoints.

The yaw never made any sense; it was an arbitrary call made by people who should have known better and it tarred all ships with the same awful brush.

We have six degrees of freedom; ships can pitch, yaw, roll and move in a complete sphere. Anyone with half a brain knows that just standing on yaw is no more effective than pitch or roll when in three dimensional space.

Yaw authority is a genuine important concern for actual flight and the lack of it has lead to crashes and loss of life. There are very few scenarios where adequate control of yaw should not exist. It's very much the opposite. There is no lore to support the yaw dampening. David Braben was just worried people would fly ships like planes. Which, surprise, really nobody does at all.

On the contrary, the forced reduction in yaw authority turned combat into pitch and rate fights, with jousting being the common outcome because one axis is heavily compromised in all the legacy ships.

Frontier are quite rightly introducing new ships with a restored yaw control (likely because that's logical and there isn't the same concern now, that may have existed way back when) which makes them nicer to fly as a result, and restores the full flight envelope as a result. Good on them.

I get people think the new ships are sprightly and is that wrong, but I'd argue, as I have, that what the new ships do, is highlight how poor the handling actually was for the old ships. It's fine to have rose coloured glasses? Just remember you have them on.

 

[Dormant account - pls delete]

Is it really that big of a thing?

Yes it is because you are not using the right comparison...

How many times do you SC for long distances where it becomes a real advantage?

SCO also radically accelerates planet-hopping and Odyssey content is entirely focused on planet-hopping. That's the impact of SCO here. It's an advantage every single time you launch from a settlement.

That said, even the 100,000ls thing is an advantage. There are a surprising number of agricultural settlements and Rare Goods which are around a B or C star, so if you're a trader or you're looking to run Donate missions or you just generally want to trade agriculture because Felicity Winter then you would do that a lot now.

It also means you can turn in a few million in Carto for an all-bodies DSS set in the Bubble really easily, because you're using both advantages there. Flyby scans are WAY faster now because you're in the well for only as long as it takes you to fire off six probes. And if the B star is all the way over there you don't need to invest half an hour of doing nothing at all to get there.

 

[Dormant account - pls delete]

The yaw never made any sense; it was an arbitrary call made by people who should have known better and it tarred all ships with the same awful brush.

Yes. Because it's lore.

We have six degrees of freedom; ships can pitch, yaw, roll and move in a complete sphere. Anyone with half a brain knows that just standing on yaw is no more effective than pitch or roll when in three dimensional space.

I have slightly more than half a brain so I have in fact remembered that angular acceleration depends on angular impulse (which in turn depends on where the thrusters are on the spaceframe) AND on polar moment. This is not a game where the characteristics of the ship properly match where thrust appears cosmetically, so it's not an engineering discussion worth having. It's a storytelling discussion.

I assume you meant "standing on yaw is no LESS effective" otherwise you're making my point for me. This is why I talked about spherical ships, and even took the time to mention lateral, to bring in the other three degrees of freedom.

(It doesn't have to be entirely thrust, there are other ways to point, but not particularly pacey ones so they're not relevant here; I'm just mentioning that in order to head off further pedantry.)

On the contrary, it turned combat into pitch and rate fights, with jousting being the common outcome.

Since the full turn rate is available to you at all times with by applying a trivial amount of roll (and all the combat ships have insanely good roll) I'm not sure how you think making yaw the same rate as pitch would change this much.

 

[kofeyh]

I assume you meant "standing on yaw is no LESS effective" otherwise you're making my point for me. This is why I talked about spherical ships, and even took the time to mention lateral, to bring in the other three degrees of freedom.

Legacy ships have essentially dampened yaw input. If pitch, yaw, roll are mostly the same acceleration and rate, then a natural preference won't exist.

Any pilot will learn and instinctively use the direction that offers the most efficient progress in the desired direction. By damping yaw, Frontier compromised their own flight model, for reasons that likely few at Frontier even know, now. I am sure there were reasons originally, and everyone probably interprets them differently, but there is very little advantage to do what frontier did originally, in practice.

Introducing ships that don't have such a compromised flight model might upset some, but I am very glad that we can finally actually use all axis and not die of old age waiting for yaw. By your own argument, roll can be used to compensate (which is what many learn in fairly short order) so I am not even sure what the argument is even about at this point. New ships with better yaw doesn't really change the paradigm, so much as just makes them a bit nicer to fly.

It just sounds a lot like "ships should handle badly, the new ones don't, I am sad". I am not sure if that's the crux of the argument or what. It will just always be a bit weird to me to complain a ship flies nice and that is somehow wrong.

 

[Riverside]

The typically poor rate of yaw on ships in ED was originally intended to make flight feel more aircraft-like (wwII dogfighting in space kind of feel). The original game I played in my teens on a BBC micro had no yaw at all & it was a bit awkward to make small adjustments when docking or lining up a shot that even the poor yaw rate of later versions (eg Elite+ on PC) improved that immensely while still giving that WWII in space feeling.

The T-7 has been in the game since launch, it has excellent yaw & that makes it better at evading interdictions too, arguably the saving grace of what I otherwise consider a flying coffin. It's a feature that's become more common & more popular as the game has evolved into the playerbase it ended to appealing to.

Having a good yaw rate also helps when surveying a planet surface for things of interest too, allowing those less familiar with the flight model (and perhaps less interested in it) to turret the view side to side.

I can still fly more 'plane-like' ships if I want to and the Cobra MkV probably has a better yaw rate than it needs but to be fair the Cobra MkIII yaw rate was unusually poor.

 

[SteveWW57]

I am patient enough to wait to buy the new ships for in game credits rather than ARX. Call me stingy or patient, but I think that I am a bit of both.

Pythons, Kraits and iClippers have been my mining ships to date. With T8s now available for credits I have bought them for hauling and was pleased. I bought another and rigged it for laser mining and it took a couple of tries to get a set up that I am comfortable with. A class 2 and 2 class 1 mining lasers, 2 class 5 collector limpet controllers. Not built for speed running laser mining, but has just shy of 200 tons capacity. I had to sacrifice the auto dock and keep the SC assist. Even though the others ships are "better", I think the T8 will be my miner of choice going forward.

Once I can get my hands on to Cobra V, this may well become my first choice small ship.

 

[Riverside]

I am patient enough to wait to buy the new ships for in game credits rather than ARX. Call me stingy or patient, but I think that I am a bit of both.

Pythons, Kraits and iClippers have been my mining ships to date. With T8s now available for credits I have bought them for hauling and was pleased. I bought another and rigged it for laser mining and it took a couple of tries to get a set up that I am comfortable with. A class 2 and 2 class 1 mining lasers, 2 class 5 collector limpet controllers. Not built for speed running laser mining, but has just shy of 200 tons capacity. I had to sacrifice the auto dock and keep the SC assist. Even though the others ships are "better", I think the T8 will be my miner of choice going forward.

Once I can get my hands on to Cobra V, this may well become my first choice small ship.

I bought the Cobra (and Python MkII) with ARX earned from playing the game. I was happy to wait for the others until I dock again & buy them in-game & kinda wish I'd done the same with the Python MkII (it was the first ARX ship & I wanted to try out SCO but I don't have much use for a medium pad combat ship out in the black).

But The Cobra is one I figured I could outfit from modules stored on my carrier (I caniballised a Cobra MkIV & Asp Scout for some parts) & I'm glad I did. It's a great ship, a small pad explorer with a better top speed & jump range than my existing Cobra MkIII & good for exibio landings in rough terrain so unlike the others I can put it to use immediately.

The deploy to current location is good for me too being on a carrier miles from any shipyard where I could buy these ships.

If you're considering the CobraV all I can say is it's worth it.

 

[Dormant account - pls delete]

Legacy ships have essentially dampened yaw input.

Yes. For reasons I mentioned in my comment. But also because the ships just don't have the same thrust vectoring capabilities for yaw that they do for pitch.

If pitch, yaw, roll are mostly the same acceleration and rate, then a natural preference won't exist.

There will still be a natural behaviour for a given ship if the flight model was rewritten and ships were redesigned to respect classical mechanics and actual rocket engineering. That is what I was pushing back on (if you will pardon the mild play on words on the Third Law). There's no ship in the current game which would have equal rates of pitch, roll, and yaw in that scenario. Everything else you're saying flows from the assumption that there would be equal rates, and it's a bad assumption.

By your own argument, roll can be used to compensate (which is what many learn in fairly short order) so I am not even sure what the argument is even about at this point.

Either you are arguing that ships should have symmetrical control authority, in which case my pushback is that all you're doing there is introducing a different unrealistic thing. Or you agree that roll can be used to compensate in which case you surely have no issue with the current flight model either. Your other objection was about combat and you didn't answer my question about what different you think it would make to combat anyway, so I am still unsure what your point was there.

New ships with better yaw doesn't really change the paradigm, so much as just makes them a bit nicer to fly.

It does change the paradigm. I fully respect your opinion that changing the paradigm is OK, and I've just realised this could make the Mk V awesome for core mining. I'm happy for us to agree that changing the paradigm is OK and I'm being an old lore-first fuddy-duddy. I'm not happy to agree that it's not a change. Because it is a change.

My first comment said quite clearly that I felt poor yaw response was an essential part of game lore. If you're not clear that my opinion is, therefore, that poor yaw response is an essential part of game lore, I don't think that's a me thing tbh.

It will just always be a bit weird to me to complain a ship flies nice and that is somehow wrong.

OK but it's a bit weird to me that people still think ten years in that ED is intended to be Space Engineers or even intended to be as it was in Frontier (game) or FFE.

I suppose my actual issue is it feels a bit weird for FDev to change their minds about that 10 years in and that's what led to me wanging on about lore.

By all means add a ship which is a bit closer to spherical and that can vector the main engines significantly on the yaw axis and we'll talk about this new world of the Mk V generation what can do six DOF like a helicopter. But "here you go, this one does yaw better even though it looks like and is built like lots of the previous gen ships" has a bit of a storytelling smell to it.

As for the idea it's generically weird for a human to complain about things being better, I dunno man, have you met people who own sportscar with "character?"

 

[Dormant account - pls delete]

You know you can put a SCO drive on the other ships, right?

Yes, and when you use it super-close to the surface, as soon as you can after undercarriage up, it's heckin' dangerous because there is a planet there to wobble into. Less wobble, less danger of rapid unplanned lithobraking. So again the advantage especially applies when planet-hopping.

But yes, only when doing that one specific playstyle, so I agree if you're doing DBX type gameloops and playstyles it's not a killer advantage.

Then again I don't think it was me saying everything is ruined forever so I'm not entirely sure you've quoted the right person here...