Lightweight and heavy Cruiser debate

[coca_fr]

Anaconda is supposed to be a Lightweight Cruiser and Federal Corvette an heavy one.
Anaconda hull integrity should be a lot lower than now and below Federal Corvette and it's agility better.

Heavy Cruiser should mostly be usable with turrets. Their strength should be in their shield and hull resistance compared to small ships.

Light Cruiser should be really usable with gimballed / fixed weapons but weak when shield is down compared to Heavy Cruiser.
As opposed to Heavy Cruiser that can stand multiples ships attacks at same time, ships like Anaconda are supposed to play a mobile role and retreat as soon as their shield are down.
Therefore Light Cruiser are better used in wings of ships.

If we were to have good wings mechanics gameplay implemented, we could had wars with wings composed of :
- Heavy slow Cruiser that act as turrets defense ships.
- Light agile Cruiser that can make fast stricking attack.
- Fast agile ships/fighters that play harasment and kills others annoying small ships/fighters.

If well balanced it could lead to very interesting battle, moreover if including in Power Play mechanics.

Currently ships are very badly balanced. A light cruiser like Anaconda has more hull integrity than a heavy combat ship like Federal Corvette and is less agile... it should be the reverse.
Beluga Liner is a heavy passenger ship with incredible agility...

Many small ships like FAS can be hull tanked and still be very agile...

Hull tanking should make you slow, heavy and hard to destroy.

Don't you think guys that ED ships should be rebalanced around the concept of light/heavy ship/fighter/cruiser ?

 

[CMDR EDGEL0RD]

If do that then do it with ships which will be released later.
Anaconda atm is an alien technology vessel, which stores part of its mass in parallel dimension.
Corvette is a Vulture on steroids.
And I do personally like them that way.

 

[cool_lad]

Nope; that's not how any ship, much less a spaceship works.

Speed and maneuverability is not simply heavy=slow, light=fast, and that's before taking into account the effect of additional bulkheads and thruster placement.

Anaconda and Corvette are not capital ships; they are small ships, especially when looking at the scale of the game; if you want capital ships, look at the Farragut or the Majestic which are classed as Battlecruisers. Human warfare in Elite is dominated by small ships, with heavy capital ships playing a very minor role in the actual fights themselves.

 

[crushdepth]

The anaconda is a multi-role ship that sometimes gets pressed into service as a military vessel. The corvette is a dedicated warship. I don't see why their stats have to stack up and align.

 

[Harley001]

*AHEM* The Conda, T10 Defender, Cutter, and Federal Corvette are all Corvette class ships. Technically the Anaconda is a large multi purpose ship but can be rigged up for Vette style combat. If you go to the wiki they list all the ship sizes. Cruisers are much bigger. They are half the size of capital ships.

The T9 despite being just as big would be considered the equivalent to a 18 wheel trucker...but in space.

 

[jimmychoosshoes]

light and heavy cruiser normally depicted roles rather than firepower and armament. a heavy cruiser could be armed the same but would have a greater set of roles. it should have longer combat range than a light cruiser.

 

[RamirezKurita]

light and heavy cruiser normally depicted roles rather than firepower and armament. a heavy cruiser could be armed the same but would have a greater set of roles. it should have longer combat range than a light cruiser.

Actually, historically it was actually the armament and not the roles or capability that determined whether a cruiser was a heavy cruiser or a light cruiser. Light cruisers had guns of up to 155mm calibre while heavy cruisers had guns of up to 203mm calibre, which actually meant that some "light" cruisers were significantly larger than some "heavy" cruisers. Interestingly, there was a class of ships in WWII that were changed from light cruisers to heavy cruisers (the Mogami class) simply by swapping out the turrets. Either way, the biggest ships we have in game are small escorts, the smallest actual warships used by their respective navies.

More on topic, I don't believe that restricting entire ship hulls to particular roles would be good for variety as it would mean that only a single ship is good for a certain task - variety is when there are multiple options to achieve the same effect all with their own little spin on it. Rather than saying ship X is heavy and ship Y is light, it would be better to give us more options to customise those ships so that both of them have the option to become either light or heavy ships.

Also, the hull mass of the Anaconda compared to its integrity and its volume has been discussed ad nauseam already, with the general trend being that the Anaconda is too iconic to nerf.