"The game should teach you how to play the way I say. That's the problem, people can do what they want..."
Nerf the FDL for pvp’s sake
- Thread starter Cmdr Jim S Walter
- Start date
"The game should teach you how to play the way I say. That's the problem, people can do what they want..."
Honestly, the agility and high skill ceiling needed to get the most out of that agility are great. There's definitely a place for something like that in the game.I am going to guess that the majority of people who dislike the FDL fly mostly in Open Space and fly mostly FA ON. Those of us who "worship" the FDL in contrast, fly mostly fa OFF and have done a great deal of fighting within dense asteroid fields, i.e. organized PvP. I want to emphasize WITHIN the rings. The best pilots will force attackers to stay within the rings because of the lethality of rocks at upwards of 550m/s. Lesser pilots, especially under pressure will flee to above the asteroid field. Dense rocks also make FA OFF almost a requirement because of the increased maneuverability and turn rate. Below is a video of perhaps the best pilot in game evading a hard two man focus using fixed rapid fire multicannons in a meta fdl.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-ym15piiss&feature=emb_logo
It requires tens if not hundreds of hours flying the FDL to be considered "dangerous" in organized PvP, mostly because of the necessity of FA off. Yamato, of the above video, probably has thousands of hours invested. There are exceptions, but most of us who love the FDL have spent hundreds of hours practicing it because the challenge of controlling the FDL is so engaging and satisfying.
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The thing is, it's a fast and agile heavy fighter and it has a huge shield multiplier and more utility slots than anything else in its class and shield booster engineering is wildly overpowered. Underneath its shields it isn't actually too bad - I've never particularly heard of it being an overpowered contender in a hulltank match. I could be wrong though!
Kinda the problem is that in one particular sphere, people can't do what they want unless they want an FDL.
The FDL needs a lot of time spent flying it to fly it well - and a huge amount of time to fly as well as in the video! (I'm mediocre even after flying it for many hours - but massively improved over where I started)
As a PvE player I'll take every Mj of shield and every ounce of hull & module reinforcement available into a Med or High CZ, even in a FDL, as I intend to win - even against the Spec Ops ships, so, naturally, I'd prefer to keep the ship's strengths as they were when I started playing, rather than have it hobbled because... reasons...
The flame is strong to this one, Obi Wan.
This is all part of the Meta effect. People don;t see alternatives because an unknowable force drives them into the same ship as everyone else. I blame gaming.
I got beat by a Commander in an FdL, it must have been the FdL...
People keeps saying "it's just the Meta" but that kinda isn't the problem. The problem is that the meta is degenerate, there isn't a counterpick to the FDL because there isn't a functional counter to high agility and the counter to shields isn't effective enough. (Not as effective as module targeting is at countering high hull, at least).
It has been written...
FDL is OP, but my main issue is the horrible looking cockpit. I bought and sold my FDL a while back.
Instead of nerfing it, I suggest making the cockpit even uglier.
Add another asymmetric crossbar, and maybe some high pitched whining engine noise.... something that sounds like my expression when I see my 20th FDL gankwagon in an open CG.
Instead of nerfing it, I suggest making the cockpit even uglier.
Add another asymmetric crossbar, and maybe some high pitched whining engine noise.... something that sounds like my expression when I see my 20th FDL gankwagon in an open CG.
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Make the pilot sit backwards. That’ll learn ‘em!
And remove 2 of its utility slots. (Do the same for the mamba.) Make them have to chose between shield boosters, heat sinks, and chaff like everyone else.
LOL
exactly: put a class 5 pp and remove 2 utility slots. the same for the Mamba.
currently im learning PvP combat, especially using plasma, anyway need TOOOO MUCH time pull down FdL shields, for its agility and its base shields + utilities slots.
an example of BUILD with a nerfed and rebalanced FdL, same modules, but less shields:
FDL CLASSIC META BUILD https://edsy.org/s/viPSrRu
FDL NERFED BUILD https://edsy.org/s/vYdVI3U
same weapons, same modules and engineering only less shields, and one SB alternating with the other with different eng (specialised). will be also slightly fast and with improved jump range, thanks to minor mass.
honestly I only see benefits for the game combat mechanics.
my 2 cents.
I think the real answer to the ongoing buff/nerf cycle is that blowing up should be more painful... it's not realistic that insurance rebuys your old ship EXACTLY how it was with all the engineering. There should also be some supply limitations, the ship should be initially replaced with a stock one at the nearest station where it is actually sold, and then you have to rebuild it yourself by getting the modules..etc and refiting it (cost can be covered by insurance at least, re-engineering can be with zero material cost but you have to go through it again). Your insurance will make you whole again, but not just with a simple click. You have to do some work. This will limit meta ships somewhat because it won't be so quick anymore. Right now there is almost no penalty to blowing up, especially if you have billions of credits. I've seen people self destruct just because it's a quicker way to get back to the station and repair.
ugh... necro. should have checked the date.
Come join a wingfight in San Tu, get first focused and you'll see if it actually takes too much time to lose your shield, LMAO
'Specialised' is an SCB blueprint and it's not really working in PvP (it's too easy to cancel because it's slow).
You wouldn't survive for more than a minute in your nerfed build in a wingfight against opponents who know how to do damage.
Potential damage output is pretty high.
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Sorry, but that's a stupid idea.
In organic PvP it's nearly impossible to lose a ship if you know what you are doing, so only noobs would suffer as a consequence.
At the same time it would make organized PvP unnecessarily painful.
How would it work? Half the team dies in a league fight, next round next week after a grind wall or what?
Getting good takes a lot of rebuys.
IMHO to encourage open play and PvP what could be a real game changer is the contrary of what we have now in the game (and which has somehow implemented in "legs"): nothing is lost on a rebuy apart the cost of the insurance and merits held (for the sake of powerplay PvP lol).
Cargo, mission hauling have to receive insurance coverage as well for a fraction of their value.
Explo data, bounties, these will not be lost as saved somewhere in the ejected escape pod.
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It's not all that bad because with pinned blueprints you can re-engineer a ship pretty fast, only needing to visit bases for the added experimental things. Note your insurance would cover your materials too, so no real grind is required it just makes you go through the motions of re-engineering the modules, much more realistic than the current instant recreation of your ship.
I hadn't really considered organized PvP, but keep in mind everyone would be in the same situation, so the average combatant would no longer be a fully min/max meta ship anymore, there would be a mix of rebuys with slightly lesser stats depending on how much time participants want to spend fixing their ship. In my mind this would make PvP more interesting because it would be more varied vs everyone just having the best of the best all the time. I acknowledge this is not how it works now and likely would be extremely negatively received by that community though, probably ruin the whole thing actually, so ya.... stupid idea to actually do this, but just wish it had been more like this from the start.
You think it would be fun to repeatedly visit a dozen engineers to reengineer a crapload of modules this many times?
Obviously.
It's not fun to do organized fights in unengineered or otherwise handicapped builds. There are specific, agreed upon build restrictions in certain tournaments, but the purpose of these rules are always to make the fights more balanced and/or more fun, not the opposite. It already takes quite a lot of time to set up the instance thanks to the tons of bugs affecting instancing, and the first focused person usually spends much less time actually fighting (=having fun) than he does while waiting for all the others to gather. It would be utterly unacceptable and pointless to have to spend many more minutes/hours to visit a dozen engineers after every single rebuy screen.
It's quite apparent that you have probably never participated in organized wingfights, so here's an example:
That was a 4v5 in which 8 out of the 9 participants died, but once the fight was over we could do another one in a couple of minutes.
You cannot seriously think that it would be a good idea to force 8 people leave the system after every single fight for an hour to get back their feedback rails, drag drives and whatnot.
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