Honestly the weirdest thing about the FDL getting buffed was that this was during a time when Frontier was especially infamous for its nerf everything, no fun allowed attitude. The FAS used to offer it some decent competition but the original FDL with its class 5 plant, worse handling and heat management was already the meta PVP ship pre-buff. Balance tweaks just seemed to get applied inconsistently. Note that they didn't extend this powerplant buff to the Vulture, another combat specialist released at the same time and similarly power-restricted. Or how they nerfed the Python's shields/speed/handling on the grounds that it was supposed to be a freighter, despite the hardpoints and distributor and its common use as a warship by NPCs suggesting otherwise.
Nerf the FDL for pvp’s sake
- Thread starter Cmdr Jim S Walter
- Start date
I remember only meeting it rarely. Also, the blurb said it could cruise among the stars and had luxury accommodation for rich bounty hunters. Sounds a lot nicer than it is now.Who hated fighting the FDL in the original Elite because of its speed and agility?
I did fight the original FDL in 1984, but I didn't hate it for that.Who hated fighting the FDL in the original Elite because of its speed and agility?
Instead, it became my favourite ship to destroy.
As for the current FDL design, it really doesn't match, because back in the day we were using a Cobra MKIII to destroy it, and that's impossible in today's ED.
In fact, in original Elite you could kill any ship with a Cobra MKIII, and vice-versa.
I think that the usefulness of the small ships is what is missing here.
A trivial issue and one Frontier hasn't had any compunctions about handing down before. ~80% of the modules my CMDR has ever Engineered have been sold back to the station because some balance change rendered them useless or redundant (2.1's heat 'meta' is a good example of this...I had to essentially scrap an entire fleet built to deliver and survive massed thermal shock...which is all fine and good, because it was a silly situation for thermal shock to be the only effect worth having and four to six heatsink launchers being mandatory). Having to roll up a new power plant is hardly a game breaker.
The FDL was more balanced in combat in general, in it's pre-buff state.
If you're talking about PvE, I can frequently take on NPC FDLs with Engineered small ships and not take any damage, and easily dance around them even in a completely unEngineered Viper.
The Cobra III, while less my style is more than capable of beating the snot out of NPC FDLs, even without Engineering.
If you are talking about PvP, well, that's a different matter, but there are still enough inept FDL pilots in circulation to make seeing an FDL CMDR shot down by just about anything common enough.
There is no single NPC ship that cannot be destroyed by any single CMDR ship and no single non-Thargoid/non-ATR NPC that cannot be downed without using Engineering or synthesis.
The FDL seems to be flown today, by avid PvPers, as if it was a small class vessel; exceptionally agile yet, by virtue of being a medium sized vessel, having a massive pool of hitpoints.
Once you knock down the FDL a peg, there's the issues of another medium class ship becoming "the meta".
And no matter what, there'll still be the issue that small ships are generally avoided like the plague because they have no hitpoint pool to survive today's PvP meta, nor the agility you'd expect to evade attacks.
Sucks to be the one in charge of balancing this game!
Once you knock down the FDL a peg, there's the issues of another medium class ship becoming "the meta".
And no matter what, there'll still be the issue that small ships are generally avoided like the plague because they have no hitpoint pool to survive today's PvP meta, nor the agility you'd expect to evade attacks.
Sucks to be the one in charge of balancing this game!
There are ships much stronger than FDL in combat. Many people prefer it, because it’s simply enjoyable to fly, so Zorgon Peterson got it right with FDL. Daily pvp driver needs speed, agility, firepower potential to take on any class, hardpoint versatility - to fine tune the build “on the fly” for specific needs. Minor problem is temporary lack of alternatives in class. Other shipyards need to analyse FDL’s success and release new models to capitalise on the absence of alternatives.
I don't know. I sorta find it useful that the FdL is the "Murder Meta", because it makes it easier for me to IFF in Open. If it's any other ship, I don't really know what they're up to, but if it's an FdL. Might as well rename the ship to "lol git gud scrub" to make it even easier
And also, let's face it, making ship go boom is pretty much the ONLY thing that the FdL is good at (and very good at it too). As somebody who likes to do different things at times without having to visit the garage first, it's pretty useless to me personally.
And also, let's face it, making ship go boom is pretty much the ONLY thing that the FdL is good at (and very good at it too). As somebody who likes to do different things at times without having to visit the garage first, it's pretty useless to me personally.
I don't recall FD ever making a change to a ship which rendered it unflyable to existing owners.
I do; pre engineers FD rolled out a heat/power change to ships whereby my viper (which was fine the day before) exited the station, I deployed h-points, and the ship went dead.
Very much that star wars moment when millenium falcon dies when solo punches the hyperdrive.
A power plant size reduction wouldn't do this.
Worst case scenario, the ship is kicked back to a starport and the existing class six module is automatically stored and replaced with a stock 5E, which has plenty of power for any set of thrusters, FSD, life support, and sensors you can fit in an FDL...meaning it could still fly away to outfit elsewhere.
Ah ha! I don't actually recall FD changing the power plant for the Viper.
Sorry, you took unflyable to mean literally unflyable. I should have said unusuable (for combat - if you want to split hairs). You'd have a hell of a lot of angry FdL owners out there, not just FdL owners.
Hell, i'm not against a good old nerfbat on some ships. But i think this would cause way too much upset for it to be worth it for FD.
I could only see it being worthwhile if FD could come up with a big plan to rebalance things across the board in terms of ships, ship costs, the economy, missions, and, as it is implemented, everyone being given a huge amount of materials to redo their ships how they want to compensate for all the time they will have to spend on redoing their ships.
Because, if they nerf the FdL and nothing else, all that happens is another ship becomes the new meta.
PS: Nerf the Python!
By this standard, Frontier has done this many times before; most significant balance changes do this.
If you rolled back my CMDRs assets, you'd find many vessels that would currently be just as unsuitable to the task they were built for as an FDL with a stock 5E powerplant is to combat...and most of them would be much harder to fix.
if you have "open category" pvp event and 4vs4 consist entirely of FDL's it's kinda obvious it's broken, but i would touch only hard numbers, weaken shield, and get rid of this idiotic 70 armour value, 35-45 sounds better.
Got me! I cannot recall if it was a viper, or vulture.
However, the point stands in that a numbers game change to weapons made my ship crippled until I went back and changed some pieces around.
the rpoblem is not in the FDL. It is preety well ballanced ship for its cost and purpose. the issue is with the engeneering. Engeneering needs to be ballanced and now it is not and is breaking the game. For me engeneering needs to be able to go max 2 levels and experimental effects need to be revised as well. This will help also the guardian midules to be more viable.
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More ships will not solve anything... as the outcome is always the same, as this is a re-occuring theme along all these games, there will be a widespread meta build that the majority of players uses, so if we get a ship that overtake the FDL in being the "best" ship, everyone will start to use this instead, and since this is even more powerful than the FDL, even fewer players will use the other ships. And if the new ship is weaker, then it is a novelty to try it out, and for a short while we have a mix, when players try it out, but pretty soon players are back flying FDL's....
Basically this.
I suppose giving weight to point defense turrets could have stranded somebody if they were incredibly unlucky.
It does seem out of place that this luxury sports car looking ship has a higher toughness than the literal bricks of armour from the Feds and Alliance in the same class.
Guadian modules is still viable, but if you are in the business of best in class or following any meta builds, then of course guardian modules will not be as popular, as engineered modules, since these have higher max values, but require more "rare" material to max out. While a guardian module that is a basically a pre-engineered module that can buy off-the-shelf, is just credtis once you have unlocked them.
Lets say we limit powerplant and power distributors to be max G2, that would basically make guardian modules to be the META. as these for most part of the most popular engineering done to these modules is roughly a G4.
Guardian modules will be better but with not experimental effects and only those two modules. The big difference will come from the shield booster, armor and weapons upgrades that cause the issue with meta builds andballance. Guardian armor reinforcement requires energy.