Offensive and defensive inflation hasn't been even across the board. Overall 1v1 TTKs are significantly inflated, because of augmentations to defenses that significantly exceed augmentations to damage, but protection for external modules has not increased to anywhere near the pace of shields, hull, or even internals. Likewise, the prevalence of longer range weapons and the inability to break sensor lock (fight enough people at once and the odds of someone having emissive get pretty damn high) in wing combats means that focus fire is more effective than it was before (more ships can be inside effective sensor and weapons range at any given moment), and further skews things in favor of shield focused setups.
You can take a look at older, pre-Engineer, wing enagements and realize that 1v1 took less time, but wing focus fire, for both shield and hull focused vessels was at least as survivable as it is now, if not more so. In the case of hull focused setups, silent running being able to be used effectively for protracted periods was a major factor in the survivability...it made it very difficult to focus on a target that could be confused with other targets in the area.
The FDL just happens to be the shieldiest medium, with the fewest glaring downsides, and one of the best overall hardpoint layouts available. It's always been a wing favorite because it's advantages are highly synergistic. The Mamba and Phantom are faster though, without sacrificing firepower, and that's a pretty big deal in groups.
As far as missiles go, the problem isn't with them specifically, it's that your externals have twice the effective integrity as before (better hull resistances and an MRP), but your hull may be five times as strong and you may have ten times the total shield pool. Someone evading missiles prior to long range weapons and emissive was also probably evading most other fire...dumping a heatsink and making a run for it, even in a fairly straight line, would keep most keep most kinetics from landing and rapidly get into the drop off ranges of most hitscan weapons. Before Engineers, the longest range any hitscan weapon could go before damage falloff hit was 1km...now a solid two-thirds of rail guns I see and use are LR5, full damage at 6k, which is nuts.
The biggest issues I have with combat in the current game, which hit hull-oriented setups disproportionately hard, are:
- Shields are just too good. No diminishing returns on raw shield strength stacking, and the ability to achieve high all-round resistances, makes shielding more useful than ever, despite the addition of token/niche counters like phasing, flechettes, or reverberating cascade. Any credible counter to shielding started off comically overpowered and was rapidly nerfed into complete uselessness...not that they weren't overly niche anyway.
- Effective weapon ranges are too long, especially for hitscan weapons, most especially for railguns. The microgimbal/snap-to-target effect exacerbates this.
- No counter, no cooldown effects like emissive and corrosive are extremely potent and synergistically reinforce the relative power of the above.
- Increased ammo pools and synthesis make ammo limitations even less of an issue than before in many cases, removing one of the main balance points that had previously limited the utility of weapons like rails and seekers. Other than Engineering itself, synthesis is probably my least favorite addition to the game as it trivializes many loadout trade-offs, general forethought, and discipline, for all kinds of activities, combat and otherwise, replacing them with material farming.
- Stealth was once a potent equalizer in the utility of shield focused vs. hybrid/shieldless vessels, but it was dramatically reduced in effectiveness, both via effects of loadout choices that are heavily incentivized, as well as by radical changes in how weapon thermal load worked, and most recently nightvision. Still has a niche, but outside of ambushing the ignorant and unaware, it's a small one.
, so from start you have like 2 times smaller healthpool. Gap may look smaller than it is because people make mistakes, lack coordination, reconnaissance or battle plan, if this not happen, fight is very fast and can end in 1 way only.
