Ship class balancing...

[MK Regular]

I have one idea on this could be the case. It is all about he how the shield is projected, so to project the shield from the shield generator, we need some sort of emitters, shield emitters.
Shield generators works on creating a field, that is measured in power/area and is regardless of how many shield emitters there are. Call is resonance bonus or something between shield emitters, and stacking shield emitters to close would remove this bonus, so there is an optimum number of shield emitters to place on any given ship, and having to many would create a weaker shield.
So small ships have fewer shield emitters and bigger ships have more.

Since the overall shield strength now comes from how big area your shield has, then on a big ship, your shields is stronger due to a larger area, compared to a smaller ship. And due to different shapes of ships etc, that is why we can see different shield strength due to hull layout, as we might need to use more shield emitters on some ships to get full coverage of the shield, and thus giving us a negative bonus.

Some rambling about tech totally unknown to us, trying to explain things in simple terms. But this could explain the conundrum.

Honestly, your guess is as good as mine. It kinda makes sense (I guess), but we won't really know how accurate it is until FDev goes and explains the various bits and pieces of our ships that are involved.

We also know there are other shield tech being developed, that did have segmented shields that would allow us to focus our shield strength in various segments, but that tech does not appear to be ready for general use.

Interesting, I don't remember anything about that. I'm just wondering how the pilot would get it to work, seeming as they are already so busy. Maybe it would need an additional crew member to use it? I can imagine something along the lines of having the gunner manage it by pointing the guns in the direction of the biggest threat....

As for other shield tech, I remember seeing a suggestion a few weeks ago about a reverse engineered thargoid shield as a tech broker unlock. It would have charges like an SCB, would have no passive regeneration, and would naturally decay over the course of a few minutes. It was quite interesting, although it would probably need some fine tuning to be balanced.

Good post.

Since Sensors and Life Support can't be downsized, I'd view those two as properties of the hull rather than replaceable bits. The sensor modules presumably mostly run around the outside, and the life support spread throughout the interior, rather than being modules where you can move a bulkhead and fit a different size.

Dropping the internals to 5-3-3 in exchange for a class 4 distributor would be very tempting on the Cobra, though - go on, Frontier, give us a Cobra IIIa with that layout

Generally, I don't like to screw with the sizes of sensors and life support on hypothetical ship rebuilds. That said, in this instance I figured downsizing the sensors was the best option since you would not lose much capability and the alternatives were downsizing the life support (you'd be permanantly stuck on emergency oxygen I guess?), having a class 2 distributor (please no), or a 5-3-2 optional internal setup. I hindsight, the 5-3-2 optional internals would probably make more more sense than the downsized sensors.

As for the Cobra IIIa you wanted, you still have 4 free units of volume, enough for another class 2 internal. FDev could potentially sweeten the deal a bit and make the optional internals 5-3-3-2 and still give it the size 4 distributor (4-4-3-3-2 or 5-4-2 would also work) . I wouldn't hold my breath on the extra internal though, they might need to move a few things around and block some of the extra space. Oh well

What about some form of "cloaking" which makes Small ships invisible on Radar if certain conditions are met... a bit like "silent running" but not where your ship decides to massively overheat?
That could become a benefit of using Smaller ships, I.e. you activate the temporary cloaking module as you fly passed a large vessel and due to your agility in turning, the medium vessel may not know which direction to turn and face you giving you a cleaner run at the target on the next pass. So they lose lock, and lose track of you on the radar basically.

Yeah, this could work. It might be a bit overpowered, but it could work. I'd say the main limiting factor of the module would probably be a very limited duration (30 seconds max) followed by a cooldown at least as long as the active time of the module. Perma-stealthing small ships would be exceptionally annoying to play against, so there would need to be at least some period of venerability (or at least some downside like silent running has).

 

[TheMegaTurnip]

I feel that the ship classes are already well balanced in such that they have very clearly defined roles in more or less every sphere.

For instance, you don't engage Vipers and Eagles in turn fights with a Cutter. They'll just run out of ammo and make you look silly.

The small ships I feel are sitting in quite a nice place when it comes to balance, due to them being the starter ships, yes, but also the hardest ships in the game to become truly proficient at flying.
If you see a cmdr at a CG with one of the small vessels, he is either new, and is about to end up very out of his depth, or he is a very skilled pilot. I quite enjoy the rarity of the small ship pilots, because there is very little in the way of PvP thats as exciting as fighting in small ships.

Not to mention, for those of us who are used to them, any buffs are going to make them downright overpowered. FDL's hit hard and they are tanky, but no person is hitting something with any consistencey that never drops its speed below 650 (Viper 3 most notably), what this effectively means is that with their already absurdly high TTK with a good pilot at the helm, they would then have more ability to be out of both reach and range of the reticule in such a short time the things would instantly become the gank ship of choice again. Even given that they have no masslock. That would prove to be a far more annoying thorn in the side of most, than even the meta FDL's are, you can at least, fire back and land hits on those. You will not get that luxury with a super fast accelerating ship that has the profile skinnier than the gap between your hardpoints.

Also, call me an Elitist, but I can't help but feel people should have to earn their wings in small ships. I won't condone making them stupidly overpowered just so joe bloggs is'nt instantly vaporised by the NPC's in the haz res.

 

[CMDR Hagglebeard]

I don't like this at all. How can you possibly stuff the massive high-class modules into a tiny ship? Science/immersion aside, small ships should not be able to match large ships in combat, but instead have entirely different roles that large ships cannot fill.

Smuggling, reconnaissance, escort. Et cetera.

 

[TheMegaTurnip]

I don't like this at all. How can you possibly stuff the massive high-class modules into a tiny ship? Science/immersion aside, small ships should not be able to match large ships in combat, but instead have entirely different roles that large ships cannot fill.

Smuggling, reconnaissance, escort. Et cetera.

Except they can already match the large ships in combat...

Sure, they can't kill them often, but then the opposite is also true.

If a Cutter finds himself with an agressive fighter glued to his buttocks there is seldom little he can do except wake or get severely irritated.

 

[Azmuth Divarchchron]

Ship balance is fine the way it is. Get a cobra if you want a small ship with a ton of defense and firepower.
Alternatively you can get a courier.

 

[CMDR Big Mike]

The only buff I could see is to speed and agility for the higher end small ships. The thing about the small ships is that they are supposed to be used in numbers. Like wolves taking down a moose, they need to work as a team. I think that the ships are balanced really well in this regard

 

[iiMStevo]

Ship balance is fine the way it is. Get a cobra if you want a small ship with a ton of defense and firepower.
Alternatively you can get a courier.

I already have a Cobra mk3... it isn't engineered though. It isn't really that strong, even against most NPCs, by the time I've got the ship turned around with the throttle in the blue zone, I've turned maybe half a second quicker than the enemy ship and this leads to the enemy ship still being able to shoot me as I make my pass. Their weapons > my weapons, their shields > my shields, their hull > my hull... so what exactly does the Cobra mk3 bring to the fight against say a Federal Dropship? That half second of "free" damage becomes null when they still get to shoot. I've watched tutorials on flight, I can't fly without FA yet as I haven't looked into it, but surely not every single pilot on this game flies without FA?

 

[Azmuth Divarchchron]

I already have a Cobra mk3... it isn't engineered though. It isn't really that strong, even against most NPCs, by the time I've got the ship turned around with the throttle in the blue zone, I've turned maybe half a second quicker than the enemy ship and this leads to the enemy ship still being able to shoot me as I make my pass. Their weapons > my weapons, their shields > my shields, their hull > my hull... so what exactly does the Cobra mk3 bring to the fight against say a Federal Dropship? That half second of "free" damage becomes null when they still get to shoot. I've watched tutorials on flight, I can't fly without FA yet as I haven't looked into it, but surely not every single pilot on this game flies without FA?

The cobra can get over 2,600 armor and can sustain 520-600 m/s boost with all heavy duty armor. It also is a silent running beast.
And its low profile makes it hard for people to land rails on you head on.
Ive used it to take on greifing anaconda players before.
It is more than capable of taking on a dropship.

The courier brings speed and sheild to the table. With 760-860 boost depending on how you build it.

So you can have an armor tank fighter and use the cobra or a sheild tank and use the courier.

 

[iiMStevo]

The cobra can get over 2,600 armor and can sustain 520-600 m/s boost with all heavy duty armor. It also is a silent running beast.
And its low profile makes it hard for people to land rails on you head on.
Ive used it to take on greifing anaconda players before.
It is more than capable of taking on a dropship.

The courier brings speed and sheild to the table. With 760-860 boost depending on how you build it.

So you can have an armor tank fighter and use the cobra or a sheild tank and use the courier.

Not an unengineered one though... that's a fully engineered Cobra.

 

[TheMegaTurnip]

Not an unengineered one though... that's a fully engineered Cobra.

Thats largely irrelevant.

All the ships are tripe without engineering. Like all of them, with zero exceptions.

You know that phrase about never going back? Yeah. Engineering in ED is like that.

Please can we stop with "I need an easier life buff this random thing" threads.

Small ships fill a nieche already. Spend some time in them and learn how they work as opposed to complaining you can't get results out of them as many of us can, and it just sounds ridiculous to us.

 

[Azmuth Divarchchron]

Thats largely irrelevant.

All the ships are tripe without engineering. Like all of them, with zero exceptions.

You know that phrase about never going back? Yeah. Engineering in ED is like that.

Please can we stop with "I need an easier life buff this random thing" threads.

Small ships fill a nieche already. Spend some time in them and learn how they work as opposed to complaining you can't get results out of them as many of us can, and it just sounds ridiculous to us.

this^

Engineering is part of the game.

Learn to use it.

and if you are just fighting NPC's a non engineered cobra can get 1900 armor and is more than capable of taking on NPC condas.

 

[TheMegaTurnip]

this^

Engineering is part of the game.

Learn to use it.

and if you are just fighting NPC's a non engineered cobra can get 1900 armor and is more than capable of taking on NPC condas.

Fully. It's a basic requirement at this point in the game to stay relevant.

Fully tarted up smalls are easily capable of TTK timers equal, or higher than FDL's with a decent pilot at the helm.

The biggest edge they have is speed and manuverability, coupled with a tiny hitbox.

Use these things to your advantage and you won't ge shot down.

Also, don't waste your time with shields on small vessels. Protip: The distro's are often too small to allow you to be running Shields AND high damage weapons. Far more effective having that higher hull resistances, as you can properly leverage the speed the ships provide.With the exception of the MKIV Viper. It's slow but it is a serious little tank.