Ship class balancing...

[iiMStevo]

The use of Small class ships is practically minimal. As soon as you get out of the starting blocks and up to your first Medium, you rarely go back (in b4 "I have a small ship I use all the time").

Is it not possible for FDev to create a solution to this by providing improved Small ships with better modules that can actually compete with larger ships. I mean, if you look at actual ships (in the Navy), you've got Aircraft Carriers, and their biggest weakness is typically a Destroyer class vessel, which is tiny in comparison. Yet in Elite Dangerous if you're in a small ship, you can never beat a bigger ship if you're equals as pilots (in b4 "I beat Anacondas in a Sidewinder all the time")... please understand this is about an equal footing - so two mirrored pilots fighting each other, one in a Sidey, the other in a 'Conda... the 'Conda wins every single fight.

What I'm suggesting is FDev create a ship something like the following (Comparison with Cobra Mk3):

(click left picture to show bigger picture)

So basically, you're getting about 50% more in the ship, compact into a Small frame, for about 2539%~ of the price. The cost is huge, but the trade off should be good enough that players would be able to utilise Small ships like this again instead of everyone just using Large/Medium ships.

Likewise, there really should be a better balance of ships among the financial timeline for players. Why isn't the T9 more easily available to newer players? Aside from it's storage capacity, it's a pretty terrible ship. A lot of newer players really can't get involved in anything other than Trading as the financial investment required isn't available to them and the return off the early trips is minimal in comparison to what's actually required.

Really, what I'm looking for is a "Grade" aspect to be assigned to Ship Classes.

You get a certain Size module, and then it it Graded based on it's performance... surely this should also apply to Ship Classes, where for example a T9 could be considering a D-C Grade Large vessel. Great storage, terrible handling, speed and jump-range and requires heavily engineering to make it worthwhile. A ship similar to the Hauler could be your Grade E Medium Ship available early on - gaining storage space while sacrificing hull strength, speed, handling etc. We'd need Grade A, B, C (+ D?) Small ships creating and adding in. Medium Class ships are pretty well balanced from E-A, and Large Ships are basically non-existant aside from at the A Grade end and T9 really shouldn't be considered that high up on the scales, so there'd need to be E, D, C (+B?) Large ships to be created too.

Now you could then say "Well what stops you from fitting the same modules in a Grade A ship to a Grade E ship?". The honest answer would be the Size compartments for modules would be what prevents that. So your E Grade ships should typically have poor Powerplant capacity, so even if you had the Grade A modules, you wouldn't be able to power any of them since a 1A Powerplant wouldn't be able to run a 4A FSD etc... The ships would also be categorised based on Weight, Turning Speed, Mass, Hull density etc... So if you spent say 3,000,000 Cr on a Large E Ship (Lets call it a T3 for example), the T3 would be a heavy, bulky, ship with low Hull strength, and slow movement. The jump range would be limited to 8/9 Ly, and the fuel supply would be enough to do around 3 or 4 jumps. Making it an ideal starter ship for new players to do short-distance hauling.
However, you wouldn't want to utilise the T3 for a long-distance mission, since you'd have to stop and refuel every couple of jumps. You also wouldn't use it for mining, since the low hull strength could be catastrophic when navigating an asteroid field.

 

[Captain Jack Sparrow]

First off, not everyone uses medium or large ships. Secondly, small ships should not be able to beat a larger ship with equal pilots. Absolutely not. You're basically asking to make a golf cart compete with a Ferrari, bad idea. What would be the point of buying ships in this game if they were all equal? Why would I spend 1 billion to buy and outfit a cutter if an eagle could take it down? And the large ships already handle worse than small ships and there are also plenty of pilots who fly combat in Couriers and Vipers due to their speed and small profile. Just no.

 

[dm06]

Another idea: you told about grade. The money is nothing in the game and just because they have no price actually. Instead I suggest such ships to be very not comfortable for casual players: like no target lock, only fixed weapons, only fa off, only 1 km sensor and whatever else which prove that this player's grade worths the ship.

 

[Ethaidan]

So, you want a small ship with the same firepower, shield, PP, and thrusters, but a bigger FSD than a Krait Phantom and twice the optional internal capacity of other small ships... that's not a small ship, that's a medium.

 

[Chaparral]

Small ships remain "entry level" ships based on cost (engineering mats included). I would like to see variants like an eagle with a single large hardpoint, or something truly divergent in the distant future like smalls that latch on for boarding, or serve as anchors for wing piracy purposes. Otherwise, they're ok for now.

 

[Auronio]

OP - NO!

I would rather compare small with a speedboat and large with a battle cruiser.
No way - assuming normal circumstances - would and should a speedboat resemble a serious threat to a battle cruiser.

 

[deleteduser]

Just. Get. A. Bigger. Ship.

 

[iiMStevo]

So, you want a small ship with the same firepower, shield, PP, and thrusters, but a bigger FSD than a Krait Phantom and twice the optional internal capacity of other small ships... that's not a small ship, that's a medium.

I mean it was just an example... however, the cost is vastly outweighed. Krait Phantom being 37M Cr, and the ship I put in there being worth 95M Cr. The Krait Phantom being a larger ship, weighing more and jumping less distance as a result.
What limits players at the start is the price, it isn't engineering mats, or skill - It's simply money which is only earned by time-invested because you can't earn 15M Cr an hour when you're only in a Sidewinder. With time comes bigger ships, and more income... but what's the point in having Small class vessels when 99% of people you encounter are flying Large or the heavy Medium ships, because literally everyone has already done that grind at least once in their time playing the game?

First off, not everyone uses medium or large ships. Secondly, small ships should not be able to beat a larger ship with equal pilots. Absolutely not. You're basically asking to make a golf cart compete with a Ferrari, bad idea. What would be the point of buying ships in this game if they were all equal? Why would I spend 1 billion to buy and outfit a cutter if an eagle could take it down? And the large ships already handle worse than small ships and there are also plenty of pilots who fly combat in Couriers and Vipers due to their speed and small profile. Just no.

That's the point, the ships wouldn't be equal. If I took an A-Grade Small Fighter to your E-Grade Large Freighter, you should bet your bottom that I expect the Small Ship to win in combat... and I've not mentioned that someone would jump in an Eagle and take down a Cutter.
Maybe I just fly in the wrong part of space, but the only people I ever encounter are in Medium/Large ships fully engineered. I'm yet to see anyone rock up in a Small ship and take down any of the Large vessels.

Also, the credit balance becomes irrelevant when the entirety of it is just a grind. Why grind for 1bn Cr to spend on a Cutter just because it's the best thing you can build up when you can do the same thing in a Sidewinder? You grind that 1bn Cr out because you want to be indestructible in comparison to other ships... and that reward is literally exclusive to Large ships. Yet in real life, just because it's bigger, it doesn't mean it's better.

Small ships remain "entry level" ships based on cost (engineering mats included). I would like to see variants like an eagle with a single large hardpoint, or something truly divergent in the distant future like smalls that latch on for boarding, or serve as anchors for wing piracy purposes. Otherwise, they're ok for now.

Yes, literally anything like this. Weapons typically are the problem with Small Ships because they can't put out enough firepower to dent a Large ship's shield, let alone take it down and then reduce the massive hull to 0%.

OP - NO!

I would rather compare small with a speedboat and large with a battle cruiser.
No way - assuming normal circumstances - would and should a speedboat resemble a serious threat to a battle cruiser.

...but why have you picked a Speedboat, and why is that analogy acceptable? You've just underlined and bolded the problem I'm trying to get people to see. Flying a small ship, is like rocking up to a tank with a Pea-Shooter, when you fly up against 99% of the player-base flying about in fully engineered Large ships. There is absolutely no balance across the ship classes.

 

[CMDR Big Mike]

I’d be ok with the small ships being faster and more manuverable. I don’t agree with just pumping up the health pool on them. Large ships are much easier to hit in the game, which adds some balance to the higher HP and damage output.

I think it’s rightfully the case that you can solo a ship that is one size up. A small can take out a medium, a medium can take out a large, and it takes multiple smalls to take out a large.

 

[Azmuth Divarchchron]

back in the day i used cobras to take down greifing anaconda pilots all the time.
If you really want a small ship that preforms well get a cobra, its the best heavy fighter in the game, it also trumps the vulture and the viper.

small ships are fine the way they are now.

and we dont need more powerful trollwinders in the game either.

Bigger ships are SUPPOSED to be better than smaller vessels, thats just how the world works.
This is a game where it attempts to be very scientifically accurate. having a side winder take down a fully engineered anaconda would not be scientifically accurate at all.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

you can't earn 15M Cr an hour when you're only in a Sidewinder.

Exploration scanning and mapping pays pretty much the same no matter what ship you do it in, and can get that high if you optimise it.

But you don't need to earn 15MCr/hour in a Sidewinder - if you earn a million, you can buy a decent Cobra III (still small!) and earn 15 MCr/hour in that instead. I think it's fine for the Sidewinder to be a "starter ship" and not something most pilots spend their entire career in.

because you want to be indestructible in comparison to other ships... and that reward is literally exclusive to Large ships.

My FDL is only medium-sized and is basically indestructible: there's a reason the FDL, not any of the big 3, is the most popular PvP ship. For different reasons, my Viper III racer would be very difficult for most ships to actually kill.

Maybe I just fly in the wrong part of space, but the only people I ever encounter are in Medium/Large ships fully engineered.

Small ships definitely have their niches.
- they're extremely fast, especially the Viper III down which can fit enhanced drives
- they can land basically anywhere
- they have excellent supercruise agility

They make excellent salvage, surface, racing, courier and exploration ships. I'd like to see Frontier make some more of those niches - missions with extremely tight timers where supercruise agility, normal-space speed, and not having to waste ten minutes finding a large enough flat bit of land are crucial, for example.



And I get what you're saying about ship grades - though the T-7 is already a Large cargo hauler (it's only out-hauled in raw tonnage by other much more expensive large ships) with little else to recommend it other than being cheap ... while the Vulture is a Small combat ship with more firepower than some mediums ... so there is a bit of that already - but if Frontier had made the game that way we'd just be talking about how "E-grade ships are pointless" rather than "small ships are pointless". If everyone's flying an A-grade ship, what does it actually matter (a few minor questions aside) what size the hull is?

 

[MK Regular]

And I get what you're saying about ship grades - though the T-7 is already a Large cargo hauler (it's only out-hauled in raw tonnage by other much more expensive large ships) with little else to recommend it other than being cheap ... while the Vulture is a Small combat ship with more firepower than some mediums ... so there is a bit of that already - but if Frontier had made the game that way we'd just be talking about how "E-grade ships are pointless" rather than "small ships are pointless". If everyone's flying an A-grade ship, what does it actually matter (a few minor questions aside) what size the hull is?

This really. There is some overlap between the capabilities of the various sizes of ships (small ships that are better than mediums, mediums that are better than larges, etc...) and this is almost entirely based on the price of each individual ship. More expensive ships are generally more capable, but also tend to be larger to have room for said capability. For this reason, small ships are typically the starter ships, and "high-end small ship" is a bit of an oxymoron. All this suggestion seeks to do is move the "starter ship" category from being almost exclusively small ships to being exclusively E and D rated ships. This does not seem like a worthwhile use of FDev's time when you consider how little impact it would have on the overall game and the amount of dev work required to get it to work. Of course this assumes that the suggested rework is actually somewhat logical, which it really isn't.

A good example of why the rework doesn't make sense is the Cobra III setup that OP gave. There is no way a Cobra III frame should be able to fit multiple size 6 components (even if it was designed by a Tetris grandmaster) simply because the internal volume required does not exist. Having such large modules on a small class ship is physically impossible (it should be worth noting that no small ship has a class 6/7/8 component and no medium ship has a class 8 component, likely due to size limitations). With small ships limited to lower class components, it becomes quite difficult to see how a small ship can have a base price of more than a few million at most.

Now, let's take the other approach that OP gave: limit the size of a specific module (e.g. powerplant) to force the use of lower grade modules. This simply is not possible with existing ships. If the modules on a given ship can go up to a certain size, I can guarantee you that most people using that ship have a module of that maximum size mounted. If a maximum module size of several popular ships was reduced, nearly every single account in the game would need to be manually updated. FDev has ~100 staff working on ED and have sold over 3 million copies of ED as of last month. Each staff member would need to manually update 30,000 accounts, which would take around 14 and a half months if each staff member took 5 minutes per account and worked 40 hours a week. Effectively, every single staff member would need to stop all work on anything that wasn't manually updating accounts for the next 14-15 months. During this time there would be no dev support, no updates, no bugfixes, and you wouldn't be able to play the game because the servers would be down the whole time while the changes are implemented.

This whole suggestion seems a bit over-complicated and unnecessary to me. If you want to make extremely expensive small ships relevant in the late game, maybe consider using high-performance modules that are only available in smaller sizes, as this is exactly what the enhanced thrusters did (although not quite to the degree OP seems to want).

 

[Misty_Dark]

Well if you want to make small ships more useful, lets remove the medium landing pad from small outposts. So that they only have small landing pad/pads.

Now we have instantly created a niche for the use of small ships. Where small ships is the only option to go to these places.



Now they are no longer simply stepping stones for bigger ships, they also have their very own use cases. And missions going there could be paying equally good as similar mission to go to an outpost with medium pad. If only small ships can go there, it will cost more to transport stuff, as there is more limited space on the ship, hence higher price.



And for combat, they are not bad, and here Vulture and Imperial Courier stands out as being very competent, despite being small ships.

 

[trollson]

No point trying to match small ships vs big ships - trying to create such a balance would be farcical.

What you may be looking for is a reason to use small ships instead of larger ones. So look for scenarios where a small ship should have an intrinsic advantage - its not all about combat or capacity. For instance, smuggling use to be a small ship scenario (but not sure if this is still true?).


To deviate slightly - I have suggested in the past that the ship hull should affect the performance of modules. So military modules work better in military hulls, cargo modules in transporter hulls, etc. This doesn't mean the headline properties - a 32 tonne cargo module will always hold 32 tonnes - but rather derived properties and effect on ship performance - heat, flight characteristics, energy consumption, passenger happiness, etc.

 

[iiMStevo]

A good example of why the rework doesn't make sense is the Cobra III setup that OP gave. There is no way a Cobra III frame should be able to fit multiple size 6 components (even if it was designed by a Tetris grandmaster) simply because the internal volume required does not exist. Having such large modules on a small class ship is physically impossible (it should be worth noting that no small ship has a class 6/7/8 component and no medium ship has a class 8 component, likely due to size limitations). With small ships limited to lower class components, it becomes quite difficult to see how a small ship can have a base price of more than a few million at most.

This is the bit I have issue with.
So each slot is essentially a designated amount of "space" inside the ship... now, you can take a highly complicated piece of equipment, the FSD, and engineer it so that it performs completely differently than what it intended to do.... but you can't knock through a wall in a ship to extend an area so that you can fit a larger module instead?

What if you take out the 5, 3, and 3 optional modules (from the new spec ship), and transfer that combination across to the optional modules in the existing Cobra Mk3... and you have less available storage, but you've got "9" module space free... so with just that, you'd be able to make space for most of the core internals already specified.

Components aren't just a case of "they're bigger"... they're far more powerful too. I like the Cobra Mk3 too, but unengineered, it's like using a pea-shooter against most medium and large ships... you can barely survive anything. I'm not the greatest fighter at the moment, but if I can't use a ship to fight in and learn to fight, then I'm never going to get any better at it. Mostly, they have to hit me 2-3 times, and my shields are gone, and my hull is half way gone. I have to hit them about 30-50 times, just to pop their shields - it just doesn't feel balanced to me.



That said, I'm happy to concede it's a bit of a flawed concept.
The grade system was so that there'd be more of a balance for players working their way up, but it only really benefits new players, and all old players would still use A grade ships.

 

[iiMStevo]

No point trying to match small ships vs big ships - trying to create such a balance would be farcical.

What you may be looking for is a reason to use small ships instead of larger ones. So look for scenarios where a small ship should have an intrinsic advantage - its not all about combat or capacity. For instance, smuggling use to be a small ship scenario (but not sure if this is still true?).


To deviate slightly - I have suggested in the past that the ship hull should affect the performance of modules. So military modules work better in military hulls, cargo modules in transporter hulls, etc. This doesn't mean the headline properties - a 32 tonne cargo module will always hold 32 tonnes - but rather derived properties and effect on ship performance - heat, flight characteristics, energy consumption, passenger happiness, etc.

I quite like that concept.

 

[MK Regular]

Sorry for the incoming wall of text. I got carried away.

This is the bit I have issue with.
So each slot is essentially a designated amount of "space" inside the ship... now, you can take a highly complicated piece of equipment, the FSD, and engineer it so that it performs completely differently than what it intended to do.... but you can't knock through a wall in a ship to extend an area so that you can fit a larger module instead?

What if you take out the 5, 3, and 3 optional modules (from the new spec ship), and transfer that combination across to the optional modules in the existing Cobra Mk3... and you have less available storage, but you've got "9" module space free... so with just that, you'd be able to make space for most of the core internals already specified.

The misleading thing about module class is that their size progression is exponential rather than linear. The approximate size of a component can be described as 2^class, meaning that a class 1 component has a size of 2 units, a class 2 has a size of 4 units, a class 3 has a size of 8 units, etc.... (basically, it follows the pattern of cargo rack capacity). Therefore, the difference between a class 5 and a class 6 component is 4 times larger than the difference between a class 3 and a class 4 component. Finding the internal volume of a ship is not as simple as just adding up the classes of all of the module slots, you actually need to find the sum of 2^class of all of the module slots. For example, a Cobra III has:

• Class 4 components: 4 core, 3 optional 7 x 2^4 = 112
• Class 3 components: 3 core 3 x 2^3 = 24
• Class 2 components: 3 optional 3 x 2^2 = 12

For a total of 148 units of volume (not including hardpoints).

Yes, you could theoretically knock out a few bulkheads and put in bigger modules, but you have a few limitations:

• Total module volume cannot exceed 148 units
• You need thrusters that are at least class 4 (class 3 don't have high enough optimal mass)
• You need a size 4 FSD if you want to jump more than about 7 ly

This is of course assuming that the modules can be squeezed into any available space as long as there is sufficient volume (which is probably not the case). Now, if we change the optional modules of a Cobra III to a 5-3-3 combination, we got from using 60 units of volume to 48 units of volume, giving us a total of 12 units that can be used to increase the size of our core modules. What can we do with 12 units of volume? Not much. We can't upgrade any of our class 4 modules to class 5 since that would require 16 units of volume, but we could upgrade one of our class 3 modules (like the power distributor) to class 4 and still have 4 units of volume left over. Optionally, if we were to downgrade one of our class 3s (probably sensors) to a class 2, we would have just enough extra volume to upgrade exactly ONE of our class 4s to a class 5. I would say our best option here would be to upgrade the thrusters, which would insure that we can get to our maximum speed and boost of 325/464 (470/672 engineered) even when fully loaded.

Again, it is not possible to get the core internals you want on the frame of a Cobra III, there just isn't enough internal volume to accommodate the modules.

Components aren't just a case of "they're bigger"... they're far more powerful too.

Most modules actually have a better mass-performance ratio in smaller sizes. For example, a 7A power plant has a mass of 40 tons and generates 30MW of power, while a 4A power plant has a mass of 5 tons (1/8 that of the 7A) and generates 15.6MW of power (a little over 1/2 that of the 7A). The 4A is effectively 4 times more mass efficient than the 7A. Most modules follow this general trend, with increasing sizes giving diminishing returns (in some cases like thrusters and shield generators, exponentially diminishing based on ship/hull mass). The reason why larger modules seem far more powerful than their smaller counterparts is because the ships that can mount the larger modules have better base stats. Compare a 4A shield generator mounted on a Cobra III vs Anaconda. On the Cobra III a 4A shield generator gives 124MJ of shield, while on an Anaconda the exact same shield generator gives 327MJ of shield, despite the conda being both bigger and having a heavier hull (both of which should negatively affect the strength of a shield).

Yeah, I can't think of an in-universe reason behind it either. "Game balance" I guess.

I like the Cobra Mk3 too, but unengineered, it's like using a pea-shooter against most medium and large ships... you can barely survive anything. I'm not the greatest fighter at the moment, but if I can't use a ship to fight in and learn to fight, then I'm never going to get any better at it. Mostly, they have to hit me 2-3 times, and my shields are gone, and my hull is half way gone. I have to hit them about 30-50 times, just to pop their shields - it just doesn't feel balanced to me.

This sounds to me like you immediately tried to practice combat in a haz res or against other players. Quite frankly, this is like teaching a kid to swim by tossing them into the deep end of the pool. High/medium/low res and nav beacons are far better places to learn combat when you are new to the game. As for the whole "able to take 2-3 hits" thing you're experiencing, are you sure you have your ship set up for combat? There's not much you can do about the shields without engineers or tech brokers, but you should still have quite a bit of hull left if you have military bulkheads and load up on HRPs.

As for having to hit larger ships an proportionately excessive number of times, yeah not much that can be done here without making weapons that can individually one-shot beginner ships and melt most stock ships in seconds. As someone who has done combat in small ships against larger ships (both engineered and not), I know how this feels. It takes a bit of practice (and a lot of patience) to cut through a NPC conda's shields with small beam lasers, but it is doable. Quite often it will take so long that the cops will show up (even in low security systems) and will help you take down the target (having a few vipers adds quite a bit of firepower and gives you several nice distractions). There's not much that can be done here without nerfing larger ships into the ground or decreasing ttk on squishier ships to unacceptably low levels (if you thought ganking and seal clubbing was bad now....).

The grade system was so that there'd be more of a balance for players working their way up, but it only really benefits new players, and all old players would still use A grade ships.

Essentially, yes. That said, I would like to see something where small ships are just as useful to old players as they are to new players. The way I see it, there are a few distinct ways to increase the usefulness of small ships to veteran players:

1. Introduce new mission types that favoured smaller, faster ships,
2. Change the game mechanics to give small ships some inherent advantages such as lower detectability (this would be tricky, but would be nice if done correctly)
3. Small pad outposts with high-paying missions (I don't like the idea as it seems too much like an artificial restriction, but this could potentially do the trick)
4. High-performance modules only available in smaller sizes a la enhanced thrusters (shamelessly ripped off from RamirezKurita in posts 17 and 22 of this thread)

Which route FDev will ultimately take (if they do at all) remains to be seen, although personally I would prefer options 1 and 4

 

[Misty_Dark]

Most modules actually have a better mass-performance ratio in smaller sizes. For example, a 7A power plant has a mass of 40 tons and generates 30MW of power, while a 4A power plant has a mass of 5 tons (1/8 that of the 7A) and generates 15.6MW of power (a little over 1/2 that of the 7A). The 4A is effectively 4 times more mass efficient than the 7A. Most modules follow this general trend, with increasing sizes giving diminishing returns (in some cases like thrusters and shield generators, exponentially diminishing based on ship/hull mass). The reason why larger modules seem far more powerful than their smaller counterparts is because the ships that can mount the larger modules have better base stats. Compare a 4A shield generator mounted on a Cobra III vs Anaconda. On the Cobra III a 4A shield generator gives 124MJ of shield, while on an Anaconda the exact same shield generator gives 327MJ of shield, despite the conda being both bigger and having a heavier hull (both of which should negatively affect the strength of a shield).

Yeah, I can't think of an in-universe reason behind it either. "Game balance" I guess.

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.

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.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Good post.

Optionally, if we were to downgrade one of our class 3s (probably sensors) to a class 2

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

 

[iiMStevo]

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.