PvP The death of the FAS\FDS? A outsiders observation into post 3.0 PvP

[CMDR Plexus Ironrot]

As PvP has evolved and changed over the updates and as new ships come out the PvP meta shifts (tho not far). Some ships rise to prominence like the Frag Mamba that is favored by CMDRS as its a killing machine with low draw weapons that don't require much aiming and do a ton of DPS accompanied by its speed and sheer shield volume making it a great ramming ship for that large absolute damage that was once supplied by PA's now can be done with a few well placed rams and frags. The Chieftain (and to a lesser extent the Kraits) taking up the Bi-weave hybrids with 300 plus shields with sub 45 second regeneration on average with 3-5k hulls making them quite the beast. The Chieftain being notable for its excellent TOT ability! All this while other ships like the FAS and FDS fall by the wayside not favored because its overall low survivability for low\mid skill pilots most opting for Shield stacking or Speed (in my case). Also with the introduction of Night Vision the hybrid or hull tanks ace is now rendered useless to anyone mildly decent with hit scan. Hybrid ships have a much lower survival rate due to the sheer number of counters while there is few for the shield stacked ships. For a long time now the FDL has reined supreme as the PvP vessel of choice. Rightly so as its a wonderfully maneuverable vessel and it being a shield tank and being able to stack shields with little to no side effects after engineering giving it a far greater HP pool then even the strongest hull tank. Some FDLS and Mambas have so much shielding that 400pas (that is 4 pas all rounds) can sometimes not do enough DPS to deplete the shield health pool this is stuff you run into with Cutters..... tho only a few good volleys and rams can deplete 4k hull HP in no time. This makes it where you rarely see Hybrids in PvP anymore. This also is compounded in wing combat as once again a Hybrid can't compete at low\mid tier skill level in wing combat due to the amount of counters and overall lower HP pools. Shield stacking is the way to go in PvP and its honestly been going that way for a while. Post 3.0 has really cemented that as its so much easier to make more and more MJ to add to that already unbalanced HP pool. Now you rarely see a Hybrid like a FAS or even more rare a FDS heck I have not seen many chiefs as of late with the whole Mamba craze. Even the Kraits are shield stacking (I am guilty of this) due to you can be more tanky with the shielding then the bi-weave counterpart. I miss the days of the FAS being ran in all sorts of PvP encounters and small silent ships prowling cgs hunting down that unsuspecting vet...

These are my observations and are my opinions on this. I have walked away from the modern PvP as its basically forcing you into a FDL or Mamba at this point if you want to be competitive and the FAS was my ship of choice in PvP. I hope that someday FDEV revisits this and looks into how this is effecting ships. I know people will disagree with me and most likely tell me that I am wrong and I don't know what I am talking about and that is fine because these are facts and this is merely my observations on the facts and my opinions on it. Yes there is great hybrid pilots out there many are in this forum right now! Just saying for the entry\low\mid tier CMDRs these ships that used to be used in a viable play style has now been rendered subpar due to all of the changes. Hybrid combat is a playstyle not just a ship build. It is a entirely different animal that at one point was on par with its shield brother but now it pales in comparison to the Shield Tank!!

Cheers
Plexus

 

[Screemonster]

It'd be neat if the amount of protection a shield offered scaled with its integrity after a while, so a damaged shield generator allowed damage to bleed through, combined with some chance for the shield generator to lose integrity from a particularly concentrated attack, ie. if you take more than a certain amount of damage in a certain timeframe.
Alternatively, if all damage sources had a chance of bypassing shields to a degree, especially at low pips / sys charge (just make phase sequence weapons considerably better at it)

 

[cmdr Ramius007]

FAS is half of kraits, FDL or Mamba rebuy, and have a lot better jump range than last 2, it would make game very unbalanced if it would provide same combat performance, and i say this as long FAS pilot. Dropship was always meme PvP ship, nothing changed here, of course in right hands or with counter build it can beat higher tier ships, FAS and alliance ships are perfectly balanced, better firepower and shield regen traded for speed and vulnerable drives. As for shield META, 2 days ago i had FAS duel in expansion, i was flying rather original light bi-weave shield tank build with fuel scoop, guardian FSD, and 2 large SCB, base shields were strong about 800MJ from 3 guardian shield boosters with good 2 boosters resistances, opponent was flying shield-less hammers+PA build and was experienced pvp-er. I don't consider myself to be a better pilot. Outcome was he barely hi-waked with 5% hull left, so shield tank variant was able to overcome 2 internals sacrificed for non-combat equipment, also some of my banks get cascaded! Biggest difference is not bigger number of counters vs hull-tanks, but shield resistance gain from sys pips, this is what actually beat hybrid or hull tanking builds + microgimbal module snipes from OP rail-guns.
I found ramming absolute damage to be quite an issue(but perfectly balanced in non-engineered realm), first i lost 900 armour(or more) on my FAS vs SINGLE vulture ram, i thought it's a bug, then came this fight Mamba vs FAS, where i lost half of 4000 armour in 2 rams, so now i know 1 thing, there is no something like good hull-tank ram, fighting shield tanks, ramming must be avoided to have any chance in a fight.

 

[Voracity_T]

Shield stacking is for scrubs imo. If you need multiple gigajoules of shield (which is already a constantly regenerating barrier preventing any module/hull damage) you're crutching on broken game mechanics. None likes to hear that, but at this point it is the truth,

"Skill boosters" have that name because of the now utterly stupid levels of shield they permit. Pre 3.0 a FAS had for example, a favourable matchup against most, if not all ships, now it's pretty much dead by the wayside because people only follow the meta. I made a post not long ago about MJ stacking on the FDL and some very high tier PvPers we're even on side that shield stacking has gone WAY to far. But then there as also people trying (Badly) to justfiy mediums ike the FDL getting 3.5kMJ with most of that able to be regened with banks. (Excuse me whilst I vomit in my mouth a little).

Noone particularly liked the random outcome engineers but at least it was still within a somewhat sensible boundary most of the time. Now it's just ALL the boosters, ALL the banks, ALL the high power weapon loadouts and ALL the thruster buffs. On ships like the FDL/Mamba which barely need to comprimise this is utterly disgusting.

I will link a video of a prismatic FDL smashing several biweave ships with no reloads and no docking if it's needed.

Personally I'm getting very sick of the endless FDL/Mamba thing. FDev for the love of F, nerf boosters into the dirt. FDL's should be good if the pilot is exeptionally good with thier evasion skills, they should not be good in a one size fits all situation. Nerfing boosters will not change it's mark as top tier PvP ship either, it will remain on top for the good players, probably still by a large margin, but it should be brought back around to realistic levels so other ships can still compete without ultra specific loadouts.

o7. Do something about it!

 

[cmdr Ramius007]

This is pre engineers era shield tank FDL build, there are sacrifices to be made, we don't have hard hitting energy weapons cause of power constraints, alternative is hybrid setup with 2 maybe 3 rail guns, it's balanced tough, FDL still have better laterals, boost, more utilities and better placement of those, as well as better firepower traded for worse internals of comparable ships, but in all it's still better ship, just not as tanky as anaconda

 

[Krash]

I would be happy if FDEV scrapped SCBs

 

[Bigmaec]

I would be happy if we get a complete rebalance.

At this point everyone screams "nerf shield boosters" "nerf night vision" "packhounds are cancer" "seekers are for scrubs" "gimbals are for scrubs" bla bla bla.
Without a complete rebalance there always will be things more easy to use then others, hell propably even after a complete rebalance it would take a day max for a new Meta to arrive.

And as long as there are legacy PAs and other shenanigans running around, I happily use skill boosters to push my absolute mj to 3000+ in my FdLs thank you very much

edit: I totally love the FAS and FDS, but as OP says there is no incentive to fly one. Chief is the better FAS, everything is the better FDS nowadays

 

[Voracity_T]

...everything is the better FDS nowadays

Hush up you, the FDS is badass.

 

[Krash]

Hush up you, the FDS is badass.

I don't remember ever seeing a FDS in PvP, but I still see a lot of FAS's

 

[cmdr Ramius007]

I would be happy if FDEV scrapped SCBs

They are scrapped on big ships in 1vs3 like fights, all unbalance come from engineers, 1vs1 vs anything without feedback cascade cutter have extra 9000MJ from SCB's(c8+2xc6) on top of 7k MJ base, but in 1vs3 he loses most of his scb's, we have most OP effect on most OP base weapon, remove boosters stacking and overcharged power plants, we have better flight sim, but maybe not necessarily better game for most casual players. Without engineers same cutter have same banks, but must manually turn it on because of power constrains and base shield are much worse, also need some point defence to fight after shields drop, and no booster stacking make sense, cause of power limitations. If engineers give 75% bonuses it's gross already, but shield booster give over 300% improvement over a rated boosters, how can we call something like this??? How on earth this can be considered to not make any unbalance by anybody sane!? HD boosters try to balance unbalanced feedback cascade and dispersal+TLB(even after nerf it's still valid) vs big ships, on mediums it's just cancer that enforces synthesis against 4000MJ FDL's or 3000MJ bi-weaves tanks.

 

[Krash]

They are scrapped on big ships in 1vs3 like fights, all unbalance come from engineers, 1vs1 vs anything without feedback cascade cutter have extra 9000MJ from SCB's(c8+2xc6) on top of 7k MJ base, but in 1vs3 he loses most of his scb's, we have most OP effect on most OP base weapon, remove boosters stacking and overcharged power plants, we have better flight sim, but maybe not necessarily better game for most casual players. Without engineers same cutter have same banks, but must manually turn it on because of power constrains and base shield are much worse, also need some point defence to fight after shields drop, and no booster stacking make sense, cause of power limitations. If engineers give 75% bonuses it's gross already, but shield booster give over 300% improvement over a rated boosters, how can we call something like this??? How on earth this can be considered to not make any unbalance by anybody sane!? HD boosters try to balance unbalanced feedback cascade and dispersal+TLB(even after nerf it's still valid) vs big ships, on mediums it's just cancer that enforces synthesis against 4000MJ FDL's or 3000MJ bi-weaves tanks.

Baby steps. Imagine the galaxy without SCB, how will that change things?

 

[Webgear]

Do something about it!

They have. It's called Reverb Torpedoes. Check out my videos showing how the shield stackers run away (FDLs, Corvettes, etc doesn't matter, they all run)

 

[Krash]

They have. It's called Reverb Torpedoes. Check out my videos showing how the shield stackers run away (FDLs, Corvettes, etc doesn't matter, they all run)

Do torps expire after 2 mins? Assuming your prey boosts around until the torps expire then come back at you, then the fun begins?

 

[Webgear]

Do torps expire after 2 mins? Assuming your prey boosts around until the torps expire then come back at you, then the fun begins?

Nothing's 100%, but right now for me it's around 70% success with torps. And yesh, if the player is smart and avoids the torps then it gets interesting. If I interdicted him I'm sort of forced to remain rather than jump away, although TBH sometimes I book. If I'm the interdictee then I'm under no obligation to remain, so Bye Bye!

 

[Kyle Stryker]

The question is how to balance shield tanks without completely screwing over the people who have invest large amounts of time engineering shield boosters (SB) and guardian shield reinforcements (GSR). I believe the answer is to have both negatively affect ship’s heat management. My thinking is if you have more than two or three SBs and/or GSRs you would seriously cook your ship with sustained weapons fire or FSD charging. If this was implemented, after the patch CMDRs could recycle their SBs to get their credits and materials back for any unwanted SBs they de-mount from their ships.

 

[Bigmaec]

The question is how to balance shield tanks without completely screwing over the people who have invest large amounts of time engineering shield boosters (SB) and guardian shield reinforcements (GSR). I believe the answer is to have both negatively affect ship’s heat management. My thinking is if you have more than two or three SBs and/or GSRs you would seriously cook your ship with sustained weapons fire or FSD charging. If this was implemented, after the patch CMDRs could recycle their SBs to get their credits and materials back for any unwanted SBs they de-mount from their ships.

I have invested A LOT in shield boosters, Inara tells me I have 123 shield boosters engineered, most of them G5 + experimental. And still I say lets rebalance. I don't care about my invested time, I did it for fun and got my fair share of advantage from it. This argument about invested time needs to die in a dumpster fire, or we will never get anything like balance.

 

[Slange Lands]

I have invested A LOT in shield boosters, Inara tells me I have 123 shield boosters engineered, most of them G5 + experimental. And still I say lets rebalance. I don't care about my invested time, I did it for fun and got my fair share of advantage from it. This argument about invested time needs to die in a dumpster fire, or we will never get anything like balance.

123 engineered grade 5 shield boosters?!!!!!
WAT?!
/faint

 

[Feros-da-Grundig]

If anything they're doubling down on shields though. Adding a 5 second arming to mines removes one of the few high-skill counters to a bazillion MJ shield (high skill b/c dive bomb style usage of reverb cascade mines is not easy) .

I wouldn't hold my breath :-(

 

[Krash]

I have invested A LOT in shield boosters, Inara tells me I have 123 shield boosters engineered, most of them G5 + experimental. And still I say lets rebalance. I don't care about my invested time, I did it for fun and got my fair share of advantage from it. This argument about invested time needs to die in a dumpster fire, or we will never get anything like balance.

Suddenly, I don't feel like the inglorious scrublord with my 73 shield boosters. I bow before your majesty.

 

[cmdr Ramius007]

Baby steps. Imagine the galaxy without SCB, how will that change things?

SCB's are just 1/4 of fdl total shield pool, and actually require skill to use, proper timing if base shields have relatively low base compered to scb's or to avoid cascades, SCB create gameplay, boosters stacking takes gameplay away, from what i noticed people on purpose fly 5-6 boosters FDL even if they know that if good pilots with heavy gimbal lodouts interdict them, they are screwed, see some papa lazarou videos of his shiledless chief vs 1 or chaff-less FDL's. If you weaken boosters stacking, either by overheating ship, or increased power cost, it somehow tunnel players to more balanced builds and reduce rock, paper scissor mechanic. Lets take a look on 2 scenarios, a: 5 boosters FDL vs pacifier/PA vulture and 2nd same FDL vs gimbal phasing vulture, outcome of those 2 fights is known before it started. Because of massive shielding and regen rates it's impossible for both ships to win in conventional way, in first scenario vulture pilot is forced to make multiple synthesis to even think about winning, in 2nd evasion and advantage of aimbot+regen don't give much chances to FDL pilot, it will take some time, but at the end he lose, and this is just vulture, it's even more striking for same tier ships. We have arranged PvP of prearranged outcomes.