Dear all,
I have been fairly active talking about the diamondback, and find that I am repeating myself a lot, so I thought I would give feedback on this ship as a "serious explorer." I will also address some of the common arguments I hear in one place, to avoid repetition.
What we know: the diamondback is listed as a dual purpose combat/explorer ship. This post is about the exploration role of the diamondback, not the combat role. I am not a serious combat pilot and I have no feedback to give about that. I am not going to list full stats of the diamondback here, as they are not all relevant for exploration. I am not going to talk about how well the diamondback flies or fights, or how good its hardpoint placement is. None of that is currently relevant for exploration.
The stats of the diamondback that are relevant for exploration in the current game are these: 170 T hull mass, a class 4 FSD, a 16T fuel tank, three size 3 internal compartments, and one size 1 internal compartment. Stripped down, the diamondback gets about 29 ly jumps. It looks like it will cost about 500-550k.
The feedback itself:
The diamondback has good supercruise turning speed, and reasonable jump range for its price point. Those are good things for exploration. The diamondback has two major problems, however:
My proposed fix:
The point of these fixes is to make the diamondback a better explorer without making it stronger for either trade or combat.
Frequently heard arguments:
"Why are you so negative about the diamondback, it's a great little combat ship."
I have no problems with the diamondback combat performance. I am not a combat pilot, and cannot evaluate the ship competently myself, but from everything I heard it is a great ship for combat. But it is not billed as a combat ship, it is billed as a dual purpose combat/explorer ship. It is quite bad for exploration, as discussed above. My feedback is meant to improve the exploration aspect of this ship while keeping it as good at combat as it is now.
"Stats and efficiency do not matter for exploration as they do for trading or combat."
I disagree with you. If stats like jump range or fuel scooping speed really didn't matter for explorers, they would fit 1E FSD and 1E scoop. Obviously almost no one does this, so people do value things like jump range and scooping speed. Maybe some people stop caring about such things past a certain point, but at this point we are just arguing how much of a stat is "good enough." This is a matter of opinion. In fact, the base stats of the diamondback make it objectively worse as an explorer ship than the adder, a ship that costs 40k, or a type 6, a pure trader ship. This indicates to me that explorer stats on the diamondback (an ship with an explicit explorer role that costs about 500k) are undertuned.
"Maybe the diamondback is not meant as an either or combat/explorer, but for hybrid combat exploration gameplay."
Maybe... and this kind of hybrid gameplay is not unheard of. For example, piracy is a kind of hybrid trader/combat gameplay style. A pirate needs both good guns for an alpha strike to intimidate traders into compliance, but also a lot of cargo room for loot! Similarly, one could imagine a hybrid combat exploration gameplay style, maybe hunting thargoids in deep space. But:
(a) This gameplay style is currently not supported by the game. It would be silly for the devs to add a ship to support a non-existent playstyle, and more importantly,
(b) Even if such a gameplay style did exist, the diamondback would be poorly suited for it anyways. This is because you need module room to fit everything for a hybrid playstyle, and module room is precisely what the diamondback lacks. For example, the FDL is a bad trader -- it doesn't have the cargo room. This also makes FDL not a top choice for piracy, despite its combat power. If the FDL lacks cargo room, it will certainly lack room for BOTH cargo and combat stuff a pirate needs. Pirates prefer asps, clippers and pythons -- ships that make good traders but also good combat ships.
Similarly, explorers want to fit sensors, scoop, AFMUs -- the kind of stuff combat players do not care about. Combat players want to fit good shields, good weapons, maybe cells and boosters -- the kind of stuff explorers do not care about. If you are going to have a hybrid playstyle, you will need room for all that stuff together. The diamondback already lacks room for pure exploration gameplay style, exploraton/combat hybrid gameplay style would be even worse.
"You just want the diamondback to replace the asp."
I admit, I do want a better explorer ship than the asp. There are only two ships in the game at the moment listed as explorer ships: adder and asp, and many many many more combat ships. There is no python/fdl or even clipper/type 7 price range explorer. This is unfortunate, but obviously the diamondback is not going to be an asp replacement, and that is not the goal of my changes.
I want the diamondback to be a better explorer than the adder (a ship that costs 40k, an order of magnitude less than the diamondback), or a lakon type 6 (a ship with a price in the same ballpark as the diamondback, but which is listed as a pure trader ship). I think that is a reasonable goal. My suggested changes above will do precisely that.
"Stop whining."
I am giving feedback to help improve the game for explorers. If you don't like the tone of my posts, that's fine, you don't have to read them.
"Why do you think explorers need an AFMU, I went to Sag A* and back without one and was fine. Why do you think explorers need shields, I went back from a long trip and avoided interdictions. Why do you think explorers need really good scooping speed, I explore in an asp with a 3A scoop and that speed is plenty for me."
You can avoid needing to use an AFMU if you are a good pilot and careful, even on long trips. But AFMUs are still great to have if you run into bad luck, or make a mistake. Some people make more mistakes than others. It is pretty obvious AFMUs are a very good thing to bring along on very long trips. You may recall that Erimus' extended trip to the far rim of the galaxy completely trashed his ship. I am sure AFMUs would have been very helpful for him!
Interdictions are based on luck. It is possible to get severely trashed by a powerful NPC ship on the way back to civilization. Some explorers do not run with shields, especially those in powerful ships with good armor, like the anaconda. But the diamondback is small, and can take a lot of damage quickly if you are not careful. Shields are often a fairly standard part of explorer builds.
Scooping speed does not matter much if you scan a lot, because it only accounts for a small part of your overall time spent in a system. But sometimes you want to quickly travel from point A to point B (perhaps because you want to spacehonk, or get to a neutron star field, or you are doing a Buckyball run, or you want to explore a particular arm of the galaxy like in one of Erimus' videos). If you want to travel, an undersized scoop _severely_ nerfs your travel speed. The diamondback is likely the slowest buckyball runner in the game, which is silly for a ship dubbed an explorer.
edit: Apparently the diamondback is not an explorer after all. Quoth newsletter #77:
"The Diamondback Scout is Lakon Spaceways’ attempt to repeat the success of the Asp range at a medium price point. The result was a combat capable ship with good jump capability and was pitched as a light long range reconnaissance ship. After the ship’s maiden flight it was criticized for not having the same versatility as the Asp, but it has seen modest success in the long range reconnaissance, long range interceptor and fast picket ship roles for organisations not able or willing to invest in the heavy price tag of the Asp."
That's a legitimate response, although I have to wonder -- why are there so many trader and combat ships, but only two "official" explorer ships? Yes, I realize the Anaconda is also a great explorer, ship, but really it's just an expensive all-rounder. Exploration is one of the three "officially sanctioned" playstyles in Elite: Dangerous, with its own rank progression. But exploration does not seem to have a ton of ship diversity.
Another slight irony with this response is that my view of a "scout ship" is that of a ship that is speedy, and can travel quickly between many systems to deliver messages and find threats. The diamondback is certainly speedy and maneuverable, but is _terrible_ at quick travel across many systems, for reasons detailed above. The empire's offering, the courier, remains far better as both a scout and an explorer.
I have been fairly active talking about the diamondback, and find that I am repeating myself a lot, so I thought I would give feedback on this ship as a "serious explorer." I will also address some of the common arguments I hear in one place, to avoid repetition.
What we know: the diamondback is listed as a dual purpose combat/explorer ship. This post is about the exploration role of the diamondback, not the combat role. I am not a serious combat pilot and I have no feedback to give about that. I am not going to list full stats of the diamondback here, as they are not all relevant for exploration. I am not going to talk about how well the diamondback flies or fights, or how good its hardpoint placement is. None of that is currently relevant for exploration.
The stats of the diamondback that are relevant for exploration in the current game are these: 170 T hull mass, a class 4 FSD, a 16T fuel tank, three size 3 internal compartments, and one size 1 internal compartment. Stripped down, the diamondback gets about 29 ly jumps. It looks like it will cost about 500-550k.
The feedback itself:
The diamondback has good supercruise turning speed, and reasonable jump range for its price point. Those are good things for exploration. The diamondback has two major problems, however:
- It is the only ship in the game that fits an undersized fuel scoop for its FSD class. Because the largest internal compartment the diamondback can fit is a size 3, the best scoop it can fit is a 3A scoop. A 3A scoop fills a 16T tank in 90 seconds, which is a very long time. A 3A scoop fills the tank after one max range jump (which will take 3T fuel in a 4A FSD) in about 16.5 seconds. This is nearly three times as long as a type 6. Scooping is a very common activity that all explorers do constantly. No other explorer ship (asp or adder) or indeed any multipurpose or even trade or combat ship suffers from this limitation. An undersized scoop severely slows down the travel rate of the diamondback, and while some explorers do not care about that, many do.
- The diamondback has four internal compartments total. All serious explorers will fit two sensors and a scoop in their internal compartments. That means there is only one slot left over to pick either a shield to help with possible interdictions on the way to and from civilized space, or an AFMU, not both. The only ships with this limitation in the game are the sidewinder and the hauler, both extremely cheap vessels. Even the adder, an exploration vessel that costs 40k, an order of magnitude less than the diamondback, has five internal compartments.
My proposed fix:
The point of these fixes is to make the diamondback a better explorer without making it stronger for either trade or combat.
- Replace a size 2 internal compartment by two size 1 compartments. Explorers like sensors and sensors are size 1 modules. This change allows the diamondback to have dedicated sensor slots while giving it room for both an AFMU and shields. It does not make it a better combat ship (because there aren't critical modules that can go into those compartments) or a better trader (because the overall cargo capacity remains as low as before). This is a buff that will immensely help exploration and leave everything else the same.
- Move one size 3 internal compartment to size 4, and nerf the shield hull coefficient. The diamondback needs the right sized scoop for a 16T tank, and the right sized scoop needs a size 4 compartment. However, size 4 compartments can mount size 4 shields, which might make the diamondback shields too good for a ship its size and price. But we know that there is a ship-specific coefficient that governs the strength of shields independently of shield size (we know this because python shields were nerfed before by tweaking this coefficient). I suggest a similar nerf for the diamondback to go along with this change, such that the overall shield strength of the ship stays as it is now. The result will be an enormous buff to scooping speed, the same combat performance, and a small improvement to cargo capacity (but the diamondback cargo capacity will remain quite low compared to the cobra, for example).
Frequently heard arguments:
"Why are you so negative about the diamondback, it's a great little combat ship."
I have no problems with the diamondback combat performance. I am not a combat pilot, and cannot evaluate the ship competently myself, but from everything I heard it is a great ship for combat. But it is not billed as a combat ship, it is billed as a dual purpose combat/explorer ship. It is quite bad for exploration, as discussed above. My feedback is meant to improve the exploration aspect of this ship while keeping it as good at combat as it is now.
"Stats and efficiency do not matter for exploration as they do for trading or combat."
I disagree with you. If stats like jump range or fuel scooping speed really didn't matter for explorers, they would fit 1E FSD and 1E scoop. Obviously almost no one does this, so people do value things like jump range and scooping speed. Maybe some people stop caring about such things past a certain point, but at this point we are just arguing how much of a stat is "good enough." This is a matter of opinion. In fact, the base stats of the diamondback make it objectively worse as an explorer ship than the adder, a ship that costs 40k, or a type 6, a pure trader ship. This indicates to me that explorer stats on the diamondback (an ship with an explicit explorer role that costs about 500k) are undertuned.
"Maybe the diamondback is not meant as an either or combat/explorer, but for hybrid combat exploration gameplay."
Maybe... and this kind of hybrid gameplay is not unheard of. For example, piracy is a kind of hybrid trader/combat gameplay style. A pirate needs both good guns for an alpha strike to intimidate traders into compliance, but also a lot of cargo room for loot! Similarly, one could imagine a hybrid combat exploration gameplay style, maybe hunting thargoids in deep space. But:
(a) This gameplay style is currently not supported by the game. It would be silly for the devs to add a ship to support a non-existent playstyle, and more importantly,
(b) Even if such a gameplay style did exist, the diamondback would be poorly suited for it anyways. This is because you need module room to fit everything for a hybrid playstyle, and module room is precisely what the diamondback lacks. For example, the FDL is a bad trader -- it doesn't have the cargo room. This also makes FDL not a top choice for piracy, despite its combat power. If the FDL lacks cargo room, it will certainly lack room for BOTH cargo and combat stuff a pirate needs. Pirates prefer asps, clippers and pythons -- ships that make good traders but also good combat ships.
Similarly, explorers want to fit sensors, scoop, AFMUs -- the kind of stuff combat players do not care about. Combat players want to fit good shields, good weapons, maybe cells and boosters -- the kind of stuff explorers do not care about. If you are going to have a hybrid playstyle, you will need room for all that stuff together. The diamondback already lacks room for pure exploration gameplay style, exploraton/combat hybrid gameplay style would be even worse.
"You just want the diamondback to replace the asp."
I admit, I do want a better explorer ship than the asp. There are only two ships in the game at the moment listed as explorer ships: adder and asp, and many many many more combat ships. There is no python/fdl or even clipper/type 7 price range explorer. This is unfortunate, but obviously the diamondback is not going to be an asp replacement, and that is not the goal of my changes.
I want the diamondback to be a better explorer than the adder (a ship that costs 40k, an order of magnitude less than the diamondback), or a lakon type 6 (a ship with a price in the same ballpark as the diamondback, but which is listed as a pure trader ship). I think that is a reasonable goal. My suggested changes above will do precisely that.
"Stop whining."
I am giving feedback to help improve the game for explorers. If you don't like the tone of my posts, that's fine, you don't have to read them.
"Why do you think explorers need an AFMU, I went to Sag A* and back without one and was fine. Why do you think explorers need shields, I went back from a long trip and avoided interdictions. Why do you think explorers need really good scooping speed, I explore in an asp with a 3A scoop and that speed is plenty for me."
You can avoid needing to use an AFMU if you are a good pilot and careful, even on long trips. But AFMUs are still great to have if you run into bad luck, or make a mistake. Some people make more mistakes than others. It is pretty obvious AFMUs are a very good thing to bring along on very long trips. You may recall that Erimus' extended trip to the far rim of the galaxy completely trashed his ship. I am sure AFMUs would have been very helpful for him!
Interdictions are based on luck. It is possible to get severely trashed by a powerful NPC ship on the way back to civilization. Some explorers do not run with shields, especially those in powerful ships with good armor, like the anaconda. But the diamondback is small, and can take a lot of damage quickly if you are not careful. Shields are often a fairly standard part of explorer builds.
Scooping speed does not matter much if you scan a lot, because it only accounts for a small part of your overall time spent in a system. But sometimes you want to quickly travel from point A to point B (perhaps because you want to spacehonk, or get to a neutron star field, or you are doing a Buckyball run, or you want to explore a particular arm of the galaxy like in one of Erimus' videos). If you want to travel, an undersized scoop _severely_ nerfs your travel speed. The diamondback is likely the slowest buckyball runner in the game, which is silly for a ship dubbed an explorer.
edit: Apparently the diamondback is not an explorer after all. Quoth newsletter #77:
"The Diamondback Scout is Lakon Spaceways’ attempt to repeat the success of the Asp range at a medium price point. The result was a combat capable ship with good jump capability and was pitched as a light long range reconnaissance ship. After the ship’s maiden flight it was criticized for not having the same versatility as the Asp, but it has seen modest success in the long range reconnaissance, long range interceptor and fast picket ship roles for organisations not able or willing to invest in the heavy price tag of the Asp."
That's a legitimate response, although I have to wonder -- why are there so many trader and combat ships, but only two "official" explorer ships? Yes, I realize the Anaconda is also a great explorer, ship, but really it's just an expensive all-rounder. Exploration is one of the three "officially sanctioned" playstyles in Elite: Dangerous, with its own rank progression. But exploration does not seem to have a ton of ship diversity.
Another slight irony with this response is that my view of a "scout ship" is that of a ship that is speedy, and can travel quickly between many systems to deliver messages and find threats. The diamondback is certainly speedy and maneuverable, but is _terrible_ at quick travel across many systems, for reasons detailed above. The empire's offering, the courier, remains far better as both a scout and an explorer.
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