Ramius007 and I just conducted our seeker tests, three of them actually.
The shieldless FAS I was using has already been posted and was using dual focused large TLB PAs and dual LR plasma slug railguns for weapons; any changes will be noted below.
Ramius was using a hybrid Cobra III with dual PAs and dual high-cap seekers (one of them drag).
The results:
- First test with the baseline loadout went pretty poorly for me. Ultimately, the single PDT was not able to reliably counter dual seekers and because the FAS' utilities are in close proximity to it's weapons, ensuring the PDT has a clear line of fire means that anything that does get through hits the guns. While the MRPs held, thanks to the AFMU, the damage resistance they provided to the externals (42%) was insufficient to keep my weapons functioning for the duration. By 50-60% hull I was missing one of each weapon and suffering frequent malfunctions on the rest. By 30-40% hull all of my weapons were completely destroyed.
- For the second test, I decided to swap out the top PA for a screening shell frag, in order to see if that could be used to knock out the incoming volleys of seekers. I knew I wouldn't be able to target them fast enough, but I was hoping simply rotating and spraying fragments in their direction would be useful. It was not. This was the shortest of the tests as I called it after only a few minutes when the frag was the first module I lost, leaving me with just a less useful clone of the first setup. The screening shell performance was disappointing, but wasn't that much of a surprise...anyone using it is using it for it's off-label boost to DPS.
- For the last test, I wanted to simulate emissive as well as one PDT per seeker rack. So, I never engaged silent running and did not deploy any heatsinks while taking a second PDT alongside the first. This resulted in a much better showing. A few seekers still made it through, but I was able to knock out enough of them to keep my weapons intact long enough to make it clear that the FAS would eventually win this engagement. Ramius lost canopy around 30% hull and I was interrupting his synthesis often enough to matter. Still, my weapons were taking a fair amount of damage and if the fight had lasted too much longer there would have been problems.
Ultimately, it appears that to be viable in an engagement where one adopts an aggressive stance and actually tries to fight, a sheildless FAS will need at least one PDT per seeker rack employed against it, and probably more if Packhounds are thrown in the mix. A full missile boat or a wing with more than a few seekers would chew up the ship pretty quickly, unless it does nothing other than try to evade missiles. A hybrid FAS might do a bit better, but given the limited number of utilities the ship has and it's generally low shield pool, it's still a niche vessel.
My original premise that one PDT can counter one seeker rack seems to hold, even for the FAS, but it is admittedly difficult to leverage while still pressing the attack. On the other hand, I still have no intentions of using a loadout like this in general/organic PvP because I think it's a lemon, and it's relative vulnerability to seekers is no small part of that.
I also completely agree with Ramius et al that effects like emissive and abilities like synthesis are too potent, as well as with the general consensus of most PvP oriented players that gameplay in general is slanted too heavily in favor of shielding.
Someone who is a better FAS pilot than I (and I can think of several, @PeLucheuh comes to mind) might be able to bend this a bit with better tactics and aim, but most just don't use the ship for engagements where there are likely to be loads of seekers and most inexperienced FAS users are just going to get all their weapons destroyed in short order.
Anyway, I'd like to thank Ramius007 for the tests; I'm sure he'll be around to offer his perspective and correct any omissions I may have made. I'll link a video of the last test as I think that's the most interesting one, maybe Ramius could show the others.
@TEBORI if this derailment of your thread is problematic, let me know and I'll have this discussion moved to a new one.
Only if you already have at least one other MRP, preferably two. An AFMU is an MRP supplement; it repairs MRPs at ten times standard rates and can be used to add thousands of effective integrity to an MRP over the course of a fight, provided you don't explode first. You can usually downsize your largest MRP by one class if you have an AFMU, but you still need a decent MRP pool to buffer high-alpha module damage and give you time to initiate repairs (repair pauses after the MRP is full).
The shieldless FAS I was using has already been posted and was using dual focused large TLB PAs and dual LR plasma slug railguns for weapons; any changes will be noted below.
Ramius was using a hybrid Cobra III with dual PAs and dual high-cap seekers (one of them drag).
The results:
- First test with the baseline loadout went pretty poorly for me. Ultimately, the single PDT was not able to reliably counter dual seekers and because the FAS' utilities are in close proximity to it's weapons, ensuring the PDT has a clear line of fire means that anything that does get through hits the guns. While the MRPs held, thanks to the AFMU, the damage resistance they provided to the externals (42%) was insufficient to keep my weapons functioning for the duration. By 50-60% hull I was missing one of each weapon and suffering frequent malfunctions on the rest. By 30-40% hull all of my weapons were completely destroyed.
- For the second test, I decided to swap out the top PA for a screening shell frag, in order to see if that could be used to knock out the incoming volleys of seekers. I knew I wouldn't be able to target them fast enough, but I was hoping simply rotating and spraying fragments in their direction would be useful. It was not. This was the shortest of the tests as I called it after only a few minutes when the frag was the first module I lost, leaving me with just a less useful clone of the first setup. The screening shell performance was disappointing, but wasn't that much of a surprise...anyone using it is using it for it's off-label boost to DPS.
- For the last test, I wanted to simulate emissive as well as one PDT per seeker rack. So, I never engaged silent running and did not deploy any heatsinks while taking a second PDT alongside the first. This resulted in a much better showing. A few seekers still made it through, but I was able to knock out enough of them to keep my weapons intact long enough to make it clear that the FAS would eventually win this engagement. Ramius lost canopy around 30% hull and I was interrupting his synthesis often enough to matter. Still, my weapons were taking a fair amount of damage and if the fight had lasted too much longer there would have been problems.
Ultimately, it appears that to be viable in an engagement where one adopts an aggressive stance and actually tries to fight, a sheildless FAS will need at least one PDT per seeker rack employed against it, and probably more if Packhounds are thrown in the mix. A full missile boat or a wing with more than a few seekers would chew up the ship pretty quickly, unless it does nothing other than try to evade missiles. A hybrid FAS might do a bit better, but given the limited number of utilities the ship has and it's generally low shield pool, it's still a niche vessel.
My original premise that one PDT can counter one seeker rack seems to hold, even for the FAS, but it is admittedly difficult to leverage while still pressing the attack. On the other hand, I still have no intentions of using a loadout like this in general/organic PvP because I think it's a lemon, and it's relative vulnerability to seekers is no small part of that.
I also completely agree with Ramius et al that effects like emissive and abilities like synthesis are too potent, as well as with the general consensus of most PvP oriented players that gameplay in general is slanted too heavily in favor of shielding.
Someone who is a better FAS pilot than I (and I can think of several, @PeLucheuh comes to mind) might be able to bend this a bit with better tactics and aim, but most just don't use the ship for engagements where there are likely to be loads of seekers and most inexperienced FAS users are just going to get all their weapons destroyed in short order.
Anyway, I'd like to thank Ramius007 for the tests; I'm sure he'll be around to offer his perspective and correct any omissions I may have made. I'll link a video of the last test as I think that's the most interesting one, maybe Ramius could show the others.
@TEBORI if this derailment of your thread is problematic, let me know and I'll have this discussion moved to a new one.
Only if you already have at least one other MRP, preferably two. An AFMU is an MRP supplement; it repairs MRPs at ten times standard rates and can be used to add thousands of effective integrity to an MRP over the course of a fight, provided you don't explode first. You can usually downsize your largest MRP by one class if you have an AFMU, but you still need a decent MRP pool to buffer high-alpha module damage and give you time to initiate repairs (repair pauses after the MRP is full).
Last edited:
