They should seperate out different types of fighters. What we have now, due to the nature of ED and the authors wanting you to see all the pretty ships, is a huge focus on dogfighting and turn fighting. What should be done at this point, since things are getting weird and way to dizzy, is introduce the American's world war II concept for Zoom and Boom fighters. Beef up the engines on things like the Python, FDL, and Anaconda. Make them the zoom and boom type fighters, they take passes at things, but turn slowly and if improperly positioned can be caught up too and outmaneuvered by more agile craft. Maybe make the power core a little easier to take out, or the drives, so those more agile craft have a specific method with which they can fight back against the tactic.
Drag them onto the same playing field with precise fire. Their turning capacity during boost should also be restricted, to more solidly adapt them to this gameplay style. Instead of a boost increasing their turn speed, their 'zoom' speed locks them in fairly hard to a heading. Giving only enough room to adjust aim on a pass, though a skillful practitioner may set it up with F/A off so they can strafe past sideways raking their target. And be positioned possibly for a quick second pass, though killing inertia too early around something like an Eagle could be a quick problem. But overall the ships need a rebalance to be more well defined into their roles, though with other things I'd advocate more flexibility. All ships should be able to fit, for instance, fuel limpets and cargo limpets are part of their standard equipment. Without sacrificing combat potential.
Eugh, just dipping my head into this makes me want to off and get a spreadsheet and start laying out 'how it should be, maybe, if the community agree's", though I have so little faith in Frontier that I hardly think it even worth doing. That said, I've started pouring through it all anyways right now and I'll probably post it all up a little later.
But yeah, as a few forward thoughts. The Eagle, the Eagle is everybodies interceptor. And A - Class fitted Eagle should be able to catch up to anything, even before the Engineer Upgrades, and only an Engineer upgraded ship should be able to outrun such a standard Eagle. This isn't a highly threatening ship, or a highly desireable ship right now. Lets strengthen its role as in Interceptor and a chaser. And, lets be honest, most ships should be able to deal with a single Eagle, with the exception of pure trade ships. And for other situations its speed and maneuverability would serve much better as a harasser. Don't make a lot of cash being a harasser though, hehe. Unless you're bounty farming and you're just getting your tags in and staying out of the way to make your $$$$. Legitimate but kinda boring, it'd be nice to have a little more punching power. But I'd take just being able to stay on my target.
The Cobra should remain, with the exception of the Eagle, the Lord of its Domain. Its one of the most popular early pirate vessels for a reason. Whatever adjustments needed to keep it in its catagory should be made. However, its more heavily armored cousin needs a little more speed. Or a little more maneuverability. It has neither the ability to chase or run, nor does it fully support the ability to swiftly kill. Its a slightly punch baggier version of the Cobra, that's meant to have more teeth. It'd have more teeth if it still had its speed.
If the Courier and the Dropship are meant to counterbalance eachother, some more balance is needed. The Dropship/Assault Ship those things are the destroyers of worlds. Drop one or two of their weapon slots a size class please, or maybe boost the Courier in some way to make it a little more able to deal with the dropships crazy weapon load. Maybe give it more lateral thrust to make it a better dodging craft. Note on the Imperial Eagle, also needs its maneuverability bumped up. That ship isn't nearly maneuverable enough to justify its frailty.
In reference to General Purpose Ships, these things should be perfectly capable fighters/traders/explorers if well fitted to the roll. We have many slots, let us fit secondary shield generators plox? Maybe restrict them always to being a size class lower than the prior one. Obviously this would only work on some general purpose ships.
The Viper MKIII and Viper MKIV, oh man. Alright so the Viper Mark III needs a little more flexability. I mean, the ability to fit a kill warrant scanner and still be effective would be oh so nice. Also, it currently lacks finishing power a lot of the time. Another upgrade for the power distributor would really help balance this thing out. I mean, if I can stay on his tail for ten minutes, lemme just kill him right? No point dragging this out to a 20 minute battle, accounting for the occasional F-up and waiting for my weapons to recharge all the time. Also the Viper MKIV suffers from pretty much the same issues as the Cobra's more advanced varient. Its reduction in speed hurts, but its really its lack of maneuverability that makes it useless. It has some more armor than the MKIII, but less speed, less maneuverability, and the same amount of weapons. And less ability to point them where they need to be, so less combat potential than its progenitor. I mean you could turn this one into a zoom and boom, or a turn fighter. Either way would be better than it is now. I mean come on, its smaller than an Asp Explorer and it turns slower than one. You g kidding me?
The Imperial Clipper needs a maneuverability boost. Its 2. 2. The python turns at 6. Thats the same as an Asp Explorer for gods sakes. If anything this is the thing that should be maneuverability four, like the viper mkIV. This should also be one of the ones that boasts the capacity to use two shield generators, sacrificing any semblance of real cargo space for combat potential.
Anaconda, Corvette, Cutter, yeah those maneuverabilities should be two. But their powerful primary drives should give them an advantage of top speed over basically everything save interceptor ships. (Eagle and Empire/Federation Specific Fighters) But their acceleration to said speeds should take a long time. So their have to carefully set up their runs, or risk being set upon and having their drives damaged and forced into the disadvantageous dogfight situations.
Oh and one more thing. An auto power balancer would be really cool. To make it too smart, but it'd be a nice little gixmo. Like a docking computer, something helpful that you actually seriously consider sacrificing a slot into to make your life easier. Taking shots, puts pips to shots until you stop taking fire. Firing, pips to firing! Gone 30+ seconds without firing or taking damage? Pips to Engines! Boosting? Pips to engines! Overrides to whatever setting you want it at, reset it to functioning with the rebalance power option. Sets to working for you again.
Oh and Freighters should also be under the high top speed, slow acceleration category. So you want something quick, or an Interceptor, to be messing with them in interstellar space. Should probably be easiest to go for the cargo hatch to actually get times, and you can whack the pinata until it gets away, with a clever pilot putting the cargo hatch on the opposite side of the ship from you as he boosts to max speed slowly, to prevent you from getting as much as possible.
Some interesting points. I'd be happy with player definable presets for the pips, seeing as the manual adjustment never puts the pips quite where you want them without having to flick to and fro 2 or 3 times. An annoying waste of time. I'm not against pip management, I'm just against making it pointlessly take more inputs than it should.
We should have CZ's in asteroid fields, and around stations - that would be epic! Traders could try and runt he gauntlet for super high profits.
As for your WWII style idea - I do believe it has been admitted that WWII fighter is the flight model they are aiming for(I'm good with that), and judging by the stupidly wildly varying nerfs and buffs to various ships, doing a complete re-configure wouldn't exactly be anything out of the norm, though it may work in making things more interesting.
I'm certainly not a fan of the SC flight model, dragging a mouse pointer around and clicking on your target is just not really my idea of fun. Having said that, a yaw buff could be nice.
Regardless, I do find the current flight model reasonably fun.
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