OP wants to play a carrier. That's what I was doing. Tomato, tomayto.
To All Veteran CMDRs about Ship launched fighter
- Thread starter Ratstar
- Start date
Not the same, you don't understand but I can't explain properly. A human being will act differently than a NPC, and is not ALWAYS available, no matter the hour and the amount of time. It's vastly different.
It's like saying Mass effect and its AI NPC is the same than Counter strike and it's very human player. It's not.
That was me.
Anything else I can disappoint you with?
Cool. Let's leave it at that.
'People' eh?Got a link?
Erm, I upgraded my PC for Odyssey.
Did I do a bad thing?
Ironically enough, I haven't actually been able to play Odyssey much since I finished my new PC cos I also got a new chair and a new HOTAS and I haven't got around to attaching them together yet.
Skyrim, OTOH, looks flippin' amazing on my new PC (and with >100 mods) though.
To the OP, there is a very good reason why it was removed/never put in.
Now i will say i personally would enjoy if we could launch more then 1 SLF at a time, personally i think we should be able to launch a max of 2 at a time. However, you are not allowed to, due to balance.
If you get a pilot up to elite status, they literally never miss their shots on a craft, how is this broken you might ask your self.
1 fighter, the lance. This little fighter in the hands of a elite rank pilot is a mean little machine, it can solo anything below an elite rank thats a small ship save for a vulture.
And it never misses once. if you would have 2 of these things, it would strip the shields off of most small NPC crafts after 1 or 2 volleys from both of them, and if you are a good pilot, you will be having them target sub systems, and they will literally rip them appart because again, then never freaking miss.
If you could have 2 elite lance pilots that would be pretty much the same as having 2 extra medium turreted rail guns. Even against large ships it would wreck them if you are targeting sub systems.
Now with that said, i would LOVE if we could get a new Hanger bay that let us launch a single sidewinder/eagle/iegale/vulture, and the hanger could only carry 1 of them, maybe 2 if its a large hanger. As canonically the anaconda DOES have a self launched sidewinder or rather can have one. I think having a heavy fighter hanger that held 1 maybe 2 small ships would be really cool.
Now i will say i personally would enjoy if we could launch more then 1 SLF at a time, personally i think we should be able to launch a max of 2 at a time. However, you are not allowed to, due to balance.
If you get a pilot up to elite status, they literally never miss their shots on a craft, how is this broken you might ask your self.
1 fighter, the lance. This little fighter in the hands of a elite rank pilot is a mean little machine, it can solo anything below an elite rank thats a small ship save for a vulture.
And it never misses once. if you would have 2 of these things, it would strip the shields off of most small NPC crafts after 1 or 2 volleys from both of them, and if you are a good pilot, you will be having them target sub systems, and they will literally rip them appart because again, then never freaking miss.
If you could have 2 elite lance pilots that would be pretty much the same as having 2 extra medium turreted rail guns. Even against large ships it would wreck them if you are targeting sub systems.
Now with that said, i would LOVE if we could get a new Hanger bay that let us launch a single sidewinder/eagle/iegale/vulture, and the hanger could only carry 1 of them, maybe 2 if its a large hanger. As canonically the anaconda DOES have a self launched sidewinder or rather can have one. I think having a heavy fighter hanger that held 1 maybe 2 small ships would be really cool.
It can be balanced. Even if they don't miss at elite (which is an investment by itself as they don't come Elite), it's still only 2 non engineered small hardpoint. And the majority of ship capable of SLF are weaker than their counterpart (alliance crusader vs chieftain, krait vs FdL, for example). The only real exception are the "big" ship (anaconda, vette, cutter and type 10), but they have no competition for that size to begin with.
The real reason is Fdev don't want to work on an "old" feature. It's very much a "foundation" feature, but the entire game is made of foundations. And so it's fine.
The gameplay/balance reason isn't why. Perhaps they could have balanced it where a single SLF wasn't as strong, then you could have 2,4, or even more SLFs out simultaneously. This would have given a greater gradient in the power of ships capable of launching fighters. It wasn't necessary for SLFs to be as strong as they are today.
We should all know the actual reason why this avenue wasn't chosen. It was a technical problem that didn't have a good solution. Having dozens of SLFs flying around an instance would deliver a networking apocalypse upon anyone so bold as to attempt it. Reducing the number of SLFs in play was needed (and they still cause some people grief), so they had to beef them up to make their contribution worthwhile.
But, in the perfect version of the game that we can only dream about, it would have been very cool to launch a full squad of SLFs. I feel like you can often catch a glimpse of the great game they wanted to make, but couldn't figure out how to deliver.
I think the real reason is the problems with the networking with players where someone having an slf out causes periodic lag especially if they are spamming commands. I have a feeling two would double the problem.
Experimented once with a friend with our slfs out in a non wing but same instance and assigning key binds to the slf commands and spamming them made the latency meter spike sometimes four or five times what it normally reads and it was very perceptible to the other player. This Is the real reason I feel we dont get multiple npc slf.
Oh yes. But that issue is entirely on Fdev. They have some wonky networking going. Between SLF and FC doing all sort of shenanigans to their servers. I guess they did as much work on networking than they did for occlusion culling
Maybe like you have to be in solo or private group for high res screens they could do the same kind of restriction for two npc slf pots. Who knows.Oh yes. But that issue is entirely on Fdev. They have some wonky networking going. Between SLF and FC doing all sort of shenanigans to their servers. I guess they did as much work on networking than they did for occlusion culling
I already said that it would be better to remove the Pilot rank, Let them be harmless
A properly outfitted Cutter or Corvette will never die to a small ship or even a meta FDL because of the sheer amount of health pool the large ships have. iirc Cutters commonly have upwards of 8000MJ as compared to the 3000MJ of a meta FDL. Assuming equal piloting skill, a small or medium ship would simply run out of ammo or get obliterated first.
Big ship PvP has been ruined by slf lag. No bona fide PvPer would use a SLF in a PvP fight unless they want to get ostracized by their peers.
The beauty of high level large ship fighting is in the multitasking. Not only management of the SLF, but also in knowing when to use which weapon for greatest damage, i.e. range control. Or also in equipping and deploying the correct countermeasures like point defense or ems. Making sure your experimentals i.e. corrosive, scramble spectrum, emissive, etc.are in effect and managing cooldowns or repairing modules in fight are other considerations. Knowing when it is time to high wake and making sure your fsd isn't shot out, etc. can make large ship fighting extremely challenging and fun!
But yeah, SLF lag ruined it for PvP.
Big ship PvP has been ruined by slf lag. No bona fide PvPer would use a SLF in a PvP fight unless they want to get ostracized by their peers.
The beauty of high level large ship fighting is in the multitasking. Not only management of the SLF, but also in knowing when to use which weapon for greatest damage, i.e. range control. Or also in equipping and deploying the correct countermeasures like point defense or ems. Making sure your experimentals i.e. corrosive, scramble spectrum, emissive, etc.are in effect and managing cooldowns or repairing modules in fight are other considerations. Knowing when it is time to high wake and making sure your fsd isn't shot out, etc. can make large ship fighting extremely challenging and fun!
But yeah, SLF lag ruined it for PvP.
That is an even worse idea, harmless SLF are literally worthless, they dont have the skill to hit, and or maneuver from enemy fire.
It would make all guardian fighters 100% useless more so then they currently are, as with out the rank of elite, they dont have enough skill to survive. Guardians already are super fragile glass canons, and with out elite they just get blown up.
That is by far a worse solution to a problem thats not really there.
But it's pretty funny, and should happen more often.
There's some missing context in this tale for sure, but hopefully the EGS CMDR could afford his rebuy and did not uninstall.
If you dont accept Harmless then make it competent simple as that.
I agree with the OP - we need at least two SLF minimum for large ships - one extra SLF cannot possibly affect the game that bad surely? Why is this any different to have many CMDR's instanced?
I often come across big NPC ships with at least two defending fights (not SLF's but eagles, vipers and cobra's), so launching two SLF's to tackle their combat ships while you focus on their flagship would make plenty of sense and add to the over feeling of "I have a big & bad ship".
Anyway that too was my original expectation when securing my first Anaconda and was massively disappointed at the time. However over time I realised that the only thing an SLF is actually good for is distracting the NPC enemy long enough for you to fly away and repair or jump to safety when things go south.
I often come across big NPC ships with at least two defending fights (not SLF's but eagles, vipers and cobra's), so launching two SLF's to tackle their combat ships while you focus on their flagship would make plenty of sense and add to the over feeling of "I have a big & bad ship".
Anyway that too was my original expectation when securing my first Anaconda and was massively disappointed at the time. However over time I realised that the only thing an SLF is actually good for is distracting the NPC enemy long enough for you to fly away and repair or jump to safety when things go south.