Why isn't there a big call for use cases for all ships?
- Thread starter Crook
- Start date
Deleted member 38366
D
About a year ago, I made the following Suggestion :
- equip some/many Planetary Colonies with a single S Landing Pad
- make them a Mission Target of an own Mission branch (legal, as an alternative for illegal Scan-, Base raid or -Skimmer Missions)
- existing Trespass Zones removed for duration of Mission and Departure of Player
Voila, there's your Horizons Small Ships only content.
Similarly, 1-2 ton or Data delivery Missions into Planetary Colonies even without any Landing Pads would be possible.
Those would be SRV Mission Targets. Land nearby, drive onto a center platform (any existing Trespass zone lifted during active Mission & Departure again), deliver the Cargo (or Data) and complete a Mission that way.
- equip some/many Planetary Colonies with a single S Landing Pad
- make them a Mission Target of an own Mission branch (legal, as an alternative for illegal Scan-, Base raid or -Skimmer Missions)
- existing Trespass Zones removed for duration of Mission and Departure of Player
Voila, there's your Horizons Small Ships only content.
Similarly, 1-2 ton or Data delivery Missions into Planetary Colonies even without any Landing Pads would be possible.
Those would be SRV Mission Targets. Land nearby, drive onto a center platform (any existing Trespass zone lifted during active Mission & Departure again), deliver the Cargo (or Data) and complete a Mission that way.
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The correct player response to this is to just not do those missions ever.
The only way to make small ships attractive to players is to make big ships have meaningful drawbacks to being used. Currently the only drawback they have is that it costs a lot of credits ...but credits in this game are free and infinite...so they have no drawbacks at all.
Now that we have fighters, it should be possible to implement escort mechanics and you can make big ships behave like big ships, ensuring that they cannot dogfight themselves. That is what is needed. Not missions that nobody will take.
I like the modularity of the ships meaning that you can really use any ship for anything, even if not the min max for any given task
I often do First Class Sight Seeing Passenger missions in a FDL as I find it a joy to fly in VR
With regards to small ships, there are already activities where the shine.
Space Salvage missions they can zip in and out before the baddies arrive due to their managing and easy scoop management
A Sidewinder can do three ~$3 Millon CR black box or art salvage missions a time as shield are not needed if quick, and that is quite a return on the cost of the ship
The Guardian Site are often in location medium and large ships have difficulty landing, but not so small ships.
Having Missions locked to small ships would, I think, result in those missions being ignored, and complained about using up space on the mission boards, more often than people changing the ship they fly, and I say that as an avid small ship fan.
I often do First Class Sight Seeing Passenger missions in a FDL as I find it a joy to fly in VR
With regards to small ships, there are already activities where the shine.
Space Salvage missions they can zip in and out before the baddies arrive due to their managing and easy scoop management
A Sidewinder can do three ~$3 Millon CR black box or art salvage missions a time as shield are not needed if quick, and that is quite a return on the cost of the ship
The Guardian Site are often in location medium and large ships have difficulty landing, but not so small ships.
Having Missions locked to small ships would, I think, result in those missions being ignored, and complained about using up space on the mission boards, more often than people changing the ship they fly, and I say that as an avid small ship fan.
An out there idea I had for balancing ships across sizes is to require medium and larger ships to employ crew in order to be effective, allow players to have some of their npc crew fly as wingmen, but to still limit players to 3 crew members. If you balanced it so that small ships only needed 1 crew (player included, so 0 npcs), medium generally needed 2, and the big 4 needed 4, you would create a use for smaller ships without making them more powerful than their size would permit. Sure, your viper might only be 1/4th as powerful as a fully crewed corvette, but you can command a wing of 3 other npc vipers as well, while the corvette is stuck with just 1 ship.
Things would need to be rebalanced, and I don't think its ever going to happen, but it's a thought.
Things would need to be rebalanced, and I don't think its ever going to happen, but it's a thought.
Because bigger is better. You can run Basic Medicines to an Outbreak system in an Adder (22t) for a ~108k income. But 256t Python will bring you 1M 254k (~12 Adder runs) while 720t Cutter is a matter of 3M 528k (~3 Python runs, ~33 Adder runs). All three ships make such a cargo haul in equal time. Assume 4 runs an hour.
- Adder total income: 432 000 Cr
- Python total income: 5 016 000 Cr
- Cutter income: 14 112 000 Cr
Python is top of the food chain when Outposts come to play. Reason is above.
Because there is no real difference (maybe except combat) coming from ship's size. I can have 30 LYs range Adder and 30 LYs rance Cutter. Both jump equally far and equally fast. In system SC is the same. What is different is the cargo capacity. So when profit calculating - why pick 22t Adder when I can have 728t Cutter?
Current design revolves around few "best ships", rest serve as a mean to get to those.
Maybe it's like swearing in church, but in EVE the smaller ships actually had an advantage over larger ones since larger guns were less able to hit and apply damage on the smaller ones.
Angular tracking for larger weapons was poor and the applied damage was reduced. Obviously the larger shields, repairs, shield boosts, ability to launch drones, thicker armor and so forth made smaller ships struggle to deal with large ships (at least alone).
In Elite this is exactly opposite. Shooting small ships with a huge gun = massive damage. For the most part the smaller ships are at a huge disadvantage nomatter what. Sure, you can find videos where very experienced pilots in Eagles and Sidewinders are going up against inexperienced players in FdL's and Anacondas, but those are by far the exceptions.
Most people in an Eagle will get absolutely shredded if they go up against the larger ships.
So what advantage do these smaller ships really have?
Why would I ever fly an Eagle instead of my Viper M3, Vulture, FAS, Chieftain or FdL?
Why would I ever fly a Hauler instead of my Cobra Mk3, Python or T9?
Give smaller ships faster super-cruise speeds.
Give smaller ships faster entry/departure for planetary landings (e.g. faster glide, faster acceleration and speed when departing)
Things like this would make them much more suitable for courier missions, small scale cargo runs, planetary exploration et.c.
Angular tracking for larger weapons was poor and the applied damage was reduced. Obviously the larger shields, repairs, shield boosts, ability to launch drones, thicker armor and so forth made smaller ships struggle to deal with large ships (at least alone).
In Elite this is exactly opposite. Shooting small ships with a huge gun = massive damage. For the most part the smaller ships are at a huge disadvantage nomatter what. Sure, you can find videos where very experienced pilots in Eagles and Sidewinders are going up against inexperienced players in FdL's and Anacondas, but those are by far the exceptions.
Most people in an Eagle will get absolutely shredded if they go up against the larger ships.
So what advantage do these smaller ships really have?
Why would I ever fly an Eagle instead of my Viper M3, Vulture, FAS, Chieftain or FdL?
Why would I ever fly a Hauler instead of my Cobra Mk3, Python or T9?
Give smaller ships faster super-cruise speeds.
Give smaller ships faster entry/departure for planetary landings (e.g. faster glide, faster acceleration and speed when departing)
Things like this would make them much more suitable for courier missions, small scale cargo runs, planetary exploration et.c.
Captain, time is of the essence.
We have a capsized yacht 10km from here, the wind is too dangerous for a chopper. Send your fastest boat, AND GET THAT VIP TO SAFETY!!
Sir, yes sir.. I have the perfect ship:
MORON, TAKE THE LIFEBOAT..
Uhh no sir, this can do the job equally as well... Besides, it has an engineered rudder... sir.
For crying out loud. NO. TAKE THE LIFEBOAT.
DO NOT TELL ME HOW TO PLAY!
We have a capsized yacht 10km from here, the wind is too dangerous for a chopper. Send your fastest boat, AND GET THAT VIP TO SAFETY!!
Sir, yes sir.. I have the perfect ship:
MORON, TAKE THE LIFEBOAT..
Uhh no sir, this can do the job equally as well... Besides, it has an engineered rudder... sir.
For crying out loud. NO. TAKE THE LIFEBOAT.
DO NOT TELL ME HOW TO PLAY!
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The lack of small-pad-only bases has always struck me as something missing in the game. I've often wondered if they were originally supposed to be included, but were left out in the early days for lack of resources to do everything, then were either forgotten about or simply never made it far enough up the priority list.
Any of the older hands know if there was ever any intent to include such bases?
Any of the older hands know if there was ever any intent to include such bases?
There is some content that requires specific ships.
For example, I encountered passenger missions that asked for Luxury Cabins on an outpost. Hence, you need a Dolphin to complete.
Other than that, for exploration and testing it's often nice to have smaller ships. My most used ships so far are the ASP and the DBE. And I also have a Corvette, a T9 and a Cutter.
For example, I encountered passenger missions that asked for Luxury Cabins on an outpost. Hence, you need a Dolphin to complete.
Other than that, for exploration and testing it's often nice to have smaller ships. My most used ships so far are the ASP and the DBE. And I also have a Corvette, a T9 and a Cutter.
rootsrat
Volunteer Moderator
I think there is a use case for each ship. Not everyone has gazzilion of hours to play and not everyone finds gold rushes a right thing to do.
So I guarantee you there are some people out there that are only playing few hours a week, while sticking to the standard ways of making money and they still in a Cobra or whatever.
Haven't you had a harrier jump jet land on your row boat before. I have it all the time.
People always go for the big ships, small ships are best for some things, but many never realise because they have 'size issues'
DBX is best explorer, iEagle / iCourier are great for surface scans due to speed (apparently adder as well, I need to try that), python is best BGS worker, FdL / Chieftain for pew-pew. While y'all big shippers are waiting for yours to turn around I'm in the next system already
OP, we don't need mandated use cases for various ships. The vast majority of ships can remain useful throughout your entire career and don't have to be thrown away for stepping stones, as Factabulous indicates above.
I personally use a DBX or AspX for both exploration AND in bubble travel between my task force hubs. When I find a system that I like and want to do missions from, I generally have my Anaconda, my Python, the DBX or AsPX, and a Cobra Mk III there. If I'm temporarily bounty hunting elsewhere, I'll often park my Corvette AND Cheiftain there for use.
Small ships are the BEST ships to do Planetary scans with. Sometimes the area around the POI is a pain to land in anything bigger than a small ship. A ship like the Cobra MkIII has a good size cargo hold and is FAST, so it also works well for planetary salvage missions.
I tend to use my Imperial Clipper - "*gasp* He still uses one after having a Python, Anaconda, Cutter and Corvette?! - as in Bubble explorer/mat gatherer. She can scan wakes, gather stuff from USSes (3A Collector Limpet and huge cargo bay), land on planets to mine (with 2 SRVs!), and escape ANYTHING I don't want to fight (boost is 620). She's a lot more fun to fly in Supercruise than the big ships, due to her incredible pitch rate.
If people want to toss away their old ships and just keep going bigger, that's their right and choice. That doesn't mean one of their previous ships couldn't do the job better.
Final thought: Some anti-ganking groups fly in wings of engineered sidewinders. They frequently kill, or drive off, the newb gankers because their little sidewinders are optimized for their mission and flown with skill. Size is NOT everything. Don't believe me? Watch this video of pirate sidewinder than forced the bounty hunting FDL to flee:
[video=youtube_share;r0gv9xwHxZ0]https://youtu.be/r0gv9xwHxZ0[/video]