Why so few hardpoints on small ships?

[Boff'in]

weight is another biggy.
even a couple of smalls start to make serious impact on jump distance, manoeuvrability, agility, cruising speed, top and boost speeds.

and that's not getting into the "power" aspect people have noted.


I've almost fully upgraded the adder,and just acquired a courier and to my amazement transferring the exact same modules over, gave less jump range to the courier, because of the imbalance of some of the modules. On paper she should have a bigger jump-range, so I got to go over that a bit more.
Top -speed omg!!!

The adder has been my favourite ship for material grinding on the surfaces......I just have a softspot for that ship. I'm hoping the Courier will do the job as well.

But then the Adder had more armour and is multi-crew, for what that extra pip is worth....
The small ships fly fast when empty,
but when you start to add anything usefull, you sandbag that ability to the capability that of a cobramk3.

 

[Devari]

4x seeker racks or dumbfires on the small, 2x bursts on the mediums. Really woke the Asp up for me. It's not ideal for sustained combat, but if someone messes with you while you're trading or running missions you can definitely ruin their day. Swap out the medium bursts for PA, multis, or whatever flavor you prefer; but 4x missiles in the small hardpoints had me hanging with everything up to the big 3 as NPCs.

I have a similar loadout for my Asp Explorer that I use primarily for mission running and exploration. I use 2 medium incendiary overcharged multicannons and 4 small seeker missile launchers. I've also found that I run out of ammo too quickly for sustained combat but for interdictions and general self-defence it is a VERY powerful weapons loadout because of the massive alpha strike hull damage from the quad missiles. Even multiple PD systems can't take down all four missiles in most cases. Technically you can still run the build as a self-sufficient ship by using ammo refills but it isn't usually worth the time to gather all the mats for reloading the seeker missiles in most cases, although it does serve as an excellent deterrent within the bubble for quickly taking down small or medium ships.

 

[Ben Ryder]

Why so few hardpoints on small ships?

I think they hve too many. The asp explorer has soemthinng like six? That a bit much for an exploration ship. Maybe it should haev one ot two adn more space for exploration gear.

 

[Bryan K]

4x seeker racks or dumbfires on the small, 2x bursts on the mediums. Really woke the Asp up for me. It's not ideal for sustained combat, but if someone messes with you while you're trading or running missions you can definitely ruin their day. Swap out the medium bursts for PA, multis, or whatever flavor you prefer; but 4x missiles in the small hardpoints had me hanging with everything up to the big 3 as NPCs.

Thanks, I'll give that a shot when I get back to the bubble

 

[Devari]

Thanks, I'll give that a shot when I get back to the bubble

Not only does it give excellent alpha-strike damage, but if I read the multi-crew dev update correctly it looks like a ship's gunner will be able to fire missiles in ANY direction regardless of the actual hardpoint mounting and firing arcs. In other words having a second crew member (who can join the ship from any distance even when you're exploring) basically turns the Asp's quad missile launchers into a quad missile TURRET since the missiles can be targeted and launched in any direction by the gunner.

Given that the Asp already has good maneuverability the further addition of missile turret functionality could really open up some interesting defensive options for the Asp. Basically you are not going to want to approach a quad missile armed Asp from ANY angle if your shields are down and the Asp is using multi-crew to target the missiles.

 

[Bryan K]

Not only does it give excellent alpha-strike damage, but if I read the multi-crew dev update correctly it looks like a ship's gunner will be able to fire missiles in ANY direction regardless of the actual hardpoint mounting and firing arcs. In other words having a second crew member (who can join the ship from any distance even when you're exploring) basically turns the Asp's quad missile launchers into a quad missile TURRET since the missiles can be targeted and launched in any direction by the gunner.

Given that the Asp already has good maneuverability the further addition of missile turret functionality could really open up some interesting defensive options for the Asp. Basically you are not going to want to approach a quad missile armed Asp from ANY angle if your shields are down and the Asp is using multi-crew to target the missiles.

Any recommendations for Engineer mods/effects? In the last 7 months, I've had all of about 20 minutes of missile experience.

 

[Devari]

Any recommendations for Engineer mods/effects? In the last 7 months, I've had all of about 20 minutes of missile experience.

I haven't tried modifying the missile launchers on my Asp but I did briefly try some modifications to the missile launchers on my Anaconda. I outfitted the two small missile racks with Rapid Fire mods combined with the Overload munitions special effect, the idea being that I wanted to use missiles that had could fire more quickly and apply thermal damage to be useful against shields as well as hull. I found that the reduction in ammunition capacity as well as the reduced hull damage wasn't worth it however and I subsequently removed the mods and just run my missile launchers stock. I could see the mods being useful for certain types of niche builds, such as using the Drag muntions for a purely defensive build to slow down other ships or using Emissive munitions against stealth builds. Other than that however missiles seem to do best as alpha-strike hull damage so I just leave mine unmodded and haven't had any need to Engineer them since testing the mods on my Anaconda.

 

[Farran]

I do not think it is actually a bad idea to have a smaller ship with more hardpoints. I think the small ones we have are short on them because we needed a starting point and frankly, most of them are... well, too small to accommodate more.

If you put more small hardpoints on a small ship, it is still going to need to be larger than the other small ships, but I see no problem with having that variety. A fast and agile small ship with several small hardpoints would be relatively ineffective versus large ships compared to, for example, a Vulture, but have a lot more flexibility in weapon loadout. I could see some larger ships with a similar role, but make a mix of medium and small hardpoints rather than just small, and it will definitely still be more effective against smaller ships than large ones.

I think the point is less to say "This is something that we really need in the game" as much as "This gives players more choice over their tactics." You can either have a ship with a mixed set of smaller and larger hardpoints (e.g. the Anaconda as-is) to engage any class of ship effectively, or you can have a wing with both ships tailored for smashing large ships and ships outfitted for fighting smaller ships.

I think it would be cool to have a roughly Diamondback-sized ship with several small hardpoints that has nothing to fear from small ships, but is simply not suited to fighting large ships. At the same time, we could use some larger ships with mostly large guns to deal with the really heavily-defended big ships that are proliferating due to engineers. Having a few logical extremes and everything in between is hardly a bad idea, and I am always game for some new ships.

 

[Devari]

I think the point is less to say "This is something that we really need in the game" as much as "This gives players more choice over their tactics."

Unfortunately FD does not really want to support that type of playstyle. The devs have specifically stated that they think it should be "difficult" to manage multiple different weapons/hardpoints and that this is some sort of "balancing factor" for large ship gameplay. This is why we can't create a fire group with more than two fire buttons. FD doesn't want us to play the game the way you're suggesting, even if it would be more fun or add more options to the game.

In fact, for that matter I think that the largest ships should have a full array of 4-6 small hardpoints specifically for defensive purposes against smaller ships. For example, why not give the Anaconda 4 or even 6 small hardpoints instead of only 2? Same with the Type 9, Corvette and Cutter. They have more than enough space, volume and weight to handle the extra hardpoints easily, it would actually be trivial to add small hardpoints to these ships and they would make sense as defensive weapons, especially on large trading ships. The issue here is that FD doesn't want to design ships in a way that makes sense, they want to force players into very restrictive, unrealistic and arbitrary gameplay styles and this is why we have limited or ineffective hardpoint options on most ships.

Unfortunately, until the devs accept that their narrow view of Elite gameplay is holding back the game's potential I really don't see that changing.