Youd be surprised how big an eagle is, its closer to a vulture than a sidey!
Why so few hardpoints on small ships?
- Thread starter Snarfbuckle
- Start date
Youd be surprised how big an eagle is, its closer to a vulture than a sidey!
Don't know how useful it would be to have i.e. 4,5 or even 6 Weapons - tied to a Class 1/2/3 Power Distributor
A Stock (A-Grade) Cobra Mk.IV already has severe difficulties sustaining fire from its 5 Hardpoints when using rather Distributor-friendly Weapons. Adding more Hardpoints it can't support anyway wouldn't help it.
It depends on what you fit i would imagine.
And you would not exactly be forced to use Alpha strikes and could be combined with different weapons for different tactical situations
X2 Seeker mounts (Drag munitions)
X2 Pulse Lasers
X2 Cytoscramblers with Scramble Spectrum mod
So you use pulses+cyto to bring down shields and cause malfunctions (yes, Cytos are not "good" but you get my point)
Switch to missiles and pulses to kill
What's the OP smoking?
Viper Mk III and IV - 4 hardpoints.
AspX is 6 hardpoints, not 4.
Cobra IV, 5 hardpoints....
Edit: Oh, and diamondback scout. 4 hardpoints.
Viper Mk III and IV - 4 hardpoints.
AspX is 6 hardpoints, not 4.
Cobra IV, 5 hardpoints....
Edit: Oh, and diamondback scout. 4 hardpoints.
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No its not. The vulture is much bigger then the eagle.
Have a look here and you can see. The area mass of the eagle is tiny compared to that of a vulture.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...gress-Complete-Full-Colour-ED-Ship-Size-Chart
Yup, several ships that are "small" are not THAT small (although the Eagle is a lot larger than a Sidey but I think it's THINNER.)
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How about...
Because they're Small.
Imagine picking up a Browning .50 machine gun.
Now, imagine picking up one in each hand.
Now try to pick up two more.
Don't forget the ammo. Belt fed, and you're going to need at least 1000 rounds for each machine gun.
Because they're Small.
Imagine picking up a Browning .50 machine gun.
Now, imagine picking up one in each hand.
Now try to pick up two more.
Don't forget the ammo. Belt fed, and you're going to need at least 1000 rounds for each machine gun.
Cobra III has 4 hardpoints, cobra 4 has 5, both vipers have 4. All are small ships.
Where have you been?
Also, the small ships are just that...small. Weapons do take up space, consume power and add mass.
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.
SMALL hardpoints on SMALL ships.
And a Sidewinder has no power problems running 4 guns as long as all of them arenot PD consuming.
And what about small ships and take up space.
Both the Adder and iCourier are 35 tonne ships and one of them are running X3 medium hardpoints. I would see no issue for that ship to run X6 small hardpoints.
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Really...have you compared the Adder and Courier...both small 35 tonne hulls...
Small ships are heavily limited by space, plus the obvious secondary limits of the generator and the distributor. Looking at it, even a Viper with it's 4 hardpoints is pushing it a bit; I wouldn't expect any small ship to mount more than 6 small hardpoints and even that would involve sacrificing their larger weapon mounts.
I'm more concerned by the lack of medium and large ships with huge numbers of small/medium weapons. Currently, bigger ships tend to get bigger weapons but they don't really get many more weapons. Even the big 3 only have 7-8 weapon hardpoints, while many of the mediums have 5-6, which isn't a marked improvement over the typical 3-4 hardpoints on a small ship. I'd love to see some more variety with the weapon loadouts on the bigger ships with more options for loadouts like the AspX with large numbers of smaller weapons but fewer heavy weapons so that people could spec their ships out as anti-fighter flakships rather than focusing on the heavy main battery weapons. Unfortunately, this would require the creation of additional ships, as the current implementation of the existing large ships doesn't require any extra weapons as they are balanced around their big guns being central pillars of their design.
I'm more concerned by the lack of medium and large ships with huge numbers of small/medium weapons. Currently, bigger ships tend to get bigger weapons but they don't really get many more weapons. Even the big 3 only have 7-8 weapon hardpoints, while many of the mediums have 5-6, which isn't a marked improvement over the typical 3-4 hardpoints on a small ship. I'd love to see some more variety with the weapon loadouts on the bigger ships with more options for loadouts like the AspX with large numbers of smaller weapons but fewer heavy weapons so that people could spec their ships out as anti-fighter flakships rather than focusing on the heavy main battery weapons. Unfortunately, this would require the creation of additional ships, as the current implementation of the existing large ships doesn't require any extra weapons as they are balanced around their big guns being central pillars of their design.
Thats my point. Sacrifice larger mounts for more small mounts.
Also, they could actually make variations of existing hulls that they remodel.
Python class Destroyer. X8 small hardpoints (4 top and 4 belly)
Diamondback Assault Scout. X6 small hardpoints.
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Turret on Eagle's top hardpoint = shoot backwards. Arrrrhhh brings back old Elite frontier memoriesof shooting backwards in my clipper and leaving auto pilot to fly to my destination.
Adder and Cobra mkIV for multicrew testing with turrets on top.
I don't understand why the large ship's don't have a bunch of small/med hardpoint scattered all over then for turrets. I would think that a conda or corvette would have a dozen or so scattered around them to swat away pesky fighters
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Where are they going to fit?
You can't compare ships based on hull mass alone. Adder and courier are in two completely separate leagues. Courier is more expensive because it simply is more capable. Same total number of hardpoints, is faster, jumps farther and has an overall larger average hardpoint size ( avg of class 2 on courier vs. avg of 1.333 on adder). Not a fair or accurate comparison. I would also make the argument that the two ships don't even fulfill the same purpose.
You want to know why? Game balance. Even small ships deserve medium hardpoints. Class 2 weapons are simply more effective than their class 1 counterparts. And if you think that Fdev is really going to give ships more hardpoints for such an arbitrary reason, then think again. I consider the possibility extremely remote. The sidewinder simply doesn't need to mount 4 guns. The eagles have no need for 5, not to mention the power issues they already have without engineering.
And the basic physics issue of two objects being unable to occupy the same space at the same time still holds. A lot of your small ships simply don't have room for more hardpoints, and I don't mean just surface area.
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The Asp Explorer already has 6 hardpoints, 4 small and 2 medium. Asking for a ship with 6 small hardpoints makes no sense when a better ship exists. Even the Cobra IV has 5 hardpoints (3 small and 2 medium) although it has a small class 3 PD and can't really power them all properly. So basically if you want lots of hardpoints then use an Asp Explorer. You can even mount 6 small weapons if you wanted, there's no reason you NEED to use the medium hardpoints for medium weapons if you really want 6 small weapons.