Will FdL ever get nerfed/brought in line with other ship?

[Morbad]

The last thing hybrid setups would need is another harm. They are already in a miserable state because rams and desync rams and magic effects like corrosive, scramble and emissive, or module vulnerability in general and the most idiotic canopy mechanism in particular (why on Earth cannot we keep the HUD, the reticle and the microgimbal after canopy breach? why does the central dot only stay in place if you don't disable the annoying mouse widget?). Not even to mention the possibility of losing all your weapons to zero skill weapons like seekers and packhounds.

I largely agree, but it's almost entirely beyond the scope of any FDL specific changes.

This is what makes hulltanks/hybrids a bad choice first and foremost, not the shield stats of the FDL (well, that too, but not to the extent ppl tend to believe).

That was kinda my point. The FDL is a shield focused vessel, both by design and circumstance, and a mild reduction to some of it's shield focused loadouts will have more of an impact on it's representation than any reduction to it's marginal ability as a hybrid in the current system.

SRB PA's are not generally considered a good choice because of the distro draw (at least in wingfights).

The distributor draw is high, but the DPE is not hugely far off efficient, which allows one to carry those rails for negating banks,sniping modules, or opportunistic shots beyond effective range of any standard velocity PA volley (like when a hybrid goes evasive to avoid being rammed while shields recharge). It's also handy after the sensors melt from using maxed out TC the whole fight when you can only land the PAs during a ram attempt because you have no lead indicator.

Ramming Mambas with gimballed frags are a plague in organic open space PvP, so I wouldn't say it's perfectly balanced. Luckily it's a crap ship in the rocks so they are less of an annoyance for me.

If I'm in a medium or smaller vessel, I find frag Mamba a lot less intimidating than a PA or rail FDL, even less intimidating than a PA Mamba, but that could be down to preference/style.

 

[Morbad]

Whatever happened to the balance pass regarding shields and hull hardness from a few years back? Did they ever say they were looking to actually implement changes?

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/2-3-shield-booster-and-ship-armour-changes-feedback-thread-pt-3.340389/

Basically, people wanted to be able to sleep through CZs and even though Frontier was 'committed to resolving' issues with shield booster stacking, they must have decided it was just easier to make the game worse by inflating everything further two versions later.

Imo, most broken thing about FDL is its shields and that's not getting fixed just by changing the FDL.

The FDL's shields could certainly be fixed by just adjusting the FDL, but it's not the only way it could be balanced. The booster stacking diminishing returns changes trialed would have a proportionally greater effect on the FDL and Mamba than any of the other mediums.

I'm more of a 'why not both?', kinda person though. Honestly, if I had my way, Engineers (and synthesis) would go, the shield booster stacking changes would go through, and every ship that has ever been buffed, except the Asp Scout, would be kicked back to it's initial config.