Aashenfox was primarily interested in an Indicator of usage of premium ammo. Premium ammo is extremely helpful when fighting Medusa and Hydra Thargoid Interceptors, who have gigantic health pools. Most PvPers would not begrudge their AXI brethren of such a helpful tool, especially since many PvPers do AX combat, too.
Will FdL ever get nerfed/brought in line with other ship?
- Thread starter Phoenix13
- Start date
His preference, at that time, was removal - or at worst an indicator - I had some interesting dialogue here with him, I remember it well
(and the remainder of your 'community' were pretty vociferous in how terrible it is and that it should be removed, if my memory isn't failing me - at my age it could...)Sooner or later Frontier will be addressing PvP (from CM comments), let's hope they use common sense rather than the demands to make every player the dog the tail wags...
Not only the prismo builds.
IIRC you need a c6 PP even on the biweave FDL if you want to have an armoured PP (which is pretty much mandatory on biweave builds) and still be able to keep your shield generator on priority 1 (so that stupid random magic effects like scramble spectrum won't stop the broken regen).
And I think you can agree that a pretty big (so not particularly hard to hit) medium ship with 500ish MJ's of shields and 2000 to 2500 hull HP underneath isn't OP in terms of hitpoints (compared to a Chieftain, for example, with a very quickly regenerating 6c biweave and more than 4000 hull HP's).
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All with the usual throwaway that only PvP players actually play and that the PvE community wouldn't ever notice anyway (or if it affected them it doesn't matter because..)
Please read carefully what you just wrote. It does not help unify or add to the evolution of our community.
I am a PvPer and would never say such a thing. All of us were PvEers first.
There are turkeys in every subset of humanity. We need to explore and emphasize the positive.
For context the Python was nerfed before I joined the game in May 2016
When doing the rational thing is not enjoyable, something is wrong.
So do I.
The problem with self-imposed risk is that it's at odds with those who derive enjoyment from pushing the boundaries of what can be done, with no arbitrary qualifiers.
More objective risks can challenge everyone.
My complaint is that doing something different often means doing something irrational. There should be more rational options, not a requirement to indulge in the inferior to experience variety.
I'm not a fan of synthesis at all. No doubt it's a useful tool, but it trivializes many considerations that were important before.
A 5A armored+monstered PP is just enough to keep thrusters and a thermal resist fast-charge C5 bi-weave powered through PP malfunctions. I used to run such a setup until it became clear the mass savings meant a lot less after engineering than it did before.
That said, I completely agree that other hybrid ships are superior to the hybrid FDL, but that's because the FDL is not particularly suited to hybrid loadouts, at least not when there are no loadout restrictions in play.
Why have a ship with 500-600MJ of shields and 2-2.5k of hull when you can have a ship with 3k MJ of shields and 2-2.5k hull and not have to worry about trying to get shields back up when they eventually fail? Active regen is difficult to leverage if anyone around can keep up, and collapsed regen with a class 5 bi-weave takes long enough to make survival very uncertain over the course of the half-dozen cycles needed to make up for the upfront shield discrepancy. It takes over 60 seconds to get a measly ~300MJ of shields back after a collapse with a fast charge C5 bi-weave, only to lose them from a single PA volley or ram. Front loading shields is almost always going to be more effective unless you can disengage at will (far easier said than done, even for a light FDL, when 6km range weapons aren't exactly rare).
The class 6PP lets one front load absurd amounts of shielding and then run the highest energy weapons there are. Even an armored class 6 PP (to better control heat accumulation and last longer after shield are down) is enough to negate most power considerations. And these sorts of setups tend to dominate the ships that are suited to hybrid loadouts, because hull and especially modules are super vulnerable.
It is also better than all but 1 medium ship at hauling stuff.
Thusters + shields (thermal res lodraw biweave) yes, but not thrusters + shields + distributor (9.75 MW > 24.0 MW x 0.4).
And if you're forced to stall (no boost) without distro you're as good as dead because you'll be a sitting duck for PA (shadow)rams.
Still I 100% sure would rather fly a 2 booster biweave FDL instead of the Chief in the ongoing RoA League, were it not banned. Not because it would be OP (it wouldn't), but only because of the much better and more enjoyable flight model. Oh, and it would be effective as well, ofc.
If the FDL had a c5 PP, you'd still be perfectly able to use the c5 prismo + doublebank with 5 boosters and 5 PA's (2916 MJ + 2x4A rapid banks).
It would even be easier to proc TC because you'd need a G5 OC PP.
Only if you insisted on using rails would force you to give up on some shield strength (so no 4+1 and 3+2 builds with the same shield, but those aren't really superior anyway).
It would be much easier to introduce a "max 4 boosters per (medium) ship" limit. That would bring down the max. shield strength to the 2500 (with OK thermal res) to 2700 (with crap thermal res) MJ range, without the annoyance of unnecessary build restrictions.
By your own admission you don't actually read much of what is 'contributed' here, I do read many of the threads here until they inevitably start to recurse.Please read carefully what you just wrote. It does not help unify or add to the evolution of our community.
I am a PvPer and would never say such a thing. All of us were PvEers first.
There are turkeys in every subset of humanity. We need to explore and emphasize the positive.
The PvP 'community' is excellent, so I am led to believe, or at least those who have organised their own groups & activities.
Do you consider my comment to have just been scribbled down for effect? Not based on a multitude of posts by those who class themselves PvP players (note I omitted the 'community' part) yet have little or no tolerence of other playstyles?
Yes, there are 'turkeys' in every subset of players (let's not bring humanity into the discussion, not when the topic is a game - that is a minefield in itself) and each considers their views to be the only important one, as is envinced by the many circular 'debates' on this very forum.
I never played without engineering, but I'm guessing the small ships suffered more.
Why?
I would think better endurance, better sensors and sneakier were the attributes for a Scout not speed.
Speed is for things like Couriers.
So a mamba?
Low draw would be more resistant to bottoming out ENG, but even fast charge thermal resist shields fit in the power limit.
A PP malfunction during shield rebuild on a ship that can power the generator but not the distributor means you have frozen distributor pips for 10 seconds (five second PP malfunction, five more for the distributor to power back up)...that's definitely worse than being able to keep the distributor powered, but still way better than losing all the progress on shield rebuild.
The point about a PP size class reduction potentially harming hybrid setups more than shield focused ones is a good one, but without looking at combat balance as a whole, hybrid setups are often non-starters in unrestricted encounters due to how vulnerable modules are.
What else is banned in the current RoA league? Most organized PvP has restrictions to compensate for a whole slew of imbalances that exist. Both the Chief and the biweave FDL are in trouble against someone with an emissive pulse laser and some seekers/packhounds.
Anyway, an artificially handicapped FDL still being effective against a Chief isn't any argument for the FDL being balanced, even if one of the adjustments I'm advocating isn't applicable in this scenario.
Someone having rails can become pretty mandatory against larger targets with larger banks. There are also other configs that push power past 30MW...especially if one is using SRB PAs instead of efficient, which were an increasingly common setup for ram focused ships last time I was fighting people regularly. I've even seen a quad SRB rail + huge LR thermal vent beam loadout put to good use on an FDL that went all in with six boosters.
A PP size reduction certainly wouldn't stop front loaded FDL setups, but it might introduce enough trade-offs to skew selection slightly in favor of other options.
This would be an even more arbitrary change and would also affect the Mamba, which isn't particularly unbalanced, even with five or six boosters. The underlying problem isn't the number of boosters, but how they stack, and the fact that every other potential utility is more situational and generally less effective.
Ultimately, I'm not suggesting that restoring the FDL to it's old stats would solve all the game's balance problems, but I don't think it would hurt, and it could easily synergize with other changes (stronger negatives, or less profound positives, to Engineering BP's for example).
Original Mamba maybe, but the ED Mamba is quite a bit bulkier than the FDL.
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No, its engineering that should be changed! It should be inversely-%-based rathger than %-based. Even when fully engineered, the smaller ships should be faster & have a higher jump range than bigger ships.
Below are the rules of the current RoA league, translated. Pilots of all nationalities are participating and often the matches are streamed. I will post the rules of the PvP League (no restrictions on mediums, Orca allowed) shortly so you can compare.
********************************************************
""We are happy to announce that the RoA League 2.0 will start in the next 2-3 weeks. The first RoA League was a complete success, so we want to continue there! We have slightly modified the rules in this matter, so that there will be completely new challenges.
Rules
GERMAN LANGUAGE
RoA PvP League 2.0
Location: LHS 3006 in the group of Tinvanno [RoA]
Mode: 3v3, everyone against everyone, two rounds per match
The winner of both matches gets two points
the loser 0 points
Undecided 1 point
Whoever does not appear loses.
Final
First place against second place - max. 5 rounds
Game for third place - max. 5 rounds
more rules
-Medium ships
-FDL and Mamba are prohibited
-No healing weapons
-no Premium/Standard ammunition
-no SLF
-no rockets
-thermal conduit is prohibited
-no Guardian modules
The organization and realization takes place via our Discord
Tritt dem Ronin of Amarak-Discord-Server bei!
Sieh dir die Ronin of Amarak-Community auf Discord an – häng mit 163 anderen Mitgliedern ab und freu dich über kostenlose Sprach- und Textchats.
If your team is looking for a player or you as a player are looking for a team, you can add yourself to the search list in the discord.
We are looking forward to numerous registrations!"
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.
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).
SLF's, seekers and packhounds (as well as healing weapons or damage increasing synthesis) are banned everywhere in organized PvP because it's literally impossible to organize an enjoyable tournament with these things present. Max. skillbooster count is generally limited to 4. Apart from these rules, what else gets banned usually varies, it's up to the organizers. Thermal conduit is usually not allowed. During the League Season 5 last autumn drag munitions, silent running and getting shields back via rebooting was banned too (which was a wise decision IMO). In the current RoA league they wanted to see a greater variety of ships so they banned the FDL altogether which, on the other hand, wasn't a good one IMO (it would have been enough to ban prismatic shields). The field is dominated by Chieftains as a consequence (you can only see a couple of Challys, FAS's and Phantoms here and there (but even those wouldn't really be used, were it not for the stupid canopy of the Chief).
It's only effective in wingfights, in 1v1 it takes quite a skill gap to be able to consistently bring down a Chief using a biweave FDL.
SRB PA's are not generally considered a good choice because of the distro draw (at least in wingfights). SRB rails, on the other hand, is pretty much the current meta (at least when thermal conduit PA's are not present).
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.
PvP League tournament rules:
[Edit]
Changes to initial ruleset:
Silent running banned.
Rebooting to regain shields banned.
Orcas count as medium ships and are allowed!
There was an Orca team that fought because they were very principled Orca enthusiasts. Of course, the Orcas were demolished by the FDL piranha, but everybody was rooting for the Orcas anyway!
- SLFs are banned
- Seeker missiles and packhounds are banned
- Healing weapons are banned
- Thermal conduit (PA and laser) is banned
- Guardian and tech broker weapons/modules are banned
- Legacy modules are banned
- Drag munitions are banned
- Basic, standard, and premium reloads/ammunition are banned
- Synthesis of any type is banned
- Limit of four boosters per ship
- Medium pad ships only
- No straightlining
[Edit]
Changes to initial ruleset:
Silent running banned.
Rebooting to regain shields banned.
Orcas count as medium ships and are allowed!
There was an Orca team that fought because they were very principled Orca enthusiasts. Of course, the Orcas were demolished by the FDL piranha, but everybody was rooting for the Orcas anyway!
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The FDL has a built in nerf... trying flying that thing a few hundred Lys without wasting a precious slot for a scoop, or at least having to stop for fuel every other jump! And why would you want such a fun ship nerfed? It serves it's purpose, very well.