Discovery Gaming Community

In another topic Blodo said:

' Wrote:LFs need new ideas in how to make them work. The "fast, tiny and paper thin" just doesn't work, and hasn't for ages. They are still nothing more than a curiosity and don't really have any real use in battles. I've had a few ideas mainly revolving around remaking them into interceptor like craft, where they wouldn't really have any better agility than VHFs, but would pack a big punch with their weapons against VHFs (so in essence they would need a new weapon class just for themselves) while still having low HP.

Am I onto something here or does this sound stupid?

Now, I found this post interesting enough to dedicate a topic to.

Light fighters are indeed a bit weird. They have no real combat prowess unless you're a damn good pilot. a VHF is more useful and performs batter in pretty much all scenarios. So, what are LF for? Just to chase and cd cruising enemies? tad lame.

A while ago some suggestions were made to give LF something decent to do. At the time the suggestions were brushed off the table and the upped cruise speed was presented as the new LF speciality. The fact that 400 m/s cruise doesnt do a damn thing in actual dogfighting was bypassed because, well, I dunno. it just was. And here we are.

So, some suggestions from the top of my head that were given in ye olde days to give LF a place in actual combat

LF MR

A MR designed espacially for LF. It does quite nasty damage and has less energy drain (obviosuly) than the normal MR. it would give LF a mean bite.

High-powered chaingun burst

My favorite suggestion. give LF a chaingun that can deal out mostrerous damage over time. think of it as a souped up purple goddess with 400 hull damage per hit (just an example) and 8.33 refire that can be fired for 3 seconds before completely draining the LF plant. To clarify, something like this. Add some cooldown to balance accordingly.


4 cl 9 or cl 10 pewsticks

Compensate the lack of firepower by giving the LF 4 cl 9 guns. or god forbid, acces to cl 10 guns. full Iron hammer LF anyone? ho ho ho. would be interesting for sure.

LF rockets / missles

Ammo based rocket proppeled boomshine. kinda like Hellfires only better. given the LF the ability to do some hard hitting damage in 1 volley.

Uber Nuker Turbo Mines

give LF a special mine. one that hits harder than a nuke but tracks faster. not 80 m/s but, I dunno, 150 m/s. VHF will poop bricks for those things.

the LF that drops em will as well. so that ought to balance things out.

discuss / suggest

the main problem in terms of balance with LF is - that the combat in freelancer disco is quite fast paced as it is - while the guns are not up to the speed.

a VHF has a generous grey area where dodging vs. impossibility to hit comes into play. - the 4.85 voidrunner had passed that line and was more or less impossible to hit (on similar experience levels of the pilots involved)- if the pilot focussed on dodging - and did not receive a fatal and unlucky hit. - but skill in hitting it was inproportionate compared to the skill of dodging with it.

many LF are still rather fast to be different from the heavier ships.

a sniper weapon is nice- but in a way.... the question is ... what is ONE light fighter supposed to be capable of?

- 1 vs 1 against a VHF - equal terms? or should the VHF win

light fighters are easily troll ships. - when the pilot doesn t want to be hit, they dodge forever - making the combat rather unexciting. and when they become a ship that can switch from nearly invincible to "making a significant contribution" to a fight - we d have to wonder... what are the other shipclasses really good at.

atm the LF functions as a tactical ship - an interceptor, which needs heavier escorts just as much as a battleship needs lighter support. - both ships dont work well on their very own. - but while a battleship vs. battleship actually gets you some results - LF vs LF is about as boring as a class of elementry math.

all in all - a sniper weapon might not be bad - torp mounted.... but the LF should loose something then. - can t have a fighter that can dodge for hours, snipe heavier ships - and also have a "free card" on getting away with 420 cruise. - but right now they are the only snub class that requires friends to be effective.



edit:

i would like to keep the LF to be dependent on others... but rather introduce support weapons

- torp mounted, but NOT ammo dependable gun/missile to CD - so unlimited CD from a LF
- high speed EMP mines - maybe even cluster mines that won t hurt the enemy but simply drain them dry
- pulse gun that emites an explosion that does 1 point of damage and has a HUGE radius to explode all but capital missiles
- extreme CM to assist larger targets to get away by dropping CMs with a very very high radius and success rate
- decloaker
- jump inhibitor

' Wrote:...
4 cl 9 or cl 10 pewsticks

Compensate the lack of firepower by giving the LF 4 cl 9 guns. or god forbid, acces to cl 10 guns. full Iron hammer LF anyone? ho ho ho. would be interesting for sure.
...

Strongly in favour. LF damage output is already limited by the number of weapon slots available.

Altough those suggestions have merit, they still don't give the LF a combat role.

I think stuff like losing the cd to mount, for example, the chaingun is a good start. the LF can then hit hard when the weapon is ready to fire but it loses its ability to pin its target.

' Wrote:Uber Nuker Turbo Mines

give LF a special mine. one that hits harder than a nuke but tracks faster. not 80 m/s but, I dunno, 150 m/s. VHF will poop bricks for those things.

the LF that drops em will as well. so that ought to balance things out.

WTF? no.
last thing we need is troll lfs making fast nuke clouds during pvp fights that can insta anyone.

' Wrote:Before some balance changes, Light fighters used to wear the lvl 9 shields.
But they had proven to be too good with those sort of shields.
So they were changed.

However I could imagine they'd pack those on some Hyena's if people keep complaining about it.

If its now thought LFs arnt good enough, how about leting them actually use those class 9 and 10 (for the heavier LFs) shields that are just sitting around uselessly?

I would like to see their thruster speed exceed that of bombers and fighters, something like 220-240

' Wrote:I would like to see their thruster speed exceed that of bombers and fighters, something like 220-240

Same idea I was thinking of actually, it would make it easier for LFs to actually stay behind opponents, which with so little armour and shield HP is your best bet for winning a fight.

EDIT:

' Wrote:- decloaker

Until the homing weapon bug with cloaks is fixed, cloaks don't need nerfing at all.

' Wrote:If its now thought LFs arnt good enough, how about leting them actually use those class 9 and 10 (for the heavier LFs) shields that are just sitting around uselessly?

You didn't even read my post fully did you?

They had already proven too good with lvl 9 shields, hence they got nerfed to max. lvl8 shields.