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+---- Thread: Light Fighter Rework Suggestion (/showthread.php?tid=161491)
RE: Light Fighter Rework Suggestion - Zeerow - 05-28-2018
+1 for making it a utility ship and still having the ability to do what it does now if possible (for those that like fighting in a tiny ship)
RE: Light Fighter Rework Suggestion - Antonio - 05-28-2018
I wouldn't be against turning bigger LFs into proper combat ships, but the question then arises what kind of changes are necessary, and if those changes in the end would make them very close to HFs or even VHFs, why keep them as LFs? I'm mostly advocating for the small obnoxious ones that'll always be problematic in PvP to be turned into something proposed in the OP. The exact list is: Hayabusa, Wyrm, Neko, Liberator, Decurion, Tanto, maybe Hussar and Onuris.
(05-28-2018, 03:29 PM)Sombra Hookier Wrote: As I am probably the person here who is known for piloting LFs (while being average at most while doing so) I wouldn't want any of the suggestions. I fly them because they are incredibly fun to fly, basically the extreme opposite of battleships who are slow and tanky, while an LF can be mine-slapped instantly. That's a risk I take. I like being able to run away from fights while not being able to deal much damage. Basically, I only managed to kill stuff using HAMMERFALLs from FP11 or FEUERBALLs since they are available to LFs. To be honest, I avoid shieldrunning and died quickly in PvP, but always to mines only, and only in one single instance to the natural fisheye of Protege.
I guess if someone like Wesker would use an LF, especially with FEUERBALLs, that'd be frustrating, especilly if they are on a Liberator. I recall one instance of Kreuzberg using a Hussar with Hammerfalls to wreck five Corsairs. Would taking away their DPS fix it? I don't think so. A tiny barely unhittable ship with two HAMMERFALLs or FEUERBALLs can still deal a lot of damage while dodging. I think upscaling the ship hitboxes would only do so much, maybe adjusting all their sizes to a similar level. The Liberator is the extreme here as it is as tiny as the Hayabusa while the Liberator can mount more weapons. The Hayabusa only three.
Changing the class entirely? I think that'd go along well if there was a specific need for interceptors, and only then. Right now, any cruiser has the same CD-abilities as an LF. Why? If Cruisers, in my book, would have CDs at all, then only about 20 and only for torpedo-defense. Something like mini-flaks, guided but with huge AoE. Right now however cruisers are just as effective in CDing as LFs or anything else are - except battleships.
Creating a new class works only if there is a need for it. However with Cruisers being "omnipotent" in those regards, why would you need interceptors at all?
Understandable, those who enjoy using them won't like this and I acknowledge that there is no perfect solution to make everyone happy. In this particular example however, flying LFs being fun for you probably isn't fun for everyone else due to the nature of light fighters and their obnoxiousness, especially if you're flying one of the super small ones. It does feel good being unkillable in such a ship, especially if you use fireballs, but at the end of the day the interaction between a LF and other snubs isn't healthy for gameplay. There is no satisfaction in missing 99% of your guns until that 1 mine lands and the LF dies, or you just keep getting drained down slowly while you feel helpless. Sure, it feels good to mine it and get the kill, but that's 1 second of the fight while everything before that was either frustration or helplessness. You said it yourself, there is no middle ground in 99% of fights, it's either get instakilled or live forever.
(05-28-2018, 03:29 PM)Sombra Hookier Wrote: Changing the class entirely? I think that'd go along well if there was a specific need for interceptors, and only then. Right now, any cruiser has the same CD-abilities as an LF. Why? If Cruisers, in my book, would have CDs at all, then only about 20 and only for torpedo-defense. Something like mini-flaks, guided but with huge AoE. Right now however cruisers are just as effective in CDing as LFs or anything else are - except battleships.
Creating a new class works only if there is a need for it. However with Cruisers being "omnipotent" in those regards, why would you need interceptors at all?
This is where I don't get you. Why pick Cruisers to demonstrate your point when they're one of the worst at doing that? Cruisers and battlecruisers have the ability to CD, but it's mostly offensive CDing. Sure, you can CD stuff behind you but it's not as easy as it looks and requires an incredible amount of concentration, awareness and effort if you're under fire. Your average pilot will most likely get himself killed in trying to CD behind him due to loss of range between the target. Even if they had a 360 arc CD, you can't realistically expect them to be able to overlook the fight and CD everything due to their size and low speed. They can't freely move around due to area-of-denial of bigger caps in the area, while moving around that area is very difficult (think of the area like a sun corona, it's a sphere so if you want to go from one place of the fight to the complete opposite one you have to go all the way around it) - they're big fat caps at the end of the day compared to a bomber or a gunboat.
A bomber would be a much better example because it can move around as freely as an LF and get from one place of the fight to the other. A better example would also be gunboats which are just cruisers but smaller and more nimble, which means they're automatically better suited for the interceptor role in every way. The main part here is that gunboats can't be effectively cruised on by bigger caps which means you have much more breathing room for error and the ability to overlook the fight and be an interceptor. But still, you're limited by that same area-of-denial except it's smaller due to the nature of a smaller and faster ship.
TL;DR Bombers and gunboats as interceptors sure, cruisers and battlecruisers definitely not. However, all these can be focused down and shot, while if we had LFs doing this you'd probably let both sides have utility ships and blow up those that are worth blowing up time-wise. It's less about other classes so let's not deviate off-topic, it's more about giving LFs a clear purpose.
RE: Light Fighter Rework Suggestion - Sombs - 05-28-2018
Meh, this is a bigger topic, I feel. I think the main problem is that any kind of CD can be used on any kind of CD-slotted ship, at least I was always able to use reinforced CDs on LFs, just not while engine-killing myself. Cruisers are sort of bad at intercepting, but they are pretty well capable of. If Cruisers were forced to use a type of CD that makes them consider very much more when and against what to use the CD (since they don't need to use CDs for hitting mines but only incomming capital missiles and CDing battleships) by having a very limited amount of CD ammo (like 20 or something like that), it would actually create the necessity for cruisers to not be on their own - which is what they can be right now. Cruisers are the perfect ships to fly alone, that is something nobody can deny. They are able to take on snubs, very easily on gunboats and can fight bigger capitals easily. The only weakness is their range, which is a pretty acceptable weakness. Gunboats can be better against snubs, but they are weak against cruisers. A gunboat CDing a cruiser will think twice about CDing a cruiser. A cruiser however can CD anything and take on the fight. I personally would limit the CD ammo of cruisers, and in that case, the LFs you proposed would be awesome as support ships. They can spam CDs, meaning they can intercept torpedos and missiles for the cruiser, they can intercept enemies nicely and all that. The suggestion is to take the theoretical omnipotence from cruisers and make LFs a nice support ship for them, as any snub is a nice support ship for any battleship right now, to show some similarity.
Right now, fighting-ships up to battlecruisers don't really need a support ship. It's a nice to have, nothing more. There needs to be a demand for them, otherwise they are just nice-to-haves and people who so far prefered to play LFs suddenly end up with a ship that is nothing more than a nice-to-have.
RE: Light Fighter Rework Suggestion - Sand_Spider - 05-28-2018
Why not the best of both worlds?
Take some of the niche or less often used LFs and re-balance them as proposed, while leaving other LFs alone? I'm all about variety in ship classes. Almost every ship class in the game has variety in ship power cores, except for LFs. HFs sorely need some variety as well, but there are at least a few that stand out, like the Marauder, Bull Dog, Jack Daw, as well as a few others. Why not give some LFs the support role, with others being more combat capable?
Perhaps some freighters could also receive some love as Lanakov suggested. The Grizzly is a pretty neat little trick; double CMs allows it to keep one open for countering missiles, while also being able to cloak or counter cloaks. It would be nice to have that available to more than just the Lib-Civ tech cell.
Edit: Mini-flaks sound like an amazing thing and I want one.
RE: Light Fighter Rework Suggestion - Backo - 06-01-2018
This sounds like a way to give LFs a purpose beyond being the ship that people who don't really want to pvp and just avoid most fights fly. Not sure how used they'll become as the other utility ship - the repair ship is already not that often seen, but at least they'll offer something new on the table. I'd say it wouldn't hurt to try. Question is what will we do with the class 6 guns that were meant to be LF specific? Maybe introduce some LF specific tools, like special CDs, etc?
RE: Light Fighter Rework Suggestion - Goliath - 06-01-2018
Okay, this sounds good. But PLEASE keep Scimitars as they are. And maybe the Hawk too.
RE: Light Fighter Rework Suggestion - Antonio - 07-25-2018
Bump for new thoughts.
RE: Light Fighter Rework Suggestion - eigos - 07-25-2018
As a whole, I agree with @Antonio, LFs need to be more like a scout force, or utility pursuit force to CD runaways.
To balance things like the liberator, remove some of its guns (as Arrow and Hayabusa have 2 and 3 guns respectively), you can drop 1 gun (or 2) off a liberator and give it something else.
Or, upscale it slightly (15% maybe or something similar).
All in all, DPS doesn't make much sense for a LF, since its core should be that much smaller and weaker than a VHF. Instead, you can make them have some sort of Pulses that eat at the powercores of larger ships, or maybe have them be able to use cloaks more effectively for scouting reasons.
As for repair ships, I agree - we need more of them. But turning every LF into a repair ship isn't good imho. But a big yes for more utility roles for LF's. Let them do more harassment instead of damage and have them be useful in combinations with other ships!
RE: Light Fighter Rework Suggestion - HanCloudstone - 07-25-2018
To be fair, Light Fighters are - by design - supposed to be a cheap, mass produced and, ideally, automated swarm. Light Fighters' strength is supposed to be in great numbers, small size and great evasion. The only realistic way to make it otherwise is to give them powerful missile armament because it will not have impact on the core. Buffing LF guns to higher damage output, on the other hand, is just a crutch.
This kind of "utility" approach will make them better, sure, but don't call them Light Fighters after that.
I think that LFs in general should be used more in crowd scenes.
RE: Light Fighter Rework Suggestion - Lanakov - 07-25-2018
Some modern aircraft and warships do fall into support roles. There's a few of those, but I'm mostly thinking about electronic warfare (ECW), namely the EA-18G Growler.
Essentially, it's a flying radar jammer/disruptor built on the same frame as the F/A-18 fighter jet. But it is absolutely unarmed to my knowledge, save perhaps for defensive short-range missiles.
I think Light fighters could very well be Disco's Growler. Instead of guns, they'd have to choose from a selection of ECW tools in their weapon hardpoints. The more tools of a same category you have, the more effective the resulting effect. I'm not expert in ECW, but from what I understand of it, we could translate it in the following for Disco :
- Powerplant drain (much like what has been proposed above)
- Shield recharge delay (either the time it takes to reactivate the shield, or the speed at which it regenerates)
- Scanner jammer (masks the contacts list, or jams it into unreadable gibberish, or unreadable gibberish with IFF colours depending on the amount of jammers used)
- Repair systems disruptor (Disables any attempt at repair, either via repair beam or nanobots, or directly attacks the bot/bat supply, I'm not sure)
- Missile jam (Torpedoes, CDs and missiles can't get a lock and will go on a flat trajectory if fired, or they don't track as well or as far)
- Weapon systems jam (Slows the refire rate or the range, or both)
- Counter-intelligence systems (Reveal cloaked ships or reduce their remaining cloak time. Would function as AoE projectiles, much like depth charges)
These tools would be "fired" at the enemy, either through projectiles or beams (I imagine the difficulty of hitting a target and the risks associated to it would factor decisively in balancing them) much like mining arrays or repair beams. I think it very important to keep any support capacity an active thing, not just some FLHook wizardy you just type in like /jam and then fly around your target hoping it has better things to worry about. Same as bombing runs, we'd have jamming runs, which would make full use of the LF's zippy nature, and also open them for a devastating counter-attack.
That's all I've got for now. I confess to having no earthly clue as to the feasability of any of these, code-wise, and I reckon they'd need to be fine-tuned carefully to be neither gamebreaking nor irrelevant. I imagine ECW Light fighters as truly support ships, force multipliers, NOT as indispensable table turners. Their abilities would need to be noticeable but not overtly frustrating and with a possibility of counter. I imagine most of this could be solved with simple stats. I'd be very enthusiastic about implementing something like this and would love to work with Devs if need be.