Community Input: Heavy Fighters, Light Fighters

[Tachyon]

Greetings, I have opened up this thread to collect the community's ideas on the Heavy Fighter and Light Fighter shipclasses, as the balance team considers these to be rather left behind at the moment.

Since Haste is too busy to do anything and to save me some brainstorming, this is your chance to bring forward your thoughts on this matter. You can be creative, absurd - anything that brings something new to the table is good (refining old ideas is okay, too!)

Thusly, instead of asking for anything specific, I'll leave this open to any ideas, suggestions, innovations as well as related discussion.

If this community input thread goes well I'll consider doing it more often

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[Lythrilux]

On a specific note, it would be good if the devs could do something unique with the Sea Serpent and the Hammerhead. Giving them universal fixes along with the other ships of their class won't make them viable ships as they're VHF sized fighters with reduced stats.
I did give Haste a bunch of ideas about making them hybrid ships (the SS being some sort of LF+HF/VHF hybrid and HH becoming some sort of HF/VHF hybrid like the Centi or just a really heavy VHF like the Neph is for The Order or even making it something like the Bastet, however the Manta already fills that role somewhat) but he just told me that my suggestions were pointless as universal fixes would save the two ships, even though as I've outlined that probably won't save them.

Dii did make a pretty cool model to replace the current one of the SS, however Haste said it wouldn't make it in the mod as it was too "liberator-like" (even though it was somewhat bigger than the libbie).

On the subject of universal fixes however, I feel that as the ship class gets lighter the ships become harder to use - but the about of damage a skilled player could do with the ships could also increase. So basically the lighter ships have a higher skill cap.

edit: Maybe decreasing the armour and powercore as the class goes down, but somehow upping the amount of damage output they have? It'd reward players who have careful, precise and consistent actions by letting them dish out lots of damage, however to keep this up they'd need to try so much harder to not leave any room for error.

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[Sciamach]

Convert all HFs to utility vessels like the Carabela.

either that or remove all fighters because snub combat is boring

/thread

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[ sci·am·ach ]
/sīˈamək/

A simple, angry man casually working his way through life on a personal quest to acquire copious amounts of street cred.

[sindroms]

LFs were interesting with their 1000m/s, 500 range weapons.
Class 6 "CD" missile with a 5k range could also be interesting.

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[Tomas.]

Perhaps move more HFs, if not all of them, to the 'utility' loadouts possible on ships like Carabela, Loki. As Lyth pointed out, without some sort of perk they're just VHFs with slightly better turn and worse stats.

Except for Switchblade. (and Black Dragon/Chimmie, but those are good because of size/shape, not necessary stats or possible loadouts.)

That thing is crazy.

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[Char Aznable]

Well, most HF's I'm flying are fine as they are. To the extent of me flying almost only HFs, that is.

Specifically though, two fighters that need fixing need to be adjusted, those being:

The Katana (Blood Dragon HF) needs to be made identical to the Chimmie (Kusari lawful HF). It's currently the inferior of both, when they should be identical statswise.

The BH shipline that Lyth mentioned is actually a thing. The Hammerhead needs fixing. It's a HF that turns slower than not only its VHF equivalent, but slower than even some bombers. No wonder everyone is using only Mantas.

Edit after the Ninjas: Please don't make all HFs 'utility'. The HFs with 6 guns are mostly fine, really.

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#notmyfrankfurt

[Connor]

LFs really do need to be made more like interceptors. Maybe more set ups like the Arrow with a greater speed? Something like 500.

Edit: What happened to those old LF guns? There used to be really high fire rate weapons and 1.00s

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[Yber]

Enhance the heavy fighter reverse speed to -30.

Create an anti shield gun for light fighters that takes the mine/CD slot and does x2 times the current VHF dps to shields.

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inb4 Sirius gets renamed to XTF.

[Karst]

Regarding HFs, convert the current, horribly balanced Sunrider to a Moldy Crow replacement. No. It already fits the requirements: massive for a fighter, seven gun hardpoints, even a broadly similar shape.
Simply change all hardpoints to class 8, change shield and other equipment, drastically reduce hull and bb count, and give it turn speed faster than the Liberator. There's simply no way it can work as a slow ship because slow+huge is not a viable concept.

Otherwise - I don't see a big problem with HFs as a concept, some are just much better at their role than others.
Yes, they're very similar to VHFs but is that really a problem? They're faster and usually smaller without sacrificing much firepower, at the cost of shield and hull.
Some of the bigger ones could probably do with a buff of some sort, speed maybe, or even core.

Kinda the same situation with LFs honestly, I don't see them as having a problem in general.
They're just a fighter class with more pronounced strengths and weaknesses than the heavier ones.

Again the main issue is poor balancing within the class, mainly due to size differences. Big LFs are really quite bad at the moment and need an adjustment. More core, or a little more survivability, or even more guns would be interesting.

Perhaps move more HFs, if not all of them, to the 'utility' loadouts possible on ships like Carabela, Loki. As Lyth pointed out, without some sort of perk they're just VHFs with slightly better turn and worse stats.

For the love of anything, please do not do this. Those ships suck and there's too many of them already.

(maybe I'll come up with something more interesting when my brain is no longer kill)

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[nOmnomnOm]

Im just going to say this... Please dont ruin from this my racings.

But here we go... Heavy fighters are alright... I usually use a Torp and missile combo on them... But they can be more like a gladiator with CD and MR capabilities. Would be cool.

With light fighters.... 500 speed would be way too much to handle I predict... I'd like to know how are they not already interceptors in the first place with 425... 25 enough to be a big difference.

Like this would cause some major balance stuff if you add even more. screw up racing too :|
Why? Because you wont have ANY time if you stop to shoot cds at all.

A good start for LF would be maybe a buff to their guns perhaps? Maybe they move faster or something? I dont know... I just know that with 2-3 slots you cannot do much against a bomber that should be able to die from a light fighter encounter.

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