I personally like the 'make em a bit slower but give em a hard hitting gun' approach. that means they aren t omni potent. but they also arent nigh-useless as now.
Plus it think its the easiest methof of balancing.
As a self-proclaimed LF whore and a person who exclusively flies an LF in Conn because he utterly sucks at anything else and can never get a kill except in an LF, I would like to put in a few words.
Firstly, LFs are, as Jinx said, a tactical ship. Mind you, alone they can handle themselves just fine so long as you can dodge nukes. But where they truly shine are group fights. Majority of the fights I've participated in on my Libby, I've always played second fiddle to the VHFs. But I play an important second fiddle.
Guess who keeps the enemy under fire constantly to ensure the shield is always down. Me.
Guess who stops the enemy from escaping when they're losing the fight. Me.
Guess who CDs nukes the enemy drops before a VHF can CD it. Me. In my LF.
LFs were never meant to go toe to toe with a VHF in a duel. They were meant as a support craft to harass, annoy and debilitate an enemy while other fighters go in for the kill.
Trust me, LFs are fine as they are now. The only thing that could be fixed are the individual LFs themselves. Some LFs are horrible because they receive so little attention because nobody flies them and therefore, no input is given to the devs.
I feel that if you were to implement whatever Dashiell mentioned in the first post, LFs will become a tad OP IMO.
I would much rather leave the LF at the speeds they are now, it's their job as a LF after all to be extra fast, and if we could make them an apart speed (400) I would suggest increasing the powercore of non-vanilla ships and let them carry cls 9 guns and some maybe even 10, like originally suggested, as time passes, so does tech evolves after all, but for the rest I won't change much to them.
Hmm- what is wrong with giving the classes a complete new design and balancing other than people have to relearn or rethink their behaviour?
I would still favour LFs as true interceptors (maybe with that nice net idea of mine;)) and scouts ( maybe there is a way to get increased cargo scan range, decloaking ability or whatnot) to make it even more distinct they are support and special job-craft.
Of course this would leave the question what to do with the HFs ad VHFs -
Maybe those are balancable so that the HFs are the new bread and butter class being able to make short work with LF,HF and VHF but slacking behind in Bomber and or Gunboat hunting.
This would open up a nice for the VHFs as being able to take each other, bombers and GBs on, reached by making them an actuall tad slower, heavier armed and armored.
Of course bombers might need some rework, too...there is a lot to do and possible in disco afterall when you start thinking out of the 100 year old box;)
LFs are completely fine as it is. (Well, there are quite a few which are not, but they can just be buffed to libby/onuris level)
I would like to keep them as they are right now.
They are able to:
1. intercept any ship other than another LF
2. the balanced ones can duel VHFs on equal terms and they absolutely destroy bombers.
3. they are amazing as support in teamfights
They sort of lack the damage output to make a signifanct impact in fights against gunboats though.
And most of them are killed by one single nuke.
I think this makes them quite balanced.
Now, there are a few who have issues with the hitbox (phantom, hyena and the likes) and some who are quite slow for LFs. (wyrm, hussar, caracal, ... They are slower than some HFs and about as fast as the eagle).
Buff those accordingly and all will be fine.
' Wrote:Yep, I agree with this idea. I've dabbled in it a bit, but it would need a total revision of all fighter guns basically, so a pretty good plan is needed beforehand.
Well problem is that the smaller the ship is the more impact lag has on the ability of others to hit it, the less skill is needed to dodge, the harder the ship is to properly balance. If we gave LFs good support for example, we'd still have the issue of Hyena vs Liberator for example, which are probably the two extremes of the class - one because it's too big for what the class is supposed to achieve, the other because it is far too small. Their speed compounds this problem further, it doesn't have that big of an impact on the Hyena for example (except in very specific situations like duels and people who are able to actually use this advantage, and there are very few of those due to the way FL physics and targeting systems work) as opposed to Liberator which is basically almost unhittable and with the 8.33s is actually an excellent addition to a battle... but for the enemy it is an extremely difficult ship to kill even in a medium pilot's hands. And then the voidrunner showcases the extreme of the extreme where it is actually almost completely impossible to kill, and yet somehow becomes yet harder to kill if it lags even slightly.
VHFs are already pretty fast that in a laggy environment the battle is ludicrous. But at the moment LFs are balanced in such a way that most of them can be basically ignored in battle. If we suddenly make them meaningful, then they will become the main battle vehicles of choice on account of now being slightly to majorly OP depending on the LF... and that's not really what I want.
Point taken, and I've changed my stance on this anyway. LFs should stay as they are, as for the idea of what you think LFs should be, could be interesting to see it as a whole new class of its own.
LFs do their job well. They are harder to fly than VHFs, but in proper hands they rape.
Reduce Liberator's speed, give Hyena class 9 shield, nerf the nomad LF, give corsairs mk2 Legioneire and balance it to Hussar and, imho, the whole class is balanced.
You can remove the trolling aspect and increase the competitiveness by compressing the sub-classes a bit. Add class-9 and class-10 slots, bump the power core to 9k, bump the hull strength to survive a nuke, and then you can slow them down so they are less evasive. Alright you have reinvented HFs just with smaller hitboxes. They are still going to lose against VHF with comparable skill due to lack of comparable firepower, and they will no longer be good for what they are good at now.
Really I think the solution here is to move all of the fighter classes upwards. HF should be the air-superiority fighter platform and VHF should be like SHF currently.
In the meantime though, LFs are fine. They are tactical ships and require a completely different mindset that is focused on objective play. You get a LF when you have a cap that is trolling the system, or when you have a lone bomber enemy and you are by yourself. It makes the game interesting.
Quote:Some LFs are horrible because they receive so little attention because nobody flies them and therefore, no input is given to the devs.[/b]
This is actually the area that needs immediate attention. Phantom was already discussed but there are even worse ships out there. Take a look at the Gallic civilian lineup, where the Moonbeam LF and the Eclipse heavy bomber share the exact same body. The BHG Sea Serpent has the same body as the rest of the BHG snubline. These ships dont have the same evasive capabilities as the house Libby/Wyrm/Hussar model. Evasion is the principle attribute of an LF, if you dont have it you cant really do anything with the ship.
See above, I think all of the fighters should be heavier, until HF is the favored air-superiorty vehicle.
Well, I disagree with the "no attention" thing. The Phantom has been a subject of some discussions in the past, Mjolnir specifically tried to do something with it since he saw first hand (having his main chars in Rheinland) how the thing kind of blows. But the truth is even putting on a torp slot and buffing it up in armour didn't help it. It's just simply not on par to fight VHFs, and as much as the support ship idea is a very nice one, the reality of warfare on the server is: if I have a choice to take an LF or two with my team of VHFs or go pure VHFs into a fighter battle - I will always take full VHFs because they can simply dish out more damage. LF "anti shield support" blows, I can do the same thing with VHF with 2 debs on it. All the other things except catching up to fleeing enemy in cruise I can do in my VHF.
So, the only thing that LFs are truly useful for is catching up to fleeing enemies - not counting Liberator with Lib water cannons or the Void runner which are beasts of an LF due to size, speed and guns. This is exactly why most LFs are underused IMO... we can't turn them all into Liberators because IMO the Liberator is OP as it is, and the Voidrunner isn't even subject to opinion on this, it just is OP and everyone knows and understands it.
Anyway, like I said: the issue is not that light fighters suck in stats, it's that their concept sucks IMO. Now a big change would be to give LFs some LF only guns that excel in specific situations. Take Corsair LF for example... it will always suck with Corsair 600ms or even 650ms guns. LFs can't train on a target for long or they get shot down, and they don't deal enough damage to warrant flying them evasively. But I won't repeat myself trying to convince people, lets see where this discussion goes. Needless to say there are some pretty nice ideas here so far.
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Quote:They are still nothing more than a curiosity and don't really have any real use in battles.
A group of Mandalorian Mercenaries found out this was wrong the hard way when they tried to tangle with Lane Hackers in light fighters. The Mandos' HFs and VHFs all died, and the LFs lost 1 in a 4v4 fight. If you fly a LF right, you can take on HFs, VHFs and bombers. You just can't use LFs in combat the same way you would fly a VHF, but that doesn't mean they are no good.
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