Why does the SHF got nerfed heavily?

[Haste]

SHFs were a problem class. Their sheer HP made them do things you would realistically not want ships with 200 thrust speed to do: take a fat dump on medium and light gunboats, restock hellfires, repeat. At the same time, their main strategy against fighter opponents was to test their patience - unless they were an Anzu, in which case they just owned every ship in the game - for long enough to make them choose to lose the fight out of sheer desperation.

Years and years of repeated nanobot buffs made them one-dimensional. Their only trait was their ludicrous, inflated HP pool. Meanwhile, SNACs existed that literally one-shot them through that HP pool no problem, meaning their entire existence relied on your opponents not fielding a single bomber. I don't think that kind of binary "balance" is something we should aim for. Ships being more or less effective against specific other classes of ships is fine, but being completely unplayable against one class and bonkers overpowered against another isn't ideal.

When we reworked them, our goal was to make them just small and agile enough to actually avoid fire, while still having a generous amount of hitpoints, powercore and weapons to be easy to manage for newer players. The loss of bomber guns was done so that future bomber changes could be made without breaking the SHF class (again) in the process. It also pushed them away from being "better bombers" and towards the class their name implies they are: fighters.

We have probably underestimated the stats we could reasonably give them in their first balance iteration, and are already looking to buff at the very least the weaker SHFs (the Magpie and Anzu come to mind). The current numbers aren't final and our goal is never to take away toys from our players.

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