Why does the SHF got nerfed heavily?

[Deluxe]

the SHF were nerf because there was too many crying players that lost to SHF, even despite their huge size and low turning, that is why they nerf it. only that becuase there is soo many things to do here, and devs decide to waste their real life free time, nerfing SHF instead of solving several problems. don't get me wrong, i apreciate that people waste their spare time for the mod, but at least they could do something usefull and not ruin something.

Exactly my thought about it. Someone in a VHF/HF who knows how to fly could outclass the shf pretty easily, cause it was slow, big and hell of a mine magnet. Playing in a group I always prefer a vhf/hf over a shf - but to play alone it was by far the best solution - Competable against Bomber/Fighters and could take on bigger ships - but always outclassed if the opponent knew what he does in his ship. Now there is no ship that suits to that role anymore. On top of that the best solo Snub remaining (Thor) is nerfed for Pirate ID.

I admit it had too much of a hull (never used more than CAU4 on it, so thats not a big deal in that matter) and could needed less Nanos/Batts. But now there is absolutly no reason to use it anymore. Take a battlefrighter, better in all manners and can use turret view.

SHFs were cancer to deal with. GB DPS output, a lot of HP, capable to replace bombers in some situations. Now they are noob-friendly fighters: fatter, slower, more damage and powercore than VHFs, but they're not complete cancer as they have been before rework. Lord bless balance devs

This is the gist of it.

You people need to curb your misconceptions about this being a nerf. It's a total redesign that makes the shipclass an actual fighter, and not a bomber-fighter hybrid with more health than a heavy bomber.

That was the actual thought behind that ship a hybrid between bomber and fighter - otherwise you could just delte that shipclass, cause it has no purpose anymore.

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.

Thanks for the answer! I understand the tought behind it, but in my opinion as you rebalanced the shf, you could just have took them out of the game. There werent the best choice for specific roles before and now lost their eligibility as a good all around ship. If you are testing it next time, set it against a battle frighter and you will see what I mean.