Fighters should be fun...

[KercKasha]

The main problem isn't the fact that everyones dodge-tastic rather its the SHEER AMOUNT OF HITPOINTS fighters have! I can land every single shot on a guy until my caps drained and his hull gets scratched by like a quarter, its silly.(Mind you I use shield killers and I'm only using Two nomads + Two GMG guns, plus two shield killers) Honestly all fighters need is this, hull armour reduced back to the stock game values, leave the universals around. Slow down the projectile speed of capitalship/transport weapons so they can be dodged still. So once again, if you can dodge well you can take on a battleship and not implode at the sheer sight of it. Speaking of which, I guess nanobots and shield batteries should be reduced on fighters aswell.

The reason Battleships and capital ships in general are balanced against each other is because they only have their sheer hitpoints thats keeping them alive in the fight(Or asteroids...god I hate fighting in asteroids...), while fighters have quite alot of armour PLUS the ability to dodge and weave. It should only be the the dodging ability, leave the HP to the capitals.

EDIT: On second thought, Universals seem to be more of a "NEEDED FOR COMBAT" sort of thing rather then a "Should I put on more armour... or should I do this instead" sort of thing. Universal armour needs some sort of penalty, perhaps it could drastically reduce your agility or to make things even harder on you, it could take up a weapon slot. So if you want the tanked fighter from hell you'll have to ditch your guns. Seems fair to me, Cargo space in a fighter doesn't matter much so making that the penalty would be a "Oh, meh" situation rather then make you actually contemplate fitting it.

---

[OsoRojo]

It has come full circle. 1st Capital vessels and now fighters. Will we need licenses for these as well?

[chopper]

@Mjonlir - Yes, i know the feeling. I don't even aim in the little red cross anymore, with my 600s.
Because, i hit more if i aim manually, against good pilots.
But i still can aim with Krakens better, maybe because I use them both on regular bases.
You used 600s for a long time, and then switched to 700s. That's why you missed.:)
And we are forgetting one important thing. It is not just the weapon speed that is important here.
It is the speed/agility of the craft that is actually more important.
I can hit almost everything in Tigershark armed with Drakes (550 speed), just because i can turn fast as hell.
I actually did learn to aim as your sig says, but i didn't see it from you.
Just thought of it myself:P
8.33 is very hard to adjust, they really fly everywhere. But not impossible.

@Kerc - I can kill every VHF before my power drains. But i use only 1 Tizona.
Tried grouping?

And your proposal isn't fair.
Because, with no armor upgrade, all vanilla ships would die from a single Cannonball.
And they would have to sacrifice agility/wepslot for the ability to survive a single Cannonball.
While new ships can survive 3,4 (w/o armor upgd.)

---

It is every Corsair's responsibility to die a beautiful death in defense of Crete, regardless of how OORP or how capwhoring the opposition is. Launch your fighter, joust the battlecruisers and die a beautiful death. Then, drink it down in the bar.

Can't let you bash folks in your sig Chopper-Del

[Virus]

Actually, the best idea I've seen so far is to reduce hit points. Hitting people isn't the problem (as people have said), its that they can take too many hits, yes? So leave the Universal Armor Upgrades, lower hit points of all fighters (at least those with class 8 to 10 guns on them.

Note: Kerc's points are all very, very good ideas and points.

---

Into the Maelstrom - A Measure of Salvation - Reaver Company Database

[Badger]

Reducing hitpoints is another step backward. We'll reach the point where it costs 20 million in upgrades to put together a fighter that's essentially weaker in combat than a vanilla VHF in vanilla Freelancer. How it is now in Discovery, we have fighters with more hitpoints and guns that do less damage. It's a very simple equation, we just need weapons to be brought up to balance with armour. It's basic space-fighter engineering, it's not rocket science :0P

While I strongly disagree with nerfing anything to do with fighters, Kerc does have some interesting suggestions. Having armour upgrades occupy weapon slots is a great idea, as is having bigger armour upgrades decrease the agility of your ship. Unfortunately I don't think these two ideas are implementable as they would require modified hard-code, though I could be wrong.

---

Evil The Badger - Blood Dragon
(NovaPG)-Anaguma
__________________________________________________
Faction Status Page
(NovaPG) Message Dump

[mjolnir]

....
armor decreasing agility is not possible.... I think Igiss wrote about it a while ago.

...
armor taking weapon slots is a bad idea.... what would that do with ships that already have a few hardpoints?... LFs with 4 slots for example? , Greyhound with 4, Wrath/Guardian with 5 ? On the other hand say a Sabre (7) will suddenly get a big advantage.
..........

as it looks now the easiest would be armor decrease... not completely to vanilla levels but say to 1.5 armor upgrade max.

........
all vanilla ships die from single nuke/sunslayer already...cannonball usually takes some 70% of their hull. One nuke on Raven's Talon take some 1/3 of the hull.... :(

---

Igiss says: Martin, you give them a finger, they bite off your arm.

[KercKasha]

@Kerc - I can kill every VHF before my power drains. But i use only 1 Tizona.
Tried grouping?

And your proposal isn't fair.
Because, with no armor upgrade, all vanilla ships would die from a single Cannonball.
And they would have to sacrifice agility/wepslot for the ability to survive a single Cannonball.
While new ships can survive 3,4 (w/o armor upgd.)

I'm very aware of grouping, but I also have a habit of switching groups at the wrong time so I try not to. Especially because when I'm in an actual dog fight I tend to not run out cap as I'm not constantly firing.

Nah you can try and sell that to someone else, I'm not buying it. If the vanilla ships are too weak their HP should be upped, they shouldn't have to stick a universal armour on them and still end up being half the ship the custom VHF's are. Single player can't be blamed either because the NPC's use different ships again, plus all the customs ships are avail in single player aswell. I seriously have no idea why the vanilla ships weren't just upgraded from the start. Or why the new ships are so vastly superior to the Vanilla, honestly we'd be better off just setting the values to Vanilla's standards and leaving universals as is.

EDIT: May I add that I'm not fully aware of Freelancers limitations and are merely speculating on these things.

---

[chopper]

Look, decreasing hit points will nerf fighters against Capital ships.
I don't think it is an option.
Too much work with balancing.
Same with improving damage for weps, capital ship hull upgrade would have to follow.
Too much work again.
Most simple thing we can try is to improve speed for 100, and see how it goes.

---

It is every Corsair's responsibility to die a beautiful death in defense of Crete, regardless of how OORP or how capwhoring the opposition is. Launch your fighter, joust the battlecruisers and die a beautiful death. Then, drink it down in the bar.

Can't let you bash folks in your sig Chopper-Del

[KercKasha]

Look, decreasing hit points will nerf fighters against Capital ships.
I don't think it is an option.
Too much work with balancing.
Same with improving damage for weps, capital ship hull upgrade would have to follow.
Too much work again.
Most simple thing we can try is to improve speed for 100, and see how it goes.

So leave the game unbalanced as it is because it's 'too much work', this isn't a stab at Igiss mind you I feel he's done an excellent job but the game has buffed it self to the point that everything vanilla is useless and if that doesn't scream unbalanced, nothing does. Vanilla Freelancer was pretty well balanced, other then the end game weapons annihilating everything, but that still continues in Discovery, it's simply unavoidable.

Like I mentioned, slow the capital ships weapons down so its harder to hit a fighter with it. If a fighter DOES get hit by it then it's their own fault really. I don't see anything unbalanced about a capital ship landing a salvo on a fighter and killing it.

---

[Spear]

Look, decreasing hit points will nerf fighters against Capital ships.
I don't think it is an option.
Too much work with balancing.
Same with improving damage for weps, capital ship hull upgrade would have to follow.
Too much work again.
Most simple thing we can try is to improve speed for 100, and see how it goes.

To be honest the simplest thing in this is to do nothing as it's not broke dont fix it! Yes some fights drag on! I can kill an average pilot very quickly as it is, don't make it even harder on the new guys because you are tired of meeting worthy opponents please! If you cant take someone down, go away and re-think your load out and tatics, each faction has options avaiable to them to give them a good load out! Including my [W] char Hugo Clemens, 2 Debs, 2 Flashes and 2 missile launchers and a torp.. Weaker guns and yet I have killed so many..

---

=LSF=