actually the monitor serves as proof to me that 1% hard flux discharge with shields up and 0-flux boost at 1% or less flux should be the standard for frigates -- the monitor has half of those and is the only frigate that can stand up in a big fight
Better normal frigates have perfectly sufficient raw stats to effectively 1v1 decent subset of larger ships (phase frigates/Hyperion can kill anything, but we are not talking about them).
Problem is AI. Frigate needs to be much smarter both in absolute terms and relative to the larger ship it fights to win.
Stupid large ship is still good enough, stupid frigate is dead.
yeah but the specific way that the AI is not good enough is in micro-managing shields in a way that maxes its hard flux dissipation when it'd need to, and making the AI 100% effective in managing shields would make the game unplayable for the player who has to fight them.
Having passive hard flux dissipation would relieve this. AI that backs out of an enemy's effective range but is still in its potential range and keeps its shields up wouldn't be left at 0 dissipation forever, but a player who forced an enemy to back and then ran them down wouldn't have their effort completely foiled by the enemy perfectly slipping shield drops into the player's actions.
