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[Locklave]

Yeah, yeah its all connected to some degree I agree. Comparing tech levels, and the role of safety override definitely have place in this discussion, but the arguents sometimes strayed too far from the original post.

We all kinda slide back and forth over the primary issue. But I do feel most of the most off topic elements fed back into the main discussion.

I think we should focus on one thing we should all agree on, and that is a FRIGATE. SHALL. NOT. 1v1. A. CAPTIAL.

I disagree with this statement. 

Especially if if that frigate is player piloted with s-mods and skills, and the capital is AI run with a terrible default fit and no skills.  If I can solo an entire 10 capital/10 cruiser/10 destroyer-frigate intel fleet in a single capital (Odyssey), more than a ratio of 14 in DP, I don't see why a player frigate shouldn't be able to overcome a 5 DP ratio (8 vs 40).

The fact is, many capitals are explicitly designed not to work well when isolated.  In a fleet line up or with an escort or two, they work much, much better.

For example, when I used Onslaughts in 0.9.1a as line holders, I always gave each a cruiser carrier escort which seemed to up their killing and survival efficiency a lot.  In 0.95a, I've been using a pair of Luddic Path restored Lashers, a Mora, or a Legion XIV.

This is about AI controlled frigates with a captain outclassing Capitols. Player pilots are basically cheating the AIs limitations. Player control breaks the game and shouldn't be included in any discussion but those specifically about that.

And to be clear we aren't talking fleet vs fleet and capitols needing support when outnumbered. It's just getting a spanking 1v1, which is absurd when done by the AI. It's layers of imbalance and failure.

[Thaago]

Yup, can confirm watching an AI controlled tempest with all its bonuses just fly up and gun down a conquest head to head is silly. Sure its a non-officered, D mod conquest with a mediocre build, and I'm going down the leadership 9 Tech 5 route, but thats some serious powerup on the frigate!

[Hiruma Kai]

And to be clear we aren't talking fleet vs fleet and capitols needing support when outnumbered. It's just getting a spanking 1v1, which is absurd when done by the AI. It's layers of imbalance and failure.

Serious question, can you clarify the parameters of the 1v1?  So I was wrong to assume human players in the equation.

Is this fleet skilled vs no fleet skills?  Both sides have officers, or just the frigate?  S-mods on both sides, or s-mods on one side and d-mods on the other?  Player fitting for both, or player fit for one side and autofit for the other?

Any one of those on it's own might be shifts of factors of 50% in terms of expected power and effectiveness.  Combined, that adds up quick.  I'm fairly certain I can build an AI Legion (presumably considered the weakest capital ship at this point), which when given the option of having the same officer level, fleet wide skill choices, and s-mod additions, will beat an AI Tempest 1 on 1 every time. 

Now I agree it probably won't handle 5 of them, but I'm willing to bet the 1 v 1 is quite doable.  So I'm not saying frigates with skills are not over tuned, but I don't think they're over tuned to the point people seem to be claiming generally.

At the end of the day, Wolfpack Tactics is a single skill which shifts damage by 20%.  Target Analysis is at most another 20% in the frigate's favor.  Frigates were at best OK as distractions or escorts in end game 0.9.1a fleets, while the fundamental base numbers on the ships have not changed.  Without skills, assuming player builds, a Tempest is going to lose 1 on 1 with a capital.  And I'm fairly certain that holds when both ships are benefiting from skills/s-mods and player curated builds.

I'm merely objecting to general statements which makes things sound factors of 2 or 3 worse than they really are.

Yup, can confirm watching an AI controlled tempest with all its bonuses just fly up and gun down a conquest head to head is silly. Sure its a non-officered, D mod conquest with a mediocre build, and I'm going down the leadership 9 Tech 5 route, but thats some serious powerup on the frigate!

This for example is something I can comment on.  I'd be very curious to see that same experiment repeated with instead a Tempest, a Shrike, Medusa, or Aurora.

Seems to me the only skill that might not apply to those ships would be Wolfpack tactics.  A lack of officer, unequal fleet skills, and the presence of s-mods and d-mods can be seen as massive shifts in power.  Especially when you've got bonuses which multiply each other.

Lets consider a simple model where you multiply offensive power by defensive power (i.e. I can shoot X% harder because of offense, and I can shoot Y% longer because of my defense letting me tank longer), with and without Wolfpack tactics.


Target Analysis (+0.2), Energy Weapon Mastery (+0.15), Reliability Engineering (+0.05), Crew Training (+0.05), Weapon Drills (+0.1).  Roughly 1.55 multiplier for offense.  Three s-mods and flux regulation is likely a factor of 1.4 in terms of flux/second, allowing it to fire longer.  Similarly, probably an extra factor of 1.25 capacity.  Which multiplies defensive skills and hull mods like Hardened shields (0.75), Shield Modulation (0.8 ), 100% CR (0.9).  And say Helmsmanship lets you dodge 10% more shots (0.9). 1/(0.8*0.75*0.9*0.9) = 2.05. 

1.55*1.4 * 1.25 * 2.05 = 5.5 increase in damage spent in a single attack cycle of moving in and then out for a Tempest.  But that's also roughly the improvement I would expect for a Shrike.  Or a Medusa.

Wolfpack tactics bumps that 5.5 up to about 6.3 (i.e. 1.55 goes to 1.75).  My guess is even without Wolfpack Tactics, you'd still see that Tempest coming out on top.  But you might also be seeing a Shrike, Medusa, or Aurora coming out on top as well.  I'd love to see controlled testing on that.

I guess my point is, take a pile of ten to fifteen 10% bonus skills, and if they compound each other, can quickly result in large differences in damage output when ships clash. 

The poor fit Conquest likely doesn't have hardened shields, and d-mods might be Faulty Power Grids (-8% health) and Compromised hull (-15% total health).  So like a factor of 0.77 ish in terms of how long the Conquest lasts.

If this is the type of scenario people are objecting to (full fleet skills, full officer skills, full s-mods against no officer, no s-mod, with d-mods), you need to tone all skills down to shifts of like 5-8% instead of 20%, which I'm not sure if that is what people are advocating for.

Essentially, I view it to boiling down to 1.2^10 = 6.2 and 1.08^10 = 2.2.

Keep in mind, frigates were buffed because they weren't usable for offense in 0.9.1a late game.  And fighters could be spammed agains the AI and it couldn't do anything.  If you want to avoid another overcompensation, I feel people need to be very clear on what situations they would like to see be balanced against each other.

[Vanshilar]

Okay there are a lot of issues here, I think they're getting a bit muddled. I think they get muddled because people are conflating various issues at work and also because these issues do turn out to be inter-related. It's not a matter of low tech vs high tech, or frigate vs capital, or SO. Those are roleplay/storytelling/immersion concepts for the more fundamental gameplay design balance between weapon range vs ship maneuverability/speed, or if you prefer, offense vs defense.

Ships that are faster tend to be weaker, both in terms of offensive capability (weapons) and in terms of defensive capability (hit points). Faster ships are able to engage and disengage at will, so they need to create the opportunity to go in and do damage before being shot to pieces. It's a high risk vs high reward playstyle. Additionally, the game is set so that the onus is on the person taking the risk to create the opportunity; the longer they wait, the more the advantage goes to the slower ship. So they need to be more aggressive, but that comes with the risk of overextending themselves and getting destroyed. This can be seen in multiple ways:

1. Frigates are faster but have less flux/armor/hull than capitals. They also have fewer weapons and shorter-range weapons, plus shorter range bonuses, as well as a lower PPT. Additionally, capitals will reduce the PPT of frigates, but frigates may not reduce the PPT of capitals unless there are many of them. So the onus is on the frigate to create an opportunity to take out the capital, and if they wait too long, then they start getting weaker due to PPT and capitals get relatively stronger. Frigates have less flux/armor/hull than capitals, so they can't afford as many errors.
2. High tech ships are faster than low tech ships, but have worse weapons, lower PPT, and take longer to recover after battle. High tech ships have more flux, but energy weapons are less efficient than ballistic weapons, plus have lower range, so some of the ship's flux is used up in absorbing attacks on its way in before starting to do damage. They also tend to be more expensive DP-wise, so fewer of them can be deployed per battle.
3. SO gives twice the flux dissipation, but means the ship has only 1/3 the PPT. So the ship has to get their damage in quickly enough to turn the tide of battle, or they'll be forced to withdraw. Also, SO is a very expensive hullmod, meaning less points remaining for other stuff.

Faster ships having less weapon range means that they have to absorb some fire on their way in to attack a target. It also means that enemy ships can focus fire more easily on them -- they have to get within the range of multiple enemy ships to do their damage.

The reason why I'm getting into this, is that I think it's a lot more useful from a feedback standpoint to talk in terms of whether or not the changes skewed the risk vs reward ratio a bit too much toward one side or the other. Engaging in hyperbole etc. might be cathartic but it isn't useful, in the sense of, explaining the validity of your position.

Alright, getting into some of the specifics:

The initial post. Take for example the Hyperion getting ~17k damage in a single ion pulser burst. Sounds impressive, but let's look at it a bit more closely. It comes from:

10% CR
20% Target Analysis
10% Weapon Drills
20% Wolfpack Tactics
~30% Energy Weapon Mastery (it varied as flux increased)
-----
+~90% damage


So (hopefully I'm not forgetting any other bonuses) the bonus was roughly 90% to the overall damage. I assume this was a 30-shot burst for each ion pulser (expanded magazines), so that's 90 shots, so the Hyperion used up 8100 flux (9000 flux but -10% due to Energy Weapon Mastery) to achieve this. A bit more than double the damage.

The punching bag was the sim Onslaught. No officer, no skills, etc., resulting in shield efficiency of 1.0. Hence the high number. But what if it were similarly equipped as the Hyperion? Then we would have:

-10% damage from CR
-20% damage from Shield Modulation
-25% damage from Hardened Shields
-20% damage from Solar Shielding
-----
-56.8% damage


These are all multiplied (not added) together, so it ends up being -56.8% damage. In other words, properly equipped, the Onslaught would've taken 43.2% of the damage. That comes out to 7249 damage. So against an equally equipped Onslaught, the Hyperion would've expended 8100 flux to do 7249 flux damage to the Onslaught. Less than 1:1 ratio.

Sure it's fun to post some huge numbers (reminds me of when AD&D players would post their huge crit numbers), but it's not really indicative of typical play. Also, the Hyperion is now nearly fluxed out; it seriously risks overloading due to a stray hit, if only the sim Onslaught had any anti-shield weaponry to speak of. (This is what balances out Energy Weapon Mastery: as your damage bonus goes up, your margin of error for taking incoming damage decreases.) Overall though the damage bonuses and damage reduction between equally equipped forces still roughly balances out. So, I don't see what's the issue here.

That's because no other capital ship is explicitly built, for meta and in-game lore reasons, to bring devastating firepower to bear facing forward while being vulnerable to the rear. So people can look all cool and awesome, "look at me, I outflanked the ship that is expressly designed and described as something not to be used solo, but in a fleet setting!"

I agree, beating the sim Onslaught isn't really particularly exciting or difficult, nor indicative of if the subject ship is too "powerful". Just for fun I took a Pather Lasher, no officer, regular CR, with a couple of Reapers to punch a hole in the armor and then killed it using vulcan cannons. (Attached is the screenshot.) Obviously Lashers and vulcan cannons need to be toned down. (Side notes, I don't think the AAF did anything since vulcan cannons are already firing at the game's max rate of 20 shots per second, and yes it was an obligatory overload since I had to hug the Onslaught to be in range for the vulcans.)

I had stopped using that aurora a bit when I was fighting lots of capital ships, but then I got some spoilery weapons and now I'm using it again.

When I first saw the 0.95a changes, the SO Aurora with the spoilery weapons was the first thing I went for. The spoilery weapons (4 spoilery missiles, 3 spoilery small hybrids, 2 spoilery medium frag hybrids...I just left the middle medium synergy blank because it's tight on OP and because I didn't really need it) makes killing capitals a cinch. Then I found the Doom and man...with 6 spoilery missiles and 2 spoilery medium frag hybrids, I straight-up kill Brilliants in 2 weapon volleys (thanks to mines redirecting shields), and regularly do 60% of the damage of the whole fleet even if the rest of the fleet is radiants or frigates or whatever. I don't get why this much focus on high tech or frigates or whatever when phase ships are the strongest right now but...oh well.

Also higher tech ships should give a max number of ships penalty to max fleet size, while low tech ships should give a bonus to it, but it can't drop below 30 of course, and I have no idea at what number it should cap, but it would look like this (just a very raw example):

The game already has this, it's reflected in the DP of the different ships. What matters is not how many you can have in your fleet, but how many you can have on the battle map, and since high-tech ships tend to have greater DP, you can put more low-tech ships than high-tech ships in battle.

I think the problem is with SO itself. When you put SO on a ship, you are not so much customizing it as making a different ship. Just my personal preference but when I see a capital ship I want to be quite confident that it has more power output and is tankier than a cruiser, and not less so because the captain of the cruiser has 'overridden the safeties'.

Exactly, but that's the whole point of SO. It makes it into a very different ship with a different playstyle, etc. That's why it's there, it opens up the options for the player. If you only do the initial small battles then the shortened PPT doesn't matter, but it *does* matter later on when you fight bigger, more extended battles. Then it really does become a tradeoff at that point. Generally speaking in 0.9.1a I started the game off with SO but then gradually took it off as I started encountering bigger fleets that you couldn't just roll over so easily.

However the Hyperion is ridiculous without SO too. I think this kind of analysis is a red herring.

This. SO's main benefit for Hyperion is to give it the ability to teleport out with flux. Otherwise Hyperion can teleport in, but becomes vulnerable and can't get out. Sure, the double flux vent is nice, but Hyperion isn't a ship that stands there and melees, it's a hit-and-run. Well, elite Helmsmanship gives the same ability to Hyperion. My Hyperions did better without SO (but with elite Helmsmanship) than with, simply because they could last a lot longer in fights, long enough to actually make it through without losing a lot of CR.

My issue with SO is that it completely changes the stats and capabilities of ships in an arbitrary and senseless way. If you are happy playing with that great but I can't agree it's a good addition to the game.

This is an example of Chesterton's fence. Somebody spent the time to think about what might be an interesting hullmod to put on ships, coded it in, played around with different values, playtested it, debugged the code, etc. All that took a lot of effort to get it into the game. If you just wave that off as "arbitrary and senseless" then it means you haven't bothered to understand why it's there and thus aren't in a position to evaluate its merits.

Hyperion shouldn't be a frigate, I have no clue what Alex was thinking with that.

No, frigate is the right ship size for the Hyperion.

A frigate does not mean "weak" or "ineffective". Generally speaking, the "effectiveness" of a ship is roughly measured by its DP cost, not by its ship size. Hyperion is 15 DP (and has the High Maintenance hullmod making it twice as expensive to carry around). That means its effectiveness is actually roughly that of a cruiser. But, "downsizing" it as a frigate instead of a cruiser is actually to weaken it, because a cruiser -- with cruiser weapon range, OP, number of weapon slots, etc. -- teleporting around would simply be too strong. Similarly, the Monitor is set to be a frigate because a bigger ship with the Flux Shunt hullmod would simply be too strong.

In the 0.95a update, the Hyperion's stats were extremely buffed; it went from 3300 to 8000 flux capacity, and it went from 280 to 500 flux dissipation. Its armor and hull were also increased by 2.5x. Its DP cost stayed at 15 however. So the real issue is "the Hyperion was too severely buffed", not "frigates are too strong and Hyperion is a prime example". It's an extreme outlier of frigates, and made even more so with the update; it's not representative of frigates in general.

Safety overrides is not a hullmod in this manner, it completely redefines a ship in it's entirety. For this reason, I think the obvious choice would be separating it's effects into several other hullmods.

No, SO should be a single hullmod, to force the player to take the bad with the good. That's what keeps its power in check. Splitting its effect into separate hullmods just means the player can pick and choose the one(s) least detrimental to the ship, basically min/maxing out the bad part. It's the most expensive hullmod (double that of Heavy Armor), meaning the ship gives up a lot of other potential benefits to get it. It also locks the ship into a short-range fighting style, meaning the ship has to get in close (and take more damage) to make use of that additional flux dissipation. And of course PPT is cut to 1/3 so that the player has to make use of it quickly (spending time circling around the enemy fleet trying to find an opening is not a good use of the hullmod). All these for the sake of doubling the flux dissipation, because doubling the flux dissipation is a very strong effect, and you need these drawbacks to make sure it doesn't get too overpowering.

Wolfpack gives major boosts to both damage and PPT, so it's kinda hard to draw that conclusion IMO. Honestly, I think wolfpack could get split into two individual skills for damage and PPT. That would work well in a 3 skill/tier system IMO.

I think it'd be better to simply put a DP cap on Wolfpack, and/or decrease the PPT that it gives. Though I still don't quite see what the hubbub is about; other than the Hyperion, the frigates didn't really do much, even with the 20% damage bonus, compared to what I get out of other ships like Medusas or Champions or Radiants. It's pretty funny watching Hyperions take on ships, but non-SO Hyperions didn't really need the extra PPT from Wolfpack, and elite Helmsmanship lets them teleport around, removing the main benefit of SO for them. In many cases Coordinated Maneuvers was better because having extra speed to chase down targets or getting from point A to point B faster is more important.

I'm going all High tech frigate in my current run, I have zero salvage ships and only the cargo space industry skill because I don't want to militarize my support ships and lower bonuses. I have unlimited fuel & nearly unlimited supplies while exploring and can take on basically anything I run into. This playstyle is easy mode compared to everything else I've tried.

Wait, you're saying you use only frigates as your fleet in your current run and it can take on multiple Ordos fleets, Tesseracts, etc.? Without taking losses nor needing high amounts of CR recovery? What's your fleet composition/loadout?

Do you want to have a conversation or make a straw man? Don't put words in my mouth, I never said any of that was bad and I never said it breaks the game. Don't reduce/dumb down my points into for and against extremes so you can lazily counter them.

Um, I think you're the one who was claiming that Alex was trying to shove a certain playstyle down the players' throats. I don't know how that can be interpreted as anything but game-breaking.

My current fleet has 14 captained Frigates +me for 15, 4 redacted captains, all getting the full Wolfpack bonus without diminished returns unlike every other specialized skill in the game. Oh noes 3 got destroyed in 1 really terrible fight, I'll just have to reach into the giant pile of credits I've saved from only using frigates (again I outlined how they save tons of money) and restore them without a second thought.

Um let me get this straight -- so you're saying that Wolfpack makes frigates too strong and yet you sometimes lose 20% of your frigate fleet in a single fight and you think that represents it being too strong?

Hardened Subsystems pushes its PPT up to 137 seconds by the way,  meaning Wolfpack Tactics makes it possible for Overridden Frigades to have a higher Peak Performance time than their stock value. This also means that some Overridden frigades (looking at you Glimmer) also manage to get a PPT value that's higher than not only Destroyers, but also Cruisers. Think about that for a moment.

Eh maybe I'm not doing my math right, but I get that a SO Glimmer with Reliability Engineering, Crew Training, and Systems Expertise comes out with 257 seconds of PPT. The only destroyers with a shorter PPT are Buffalo, Buffalo Mk. II, and Nebula, and the lowest PPT cruiser has 360 seconds of PPT (Heron). Am I missing something?

This is about AI controlled frigates with a captain outclassing Capitols. Player pilots are basically cheating the AIs limitations. Player control breaks the game and shouldn't be included in any discussion but those specifically about that.

And to be clear we aren't talking fleet vs fleet and capitols needing support when outnumbered. It's just getting a spanking 1v1, which is absurd when done by the AI. It's layers of imbalance and failure.

You're saying that an AI-controlled frigate can outclass a capital one-on-one? Is this against an equally equipped capital? And this is due to the 20% damage bonus of Wolfpack (keeping in mind that ships get a variety of damage bonuses from other sources, additive, so this ends up being more like a 10-15% overall damage bonus) and the extra PPT that it gives?

[attachment deleted by admin]

[ElPresidente]

Personally, you only need to look at what roles in a fleet frigates/gunships have in RL and go from there.

they were never supposed ot be the main thrust, the core of a fleet. They are scouts, pickets, escorts.

[JUDGE! slowpersun]

Personally, you only need to look at what roles in a fleet frigates/gunships have in RL and go from there.

they were never supposed ot be the main thrust, the core of a fleet. They are scouts, pickets, escorts.

Yeah, but to be fair, there generally aren't any support ships to hunt down that normally spawn with a fighting fleet.  Just when you get run down by someone/something (ie, you generally avoid deploying support ships, since they don't heal damage/CR or reset PPT).  Plus, CP usage/refill rate is... too variable.

[Badger]

My issue with SO is that it completely changes the stats and capabilities of ships in an arbitrary and senseless way. If you are happy playing with that great but I can't agree it's a good addition to the game.

This is an example of Chesterton's fence. Somebody spent the time to think about what might be an interesting hullmod to put on ships, coded it in, played around with different values, playtested it, debugged the code, etc. All that took a lot of effort to get it into the game. If you just wave that off as "arbitrary and senseless" then it means you haven't bothered to understand why it's there and thus aren't in a position to evaluate its merits.

Not really. People often put a lot of thought and effort into things that don't turn out and you don't need to understand every aspect of the reasoning to evaluate the effects, though that often helps.

In this case I understand the idea behind SO fine - let ships do something powerful and cool while balancing with time and fitting limitations. The issue is it's too powerful and undermines ship classes and roles, doesn't make any sense from a conceptual standpoint (suddenly having power capabilities exceeding that of larger ship classes from 'overridden safeties'), and the drawbacks are uninteresting in that they either don't come into play at all or it's a no-brainer to approximate optimal usage.

[TotenKopf]

Nobody here is unclear on the intent of SO. But...

It gives significant buffs without any real downside other than relegating you to one play style. Balancing through OP cost isn't possible at the moment so you just get the same ship with crazy speed and flux dissipation.

I think it can be said uncontroversially that it wasn't Alex's intent for me to fly my eagle heavy cruiser with the speed of a frigate (190 with UI and the jets on!) and nearly 2000 flux dissipation. I mean, I've got problems, but getting into, and fighting at, close range in my eagle ain't one of em.

[Igncom1]

I wouldn't consider the names of "frigates" "Capital ships" and so on to have any meaning in this game, or even real life lol, beyond cool sounding titles that are vaguely applied.

Frigates used to be the some of the biggest ships in the fleet behind ships of the line (of battle).... now look at em!

[garter_snake]

I don't think frigates are much biased at all; to be honest I think the wolfpack build you show here is on the weak side(though it looks fun).  Yeah, soloing a battleship with a frigate looks cool, but it's kind of an unrepresentative test as you're committing your char to it.  Killing isolated line ships is what frigate wolfpacks are /supposed/ to be good at anyway.

I've tried frigate heavy fleets, but I've found them underwhelming past early game.

1. Can't kill stations without niche builds/heavy micro. 
2. Get shredded by fighters/interceptors.
3. Not particularly fuel or maintenance efficient per deployment point, especially as you don't want to spend fitting on Efficiency Overhaul or Solar Shielding.
4. Frigs will tend to take casualties in bigger fights, meaning you either need to put officers in them(which is expensive) or give them bulkheads(which is ***, as frig fitting is tight) if you don't want to play reship bingo a lot before you have production.
5. It's kind of a pain to build a 'good' frig fleet pre-production, as many of the high end frigs like the Tempest/Hyperion/Afflictor are fairly rare.  Even the mid tier ones like the brawler are kind of uncommon, and a lot of frig builds have fairly specific weapons loadouts, as they tend to rely on short range high damage guns.
6. I've been very unimpressed with frigate AI.  Larger ships have enough range and spare missile ammo for it not to matter as much, but I've seen a lot of stuff like three frigs feeding in one by one from the same direction instead of flanking and moving in at the same time.  And a lot of bad missile use.

I think frigs fleets are good for core world stuff, with their high burn and low sig being nice for chasing merchant convoys and running from the cops.  For stuff in the outer constellations, their inefficiency begins to drag. 

[Arcagnello]

Hardened Subsystems pushes its PPT up to 137 seconds by the way,  meaning Wolfpack Tactics makes it possible for Overridden Frigades to have a higher Peak Performance time than their stock value. This also means that some Overridden frigades (looking at you Glimmer) also manage to get a PPT value that's higher than not only Destroyers, but also Cruisers. Think about that for a moment.

Eh maybe I'm not doing my math right, but I get that a SO Glimmer with Reliability Engineering, Crew Training, and Systems Expertise comes out with 257 seconds of PPT. The only destroyers with a shorter PPT are Buffalo, Buffalo Mk. II, and Nebula, and the lowest PPT cruiser has 360 seconds of PPT (Heron). Am I missing something?

You're missing something because I forgot to write it myself, so that's on me 

What I meant  to say write is that Safety Overrides Frigades using an officer and wolfpack tactics (plus al the thingmagigs and thinkabobs) can reliably get close to or even suprass the Peak Performance Time of Overridden Destroyers and Cruisers. The Glimmer is one of the most infamous Frigades able to do this since Automated Ships have a rather high PPT in the first place  

[Locklave]

edit: Self Redacted.

You're saying that an AI-controlled frigate can outclass a capital one-on-one?

Tempest can. 2 posts above you saying the same thing. I'll post it below. edit: That is a cruiser below but w/e same point.

Yup, can confirm watching an AI controlled tempest with all its bonuses just fly up and gun down a conquest head to head is silly. Sure its a non-officered, D mod conquest with a mediocre build, and I'm going down the leadership 9 Tech 5 route, but thats some serious powerup on the frigate!

[intrinsic_parity]

1. I played a game on the weekend where frigates were eating stations including redacted ones. No micro, no nothing. Full assault On, aggressive captains. This one point tells me you have nearly zero actual playtime with these builds and shouldn't be commenting on their balance.

Come on.... I've spent lots of time using officered frigates because they are definitely really strong, but killing a full strength nexus is not something they are good at. Maybe against the weak unshielded ones, but the full alpha core nexus in a red ping system?... There's no way you don't lose multiple frigates on approach, and they have no where to back off to for venting because stations have such absurd range. You probably could kill one but you're gonna take heavy loses. Even certain radiant builds require micro because 5x autopulse or 5x tac lance will delete a frigate in one burst and you need to ensure that you coordinate against them.

[Locklave]

1. I played a game on the weekend where frigates were eating stations including redacted ones. No micro, no nothing. Full assault On, aggressive captains. This one point tells me you have nearly zero actual playtime with these builds and shouldn't be commenting on their balance.

Come on.... I've spent lots of time using officered frigates because they are definitely really strong, but killing a full strength nexus is not something they are good at. Maybe against the weak unshielded ones, but the full alpha core nexus in a red ping system?... There's no way you don't lose multiple frigates on approach, and they have no where to back off to for venting because stations have such absurd range. You probably could kill one but you're gonna take heavy loses. Even certain radiant builds require micro because 5x autopulse or 5x tac lance will delete a frigate in one burst and you need to ensure that you coordinate against them.

Low tech, Midline, High tech max level ya. All were no issue. I didn't say a max level Nexus, just that they didn't have issues with ones I came across.

He just said they can't handle stations generally. As in any stations, which is absurd.

edit:
Why would you kill a max level one anyways? I need them to spawn stuff to farm.

[Thaago]

@Locklave please tone down the hostile language. Everyone has different amounts of experience with different builds, and telling people not to comment at all because they lack playtime is extremely toxic. If their experience is struggling with stations for example, sharing your builds with pre/post battle pictures and an explanation of why that strategy works would be a much more productive way to get your point across while building group knowledge.