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[SafariJohn]

In fact, as long as you can keep your mouse pointer on the enemy ship

Turn to cursor is not enabled by default IIRC

[Alex]

I appreciate the testing and the resulting perspective! That all makes sense.

(With the Wolf, I personally tend to switch the missiles to either (preferably) some torpedoes or Harpoons, with EMR - that can let it be pretty useful for longer, even after you switch out from it as the flagship. The initial loadout is very much "easily handle all the early game stuff", but yeah, extremely toothless vs anything heavier.)

In fact, as long as you can keep your mouse pointer on the enemy ship

Turn to cursor is not enabled by default IIRC

It's not, and perhaps even more importantly, keeping the hardpoint Pulse Laser on autofire seems like something that would not immediately occur to a new player. It's more likely to be "big gun, should fire manually", even assuming an understanding of autofire...

[SCC]

You can start with a Lasher already - either acquiring it during the course of the tutorial, or by going to Tetra graveyard despite skipping the tutorial. It isn't intuitive to do that, since there are many games with tutorial loot you would either get by default when skipping the tutorial, or it wouldn't carry over from the tutorial at all. Some way to communicate it would be nice, like Alex first mate/chief engineer/navigator/whomever opening a dialog window and telling the player captain directly what they should know. The issue is to know when to issue such a hint. Reloading after a lost fight?

[Grievous69]

Wow FooF, really appreciate the detailed tests. And it went pretty much how I've expected, with the exception of Lasher performance, thought it'd be better and quicker to kill the enemies, but as you said you chose basic loadouts with readily available weapons. Not even slightly surprised by Brawler as in my eyes it's an escort ship for something bigger (too slow for a frigate and not really make to fight other frigates), but didn't know the enemies would get scared simply because you're in a Brawler.

And really glad Centurion performed so well, it's such a neat little ship that's super easy to use. Lack of mobility shows compared to the high tech frigates but I'd probably pick it most of the time.

[FooF]

Wow FooF, really appreciate the detailed tests. And it went pretty much how I've expected, with the exception of Lasher performance, thought it'd be better and quicker to kill the enemies, but as you said you chose basic loadouts with readily available weapons. Not even slightly surprised by Brawler as in my eyes it's an escort ship for something bigger (too slow for a frigate and not really make to fight other frigates), but didn't know the enemies would get scared simply because you're in a Brawler.

And really glad Centurion performed so well, it's such a neat little ship that's super easy to use. Lack of mobility shows compared to the high tech frigates but I'd probably pick it most of the time.

I did replace the LACs with Railguns and oh boy did the Lasher absolutely destroy the Kites but I don't think a dual-Railgun Lasher is really a "starter" ship. Granted, the Fast Start Hammerhead has dual Railguns and ITU but it is a "fast start!" For a normal start, I guess I don't expect to have any elite weapons (even if they are available to buy on the Black Market immediately at Jangala). By that measure, I could have done the same with the Centurion and seen a similar bump in effectiveness.

@ Alex

Right. I'd normally swap out the Swarmers for something punchier in a normal game but for this scenario I wanted it to be as "default start" as possible. It's why I chose Swarmers for the other Frigates so I could more readily compare apples to apples. Sabots or Harpoons would probably serve all of the Frigates better and yes, against larger targets, I'm going to bring torpedoes of some type. That said, outside of the Ion Pulser or maybe a Phase Lance, the Wolf with a Pulse Laser is about as "punchy" as it can get given its flux stats.

Random thought occurred to me: if the non-pirate Wolf had something akin to a "Blink" ability, it could get away with heavier weapons (i.e. Heavy/Mining Blaster) while still maintaining overall low flux stats. What I mean by "blink" is a Phase Skimmer jump in, but if you activate it again within say half a second, you get a "free" jump back to the previous position. So you blink in, fire a Heavy/Mining Blaster shot, and then blink out.  While the Wolf could never truly sustain these weapons in combat, they could still take opportunistic shots without much harm to themselves. I don't know if this would make them more competitive or just more annoying to fight. Maybe the Medusa could use a Blink ability more than a Wolf (as the Medusa feels kind of underwhelming at the moment) but it was a thought. Just don't give it to the Radiant...!!!!

[Grievous69]

At this point the topic transformed so the title is a bit of a bait now, even I couldn't make an argument for Shrike over the 3 tiers of frigates choice.

@FooF
That blink ability sounds like an absolute nightmare to fight, hopefully we won't see such annoying abilities in game. Inb4 we get a new end game threat with precisely that ship system...

[BigBrainEnergy]

Having tried it myself, I think the shrike can work as a starter option if you get a dram instead of a kite as your sidekick, and with the right loadout it can teach the player some good lessons. Medium sabot works fine against frigates and if you set it as the first weapon it makes sense most players would use it and leave the medium energy on autofire, which leaves them free to control the omni-shield. Aside from the sabot, PL + ioncannon and 2 pdlasers would be more than enough to easily skate through early battles even if you aren't very good at the game. It's how I plan to start most future games from now on but it certainly feels off starting with a destroyer instead of a frigate, so I'd rather it be another option than the default but at this point we're just suggesting the option to pick just about every early-game ship. That's fine for an experienced player but it could be overwhelming for new ones, which is who this change would be targeted at. Maybe you could unlock more starting options based on your highest level character or by completing missions.

[Amoebka]

Experienced players don't have to care much about the starting frigate. You always start with 32k in the bank, after all, which is enough to buy whatever frigate you want right away.

[Plantissue]

Wolf seems fine to me as a starter ship. As I do play with the small start and skip the tutorial, I wouldn't really want to have it replaced with any other 4/5 DP frigate, at least not without a choice to choose. It is relatively fast and is the ship that comes with a failsafe in the form of the phase skimmer which makes it friendly for new players. It only does poorly once you are facing large fleets with cruisers, but that is the case for all non-specialised 4/5 DP costed frigates. If there is something about the wolf that needs improvement, it is only that its turn speed is suprisingly awful especially considering that its main weapon is fixed, which can cause a lot of shots to miss, especially if using a heavy blaster..