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[Ishman]

Most evident in the tempest frigate with its limited 2x M.E. 1x S.M. slots, the lack of indefinite deployment in the battle-space for energy only frigate vessels leads to a clear choice for ballistic heavy ships - if you are forced to retreat a vessel after a period of time or suffer catastrophic losses from system malfunctions, it's much better to deploy a brawler/lasher or antimatter equipped hyperion since even the most ammo-eating ballistic weapons will be able to fire for a solid minute of combat, let alone those with 3-4 minutes of ammo reserves.

Energy weapons with their large flux costs for dps values are much less appealing when you need raw dps output from your frigate screen to swat down the neverending swarms of bombers and assault fighters and to punch through the armor of a carrier or four in tandem with his friends in the current tactical situation.

This new shift in paradigm is perfectly fine with me, incidentally - but I believe that vanilla energy frigates need a balance look as they do not currently have good loadout options without mods (it also doesn't help that energy PD is only useful when deployed in double digit values).

A notable exception is the omen and shade as piloted vessel choices, as their emp emitter can be used to swat particulary dense concentrations of fighters and missiles threatening your flag ship.

I believe all that's really needed is actually effective aoe energy weapon options for point defense and offensive options that deal hard flux in high explosive/kinetic/fragmentation. (Though admittedly it seems even the best energy weapons aren't all that strong compared to similar ordnance cost ballistic weapons - the antimatter blaster is nowhere near as useful as a needler)

[PCCL]

they're also fast as hell and has great shield and flux capacity/vents, not to mention great tactical profile (2 med AND 1 missile in a single frig at near hound speed?)

Damn... I never thought I'd see comments about high tech frigates being underpowered... (not saying anything against you, ofc, it's always good to have diverse opinions) But I agree on one thing, maybe more energy options for PD apart from beams, more beams, and burst beams might be nice.

Is there even a medium energy PD other than the heavy burst beam?

Hmm... maybe we ARE a little lacking on that department

Other than that, though.... I don't see a problem... Needlers are useless vs armor (even hyperion armor), and they aren't the most flux efficient stuff around (only a bit more efficient than energy assaults, and ballistic ships don't have as much flux)

[Ishman]

Heh, before this patch I'd be in total agreement with you, but as it stands now I run just lashers protecting a brawler, with a conquest in reserve to duel other battlecruisers.

[Megas]

If Afflictor had shields instead of phase cloak, it would be an excellent high-tech alternate to the Lasher. Even with phase cloak, it is still an excellent high-tech alternate to the Lasher.  It can chew through smaller ships with Needler and/or Railgun x4.  Before v0.6a the Afflictor could kite everything that was not a battleship.

[Ishman]

I find a lasher to be a much better needler boat with the forward 3 ballistic mounts accepting said turrets, and nothing mounted in the small missile slots - it's cheap to deploy, repair, and replace.

[Borgoid]

I'll definitely agree that there's a conflict between infinite ammo + long range vs finite deployment times.

Interestingly though I've enjoyed it. It's made me significantly change up the way I use Wolfs in particular, giving them a Pulse Laser, 1 Ion cannon, 2 Tac lasers, 2 Annihilators + unstable inject. It works as a solid disabler and general brawler.

I won't argue that Lashers are fantastic, aside from their low(ish) burn speed they really have no particular weaknesses  I can't imagine not mounting them with Annihilators though, the AI uses them reasonably well and they offer a lot of damage for the cost *shrug*.

The Tempest definitely suffers since it was usually outfitted with long range weapons with the intention of having it contribute damage throughout the entire fight... That said put two Heavy Blasters on it and see what happens

[Cosmitz]

I run a Tempest as my main frig now and it's far from underpowered. Twin Phase Beams set to autofire and no missiles and this little beast can handle anything up to cruiser. The only time i've had issues with it was when i faced a Venture with a lot of friends and i eventually had to retreat at 40% hull on it since my CR was almost nil. But this was just me with 3 other frigates... and i was stretching my luck to begin with.

[Psygnosis]

I run a Tempest as my main frig now and it's far from underpowered. Twin Phase Beams set to autofire

Phase Beam;
Range 700
Dps; 150
Flux/s; 160
Ordanance Points; 12.


Light Dual Auto Cannon
Range; 600
DPS; 143
Flux/s; 143
OP; 5
(A lasher with two L-Dac's and a targeting unit would make a Tempest feel rather limp.
Sure we're talking about a drop of 40 range, and 7 dps. But we're also taking Kinetic damage. and OP7 means we have 2 medium missile slots, and 3 OTHER small ballistic slots., If we took the idea of point defence and decided it wasnt for us, much like your tempest we could be pulling 715 dps for 25 OP, while youre making 300 dps for 24 OP. getting yourself an extra 40 range. This is of course not including if we were against shields where the L-Dac's perform even better than your pew pew toys) (oh and we also make less flux)

But but muh versitility!

The Light Assault gun is the High-Ex smaller brother of the L-Dac. (L-Dags Pleaaaaase)
Range: 600
DPS: 160
Flux/s: 160
OP: 5

once again, 2 OP for a targeting unit, we're at 660 range. and are still doing more dps than you, and massively lower OP cost. infact you could afford 3 L-Dacs and 2 LAG's for about the same OP cost as your phase beams, and do about 600 dps regardless of material.

Also as Ishman pointed out. dont forget needlers;
Range; 800
DPS; 147
Flux/s; 118
OP; 9

and a final nail in the coffin. (Edit; not really i went on for a fair bit)

lashers also sport 2 missile racks.
Harpoon MRM pod at OP5 can do a one-fight damage of 2,250 high-ex
Or
Sabot SRM pod the same but in kinetic style.

A tempest meeting a lasher would have a large problem. Could it take 2,250x2 damage (which stock from a sabot is 750dps x2) of kinetic to its shields, and then withstand autolaoders taking a massive dump with 5 LAG's?) (or even 3 Lags, 2 L-dacs, 2 sabot pods)

Phase beams are good* but youd need to be rocking 99% flux boosting your DPS to 200 while sacrificing much of your survivability.

Tempest sports 2,500 stock flux capacity.  and a 90* omnishield.
Lasher Loves you with 2,100 stock flux cap, and 150* omnishield.

We're not even talking cost per deployment here, 20% lasher vs 40% tempest.
or Peak Performace buff (240s lasher vs 180s tempest)

Or even, and this was a suprise to me
Stock ordanance points
Lasher; 50
Tempest; 45

So you gain ONE speed for loosing; 1 missile hardpoint; 3 small ballistics. And any hope of mounting point defense?

Spoiler

Status; Light Dual Auto-told

[close]

[PCCL]

I guess it comes down to the fact that tempests can disengage at will, taking full advantage of their flux capacity/vent rate and keep the pressure up while punishing any attempts to vent with a quick missile (up to 3 times a fight)

needlers are one thing, but they alone won't do any meaningful damage on their own. and the lasher is too slow to bring all other weapons to bear when the tempest doesn't want to. Also, when you close in to bust armor (LAG probably), you're also staring down any medium pulse lasers the tempest has on her.

personally in a 1v1 fight, I pick the tempest 100 percent of the time. That's just me though, and I have nothing save a few hastily put together sim matches on autopilot to back it up

[Borgoid]

Well in all fairness Tempests are better at being shot at due to their .8 shield, 400 more flux capacity, 105 more flux dissipation ( nearly double the Lasher's) and 70 higher speed.

Also their Drone which is hard to account for but I'd say is roughly 100 energy dps as well as being a top tier bullet distract-er.
Not to mention the Burst PD laser.

All that said I don't know why you'd be intentionally buying Tempests in order to soak up damage. They are better chasers however.

Oh also comparing the Lasher and the Tempest in a fight is ***, that's not a fight a Lasher can win. It's too slow and if the Tempest has Optics then it can't compete in range, hell you could kite it around with Grav beams and still kill a Lasher before you ran out of CR.
What's it going to do? Fire 4500 HE damage at a .8 shield with 2500 flux capacity?
When it comes to Sabots the Tempest profile is TINY and it strafes like nobodies business and even if you overloaded the Tempest you still can't catch it... Or kill that drone for that matter.

Don't get me wrong I love Lashers and I think Tempests could use some love but... really now you're not being particularly reasonable about it

[Psygnosis]

-snip-

-Snip-

i was mostly just shredding the idea of using the Phase Beams, it'd be interesting to see your builds.

As an Anti-Lasher it would be incredibly easy to build a Tempest in that fashion while an anti-tempest lasher would actually be impossible as you can play the ammo game with a lasher.

Sadly we'll never get to test these fights properly with no MP (never multi quoth the alex)

also; Borgoid
more dissipation is out of the question in the Phase Beam Build because
1) shields generate hard flux which can only be removed by lowering the shields.
2) if you wanted to buy a chaser wouldnt the Hyperion be a superior ship?
3) Needlers will do 1,470 DPS to shields. (but the more popular equilivant uses 3 which is only a mere 882 dps at 27OP (29 op with AI targeting, making the needlers range 880) but this of course is still easilly dealt with since theyre a limited supply per match.

[Borgoid]

Screw Alex I want multiplayer combat *shakefist* I'd even settle for singleplayer everything else and co-op ship combat T_T

Needlers are cataclysmic-ally bad at actually damaging armor, low damage per shot combined with poor accuracy.
I'm not entirely sure but I have a sneaking suspicion that an unshielded Tempest will disable the vast majority of your Needlers before it suffers hull damage. Keep in mind that Phase Beams have some EMP damage attached ( Not the fun arcing kind however, just the direct damage to weapons/engines)

With regards to the Hyperion, the damn thing is too expensive to field and it's not something that you can just throw into a standard fight for a bit of extra oomph.
The Tempest is a nice compromise between the " Oops I accidentally exploded" Hound and the " Oh dear lord when will this be combat ready again!?" Hyperion

[TaLaR]

With regards to the Hyperion, the damn thing is too expensive to field and it's not something that you can just throw into a standard fight for a bit of extra oomph.

True, Hyperion is only really worth it's cost when (ab)used by player (bypassing shields with well timed teleport is a must, not luxury now), but then you have to forfeit option of piloting something larger... And difference between player vs ai piloted Onslaught is probably much more than whatever you could do with Hyperion(except in pursuit scenario). So i just have one in fleet for pursuits.

[Sealgaire]

High tech frigates are still murder machines. I run a Tempest with dual heavy blasters and a single reaper torp and as much venting as I can cram on it. This thing can solo Conquests without taking a scratch well within the 180 sec time limit. My fleet consists of nothing but Tempests and Wolves, can't remember how many exactly, but I haven't invested in the logistics skill and my logistic rating is still at 100%. We can mop the floor with the Sindrian Diktat garrison fleets, usually without any significant casualties.

It's true that they're only good for one or two engagements, but that fits their theme perfectly. You get one shot to use your superior shields and speed to take down enemy forces, but beyond that the low tech ships can easily wear you down through attrition.

As for the guy comparing the Lasher to the Tempest, I hate to burst your bubble, but nothing a Lasher can equip will ever even be abe to hit a competently piloted Tempest, even if the Lasher pilot was human, too. I like Lashers, but speed and maneuverability shut down ballistic weapons pretty decisively.

[Ishman]

No, a tempest is still a phenomenal ship - but it's incredibly inferior to deploying an equivalent cost in cheap frigates or destroyers - the combat utility is unworthy of the steep deployment costs associated with it - and even if it was switched to be deployment effective with a lasher, I'd STILL not use it because of the lack of solid flux-efficient energy weapon dps.

The only weakness of ballistic weapons - ammo consumption - makes no difference right now since a 0CR ship can't fire weapons, and only continuous sustained fire is going to drop the water level of a ballistics equipped frigate before it is CRacked out of the battle.

As to heavy blasters - 800 damage for 1420 flux is... not so good. You cannot sustain that dps long enough to drive up hard flux on even flux-inefficient shields. A lasher with two light needlers has a comprable 588 shield dps for 236 flux - easily within a lasher's venting capacity, allowing it to overload everything in tandem with its buddies. And once it HAS dropped shields - it can unload with more missile/high explosive dps than a tempest can possibly bring to bear.

The tempests 200 base speed maneuverability advantage is not worth its cost, even as a piloted ship.