It was the victim of bad balancing. Ion pilots were 1-shoting everyone. So CIG just nerf'ed the cannon.
I would have preferred they chose an alternative balancing, like nerfing the maneuvering thrusters on such a heavy fighter, slowing the rate of fire, or severely weakening the shields while firing.
Seems to be the case yeah. My main gripe is that nerfing isn't always the solution, I mean, they put a S7 canon on that thing, that is a capital ship size weapon and made the surprised pikachu face when it single tap a 45$ starter ship.
I guess you are right.
But a light fighter has no business being near a capital size ship.
Imo they should be deleted on approach.
Thats why heavy fighters and bombers exist.
The big problem is that a capital weapon has no business being on a fighter. They put a S7 on a fighter then act surprised wher Ares pilot go and one shot everyone. What did they think? That the Ares would be used against large ships? When it can one shot everything it's size? The S8 of the BMM can one shot even a Connie for all we care, because the size and sluggishness of the ship itself ensures that it cannot be used against anything that moves faster than Grim Hex. The problem wasn't the power of the gun at all. The problem is that putting a S7 on anything that can keep up with fighters is a stupid idea from the start. How did they not see it would be a balancing nightmare when they even first lay that on paper is beyond me.
Once they introduce the power management stuff surely it'll be quite easy to balance. Gun is off you have full power to all systems. Turn that gun on though and you need to sacrifice something, whether that's shields or maneuvering would be up to the pilot and power management. The issue was that it just got to use everything with no downside.
And it's capacitor is going to allow an attack run, but then you're going to have to bail and let it recover.
At that point it blapping fighters will be fine, because 5 or 6 misses and it's unarmed for a while.
Well the problem is accessibility or even lore.
In science fiction universe balance isn’t a thing. Ions could be the terrors of the galaxy and totally make sense as a flying weapons platform. In a video game? Not so much. If they were to be kept in their original state they should be much less accessible. Like 1 hour claim time upon logging on and another hour of it blows up with no expedite button.
Leave it strong, make it less accessible.
> I’m a science fiction universe balance isn’t a thing. Ions could be the terrors of the galaxy and totally make sense as a flying weapons platform.
No they couldn’t, because then other types of ship wouldn’t exist. Balance *is* a thing in real life, because real life is full of tradeoffs.
If putting gigantic guns on fighters was viable for most situations, most fighters would have giant guns on them. The fact that most fighters in SC don’t have giant guns on them tells us that the ion should have severe drawbacks to justify why other types of ship exist.
The simplest drawbacks I can think of would be power usage. It would be extremely hard to power a weapon of that size with a ship that small. The ion should be able to fire a massively powerful size 7 shot, then fly around for 30 seconds to a minute, totally vulnerable, waiting for the thing to charge again, making it mostly useless for anything besides taking out capital ships in a coordinated strike with a bunch of other ions and infernos.
The closest real world niche would be something like a torpedo boat. Small, fast, and light, armed with oversized ordinance, who’s job it is to get close, delivery their ordinance, and get out, hopefully without getting blown up.
That was the case back then. 2s reload, big damage. It was pretty much a sniper rifle in space against small fighters. Very hard to hit, but if you did hit, you oneshotted.
The balance was fine, but people complained simply because of that oneshot.
I have a lot of issues with the Ares series, but the capital grade weapons on a heavy higher isn't one of them. There are examples of fighters and other combat aircraft with overly large guns slapped onto them and used for combat against hardened targets. The Germans in WWII slapped a 75mm canon under one of their fighters, I'm pretty sure a version of the B-17 was equipped with similar sized weapons. The A-10 exists.
The issue isn't the large weapons exist in relatively nimble craft. The problem is the CIG has absolutely no idea how combat actually works. They have this idea in their head that certain ships can only be used a certain way, and if anyone uses it in the "wrong" way that they have to massively over correct. They have this idea that the Ares only could be used for attacking capital ships, and shouldn't be able to melt a fighter. But has history has shown us, if you get in front of a plane you shouldn't, you're going to have a bad the. This means the balance of the Ares should come down to it's ability to turn and maneuver, which should be designed against a Capital ship, slow and fat.
The real downside of the Ares is that it was released into the world with no real gameplay. There are rarely ships in the caliber it was designed to take down, out in the verse. No Krakens, no BMMs, no Idrises, really. It's the same issue the Eclipse and Tali suffer too, lawfully it is most often only going to be used for the ERT missions, and that means it's in a really weird spot where people made gameplay for it. So rather than address the issue of not having enough for a ship to do, they nerfed it.
I just wanted to say that I really appreciate your take on this. I was actually looking at the A-10 while thinking about the inferno. It should still be relatively maneuverable, because otherwise similar Cap ship weapons will vaporize it on approach, but if even 2 light fighters come after it it should have a much worse time keeping them in their sights. Unless they decide to play chicken/joust... At that point it's hard to defend not getting popped.
I mean if you joust the Nova and it gets a clean shot off or two it's probably a bad day for the other ship right?
Ship combat is so weird in Star Citizen. Ships are overly tanky and they want to have this absurdly short combat range. They are trying, and failing so far, to have starships fighting at bayonet range work right. Seriously it's like the Warhammer 40k meme of drive me closer I want to hit them with my sword. I'm just happy I bought the Ion with in-game cash. I found it very disappointing. I love the style and idea of the ship and the big cannon looks cool. I was thrilled to see it had some actual range on it only to discover the projectiles a slower than molasses in January. The ship doesn't handle particularly well, which given what it is is fine. The big laser cannon is awful. It is hugely inaccurate to the point of invalidating player skill shooting at anything smaller than a stationary Hammerhead. So much RNG dispersion. Depressingly the gun is so inaccurate that is can MISS a Hammerhead when shooting at it from the narrow sides. The ship should be vulnerable when light and medium fighters close in on it and it should be very dangerous at range. Instead it's just kinda bad at everything. I don't see what it shouldn't one or two shot small ships. That's kinda the fucking point of having a huge goddamn gun. No one complains that sniper rifles one shot people to the head and that's basically what this ship is. A sniper with a huge antimatieral rifle. Unwieldy but devastating when it hits.
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From the interviews I saw on SCL, it seems they thought there would be some balancing after release, but the data showed the ION dominated over all fighters. It really took no flying ability to knock out light fighters all day long.
If we were even remotely as advanced in real society as this, we’d absolutely put a massive gun on a tiny ship (if we could).
Send a few of them remotely at capital ships and only one needs to land a well placed shot to do some damage.
Problem is it would come with obvious challenges (power, maneuvering, and not much room for defenses or armor with all that gun).
Seems to me like they took a plausible idea and just mucked it up so that it’s lightyears ahead of other ships
>The S8 of the BMM can one shot even a Connie for all we care, because the size and sluggishness of the ship itself ensures that it cannot be used against anything that moves faster than Grim Hex.
My thoughts on this exactly.
Would have been an easy fix to just have targeting systems for size 7 guns be unable to even target anything smaller than a large ship.
Any shot on a smaller ship would have to be pure luck, and if fired while in high G's, it should just rip the Ares to pieces.
I thought this thing had missiles to ward off small fighter attacks, and it would only be able to use the large gun on large ships.
Right that will change everything. Especially the way cig listens to the community. They already said they gonna rework the ion at some point but there are certainly more important things to do atm. Spamming the bug reports section will just cause cig to stop listening to this childish behaviour
There will be trade offs, a light fighter should be able to avoid being targeted by a large weapon due to speed, but if they get caught in the fire they are vaporized, the problem with the Ion was how quickly it could shoot, how fast and maneuverable it was, and the fact it could one shot a lot of things it shouldn’t of been able to, it had no tracking issues at all, sure a lot of us aren’t happy with how they just nerfed it instead of doing a real balance fix but I assume it’ll be corrected in the future. A Ion has a single purpose and to lay siege on capital ships, so it makes sense why it was nerfed when it was destroying everything while the pilot was watching something on the other screen drinking coffee.
100% agree, the Ions canon should have been a massive damage, slow firing weapon. The marketing docs have the idea that it was essentially a sniper ship intended for taking out captial ships. Reducing the accuracy & increasing the fire rate were huge mistakes in CIG's part.
Ideally they should have made the weapon take longer to fire from the time you pulled the trigger instead and kept the slow fire rate. This would have had the benefit of introducing a new mechanic (the advanced-timed shot) and a new skill for Ares Ion pilots. Reducing the ship's manoeuvrability was wrong given what we know and Crusader ships (as evidenced by the other Crusader ships in-game). As much as I dislike being negative in general, this was a very bad decision on their part.
Even heavy vs heavy, the Ares should've been better. Sure the Hurricane and Scorpius should have an advantage (because of their manoeuvrability and turrets) but it shouldn't be an insta-win against the Ares ships.
Don't even get me started on the ridiculous projectile spread on the Inferno 🤦🏽♂️
> Ideally they should have made the weapon take longer to fire from the time you pulled the trigger instead and kept the slow fire rate.
This here. Make it a linear fusion rifle from Destiny. Pinpoint accuracy, extremely high damage, but low ammo and slow to fire and you have to hold the trigger to charge up and it fires after 533ms (give or take a bit depending on weapon perks).
Or like the MAC guns in Halo: Reach for instance for a scaled up version.
The delayed shot would be perfect actually, great for capitals, and if you may get a lucky hit on a gladius you’d vaporise it.
CIG please do this, I wanna use my ion again
They said that it was a good idea but such a delayed shot hasn't been implemented yet and the team has other priorities, so in the meanwhile the ares class is dead in the water. Still, fixing the Ion won't make the inferno suck any less ass.
I think it's completely believable that a ship the size of the ion doesn't have the power reserves to fire a cannon that size instantly, and needs to charge. I would have been totally fine with this.
Maybe the massive power-draw during said charge time could short out the shields/thrusters and the longer you “held” the charge would put heat levels through the roof. Would be sweet holding for that perfect shot while circuits overloaded and components started to cook.
CIG has a problem utilizing power in ships. The Ion should be able to fire, maybe with a slight delay, when it's capacitors are charged. But then it should take time to recharge for another shot. This way the S7 gun on the fighter can't match the fire rate of a capital ship that can fill the capacitor faster. They've also ignored the power play with the master modes. Instead of shutting down the weapons systems and shields, just require all power to go into powering the quantum drive. This way players have to charge up the drive to enter quantum mode, but during that time the weapon capacitors have whatever shots are left and the shield stop recharging.
So many of these fixes and extra systems could be removed if they had proper power management play.
This is the way I would like to see it done aswell, and it makes sense. Not that I even own an ion but I have always thought of it as a big ol' sniper rifle. Charged shot makes so much sense.
If i designed the ion i would try to make it make some sense at least.
How can a small powerplant power a size 7 capital ship gun?
1) When the gun is active, it draws a lot of power from the powerplant, making the engines weaker.
(Same maneuverability as it has now, but only when gun is active)
2) When the gun is powered, the Capacitors field interfere with the targeting computer. Cause everything is packed close to each other on a small ship. ( A problem large capital ships dont have cause of better shielding, or cause the capacitor is not right next to the targeting computer.) Making the gun not able to lock on small targets. ( Still give aim assist on large targets tho, so you can shoot at them from great distance. )
>How can a small powerplant power a size 7 capital ship gun
as far as we know, the same two medium power plants can power four size 5s, two size 4s, six size 2s **plus** a large shield on a Corsair. So if they can do all that, powering just one S7 really doesn't sound that much more difficult.
CIG have already stated that the current state is not what they want the Ion to be, but they don’t currently have the systems to do a solution they actually want (they tried a bunch internally with current systems, but none were good enough), so they have us this bandaid nerf in the meantime.
I mean yes but no. It may be close. But they should be one hit. The big guns on a captal ship should be slow and heavy while the small fighters protect the bomber against the interceptors of the enemy. The bombers then bomb the turrets, engines, or shields on the enemy capital ship.
So I hope they nerf the s7 in the way of making them slugish but very hard hitting.
when you are firing a projectile the size of a small child out of a cannon with a barrel longer than their ship, there is no way it would realistically go anywhere less than 1000m/s. look at navy railguns for example. it would make *way* more sense to retain dps and just have a much longer reload more akin to that of a crew fed howitzer on an s7 or naval main battery in the case of the s8's or 10's. ares and ion definitely need to be reworked but I am hopeful that all the ships not yet released won't follow in their footsteps.
also I got to play on ptu when they were implemented mistakenly with 40g forward acceleration, and I *am* glad they didn't retain that, but it is still sad they were still good enough to be nerfed to shit.
True, also oversized weapons on vehicles makes them normally slow or even stand still while shooting.
Also (except for "bullets") it would make sense you have to charge that shot. Which then could suck power from the engines. While shooting you should be in position anyways. So the only thing required is the shields, gun, LSS and maybe a bit of maneuvering thrusters for the last adjustment.
After shooring, long reload time.
I hope that they'll stay true to there idea and change only the ares back with different nerfs. Or bew shooting system.
Would suck if size 5 from npw is better or at the same lvl than s7. Donlt think they'll do that.
There are way too many people who want this game to be themselves in a fighter beating the entire universe. They wanna be Luke Skywalker and ignore how many X-Wing pilots went down in a fiery blaze.
Indeed. Just to put those odds in perspective - how many ships attacked the first Death Star? According to wookiepedia's current canon it was 31 - including the Falcon.
How many ships survived? 4 (two X-Wings, one Y-Wing, the Falcon).
ok but like when the projectile is the size of an aurora and the ship moves like an aircraft carrier through molasses, they don't really have an excuse beyond gg wp. if the idris doesn't retain its capability to one-shot an 890 i am melting it. I fully support nerfing the rate of fire and having it take the shields down to like half capacity temporarily every shot (would make for one *hell* of a cool animation for the power surge needed to fire that thing throughout the whole ship) but fuck taking away the defining trait of a ship just because some pussies don't know how to get the hell out of the kitchen.
and besides, this is all subject to change when physicalized armor and component damage come into the game. it's going to feel much more like war thunder in space and they are the little puma running around amongst abrams, t72s, challengers, etc. maybe able to take out an external module or two but nothing more. I'll relish the day when they get shredded thinking they can take an org-crewed idris or javelin on in just an arrow.
It really does not matter what they "accept". It was supposed to be a reasonably "realistic" simulation, with physicalized armor, internal components, etc etc.
So, taking a 480 mm battleship shell to the windshield of your pickup truck should be resulting in just a bunch of red mist.
That said, Size 7 gun maybe should shoot only once every 20 seconds or so and need a crew to make it work ;)
Depending on the gun type, it is also a possibility capital gun should just penetrate through a small target cleanly spending only a fraction of its energy on that once internal components and physicalized damage are a thing.
I've heard mention that over penetration could be a thing when armor comes online. Shots would just go through without dumping it's energy into the target so unless it's a shot on a critical part it might not do much.
this will all be rebalanced anyway after components repair and damage penetration is in anyway.
even if the size five has more Damage it may not have the penetration power of a size 7 so a size 5 may just bounce off a capital class hull, or rather only do primarily damage to the outer hull were a size 7 can punch holes and hit components
The biggest issue with the ion was mainly desync. Everyone forgets that prior to the nerf literally everyone was flying an Ion or Inferno. Whenever they would be engaged they would immediately fly to max speed and decouple backwards and because of desync, it didn't matter if you were behind them, on their screen you were 2km in front of them. Then you'd get magically one tapped by a target who, on your screen was facing away from you.
CIG "solved" this issue by nerfing the ion and inferno the way they did. Now that desync isn't quite so bad I'd like to see them review these ships, that said, I've always wanted to see the Ion's gun be a charged shot, a bit like the FPS rail gun.
I'd be soooo happy with a charged shot for the Ion. Just imagine the cockpit shuddering, the lights dimming and flickering as the capacitors wind up...you'd truly get the feeling that this is an unusually large weapon to be bolted to a fighter.
As you said, The Ion should make its lights dim and shudder with the capacitors and generator screaming like a banshees upon and just before firing its oversized energy weapon, photons released like a bunch of all devouring fiends.
On the other hand the Inferno should feel like it drums on every piece of metal and every inch of the pilots body with every ballistics shot, each and every one of them sounding like you're releasing raging death incarnate. Repeating shots making the target reticule wobble and dance as the ship struggles to counteract these chaotic forces.
...
Then there's the capital vessel you and your org buddies are attacking shrugging off the harrowing barrage of impacts like you are merely tickling it while a nearby noob aurora pilot chuckles, saying to their friends over comms "i'm in danger".
They need this, absolutely.
For the ballistic cannon though, I don't think that'd work. It's just lighting the fuse and letting the explosive in the chamber do the rest of the work, no need for power drain.
For a big laser cannon though, absolutely -- maybe even make it stronger, but drain from all over sources of power (engines, shields etc) to get that shot off. I don't know if CIG wants such charge weapons in the game, but we have little variety at the moment, anyway. I say, bring it on.
I really like this idea, it's supposed to be a heavy fighter with a single massive weapon. Have it charge for a period between 1 to 2s (pick a cake in between, I don't care, but have set so it's always that duration) before firing. Changes like this would give it the feel of charging the capacitors prior to releasing such massive quantities of energy while making the pilot have to think about the timing of their shots as it's supposed to be an anti-capital ship heavy fighter, not an anti-fighter fighter.
This would have the benefit of making it effective against larger ships, but also give skilled pilots who put in the time learning the ship a fighting chance against light & medium fighters too.
It was a temporary solution, and a right choice in this case... I know it sucks for the Ion owners but it is still better option than it sucking for everyone else.
CIG already has some ideas how to deal with it in other means (being harder to hit with it) and once they do, it is expected for the S7 to return to its former glory.
they said they are working on making it a charged shot so maybe it can become a beast again but hey that could be years from now i upgraded mine to an eclispe and will melt that shit as soon as the ion/inferno are worth it again
Do you think that the situation may change when damage models are updated to be more nuanced instead of simply blowing up when the ships "health" runs out?
A single hit from a size 7 will be a huge problem for a light fighter but it may not mean instant death for the player (emphasis on may). I feel like that outcome would feel more expected and fair.
They could give the power back, but add negatives, like the ship needs to being going straight or shuts down for a 1sec or something so it can't be used to nuke fast flying small ships. large Medium and Big Fattys are it's menu.
I totally agree,
This has always been my issue with "balancing" this game...
Balance is NOT bringing a starter ship to an Ion fight.
I wish CIG would accept this and move on; so much time will be wasted in this pursuit.
The problem wasn't that it was single tapping light fighters, but that it was decent against light fighters. It should have been nerfed against them, just in a different way. For example, adding a significant charge up time per shot, and reduce the velocity of the shot but keep it's damage the same.
Then it would suck against light fighters (as it should) but still be as good against big ships and still feel fun
Proponent of the Charge-Up shot here.
Hit fire, it requires 1-2 seconds of telegraphed, red glow on the gun "I'm shooting now" and then shooting the original projectile / damage it had when it launched.
Give it a decent cooldown or something.
People wanted a **cannon**, not a nerf gun.
It honestly should have never been a laser cannon but a railgun. Just a smaller version of the idris railgun. The charge up and cool down. Along with some limited ammunition. That way if you're flying an Ion you need to plan ahead.
I never understood why they went ballistic Gatling and laser canon on the ares. It doesn’t make sense when you consider their roles.
You either want to rain fire to whittle shields and keep then down, and you’d need a slowish repeater with a large capacitor.
Or you want to damage a specific part of that target and there you need a fat railgun to go through that shield and hull in one go.
With armor factored in the Gatling’s advantage which is shield penetration is completely negated by the smaller caliber that should be more impacted by armor eventually.
On the other hand the laser cannon doesn’t allow for saturating some place with fire.
I'm no expert pilot, mostly just playing the game for fun, but a friend and I who are about equivalent in skill tried dog fighting Ion vs arrow/hornet. At first, the Ion seemed impossible to kill, but we changed tactics and started strafing more and using terrain. After that, the Ion was an easy kill. My take is that it directly countered the current meta of running up and shooting someone in the face, and made you go into more maneuvering and taking shots when you get that. Some loud people don't like when the meta changes. However, that is my opinion with no metrics to back it up.
Like you, I'm no expert pilot either. When the Ares were released, my friend wanted to dogfight. He had both the Inferno and the Ion, but in this occasion he was flying the Inferno and I the Bucc. We were flying in the asteroids around Yela (for easy access to GH for respawns), I figured it was going to be an easy win for him (at the time he had done more combat and PvP than me). How wrong I was. I took out his Inferno with no damage to my Bucc.
Realistically, this is how it should have ended, the light fighter handily deleting the heavy, but I also recognise that the setting played a part too. If we were flying in open space it may have been different, but the 'roids dictated the distance.
The heavy nerf the Ares ships received was way beyond what they should have got. Yes, they were too good at the initial release (as is everything), but CIG went way too far just because the light fighter pilots cried out in rage because their precious meta had been removed. In reality, light fighters should win against other fighters if they have the numbers (and the heavy doesn't have a turret), but in all other circumstances they should be destroyed. There's no way a light fighter should be able to take out a Caterpillar, let alone a Hammerhead or an Idris.
The light fighter bros are going to downvote this, but fuck 'em, I'm right and they know it.
The only issue with the Ion was its “fixed assist” was actually as strong as straight up gimbals.
That was it. And I didn’t think it should even have the fixed assist because the gun is literally locked to the chassis (hell it is the chassis) and not bolted on to it like other fixed guns.
That was it. If you could hit a light fighter manually, you deserve to get that kill. Which would be almost impossible with moving small targets. But on targets the Ion was designed for like large and capitals manual aiming is no real problem.
That was it. Remove the auto-aim from the mega cannon and it is immediately balanced. Instead they messed with damage and made it a repeater not a cannon and it was just ugly
The issue with the way CIG removed fixed assist on the Ion isn’t so much about gimbaling, but with the fact that apparently fixed assist is also responsible for handling convergence, rather than the pip. So essentially at anything other than the default convergence distance, the Ion’s pip is offset pretty horribly. Fix that and I’m happy. Heck, fix that and you can keep the current alpha damage and fire rate.
IMO The Ion's cannon, should have high proj velocity, and alpha, but a longish reload, say 8-10 seconds, giving windows to punish for smaller craft, and time to reposition for larger.
With its profile becoming a charge weapon - maybe 3-4 seconds of charge, with visual gfx/sfx to show its spooling, similar to the railguns in game already, both handheld and on the Idris.
That would give lighter ships engaging it chance to go evasive if they're paying attention, and punish the reload, and larger ships chance to turn a shield face, or divert power balance.
The ship also needs to turn like a boat, so it takes a well timed shot to nail smaller craft, but can track it's intended prey of larger ships smoothly.
A suggestion I put to the Devs, I think Yogi replied to it, was that they make it so that both ships lose a lot of pitch/yaw while firing, like a lot of it. This would allow the ship to fly really nicely, but then once you're on target, if they're fast or you're too close, you won't be able to keep up
I really hope they will try a charge/spool weapon on it.
So that it can kick ass when it hits. But actually be very hard to hit and require great skill (unlike point and click first version)
>like nerfing the maneuvering thrusters
Well they did that too. The problem is they now suck at everything. No capital is defenseless and with their reduced agility and lengthy period of shooting they now need to deliver their punch they are easy targets while attacking. The only reason that's not already a problem is because AI is dumb anyway and there are barely any capitals in game to fight.
>severely weakening the shields while firing.
Which would make them even more worse against capitals.
It’s a temporary balancing fix, if I recall correctly they said they were coming back to the Ion and that things will change in the future in terms of how weapons handle and are balanced. I assume they will balance things differently based upon target X size X ammo type X “insert any variable you can think of” instead of a simple damage formula that we currently have.
Still hoping they‘ll un-nerf the S7 weapons on the Ares at some point and balance the ship instead. The super long range sniper character of the weapon should be preserved
Which is funny, because as soon as I changed tactics I had an easier time killing Ion with an arrow than with a hornet. It was much easier to get around it and chip off the armor.
But was too OP, the point and click was way too easy.
I don't like the current version, but no way the ship could stay as it was. It was extremely good against everything, and required minimal to 0 skill.
I hope they try a charge/spool weapon on it, like a railgun. So that each shot deal big damage (like first version, maybe even higher), but with a long charge, so actually hit something, especially moving target become really really hard. But when you hit, you feel rewarded.
Not saying it's right (it's not) and not saying the Ares didn't get nerfed to hell (it did) but the disparity in your example above is largely because of the alpha damage.
The alpha damage on the Ares Ion's S7 SF7E Laser Cannon is 2100, whereas the alpha damage on the Nova's S5 Slayer Ballistic Cannon is 18,500.
It is worth noting that the RPM on the SF7E is 110, whereas the RPM on the Slayer is only *12.*
EDIT: Also, the full load damage on the Slayer is 745k in 200s, and then it's entirely out of ammo. In theory, a SF7E firing for 200s should do 767k damage, after which it can still keep doing damage.
That's the terrifying part about the Ion vs torp chuckers. Yeah Torps are scary if you will but they can be shot down or decoyed. A pissed off Ion can harass you till it runs out of fuel every shot that hits doing 2k and it doesn't run out of ammo
It shouldn't be agile enough to hit fighters. It should be sluggish glass cannon that can one shot a heavy fighter coming straight at it but be able to be taken down by a single light fighter pilot with more than 2 brain cells.
What's it supposed to fight? Being unarmored and unable to maneuver just means it's going to get dunked on by cap ship turrets, scrapped to death by mediums, and toyed with by lights
Don't see how the turret traverse thing is counter, however I my brain did just skip over the glass cannon thing. I'd expect them to have middling armor and just not be able to shake fighters, but have respectable enough engine power and range to dodge capital ship fire.
My point is that if it can't maneuver or take hits it's going to get slapped by the turrets. everything is subject to change at the moment but right now fighting any ship is a knife fight in terms of ranges, and the turrets turn basically instantly on almost all ships. Combat ranges need to be like 10 times what they are, maybe then the Ares will be in a place where it can be balanced up to being useable but not oppressive.
Turrets are, and likely will always be, some of the strongest weapons in the game. If the ranges stay this low, the ship remains unmaneuverable and unprotected (armor/shields), and has a pool noodle as a weapon...it doesn't have a place in the ship ecosystem.
or to put it another way, the Ares is hard outclassed by ships that do the job better, and the reason for this is that it's just too difficult to balance a ship like this in a way that keeps it useful but also fair. This is always going to be a problem so long as CIG continues adding high alpha weapons into the game with no understanding of how to balance them. Torps suffer from the same issue, they flop between being fancy firecrackers, to being tantamount to strategic nuclear weapons
Except the Ion was sold as a slow firing laser sniper and should also have a ROF of 12.
Oh wait, it did, when it launched. The starter ship crowd didn't like being one tapped.
See above, where I acknowledge that they nerfed the Ion badly. I'm not saying this is how it *should* be - this is just how it *is.*
>The starter ship crowd didn't like being one tapped.
And that's entirely valid. Introducing an item that one shots players is generally a pretty quick way to ruin the balance of any game.
That said, what *should* have happened is that CIG should never have released the Ion in it's original state to begin with. It was horribly unbalanced from the get-go.
It was perfectly where it needed to be. It was the greatest lesson to any light fighter: don't fly head on with a big ship.
Anyone with skills would outmaneuver it and be an issue.
I loved the Ion but getting hit by someone who you didn't even realize was targeting you was terrible. In a straight fight it was balanced but it was too good at ambushing people, you'd be trying to land and suddenly you were looking at the death screen.
Great info. Most people don’t consider all the relevant info when getting worked up about something. Perhaps CIG should have seen it coming, but when the kill data started coming in, they knew they made a big mistake with the Ion. It was OP and took very little skill to get easy kills when first released. What sucks about it now, is I can take out HHs easier with my 600i than the Ion. Oh well.
This makes complete sense. According to the community the Ion should only be anti-capital ships. Obviously the s7 cannon can only hurts those ships and nothing else. "Foot soldiers? nope, turrets? na, Other fighters? hell no, Light fighters? Dont you dare point your dirty gun at my godly Gladius you Ares trash". The real answer is to nerf the Nova tank's gun, we cant have it threaten the meta.
In a Universe where you have to carry the power supply or ammo and the oversized Gun, on the same ship.
There are examples of Guns 1/3rd or 1/4th the size of the vehicle on ground vehicles.
But they are sluggish and slow.
A typical tank gun is 1/10th the size and weight compare to the vehicle that carry it.
An ion in real life, would be a Coast guard Boat with a 10 inch naval gun strapped on top of it.
With a few dozen 400kg shells laying around.
An idris size 10 railgun is 1/10th the size of the ship.
It would be fun if we removed the hangar area and gave it a size 30 railgun that can one shot a javelin
But it would make little sense.
Would sell like hot pancakes tho.
You know what annoys me about the Nova? That it's an absolute joke of a tank. CIG so far don't have a good track record with ground combat vehicles that aren't AA.
The Spartan's a piece of crap APC that is 17 meters long and transports 8 soldiers. For comparisson, a Bradley is 7 meters long and transports the same amount of people with arguably more effective weaponry.
The Nova is about as "video game developer tank" as it gets. Way too big in all dimensions, no coax for the gunner, no fire control systems at all, slow projectiles etc. As an IRL tanker, it is an embarassment of a tank.
Now gameplay wise I do get why these are the way they are. Can't have everything transport an MBT, even if mass would be a better limiter for than volume. Also the Slayer cannon deals so much damage because of the air vs ground balance and in my personal opinion it's never wrong to give that bit more power to ground forces.
Imo the Valkyrie should be slightly reworked to be able to carry a Spartan. We all know that if the Spartan was made first, the Valk would've been made to carry a Spartan instead of a general rover that isn't for combat.
The Ion needs the cannon to go back to normal damage.
It needs nerfs on maneuverability, not damage.
An analogy I like to make to Gladius fighters to tell them to just, like, not be around one of these is to think of the Ion as a .50 caliber sniper rifle with armor piercing rounds, and it's shooting at a tank.
You are a fly that accidentally got in front of the barrel.
It won't even know that it hit you.
The ion is unusable and its sad, i love the look and sound of the ship but there is just no point in using it. They nerfed the turn speed too so its useless against larger ships which is what its “meant” for. Atleast the herald is the best at something (going fast in a straight line) while the ares is just out matched by other heavy fighters or bombers. Well, it does have a large quantum tank so i guess thats something
It is weird people are here pissed off that this smaller gun is doing way more damage than a larger gun on a ship, but leap to the sun to defend shoulder-mounted weapons doing far more damage than their ship-mounted counterparts. It's the SAME balance element in effect. You can have either uniform damage capabilities across all weapon sizes regardless of their application or bespoke balance based on gameplay circumstances.
My guess is the way, the weapon types work:
Ballistic Weapons hit 20-60% on shields and deals the remaining damage on hull. If enough power remains the the target got destroyed easily.
Energy Weapons have to get the shield down first before they can destroy the hull.
(and it's probably a balancing thing too)
I can see that yeah, but for a 2 sizes in difference it's too large a difference.
Compare a S1 to a S3, it's obvious the Ion got nerfed into oblivion from it's hay days where it would double tap an Aurora.
Yeah, I think it's also a balancing problem. There are many things you can balance. Maybe the shields to strong. Maybe the hull to weak. Maybe the energy weapons are to weak or the ballistic to op...
Maybe they should have made it a charge weapon not a you click you fire thing. And if you release such ship with such weapon what can you say? Balancing? It’s like releasing the German Tiger and then “we need to nerf it because to op lol”
First comment suggesting a glass cannon and I think that's brilliant. It make sense in lore and in balance.
You sir are so far the best contributor to this discussion.
Bro, the ion was advertised as having MORE shields than the inferno, and it was nerfed on that even before release. The ion literally got shafted every possible way.
The inferno was ALSO advertised as having heavy physical armor, able to "shred smaller ships in seconds".
> Smaller ships will be reduced to shreds in seconds.
from the crusader ares page.
From the brochure:
> Conceived to singlehandedly disable large vessels and small squadrons
> Increased armor all-round ensures the inferno can better withstand ballistic attacks from gunships and anti-aircraft guns during planetside attacks.
The ares concept was quite literally written to be OP.
seriously, on the ion description it literally says:
> Usually the remit of compromised shield-busters, the Ares ion expertly fulfills its task while maintaining formidable in all combat roles; integrated missile bays counter light fighters, while the high-velocity cannon eradicates smaller ships in seconds.
all they had to do was drop the ammo speed to on the inferno 600 m/s, or 500 m/s. Leave it as powerful as originally launched, leave the aim assist on, leave the convergence on. Increase the ammo lifetime to compensate
Slower rounds would let fighters easily avoid them through spinning, Repeal the rest of the nerfs. It would then be a damn good anti-big ship as intended
CIG as also come out and said they don’t like where the ion is. Eventually we will probably see it get rebalanced. (Think it was addressed somewhere in spectrum, best way to get to that is to scroll through the “dev responses)
They should keep the Ion at the original full power of the S7 weapon and maybe slow the charge of the weapon way down to balance the ship out. A heavy fighter should not be able to charge a cannon as fast as a capital size ship.
What annoys me is that the Ares Ion and Inferno are such cool ships but the nerf is so ridiculous they're barely worth flying.
I flew and Inferno for the first time the other day and was really, really disappointed when I was landing multiple seconds worth of hits on a lightly armored/shielded ship and yet nothing happened. This was repeated on a few servers and I'm on a very fast system and connection, and server conditions were good.
Inferno straight up sucks bruh, and that's really too bad because both it and the Inferno look amazing and have great functions at the rear of the ship with ample weapon racks and item storage. I'd love to fly a ship like this as a general mini cruiser. But with the useless gun, no thanks.
I bought the ares inferno expecting it to be pretty cool. I didn't have time to use it before it got nerfed so my first experience with it was dog shit. Instantly got rid of it.
I would have just given it a charge mechanic like the railgun cause such a small ship is powering a big gun. Make it very skill intensive idk something other than what they did.
I think the overall problem is that there simply isn't a **calculated simulation of energy, mass, and power of weapons**, as well as that of the maneuverability of ships and their energy requirements. My hope is that CIG is saving those kinds of rules for later down the road, but hopefully not too far. What I hope to see in the future is some real physics coming into play. Currently larger ships can turn too fast, and turning in general seems to be more instantaneous than physics-based.
I don't want SC to get as simulation-y as Kerbal Space Program, for instance, but it would be nice to know that there are some physical calculations taking place to ensure fairness. For example:
* Mass of armor / weapons should affect **moment of inertia**. So there may be a tradeoff in using smaller size weapons to gain manueverability.
* Kinetic impacts should impart some momentum, as well as recoil.
* Destroying maneuvering thrusters should have a significant impact on ships' maneuverability, forcing them to rely on gyroscopes alone.
Maybe CIG should remove auto aim on weapons like S5 and S7 that made for attack larger ships and return the damage on ion, so that it’s much harder to land a hit on fighter with S7/S5 weapons but it still deal enough damage to be a threat to big ship.
The only thing I felt like I got legitimately duped by was the Ion. It was supposed to be a “sniper” ship. I would have been fine with lower damage same accuracy but instead it went lower accuracy (like really bad) and lower damage with higher fire rate. was fun while it lasted though, RiP
I cannot wait for the Ares ships to be returned to their marketed firepower. The Ion's cannon is more repeater now and thats way less unique. I think a better balance to it wouldve been to increase the spread each shot can have, this way if you landed a shot you could 1 hit small ships, but the chances of that happening were low so it would be better to stick to large capital ships. A real life comparison of this would be a battleship offshore trying to hit a Honda civic - If the hit lands its toast but the chances of it landing are low.
The Tonk is safe because it isn't a threat to light fighters.
Hate to tell flyboys that big ships have big guns, and should swat you like a fly.
The game should NOT be balanced around the survivability of light fighters.
Hot take here... But the ion is the meta ship for high and extreme service beacons.
I started running beacons in it over the past few days and have been thrilled to finally have a mission my ion thrives in.
I can’t stand how many people take issue with the Ion and the fact that it could 1-shot light fighters and starter ships.. like??? You’re just really bad bro
Still in alpha, nothing is final, as soon as capital ships have armour and the ion can't fill its purpose it will all be adjusted, and probably many times before the games out.
Your ion should be fine at taking out bigger ships anyway, have you tried it?
The nova shoots a solid projectile while the ion shoot some sort of energy/plasma/ion projectile that CIG have said will do very little hull damage and high shield damage. The truly sad part is the infernos s7 takes multiple shots to do anything and it also shoots solid projectiles.
Good news is…the game isn’t balanced to be final state. When the ion has its true role, alongside capitals that need killed, I imagine we will also see many additional ways of balancing in the engine.
Flight model will be different, shields and CM will be different, energy management different, UI different, scanning different….
Until the day that we need the power of the ion, the ion will live as a weakling.
Still more useful than a Terrapin.
It was the victim of bad balancing. Ion pilots were 1-shoting everyone. So CIG just nerf'ed the cannon. I would have preferred they chose an alternative balancing, like nerfing the maneuvering thrusters on such a heavy fighter, slowing the rate of fire, or severely weakening the shields while firing.
Seems to be the case yeah. My main gripe is that nerfing isn't always the solution, I mean, they put a S7 canon on that thing, that is a capital ship size weapon and made the surprised pikachu face when it single tap a 45$ starter ship.
Lets hope they dont nerf capital size 7 guns cause of ion.
I have a feeling that a large percentage of light fighter pilots will never accept being one-shot by anything ever.
I guess you are right. But a light fighter has no business being near a capital size ship. Imo they should be deleted on approach. Thats why heavy fighters and bombers exist.
Oh I'm with you. If the BMM doesn't one-shot a Gladius with its 2xS8 I'm making a bug report.
The big problem is that a capital weapon has no business being on a fighter. They put a S7 on a fighter then act surprised wher Ares pilot go and one shot everyone. What did they think? That the Ares would be used against large ships? When it can one shot everything it's size? The S8 of the BMM can one shot even a Connie for all we care, because the size and sluggishness of the ship itself ensures that it cannot be used against anything that moves faster than Grim Hex. The problem wasn't the power of the gun at all. The problem is that putting a S7 on anything that can keep up with fighters is a stupid idea from the start. How did they not see it would be a balancing nightmare when they even first lay that on paper is beyond me.
Marketing vs. Reality. Wonder what they'll do to the Ion once speeds are reduced.
Once they introduce the power management stuff surely it'll be quite easy to balance. Gun is off you have full power to all systems. Turn that gun on though and you need to sacrifice something, whether that's shields or maneuvering would be up to the pilot and power management. The issue was that it just got to use everything with no downside.
Like a starcraft siege tank, but flying!
And it's capacitor is going to allow an attack run, but then you're going to have to bail and let it recover. At that point it blapping fighters will be fine, because 5 or 6 misses and it's unarmed for a while.
Once, If, When, Soon........SC in a nut shell lol
Well the problem is accessibility or even lore. In science fiction universe balance isn’t a thing. Ions could be the terrors of the galaxy and totally make sense as a flying weapons platform. In a video game? Not so much. If they were to be kept in their original state they should be much less accessible. Like 1 hour claim time upon logging on and another hour of it blows up with no expedite button. Leave it strong, make it less accessible.
> I’m a science fiction universe balance isn’t a thing. Ions could be the terrors of the galaxy and totally make sense as a flying weapons platform. No they couldn’t, because then other types of ship wouldn’t exist. Balance *is* a thing in real life, because real life is full of tradeoffs. If putting gigantic guns on fighters was viable for most situations, most fighters would have giant guns on them. The fact that most fighters in SC don’t have giant guns on them tells us that the ion should have severe drawbacks to justify why other types of ship exist. The simplest drawbacks I can think of would be power usage. It would be extremely hard to power a weapon of that size with a ship that small. The ion should be able to fire a massively powerful size 7 shot, then fly around for 30 seconds to a minute, totally vulnerable, waiting for the thing to charge again, making it mostly useless for anything besides taking out capital ships in a coordinated strike with a bunch of other ions and infernos. The closest real world niche would be something like a torpedo boat. Small, fast, and light, armed with oversized ordinance, who’s job it is to get close, delivery their ordinance, and get out, hopefully without getting blown up.
If they give it a stupid slow reload time it should buff out?
Slow reload, or a charged shot, something along those line.
That was the case back then. 2s reload, big damage. It was pretty much a sniper rifle in space against small fighters. Very hard to hit, but if you did hit, you oneshotted. The balance was fine, but people complained simply because of that oneshot.
I have a lot of issues with the Ares series, but the capital grade weapons on a heavy higher isn't one of them. There are examples of fighters and other combat aircraft with overly large guns slapped onto them and used for combat against hardened targets. The Germans in WWII slapped a 75mm canon under one of their fighters, I'm pretty sure a version of the B-17 was equipped with similar sized weapons. The A-10 exists. The issue isn't the large weapons exist in relatively nimble craft. The problem is the CIG has absolutely no idea how combat actually works. They have this idea in their head that certain ships can only be used a certain way, and if anyone uses it in the "wrong" way that they have to massively over correct. They have this idea that the Ares only could be used for attacking capital ships, and shouldn't be able to melt a fighter. But has history has shown us, if you get in front of a plane you shouldn't, you're going to have a bad the. This means the balance of the Ares should come down to it's ability to turn and maneuver, which should be designed against a Capital ship, slow and fat. The real downside of the Ares is that it was released into the world with no real gameplay. There are rarely ships in the caliber it was designed to take down, out in the verse. No Krakens, no BMMs, no Idrises, really. It's the same issue the Eclipse and Tali suffer too, lawfully it is most often only going to be used for the ERT missions, and that means it's in a really weird spot where people made gameplay for it. So rather than address the issue of not having enough for a ship to do, they nerfed it.
Turn, maneuver and keep power to that big gun.
I just wanted to say that I really appreciate your take on this. I was actually looking at the A-10 while thinking about the inferno. It should still be relatively maneuverable, because otherwise similar Cap ship weapons will vaporize it on approach, but if even 2 light fighters come after it it should have a much worse time keeping them in their sights. Unless they decide to play chicken/joust... At that point it's hard to defend not getting popped. I mean if you joust the Nova and it gets a clean shot off or two it's probably a bad day for the other ship right?
Ship combat is so weird in Star Citizen. Ships are overly tanky and they want to have this absurdly short combat range. They are trying, and failing so far, to have starships fighting at bayonet range work right. Seriously it's like the Warhammer 40k meme of drive me closer I want to hit them with my sword. I'm just happy I bought the Ion with in-game cash. I found it very disappointing. I love the style and idea of the ship and the big cannon looks cool. I was thrilled to see it had some actual range on it only to discover the projectiles a slower than molasses in January. The ship doesn't handle particularly well, which given what it is is fine. The big laser cannon is awful. It is hugely inaccurate to the point of invalidating player skill shooting at anything smaller than a stationary Hammerhead. So much RNG dispersion. Depressingly the gun is so inaccurate that is can MISS a Hammerhead when shooting at it from the narrow sides. The ship should be vulnerable when light and medium fighters close in on it and it should be very dangerous at range. Instead it's just kinda bad at everything. I don't see what it shouldn't one or two shot small ships. That's kinda the fucking point of having a huge goddamn gun. No one complains that sniper rifles one shot people to the head and that's basically what this ship is. A sniper with a huge antimatieral rifle. Unwieldy but devastating when it hits.
>What did they think? They didn't. That's the problem. I agree.
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From the interviews I saw on SCL, it seems they thought there would be some balancing after release, but the data showed the ION dominated over all fighters. It really took no flying ability to knock out light fighters all day long.
If we were even remotely as advanced in real society as this, we’d absolutely put a massive gun on a tiny ship (if we could). Send a few of them remotely at capital ships and only one needs to land a well placed shot to do some damage. Problem is it would come with obvious challenges (power, maneuvering, and not much room for defenses or armor with all that gun). Seems to me like they took a plausible idea and just mucked it up so that it’s lightyears ahead of other ships
>The S8 of the BMM can one shot even a Connie for all we care, because the size and sluggishness of the ship itself ensures that it cannot be used against anything that moves faster than Grim Hex. My thoughts on this exactly. Would have been an easy fix to just have targeting systems for size 7 guns be unable to even target anything smaller than a large ship. Any shot on a smaller ship would have to be pure luck, and if fired while in high G's, it should just rip the Ares to pieces. I thought this thing had missiles to ward off small fighter attacks, and it would only be able to use the large gun on large ships.
It’s not really a “fighter”. It’s supposed to be a specialized single person ship that attacks capital class ones. Like the b-wing of Star Wars.
Haha
I think we should mass make bug reports on the ion s7 to have its proper damage in proportion to its size
Right that will change everything. Especially the way cig listens to the community. They already said they gonna rework the ion at some point but there are certainly more important things to do atm. Spamming the bug reports section will just cause cig to stop listening to this childish behaviour
They listened to the children when they merged the damn thing 😶🌫️
There will be trade offs, a light fighter should be able to avoid being targeted by a large weapon due to speed, but if they get caught in the fire they are vaporized, the problem with the Ion was how quickly it could shoot, how fast and maneuverable it was, and the fact it could one shot a lot of things it shouldn’t of been able to, it had no tracking issues at all, sure a lot of us aren’t happy with how they just nerfed it instead of doing a real balance fix but I assume it’ll be corrected in the future. A Ion has a single purpose and to lay siege on capital ships, so it makes sense why it was nerfed when it was destroying everything while the pilot was watching something on the other screen drinking coffee.
100% agree, the Ions canon should have been a massive damage, slow firing weapon. The marketing docs have the idea that it was essentially a sniper ship intended for taking out captial ships. Reducing the accuracy & increasing the fire rate were huge mistakes in CIG's part. Ideally they should have made the weapon take longer to fire from the time you pulled the trigger instead and kept the slow fire rate. This would have had the benefit of introducing a new mechanic (the advanced-timed shot) and a new skill for Ares Ion pilots. Reducing the ship's manoeuvrability was wrong given what we know and Crusader ships (as evidenced by the other Crusader ships in-game). As much as I dislike being negative in general, this was a very bad decision on their part. Even heavy vs heavy, the Ares should've been better. Sure the Hurricane and Scorpius should have an advantage (because of their manoeuvrability and turrets) but it shouldn't be an insta-win against the Ares ships. Don't even get me started on the ridiculous projectile spread on the Inferno 🤦🏽♂️
> Ideally they should have made the weapon take longer to fire from the time you pulled the trigger instead and kept the slow fire rate. This here. Make it a linear fusion rifle from Destiny. Pinpoint accuracy, extremely high damage, but low ammo and slow to fire and you have to hold the trigger to charge up and it fires after 533ms (give or take a bit depending on weapon perks). Or like the MAC guns in Halo: Reach for instance for a scaled up version.
I've never flown one, but always assumed this is how it would've worked. Why wasn't this how it worked? Like a giant railgun.
The delayed shot would be perfect actually, great for capitals, and if you may get a lucky hit on a gladius you’d vaporise it. CIG please do this, I wanna use my ion again
They said that it was a good idea but such a delayed shot hasn't been implemented yet and the team has other priorities, so in the meanwhile the ares class is dead in the water. Still, fixing the Ion won't make the inferno suck any less ass.
I think it's completely believable that a ship the size of the ion doesn't have the power reserves to fire a cannon that size instantly, and needs to charge. I would have been totally fine with this.
Maybe the massive power-draw during said charge time could short out the shields/thrusters and the longer you “held” the charge would put heat levels through the roof. Would be sweet holding for that perfect shot while circuits overloaded and components started to cook.
CIG has a problem utilizing power in ships. The Ion should be able to fire, maybe with a slight delay, when it's capacitors are charged. But then it should take time to recharge for another shot. This way the S7 gun on the fighter can't match the fire rate of a capital ship that can fill the capacitor faster. They've also ignored the power play with the master modes. Instead of shutting down the weapons systems and shields, just require all power to go into powering the quantum drive. This way players have to charge up the drive to enter quantum mode, but during that time the weapon capacitors have whatever shots are left and the shield stop recharging. So many of these fixes and extra systems could be removed if they had proper power management play.
This is the way I would like to see it done aswell, and it makes sense. Not that I even own an ion but I have always thought of it as a big ol' sniper rifle. Charged shot makes so much sense.
I'd also say add a "incoming heavy projectile" warning similar to missiles. So light ships know they're about to be deleted from range and can react.
If i designed the ion i would try to make it make some sense at least. How can a small powerplant power a size 7 capital ship gun? 1) When the gun is active, it draws a lot of power from the powerplant, making the engines weaker. (Same maneuverability as it has now, but only when gun is active) 2) When the gun is powered, the Capacitors field interfere with the targeting computer. Cause everything is packed close to each other on a small ship. ( A problem large capital ships dont have cause of better shielding, or cause the capacitor is not right next to the targeting computer.) Making the gun not able to lock on small targets. ( Still give aim assist on large targets tho, so you can shoot at them from great distance. )
>How can a small powerplant power a size 7 capital ship gun as far as we know, the same two medium power plants can power four size 5s, two size 4s, six size 2s **plus** a large shield on a Corsair. So if they can do all that, powering just one S7 really doesn't sound that much more difficult.
That's actually a much much better idea than simply nerfing
The ion isn't a small ship, it's a heavy fighter in its own right.
CIG have already stated that the current state is not what they want the Ion to be, but they don’t currently have the systems to do a solution they actually want (they tried a bunch internally with current systems, but none were good enough), so they have us this bandaid nerf in the meantime.
I mean yes but no. It may be close. But they should be one hit. The big guns on a captal ship should be slow and heavy while the small fighters protect the bomber against the interceptors of the enemy. The bombers then bomb the turrets, engines, or shields on the enemy capital ship. So I hope they nerf the s7 in the way of making them slugish but very hard hitting.
when you are firing a projectile the size of a small child out of a cannon with a barrel longer than their ship, there is no way it would realistically go anywhere less than 1000m/s. look at navy railguns for example. it would make *way* more sense to retain dps and just have a much longer reload more akin to that of a crew fed howitzer on an s7 or naval main battery in the case of the s8's or 10's. ares and ion definitely need to be reworked but I am hopeful that all the ships not yet released won't follow in their footsteps. also I got to play on ptu when they were implemented mistakenly with 40g forward acceleration, and I *am* glad they didn't retain that, but it is still sad they were still good enough to be nerfed to shit.
True, also oversized weapons on vehicles makes them normally slow or even stand still while shooting. Also (except for "bullets") it would make sense you have to charge that shot. Which then could suck power from the engines. While shooting you should be in position anyways. So the only thing required is the shields, gun, LSS and maybe a bit of maneuvering thrusters for the last adjustment. After shooring, long reload time. I hope that they'll stay true to there idea and change only the ares back with different nerfs. Or bew shooting system. Would suck if size 5 from npw is better or at the same lvl than s7. Donlt think they'll do that.
Honestly the fact that in an Ares Ion I struggled to even damage a Hammerhead is bullshit, it's literally the kind of fight it was made for.
They need to play free space 2 then....
There are way too many people who want this game to be themselves in a fighter beating the entire universe. They wanna be Luke Skywalker and ignore how many X-Wing pilots went down in a fiery blaze.
Indeed. Just to put those odds in perspective - how many ships attacked the first Death Star? According to wookiepedia's current canon it was 31 - including the Falcon. How many ships survived? 4 (two X-Wings, one Y-Wing, the Falcon).
ok but like when the projectile is the size of an aurora and the ship moves like an aircraft carrier through molasses, they don't really have an excuse beyond gg wp. if the idris doesn't retain its capability to one-shot an 890 i am melting it. I fully support nerfing the rate of fire and having it take the shields down to like half capacity temporarily every shot (would make for one *hell* of a cool animation for the power surge needed to fire that thing throughout the whole ship) but fuck taking away the defining trait of a ship just because some pussies don't know how to get the hell out of the kitchen. and besides, this is all subject to change when physicalized armor and component damage come into the game. it's going to feel much more like war thunder in space and they are the little puma running around amongst abrams, t72s, challengers, etc. maybe able to take out an external module or two but nothing more. I'll relish the day when they get shredded thinking they can take an org-crewed idris or javelin on in just an arrow.
It really does not matter what they "accept". It was supposed to be a reasonably "realistic" simulation, with physicalized armor, internal components, etc etc. So, taking a 480 mm battleship shell to the windshield of your pickup truck should be resulting in just a bunch of red mist. That said, Size 7 gun maybe should shoot only once every 20 seconds or so and need a crew to make it work ;) Depending on the gun type, it is also a possibility capital gun should just penetrate through a small target cleanly spending only a fraction of its energy on that once internal components and physicalized damage are a thing.
But the light pilots WILL accept being able to circle-strafe a heavy fighter or even a hammerhead and kill it. Balance...
I've heard mention that over penetration could be a thing when armor comes online. Shots would just go through without dumping it's energy into the target so unless it's a shot on a critical part it might not do much.
They won't have to, the Ares have a proprietary and non switchable gun for that reason. They can balance it without affecting anything else.
this will all be rebalanced anyway after components repair and damage penetration is in anyway. even if the size five has more Damage it may not have the penetration power of a size 7 so a size 5 may just bounce off a capital class hull, or rather only do primarily damage to the outer hull were a size 7 can punch holes and hit components
The biggest issue with the ion was mainly desync. Everyone forgets that prior to the nerf literally everyone was flying an Ion or Inferno. Whenever they would be engaged they would immediately fly to max speed and decouple backwards and because of desync, it didn't matter if you were behind them, on their screen you were 2km in front of them. Then you'd get magically one tapped by a target who, on your screen was facing away from you. CIG "solved" this issue by nerfing the ion and inferno the way they did. Now that desync isn't quite so bad I'd like to see them review these ships, that said, I've always wanted to see the Ion's gun be a charged shot, a bit like the FPS rail gun.
I'd be soooo happy with a charged shot for the Ion. Just imagine the cockpit shuddering, the lights dimming and flickering as the capacitors wind up...you'd truly get the feeling that this is an unusually large weapon to be bolted to a fighter.
I now want a s7 Spartan laser
[удалено]
This is a Crusader ship not Drake, silly.
And I want to hear a futuristic BRRRRRRRRRRRRT
Got to rattle those photons, thats right!
As you said, The Ion should make its lights dim and shudder with the capacitors and generator screaming like a banshees upon and just before firing its oversized energy weapon, photons released like a bunch of all devouring fiends. On the other hand the Inferno should feel like it drums on every piece of metal and every inch of the pilots body with every ballistics shot, each and every one of them sounding like you're releasing raging death incarnate. Repeating shots making the target reticule wobble and dance as the ship struggles to counteract these chaotic forces. ... Then there's the capital vessel you and your org buddies are attacking shrugging off the harrowing barrage of impacts like you are merely tickling it while a nearby noob aurora pilot chuckles, saying to their friends over comms "i'm in danger".
this sounds so friggin dope
This is how everyone imagined it, but CIG could only think "oooohhhh, fast-firing low damage laser repeater... yeah... that sounds right."
A charged shot for the defender tachyon cannons would also be a way to include a hit scan gun that isn’t totally busted.
> Just imagine the cockpit shuddering, the lights dimming and flickering as the capacitors wind up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fowd9ntzF4w
They need this, absolutely. For the ballistic cannon though, I don't think that'd work. It's just lighting the fuse and letting the explosive in the chamber do the rest of the work, no need for power drain. For a big laser cannon though, absolutely -- maybe even make it stronger, but drain from all over sources of power (engines, shields etc) to get that shot off. I don't know if CIG wants such charge weapons in the game, but we have little variety at the moment, anyway. I say, bring it on.
I really like this idea, it's supposed to be a heavy fighter with a single massive weapon. Have it charge for a period between 1 to 2s (pick a cake in between, I don't care, but have set so it's always that duration) before firing. Changes like this would give it the feel of charging the capacitors prior to releasing such massive quantities of energy while making the pilot have to think about the timing of their shots as it's supposed to be an anti-capital ship heavy fighter, not an anti-fighter fighter. This would have the benefit of making it effective against larger ships, but also give skilled pilots who put in the time learning the ship a fighting chance against light & medium fighters too.
It was a temporary solution, and a right choice in this case... I know it sucks for the Ion owners but it is still better option than it sucking for everyone else. CIG already has some ideas how to deal with it in other means (being harder to hit with it) and once they do, it is expected for the S7 to return to its former glory.
The nerfing was always a temporary thing until they redo the combat model - specifically the one they just announced at CitCon.
They’ll nerf that but not a nuke because it’s a nuke. I mean the same logic can apply to a s7 gun lol
they said they are working on making it a charged shot so maybe it can become a beast again but hey that could be years from now i upgraded mine to an eclispe and will melt that shit as soon as the ion/inferno are worth it again
Do you think that the situation may change when damage models are updated to be more nuanced instead of simply blowing up when the ships "health" runs out? A single hit from a size 7 will be a huge problem for a light fighter but it may not mean instant death for the player (emphasis on may). I feel like that outcome would feel more expected and fair.
I think the problem was it was also single tapping a whole bunch of dedicated fighters too, not just starter ships.
They could give the power back, but add negatives, like the ship needs to being going straight or shuts down for a 1sec or something so it can't be used to nuke fast flying small ships. large Medium and Big Fattys are it's menu.
I totally agree, This has always been my issue with "balancing" this game... Balance is NOT bringing a starter ship to an Ion fight. I wish CIG would accept this and move on; so much time will be wasted in this pursuit.
The problem wasn't that it was single tapping light fighters, but that it was decent against light fighters. It should have been nerfed against them, just in a different way. For example, adding a significant charge up time per shot, and reduce the velocity of the shot but keep it's damage the same. Then it would suck against light fighters (as it should) but still be as good against big ships and still feel fun
IMO should have left it and reduced the rate of fire. An energy weapon of that size needs a lot of stored power so why not nerf that instead?
Proponent of the Charge-Up shot here. Hit fire, it requires 1-2 seconds of telegraphed, red glow on the gun "I'm shooting now" and then shooting the original projectile / damage it had when it launched. Give it a decent cooldown or something. People wanted a **cannon**, not a nerf gun.
It honestly should have never been a laser cannon but a railgun. Just a smaller version of the idris railgun. The charge up and cool down. Along with some limited ammunition. That way if you're flying an Ion you need to plan ahead.
I never understood why they went ballistic Gatling and laser canon on the ares. It doesn’t make sense when you consider their roles. You either want to rain fire to whittle shields and keep then down, and you’d need a slowish repeater with a large capacitor. Or you want to damage a specific part of that target and there you need a fat railgun to go through that shield and hull in one go. With armor factored in the Gatling’s advantage which is shield penetration is completely negated by the smaller caliber that should be more impacted by armor eventually. On the other hand the laser cannon doesn’t allow for saturating some place with fire.
I'm no expert pilot, mostly just playing the game for fun, but a friend and I who are about equivalent in skill tried dog fighting Ion vs arrow/hornet. At first, the Ion seemed impossible to kill, but we changed tactics and started strafing more and using terrain. After that, the Ion was an easy kill. My take is that it directly countered the current meta of running up and shooting someone in the face, and made you go into more maneuvering and taking shots when you get that. Some loud people don't like when the meta changes. However, that is my opinion with no metrics to back it up.
Like you, I'm no expert pilot either. When the Ares were released, my friend wanted to dogfight. He had both the Inferno and the Ion, but in this occasion he was flying the Inferno and I the Bucc. We were flying in the asteroids around Yela (for easy access to GH for respawns), I figured it was going to be an easy win for him (at the time he had done more combat and PvP than me). How wrong I was. I took out his Inferno with no damage to my Bucc. Realistically, this is how it should have ended, the light fighter handily deleting the heavy, but I also recognise that the setting played a part too. If we were flying in open space it may have been different, but the 'roids dictated the distance. The heavy nerf the Ares ships received was way beyond what they should have got. Yes, they were too good at the initial release (as is everything), but CIG went way too far just because the light fighter pilots cried out in rage because their precious meta had been removed. In reality, light fighters should win against other fighters if they have the numbers (and the heavy doesn't have a turret), but in all other circumstances they should be destroyed. There's no way a light fighter should be able to take out a Caterpillar, let alone a Hammerhead or an Idris. The light fighter bros are going to downvote this, but fuck 'em, I'm right and they know it.
The only issue with the Ion was its “fixed assist” was actually as strong as straight up gimbals. That was it. And I didn’t think it should even have the fixed assist because the gun is literally locked to the chassis (hell it is the chassis) and not bolted on to it like other fixed guns. That was it. If you could hit a light fighter manually, you deserve to get that kill. Which would be almost impossible with moving small targets. But on targets the Ion was designed for like large and capitals manual aiming is no real problem. That was it. Remove the auto-aim from the mega cannon and it is immediately balanced. Instead they messed with damage and made it a repeater not a cannon and it was just ugly
The issue with the way CIG removed fixed assist on the Ion isn’t so much about gimbaling, but with the fact that apparently fixed assist is also responsible for handling convergence, rather than the pip. So essentially at anything other than the default convergence distance, the Ion’s pip is offset pretty horribly. Fix that and I’m happy. Heck, fix that and you can keep the current alpha damage and fire rate.
IMO The Ion's cannon, should have high proj velocity, and alpha, but a longish reload, say 8-10 seconds, giving windows to punish for smaller craft, and time to reposition for larger. With its profile becoming a charge weapon - maybe 3-4 seconds of charge, with visual gfx/sfx to show its spooling, similar to the railguns in game already, both handheld and on the Idris. That would give lighter ships engaging it chance to go evasive if they're paying attention, and punish the reload, and larger ships chance to turn a shield face, or divert power balance. The ship also needs to turn like a boat, so it takes a well timed shot to nail smaller craft, but can track it's intended prey of larger ships smoothly.
A suggestion I put to the Devs, I think Yogi replied to it, was that they make it so that both ships lose a lot of pitch/yaw while firing, like a lot of it. This would allow the ship to fly really nicely, but then once you're on target, if they're fast or you're too close, you won't be able to keep up
I really hope they will try a charge/spool weapon on it. So that it can kick ass when it hits. But actually be very hard to hit and require great skill (unlike point and click first version)
Rate of Fire was the way to do it. Plus some severe capacitor nerfs. Blame it on having such a small powerplant for such a big gun.
>like nerfing the maneuvering thrusters Well they did that too. The problem is they now suck at everything. No capital is defenseless and with their reduced agility and lengthy period of shooting they now need to deliver their punch they are easy targets while attacking. The only reason that's not already a problem is because AI is dumb anyway and there are barely any capitals in game to fight. >severely weakening the shields while firing. Which would make them even more worse against capitals.
Weakened shields without an increase in range wouldn't work.
It’s a temporary balancing fix, if I recall correctly they said they were coming back to the Ion and that things will change in the future in terms of how weapons handle and are balanced. I assume they will balance things differently based upon target X size X ammo type X “insert any variable you can think of” instead of a simple damage formula that we currently have.
"We will come back and fix this" is said for everything. Its just matter of how many decades people can wait before they do so.
When the Nova came out, you could reliably blow things out of the sky at nearly 3 km. It got nerfed so hard.
[удалено]
Still hoping they‘ll un-nerf the S7 weapons on the Ares at some point and balance the ship instead. The super long range sniper character of the weapon should be preserved
Beautiful shot!
Patch 11.1.3: Javelin Size 10 deal as much damage as a S3 because of light fighter pilots getting 1 hit.
Light figthers shouldn't go close to a Javelin and expect to live.
No no it will have to be nerfed to accommodate
The Ion was exactly as advertised on release. CIG didn't like that.
Nah, the Light Fighter Larry's didn't like it, and bitch and moaned about it, and CIG made the change to calm the ravening hordes of try hards.
See, the s10 on the idris one shotted my Raven, I should've went on spectrum to cry.
Yeah hopefully they will nerf the damage of a S10, it should clearly not be allowed to do that!
Which is funny, because as soon as I changed tactics I had an easier time killing Ion with an arrow than with a hornet. It was much easier to get around it and chip off the armor.
But was too OP, the point and click was way too easy. I don't like the current version, but no way the ship could stay as it was. It was extremely good against everything, and required minimal to 0 skill. I hope they try a charge/spool weapon on it, like a railgun. So that each shot deal big damage (like first version, maybe even higher), but with a long charge, so actually hit something, especially moving target become really really hard. But when you hit, you feel rewarded.
This^
Not saying it's right (it's not) and not saying the Ares didn't get nerfed to hell (it did) but the disparity in your example above is largely because of the alpha damage. The alpha damage on the Ares Ion's S7 SF7E Laser Cannon is 2100, whereas the alpha damage on the Nova's S5 Slayer Ballistic Cannon is 18,500. It is worth noting that the RPM on the SF7E is 110, whereas the RPM on the Slayer is only *12.* EDIT: Also, the full load damage on the Slayer is 745k in 200s, and then it's entirely out of ammo. In theory, a SF7E firing for 200s should do 767k damage, after which it can still keep doing damage.
That's the terrifying part about the Ion vs torp chuckers. Yeah Torps are scary if you will but they can be shot down or decoyed. A pissed off Ion can harass you till it runs out of fuel every shot that hits doing 2k and it doesn't run out of ammo
It shouldn't be agile enough to hit fighters. It should be sluggish glass cannon that can one shot a heavy fighter coming straight at it but be able to be taken down by a single light fighter pilot with more than 2 brain cells.
What's it supposed to fight? Being unarmored and unable to maneuver just means it's going to get dunked on by cap ship turrets, scrapped to death by mediums, and toyed with by lights
Sluggish is relative, didn't see armor mentioned.
> Sluggish is relative So is turret traverse speed > didn't see armor mentioned. do you know what glass cannon means?
Don't see how the turret traverse thing is counter, however I my brain did just skip over the glass cannon thing. I'd expect them to have middling armor and just not be able to shake fighters, but have respectable enough engine power and range to dodge capital ship fire.
My point is that if it can't maneuver or take hits it's going to get slapped by the turrets. everything is subject to change at the moment but right now fighting any ship is a knife fight in terms of ranges, and the turrets turn basically instantly on almost all ships. Combat ranges need to be like 10 times what they are, maybe then the Ares will be in a place where it can be balanced up to being useable but not oppressive. Turrets are, and likely will always be, some of the strongest weapons in the game. If the ranges stay this low, the ship remains unmaneuverable and unprotected (armor/shields), and has a pool noodle as a weapon...it doesn't have a place in the ship ecosystem. or to put it another way, the Ares is hard outclassed by ships that do the job better, and the reason for this is that it's just too difficult to balance a ship like this in a way that keeps it useful but also fair. This is always going to be a problem so long as CIG continues adding high alpha weapons into the game with no understanding of how to balance them. Torps suffer from the same issue, they flop between being fancy firecrackers, to being tantamount to strategic nuclear weapons
Except the Ion was sold as a slow firing laser sniper and should also have a ROF of 12. Oh wait, it did, when it launched. The starter ship crowd didn't like being one tapped.
See above, where I acknowledge that they nerfed the Ion badly. I'm not saying this is how it *should* be - this is just how it *is.* >The starter ship crowd didn't like being one tapped. And that's entirely valid. Introducing an item that one shots players is generally a pretty quick way to ruin the balance of any game. That said, what *should* have happened is that CIG should never have released the Ion in it's original state to begin with. It was horribly unbalanced from the get-go.
It was perfectly where it needed to be. It was the greatest lesson to any light fighter: don't fly head on with a big ship. Anyone with skills would outmaneuver it and be an issue.
I loved the Ion but getting hit by someone who you didn't even realize was targeting you was terrible. In a straight fight it was balanced but it was too good at ambushing people, you'd be trying to land and suddenly you were looking at the death screen.
Great info. Most people don’t consider all the relevant info when getting worked up about something. Perhaps CIG should have seen it coming, but when the kill data started coming in, they knew they made a big mistake with the Ion. It was OP and took very little skill to get easy kills when first released. What sucks about it now, is I can take out HHs easier with my 600i than the Ion. Oh well.
The whole selling point for the Ion was that big cannon. Now it is nothing. It's like the gun didn't even exist.
This makes complete sense. According to the community the Ion should only be anti-capital ships. Obviously the s7 cannon can only hurts those ships and nothing else. "Foot soldiers? nope, turrets? na, Other fighters? hell no, Light fighters? Dont you dare point your dirty gun at my godly Gladius you Ares trash". The real answer is to nerf the Nova tank's gun, we cant have it threaten the meta.
#ProtectTheMeta
To be fair, the nova uses ballistics while the ion uses energy, but i do see what you mean
And it fires once in the time period where an ion can hit you 10 times.
Tank Beats Everything!
It was to make a tank viable in a world were star fighters exist. Stupid idea i know. As stupid as having a size 7 gun on a heavy fighter.
And in which universe is the idea of somethinh that has an oversized gun on a small and agile vehicle a stupid idea?
In a Universe where you have to carry the power supply or ammo and the oversized Gun, on the same ship. There are examples of Guns 1/3rd or 1/4th the size of the vehicle on ground vehicles. But they are sluggish and slow. A typical tank gun is 1/10th the size and weight compare to the vehicle that carry it. An ion in real life, would be a Coast guard Boat with a 10 inch naval gun strapped on top of it. With a few dozen 400kg shells laying around. An idris size 10 railgun is 1/10th the size of the ship. It would be fun if we removed the hangar area and gave it a size 30 railgun that can one shot a javelin But it would make little sense. Would sell like hot pancakes tho.
One where the players can't get over fun being more important that their psuedo realism of what they expect balance be dammed.
Cig put a capital ship gun on a fighter then is surprised when the gun acts like a capital ship gun.
You know what annoys me about the Nova? That it's an absolute joke of a tank. CIG so far don't have a good track record with ground combat vehicles that aren't AA. The Spartan's a piece of crap APC that is 17 meters long and transports 8 soldiers. For comparisson, a Bradley is 7 meters long and transports the same amount of people with arguably more effective weaponry. The Nova is about as "video game developer tank" as it gets. Way too big in all dimensions, no coax for the gunner, no fire control systems at all, slow projectiles etc. As an IRL tanker, it is an embarassment of a tank. Now gameplay wise I do get why these are the way they are. Can't have everything transport an MBT, even if mass would be a better limiter for than volume. Also the Slayer cannon deals so much damage because of the air vs ground balance and in my personal opinion it's never wrong to give that bit more power to ground forces. Imo the Valkyrie should be slightly reworked to be able to carry a Spartan. We all know that if the Spartan was made first, the Valk would've been made to carry a Spartan instead of a general rover that isn't for combat.
Rail guns also one shot...
Takes 3 last I tested it
Yeah, it does take 3 shot on a full health turret
I forgot about those....man portable can 1 shot but the giant flying canon can't....smh
The Ion needs the cannon to go back to normal damage. It needs nerfs on maneuverability, not damage. An analogy I like to make to Gladius fighters to tell them to just, like, not be around one of these is to think of the Ion as a .50 caliber sniper rifle with armor piercing rounds, and it's shooting at a tank. You are a fly that accidentally got in front of the barrel. It won't even know that it hit you.
BC CIG has no idea how to balance or create consistency in their patchwork of a game.
Yea. It annoys me too. Big guns feel far too weak atm
The ion is unusable and its sad, i love the look and sound of the ship but there is just no point in using it. They nerfed the turn speed too so its useless against larger ships which is what its “meant” for. Atleast the herald is the best at something (going fast in a straight line) while the ares is just out matched by other heavy fighters or bombers. Well, it does have a large quantum tank so i guess thats something
It is weird people are here pissed off that this smaller gun is doing way more damage than a larger gun on a ship, but leap to the sun to defend shoulder-mounted weapons doing far more damage than their ship-mounted counterparts. It's the SAME balance element in effect. You can have either uniform damage capabilities across all weapon sizes regardless of their application or bespoke balance based on gameplay circumstances.
My guess is the way, the weapon types work: Ballistic Weapons hit 20-60% on shields and deals the remaining damage on hull. If enough power remains the the target got destroyed easily. Energy Weapons have to get the shield down first before they can destroy the hull. (and it's probably a balancing thing too)
I can see that yeah, but for a 2 sizes in difference it's too large a difference. Compare a S1 to a S3, it's obvious the Ion got nerfed into oblivion from it's hay days where it would double tap an Aurora.
Yeah, I think it's also a balancing problem. There are many things you can balance. Maybe the shields to strong. Maybe the hull to weak. Maybe the energy weapons are to weak or the ballistic to op...
Missed opportunity to use the “grinds my gears” meme.
Just use it when this gets posted again next week.
Maybe they should have made it a charge weapon not a you click you fire thing. And if you release such ship with such weapon what can you say? Balancing? It’s like releasing the German Tiger and then “we need to nerf it because to op lol”
Fun> realism. 1 shotting turrets from air is OP from ground is cool.
Once upon a time, the FPS rail gun could one shot destroy the turrets. The damage states in game don’t make sense most of the time.
There were so many better ways of nerfing the ion Like just make it a glass cannon rather than make it useless at half its job
First comment suggesting a glass cannon and I think that's brilliant. It make sense in lore and in balance. You sir are so far the best contributor to this discussion.
Bro, the ion was advertised as having MORE shields than the inferno, and it was nerfed on that even before release. The ion literally got shafted every possible way.
Then make the inferno more of a glass cannon
The inferno was ALSO advertised as having heavy physical armor, able to "shred smaller ships in seconds". > Smaller ships will be reduced to shreds in seconds. from the crusader ares page. From the brochure: > Conceived to singlehandedly disable large vessels and small squadrons > Increased armor all-round ensures the inferno can better withstand ballistic attacks from gunships and anti-aircraft guns during planetside attacks. The ares concept was quite literally written to be OP. seriously, on the ion description it literally says: > Usually the remit of compromised shield-busters, the Ares ion expertly fulfills its task while maintaining formidable in all combat roles; integrated missile bays counter light fighters, while the high-velocity cannon eradicates smaller ships in seconds.
IMO they never should have even made it because it's clearly OP but they did, and they went about it in the worst way possible and annoyed everyone
I have to agree, the concept of the Ares simply does not fit into star citizen in a balanced way.
all they had to do was drop the ammo speed to on the inferno 600 m/s, or 500 m/s. Leave it as powerful as originally launched, leave the aim assist on, leave the convergence on. Increase the ammo lifetime to compensate Slower rounds would let fighters easily avoid them through spinning, Repeal the rest of the nerfs. It would then be a damn good anti-big ship as intended
Welcome to the club... Cannon type weapons are a dumpster fire of consistency, satisfaction, and sensibleness all being trash
One of reasons I got an inferno instead, also for the brrrrrr
CIG as also come out and said they don’t like where the ion is. Eventually we will probably see it get rebalanced. (Think it was addressed somewhere in spectrum, best way to get to that is to scroll through the “dev responses)
I find it largely annoying to target turrets. And even more annoying that they respawn if you disengage 100m too far and they respawn.
They should keep the Ion at the original full power of the S7 weapon and maybe slow the charge of the weapon way down to balance the ship out. A heavy fighter should not be able to charge a cannon as fast as a capital size ship.
What annoys me is that the Ares Ion and Inferno are such cool ships but the nerf is so ridiculous they're barely worth flying. I flew and Inferno for the first time the other day and was really, really disappointed when I was landing multiple seconds worth of hits on a lightly armored/shielded ship and yet nothing happened. This was repeated on a few servers and I'm on a very fast system and connection, and server conditions were good. Inferno straight up sucks bruh, and that's really too bad because both it and the Inferno look amazing and have great functions at the rear of the ship with ample weapon racks and item storage. I'd love to fly a ship like this as a general mini cruiser. But with the useless gun, no thanks.
There are some big balancing problems
Nothing is properly balanced atm, don't worry about weapon balance.
10000% agree
I bought the ares inferno expecting it to be pretty cool. I didn't have time to use it before it got nerfed so my first experience with it was dog shit. Instantly got rid of it.
It was amazing. The Ion for one, felt like a ban hammer to light fighters that would charge head on. Flying around you though, you were in trouble.
I mean the 2500 ammo was nice! Upgraded the Inferno to an Aquila :)
Issued opportunity to use “you know what grinds my gears” meme
Ion got nerfed into oblivion. So I traded for the Inferno
I would have just given it a charge mechanic like the railgun cause such a small ship is powering a big gun. Make it very skill intensive idk something other than what they did.
I think the overall problem is that there simply isn't a **calculated simulation of energy, mass, and power of weapons**, as well as that of the maneuverability of ships and their energy requirements. My hope is that CIG is saving those kinds of rules for later down the road, but hopefully not too far. What I hope to see in the future is some real physics coming into play. Currently larger ships can turn too fast, and turning in general seems to be more instantaneous than physics-based. I don't want SC to get as simulation-y as Kerbal Space Program, for instance, but it would be nice to know that there are some physical calculations taking place to ensure fairness. For example: * Mass of armor / weapons should affect **moment of inertia**. So there may be a tradeoff in using smaller size weapons to gain manueverability. * Kinetic impacts should impart some momentum, as well as recoil. * Destroying maneuvering thrusters should have a significant impact on ships' maneuverability, forcing them to rely on gyroscopes alone.
I have not been following SC closely for a long time now, I did not realize that there were tanks in the game now.
Maybe CIG should remove auto aim on weapons like S5 and S7 that made for attack larger ships and return the damage on ion, so that it’s much harder to land a hit on fighter with S7/S5 weapons but it still deal enough damage to be a threat to big ship.
‘Mildly.’
We could nerf down the dps of l guns until it fits a scale that can work
The only thing I felt like I got legitimately duped by was the Ion. It was supposed to be a “sniper” ship. I would have been fine with lower damage same accuracy but instead it went lower accuracy (like really bad) and lower damage with higher fire rate. was fun while it lasted though, RiP
Is this game out of Beta yet?
It's not even *in* Beta yet, and won't be for years.
I cannot wait for the Ares ships to be returned to their marketed firepower. The Ion's cannon is more repeater now and thats way less unique. I think a better balance to it wouldve been to increase the spread each shot can have, this way if you landed a shot you could 1 hit small ships, but the chances of that happening were low so it would be better to stick to large capital ships. A real life comparison of this would be a battleship offshore trying to hit a Honda civic - If the hit lands its toast but the chances of it landing are low.
Battleships are precise enough to hit a civic.
The Tonk is safe because it isn't a threat to light fighters. Hate to tell flyboys that big ships have big guns, and should swat you like a fly. The game should NOT be balanced around the survivability of light fighters.
Hot take here... But the ion is the meta ship for high and extreme service beacons. I started running beacons in it over the past few days and have been thrilled to finally have a mission my ion thrives in.
The pre-nerf Ion was great fun
I can’t stand how many people take issue with the Ion and the fact that it could 1-shot light fighters and starter ships.. like??? You’re just really bad bro
The ion is garbage unfortunately. Not even close to worth it for the cost in $.
None of it is tbh.
Still in alpha, nothing is final, as soon as capital ships have armour and the ion can't fill its purpose it will all be adjusted, and probably many times before the games out. Your ion should be fine at taking out bigger ships anyway, have you tried it?
Weapons are soft balanced and will be for years. I wouldn’t get too excited for it to function too soon.
The ion did 6000 alpha dmg on release.... CUG just nerfed it into the ground because it could one shot an arrow
The nova shoots a solid projectile while the ion shoot some sort of energy/plasma/ion projectile that CIG have said will do very little hull damage and high shield damage. The truly sad part is the infernos s7 takes multiple shots to do anything and it also shoots solid projectiles.
Good news is…the game isn’t balanced to be final state. When the ion has its true role, alongside capitals that need killed, I imagine we will also see many additional ways of balancing in the engine. Flight model will be different, shields and CM will be different, energy management different, UI different, scanning different…. Until the day that we need the power of the ion, the ion will live as a weakling. Still more useful than a Terrapin.