My 2 cents on the corvette. Sorry if it doesn’t read well, I’m super tired atm, I’ll edit it later if needed.
As I and others noted, the corvette has trouble hitting targets. I spent about 3 hours+ in one, and it was at times borderline frustrating at my inability to kill stuff, let alone hit stuff. I hardly gained enough credits to cover my losses. Before, I’d usually switch to the corvette around the 300 credit mark, then make it to 1000 in about 45 minutes, then switch to cruiser and make some real cash. This evening, I only topped 900 in the vette.
Prior to this patch, my usual tactic was to drop out of warp right on top of an inty/bomber, and I was heavily damage, if not destroy my target, human players or not. The corvette’s turret turn rate, combined with good positioning and good guesswork on how the target will react, was usually enough to get good results, as the dps output of the weapons are theoretically more than capable to destroy i/bs in short order. Now, I think the corvette had trouble prior to this patch in terms of it killing, let alone hitting stuff, but with the inty/bomber buffs to maneuverability, these problems have become much more noticeable.
(Having flown the current iteration of the inty, it does feel better than before, and fighting in them is fun. I don’t think reverting the buffs is the way to go.)
Here is my experience of a usual 1v1 player fight, one corvette vs one inty: the result is usually a frustrating stalemate. The inty can’t hurt the corvette if you can avoid a few shots and missiles, but the corvette simply cannot hit the inty outside of a few stray shots. And if the inty does take a little damage or runs out of flares, it has more than enough ability to simply leave the fight. Later in my session this evening, I’d only go so far as to shoot one or two missiles at the inty, just to (hopefully) shoo it away, and not even bother shooting at it. I tried to escort a couple cruisers/destroyers, but all it took was literally one interceptor to negate any effect I had.
Once it becomes a 1v2, the corvette simply doesn’t stand a chance atm. Two intys have more than enough damage output to ruin any corvette’s day. They don’t even really have to be human players at that point.
This has been my experience with the corvette. I’m not sure how to suggestion ways to adjust it, as I honestly don’t know exactly the role the corvette is supposed to have or niche it’s supposed to fill. So far, it seems like the only thing the corvette is actually good for is staying away from fights and re-supplying i/bs. Is it supposed to be a support ship that relies on other ships to do the damage? If so, I see a gap in terms of taking care of large groups of i/bs other than hurling more intys at the swarm. Is it a gunboat/missile platform? It needs more and better guns and missiles. It seems like the corvette is trying to be a jack of all trades, master of none ship atm.
Until there are mechanics in place for outfitting the cap ships with certain weapons or abilities etc so that there can be an anti-small-ship-swarm role, I think the easiest way to buff the vette is to simply change out the weapons: swap the guns with some beefy flak cannons. Make the blasters much more efficient with a significantly higher fire rate at the cost of damage per shot. If three flak cannons is too much firepower, then perhaps add a new weapon type, something like a rail gun or something, that’s a fixed anti-cap ship weapon, designed for disabling systems. That would make 2 blasters, 2 flak cannons, 2 rails. Either way, the vette couldn’t really hurt cap ships to begin with, and I don’t think it should, bombers do that job, and vettes keep the bombers topped up on torps. Vettes still can’t get really close to fights, because they’re weak vs cap ships, meaning that intys still have to be the screen.
tldr; please give vette better guns!
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