They should heal vettes. They should also hyperspace with fighters/vettes docked as they used to. I have not really played with them since they require way too much handholding now to even heal one ship.
I’d like to play and focus on the fight, not fight own ship with ■■■■■■■■ crew. They ARE more trouble then they are worth but you also don’t want them buffed to become win buttons.
Support frig should do just that - support, not tank your ship, not win you a two vs 1 or 3v1.
Best way I can explain it - and hope you can extend it to greater number of ships:
1 frigate vs 2 frigates - one should lose with one enemy in yellow (say 40ish%)
1 supported frig vs 2 enemy frigs - should lose with both enemy frigs alive but one so close to death a scout can take it out
1 doubly supported frigate should take out one enemy and inflict a goot 10-20% on the other before dying.
In other words - the support beam should heal at the rate damage would have been reduced if the enemy retargeted to support - which would allow the supported frig to live longer. This is hard to do since different ships do different damage.
The problem with these numbers is that at no level would it make since to have support frigates instead of just more assault frigates. Remember, 2 assaults vs 1 assault and 1 support isn’t 2v1, it’s 2v2. And by your engagement examples above, the supports would lose 3 vs 6 (3 bare assaults vs 2 assaults with 2 x 2 supports. If latch points were not limiting, then low heal rates could be overcome potentially by numbers over time. But as it stands now, they are nothing more then over priced, slot stealing armor upgrades.
And I say the problem is compounded because assault vs assault is the highest time to kill, once you bring Ion vs assault or armor and damage upgraded HW2 frigs to the table it will really get bad.
I worry that the effectiveness thus usefulness of support frigates will be reduced to what workers were in Cata, or even worse, what collectors are in HW2. That may be fine for the HW2 folks considering their gameplay never needed to embrace the healer side of HW micro, and may be also fine for the HW folks that never liked the extra management involved with maintaining a support fleet in battle in the first place, but go back and watch some old HW recordings incase you forgot how elegant our battles were and how fundemental good support management was to HW gameplay. I don’t want to lose that when we’re so close to getting it back. But I also don’t want to see it overpowered.
This is why I’m offering hints of suggestions to compensate. Better heal but less HP to force enemy to prioritize targeting. Better micro wins. Buff to the weapons so that they have sudo attack capabilities. Maybe half the projectile dmg of an assault minus the plasma cannon. Greatly increase their speed so they can get in and out of battle quickly. Give them better range then any other frigate so they have a fighting chance on their own if properly managed thru kiting. Greatly reduced dock time for fighters and vettes.
I’m not saying all of these should be implemented, not trying to build a supper frigate here, but I am suggesting that it looks like we are on a road to having the unit that was only second to scouts in battle field presence in HW reduced to “why bother at all?”
While I respect your theoretical here I will tell you from the experience of a Cata player that made the choice in nearly every game to use repair workers that the harvest > repair arguement falls flat on its face. You’re free to argue that HW2 collectors are not effective at repair, but not that it makes more since to harvest over repair in general is simply false. The problem is not repair, the problem is a bad HW2 implementation of it.
multiple? I remember 1 statement that was part of many ideas scole posted months ago. Care to share links/quotes to any others? I must have missed them.
edit: two now, but I’m posting this from the future.
As far as I can tell this is a pretty niche thing that never really got used, but personally I find it to be one of the coolest things in HW1 and wish it could come back too.
Yes, it was too expensive to use in HW. Jumping was way more expensive then it is now. plus maps were small. I tried it out a few times on hyperspace arena, but never could get a good strategy going with it.
So I have the grand kids until tomorrow so i won’t be able to do it til much later but can’t someone fire up HW1 and do a CPU battle or something to find out what the outcome was in the original?
Not sure who has access to this so I’m posting it for reference. As of 1.05 patch. For comparison I added the standard frigate. You can get a rough idea by doing the math.
standard frigate:
maxvelocity 325.0
buildCost 575
buildTime 60
maxhealth 16000
support frigate:
maxvelocity 450.0
buildCost 425
buildTime 65
maxhealth 12000
Going on memory: If I recall correctly, support frigates could no longer heal corvettes with the beam. It was removed with the 1.05 patch. Can someone else verify this?
Not sure, not sure how to test either, however, I think it’s beside the point due to latch limitation. In HW1 there wasn’t a limit I remember to the number of support frigates that could repair a single frigate. Now, it will be limited to 2
Yeah but I’m talking about providing a comparison for how it used to work. It seems to me having the details of what happened back in the day would help as a starting point here.
The healing gun works marvelously in HWRM by the way, with one notable exception. HW SF keeps its nose pointed at the target when not healing while HWRM SF drops to a flat attitude when not healing. With the healing gun as was used in HW, in theory it should be exactly the way it was exception HW2 quirks.
HW classic:
[Team 1] 2 AFs
[Team 2] 1 AF and 1 SF
Team 1 win when Team 2 SF is side on to Team 1.
Team 2 win when SF is behind Team 2 AF.
It makes a big difference where the support frigates are located during a battle. A tactical issue that determines the outcome. Not quite so cut and dried is it?
The caveat in that second scenario is the single AF will only win If the 2 AF’s don’t split there fire as a single AF can only target one enemy effectively at a time. if the 2AF’s move apart the Support frigate loses the cover and the 2 AF’s will win with the lose one of there number.
Assuming that is, a support frigate dies slightly faster than an AF in this situation.
Currently is the healing beam greater than the damager output of the AF ? I’ve not checked.
If the AFs are split up then it’s the same as scenario 1.
The AFs can and do target 2 things at once however only one target will meet with the plasma launcher. The key to success against them is to keep your units moving and/or spread out.
The SF healing beam is more effective than the damage from 2 AFs. If we expand on this idea and add another AF to team 1 the outcome will be the same as with only 2 AFs. As long as the SF has cover it will decide the battle but it can be overcome easily by splitting up your units.
I haven’t tried it with 4 AFs in team 1 yet.
Support frigates are a game changer and do a very good job but they also have a weakness. I found that HW has them balanced out extremely well.
I tried with 4 AF on team 1 and they overwhelmed team 2 because there was no where for the SF to hide. This tells me that 2 AF with a SF can give a destroyer a run for its money. [edit] The destroyer won.
I doubled the team members (team one 4 AF) (team two 2 AF, 2 SF) and team 2 won every time but there is a condition that must be met. Since there’s no where for the SF to hide they become targets as well. Having 1 SF cover 2 AFs and 1 SF, the other SF covers 2 AFs and the other SF. This combo is most effective of all. The only way to counter this is to purposefully target 1 SF and then the other. This leaves all of team 1 with no offense against team 2 until the SFs are gone but team 1 wins.
So all this tells me is that SFs are very useful but only if you know how to use them. This also tells me that maybe the balancing of the two games is leaning the wrong direction. What I’ve learned throughout this thread and many others, as well as my own experience, is that HW is much more balanced top to bottom than HW2. Maybe the emphasis should be on balancing HW2 more in line with HW… But then there’s many other issues that need dealt with before any true balancing can be done. Just a thought…