Was about to buy the lifetime pass to support Frontier but judging by their latest financial report they're doing quite fine without my contribution.
I hope the Corvette has a more sophisticated cockpit compared to the other Federal ships as well as shields worth a damn. No idea why they push armour tanking when it's so expensive to repair vs. just refilling SCBs.
To be honest, the game needs more money sinks. Everyone will be billionaires sooner or later if the game keeps going as it is.
Apparently there was a typo/mistake in the Newsletter, and the Corvette's hardpoints are actually 2 small, 2 medium, 1 large and 2 huge.
Wow, talk about a bigass typo. Yes, it's still the king of alpha damage with a pair of huge PA's, but everything else is kinda meh now. Looking at that, i'd like to know what kind of distributor it will have. If it has a new class level of distributor (and I think it needs to with 2x C4's):
2x C4 PA's
1x C3 F/G Beam
2x C2 F/G Beams
2x C1 Rails/Missile Launchers
Make no mistake: A ship with that hardpoint setup
is designed for PvP almost exclusively. You won't want to use dual PA's for NPC farming. It's just overkill and a waste of money every time they're fired at NPCs. Further, buying this ship and NOT using C4's in the C4 hardpoints is just a waste of your time. Get an Anaconda if you're not going to use C4's. Running C3's only, the Corvette can only run 3x C3's compared to the Anaconda's 4x C3's. For NPC farming specifically, that's a big damn difference.
Hmmm...yep, this ship only beats an Anaconda in offensive firepower if you're running 2x C4's. Otherwise, it is objectively inferior secondary to only having 1x C3 compared to the Anaconda's 3x C3's. Only potential caveat is if this ship does in deed have a higher class of distributor, making a heavier beam build more viable than it currently is on the Anaconda.
But yea, this is
the FdL of big ships: built for PvP, not the best choice for NPC farming. Any ship that gets hit with dual Plasma Accelerator shots is going to lose its shield and a good part of its hull in one shot, so you can fly one of these and rest fairly assured that nobody outside of a wing of 4 will interdict you. BUT!...Taking this ship to a RES site with your huges tied up in C4's means you're basically limited to the 1 large, 2 mediums and 2 smalls when farming for long durations...in which case the ship is inferior in useful damage output to an FdL and only slightly better than a Clipper. Ship seems to have a singular purpose: to drop your shields.
Alternate build?
2x C4 Plasma Accelerators
1x C3 Gimbaled Beam
2x C2 Missile Launchers
2x C1 Gimbaled Beams (or Missile Launchers!)
In such a scenario, you rely on the PA's and alpha damage from beam(s) to drop shields, then you unleash your missiles upon their unprotected hull. I really hope it's turn speeds are good enough to not need turrets. But if it does, I'd make those gimbaled beams in that build turrets and that'd be fine. Just makes hitting those C4 shots on big targets more important.
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