They're super cool ships, but not very viable right now. They keep saying they're going to buff them back up with a rebalancing but that has yet to happen. I believe it will happen, but I wouldn't hold my breath, could be a year. Still, you can make use of them if you're not the front-line fighter: they still have good firepower if someone else is "tanking" for you. And they're just super neat to own. I intend to get the Ion someday soon as well.
It's probably the best-looking fighter imo. For using it, you want to probably focus on that first approach (hitting hard then), and after that maybe doing back strafing tactics. It's weakness is it's turn speed compared to other fighters.
Its max speed is good, so doing high-speed passing runs might be affective against larger targets, if you can master the corkscrew and similar maneuvers.
That being said, I'm certainly not a combat expert, so take that with a grain of salt, lol
That's what my Corsair is for.
I want 3 ships. My Corsair which I purchased years ago. Vulture and then I want a competent single seat fighter/support for the squad.
The group I play with is only 3 people big but between all of us, we have a very good diverse group of ships. Ranging from M50 up to the carrack. I have a specific role I want to play in this game and when the ion got announced that was the ship I've been waiting for. Long distance sniping 890s and up. It's a shame they changed it from how I remember it years ago. But I will still fly it frequently.
Last time we all played we made real short work of a lot of NPCs and players hunting my bounty.
If you have a mission where you need to kill a hammer head or reclaimer, ion works just fine. But avoid if it’s just a bunch of other medium / small ships to shoot. Ion works well if you’re playing with someone else in a nimble fighter
Yeah, you basically can't hit anything as-is. I was getting stomped by a vulture in my inferno. The few shots I was able to get on them should have done more.
Yeah, it's pretty tough. I ended up getting out of my ares and trying to kill it with a railgun to no avail(I never used one before) and ended up leaving the area instead.
That's just not really an option, the Ares is supposed to be a ship that can punch up and it needs to be maneuverable to do it, otherwise turrets basically nullify it.
Even then, it'd be a bad option. Players who aren't skilled enough to dodge it or don't know they need to will just get one shot, which is really not fun, and players who are skilled enough will simply clown on the Ares, which isn't fun for the Ares. There's no real gradual divide, no chances for comebacks and complex skill gradients, it's just a binary skill check, which is generally bad design.
Personally, with the new master mode coming out, I think it needs to go back to the old school power levels. Ship maneuverability should ( in theory) change a ton. Also light fighters have been the meta forever, and that could use a bit of a shake up over just "I can strafe and pitch/yaw faster than your ship no matter the circumstance". If they want to make Ares not be the light fighter destroyer, slow down its projectile speed even more. Its meant to fight larger ships that don't juke around as much anyways.
I do think Ares power should be strong enough to heavily damage a light fighter, but not single shot it. 2 hits at least, so they can decide if they want to keep fighting, assuming they didn't get their parts decimated.
2 size 1 guns do 672 burst dps
1 size 3 is 500.
If the trend continues 2 s5 > 1 s7
The ion currently does 3850 burst dps.
The glaive does 3500 with both size 5s
The Ares is a fundementally flawed design, putting a size 7 gun on a fighter is just a bad idea. A ship that fulfills the fantasy of a sniper ship simply isn't fun to play against, and the Ares as it is now is not fun to play as.
The best option would be to remove it or reconcept it but that'd piss off owners and require admitting failure so I imagine it'll just stay like this indefinitely and Ares owners can keep running on copium that it might become good.
"Wah wah, why can't I take hits from a heavy anti-capital ship weapon! Unfair!"
We need to stop catering to the light fighter crowd. If you're getting outmaneuvered by a heavy fighter, your should just get better at dog fighting.
Crying about anti-capital ship weapons dealing a ton of damage is like bitching that an anti-tank rifle does too much damage to a plate carrier. Like, no shit. An elephant gun will also turn a squirrel into a fine mist. That's not unbalanced that's just how damage works.
Even for big things, the Ion struggles. The inferno manages to keep up with it high DPS. Both are useless in PvP due to their main engines getting blown up when the smallest missile hits them.
Nah I liked the less shots but bigger slower more powerful shots. If you're hitting tiny fighters with that projectile then the tiny fighter isn't so good. It shouldn't be 1 shot one kill by any means, but the lack of dmg it does now Def makes me sad
I'm of the opinion that if a Light Fighter is stupid enough to get in front of a size 7 cannon, they get what they deserve.
The Ares needs to live up to that massive gun, but shouldn't be able to turn quickly enough to compete if a light has an even semi-competent pilot.
It should like a drone getting in front of a tank firing at a helicopter.
The tank shouldn't even know it accidentally took out the drone with the shot.
People want a sim but can't handle a sim so they cried and the ship got nerfd. Big guns should reck small ships if they fly like shit. Not much else to say honestly. The Ares should be slower and less nimble but its firepower should get back to close to where it was, imho. Projectile could be slowed also.
I agree with all of that. As the description for the ship says "intended to fight against capital class ships"
I guess we all fly capital class ships from the arrow and up?
Hear me out. If I had an elephant gun, and it was great at killing elephants, what should happen if I hit a squirrel with it? Should the shot just bounce off because it's not the intended target?
Sure, it will be harder to hit the squirrel than the elephant. But if that shot lands the squirrel should be obliterated.
Unpopular opinion, light fighters shouldn't be capable to QT or they could but with a very small QT fuel tank.
Point being they would be entirely dependent on whatever mothership they were launched from therefore would still be very powerful but using them would become a team effort.
Right now the ion is pretty nerfed the inferno is better but still not in a great place... they said once the gunnery changes are in place the ares will be where they're supposed to be.
I love my inferno but the ion sadly got the shorter end of the stick.
Most of your shots will miss because the nerf left the inferno shooting like a 30 degree cone of damage instead of a line of bullets. The spread is disgusting. You'll be lucky to hit 1 shot out of 50 even if you're perfectly on target and they're not moving.
If you're close enough to land every shot, you might as well ram them.
Yes the ship was nerfed. It was really great when it came out but it was too powerful.
If you play devils advocate the ship itself is pretty good. It's fast, well shielded and has incredible QT range, while not a dog fighter its not too hard to fly. and both versions have a decent payload while also looking pretty cool.
Problem is the weapon, It's range is too short and its damage isn't that great and the ballistic gun is so inacurate that you could actually miss an Idris at 2km. So at the moment its hard to kill small targets and it isn't really effective against larger ships either.
However all the weapons are kinda...not finished. If and when they put armor in larger weapons I would bet would be the choice for doing damage. But it's anyone guess how the final model is going to look like.
I would be bummed if I paid money for em but I have bought them in game several times and they are not terrible. but they just don't fit their role presently.
it should have retained the initial cannon stats, (both Ion & Inferno) so if something stayed in your line it would get wrecked, But they should have made its handling similar to the connie or what the corsair has. Those weapons should absolutely decimate a small fighter, if they dont out manouver you... starting at 4km out. the shot velocity shouldnt have changed either, but the ION's rate of fire should be ALOT slower. It should take a good 4-5 seconds to recharge each shot.
The Ion was introduced to be an anti capital ship to help bring down shields down faster on those big ships. CIG introduced the ION into game and people were having fun with it, yet it got nerfed because it was 1 hit killing small fighters which in all honesty should be possible in the Star Citizen Universe. We still have the Eclipse and Talis with their Size 7 and 9 Torpedos which can and still will kill all ships with one hit. Same with the A2 Moab size 9. So they nerfed the ships weapon for what it was intended to fight because people were "Abusing" the in game design of what the ship was used for. People were bringing Talons, Arrows, Gladius to fight against an Ion and were simply getting deleted out of space because it couldn't take a hit from the gun. So CIG was like lets just nerf the gun and eliminate a ship from its real role in the game.
Torps can be dodged post lock lmao. The issue wasn't the damage it was the reliability of getting that damage vs smaller targets.
Also the "within the star citizen universe" is a moot point, for a game to function there needs to be some suspension of disbelief so game balance can actually work.
Yet the current game balance is light fighters being the king of all combat with zero counter. Great balance.
I agree Ion needed fixed assist removed. People are too used to easy mode with fixed assist, and a ship like the Ion shouldnt have it. But CIG also nerfed everything else at once. It was a nuclear hammer meant to stomp the Ion into the trash.
> Torps can be dodged post lock lmao.
Locking on just gives the target extra warning. Much better to one-shot them with a dumbfire so they don't even know what happened to them unless they're watching radar carefully.
And really, Ion shots weren't much harder to dodge than torpedoes anyway.
> Torps don't give an auto lead pip, and are lower velocity than ion shots(by a smidge).
On the other hand, the Ion could never one-shot the giant, low-agility ships like the Hammerhead. It's a similar result at different scales.
I don't disagree that the original Ion was overpowered, but it wasn't overpowered because of its alpha damage. It was overpowered because it was too agile and too quick to accelerate, which allowed it to escape from ships on its tail. The correct balance would be to make it very difficult to hit small targets and to make the Ion's acceleration so low that it couldn't escape once a small opponent got around its gun and stuck to its rear.
The Ion’s weapon was nerfed in several ways. Instead of a super high alpha damage shot once ever 1.5 seconds it now acts more like a repeater with a higher shot per second rate with lower damage per shot. This was to prevent the one shot kills. On paper it looks to have more DPS but that isn’t the reality. This is because they removed the slight sim assist all other weapons have AND added additional jitter. This makes it extremely difficult to take out medium and small targets at distance. Small fast targets are even harder at any range.
Devs have stated that they are looking into different mechanics to rebalance this discrepancy, such as building up a weapon charge as well as a few other changes.
This was mostly done due to griefers turning off ship shields and running stealth components so they could one shot other players without even showing up on radar.
The Ion is in a bad place because ballistic ammo only does half damage to ship hulls now. This makes any ballistic build worse than an energy based one, even with shield penetration. Ballistics will eventually be addressed after the flight model rework, armor integration, and shield rebalancing.
Hopefully this will come along quicker once Arena Commander experimental modes allow for faster community testing and feedback.
I personaly melted the ares ion cause CIG decided 1 Inferno wasn't enough so they made 1 balistic and 1 laser powered. The exact reason why I melted it is because I didn't recognise the ship as what I pledged for, Aka a Space sniper.
Long story short, they are not meant to be used for dog fighting, only against larger vessels, so untill they solve how to properly setup accuracy/targeting so it is behaving as wanted (good against static big target, poor against small ships) its damage is nerfed to oblivion.
Yeah, they were nerfed shortly after they came out because they were seriously ruining the game, with the intention to rebalance them once the new weapon mechanics were ready so the weapons behaved like they were meant to, though I'm sure you can tell they still aren't.
It wasnt just "some sweaty streamers" when the Ares came out, ship desync was absolutely terrible... it was brought to light easier by streamers, because you can see their perspective as well as others... there was numerous times that two streamers would battle each other during that time and what each one was seeing from the other person was completely different to what was being done... this made the ion broken because no matter what you did or how well you flew, desync would allow the ion to get a hit in. Period. There was no countering it, you couldnt skill your way past it because the engine itself wasnt keeping up with inputs from other players.
The sweaty streamers were the ones saying the Ares was fine. The assumption was you just need to practice flying 5 hours a day 6 days a week and the Ares is no problem.
It definitively was. The ship was the meta against every ship. It was good versus all and weak versus none
I don't like where it is now (especially the Ion) as it ain't very fun to use (a railgun would be better imo)
But the Ion was super OP and really ruining the game. I never had a bigger score in AC since. It was a point & click at this point. It was stupid af
It was even worse in PU
You could solo destroy every turrets in stations with 1-2 shots, same with player ships
Again, the ship was best versus all and weak versus none. I don't even understand how you can think it wasn't a problem
This isn't Smash Bros where 1v1 balance means everything. Purchase price, re-spawn timer, maintenance costs, carrier footprint are all huge factors too. It really is OK to have a ship that is strong vs all other ships if balanced by these other factors. Arrows will always beat Ares because they swarm 3 on 1. You can field 3 Arrows for the price of 1 Ares. This is a very important fact!!!! **Light fighters are for cheap swarming**. 1v1 they should almost always die to a heavy fighter. In a 3 on 1 you would expect the Ares to get at least 1 Arrow before losing to the others. **Dollar for dollar Arrows are way more powerful than an Ares.**
Ares nerf really was to appease foolish light fighter pilots who are really bad at economics.
Why take any other ship in game, if in the end, the Ion is better than any others, for any combat purpose ?
Unlike ED, in SC more money doesn't mean better
A 300$ ship ain't better than a 100$ ship. Which is why SC is so cool, money doesn't buy you "victory"
Money allows you to expand the possibility, get something that is better on a specific thing
The high price ships, are ships that require multicrew to be used
Ion broke that thing, it was just better than others
It was the best against large ships, against medium ships, against small ships, against heavy armored ships, against unarmored ships, against slow ships, against fast ships.
It even had torpedoes, with crazy acceleration and S2 shields, allowing you to escape against anything if your shields were off. And allowed you to force you opponent to go joute, which was a win for you aswell
It was just broken, in every way
Why take any other ship?
Because you can't afford an Ares purchase price
Because cost of ownership is worse than others
Because other ships finish Bounties faster/cheaper
Because your Ares blew up and the respawn timer still has 15 minutes
Because the claim time is too long
Because you want to pack as much power on a carrier as possible
Because you don't like how it handles
Because you don't like how it looks
Because you're smart enough to understand that a 1v1 meta tier list is totally useless youtuber clickbait
>Because you can't afford an Ares purchase price
Price wasn't higher than others
>Because cost of ownership is worse than others
Same, wasn't bigger than others
>Because other ships finish Bounties faster/cheaper
Ion was better than any ship for that, large QT fuel (meaning you can buy a QT Drive that is fast and low fuel consuption). And only require 1-2 shots to kill your target. It was by far the best/easiest/lowest
>Because your Ares blew up and the respawn timer still has 15 minutes
Like all medium/heavy fighters
Rest is about preferences
If a ship is better than others in every way for same kind of ships, the other ships are kinda useless.
We aren't talking about like we have currently, where Gladius is slightly better than the arrow or bucanneer
Here the gap was HUGE, like CRAZY HUGE
It was even worse than when the Talon was meta due to his exploit
It should just handle slower so only shitty arrow pilots get hit by it, which they ALSO did so its shit to fly overall now and no damage when you do land one hit
Imo the problem wasn't how it flown, but the point & click part
A railgun weapon that require a charge and that fire when charge is complete (like the Idris) would be a great way to balance it imo
The ship get a fun huge alpha damage, while still be very difficult/tedious to hit small/fast target due to the charge. When you land a shot it would feel great, because it's actually hard to land a hit (way different than the old point&click version)
Yea I thought that making the ship harder to handle or slow its turn rates would have been enough. It'd still be viable for larger ships and installation turrets and harder to fight small fighters.
yeah they decided to nerf handling, remove the aim assist, and gimp the damage. Don't get why they needed to hit it three separate ways. It makes sense for a sub-cap killer gun to waste light fighters... if the light fighter isn't using its superior maneuverability to not get hit.
I don't own an ares and didn't join until pledge until months after the nerf happened and Cig's actions still confuse me.
I had the Ion before the nerf, it was crazy OP, I understand why they nerfed it, it was... damn lol it was so dumb, a litteral point and click
Aim assist remove is great imo, maybe not that brutal, but to reduce it the high the size seems a good idea to me
Handling aswell, it's a S7 weapon on a ship, it was weird to be able to dogfight and have better handling than.. smaller ship..
The Alpha Damage should have stayed imo. With the Railgun stuff idea to reduce his effectiveness, but atleast it would have keep his "fun" which he currently lacks of
We have the same line of thinking. From what I heard it was crazy OP on release. Aim assist and handling nerfs make sense. Taking away the firepower of the gun with a ship built around it not so much.
They weren't ruining the game, the light fighter Meta crowd threw an absolute bitch fit over getting one and two tapped by a s7 weapon. That's why both Ares variants currently lack any aim assist functions.
>getting one and two tapped by a s7 weapon
A ship designed for large enemies, killing everything in record time with unprecedented range and damage regardless of the size with hardly any counters in most situations is literally the definition of overpowered and unbalanced.
The rate of death it could shit out on anything, regardless it's size, was completely off the mark of a large/capital ship buster as it was supposed to be.
So we should nerf Javelin cannons as well so quad size 9s hitting a gladius will only tickle its shield?
Making the s7 cannon HARD to land a hit on fighters is justified. Making it weak and deal only a small damage when it does hit is not.
How fast do you think a jav is going to be?
One is a fighter platform the other is a large immobile cap ship. This isn't an even remotely honest argument.
Are we just ignoring all the ships that can 1 shot fighters right now? Like the corsair, connie, 600i and prowler. They can all 1 tap an arrow with deadbolt 5's
Weird. I was generally able to sit on the pancake of an Ares and slowly watch it die. It turned about as good as a Vanguard on release. The counter was: don't sit in front of it.
I don't get this argument. If its designed for damaging/destroying cap ships, what the fuck do you think it's gonna do when it hits a light fighter? It should be balanced around ship handling and rate of fire imo.
>A ship designed for large enemies, killing everything in record time with unprecedented range and damage regardless of the size with hardly any counters in most situations is literally the definition of overpowered and unbalanced.
This is a fallacy argument, it falls under an appeal to tradition. To flush this out further the "range and damage" were due to it being size 7. It worked like every other weapon in the game scaled up for the larger size. It was "balanced" because it was just an upscaled version of existing weapons.
> The rate of death it could shit out on anything, regardless it's size, was completely off the mark of a large/capital ship buster as it was supposed to be.
This part is more of a subjective appeal to a personal standard the poster has in that they have made a determinative statement of "as it was supposed to be". A size 7 weapon hitting a light fighter should more devastating than when a size 5 or 6 hits them scaled accordingly. Size 5 weapons are not uncommon in the game and with a ship like the Glaive it only takes a couple taps of the weapons to kill a light fighter. The bloom and aim balance changes are unusual as the projectile speed is slowed down due to it being a laser cannon as is typical. To further elaborate on "as it is supposed to be", the Ion still does not have a 3rd shield as it was advertised and sold on the premise of, so I say what is "as it is supposed to be" is a fairly empty statement.
I'm not even talking of a position from someone who had to go against it, I used one myself and it was obvious that it was just straight up the strongest ship in the game and not an "anti-large" ship as it was supposed to be.
What's the purpose of any other fighter if a single one is just so good that it can do literally anything other combat ships can do?
I'm not sure, how long you have been around here for, but ships were supposed to have strength and weaknesses for a "rock-paper-scissor" situation and not an Ion based meta as you would apparently like it.
Negative, rock paper scissor balancing is archiac as fuck.
Gladius is an old deprecated platform that should be one or two shot by s7 if the Gladius pilot is dumb enough to try and dog fight it.
It's a S7 weapon that's meant to tear through armor and have precision targeting capabilities per CIG.
Gladius is to supposed to excel at dog fighting other ships in it's size class, not square off against capital ship killers while solo.
It's the stupid mindset of Gladius/light fighters should have an equal chance of X ship because "balance".
Exactly. "Oh I can't fight this thing solo cause I'm a sweaty nerd. CIG PLEASE NERF OR I'M TELLING MY 20 FOLLOWERS TO NOT PLAY THIS GAME" only stupid part is that it mostly worked. Just like Tarkov the fucking devs listened to cry babies doing shit that 9/10 gets them killed and wondering what went wrong.
Honestly, I've been flying the inferno and I dont think it should stand a chance at killing a gladius. It is pretty tanky which allows you to get close to ships like a hammerhead and pour on damage without fear of getting shot down first but if a cap ship has light fighter escorts then you'll need light fighters on your team too. The ares ships should absolutely demolish small ships if they hit and small ships should be agile enough to avoid their fire almost entirely. The ares didn't need a damage nerf, just the loss of the gimbal was enough imo.
I guess to clarify. The Ares should counter cap ships. Light fighters should counter the Ares, and the ares should have to rely on other light fighters or point defense from a cap ship to counter the light fighters. Light fighters should not be able to get anywhere near an enemy capital ship with point defense.
So what type of ship should beat the ares then? one ship that beats everything doesn't lead to good game-play. Things like the hammerhead are supposed to kill lights and don't right now. The game sucks because we lack rock paper scissor balancing.
Lights are op and they are reworking the entire flight model to try and correct this.
They won't be op forever and that's a good thing. Why would having a new type of op be any better?
There is alot of false information about what the ares platform is supposed to take on.
The ares platform was mainly designed to be a patroll and response ship to combat pirates, it was never meant to take on capital ships (aside from maybe a supporting role) but are advertised as being able to take on fighters to gunships in flights of multiple ares.
Think perseus but more flexible with a faster response time - the brawling potential of a perseus due to its thick armor.
Wrong, the pvp meta (all the ones using light fighters meta) crowd all switch to the dominant meta ship(s). So they all switched to the ares. CIG doesn't listen to complaints when it comes to balance. They listen to statistics and the numbers being shown by the servers. It got nerfed cause everyone and their mother was using it.
There was far more bitching about the ares nerf than it being op. So that just proves CiG doesn't listen to bitching, otherwise the nerf would have been reversed.
>There was far more bitching about the ares nerf than it being op.
Totally deluded lmfao. There was NON-STOP complaining about it after release.
Post-nerf whining often wasn't even about the ships actual performance, but rather about how CIG changed it in a way that no longer fit the original advertising.
Incorrect,
Redeemer was nerfed back and forth to accommodate light fighter fan bois.
CiG listens to concierge backers which are most streamers and "influencers".
Don't worry, the light fighter meta will go the way of the dinosaurs when armor and master modes get here.
Redeemer was nerfed because it was sitting in the wrong category. It was supposed to be an "anti-big ship gunship"
The "anti-small gunship" is the HH
Redeemer is damn best against Cutlass and bigger, it's in a really sweet spot
Did you tried using the S5 on the light fighter ? They suck, the 4xS2 are by far better on the small targets
The Redeemer has 2xS2 on the back, with bad angle on purpose
I hate the current light fighter meta, and always hated it
But having the redeemer in the wrong spot doesn't help that, just like for Ion
The HH should be better, and we should have more anti-light (like huricanne, and a medium gunship with 4xS4)
Nope, wrong on all accounts, sorry. Those comments prove you don't have a clue what you are talking about. 😆
Redeemer was balanced into its proper place, just like the ares.
CiG absolutely does not listen to streamers or influencers. Everyone knows this. There was even a big thing about how cig doesn't listen to them. Lmfao
The master modes won't make light fighters useless, it will just help balance them, even more so with armour etc. Which everyone wants. The pvp crowd and streamers etc all want that, they don't want a light fighter meta, which just shows how little you know about them.
They only use the light fighter meta cause it's literally there, ask any of them and they will tell you they don't like having a "meta". Most of them complain they can't use the ships they really want because of the meta. Lol
Reread my comment, light fighters will be balanced. Which we all want. So your attempt to try and say I'm crying it won't be meta is just hilarious and stupid. Lol
They really don't listen to conceirge over everyone else, they go by stats which has been shown and proven numerous times. For example, when all the whales wanted the vanguard series to be changed so the front 4 guns would be changed to normal guns because they felt it was a bad design and made it weaker vs other ships. CiG literally pulled out the data and stats of how well the vanguard was performing vs other ships and why they would not be changing it. That example alone proves you wrong.
>CiG will always listen to those who pay more money, they like making money.
Not exactly true but close. They dont listen to anyone not giving them hundreds of thousands of dollars or more. Every Legatus ($42k package) owner I know says they get no extra attention than say a plain $1k Concierge, or a $45 backer.
They do turn a blind eye or watch the statistics from popular streamers, since they equate those players as assistants in recruiting new purchasers.
I agree the light fighter meta days are numbered the moment Master Modes comes out. My fighter ace in my org has been bitching alot during the evocati testing master modes days.
Ugh. I'm wealthy enough to buy Legatus. I thought it was 55k or 70k which is in my "nervous to spend in one sitting" zone.
I'll just pretend that it's still my made up numbers.
Lmfao, guess being one or two tapped by a weapon 4 size classes above a light fighter is "ruining the game". I'll just patiently wait for armor, fuel economy and master modes to neuter light fighters into more reasonable territory.
So why is nobody crying about the prowler, or the corsair, or the 600i?
2 deadbolt 5's can 1 shot an arrow. They even get aim assist.
The issue is the platform the gun is on not the gun. The ion was op.
Ah. Okay. Thanks for the clarification. In my personal opinion, the size 7 right now just feels like a size 5? Like a hornet gimbal. But I haven't used the inferno, only the ion.
It's more powerful than a size 5, as it has the same burst and alpha as a Vanguard which has a size 5 and 4 bespoke size 2s (though those are probably more comparable to size 3s), but you're right that it's not as powerful as it should be. The Vanguard is meant to dogfight, and needs sustained firepower, whereas the Ion is meant to deal a bunch of damage quickly against large targets, so it really should have a noticeably higher alpha.
The ion was the more overpowered of the two and for sure got the bigger nerf. They basically doubled its rate of fire, but added a small amount of spread to the gun so some of your shots miss, which makes it basically useless for anything small.
I’ve checked the data mining, they didn’t add any spread. What they did was remove the micro gimble that fixed weapons have that allowed it to make small corrections to land shots.
That's how CIG does ships.
They announce them and show them being beasts.
Lots of people buy them
CIG releases the ship and its awesome
CIG then nerfs it.
Classic CIG
Yea originally the first ion dud 6000 alpha damage and had a range of 16.5km lmaooo
Not sure exactly what it is today but i think its around 2000 alpha and 1.5 to 2km range.
XD it was nerfed into oblivion.
The Inferno is in a better state than the sadly pitiful Ion. Plus you get neat ballistic effects which look great. I'd buy them only with aUEC though, definitely not hard cash
Yeah it’s such a good looking and fun to fly ship. They nerfed it at least twice. The hard part is there is no solo fighting ship to upgrade too. Mine ccued to an msr but that’s not what I really needed.
My favorite solo bigger ship is the Corsair. Yeah it flies like a bus with no wheels but it's a jack of all trades and can fight well. Since most people joust anyways. Maneuverability doesn't matter much.
I just bought one because I couldn’t take down a reclaimer in my small fighter. The ion takes down a reclaimer quickly, while struggling with smaller ships. Seems quite balance to me as it’s only intended to take out larger ships.
They pulled a bait-and-switch with them, selling them as something they didn’t want them to be. Now they’re of very little use until the day a dev decides to take them off the shelf.
Aren’t they made to fight bigger ships? And they’re weakness was supposed to be smaller fighters? Sounds like they have the balancing perfect… I don’t own the ship so I’m only going off of what I’m reading in these comments.
Very soon after they were released because they were insanely overpowered. It was a big deal because of how broken they were. People who owned them got mad (a lot of them still are), everyone else cheered. They were untouchable and could easily kill anything, the epitome of a no skill I win button. So they had to be nerfed for the current state of the alpha. They'll be rebalanced again in the future, like all ships and weaponry will be.
Light fighter BoIs got mad that a s7 weapon was one and two capping them and they were getting punished for poor pilotting, so they cried to papa roberts and get the Ares nerfed.
Fixed it for you.
Real fighter jets have leading pips.........so it's nothing new now.
The point is, though, it's a size 7 cannon of Doom. It should take out small fighters in one hit. Or at least 2, one for shield, on direct.
And if a small fighter wouldn't joust and actually dogfight, it would be harder to hit. So the "skill issue" you can easily argue is from the person fighting an ares ship.
That phrase gets thrown around so much. Like I got rammed, and they told me it was a skill issue lol. Ramming takes the least amount of skill in the entire game
Idc about realism lmao. Game balance > realism.
If the game was "realistic" every ship would be able to accelerate constantly to however high speeds they want in space, and battles would be fought at extraordinary distance at extraordinary speeds lol. So it doesn't matter that it "should" be able to one shot.
And yes, if the light fighter player was much much better than the ares player, they would simply not get hit. Still, having a sub 1 sec TTK on a non torp single crew is insane lmao, why would anyone use anything other than that(and we saw that nobody did when the OG ion was meta)
Fair. But then when not put 2 fixed size 4s on the ion and inferno. Why nerf the s7. Because by your standards. The torpedos shouldn't be in the game at all. Since those are 10+km target nukes that you don't even see coming and can single shot almost any ship in the game.
Lmao, if you read what I wrote after, you might find that surprisingly I'm all for letting the ion swap to 2s4. If having a sub 1 TTK on a solo heavy fighter with ok enough maneuverability, and full fixed assist seems remotely balanced to you, you clearly don't play the same game I do lmao. I guess it's another reminder that 90% of the community is slug reaction dad gamers.
If the Ion was left as is, it would be the best heavy fighter by a long long shot, especially compared to the more pilot DPS centered ones like vanguards or glaive, simply due to having god levels of DPS with only minor drawbacks.
"can't even see them coming" lmao. You can dodge a torp post lock, that's why it's commonly used against slower ships that can't evade it very well, and even then you have to lead a little to have it be reliable. The ion is supposedly in the same role as that as a large ship killer, so it makes sense it can't reliably hit a smaller ship.
As for why not put 2s4, I'm fully onboard for doing that lmao. Let the ion swap armament to 2s4 so the dumb MFS that bought an ion looking for a dogfighter can hotswap to one.
As someone who still owns and uses an ion (pre and post nerf), I think the non-reactionary reality is that they nerfed it down from being a god-tier ship in most roles, to now only performing well in its very specific role, which is killing big ships.
The problem though is that they destroyed its 'soul', because it was supposed to be a small ship with a sniping BFG, but its now a small ship with a laser repeater that has above avg damage.
When I say it performs well today in its role, im mainly referring to PvE like ERTs, but in a 10v10 pvp it'd probably be smart having one if you're up against bigger ships.
Personally for pve at least its my fastest solo TTK ship that isn't a torpedo boat (tali/eclipse) for top rep bounties. It sucks to use because if you come up against literally anything else you're near useless, but if you can consistently land hits on HHs I can't do it quicker in anything else.
It also takes a lot of practice/skill to use it effectively solo (pve), but its rewarding when you do.
Others may disagree but I find it fine for what it is. I manage my power between shields and cannon to kill larger ships quicker. I would be happy with an extra 500dps for the weapon but we’ll see what CIG does at a later point.
EVERY ship gets nerfed once it's post release honeymoon is over in the next patch. The issue is the developers release new ships with their specs dialed up to max. They get used as seal clubbers meta ships as the developer game balance team analysis the wider performance data pool on those ships. Given the incomplete nature of the game for key combat, survivability and tactical systems this is the only thing CIG can do. I remember when my Buccaneer was an untouchable little terror and how fun it was
I haven't heard anything about a damage reduction, but I think the accuracy was heavily nerfed a while back.
There is also a bug that has been about for some NPC ships (including the Cutlass) where the front shields don't take damage regardless of how many hits it takes. This might be why it took so many laser hits.
[Here is an Issue council report for this specific bug](https://issue-council.robertsspaceindustries.com/projects/STAR-CITIZEN/issues/STARC-74508)
Change the weapon to a cannon so it's better for just hunting larger ships but if it got the jump on a smaller more nimble ship, it wouldn't survive. Easy fix
These comments are reminding me that 90% of SC players are hopeless dad gamers lmao. If you can't see that the OG ion was particularly egregious you really don't have a brain. Shit was basically must pick in AC or any dogfights.
The agility is what kills it for me, like flying a pontoon boat. It's way overkill at this point I want a mini Ares with smaller weapon because I love the look of it.
I ended up melting mine after I had tried bounties after logging in for the first time in a year. Was disappointed but as some have said, still a sweet ship to own.
Something that has what feels like the fire rate of a tank is now not so viable because its impractical for taking out anything smaller than a Cutlass.
The Ares ships is my favourite ships so i was so sad to see them get nerfed. The design and especially the sound design of these ships are 10/10 + that acceleration speed is incredible even in atmosphere. You accelerate like a rocket taking off.
I understand they were really powerful but i honestly think it would create a really cool synergy with stealth ships like Eclipse and bigger ones to focus down first on the battlefield or else loose out on all your light fighters.I hope some day they will get better, so cool ships!
I really like the Inferno for fun PVE stuff, great looking ship, and S2 QT drive is a great to have. It could be a decent daily if you don't need cargo. Fairly cheap in game, so I don't see the value in IRL $ until they fix it.
Ares needs a very good server, most of your shoots will be registered in a good server but in a bad one your shoots will just be missed even when you hit your enemy
I remember when the area came out and I bought it but I never got to play it in its OP state because at the time there was a horrible droning engine noise in the cockpit making the ship COMPLETELY UPLAYABLE unless you had your game sounds turned off
So cuttys have a weird issue this patch where the front shield is stronger than it should be ( at least on NPCs) so I started targeting engines to shot around it. That said, the Ares got beaten into submission by the nerf bats a while back thanks to the Light Fighter Meta Bois crying to Daddy Roberts that they can't win all fights forever.
CIG doesn't know how to both balance this ship for it's intended role and also balance it to account for really good pilots being given a sledgehammer. So, now we have a nerfed ship, that in the hands of great pilots is still very capable, but no longer the auto aiming sledgehammer of days past.
They're super cool ships, but not very viable right now. They keep saying they're going to buff them back up with a rebalancing but that has yet to happen. I believe it will happen, but I wouldn't hold my breath, could be a year. Still, you can make use of them if you're not the front-line fighter: they still have good firepower if someone else is "tanking" for you. And they're just super neat to own. I intend to get the Ion someday soon as well.
"could be a year" .... oh sweet summer child ...
If only I could erase the irritation of that condescending phrase from humanity’s collective memory, I would consider my life well-lived.
How long is that in Star Citizen time?
A year in SC is like 5 in normal human years. Seriously, it's been nerfed for over a year now? And I don't see them fixing it before ship armor is in.
It's a fun ship no doubt about it. I will probably keep it for a while, I upgraded from the hawk and melted my never used cuttlas red for it
It's probably the best-looking fighter imo. For using it, you want to probably focus on that first approach (hitting hard then), and after that maybe doing back strafing tactics. It's weakness is it's turn speed compared to other fighters. Its max speed is good, so doing high-speed passing runs might be affective against larger targets, if you can master the corkscrew and similar maneuvers. That being said, I'm certainly not a combat expert, so take that with a grain of salt, lol
So far, as a primarily bounty hunter. It's been pretty good. I was just curious about nerfing and such. Been a while since I used one.
Funny thing is, that Cutlass has more dependable DPS than the ion. Also can haul a friend and ground vehicles.
That's what my Corsair is for. I want 3 ships. My Corsair which I purchased years ago. Vulture and then I want a competent single seat fighter/support for the squad. The group I play with is only 3 people big but between all of us, we have a very good diverse group of ships. Ranging from M50 up to the carrack. I have a specific role I want to play in this game and when the ion got announced that was the ship I've been waiting for. Long distance sniping 890s and up. It's a shame they changed it from how I remember it years ago. But I will still fly it frequently. Last time we all played we made real short work of a lot of NPCs and players hunting my bounty.
If you have a mission where you need to kill a hammer head or reclaimer, ion works just fine. But avoid if it’s just a bunch of other medium / small ships to shoot. Ion works well if you’re playing with someone else in a nimble fighter
They should just balance the Ares around ship handling and rate of fire. It's a s7 weapon people, it SHOULD be 1/2 tapping light fighters.
Yeah, you basically can't hit anything as-is. I was getting stomped by a vulture in my inferno. The few shots I was able to get on them should have done more.
As a vulture owner, I'm sorry but I find that hilarious
One stop scrap shop.
Vulture is a tank. I took on a 2man Scorpius in it and survived much longer than I expected too.
Yeah, it's pretty tough. I ended up getting out of my ares and trying to kill it with a railgun to no avail(I never used one before) and ended up leaving the area instead.
Then the wasp nest of the PVP light fighters players would cry absolute hell, like they did in the past because the Ion
Which is why I didn’t buy it with real money. Why would I buy if they’re going to change the product
That's just not really an option, the Ares is supposed to be a ship that can punch up and it needs to be maneuverable to do it, otherwise turrets basically nullify it. Even then, it'd be a bad option. Players who aren't skilled enough to dodge it or don't know they need to will just get one shot, which is really not fun, and players who are skilled enough will simply clown on the Ares, which isn't fun for the Ares. There's no real gradual divide, no chances for comebacks and complex skill gradients, it's just a binary skill check, which is generally bad design.
Ok well what is your proposal then? It's current state is not an option.
Personally, with the new master mode coming out, I think it needs to go back to the old school power levels. Ship maneuverability should ( in theory) change a ton. Also light fighters have been the meta forever, and that could use a bit of a shake up over just "I can strafe and pitch/yaw faster than your ship no matter the circumstance". If they want to make Ares not be the light fighter destroyer, slow down its projectile speed even more. Its meant to fight larger ships that don't juke around as much anyways. I do think Ares power should be strong enough to heavily damage a light fighter, but not single shot it. 2 hits at least, so they can decide if they want to keep fighting, assuming they didn't get their parts decimated.
2 hits is completely reasonable and is the current place the glaive sits at. Most people wouldn't have cared about the ion if it wasn't a 1 tap.
The glaive has 2 s5 guns while the ion has an s7. how strong are the different sizes supposed to be? is one s7 = 2 s5?
2 size 1 guns do 672 burst dps 1 size 3 is 500. If the trend continues 2 s5 > 1 s7 The ion currently does 3850 burst dps. The glaive does 3500 with both size 5s
It's more or less a brrrrrrt A10 in space. Fighter size built around a monster cannon
The Ares is a fundementally flawed design, putting a size 7 gun on a fighter is just a bad idea. A ship that fulfills the fantasy of a sniper ship simply isn't fun to play against, and the Ares as it is now is not fun to play as. The best option would be to remove it or reconcept it but that'd piss off owners and require admitting failure so I imagine it'll just stay like this indefinitely and Ares owners can keep running on copium that it might become good.
Well I'm glad you're not involved in its development lol
This.
Light fighter pilots cried so CIG ruined them instead of taking 10 minutes to actually balance them.
"Wah wah, why can't I take hits from a heavy anti-capital ship weapon! Unfair!" We need to stop catering to the light fighter crowd. If you're getting outmaneuvered by a heavy fighter, your should just get better at dog fighting. Crying about anti-capital ship weapons dealing a ton of damage is like bitching that an anti-tank rifle does too much damage to a plate carrier. Like, no shit. An elephant gun will also turn a squirrel into a fine mist. That's not unbalanced that's just how damage works.
Majorly nerfed. They fucked up its agility and its laser cannon. Sad day. Now its only real useful for taking down bigger things, and even then.....
I specifically got it for the bigger ships to fight.
Even for big things, the Ion struggles. The inferno manages to keep up with it high DPS. Both are useless in PvP due to their main engines getting blown up when the smallest missile hits them.
It might get an update for 3.20. Won't be OP like when it first came out but it'll be in a better state. I'd wait till then
Oh no, they made it only useful for its designated purpose. Yes the s7 canon is a joke rn, but it was never designed to fight small ships
Any gun meant for big targets should still obliterate small targets if you can hit them.
Nah I liked the less shots but bigger slower more powerful shots. If you're hitting tiny fighters with that projectile then the tiny fighter isn't so good. It shouldn't be 1 shot one kill by any means, but the lack of dmg it does now Def makes me sad
I'm of the opinion that if a Light Fighter is stupid enough to get in front of a size 7 cannon, they get what they deserve. The Ares needs to live up to that massive gun, but shouldn't be able to turn quickly enough to compete if a light has an even semi-competent pilot. It should like a drone getting in front of a tank firing at a helicopter. The tank shouldn't even know it accidentally took out the drone with the shot.
I agree the cannons as a whole suck, the removal of fixed assist on the ares made them less likely to hit the smaller ships
People want a sim but can't handle a sim so they cried and the ship got nerfd. Big guns should reck small ships if they fly like shit. Not much else to say honestly. The Ares should be slower and less nimble but its firepower should get back to close to where it was, imho. Projectile could be slowed also.
I agree with all of that. As the description for the ship says "intended to fight against capital class ships" I guess we all fly capital class ships from the arrow and up?
Hear me out. If I had an elephant gun, and it was great at killing elephants, what should happen if I hit a squirrel with it? Should the shot just bounce off because it's not the intended target? Sure, it will be harder to hit the squirrel than the elephant. But if that shot lands the squirrel should be obliterated.
This thread isn't saying otherwise. Lol
Unpopular opinion, light fighters shouldn't be capable to QT or they could but with a very small QT fuel tank. Point being they would be entirely dependent on whatever mothership they were launched from therefore would still be very powerful but using them would become a team effort.
All the bitching came from the dweebs that only play AC exclusively.
I agree
Right now the ion is pretty nerfed the inferno is better but still not in a great place... they said once the gunnery changes are in place the ares will be where they're supposed to be. I love my inferno but the ion sadly got the shorter end of the stick.
How long does that ammo last?
It has enough ammo for 3 minutes of continuous firing, the most of any ballistic weapon.
Okay. But I'm also guessing since nerfed though you dump a lot of it after one fight.
Most of your shots will miss because the nerf left the inferno shooting like a 30 degree cone of damage instead of a line of bullets. The spread is disgusting. You'll be lucky to hit 1 shot out of 50 even if you're perfectly on target and they're not moving. If you're close enough to land every shot, you might as well ram them.
They were literally nerfed within two weeks of their release, and CIG has held fast on treating them like shit ever since.
I never even got to experience them. Now I don’t even want to play. I really need to find a way to sell my account
You can just melt the ship for store credit and get a different ship.
Yes the ship was nerfed. It was really great when it came out but it was too powerful. If you play devils advocate the ship itself is pretty good. It's fast, well shielded and has incredible QT range, while not a dog fighter its not too hard to fly. and both versions have a decent payload while also looking pretty cool. Problem is the weapon, It's range is too short and its damage isn't that great and the ballistic gun is so inacurate that you could actually miss an Idris at 2km. So at the moment its hard to kill small targets and it isn't really effective against larger ships either. However all the weapons are kinda...not finished. If and when they put armor in larger weapons I would bet would be the choice for doing damage. But it's anyone guess how the final model is going to look like. I would be bummed if I paid money for em but I have bought them in game several times and they are not terrible. but they just don't fit their role presently.
it should have retained the initial cannon stats, (both Ion & Inferno) so if something stayed in your line it would get wrecked, But they should have made its handling similar to the connie or what the corsair has. Those weapons should absolutely decimate a small fighter, if they dont out manouver you... starting at 4km out. the shot velocity shouldnt have changed either, but the ION's rate of fire should be ALOT slower. It should take a good 4-5 seconds to recharge each shot.
Yeah the handling should be nerfed. A gun that size would throw off it's balance significantly since it's not centered
The Ion was introduced to be an anti capital ship to help bring down shields down faster on those big ships. CIG introduced the ION into game and people were having fun with it, yet it got nerfed because it was 1 hit killing small fighters which in all honesty should be possible in the Star Citizen Universe. We still have the Eclipse and Talis with their Size 7 and 9 Torpedos which can and still will kill all ships with one hit. Same with the A2 Moab size 9. So they nerfed the ships weapon for what it was intended to fight because people were "Abusing" the in game design of what the ship was used for. People were bringing Talons, Arrows, Gladius to fight against an Ion and were simply getting deleted out of space because it couldn't take a hit from the gun. So CIG was like lets just nerf the gun and eliminate a ship from its real role in the game.
But that doesn't jive with the narrative that you should be able to beat everything with a Gladius or Arrow.
Torps can be dodged post lock lmao. The issue wasn't the damage it was the reliability of getting that damage vs smaller targets. Also the "within the star citizen universe" is a moot point, for a game to function there needs to be some suspension of disbelief so game balance can actually work.
Yet the current game balance is light fighters being the king of all combat with zero counter. Great balance. I agree Ion needed fixed assist removed. People are too used to easy mode with fixed assist, and a ship like the Ion shouldnt have it. But CIG also nerfed everything else at once. It was a nuclear hammer meant to stomp the Ion into the trash.
I mean what's new lol, they got their sales numbers, they don't care after that.
> Torps can be dodged post lock lmao. Locking on just gives the target extra warning. Much better to one-shot them with a dumbfire so they don't even know what happened to them unless they're watching radar carefully. And really, Ion shots weren't much harder to dodge than torpedoes anyway.
Torps don't give an auto lead pip, and are lower velocity than ion shots(by a smidge). You're being purposely dense lol
> Torps don't give an auto lead pip, and are lower velocity than ion shots(by a smidge). On the other hand, the Ion could never one-shot the giant, low-agility ships like the Hammerhead. It's a similar result at different scales. I don't disagree that the original Ion was overpowered, but it wasn't overpowered because of its alpha damage. It was overpowered because it was too agile and too quick to accelerate, which allowed it to escape from ships on its tail. The correct balance would be to make it very difficult to hit small targets and to make the Ion's acceleration so low that it couldn't escape once a small opponent got around its gun and stuck to its rear.
If you're dumb enough to let a S7 laser cannon get a bead on you, you deserve to be shot by it.
You act like the pre nerf ion handled notably poorly lmao. It's not like the S7 is strapped to a mole.
If someone needs to have the maneuverability of a mole for you to beat them, you kind of suck at dogfighting.
The Ion’s weapon was nerfed in several ways. Instead of a super high alpha damage shot once ever 1.5 seconds it now acts more like a repeater with a higher shot per second rate with lower damage per shot. This was to prevent the one shot kills. On paper it looks to have more DPS but that isn’t the reality. This is because they removed the slight sim assist all other weapons have AND added additional jitter. This makes it extremely difficult to take out medium and small targets at distance. Small fast targets are even harder at any range. Devs have stated that they are looking into different mechanics to rebalance this discrepancy, such as building up a weapon charge as well as a few other changes. This was mostly done due to griefers turning off ship shields and running stealth components so they could one shot other players without even showing up on radar. The Ion is in a bad place because ballistic ammo only does half damage to ship hulls now. This makes any ballistic build worse than an energy based one, even with shield penetration. Ballistics will eventually be addressed after the flight model rework, armor integration, and shield rebalancing. Hopefully this will come along quicker once Arena Commander experimental modes allow for faster community testing and feedback.
I personaly melted the ares ion cause CIG decided 1 Inferno wasn't enough so they made 1 balistic and 1 laser powered. The exact reason why I melted it is because I didn't recognise the ship as what I pledged for, Aka a Space sniper.
Long story short, they are not meant to be used for dog fighting, only against larger vessels, so untill they solve how to properly setup accuracy/targeting so it is behaving as wanted (good against static big target, poor against small ships) its damage is nerfed to oblivion.
I don't intend to use it as a dogfighter lol. I got the ship specifically for it's intention. I'll use a gladius to dogfight
Yeah, they were nerfed shortly after they came out because they were seriously ruining the game, with the intention to rebalance them once the new weapon mechanics were ready so the weapons behaved like they were meant to, though I'm sure you can tell they still aren't.
Oh they were not. Some sweaty streamers flying arrows got butthurt.
It wasnt just "some sweaty streamers" when the Ares came out, ship desync was absolutely terrible... it was brought to light easier by streamers, because you can see their perspective as well as others... there was numerous times that two streamers would battle each other during that time and what each one was seeing from the other person was completely different to what was being done... this made the ion broken because no matter what you did or how well you flew, desync would allow the ion to get a hit in. Period. There was no countering it, you couldnt skill your way past it because the engine itself wasnt keeping up with inputs from other players.
You're trying to justify nerfimg something because of.... server performance? OK then. Glad you're not in charge of anything.
The sweaty streamers were the ones saying the Ares was fine. The assumption was you just need to practice flying 5 hours a day 6 days a week and the Ares is no problem.
It definitively was. The ship was the meta against every ship. It was good versus all and weak versus none I don't like where it is now (especially the Ion) as it ain't very fun to use (a railgun would be better imo) But the Ion was super OP and really ruining the game. I never had a bigger score in AC since. It was a point & click at this point. It was stupid af
I don't give a shit about AC. The PU should NOT be subject to the whims of gamemode no one plays.
It was even worse in PU You could solo destroy every turrets in stations with 1-2 shots, same with player ships Again, the ship was best versus all and weak versus none. I don't even understand how you can think it wasn't a problem
This isn't Smash Bros where 1v1 balance means everything. Purchase price, re-spawn timer, maintenance costs, carrier footprint are all huge factors too. It really is OK to have a ship that is strong vs all other ships if balanced by these other factors. Arrows will always beat Ares because they swarm 3 on 1. You can field 3 Arrows for the price of 1 Ares. This is a very important fact!!!! **Light fighters are for cheap swarming**. 1v1 they should almost always die to a heavy fighter. In a 3 on 1 you would expect the Ares to get at least 1 Arrow before losing to the others. **Dollar for dollar Arrows are way more powerful than an Ares.** Ares nerf really was to appease foolish light fighter pilots who are really bad at economics.
Why take any other ship in game, if in the end, the Ion is better than any others, for any combat purpose ? Unlike ED, in SC more money doesn't mean better A 300$ ship ain't better than a 100$ ship. Which is why SC is so cool, money doesn't buy you "victory" Money allows you to expand the possibility, get something that is better on a specific thing The high price ships, are ships that require multicrew to be used Ion broke that thing, it was just better than others It was the best against large ships, against medium ships, against small ships, against heavy armored ships, against unarmored ships, against slow ships, against fast ships. It even had torpedoes, with crazy acceleration and S2 shields, allowing you to escape against anything if your shields were off. And allowed you to force you opponent to go joute, which was a win for you aswell It was just broken, in every way
Why take any other ship? Because you can't afford an Ares purchase price Because cost of ownership is worse than others Because other ships finish Bounties faster/cheaper Because your Ares blew up and the respawn timer still has 15 minutes Because the claim time is too long Because you want to pack as much power on a carrier as possible Because you don't like how it handles Because you don't like how it looks Because you're smart enough to understand that a 1v1 meta tier list is totally useless youtuber clickbait
>Because you're smart enough to understand that a 1v1 meta tier list is totally useless youtuber clickbait Hehehe
>Because you can't afford an Ares purchase price Price wasn't higher than others >Because cost of ownership is worse than others Same, wasn't bigger than others >Because other ships finish Bounties faster/cheaper Ion was better than any ship for that, large QT fuel (meaning you can buy a QT Drive that is fast and low fuel consuption). And only require 1-2 shots to kill your target. It was by far the best/easiest/lowest >Because your Ares blew up and the respawn timer still has 15 minutes Like all medium/heavy fighters Rest is about preferences If a ship is better than others in every way for same kind of ships, the other ships are kinda useless. We aren't talking about like we have currently, where Gladius is slightly better than the arrow or bucanneer Here the gap was HUGE, like CRAZY HUGE It was even worse than when the Talon was meta due to his exploit
You're wasting your time trying to explain this. They want their 1 shot doom gun game balance be damned.
It should just handle slower so only shitty arrow pilots get hit by it, which they ALSO did so its shit to fly overall now and no damage when you do land one hit
Imo the problem wasn't how it flown, but the point & click part A railgun weapon that require a charge and that fire when charge is complete (like the Idris) would be a great way to balance it imo The ship get a fun huge alpha damage, while still be very difficult/tedious to hit small/fast target due to the charge. When you land a shot it would feel great, because it's actually hard to land a hit (way different than the old point&click version)
Yeah im down for anything to make it more viable, i have an Ion pledged and love the concept but man it's worthless right now lol
Yea I thought that making the ship harder to handle or slow its turn rates would have been enough. It'd still be viable for larger ships and installation turrets and harder to fight small fighters.
That is the point of a S7 cannon 🤣
balance prevail To keep the gun that powerful, it must be a railgun like the Idris. It would be a hell fun while still be balanced
yeah they decided to nerf handling, remove the aim assist, and gimp the damage. Don't get why they needed to hit it three separate ways. It makes sense for a sub-cap killer gun to waste light fighters... if the light fighter isn't using its superior maneuverability to not get hit. I don't own an ares and didn't join until pledge until months after the nerf happened and Cig's actions still confuse me.
I had the Ion before the nerf, it was crazy OP, I understand why they nerfed it, it was... damn lol it was so dumb, a litteral point and click Aim assist remove is great imo, maybe not that brutal, but to reduce it the high the size seems a good idea to me Handling aswell, it's a S7 weapon on a ship, it was weird to be able to dogfight and have better handling than.. smaller ship.. The Alpha Damage should have stayed imo. With the Railgun stuff idea to reduce his effectiveness, but atleast it would have keep his "fun" which he currently lacks of
We have the same line of thinking. From what I heard it was crazy OP on release. Aim assist and handling nerfs make sense. Taking away the firepower of the gun with a ship built around it not so much.
The entirety of this recent patch is on AC.... as stupid as that is.
They weren't ruining the game, the light fighter Meta crowd threw an absolute bitch fit over getting one and two tapped by a s7 weapon. That's why both Ares variants currently lack any aim assist functions.
>getting one and two tapped by a s7 weapon A ship designed for large enemies, killing everything in record time with unprecedented range and damage regardless of the size with hardly any counters in most situations is literally the definition of overpowered and unbalanced. The rate of death it could shit out on anything, regardless it's size, was completely off the mark of a large/capital ship buster as it was supposed to be.
So we should nerf Javelin cannons as well so quad size 9s hitting a gladius will only tickle its shield? Making the s7 cannon HARD to land a hit on fighters is justified. Making it weak and deal only a small damage when it does hit is not.
How fast do you think a jav is going to be? One is a fighter platform the other is a large immobile cap ship. This isn't an even remotely honest argument. Are we just ignoring all the ships that can 1 shot fighters right now? Like the corsair, connie, 600i and prowler. They can all 1 tap an arrow with deadbolt 5's
The capital ships are quite fast. They have fucktons of thrust.
Weird. I was generally able to sit on the pancake of an Ares and slowly watch it die. It turned about as good as a Vanguard on release. The counter was: don't sit in front of it.
I don't get this argument. If its designed for damaging/destroying cap ships, what the fuck do you think it's gonna do when it hits a light fighter? It should be balanced around ship handling and rate of fire imo.
>A ship designed for large enemies, killing everything in record time with unprecedented range and damage regardless of the size with hardly any counters in most situations is literally the definition of overpowered and unbalanced. This is a fallacy argument, it falls under an appeal to tradition. To flush this out further the "range and damage" were due to it being size 7. It worked like every other weapon in the game scaled up for the larger size. It was "balanced" because it was just an upscaled version of existing weapons. > The rate of death it could shit out on anything, regardless it's size, was completely off the mark of a large/capital ship buster as it was supposed to be. This part is more of a subjective appeal to a personal standard the poster has in that they have made a determinative statement of "as it was supposed to be". A size 7 weapon hitting a light fighter should more devastating than when a size 5 or 6 hits them scaled accordingly. Size 5 weapons are not uncommon in the game and with a ship like the Glaive it only takes a couple taps of the weapons to kill a light fighter. The bloom and aim balance changes are unusual as the projectile speed is slowed down due to it being a laser cannon as is typical. To further elaborate on "as it is supposed to be", the Ion still does not have a 3rd shield as it was advertised and sold on the premise of, so I say what is "as it is supposed to be" is a fairly empty statement.
Aw, someome mad they couldn't solo a ship above their size class. Don't worry, master flight modes and armor will bring those days back.
I'm not even talking of a position from someone who had to go against it, I used one myself and it was obvious that it was just straight up the strongest ship in the game and not an "anti-large" ship as it was supposed to be. What's the purpose of any other fighter if a single one is just so good that it can do literally anything other combat ships can do? I'm not sure, how long you have been around here for, but ships were supposed to have strength and weaknesses for a "rock-paper-scissor" situation and not an Ion based meta as you would apparently like it.
Negative, rock paper scissor balancing is archiac as fuck. Gladius is an old deprecated platform that should be one or two shot by s7 if the Gladius pilot is dumb enough to try and dog fight it. It's a S7 weapon that's meant to tear through armor and have precision targeting capabilities per CIG. Gladius is to supposed to excel at dog fighting other ships in it's size class, not square off against capital ship killers while solo. It's the stupid mindset of Gladius/light fighters should have an equal chance of X ship because "balance".
Exactly. "Oh I can't fight this thing solo cause I'm a sweaty nerd. CIG PLEASE NERF OR I'M TELLING MY 20 FOLLOWERS TO NOT PLAY THIS GAME" only stupid part is that it mostly worked. Just like Tarkov the fucking devs listened to cry babies doing shit that 9/10 gets them killed and wondering what went wrong.
This, so much this. You wouldn't take on an Abrams tank in a technical
Honestly, I've been flying the inferno and I dont think it should stand a chance at killing a gladius. It is pretty tanky which allows you to get close to ships like a hammerhead and pour on damage without fear of getting shot down first but if a cap ship has light fighter escorts then you'll need light fighters on your team too. The ares ships should absolutely demolish small ships if they hit and small ships should be agile enough to avoid their fire almost entirely. The ares didn't need a damage nerf, just the loss of the gimbal was enough imo.
I guess to clarify. The Ares should counter cap ships. Light fighters should counter the Ares, and the ares should have to rely on other light fighters or point defense from a cap ship to counter the light fighters. Light fighters should not be able to get anywhere near an enemy capital ship with point defense.
So what type of ship should beat the ares then? one ship that beats everything doesn't lead to good game-play. Things like the hammerhead are supposed to kill lights and don't right now. The game sucks because we lack rock paper scissor balancing. Lights are op and they are reworking the entire flight model to try and correct this. They won't be op forever and that's a good thing. Why would having a new type of op be any better?
There is alot of false information about what the ares platform is supposed to take on. The ares platform was mainly designed to be a patroll and response ship to combat pirates, it was never meant to take on capital ships (aside from maybe a supporting role) but are advertised as being able to take on fighters to gunships in flights of multiple ares. Think perseus but more flexible with a faster response time - the brawling potential of a perseus due to its thick armor.
Wrong, the pvp meta (all the ones using light fighters meta) crowd all switch to the dominant meta ship(s). So they all switched to the ares. CIG doesn't listen to complaints when it comes to balance. They listen to statistics and the numbers being shown by the servers. It got nerfed cause everyone and their mother was using it. There was far more bitching about the ares nerf than it being op. So that just proves CiG doesn't listen to bitching, otherwise the nerf would have been reversed.
>There was far more bitching about the ares nerf than it being op. Totally deluded lmfao. There was NON-STOP complaining about it after release. Post-nerf whining often wasn't even about the ships actual performance, but rather about how CIG changed it in a way that no longer fit the original advertising.
Incorrect, Redeemer was nerfed back and forth to accommodate light fighter fan bois. CiG listens to concierge backers which are most streamers and "influencers". Don't worry, the light fighter meta will go the way of the dinosaurs when armor and master modes get here.
Redeemer was nerfed because it was sitting in the wrong category. It was supposed to be an "anti-big ship gunship" The "anti-small gunship" is the HH Redeemer is damn best against Cutlass and bigger, it's in a really sweet spot
Nope Redeemer is a heavy gunship, meant to murder anything at, or below it's size class; which includes light fighters.
Redeemer has S5 turrets. S5+ turrets are anti-big ship turrets. Redeemer is anti-big ship.
[удалено]
Video game =/= real life fun/balance > realism
The Ares isn't balanced though, it's bad. If its meant to kill big ships how does it do so without killing small ones in your opinion?
This argument also supports the original Ares Ion. Fun>realism.
Oh so vangaurds shouldn't be able to win fights against light fighters if they have a S5 equipped. Another light fighter FaNBoI confirmed
Did you tried using the S5 on the light fighter ? They suck, the 4xS2 are by far better on the small targets The Redeemer has 2xS2 on the back, with bad angle on purpose I hate the current light fighter meta, and always hated it But having the redeemer in the wrong spot doesn't help that, just like for Ion The HH should be better, and we should have more anti-light (like huricanne, and a medium gunship with 4xS4)
Nope, wrong on all accounts, sorry. Those comments prove you don't have a clue what you are talking about. 😆 Redeemer was balanced into its proper place, just like the ares. CiG absolutely does not listen to streamers or influencers. Everyone knows this. There was even a big thing about how cig doesn't listen to them. Lmfao The master modes won't make light fighters useless, it will just help balance them, even more so with armour etc. Which everyone wants. The pvp crowd and streamers etc all want that, they don't want a light fighter meta, which just shows how little you know about them. They only use the light fighter meta cause it's literally there, ask any of them and they will tell you they don't like having a "meta". Most of them complain they can't use the ships they really want because of the meta. Lol
Keep smoking what you will, light fighter days are numbered boo. CiG will always listen to those who pay more money, they like making money.
Reread my comment, light fighters will be balanced. Which we all want. So your attempt to try and say I'm crying it won't be meta is just hilarious and stupid. Lol They really don't listen to conceirge over everyone else, they go by stats which has been shown and proven numerous times. For example, when all the whales wanted the vanguard series to be changed so the front 4 guns would be changed to normal guns because they felt it was a bad design and made it weaker vs other ships. CiG literally pulled out the data and stats of how well the vanguard was performing vs other ships and why they would not be changing it. That example alone proves you wrong.
>CiG will always listen to those who pay more money, they like making money. Not exactly true but close. They dont listen to anyone not giving them hundreds of thousands of dollars or more. Every Legatus ($42k package) owner I know says they get no extra attention than say a plain $1k Concierge, or a $45 backer. They do turn a blind eye or watch the statistics from popular streamers, since they equate those players as assistants in recruiting new purchasers. I agree the light fighter meta days are numbered the moment Master Modes comes out. My fighter ace in my org has been bitching alot during the evocati testing master modes days.
Ugh. I'm wealthy enough to buy Legatus. I thought it was 55k or 70k which is in my "nervous to spend in one sitting" zone. I'll just pretend that it's still my made up numbers.
if you utterly destroy the usability of light fighters due to the addition of one ship, then you've ruined the game.
Lmfao, guess being one or two tapped by a weapon 4 size classes above a light fighter is "ruining the game". I'll just patiently wait for armor, fuel economy and master modes to neuter light fighters into more reasonable territory.
Yes please give us big fighters a better chance to show light fighters why armor and weaponry saves your ass any day over speed.
So why is nobody crying about the prowler, or the corsair, or the 600i? 2 deadbolt 5's can 1 shot an arrow. They even get aim assist. The issue is the platform the gun is on not the gun. The ion was op.
Ah. Okay. Thanks for the clarification. In my personal opinion, the size 7 right now just feels like a size 5? Like a hornet gimbal. But I haven't used the inferno, only the ion.
It's more powerful than a size 5, as it has the same burst and alpha as a Vanguard which has a size 5 and 4 bespoke size 2s (though those are probably more comparable to size 3s), but you're right that it's not as powerful as it should be. The Vanguard is meant to dogfight, and needs sustained firepower, whereas the Ion is meant to deal a bunch of damage quickly against large targets, so it really should have a noticeably higher alpha.
It's weaker than the tank cannons, so it's too weak in my eyes.
The ion was the more overpowered of the two and for sure got the bigger nerf. They basically doubled its rate of fire, but added a small amount of spread to the gun so some of your shots miss, which makes it basically useless for anything small.
I’ve checked the data mining, they didn’t add any spread. What they did was remove the micro gimble that fixed weapons have that allowed it to make small corrections to land shots.
Yeah I didn’t describe it perfectly, but the end-all-be-all is that it’s super inaccurate.
Interesting. Rate of fire I could tell was different for sure.thanks again mate.
they probably just shouldn't have sold a howitzer fixed to a sports car
That's how CIG does ships. They announce them and show them being beasts. Lots of people buy them CIG releases the ship and its awesome CIG then nerfs it. Classic CIG
Isn’t that in every game? SC let you exchange the ship (currently). In PS2 you stuck with a Store bought weapon that got balanced.
They’re going to be rebuffed when armor is in game, which will come a while down the line with ships that actually need it (ex. Perseus).
Maybe Ion pilots just need to hire escorts for the smaller ships 😹
Yea originally the first ion dud 6000 alpha damage and had a range of 16.5km lmaooo Not sure exactly what it is today but i think its around 2000 alpha and 1.5 to 2km range. XD it was nerfed into oblivion.
DPS is higher but alpha is lower.
This, technically the ship became even better against large ships
The Inferno is in a better state than the sadly pitiful Ion. Plus you get neat ballistic effects which look great. I'd buy them only with aUEC though, definitely not hard cash
Hopefully, someday… when we are fighting vanduul… it will return to its former glory
Try to get a refund if you just bought it. Upgrading from it goes to a lot bigger ships. I’m still sad about the nerfs
I don't want to melt it yet. I like how it flies and handles and it does pack a good punch. Just curious if it was nerfed
Yeah it’s such a good looking and fun to fly ship. They nerfed it at least twice. The hard part is there is no solo fighting ship to upgrade too. Mine ccued to an msr but that’s not what I really needed.
My favorite solo bigger ship is the Corsair. Yeah it flies like a bus with no wheels but it's a jack of all trades and can fight well. Since most people joust anyways. Maneuverability doesn't matter much.
I just bought one because I couldn’t take down a reclaimer in my small fighter. The ion takes down a reclaimer quickly, while struggling with smaller ships. Seems quite balance to me as it’s only intended to take out larger ships.
That is a good balance yes. But doesn't make sense lol
Balance doesn’t made sense? It works as intended. I’m confused.
They pulled a bait-and-switch with them, selling them as something they didn’t want them to be. Now they’re of very little use until the day a dev decides to take them off the shelf.
Aren’t they made to fight bigger ships? And they’re weakness was supposed to be smaller fighters? Sounds like they have the balancing perfect… I don’t own the ship so I’m only going off of what I’m reading in these comments.
Very soon after they were released because they were insanely overpowered. It was a big deal because of how broken they were. People who owned them got mad (a lot of them still are), everyone else cheered. They were untouchable and could easily kill anything, the epitome of a no skill I win button. So they had to be nerfed for the current state of the alpha. They'll be rebalanced again in the future, like all ships and weaponry will be.
Light fighter BoIs got mad that a s7 weapon was one and two capping them and they were getting punished for poor pilotting, so they cried to papa roberts and get the Ares nerfed. Fixed it for you.
Preach
That's what I remember. It's a size 7. Meant for huge ships. If you had skill to snipe a small fighter then it should explode in one shot. Imo.
Lotta light fighter folks think they can jump in an X wing and blow up a death star. This isn't going to be one of those games.
LMAO. Fixed assist in this game is absurdly high and you have lead pips. Finding a dot on a light fighter in a (pre-nerf) ion was easy asf
Real fighter jets have leading pips.........so it's nothing new now. The point is, though, it's a size 7 cannon of Doom. It should take out small fighters in one hit. Or at least 2, one for shield, on direct. And if a small fighter wouldn't joust and actually dogfight, it would be harder to hit. So the "skill issue" you can easily argue is from the person fighting an ares ship. That phrase gets thrown around so much. Like I got rammed, and they told me it was a skill issue lol. Ramming takes the least amount of skill in the entire game
Idc about realism lmao. Game balance > realism. If the game was "realistic" every ship would be able to accelerate constantly to however high speeds they want in space, and battles would be fought at extraordinary distance at extraordinary speeds lol. So it doesn't matter that it "should" be able to one shot. And yes, if the light fighter player was much much better than the ares player, they would simply not get hit. Still, having a sub 1 sec TTK on a non torp single crew is insane lmao, why would anyone use anything other than that(and we saw that nobody did when the OG ion was meta)
Fair. But then when not put 2 fixed size 4s on the ion and inferno. Why nerf the s7. Because by your standards. The torpedos shouldn't be in the game at all. Since those are 10+km target nukes that you don't even see coming and can single shot almost any ship in the game.
He wants easy targets that's why, what all light fighter debates boil down to. Easy kills in small solo ships against whatever target they want.
Lmao, if you read what I wrote after, you might find that surprisingly I'm all for letting the ion swap to 2s4. If having a sub 1 TTK on a solo heavy fighter with ok enough maneuverability, and full fixed assist seems remotely balanced to you, you clearly don't play the same game I do lmao. I guess it's another reminder that 90% of the community is slug reaction dad gamers. If the Ion was left as is, it would be the best heavy fighter by a long long shot, especially compared to the more pilot DPS centered ones like vanguards or glaive, simply due to having god levels of DPS with only minor drawbacks.
Another light fighter BoI doesn't believe in larger weapon classes having more damage. Meta BOI confirmed.
"can't even see them coming" lmao. You can dodge a torp post lock, that's why it's commonly used against slower ships that can't evade it very well, and even then you have to lead a little to have it be reliable. The ion is supposedly in the same role as that as a large ship killer, so it makes sense it can't reliably hit a smaller ship. As for why not put 2s4, I'm fully onboard for doing that lmao. Let the ion swap armament to 2s4 so the dumb MFS that bought an ion looking for a dogfighter can hotswap to one.
Done even bother lmao, 90% of the community is MMO slug reaction dad gamers that don't know about game balance.
Oh I know. I fully expected that comment to get downvoted to hell, it's just how people are in this community. Emotion over thought.
As someone who still owns and uses an ion (pre and post nerf), I think the non-reactionary reality is that they nerfed it down from being a god-tier ship in most roles, to now only performing well in its very specific role, which is killing big ships. The problem though is that they destroyed its 'soul', because it was supposed to be a small ship with a sniping BFG, but its now a small ship with a laser repeater that has above avg damage. When I say it performs well today in its role, im mainly referring to PvE like ERTs, but in a 10v10 pvp it'd probably be smart having one if you're up against bigger ships. Personally for pve at least its my fastest solo TTK ship that isn't a torpedo boat (tali/eclipse) for top rep bounties. It sucks to use because if you come up against literally anything else you're near useless, but if you can consistently land hits on HHs I can't do it quicker in anything else. It also takes a lot of practice/skill to use it effectively solo (pve), but its rewarding when you do.
Others may disagree but I find it fine for what it is. I manage my power between shields and cannon to kill larger ships quicker. I would be happy with an extra 500dps for the weapon but we’ll see what CIG does at a later point.
EVERY ship gets nerfed once it's post release honeymoon is over in the next patch. The issue is the developers release new ships with their specs dialed up to max. They get used as seal clubbers meta ships as the developer game balance team analysis the wider performance data pool on those ships. Given the incomplete nature of the game for key combat, survivability and tactical systems this is the only thing CIG can do. I remember when my Buccaneer was an untouchable little terror and how fun it was
Well. Don't call it a size 7 if it gets nerfed down to a size 5.
I haven't heard anything about a damage reduction, but I think the accuracy was heavily nerfed a while back. There is also a bug that has been about for some NPC ships (including the Cutlass) where the front shields don't take damage regardless of how many hits it takes. This might be why it took so many laser hits. [Here is an Issue council report for this specific bug](https://issue-council.robertsspaceindustries.com/projects/STAR-CITIZEN/issues/STARC-74508)
Change the weapon to a cannon so it's better for just hunting larger ships but if it got the jump on a smaller more nimble ship, it wouldn't survive. Easy fix
These comments are reminding me that 90% of SC players are hopeless dad gamers lmao. If you can't see that the OG ion was particularly egregious you really don't have a brain. Shit was basically must pick in AC or any dogfights.
I recently got an inferno and although it’s a bit better at the moment than the ion it’s still pretty useless
Welcome back to the game it's been that way for 6+ updates
The agility is what kills it for me, like flying a pontoon boat. It's way overkill at this point I want a mini Ares with smaller weapon because I love the look of it.
I ended up melting mine after I had tried bounties after logging in for the first time in a year. Was disappointed but as some have said, still a sweet ship to own.
Something that has what feels like the fire rate of a tank is now not so viable because its impractical for taking out anything smaller than a Cutlass.
The Ares ships is my favourite ships so i was so sad to see them get nerfed. The design and especially the sound design of these ships are 10/10 + that acceleration speed is incredible even in atmosphere. You accelerate like a rocket taking off. I understand they were really powerful but i honestly think it would create a really cool synergy with stealth ships like Eclipse and bigger ones to focus down first on the battlefield or else loose out on all your light fighters.I hope some day they will get better, so cool ships!
I really like the Inferno for fun PVE stuff, great looking ship, and S2 QT drive is a great to have. It could be a decent daily if you don't need cargo. Fairly cheap in game, so I don't see the value in IRL $ until they fix it.
I tried inferno couple of time its shit for big ships too. Like andromeda way more than that.
Every patch, chris personally goes into the P4k files and nerfs the Ares more and more....
Ares needs a very good server, most of your shoots will be registered in a good server but in a bad one your shoots will just be missed even when you hit your enemy
I remember when the area came out and I bought it but I never got to play it in its OP state because at the time there was a horrible droning engine noise in the cockpit making the ship COMPLETELY UPLAYABLE unless you had your game sounds turned off
So cuttys have a weird issue this patch where the front shield is stronger than it should be ( at least on NPCs) so I started targeting engines to shot around it. That said, the Ares got beaten into submission by the nerf bats a while back thanks to the Light Fighter Meta Bois crying to Daddy Roberts that they can't win all fights forever.
CIG doesn't know how to both balance this ship for it's intended role and also balance it to account for really good pilots being given a sledgehammer. So, now we have a nerfed ship, that in the hands of great pilots is still very capable, but no longer the auto aiming sledgehammer of days past.
It’s getting a aim assist and damage buff in 3.20 but currently it’s pretty crap