Corvettes: a weightclass between fighter and frigate

Corvettes

I was in the hangar and noticed that there is a large size jump between fighters and frigates, and was thinking maybe there should be a ship weight class to fill in that jump.  Historically corvettes were the ship size below frigate so I figure that’s a good name.  As with the other weightclasses there should be a shooty variant (ecm, gunships, LRF), a tanky variant (ECM, command, guard) and a mobility variant (Recon, tackler, engineer).   As a note I tried to include minimal numbers in the modules/weapons/missiles, and were I did include numbers they are a general guidline and fully subject to balance/testing.

 

Missile Boat (shooty)

Missile boats have two missile slots (this can be handled via return of the switch missile key, or by having whenever you hit the fire missile button it switches to other missile after trying to fire, even if it doesn’t fire due to being on cooldown), a 5% damage bonus, and a 10% shield and hull penealty.

 

Special module

Adaptive warheads:  every time this ability is used it shifts to the next form.  Form 1: the next missile fired in the next 20 seconds will deal thermal damage and have 20% larger radius (30% if the missile normally does thermal damage).  Form 2: the next missile fired in the next 20 seconds will deal EM damage and deal 10% more damage (15% if the missile normally does EM damage).  Form 3: the next missile fired in the next 20 seconds will deal physical damage and have 20% faster velocity (30% if the missile normally does physical damage).  This will have a short cooldown, and if the buff is still active when you use it again, the new one will overwrite the old.

 

Active modules

T.A.G. (Target Acquisition Gear): a continuous beam (like target painter) that allows any ally to instantly lock onto the target, in addition all missiles fired at the target have 50% improved turn rates and a 15% chance to critical for +50% damage.  (alternately could work like spy drones except with a shorter duration and the lock on and missile bits instead of the healing debuff)  (upgrades reduce cooldown and increase range of effect)

 

Guidance Redirect: enemy guided missiles within range (~1500) have their target switched to your current target, no effect on unguided missiles or jericho LRFs guided torpedos.  (upgrades reduce cooldown and increase range)

 

Autoloader:  Empty missile cartridges gain 20 seconds, non-empty cartridges gain 1 charge, but not beyond their normal max charge. (upgrades reduce cooldown)

 

Deep Scanner:  Significantly (+200%?) increases sensor range for 15 seconds, but only in the way you are facing (maybe a 30 degree cone)

 

Notes: quite obviously is focused on missiles to add to its dps, with extra missile slots, a special module that increases the parameters of missiles (as well as lets you choose damage type)

 

 

Charger (mobile)

+30% afterburner speed, -10% rotation and strafe speeds.

Special Module

Ramming Speed:  speed is increased instantly to 1000 m/s for .5 seconds and gains immunity to collision damage for 3 seconds.  Short recharge (~30 seconds)

 

Active modules

Tether:  connects the charger to the target, whenever the target is more than 500m away from the charger it pulls the charger toward the target and vice versa.  The strength of the pull is relative to the distance between the connected ships, and the size of the other ship (an interceptor will be pulled toward a corvette more than the corvette will be pulled toward the interceptor, but the opposite is true with a frigate).  The tether breaks if the distance between the ships becomes too large (3k) or if LOS is lost for 2 seconds. (upgrades reduce cooldown)

 

Jamming Device:  Drops a small device that creates a jamming field with a 2000m radius.  It takes +400% as much time to lock on to allies within the jamming field. (upgrades increase radius and reduce cooldown)

 

Solar Racer: gives a large boost to speed, but reduces acceleration, turn rates, and weapon heat time.  Toggle-able skill (upgrades increase speed boost)

 

Hull Charge:  builds an EM charge on the hull that is discharged to the first enemy you collide with in the next 20 seconds.  (upgrades increase damage and reduce cooldown)

 

Note:  Chargers can go quite fast for their size, but only in strait lines, still with solar racer and ramming speed and tether enemies will find it difficult to get away from a determined charger.  The massive (if short) burst from ramming speed also combines well with hull charge, combining collision damage and with extra EM can operate as a dangerous headbutt to anyone who gets in the way.

 

 

Brawler (tanky)

Innate bonus to hull and shield strength.

 

special module

Absorption field: Becomes wrapped in a cocoon (like with the ecm special) for 8 seconds, during which the brawler does not heal hull, regenerate shields or energy normaly, instead all incoming damage is converted thus Kenetic heals hull, EM heals shield, and thermal charges energy.  The effect can be ended early by pressing the special module button while it’s active after a short grace period (second or two).  While active the brawler does not count for capturing/defending beacons and will cause the EMP bomb to be dropped.

 

Active modules

DKA Sanguine System:  for 12 seconds you and all ally ships within 2000m have their hull and shield repaired for 15% of the damage they deal.  (upgrades increase radius and reduce cooldown)

 

Berserker Drive: for 3 seconds you gain +20 resistance to shield and hull, and gain a (very) small bonus to damage and fire rate.  Every time you deal damage the duration refreshes, every time you receive damage the bonus to damage and fire rate increases.  (upgrades increase resistance and reduce cooldown)

 

Sympathetic Resonator:  target’s an enemy ship within 2000m, for 20 seconds you share any buff the target receives, and the target shares any debuff you receive.  (upgrades increase range and reduce cooldown)

 

Pain Device:  Charges for 8 seconds and then deals thermal damage to all enemies within 1500m, damage scales with damage taken during charging and inversely with your hull health.  (upgrades increase damage and cooldown).

 

 

Note: Brawlers are about getting into the thick of things, almost all their modules are more effective when under fire, taking damage increases what they can deal, and dealing damage increases what they can take.

 

 

Weapons

 

Vulcan:  Rapid fire kinetic weapon, operates a lot like the heavy blaster on frigates, but with a shorter range and no turret rotation limits.

 

Resonance Cannon:  long ranged thermal weapon, fires in a single burst (as opposed to continuous beam), can be charged (like gauss or position cannons).

 

Tesla Cannon:  medium ranged EM weapon, fires pulses of EM energy, will shock any enemy within ~150m of the projectile for 20% of the projectile damage, each enemy can only be shocked once per projectile.

 

a fourth weapon will depend on what damage type its decided corvettes will favor, though I read a suggestion for a weapon that fires high powered shots sequentially instead of simultaneously (like a more rapid coil mortars, but without the area of effect) that could work effectively as any damage type

 

 

 

Turret count doesn’t really matter as weapons are unique to each weight class, so turret count is almost purely aesthetic, if you have more turrets you just reduce the damage and or fire rate of the weapons until you reach the desired damage output.

 

Missiles

 

LRM: thermal missile with range between cruise and standard missiles (~7k) and around 3.5k damage, good projectile speed but poor maneuverability

 

Breacher Missile:  unguided Mid ranged kenetic missile, if it deals hull damage to the target it adds a short debuff doing additional kenetic damage over 3 seconds.

 

Shock Missile: mid ranged EM missile, has a very large splash radius (400m), but deals only 20% damage to secondary targets.

 

 

Missile boat only

 

Image Seeking Missile:  Kenetic damage guided missile with very high maneuverability (125 deg/sec), if it loses its target it will automatically acquire the nearest enemy on sensors as its new target

 

Inferno Pod:  Rocket volley of 5 unguided missiles for small thermal damage, each missile leaves behind a small (50m) radiation field

 

Charger only

Momentum Manipulation Missile:  Guided EM damage missile that sets the targets instantaneous speed to zero (no continuing effect, so they just have to reaccelerate up to speed)

 

Brawler only

Lacerator:  unguided Thermal missile that reduces the targets hull and shield resistances by 20 for 7 seconds.

 

A long while back there was a thread about Corvettes where it was established that, if we are going to use naval terminology, “Frigates” are actually Corvettes.

 

Honestly, adding this weight class would do nothing for the game. A point can be made for re-tooling existing ships into new roles (Empire Long Range is in dire need of replacement in my opinion), but this concept would just be unnecessarily complicated, resulting in an overly cramped ship tree and not a great deal more variation in play.

Frigates in terms of size in this game really feel more like Corvettes. 

 

Maybe you get some size impression from some empire frigates, but if you take a look at jericho and some federation ones like the Phoenix, they seem really small for a frigate.

 

A real frigate imo is what a Normandy SR2 is. Length = 216 meters. 5 decks, including the living quarters and hangar for on board planetary vehicle. Frigates in SCon seem to be about 20-50 meters in length, with at most 3 possible decks in some larger T5 “frigates”.

 

But nice ideas with the modules, anyway.

I did the measurements a while back, I’ll try to dig them out again, but the short answer is the [Empire] Frigates are about the size of a modern airliner.

 

Here it is:

 

Classical Navy ships (and modern Navy ships for that matter) often had to operate for extended periods without support. They could be weeks or months away from the nearest port, let alone a place they could go ashore. By contrast, the airforce does not deal in such long-term operations; flight times are measured in hours, not weeks.

 

When we do reach the stars, we will almost certainly be drawing upon the Navy for guidance. Their terminologies are likely to carry over for the simple reason that much of it still makes sense; the difference between a ship and a boat, for example, is just as valid away to distinguish a large, inter-planetary void craft and a smaller void craft designed for short ship-to-ship, ship-to-orbital or ship-to-planet trips. In other words, the Space Shuttle would likely be called a boat in space faring terms.

 

Finally, let us look at modern usage and see how that compares:

 

Frigate: A primarily anti-submarine vessel, larger than a Corvette but smaller than a Destroyer.

Okay… so what is a Corvette and what is a Destroyer?

 

Corvette: A small, maneuverable, lightly armed warship. Modern Corvettes measure about 180-330ft (55-100m) in length and are usually armed with medium and small caliber guns.

Let’s just take that description and run with it a second… excuse me while I boot up Star Conflict and fetch a ruler.

Okay, so, I’ve lined up the camera so that a person loitering under each of my ‘Frigates’ is about 0.5cm high. Assuming a person is 6ft tall, let’s look at the approximate lengths of these ships…

_Harpy: _23.5cm = 282ft.

_Hydra: _27cm = 324ft

Raptor: 24.5cm = 294ft

 

As you can see, those lengths fit nicely within the Corvette size bracket. But let’s go one better and look at the guns; the weapons on these ‘Frigates’ are little better than Fighter / Interceptor guns. They might be more powerful, but aside from specialist gear like the Disintegrators, Torpedoes or mine layers these ships are essentially packing weaponry off an attack craft.

 

By contrast, Frigates and Destroyers are armed with weapons intended for full-on warships.

 

So… the thinking is starting to add up. It’s becoming pretty obvious we aren’t flying Frigates out there.

What I would like is the removal of the LRF ships, and instead have a real badass attacking ship, and some of the modules you proposed can be used for it.

 

PS: Voted for the 3rd option btw.

In general these ideas sound nice, but for now we will stick to the ship classes we have and try to improve them.

Please make empire guard, jericho engineer and federation long range. At least this. Need some fresh content. Pleease :smiley:

Please make empire guard, jericho engineer and federation long range. At least this. Need some fresh content. Pleease :smiley:

Empire CO and Tackler.

Fed ECM anf Command.

Jerry Recon and Gunship.

Why not? :smiley:

Jeri gunships?

I’ll never fly anything else!

Corvettes? A size between Fighters and Frigates? You mean the T5 Federate Fighters?

Fed ecm… Oh s&@$&$

Jeri gunships?

I’ll never fly anything else!

 

That level of particle purge.

We need it!

That level of particle purge.

That would get you 2 shotted afterward though

That would get you 2 shotted afterward though

 

We’ll have to make sure nobody survives the particle purge.

 

Fed LRFs would be able to deploy and reposition themselves quickly. Or rush in at high speed with guns blazing. 

Fed lrf… Would love that, would fit perfectly in my lineup

Please make empire guard, jericho engineer and federation long range. At least this. Need some fresh content. Pleease :smiley:

You mean a Styx isn’t a guard?!?!  I’ve been playing it wrong the whole time!