As far as I’m concerned the Interceptor should be underpowered in the hands of an unskilled pilot!
Games benefit from having things that allow all skill levels to take part. Engineering Frigates and Command Fighters are the “newbie friendly” ships in this game; all you need to do to get a good score in one of those ships is to stay close to other people, and your buff assists will do the rest.
However, the Interceptors by and large are harder ships to fly, and the harder the ship is to use properly the more powerful it should be.
Note that I am not suggesting that because an Inty is twice as hard to use, it should be twice as good. Far from it. Let’s try to do this in a table of sorts…
Let’s assume the following applies to the Engineering Frigate:
Effort In: 2/10
Power Out: 6/10.
In other words, you can achieve the Engineer’s full potential with very little effort. Next ship!
Command Fighter:
Effort In: 4/10
Power Out: 7/10.
So, for twice as much effort, you get a 1/6th power increase over the Engineering Frigate. Seems unfair, doesn’t it? Well it’s not - it means that a less experienced player in an Engineering Frigate can still hold his own as opposed to being obliterated.
Moving on… let’s pick an Inty at random here.
ECM Interceptor:
Effort In: 8/10
Power Out: 8/10.
See the pattern here? Huge amount of effort for relatively little power boost. However, going by these metrics an Interceptor pilot flying as well as the ship allows has a 33% advantage over an Engineering Frigate doing the same. Thus, the “pro” Interceptor should win more often out of the two. He has to work harder for his victories, and even a relatively unskilled Engineer Frigate might still get lucky and kill him, but he cannot render the game unplayable for the newbie pilot and he has to push himself hard to get that advantage.
This method keeps both ends of the scale happy. The rookies who stick with easy to fly ships can make a difference and feel like they actually matter. The pros can fly ships that will test them to their limits, but will reward them for the effort.
However, this is always going to make balancing things tricky - if the Interceptors are intended only for the best of the best, then its going to result in a lot of less able pilots complaining they are underpowered.
Well, pardon me not knowing those “stats” you pull off from no where.
In my opinion, Interceptor, Covert Ops in particular in T2 takes minimal effort and skill to butcher the opposing force, be it fighter or frigate. They are very often the main front line ship, that actually stand a survival chance. I own a Swift Mk. III and keeping it alive is the most simple task I have ever tried.
Engi frigate in T2 is extremely fragile compared to my T3 engi, that will need focusing to take down due to the large increase on modules and modules slots that is made available in T3.
Healing in current from is no mean overpowered, but does greatly improve the combat ability of the already powerful Interceptors further. The increased healing percent per tick compared to bigger ships means point capping and tanking is very much an interceptor’s job as much as a guard’s job with the poor fighters unable to contribute as much as they should.
In short healing is
Very strong when put on an interceptor because of the percentage healed.
Weak on fighter because of poorer speed and the small increase in survivability relative to the speed lost.
Just right on frigate with their overall higher resist in general. (healing Guards not long range)
It is rather sad when you are unable to kill an interceptor without landing big alpha strikes as they will simply heal back to full strength in a tiny amount of time.
In T3 everything changes, healing and other aura buff is vital to success and teamwork is everywhere due to large amount of 4 man squads from major corps dominating. A well organized premade of 4 in a team of 10 or less is simply not what I call a pub game. That is nearly half the team.