Combat is perhaps at the second worst state it has ever been in. But you might not know that if all you fly are agile ships. [Worst was back when size 9 torpedoes were uncounterable and one shot everything....] Since its seems to be clear that CIG are making active steps in the wrong direction with combat, I want to be very clear about exactly what is wrong with combat: So to start, what are these active missteps that CIG are taking? Rather than solve the glaring issues with the mobility meta, brought on due to a utter lack of defense and a obsessive focus on skill and damage, CIG has decide to just make the AI try to meet the meta by literally cheating with infinite boost. Everything now travels at the combat breaking SCM+ speeds, ships that should not even be capable of being mobile like the Idris are now infinitely boosting to try and stay relevant to the meta resulting in just jarring scenes of Idris's turn fighting smaller ships. When infinite boosting still isnt enough, CIG decided to give the Idris ungodly large sponge values that make no sense, rather than actually make shields do their job of forcing ships to slow down and focus on an area. This ungodly large HP ironically just pushes out larger ships from combat and only allows smaller agile ships that can dodge fire to stay in the fight. Rather than address the issue of small ships being hard to hit by turrets, CIG just gave turrets ungodly firepower and hope that maybe enough of the scatter fire will hit a fighter. This results in ships like the hammerhead being able to MOW DOWN large ships with impunity when its supposed to be for fighting fighters, rendering the Perseus obsolete before it even launches. The AI that used to take tactical stances now instead tries to dog fight like its an oversized fighter. There are no words to adequately describe how asinine it is to see a capital ship TURN FIGHTING LIKE ITS AN OVERSIZED FIGHTER. Together these misteps only make the problem so much worse if you play outside the meta of mobile ships. If you are not mobile enough to dodge your opponents damage, you just lose. If you are not a skilled player who does not knows how to constantly dodge, you just can't participate anymore. You Dodge, or you Die, There is no inbetween Its the fundamental flaw that has been with combat for the longest time now. It first reared its head back when shield piercing gave smaller ships the ability to punch up past ships with constant regen by just bypassing shields outright. Ammo was plentiful back then and its why ships like the Talon used to be so meta, because it had large ballistic weapons that could punch up to beating capital ships alone thanks to shield piercing. But with 3.14 CIG really let the bull into the china shop when they removed constant shield regen for size 2 and above. Now its free reign, you do enough damage you win, period, there are no constraints an arrow can beat anything alone now. You must be this agile to participate We see it all the time on the forums "make this ship more agile, increase the turn rate of these ships." And do you know why? Its because the meta you created AND CONTINUE TO FOSTER demands agility above all else. If you can't hit your target you lose, period, putting everything on the back of the ships agility. Even the xenothreat event is no stranger to this. Ships like the Reclaimer are no longer viable in xenothreat now thanks to the removal of constant regen because it just cant live long enough in the fight. There is no tankage, only inevitable death at the hands of an infinite boosting Idris with 100s of times your health pool for no good reason. The only large and medium ships that can participate are those that MUST BE MORE AGILE THAN THEIR TARGET'S TURRETS. So What Needs to be Done? Ships need shield based gating mechanics. There cannot be a means for a singular inappropriate ship to win no matter what. That issue will only multiple out when more fighters are involved resulting in more asinine situations where you have to literally create ungodly high sponge values just to pretend the Idris is a threat when really its just a chore for fighters. Armor based gating mechanics will not work because not all ships are armored, and physicalized damage will not allow you to create magic "you cannot damage this" bubbles across the entire hull like shields can. You can use energy ammo limitations as well to accomplish this effect. Combat must be slowed down. As it stand right now, there are no large ships, its just oversized fighters fighting other oversized fighters in constant turn fights because that is the only way to survive combat right now thanks to the meta you keep fostering. To slow down combat you need to both reduce speeds available in combat (IE a SCM lock) and create a reason for ships to have to better focus their fire by making shield faces matter again. Not this nonsense of "just throw damage at a shield face and eventually it will go down", you have to force a larger volume of damage into one shield face in a short period of time to make people not only slow down, but not be constantly circle strafing in combat against larger ships. Larger ships need the survivability to stay mostly stationary during combat. This meta of mobility is all that matters needs to die or it will take the game with it. We need larger ships to be okay with being slow, sluggish, and tanky. Larger ship shields need to be able to survive sprays of inaccurate or low damage attacks. That can be accomplished by adding mechanics in like constant shield regen and reducing damage the more the attacks are spread out, forcing smaller craft to have to slow down, focus fire, and make themselves vulnerable. Larger ships should not have to fear being sprayed to death by a handful of smaller craft. That fear of being whittled down is what makes everyone fly a large ships like its an oversized fighter, they have no choice right now, you fly it like a fighter or you die. Doen't that sound familiar to when I talked about the meta that absolutely killed and buried Evolve? The meta all through Evolves life span was this: Wail down the medic. That was it. As a monster if you did not live and die by this meta, you would lose even against lower skill opponents. https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/4/thread/long-winded-post-ai-are-no-where-near-as-bad-as-yo Ships need to be punished for trying to turn fight. Turn fighting adds nothing of value to combat other than a mobility check of attacker vs defender. Even for fighters v Fighters turn fighting only devolves combat into "mobility = win." And under no circumstance should we see larger ships trying to turn fight each other, which is why you have to put mechanics in to force them to not do it. To do this, on top of all the other shield improvements like constant regen and reduced damage for inaccurate fire, and on top of gating combat to SCM speeds, force weapons to be inaccurate when traveling above a % of the ships SCM speed. For larger ships, ontop of the weapon inaccuracy, give large ships and ACTIVE ability to focus/harden a shield face that requires the ship to be stationary. That way larger ships can survive against one another in a slower draw out battle rather than having to rely on turn fighting to dodge fire. Larger ships should only get their full damage potential and accuracy while practically stopped and with little to no turning. Ships need to be punished long term for losing shield faces. Whether its a fighter or a capital ship, losing a shield face needs to be a dramatic event that symbolizes the other team scoring a point, not just winning the game from that point forward. Shield faces should be recoverable even while under fire, but each time you lose a shield face your shield emitters should be punished with long term damage. That way if the other team scores enough points, they can then go in to try and end the game, rather than just immediately winning the moment any shield face is down. The same goes for fighters, fighters should not be able to infinitely recover their shield after breaking resulting in nearly infinite effective health. Shield piercing needs to be removed outright. It was a problem before, and it will only come right back as a problem the moment energy weapons stop being the end all be all of infinite damage potential. Shield piercing only makes the game worse, it will only get even worse when physicalized damage is added. It already results in eventual death in fights that you can do NOTHING ABOUT unless you play the mobility meta. Its exactly the issue of "if you take any damage you are losing" that is causing the mobility meta, as such ballistic shield piercing cannot be allowed to stay as it only perputates that meta by punishing slower ships for the crime of merely existing. Ships need more accurate BUT LESS DAMAGING turret weapons. If you just give turrets more accuracy you will find that mowing down power you see right now with these turrets will just render even more ships obsolete in fights. Combat will devolve into "whoever brings the highest DPS with the Highest HP" wins fights where everything else is completely invalid and instantly nuked in the area of denial fields created by turrets. With accuracy being a key factor to effective damage against shields long term, turrets should focus on being accurate over bringing raw power. Word limit I swear...