Good morning everyone, this is my first post so I apologize if it in the wrong place or has the wrong tags. Kindly let me know and I will adjust it accordingly. I never really found it worth while to post or comment until now so please allow me to share some thoughts and comment if you agree or if you have any better ideas. The Ares Ion is marketed to us as such: “Spark fear in the corridors of the most formidable gunships and frigates with the Ares Ion. This laser-equipped variant delivers extremely powerful shots to quickly disable the shields of even the biggest enemy vessels.” With this being said we all know that the Ion is supposed to be the premiere Corvette/Capital ship class sniper. With good piloting you can solo a Hammerhead in an ERT and to say that just because it can one shit a single seater is “broken and needs to get nerfed” is flat out ridiculous. Allow me to share why the upcoming “fixes” will mostly likely kill this ship. 1. The Ion’ new fire rate, larger magazine, damage reductions, and extremely reduced accuracy no longer keeps it in line with the Sniper Class it was supposed to fall into and puts it into a class of its own… weaker than any laser cannon or repeater set up. Any set up of laser canons can now out perform the Ion with similar alpha damage and increased accuracy. These new changes takes us from accurately timing and placing our shots to take out single seaters or turrets to just hoping that RNG let’s us land our shots thus making hitting anything at range extremely difficult due to the inaccuracy. 2. Any single seat pilot that knows the following can out maneuver an Ion’s projectile. The projectile velocity is so slow that any basic maneuvering technique will result in a miss. I’m talking about a simple up strafe will suffice. At closer ranges a corkscrew will save you from instant death. 3. The ion has an extremely large red flash when a shot is being fired that is visible even at the weapons max effective range. This flash mixed with the slow projectile speed means it is easy for any pilot to understand that a shot has been fired and to make any maneuver to dodge it. 4. The Ion’s turn radius even while turning using pitch is so slow compared to a single seater that any pilot with basic understanding of positioning can out maneuver an Ion. 5. For the Ion to now be effective, it has to get closer to its target, further nullifying its sniper class title. I guess what I’m trying to get at here is that if a single seater ship or light fighter puts itself in front of an Ion’s cannon long enough fro the Ion to put its crosshairs onto it and long enough for the slow moving projectile to hit… well the player deserve to get sent to the med bay. To say the Ion is not inline with CIGs no meta ship and skill based gameplay concept is ridiculous. I wholeheartedly believe that if an Ion pilot takes the time to position itself to line up a shot on a single seater and the light single seater gets hit, that is 100% a mistake on the light fighters part. Speaking from experience the only time I have ever gotten a light fighter kill in an Ion (or when I was killed by an ion in a light fighter) was because the light fighter pilot made a mistake. Which usually is being in line of sight for too long and not realizing it. So with all this being said, I propose a better fix to the Ion if players and devs really think that the “Ion needs a nerf”. Add a spool up time to its laser similar to the rail gun with an increasingly large red flash before it is fired. This will further increase skill based gameplay on the Ion pilots end and give even the newest player time to realize “oh maybe I should move because I’m about to get one shotted”. If you wanted to take a step further, once the spool up start it cannot stop until the shot is fired forcing the Ion pilot to pick its shots wisely. All damage stays the same if not increased to compensate for the slower rate of fire. All other stats like accuracy and projectile speed stay the same. Maybe even increasing the projectile speed seeing as the increasingly large flash during spool up will be a warning sign to other pilots to move out of the way. Ideas, questions, comments, concerns, complaints? Please let me know what you guys think of this post. I’m sorry it was drawn out a bit I just feel passionately about my favorite ship being gutted that way that it is. Thanks for reading and if you want to play with me in the verse please send me a friend request. Safe piloting citizens!