That depends on how the change in hull space is handled too. The change gave it almost twice as much hull space, but that's hull space I didn't really need unless I wanted to fit in a bigger shield/energy capacitor.

If you want it to have lighter shields, but have the ship still be useful, you could revert the energy bank reduction back to 650%, set its shield bonus to 350-450% instead of the new 200%, and drop the hull space to some point between its old 450 and its new ~860, something like 500-600. That would bring it towards the intention of being a lighter frigate while still keeping it useful and worth making a Pax Astro and EFDN to make it. Keep in mind the PBF's resistances are still *very* weak in comparison to an EFDN

anything less than that, I don't see anyone bothering with PBFs since mastodon-fighter boat setups would be cheaper and easier to gear for the same or more capabilities, and thus be more preferable. (the mastodon itself is more expensive than a PBF to build provided you have the BPs, but the augmenters required to be useful are dirt cheap for a mastodon)

I am pretty sure the hull space buff you're referring to is from an older change. When we condensed class skills into three levels we also decided to take away some of the capship-only hull bonus of Fleet Focus and simply apply it directly to capship hulls.

I have no problem putting the energy back to where it was. I would like to keep the shield bonus at 200% for now. Just so that we are discussing exact numbers here, the EFDN is 40% tankier to most damage types.

According to some analysis done by SMW, the third augmenter slot is worth quite a lot–-about 75% more power over two slots.

That third augmenter slot doesn't mean much compared with fighters whose DPS is more or less unaffected by augmenters beyond electric regeneration. The Mastodon as a fighter boat doesn't need a third augmenter to compete. A PBF with its old stats but 2 augmenter slots as a fighter boat is absolutely better than the new stats with 3 augmenters as a gunboat

The speed nerf to FC mastery (t20 and lower augs) is a simple shot in the nuts, nothing more. It accomplishes nothing but makes using slaves more annoying, and botting more attractive, 2 days after the most extensive botting action was revealed. FC slaves are not seers or SDs. Speed does not help with their DPS or survivability. All speed does for slaves is it helps put a bandage on the frustration of using them by allowing their owner to reduce the time spent waiting for them to catch up when moving across systems. And this needed nerfing why? Was there a problem with OP super fast FC slaves? Or was it because some balance spreadsheet which doesnt account for the fact that different stats mean totally different things to different classes said so?

The tractor nerf though really kills me. That bonus wasnt enough to allow anything meaningful like using an FC main ship as a tractorship in BvB, I know I tried. What it did do was something magical though. My DG runs with my UAoC auged FC were spent with me frantically clicking and tractoring things all over the place. It made my tractor good enough to where i could start to use to offensively and defensively as a regular part of combat, pulling in AI to focus damage on, pushing ones away, flinging my slaves all the over place to try and save them.. While yes you can do that without tractor bonus, the effectiveness of it makes it not worth it.

This simple bonus on the UAoC augs accomplished something which Star Sonata has never really succeeded in doing: You made it actually worth it for me to commit to 100% active playing on a single char, vs simply passive MC'ing multiple boring characters. <----- This is the ultimate solution to MC'ing and botting, making the gameplay for a class so immersive, interactive, demanding, and dynamic (compared to just hitting spacebar) that you cant get anywhere near the same effectiveness through trying to juggle multiple clients.......... Then like that you just killed the one instance of a class setup for an FC that wasnt OP and yet at the same time was enabling this more immersive gameplay through allowing a decent tractor bonus + normal FC stats.......................... And again, this was decided on, this move which punishes active players and makes MCing more attractive relatively, just 2 days after the worst botting reveal in SS history...???? REally??

I've given up on this game...

Bots will be fine it seems

that's it? are you kidding me? what

It rolls back the nerfs to FC mast and AoC on slaves, plus gives them some extra shield regen.

In the aftermath of this I'd like to make a request based on the clusterfuck I witnessed on discord after the patch for your sake and the playerbase's sake is in these dev posts when you are buffing or nerfing something that we get some design justifications/reasoning for changes that occur.

This would at least help cull some of the ascending level of salt (Players rushing to discord town-hall style demanding answers) that generates a unhealthy and unnecessary level of toxicity of communication between the players and the developers (Also please don't respond to it either, it helps no one), I know I (and a few others) was put off in trying to "engage" in discussion over the patch.

I'm not excusing the players in this either, if this is our approach to things we don't like we might as well give up now because I've seen this kill the connection between players and developers in mmos, there's only like 50 or so of us here ffs, I don't wanna want to know what its like with a large playerbase (Oh wait I do know).

The change to the PBF (and honestly the Battle Sphere too) just seem 100% unwarranted, unnecessary, and with no real justification other than "we didn't intend it to be this type of ship"

At the present, it wasn't OP. It didn't break anything. It wasn't abusable. It's still the most difficult to get t20 Capital Ship. It still has piss poor resistances in comparison to other t20 capital ships.

Things were just nerfed for no apparent reason other than wanting to nerf something that absolutely didn't need it.


And who the heck used a Battle Sphere enough to the point where it was broken and needed an aug removal?!

There is only one other aug that is both semi-FC based and gives tractor, Saluna Psu, others have damage and/or are aimed for other classes. Saluna Psu is a progression step down from UAoC, and actually seems more geared for an engi if anything based on stats. Saluna Psu is also for hardcore tractoring, if you actually wanted your FC to start to be comparable to a BvB tractorship. UAoC was a more advanced aug in terms of progression that allowed you a middle ground between Saluna Psu and nothing.

BTW what exactly was wrong, OP, unbalanced, causing others harm or allowing unfair advancement by having the "perfect" aug setup, where "perfect" does not mean having the best of everything, but actually getting to have fun in an active manner with the setup? I wasnt advancing or getting loot any faster with the old UAoC. If I wanted to get loot faster I would simply MC. I was choosing not to MC because it was actually more fun to solo FC with 2x old UAoC.

I feel like these changes are based 100% on something in a balance spreadsheet not adding up, and not based at all on real-world play. There is only one instance when my old 2x UAoC with tractor could be considered to be OP, and that was the rare event of solo 1-on-1 PvP in perispace, which basically just = defending myself while getting jumped by HeavyG.

Thanks that's good to hear. Would be useful to put in patch notes. I didnt see this anywhere in the last 3 blog/patch posts.

This idea that if you want a xyz you will have to Aug for it is lame. You just make everyone the same as nobody can in fact Aug for these things without being non functional. Like oh yeh u can have crits but yeh ur gonna have nothing else. These things were bonuses on top of other things in the past so could be worked in. The push to mediocracy sucks.

The AoC augs had everything a FC would ever want: Shields, Energy, Energy Regen, (Thrust), Capacity, (Radar), Resists, Speed and Tractor power. This resulted in FCs simply stacking 2 of these and they'd be able to fulfil any role any FC would ever have, which we don't like. We want to encourage customization to fulfil the role that you aug for. With the stats on these augs every FC was basically the same. Personally I think a side problem is how FC is probably the class that cares about the least amount of stats (at least in squad play).
However, I do agree that there aren't enough viable options with Tractor Power for a FC to pick from (only the Saluna Psu, really).

The reason we opted to take Speed out of the augs was because we came to the conclusion that these giant Capital ships were traveling at nearly double the speed of Heavy Fighters. Capital ships aren't meant to be speedy and agile. If a Capital ship has to go places it can equip a Travelfield. Infact, over the years capships have gotten a pretty large base speed increase. The EFDN goes 60 (I believe this was 40 in the T20 days) while most of the T22 capships go over 100. That's a 66% increase.