Has anyone come up with a good fighter yet that they are completely satisfied with? The best i've found is a Warthog with Adv. Gattling and some sort of small blaster, and a hornet with tripple or quad blasters. Still, there isn't a ship that i think can take down heavies and other fighters like the old light with blue ions could. It seems too had to dog fight. Right now it's all about torp. and adv. gattling. How can a auto-aim turret be better than pure human skill? There has to be a better way. And yet with the new stronger ships, it takes so long to kill them with a small blaster. With a blaster such as a Gause Cannon or a Charge Cannon, you can inflict major damage in a short amount of time. But if you miss...well you know the rest. I'm just looking around to see if someone else has some ideas and input or if there are plans for future weapon and ship modifications.

-DuctTape

The valk (b*tch, moan...) is great for botting when combined with 3 tachyon guns. I've never seen a bounty 75 bot take more than 3 hits from it...
Gause cannon... SURRENDER YOUR CARGO OR I DRESS YOUR WOUNDS!!! :P

The Valk is only a blue ship. I might also add that it is very expensive. If there are too many Valks around they can easily be nuked. Although I do strongly agree that they are an excellent fighter. I just believe that there needs to be something as good for everyone. Maby if the Hornet had high agility or something. Hehe. Actually, I would be happier with a quicker recharging battery and a higher damaging laser rather than a new ship. I may still be overlooking some great combination. I'm sure the devs will come of with the right adjustments for the weapons and ships to make everything equal.

-DuctTape

What used to be great:

Hornet
Heavy Battery
Medium Engine
2 Rail guns
2 Tachyon Blasters

But now that rail guns are nerffed, that is no more. :(

My personal favorite (recently discovered, and yes it sounds a little wierd):
Valkyrie/Hornet
Fast Charge Battery
Medium Engine
1 or 2 Tachyons
1 Graviton
1 Gauss

Its a lot of fun to use it, and the balance between those three weapons is great.

I personally think that all of the light fighters except the Valk are underpowered, but things I'd like to try (but never will because I have access to a Valk) are:

Warthog + tachyon + screamers + hb + me (Adv. gatlings just sandpaper a Valk, and primarily worked as an anti-rail weapon. Screamers would give you more punch.)
Warthog + sunflares + adv. gatling + hb + me (Another way to get punch.)
Hornet + 4 sunflares + fb + he (Not quite four rails, but it might work.)
Hornet + 4 gemini + fb + he (A little crazy, and probably wouldn't work in 1v1 dogfights. Might work pretty good in a furball though.)
Hornet + 2 tachyon + 2 sunflares + hb + he (Best non-Valk ship at present?)
Centurian + 1 graviton + fb + me (Dangerous in numbers if team work is used, but would probably get flattened by Valks.)
Vulture + 2 tachyon + hb + me (Vulture is inferior to Valks in every way, but might work well against other ships.)
Vulture + 1 tachyon + 1 sunflare + fb + me (Ditto.)

I don't really think much of the current selection of either fighters or small weapons. Nerfing the railgun has left only the Valk with both an effective weapon load out and good agility. The Warthog maybe the best you can do right now, but it is either undergunned or two slow or both.

Most of the small weapons are pretty low value. Tachyon's and sunflares are the only ones I'd currently bother with except in special cases.

A pilot has to be vastly superior to defeat a Valk pilot one on one in any light fighter currently available. I don't mind the Valk having a slight edge in a dogfight, but I'd rather alot more parity than we have now.

Things I'd like to see changed.

Centurian: Change from 1S to 2S. (Currently has to little firepower to win except in numbers.)

Warthog: change from 1S/1L to 2L, or bump manueverability to high, or both. (Lose of two manueverability does not make up for gain of a single heavy weapon.)

Wraith: Bump manueverability to medium. (Currently has no advantage over Ragnarok.)

Vulture: change from 2S to 3S. (Currently vastly inferior to Valk in every category.)

Reduce energy requirements of ion, phased, and gauss rifle. Increase ammo capacity of sunflares. Greatly reduce energy requirement of railgun.

Actually, my rocketbus (stock bus + sunflares) is pretty deadly. I've had people run from it more than once... >:D

Great Suggestions Celebrim. I agree completely with everything you said. I still want to try out a Centurian wiht 1 grav, FB, and ME. It could be useful as long as you don't get hit :) You just have to count on that. Unfortunately with the use of nukes these days. just a minor shockwave would wipe you out. Personally i have found the hornet to be the most fun, but it's just not good enough for dogfights becauseo of it's lack of manuverability. The warthog and hornet agility changes, vulture and centurian weapons changes, and the energy adjustments on cannons and blasters are me largest concerns. They don't all need to be changed, but if any one of them were adjusted it would greatly even the playing field. Thanks again for the input.

-DuctTape

I think the Hornet is good as is, and its only real problem is the lack of adequete small weapon selection now that the rail has been nerfed.

Celebrim, I don't understand why you're having so much trouble with the Warthog. I've made it my Valk killer ship, and anything below just gets ripped up by it. The maneuverability is perfect also. It used to be a medium ship, so the faster maneuverability now should actually be a blessing. Giving two large ports on a small ship like that would be unreasonable. Even with one large port, I don't see how it would look right to give it very high agility.

Anyway, I'm just worried that if they do change it to 2 large ports and/or faster maneuverability, too many people would whine about it and they would nerf it down to something worse than it is now. I personally haven't had a problem getting kills with it. It's my main fighter ship. Try equipping it with an Advanced Gatling Turret and Gemini homers. The ship's a monster with that loadout.

Yeh seems to me like the Warthog is the most popular ship right now. People have been going 1:1 against the Valk with quite a moderate amount of success. I, for one, am happy that the rail got nerfed... maybe they shouldn't have nerfed it SO much, but it was just way too uber of a weapon - and nobody used anything else.

OK the current load out I use, sounds pretty useless too, is this:
Centaur, HB, ME, 1 railgun, 2 Adv gatling turrets

Again it sounds pretty worthless, but in the hands of somebody whos use to flying a lead brick on steriods its pretty good.

BTW I think something needs to be done about the Promy, NOTHING can kill the damned thing except dual nukes and 2k more damage, its practically invincble o_0

Yeh the promy seems to be the new uber ship, but I think its ok for now, since most players are so used to flying fast/agile fighters, they still haven't quite gotten the hang of the lunky promy. For something that huge and heavy... it still turns way too wickedly fast.

But I guess this thread is about the "Perfect Light Fighter." So lets get this back on track.

I personally think the vulture needs some tweaking. There's that slight bug with it when you clip one the wings even slightly... b0000m. But I don't think it should be anywhere as near as powerful as the Valk - afterall, the Valk IS a 'special ship.'

The Vulture would look better with smaller wings. That's why I never liked 'em. They collect rockets, lasers, and asteroids too easily.

hazaanko, if the valk should be better than the other fighters, we could delete all ships besides the valk, since nobody wants to use a bad ship.

Maybe you could balance the fighters by making one of them the most manuverable, one the best armored and one the best armed, that way, the special ships could still be special, without being unbalanced.

No ship should be better than another ship at everything, doesnt matter how special it is.

Whoever said that the Valk is better than every other ship? And not -everybody- can access it. Besides - this is a thread about what your Perfect Light Fighter is, not ship balancing. My 'Perfect Light Fighter' just so happens to be the Valk. But when I don't have access to it, the hornet is my next best bet.

- Arolte, one thing that I do like about the Vulture though is its so thin. Incredibly hard to hit from straight-on.

These days, I use three ships:

Hornet
Heavy Battery
Efficient Engine
4x Tachyon Blasters

Valkerie
Heavy Battery
Medium Engine
2x Tachyon Blaster
Charged Cannon

Warthog
Heavy Battery
Medium Engine
Graviton Blaster
Avalon-class torpedo launcher

Ohhhh, but you see that's a common misconception, hazaanko. Thin and long doesn't necessarily mean better. This is something I tried to explain back in 3.1.x. The proximity detonator for the old level 2 rockets gave Vulture pilots one hell of a ride. At least from my point of view. Hehe. With wings that long it really didn't matter how thin or thick are. With proximity detonation weapons, such as rockets and missiles, it's usually better to have shorter and more compact ships. To illustrate this, select players with different types of ships and fly up to each one. You'll notice how the bounding boxes (the same ones used to indicate lock on) of each ship varies in size and thickness. This is what proximity weapons see when they determine whether to detonate or not.

Charged cannon? People actually use that? I mean, its cool and all, but does it really have any practical use? (I really don't know - haven't tried it out in battle before)

Yeh, I guess I didn't think about the proximity detonation thing... but its still harder to hit with lasers... isn't it? And most people use lasers... don't they?