The superlight has superlight armor. A port scanner is practically required so you know when to expect flares.

But I would soil my pants if I ran across mecha or ghost in a superlight, no matter what I was driving, short of a trident.

The superlight is perhaps one of the very best botting machines I have ever driven. The single port lines up on target, the widowmaker kicks ass. The ship strafes and holds range better than a rev-c or corvult. It spins onto target like a dream. It jumps on a targets tail effortlessly. The repair cost is next to zero. It is in some ways is in a class of it's own, just not in pvp.

give it a built in port scanner.

I think that it just needs to be much easier to build...or for every manufacturing mission you take, you get 3, 4, or 5 of them. Something like that

Very good points raised all around.

@pey
Superlight is the only 'potentially top of the line' combat ship that can be used by anyone regardless of nation - provided they pass the missions and don't mind investing time in building it.
KOS requirement would put it out of reach of the majority of player base. Do we really want that for a manufacturable ship?

@fluff
I agree, risking it in combat is a tough choice unless it's buffed to make it more dangerous. ARF made a very good point, against typical dual-flare and swarm spam loadouts it does explode in half a sec.

I had a test fight with BT's dual flare X-1 and, as long as you manage to keep a 'in your face' close wasp style attack it works but if you slip for a milisec and allow the valk to move outside of the flare dead zone (30-40m) - you are toast. Only other alternative tactic is a boring long range distance control till your opponent is out of flares.

@roda
I agree - Superlight needs a built in addon scanner. It is a great botting ship and a decent fighter and, in my opinion, with some small improvements (including widow maker buff) it could become a pvp star worth of tedious manufacturing.

The one thing I really like about Superlight is that, if you can complete the missions without cheating (buddy repping you between mission stages), everyone who finishes the missions is worthy of using it.

Pilots with great pvp skill will always have the upper hand but even average pilots will stand a fair chance in combat if Superlight and WM get much needed buff.

Player interaction will increase, demand for buying 'Superlight kits' and manufacturing will go up and VO combat will get a bit more variety in ships and weapons used.

Considering what death fluffy said... "I say either significantly reduce the manufacture requirements or give it a buff that makes it even more dangerous in combat"

Would keeping the stats the same but adding two more small ports on the front wings make this worth building? you could fly it with a widow maker in the middle port or two flares and a nuet if you like.

that is not a horrible idea biretalk with the crazy manufacturing requirements this ship could be pretty OP and still be balanced plus if it ever took splashback from its own flares it would probably be dead in a second.

Adding 2 more weapon slots to Superlight would be crazy and against the very idea of this ship.

Most compelling and (easy to do) ideas for Superlight buffing are:

1. built-in addon scanner
2. reduced energy drain

In addition to this, manufacturing requirements could be slightly reduced (or make it you get 2 SL when you finish manufacturing - same as widowmakers) and cap on the number of Superlights built could be removed.

I also think adding 200 dmg to widowmaker (1000 dmg/shot) would be quite enough to make this combo worth building and using in a day to day combat.