Once you have access to proms, valks, corvults, and most other fighting ships, the hornet and all its variants end up being mostly useless and unseen in battlegrounds.

It's completely reasonable to expect certain ships to be used by new players, and then never again. But in this case, there's an opportunity for the hornet to fill the role of a utility/defensive ship in combat. There's no lack of offensive ships, but there's a clear gap in the other department.

One small idea for buffing the hornet would be modifying it to be a weaker version of the greyhound while keeping the 4 ports.

In terms of how it can fill a defensive or utility role, it'd need rail guns and power cell blasters to be buffed. PCBs can be great against capships, but they're almost never seen outside of that. I'd suggest modifying PCBs to have 5 ammo and increasing speed to be equivalent to rails, but each one "freezes" a power cell. Instead, they would prevent a player from turboing or using energy weapons for 5 seconds or something to that effect. This would provide a good skill-based solution to greyhounds and just constantly running away.

Then, rail guns are almost never used. There are plenty of ways to rework them. The damage they deal is appropriate, but it's too difficult to aim them over long distances, which is really the only time they're useful. A possible solution would be to increase the speed even further, while reducing ammo count and increasing cost.

Combining all of this with aeolus light repair modules could create a great new combat role which would make fights much more dynamic. Running away in deathmatches or nation wars is punishable and non direct combat is rewarded.

Thoughts?

-1: Hornets are great botting ships, and skilled pilots have used them to harrass npc convoys. For PvP, Hornets are more support ships than dogfighters, and thats why they dont see too much combat. If you are in a group setting, and you have training with hornets, I think you would be more inclined to use them.

-100: dont touch pcbs. I use them against queens, and other pilots have used them against capital ships (quite frequently).

-1: ive seen rails used just last TeamDX, and they pop up every now and then. Proper use of them is indeed difficult, but thats what makes rails such an amazing weapon.

Speaking of which.... running away in deathmatches is a valid, though frowned upon, option. If someone is beyond your radar range, ignore them. If its the last member on the opposing side or something, let the host know, and he can call that match. As for just turboing away from a clusterfuck, maybe he is gaining distance so he can focus on less pilots all at once - I do that too.

-1 Sorry, but Hornets are amazing. Maybe I'll sting ya sometime hehe

Heh people in here saying the hornet is a capable ship... that's rich.

hornets are utter shite for anything; rails are also shite... sure you can get kills with them but they're way way less effective and versatile than blasters or flares.

problem with rails and distance is aim quant, rails are also much much less efficient DPE wise compared to pretty much any blaster this coupled with the fact they're heavy as balls make em useless for most purposes.

I'll lay it out explicitly for you guys

"Hornets are shit"
"Rails are shit (The mk2 and adv rails are fun to use but they're not exempt from shit weapon status!)"

I don't have a solution but yeah just putting my 2c out there.

I agree with the premise that the hornet isn't good and needs a role/buff but maybe only the Orion one.

Take away a small port and change the front or back one to a large port. Give it some more spin torque and we'd have a great defense ship.

Otherwise, nobody uses this ship seriously. +1 to tweaking the hornet!

A light tweak light Ore's suggestion I wouldnt mind seeing.

Hornets never were great.

-1

I like to go on suicide runs in hornets. I welcome death with open arms.

I suggest that you try running toward a somewhat competent pilot in a hornet equipped with 4x nearly anything (laws, hive posis, whatever).

See how long it takes you to die.

Hornets were never meant to be dog fighters like vults/cents/valks or chasers like hounds.

They are in the bombing/assault class along with rags. Your suggestions show that you fail miserably at understanding this.

However, Ore does understand this.

>>"I suggest that you try running toward a somewhat competent pilot in a hornet equipped with 4x nearly anything (laws, hive posis, whatever). See how long it takes you to die. "

lol.

Yes JJ I get it, I just don't agree with it. it's a useless ship, why wouldn't you want a ship with some redeeming quality to be useful for something?

Given that the Orion version is considered a guardian or defense ship, it should be capable of some combat. The asset is there, why not tweak it and have more ships to pick from?

Take it down to 2s and 1L port.

Hornets do have a niche, like Spidey said you can put 4x railguns on them, and they are well fun. Or 4x flares, or 4x gems!

Plus, newbs like them a lot, and we all like killing newbs so..

The convoy hornet is already quite capable at running away, and in a straight line it is actually quite fast. If you think otherwise, well you suck worse than the hornet.

The strength of the Hornet is its ability to equip 4 small port weapons: something no other ship in the game can do.

It's not a dueling ship; it has a high degree of utility in botting, bombing, larger furballs, and certain missions. Some variants are great at covering long distances with a decent cargo hold.

I disagree; the hornet is decent at some things but it doesn't fit a specialty other than humiliating people by hornet defeat, In any situation where a hornet is "decent" a rag is invariably better.

You can put megaposis on your energy rag the rag handles pretty much just as "well" as the hornet the rag 3 actually has a decent amount of armor to compensate for its shit maneuverability, the rag actually has decent engine to handle heavier loadouts.

the only thing the hornet can do that other ships can't is zap sub 10k armor ships in one shot, thing is the rag you can still do 3/4 of the zapping damage plus you can zap a second time at full power just 0.5 seconds after the first shot not to mention you can have jackhammers or swarms to defend you if people get too close.

TL;DR the rag is a much better heavy fighter than the hornet the hornet is totally irrelevant.

I disagree the hornet is decent at some things but it doesn't fit a specialty other than humiliating people by hornet defeat.

If hornet is buffed, then we can no longer use it for the purpose of humiliating others.

We need at least one humiliation class ship.

You don't have to buff all the hornets... losing to a mk123 centurion is humiliating but losing to a superlight isn't...

also the EC-89/88 is the ultimate humiliation ship nothing will beat it until the devs give us a crappier boat. (lol)