I am a veteran MMO player, who started with Knight, MU, Lineage and the like (didn't like Runescape), played Wow for 10 years and EVE close to that with breaks for other games like Cabal, Requiem, Tera, WoT, War Thunder and many many others, now playing Crossout, Star Conflict and Dreadnought. The reason I mention all this is for you to understand that I have seen how classes work, I have seen "Assassin" and "Rogue" like classes before and never have I felt so powerless in dealing with them, and NEVER have I complained about a class on the forum before. In most games you have a fairly short window of burst that you have to survive or avoid, which has always been doable for me, even undergeared, but it is not the case in Dreadnought. Whenever I would die to a rogue in wow, for example, I'd see what I could have done differently in order to live, and then try and execute it the next time. In this game, though, you can't run, and you can't protect yourself, your only hope is to hope for your team to react and save you in 5 seconds.

I am currently doing the Dola grind, 20k off Koschei, and sometimes I feel like tearing my hair out, even though patience is something I have plenty of. Maybe I am not at a point where I can objectively evaluate how strong corvettes are, since my max range against a corvette on Dola is <1 KM and my only defense against a Corvette is to nuke us both while shielding myself. It works only the first time against any corvette pilot who is not a vegetable. Unfortunately, most aren't, so they learn to maintain a distance of 2 kilometers, making it impossible for me to hit one. Shouldn't destroyers be the counter of Corvettes? If not, what is? Certainly not Dola.

The other ship I normally play is a t3 tactical (the healing one, forgot the name), and I am spinning my head around constantly, spam marking corvettes all the time, and I see people trying and failing to shoot them down, then giving up and going for other targets instead. This is an unfrotunate situation, because I am hiding behind or below my team and the only way I can "run" is towards other enemies or away from my team, neither option being really an option.

I have seen people on forums complain about Koschei and how overpowered that is, but in most games I am able to sneak in from behind or below and suicide wreck it even if it's with another, lighter healer, placing myself between them.
But how on earth am I to deal with a t4 corvette of the same faction? It has 20k health and can survive a nuke while dealing 3x my dps at 3x the distance, while flying at a higher speed, having better maneuverability, having a drastically smaller hitbox that I can only hit at a distance of 800. I get it that the point of Dola is to make you suffer so much you wouldn't want a Koschei or you'd donate for exp conversion instead, but dаmn.

I see people here making the argument that "oh it's only the experienced players wrecking new players on covettes, any decent team would stop a Corvette from being effective", but as someone who plays solo in pubs all the time, I constantly see Corvettes atop the scoreboards with 10+ kills and 0-2 deaths, taking up 1st, 2nd and sometimes even 3rd places on both teams. So are you saying that these are the same experienced players wrecking the other 80% of playerbase? I feel they need to be adjusted but I am not knowledgeable enough yet to say how.

Take it simply as an opinion of a fairly new player.

Some interesting ideas above on how corvettes might be re balanced, here are some basic ones that could work:

MAKE ARMOR ACTUALLY MEAN SOMETHING

Ships with more armor should take less damage from corvettes, as would be the case in real life. If you try to fire a projectile through a 10 cm plate of armor vs 100 cm plate the projectile will be less likely to penetrate thicker armor and cause damage. This is the basic principle behind armor since the very dawn of war, but it's not implemented in Dreadnought.

Want corvettes to kill Artillery & Tactical cruisers but not instagib destroyers & dreadnoughts? Then set armor modifiers so that the damage taken by ships with much more armor actually take less damage from corvettes main weapons. Just as an example:

Tactical Cruiser = 100% of stated weapon damage
Artillery Cruiser = 100% of stated weapon damage
Destroyer = 50% of stated weapon damage
Dreadnought = 25% of stated weapon damage

The whole purpose of armor is to reduce damage to otherwise critical areas of the ship, and the armor on a Dreadnought should be much thicker that that of an Art or Tach Cruiser. The bigger the ship the less damage it should take from smaller ships. Destroyers and Dreadnoughts should not be taken down by corvettes in 4-10 seconds, otherwise there's no point in having a bigger ship with more armor in the first place.

MAKE FLAK CANNONS GREAT AGAIN

The current implementation of flak cannons leaves much to be desired. 800m of range is rather absurd when you consider these ships should be fighting in space, not a swimming pool. At minimum, the range of the flak cannons should be closer to 1,500m - 2,500m to actually be useful against smaller craft like corvettes that need to get up close to cause damage. Right now most of the anti-aircraft weapons (except the repeater) feel extremely ineffective and have less range the WW1 era flak cannons. You can apply the same armor modifiers to the flak cannons as well given that the effectiveness of flak weapons is dependent on how much armor you have; i.e. using your flak cannons on a heavily armored dreadnought might only do 25% of the rated armor damage.

I am currently doing the Dola grind, 20k off Koschei, and sometimes I feel like tearing my hair out, even though patience is something I have plenty of. Maybe I am not at a point where I can objectively evaluate how strong corvettes are, since my max range against a corvette on Dola is <1 KM and my only defense against a Corvette is to nuke us both while shielding myself. It works only the first time against any corvette pilot who is not a vegetable. Unfortunately, most aren't, so they learn to maintain a distance of 2 kilometers, making it impossible for me to hit one. Shouldn't destroyers be the counter of Corvettes? If not, what is? Certainly not Dola.

If a corvette is maintaining a distance of 2km, you've already won. Effective range of a corvette is 1.2km; outside of that, they only do a tiny fraction of their maximum DPS (light corvette does, what, 10% of its DPS from 1.2 - 2.4km, iirc?). The Dola itself isn't that great of a ship, but it can be useful for shielding healers or artilleries from corvettes. The real counter for a corvette is a tactical, although all T4 ships can be built to counter 'vettes (at the expense of general-purpose usefulness).

I see people here making the argument that "oh it's only the experienced players wrecking new players on covettes, any decent team would stop a Corvette from being effective", but as someone who plays solo in pubs all the time, I constantly see Corvettes atop the scoreboards with 10+ kills and 0-2 deaths, taking up 1st, 2nd and sometimes even 3rd places on both teams. So are you saying that these are the same experienced players wrecking the other 80% of playerbase? I feel they need to be adjusted but I am not knowledgeable enough yet to say how.

Yeah... you haven't seen a skilled anti-'vette. Take that K/D, and flip it around. That's what a 'vette score looks like in a match where they try to take down a pilot who knows how to take them down.

MAKE ARMOR ACTUALLY MEAN SOMETHING

In this game, "armor" means "more health"; you could, for example, see a dreadnought as having 20-40k HP and armor twice as strong as normal. I suspect that the only reason armor isn't really a thing is because of how durable that would make a dreadnought under healing; if a shot only does a half or a quarter of the damage against a ship, then that means that healing that ship is effectively twice, or even four times as potent as on normal ships; which would make the already durable dread + tac combo virtually immortal (so long as they keep you off the tac).

MAKE FLAK CANNONS GREAT AGAIN

About the furthest that it would be acceptable to buff flak range is 1.5km. At 2.5km, that's already further than the minimum range of most main guns, and with a very high damage shot at that. I'd say a buff of 300m to all flaks would be reasonable.

Why are we comparing this game to EVE? It's not a shooter, all the hit/dmg is determined by numbers.

Lymceh#8349 posted (#post-125641)
If a corvette is maintaining a distance of 2km, you've already won. Effective range of a corvette is 1.2km;

I'll be honest, doesn't feel like win when you blow up. The effective range of the plasma turret is 2.4 km, which I see most of the time.

Yeah... you haven't seen a skilled anti-'vette.

Precisely.
And from what I've seen the best counter to a Corvette is a Corvette, because it can outrun anything else, or will simply avoid it. I've seen a teammate corvette chase and shoot down an enemy corvette when 4-5 ships were firing at it. They kept missing and our corvette simply came back when the job was done.

I don't mean to argue, you are likely to be right and much more knowledgeable. I am simply sharing the experience of a new player. Also the amount of butthurt in team chat is amazing

Inspired#3072 posted (#post-125663)

Precisely.
And from what I've seen the best counter to a Corvette is a Corvette, because it can outrun anything else, or will simply avoid it.

Man, but that (best counter to class, its same class itself) is sign that class is broken.

I don't even care if the numbers don't add up and who's OP or not, fact of the matter is that a single Corvette can efectively ruin the fun for all other players, including the rest of their own team.
Considering this is a game that's supposed to deliver some sort of enjoyment it, that's really anti-fun.

Half my games I just randomly die and when I see, oh it was a carvette I just shrug it off cause there is nothing I could have done anyways, even with F2 shields and secondary fire in a best case scenario I can get the vet down to half healkth before I die and it blinks away....

one major problem i'm starting to see with the corvettes is they can fire while cloaked.. WT actual F? just recently played a TE match and all of our healers got taken down within seconds by a cloaked corvette with 100% absorbing shields activated.. artillery cloak disables as soon as you fire or get hit while this vette is getting hit and dpsing down our TCs all while cloaked.. that in my opinion should NOT be a thing.. as soon as you fire your cloak needs to go away and start its cooldown.. Oh and you can't even tag them for the rest of the team to see where the threat is while cloaked.. once again WT actual F?

RavynKnight#4919 posted (#post-125673)

one major problem i'm starting to see with the corvettes is they can fire while cloaked.. WT actual F? just recently played a TE match and all of our healers got taken down within seconds by a cloaked corvette with 100% absorbing shields activated.. artillery cloak disables as soon as you fire or get hit while this vette is getting hit and dpsing down our TCs all while cloaked.. that in my opinion should NOT be a thing.. as soon as you fire your cloak needs to go away and start its cooldown.. Oh and you can't even tag them for the rest of the team to see where the threat is while cloaked.. once again WT actual F?

Heavy cloak is the only corvette cloak that does not break except when cancelled or disrupted/purged; the downside of it is that the corvette takes increased damage when hit. It's not available below T4, and is not especially easy to get to, making it a relatively rare module to see in game... although I suppose that, with more players grinding out T4 ships, it is inevitable that more heavy cloaks come out. They are usually dropped in favor of warps by the more skilled players, so if you are able to pop the cloak with disruption, they will probably panic and not put up much of a fight.

By the way, how could you tell shields were activated? Cloaking hides the ships' status o.o

Precisely.
And from what I've seen the best counter to a Corvette is a Corvette, because it can outrun anything else, or will simply avoid it.

The answer to the outrunning problem is simple: let the corvette come to you. Use convenient artillery cruisers as bait; they come in looking for an easy kill, and instead get served an amplified nuke mine to the face. It's hilarious.

Lymceh#8349 posted (#post-125679)

RavynKnight#4919 posted (#post-125673)

one major problem i'm starting to see with the corvettes is they can fire while cloaked.. WT actual F? just recently played a TE match and all of our healers got taken down within seconds by a cloaked corvette with 100% absorbing shields activated.. artillery cloak disables as soon as you fire or get hit while this vette is getting hit and dpsing down our TCs all while cloaked.. that in my opinion should NOT be a thing.. as soon as you fire your cloak needs to go away and start its cooldown.. Oh and you can't even tag them for the rest of the team to see where the threat is while cloaked.. once again WT actual F?

Heavy cloak is the only corvette cloak that does not break except when cancelled or disrupted/purged; the downside of it is that the corvette takes increased damage when hit. It's not available below T4, and is not especially easy to get to, making it a relatively rare module to see in game... although I suppose that, with more players grinding out T4 ships, it is inevitable that more heavy cloaks come out. They are usually dropped in favor of warps by the more skilled players, so if you are able to pop the cloak with disruption, they will probably panic and not put up much of a fight.
Please keep in mind that i am an advocate of not taking out the corvette and that its not really "OP" i have swatted many corvettes down with my broadsides and repeaters and i am by no means a corvette player as its not my playstyle (I did try though and confirmed by T3 that it is in fact not my preferred playstyle)

i can understand that the heavy cloak is hard to come by but thats no excuse for it being the way it is as in being able to fire or use shields while cloaked.. and i totally understand it not being visible on radar or being able to call it out to your other team mates while cloaked.. thats what a cloak is for after all stealth.. but it would make more sense in that heavy cloak should:

A.) drain the energy slightly or prevent energy recharge until the cloak timer stops and starts the cooldown or the cloak shuts off when energy is empty which ever comes first to maintain the cloak while firing which also limits the use of shields while cloaked..

OR

B.) have the shields do only 80% 90% damage reduction while cloak is activated not the full 100%

those make sense to me as reasonable downsides.. the damage resistance debuff i didn't know about but that makes sense and makes me relieved that there is a downside to it.. however i would be 100% okay with taking out that debuff in favor of option A or option B instead..

By the way, how could you tell shields were activated? Cloaking hides the ships' status o.o

by the angry shooting corvette shaped "empty" shield bubble 200m away from our TCs..