I started playing about a month and a half ago with a friend, we've both stopped playing. I have 4 Tier 4 ships and more or less every game runs the same. Either we steam roll the enemy, or we get steam rolled. Having T3s and low level players on your team up against T4 level 50s is pretty much an auto-lose, without getting into what happens when you hit a premade. I can have what seems like a decent game but come out of it with only 2k xp. When I need 55k for a useful module that's 28 games for a single module when you need 17 for a T5 ship (that's 476 games btw). Not to mention that required OBs are spread out around a profuse collection of ships, many of which I don't want to play and getting 300xp per game just for having them in fleet means I'm not getting those without even more grinding.

I actually like the game. However, after many, many weeks of playing almost exclusively the enjoyment has gone, I see more and more of the flaws in the game and, honestly, it's just not worth my time grinding that much stuff when all I want to do is play my Dreadnought.

Part of the issue is trying to co-ordinate with Pubs. Obviously I can kit out my ships with a utility loadout and a more "damage" loadout, or a cross of the two and pick which one I want to spawn in at the start of the game. But, even if I do take the Tartarus and use it appropriately, my team either has to spot that it's being used, or I've got to type into the chat, which, I am sure you will agree is not a very quick or responsive way of doing it. You can tell them at the beginning of the game that you have it and hope they play off that, or you tell them when you're firing it and watch the Tac Cruiser drop out of LoS before you can fire because you're still typing to tell the team that you're launching it.

Yes, there are counters, I've been the potato in that heal ball before and I've only unlocked one module so far and not got AS yet, and you're right, some players just do not adapt, but there are also issues, that I don't think anyone can deny, that revolve around a huge difference between T3 and T4 ships, where, if your team is in majority T3s even a smattering of one or two T4s, even just a single potato can shut down a team and they don't have any effective counters because of the disparity in power levels.

I'd like it where when you buy a decal it's not just for that ship line.... I spent 125g (which isn't easy to come by without forking out real cash) for the Bounty Hunter Guild decal and then tried to apply it to all my Hangar. I was shocked that I couldn't. Luckily I bought it on my Gravis and can apply it to my Lorica which is what I'm playing for the most part but not having it across all my fleet seems...... greedy.

Yup, it's like the giant icon on an enemy command ship is missing on their screen as they sit at the back of the map waiting for the enemy to come to them....

Also, suicidal Corvettes that don't change ship. I've lost so many TDM games where over half the deaths are down to 1 or 2 Corvettes that keep diving into the middle of the enemy team feeding kill after kill and losing us the game. But I take it they don't care about winning at all as long as they grind that XP little by little to buy mods or whatever.

Had a game last night, I think my friend and I, in party, were the only people above level 20 on the team. Certainly we were the only two people in T4 ships. The enemy team was 6/8 in T4s with multiple level 50 players. It was a slaughter. The entire team could focus a single enemy ship and the health bar just wouldn't move. The T3s on our team got picked off, my (admittedly still stock) potato just couldn't prevent enough damage even with pods and beam amplifier against the damage spread about, even if the enemy weren't focussing all on one target.

It felt like a waste of time to even be in that game. Luckily however, I have to admit that this experience isnt' the norm. However, matchmaking does seem very hit and miss. There aren't many consistently close games which are the ones that really are enjoyable.

As a new player I can see several things that would put off new players. These are things I've accepted and decided to just live with to get on with things and get myself up there in terms of ships, their modules and OBs. I definitely think this game has potential, I enjoy it, otherwise I'd not be wasting my time with it. I don't think it needs a huge amount of work to be really good.

I'll back up FooJub some here too. The amount of times I get wrecked by a heavy cloak corvette that can alpha me before I have time to react. While I know that some of this is down to me being new and still having to learn what I am doing. On the whole, the biggest help to a heal ball is the rest of the team. Because healing beams require the healer to have a laser focus, pun intended, you can't always be off looking around for threats to you. You need your team to do that to protect you. If they do a lousy job of it then it's easy to get rekt by a flanking warp destroyer or those cloaked corvettes.

I'm sure that my self defence will get better as I unlock modules but the healer themselves is only so much of an issue, it's proper support by the rest of the team that really turns them into something amazing, as it should do.

THis isn't unusual in my experience, even without squadding.

As a newer player myself (unlocked my first two stock T4s yesterday) I fully understand how frustrating it can be to be matched up against level 50 players in maxed T4s and feel completely helpless against them. It's even worse when you can see them in a Discord voice group and know that they're teaming up. Now, there's nothing to stop you from doing the same but you shouldn't have to do that to win.

I play with a friend and we committed to grinding out Veteran (we didn't buy any founders packs either, just some Elite status days) and, while it was horrible at first and it still can be (thinking about you 4 man level 50 T4 corvette spam team) it does actually get better. It took a lot of games (I'm at over 170 now) but you start to figure out the ships, you unlock some modules, find something that you enjoy playing (I really love my Gravis which is now a Lorica) and figure out the loadouts that work for you.

It's absolutely demoralising to play a game where you walk away with under 1k XP when you need at least 10 times that just to unlock one of the cheaper end modules and it's even worse when you look at how spread out all of the officer briefings are (I need Retaliator for my Dreadnought which means grinding through a T3 Destroyer and then two T4 modules on the next ship) so that's a huge amount of playing a ship/class that I'm not really interested in, just to get something that's more or less mandatory for something I DO want to play.

What you have to do unfortuneatly is be prepared to eat those losses. See if there's something that you can learn from them. Yes, sometimes there won't be much because you got ROFLstomped by a T4 group and it feels like you're shooting nothing but spit wads at them. But, once you start unlocking some modules, figure out your play style and get a ship you really enjoy playing... there is still fun to be had here.

I just unlocked my potato, second game in, over 900k healing done with stock loadout. We had one other healer who kept bumping into me and blocking my line of sight for the healing beam too.

Need to keep your head on a swivel for Corvettes or flanking destroyers, but, if your team protects you, you're a very valuable asset. Although I've been in games where the healers just don't keep pace with the tanking dreadnoughts so your initiation is weak. You've got the heals but they're hidden behind a hill where the team spawned healing each other rather than helping to push/put pressure on the enemy.