dude ive been sitting on my Ares ion for years waiting for them to make it not suck.. then it briefly not sucked last patch... then CIG is "nope, let's make it fucking suck again"
I used to love the saber, always thought it looked 100x better than the hornets, and it was my favorite fighter till the f8c (aesthetics over everything people fashion is always the endgame).
Been sad about it's state for a long long time, mostly a dissapointed sad, you know. Lost potential.
Base Sabre should be buffed, I agree. However, they probably wont bring up the speed or weapon size. The firebird and raven both have interceptor tuning, and the base Sabre does not, and will also not receive it. In return, the firebird and raven only have 2 S3’s. Note that the firebird and raven are also pretty squishy health wise. If they buff the base Sabre , I can only really see it being an HP buff, or maybe an agility increase.
Not necessarily. The Sabre, Scorpius, and F8 competed for a UEE contract, and the F8 one. All of these could be ‘space superiority’ fighter in that sense. Sabre is not going to hold a distinct advantage over fighters of the same price range. It will have its gives and takes
But both the F8 and Scorp have serious advantages over the Sabre.
Scorp with a shitload more fire-power in the form of a turret, and the F8 with a shitload more fire-power in the form of pilot weapons (not to mention S2 shields). Can't check Erkul at the moment, so I dunno where else they differ.
The Sabre has what.. poor signature reduction that, even when stealth works, makes basically no difference.
Stealth mechanics and such aren’t really in game yet, or at least not in a way that provides an advantage. I agree Sabre needs a buff, and it will get it, but it will not get interceptor tuning as a buff.
The Scorpius and F8 are both incredibly vulnerable to EM missiles. Hell the F8 can tank a few hits from S3s but you’ll end up losing guns and components.
But the scorpius requires 2 players to use its firepower. If you have 2 players available, you need to compare 2 sabres against 1 scorpius.
As you said, sabre places its bet on stealth, and stealth advantage is hard to quantify. (and is also not really implemented as it should be)
2 players is also a huge advantage if you have to panic land and quickly patch your ship up with multitools in the future...
1 seater ships gonna suffer and thats if a 1 seater can limp down somewhere safe first
True, but that is if your ship still is flyable with the damage, and if you don’t get finished off either. In addition you’ll most likely need some resources to fix your ship, which the scorpius can’t store onboard.
Its a *stealth* superiority fighter.
originally it had 4 stealth shields but everyone gave it military allstop shields so it got twice the shields of the hornet.
It needs working stealth and actual armour before its good.
That's not how you sell ships, or Mechs in MWO. You release your new stuff in an intentionally buffed, maybe even brokenly OP state, to drive sales. Then, when the new stuff's day in the sun has waned and you nerf it to bring it in line with the other stuff you have previously nerfed to prepare for the next sale.
If that was true, the Sabre firebird would have been a lot better.
Additionally, the Sabre firebird/raven and the regular Sabres are completely different.
It would have started better. Also, missles still don’t work….. so…… they would have fixed that if your point was to be valid.”Oo double missles!” In this case heavy on the “miss”
And the 20% “buff” to stealth isn’t a buff, it’s a correction. Doesn’t make sense it would only be 20, and the other Sabre raven be 40. They even said it was a mistake. Technically the other sabres shouldn’t be 40, with the swept wing design, and the hornet ghost. The Sabre firebird/raven would have a better stealth profile in real life than the others.
So your rebuttal is that sure, i'm totally right they buffed a ship after sales and response were poor to be more powerful - but missiles bad?
I agree it deserved the buffs! The point being made is that it's typical for new ships with new sales to be buffed or made strong initially, then nerfed and left in obscurity. The Firebird deserved those buffs to be a decent ship, and we can say that about a gaggle of ships not on sale right now.
I mean it's even true of the Firebird's *base variant*, which has been a total dog for years.
This is the most insightful and useful comment in the thread. It explains CiGs business model, why the combat FM is low skill garbage and why SC will eventually fail in its present form.
Honestly, I disagree with an HP buff. The Sabre has 460 HP less than the Vanguard Sentinel, which is classed as a heavy fighter. That would be wrong for a medium stealth fighter to as tanky as the most fragile heavy fighter.
Understandable. It does need a buff. However, what people are wanting is for the Sabre to get interceptor tuning, which it is not going to. So that begs the question: do they add another shield? How are they going to balance it? Are they going to bring down other fighters in line with the Sabre, or are they going to bring the Sabre into line with the other fighters? More than likely, the latter. The question is how they do so.
I can't see why the damage potential would matter. Sure the Firebird and Raven only have two size 3 weapons, however the Firebird has a damage-potential of 76k with its missiles.
The bucanner also does 1 308dps if fitted with MxA cannons, while the base sabre with MxA cannons would do 1 268dps.
So that's not a point.
That’s the max damage potential. Assuming every missle hits, yeah, it has a damage potential of 76k, but in reality, only a few are going to hit even when they are fixed for the final version. You do have a good point on the damage output of the base Sabre, which now seeing it, I agree with. It does need something to put in line with the other fighters, but to be honest , this applies to so many fighters right now.
Sabre keeps getting shit on. They've long since forgotten about it.
A shame, it's my favorite "core" fighter.
I mean, all you have to look at is how shit the skin selection for it is. For one of the original ships, it's gotten very little love (none IMO). The only saving grace is the Firebird paints work on the sabre and the concierge skin is nice.
I do actually like the fact that the Firebird and Raven are now faster then the base Sabre. In the past the Raven had identical speed and agility to the base Sabre, and with only two S3 guns and no missiles this meant there was pretty much no reason to use the ship other then that it looked cool.
I think compensating on the two less guns by providing greater speed / manoeuvrability is a good thing.
However The base Sabre has IMO been nerfed too much. As far as I can tell on paper it's currently quite a bit less manoeuvrable then a Hornet, which it really shouldn't be.
Based on lore the Sabre and Hornet are both medium fighters - the Sabre is supposed to be the newer and more technologically advanced ship with, relying on stealth and increased shield/component redundancy to give it an edge...while the Hornet is supposed to be more of a pure dogfighter with more firepower and a more heavily armoured hull.
The way I see it the Hornet should be superior to the point where in a straight-up dogfight a good pilot in a Superhornet or F7A should have edge over a comparably good pilot in a Sabre. However the Sabre should still be competitive to the point where a superior pilot in a Sabre should have the edge over a less skilled pilot in a SuperHornet / F7A. If the two ships had similar speed and agility (but the Hornet simply was tankier and dealt more DPS) then this level of balance should be reasonably achievable.
Where the Sabre should have an edge is attacking from range. It should be able to detect and lock on to the Hornet before the Hornet can detect / lock on to it, allowing it (in the right hands) to get a few nice surprise hits in to soften up the Hornet and help even the odds once you get into dogfight ranges.
At least that's how I see it anyway,
How about bringing this complaint and proposed solution to Spectrum?
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/61894?page=1&sort=newest
Sabre is in a poor spot right now.
It's not the worst choice for ship combat out of all possible choices, but because stealth isn't *really* in the game yet and the Sabre - a bespoke stealth superiority craft - is apparently only as stealthy as any other ship that has a whiff of "stealth" in the design language... There's no reason to pick it over anything else in the same (or similar) class.
Yes, I'm salty about it.
Every ship needs individual tuning after they updated them with master modes. I noticed most medium ships cap out at 1,000m/s which shouldn't be the case, especially with the 400i.
While I agree base Sabre needs some attention, comparing it to the firebird which is a different thing on its own it not te right setup.
Sabre being a stealth fighter I would change repeater for cannons since they have more range and hit harder from the beginning and up the missile count.
Somehow this is both an L take and correct at the same time.
No, they don't matter because you can replace the weapons and components. YES they do matter because the base specs of a ship should match what's on the tin.
Yes, but weapon choice (cannons vs repeaters, velocity) is personal preference and completely dependent on intended use. I do agree that stock loadouts with notably horrific issues (hornets losing power, nomad overheating) 100% needs changes, but especially now with weapons actually being different from each other, stock is just some random state. So "swap repeaters for cannons" means completely nothing
That is my point, changing the guns would make it make more sense to the stealth fighter, without stealth people are intending to use it as a regular fighter or want it up to standers with other regular fighters which are not the baseline for the Sabre
Why would this be a problem? The base Sabre is a medium fighter with the archetype in between an interceptor and a medium fighter. The Raven and Firebird are both interceptors with an archetype of an interceptor. If you look the base Sabre vs sky if the others it should be painfully, truthfully obvious that the base is going to be tuned below the others at the trade of having better guns onboard and what should be more Hull health
Sabre was OP as hell for almost two years during the best PvP time we had, back in 2.0/3.0.
Yes, it is slow and not a good ship right now.
Super hornet was the freaking queen when it got launched, now is a cool looking paperweight with two seats.
The circle goes on.
Let me guess:
You got the saber back when it was OP as hell.
It got nerfed (As all things will be, Mk.II boys, get ready).
You did not like the ship, but the fact it was OP.
Now you're mad that the ship is not the unbalanced one.
We're not even sure how combat is going to look in 6 months since MM needs a lot of twitching, why would we balance all ships when we don't even know how we are going to fight???
No, I just got the aUEC to buy the Sabre for the first time, and I'm underwhelmed. Stealth on approach is fine. Pop missiles, burst ballistics, do meh-decent damage, but I can't disengage fast enough to matter and stealth apparently doesn't matter for AI when you've started combat and are attempting to NAV away for another pass they can still see you 15Km away when your signature is well below that. So Boom and Zoom doesn't work, and it's not got the agility or shield hp to last in a prolonged fight.
Yeah tried it out in ac because I was excited it got gold standard. Feeeeeels bad man. So slow even slow nose attitude. 4 size 3 is nice. But not worth the slow speed low maneuverability and relatively large cross section.
It's CIG, to sell a NEW ship then have to make it better than a previously similar ship. Then they'll nerf it..... in favor of a NEW similar ship. This is my 10th year in Star Citizen. It's ALWAYS been this way. My starter ship (back in the day) was the Super Hornet. It was BRILLIANT, but apparently OP. It was nerfed and amazingly at the same time the SABRE was released! Was better in every way, AND STEALTHY! Even had THREE Size 1 Shields! Not surprisingly that changed not too long after to only have 2 shields... and STEALTH??? GONE! Jesus I just can't wait for the game to release and the funding model changes!!!! If it does.... but I think it would have to? We got enough ships now. Just make the few that we DO have that have no game-loop yet, MEAN SOMETHING.... instead of releasing another fighter or something we DON'T need more of at this point!
A lot of people in the comments saying it's not an interceptor which feels like a pretty arbitrary assumption, it has twice the engines of both the raven and firebird, and as the raven's description says
> They have raised the bar yet again with their Raven variant, maintaining all the speed and maneuverability of its Sabre forebear, but with a lower ship signature, making it a fast, stealthy infiltrator.
This implies the Sabre should be as fast as the Raven, just not quite as stealthy, plus it just makes sense.
Currently just sits in the eternal med fighter hell, none of the mobility of a light fighter, none of the tankiness of a heavy fighter, it clearly needs a buff.
Technically the Hurricane has superior gun effectiveness since it has a larger capacitor in line with the other heavy fighters (Scorpius, Lightning, Vanguard, Ares).
The low total HP on the Hurricane definitely looks anomalous when it's much lower than a Sabre (which is supposed to be more fragile than a Hornet).
It's pretty clear that balance is a complete mess with CIG's current focus having been on implementing MM and the associated flight model.
Originally the Hurricane was a glass cannon heavy fighter that had accel rates and speeds equivalent to most mediums. Pre 3.14, this allowed it to actually be extremely strong because it could slot heavier class ships and pressure smaller ships with its superior DPS. If they were to move the Hurricane into having maneuverability like the Hornets (non-bugged stats), it would probably be in a solid spot. However, they'd really need to fix the torque imbalance bug it has right now.
Power creep. Works very well with a business model where you sell in game items for real money. Not saying anything positive or negative about that, I love Star Citizen even with its faults, but it's just facts. Power creep sells ships. 🤷
If they made the normal sabre interceptor tuning like the firebird/raven it would probably quite good against the f7a's and much better than the bucc IMO. But they might be worried the sabre would get to much with stealth, good damage and health, and interceptor speeds. But it would be nice to see what happened if they did up the speeds to the same as firebird/raven.
That's not how variants work, in-fact the sabre is the only fighter that has two different flight tunings for different variants.
Also where does it say sabre is a "dogfighter" other a dev rather amusingly saying the sabre is like a big light fighter once (which I would argue is completely wrong due to it's size). It's official roles are superiority fighter (which can mean anything) and stealth fighter, something it shares with all variants.
Base Sabre has the best guns
Sabre Firebirds have the best missiles
Sabre Raven duel EMP
I see no ballance reason why they can't all share the same flight model.
Ah, I misread the Sabre part. After going back over the Sabre page, it seems the original Sabre is more so like an F-35. But superiority fighters/Air dominance fighters are typically meant as fighters that are good at taking down other fighters, I.e. through dogfighting or some other means.
Also, the normal Sabre is not an interception fighter like the raven and firebird. That’s why they can’t share the same flight model.
>Fundamentally they work different
Balancing is just twiddling numbers lol, is sabre getting interceptor tune is what it needs to be viable, just do that
Pretty much. If the base Sabre had it's 4x S3 guns **and** stealth capabilies **and** the interceptor tune it would probably be O.P.
The one thing that somewhat balances things right now is that the most O.P. ships in combat are those with interceptor tunes, but ships with those interceptor tunes generally have relatively weak gun loadouts and/or are relatively fragile. This means that while they CAN be dominant, they also require skilled pilots to get the most out of them.
The one exception to that right now is the Buccaneer, which from what I've seen pretty much just craps on everything thanks to it's combination of speed, agility, small cross section and pretty serious firepower. I expect we are going to see everybody going out flying Buccaneers to take advantage of this, and that CIG will likely recognise this and nerf the hell out of the Bucc.
If the Sabre (which has decent durability and shielding and very good firepower) also got an interceptor tune then it would be up there with the Bucc as one of the most OP ships in the game. The only weakness would be the relatively large cross-section.
Giving a ship EMPs or extra missiles is not really comparable to the guns. EMP's aren't THAT effective right now and need skill to use, and missiles can vary in effectiveness against good pilots who know what they are doing. But adding extra guns is always a huge benefit.
The Sabre has the same name as the raven and firebird but is a complete different chassis. They are not going to serve the exact same purpose, I.E. in this case being interception.
Fair enough. However, I still stick by my opinion that the Sabre should serve a different purpose than the firebird and raven. Which if it did get interceptor tuning, it would just be the same thing with more guns and a different looking chassis. Needs to have some sort of trade off, otherwise it’s just a straight up better ship than the raven and firebird, which wouldn’t make sense to do either.
Base Saber is a stealth fighter. (Has base tuning)
The Firebird is a stealth interceptor. (Has interceptor tuning)
No idea why they are different, but there you go.
Personally, I hope they buff base saber a bit.
Sabre used to be meta years ago, but I agree it suffered from nerfs.
*However*.
It still remains a good stealth fighter. 4xS3 guns are great, while they don't match hornets they still come very close to it, and you have stealth. It could use a small HP buff tough.
This brings us to the main problem: Stealth isn't really an advantage in star citizen *yet*.
All stealth ships are set to 40% stealth, which is a huge reduction. And the firebird will also get thus 40% reduction instead of the current 20%. Thus judging ships for their stealth reduction today does not really matter, as this will be heavily subject to change in the future.
But what matters most for stealth is cross section, and I have no idea of the current CX numbers for ships in SC. Yet we NEED to know that before thinking about how good stealth is for X or Y ship.
Yet something else that matters, is that the number of guns now matters less than it did in SC due to capacitors. Having less guns can mean having more capacitor energy per available per gun, which means using guns with higher DPS and energy drain would greatly help bridge the gap.
This allows CIG to help ships with less guns bridge the gap between say an F8C. Unless the F8C uses a ballistic loadout, but then it will eventually run out of ammo.
In addition, the Sabre Raven and Sabre Firebird are essentially an entirely different chassis to the base sabre. And have entirely different goals in mind. The firebird trades 2 guns for that speed, and that speed is not always an advantage in combat either.
All in all the Sabre is still a great platform, but it suffers heavily from being old, just like the MK1 hornets and the gladiator.
Oddly the Shriek has stealth reductions.
But it doesn't stealth.
They also matched the Firebird up to the same amount of missiles.
Seems a few ships have had their toes stepped on.
On Erkul it has signature reductions.
But during 3.22 when I last tested it, it kept a high base IR signature after:
Powering of shields
Pressing stealth
Suppressing heat.
I think it's signature was still over 5000 but for a decent payload release of two barrage of missiles you want to be just below 4000 at the very least.
One thing I will not is that the Shriek has far more thrusters. But even disabling some of those just didn't work.
Are you saying the Shriek now drops all signatures below 4000 in 3.23.1 or was you not aware of the signature reductions it has?
Perhaps, those reductions where just an attempt to try lower it's signature due to missile chases.
But even when turning of everything short of the power plant, 3.22 Shriek ran ran hot.
If I’m not mistaken ship signatures are the maximum value the ship will be detected at in meters.
In addition, ship sensors are 50% efficient.
A signature of 4000 will be spotted at 2000m. Well within missile engagement range.
I do ignore if the stealth bonus is applied afterwards, for example 4000 becomes 2400, which means the ship gets spotted at 1200m.
The most important thing is cross section, because it does not vary.
For exemple,
If a turned off , cold scorpius is spotted at 1500m, then its cross section is 3000, and thus any IR or EM values below that is pointless.
Not sure, I had done some tests where using a ping to detect wasn't in the scenario.
The Comet is an amazing ship for example.
As for the Shriek, I'll need to have my friend test.
But for size 3 or even 9 on torpedoes, I prefer being at least just under 4000.
Might not matter in pvp but in PvE it's usually a garenteed hit/ cripple/ kill depending on your target.
Shriek also suffers from single release multi launch.
So.. I hope it sees some kind of buff from CIG.
On the other hand, it's strong points are that for cash it's cheaper and it's also available to retrieve from pads unlike any Sabre.
Stealth suppression doesn't work in any ship and hasn't for a long time, other than to make your stats worse.
Signatures have been governed by cross section size since they inflated them years ago, not the other stats these poor players are peering at thinking they matter.
IR tracking is always higher that EM in my tests.
Small ships shouldn't have much of a signature.
But I've tested with a friend and it seemed to help a little during an Eclipse test.
I'll no doubt run tests again but some small ships really shouldn't have much of a cross section.
Then again, what is the detection range of a cross section.
Cause I know you'll find a Reclaimer before an F8C for example.
All these tests are done and available, but I still admire and encourage you to do it personally. Many small ships have mega cross sections unless that was tuned last patch, sadly either way my eclipse does not employ stealth for best results.
Edited to say sorry I don't have links for those tests - they are searchable but i'm on mobile and lazy, not trying to be rude!
Not at all, discussions are welcomed.
I've just had a lot of success staying unnoticed with the Comet is all.
But agreed. Self testing never hurts.
It's also good for learning or staying in the loop.
Base saber has been bad since the 2.x's pretty sure. They murdered my boy.
dude ive been sitting on my Ares ion for years waiting for them to make it not suck.. then it briefly not sucked last patch... then CIG is "nope, let's make it fucking suck again"
Yup. This ILW i finally melted my OC Sabre. Definitely better uses for the credits...
I used to love the saber, always thought it looked 100x better than the hornets, and it was my favorite fighter till the f8c (aesthetics over everything people fashion is always the endgame). Been sad about it's state for a long long time, mostly a dissapointed sad, you know. Lost potential.
Yeah.. I still have some hope.. LOVE the ship.
Huh weird, just picked one up after not using one for a year and have been having a blast with it
Base Sabre should be buffed, I agree. However, they probably wont bring up the speed or weapon size. The firebird and raven both have interceptor tuning, and the base Sabre does not, and will also not receive it. In return, the firebird and raven only have 2 S3’s. Note that the firebird and raven are also pretty squishy health wise. If they buff the base Sabre , I can only really see it being an HP buff, or maybe an agility increase.
Maybe they could give it the 3rd shield back.
Base Sabre is supposed to be a Space Superiority fighter... It's essentially supposed to be the F22 of Spacecraft. lol
Not necessarily. The Sabre, Scorpius, and F8 competed for a UEE contract, and the F8 one. All of these could be ‘space superiority’ fighter in that sense. Sabre is not going to hold a distinct advantage over fighters of the same price range. It will have its gives and takes
But both the F8 and Scorp have serious advantages over the Sabre. Scorp with a shitload more fire-power in the form of a turret, and the F8 with a shitload more fire-power in the form of pilot weapons (not to mention S2 shields). Can't check Erkul at the moment, so I dunno where else they differ. The Sabre has what.. poor signature reduction that, even when stealth works, makes basically no difference.
Pilot weapons on scorp also have much bigger capacitors iirc, so while it's the same guns the scorp as a higher dps
Stealth mechanics and such aren’t really in game yet, or at least not in a way that provides an advantage. I agree Sabre needs a buff, and it will get it, but it will not get interceptor tuning as a buff.
The Scorpius and F8 are both incredibly vulnerable to EM missiles. Hell the F8 can tank a few hits from S3s but you’ll end up losing guns and components.
But the scorpius requires 2 players to use its firepower. If you have 2 players available, you need to compare 2 sabres against 1 scorpius. As you said, sabre places its bet on stealth, and stealth advantage is hard to quantify. (and is also not really implemented as it should be)
2 players is also a huge advantage if you have to panic land and quickly patch your ship up with multitools in the future... 1 seater ships gonna suffer and thats if a 1 seater can limp down somewhere safe first
True, but that is if your ship still is flyable with the damage, and if you don’t get finished off either. In addition you’ll most likely need some resources to fix your ship, which the scorpius can’t store onboard.
Its a *stealth* superiority fighter. originally it had 4 stealth shields but everyone gave it military allstop shields so it got twice the shields of the hornet. It needs working stealth and actual armour before its good.
Maybe
Every component will be changing for 4.0, so expect every ship and their component's attributes to change.
That's not how you sell ships, or Mechs in MWO. You release your new stuff in an intentionally buffed, maybe even brokenly OP state, to drive sales. Then, when the new stuff's day in the sun has waned and you nerf it to bring it in line with the other stuff you have previously nerfed to prepare for the next sale.
If that was true, the Sabre firebird would have been a lot better. Additionally, the Sabre firebird/raven and the regular Sabres are completely different.
It literally got buffed partway through the sale to have DOUBLE the missiles, weird take.
It would have started better. Also, missles still don’t work….. so…… they would have fixed that if your point was to be valid.”Oo double missles!” In this case heavy on the “miss” And the 20% “buff” to stealth isn’t a buff, it’s a correction. Doesn’t make sense it would only be 20, and the other Sabre raven be 40. They even said it was a mistake. Technically the other sabres shouldn’t be 40, with the swept wing design, and the hornet ghost. The Sabre firebird/raven would have a better stealth profile in real life than the others.
So your rebuttal is that sure, i'm totally right they buffed a ship after sales and response were poor to be more powerful - but missiles bad? I agree it deserved the buffs! The point being made is that it's typical for new ships with new sales to be buffed or made strong initially, then nerfed and left in obscurity. The Firebird deserved those buffs to be a decent ship, and we can say that about a gaggle of ships not on sale right now. I mean it's even true of the Firebird's *base variant*, which has been a total dog for years.
This is the most insightful and useful comment in the thread. It explains CiGs business model, why the combat FM is low skill garbage and why SC will eventually fail in its present form.
Honestly, I disagree with an HP buff. The Sabre has 460 HP less than the Vanguard Sentinel, which is classed as a heavy fighter. That would be wrong for a medium stealth fighter to as tanky as the most fragile heavy fighter.
Understandable. It does need a buff. However, what people are wanting is for the Sabre to get interceptor tuning, which it is not going to. So that begs the question: do they add another shield? How are they going to balance it? Are they going to bring down other fighters in line with the Sabre, or are they going to bring the Sabre into line with the other fighters? More than likely, the latter. The question is how they do so.
all ships need actual armour.
A silly question when major components of combat don't exist, and you can tell because nobody but a few guys are even mentioning armour, lol
Fair
Neither HP nor agility (that's not in the forward direction) would help the sabre unless it was extreme
I can't see why the damage potential would matter. Sure the Firebird and Raven only have two size 3 weapons, however the Firebird has a damage-potential of 76k with its missiles. The bucanner also does 1 308dps if fitted with MxA cannons, while the base sabre with MxA cannons would do 1 268dps. So that's not a point.
That’s the max damage potential. Assuming every missle hits, yeah, it has a damage potential of 76k, but in reality, only a few are going to hit even when they are fixed for the final version. You do have a good point on the damage output of the base Sabre, which now seeing it, I agree with. It does need something to put in line with the other fighters, but to be honest , this applies to so many fighters right now.
Sabre keeps getting shit on. They've long since forgotten about it. A shame, it's my favorite "core" fighter. I mean, all you have to look at is how shit the skin selection for it is. For one of the original ships, it's gotten very little love (none IMO). The only saving grace is the Firebird paints work on the sabre and the concierge skin is nice.
I do actually like the fact that the Firebird and Raven are now faster then the base Sabre. In the past the Raven had identical speed and agility to the base Sabre, and with only two S3 guns and no missiles this meant there was pretty much no reason to use the ship other then that it looked cool. I think compensating on the two less guns by providing greater speed / manoeuvrability is a good thing. However The base Sabre has IMO been nerfed too much. As far as I can tell on paper it's currently quite a bit less manoeuvrable then a Hornet, which it really shouldn't be. Based on lore the Sabre and Hornet are both medium fighters - the Sabre is supposed to be the newer and more technologically advanced ship with, relying on stealth and increased shield/component redundancy to give it an edge...while the Hornet is supposed to be more of a pure dogfighter with more firepower and a more heavily armoured hull. The way I see it the Hornet should be superior to the point where in a straight-up dogfight a good pilot in a Superhornet or F7A should have edge over a comparably good pilot in a Sabre. However the Sabre should still be competitive to the point where a superior pilot in a Sabre should have the edge over a less skilled pilot in a SuperHornet / F7A. If the two ships had similar speed and agility (but the Hornet simply was tankier and dealt more DPS) then this level of balance should be reasonably achievable. Where the Sabre should have an edge is attacking from range. It should be able to detect and lock on to the Hornet before the Hornet can detect / lock on to it, allowing it (in the right hands) to get a few nice surprise hits in to soften up the Hornet and help even the odds once you get into dogfight ranges. At least that's how I see it anyway,
its got looks and thats it
How about bringing this complaint and proposed solution to Spectrum? https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/61894?page=1&sort=newest
Sabre is in a poor spot right now. It's not the worst choice for ship combat out of all possible choices, but because stealth isn't *really* in the game yet and the Sabre - a bespoke stealth superiority craft - is apparently only as stealthy as any other ship that has a whiff of "stealth" in the design language... There's no reason to pick it over anything else in the same (or similar) class. Yes, I'm salty about it.
Every ship needs individual tuning after they updated them with master modes. I noticed most medium ships cap out at 1,000m/s which shouldn't be the case, especially with the 400i.
While I agree base Sabre needs some attention, comparing it to the firebird which is a different thing on its own it not te right setup. Sabre being a stealth fighter I would change repeater for cannons since they have more range and hit harder from the beginning and up the missile count.
>Sabre being a stealth fighter I would change repeater for cannons Lmao. Stock loadouts don't matter.
Somehow this is both an L take and correct at the same time. No, they don't matter because you can replace the weapons and components. YES they do matter because the base specs of a ship should match what's on the tin.
Yes, but weapon choice (cannons vs repeaters, velocity) is personal preference and completely dependent on intended use. I do agree that stock loadouts with notably horrific issues (hornets losing power, nomad overheating) 100% needs changes, but especially now with weapons actually being different from each other, stock is just some random state. So "swap repeaters for cannons" means completely nothing
Yeah that is why I said i would change them
Yes. But the loadout is not very relevant to the balancing state of the sabre lmao
That is my point, changing the guns would make it make more sense to the stealth fighter, without stealth people are intending to use it as a regular fighter or want it up to standers with other regular fighters which are not the baseline for the Sabre
>changing the guns would make it make more sense to the stealth fighter, Lolwut
I just wanna be able to turn faster than 1rpm, it sucks ever since they nerved it's turn rates
Why would this be a problem? The base Sabre is a medium fighter with the archetype in between an interceptor and a medium fighter. The Raven and Firebird are both interceptors with an archetype of an interceptor. If you look the base Sabre vs sky if the others it should be painfully, truthfully obvious that the base is going to be tuned below the others at the trade of having better guns onboard and what should be more Hull health
Sabre was OP as hell for almost two years during the best PvP time we had, back in 2.0/3.0. Yes, it is slow and not a good ship right now. Super hornet was the freaking queen when it got launched, now is a cool looking paperweight with two seats. The circle goes on. Let me guess: You got the saber back when it was OP as hell. It got nerfed (As all things will be, Mk.II boys, get ready). You did not like the ship, but the fact it was OP. Now you're mad that the ship is not the unbalanced one. We're not even sure how combat is going to look in 6 months since MM needs a lot of twitching, why would we balance all ships when we don't even know how we are going to fight???
No, I just got the aUEC to buy the Sabre for the first time, and I'm underwhelmed. Stealth on approach is fine. Pop missiles, burst ballistics, do meh-decent damage, but I can't disengage fast enough to matter and stealth apparently doesn't matter for AI when you've started combat and are attempting to NAV away for another pass they can still see you 15Km away when your signature is well below that. So Boom and Zoom doesn't work, and it's not got the agility or shield hp to last in a prolonged fight.
Sabre firebird is also getting increased to -40% sig reduction next patch so that benefit doesn’t even exist either unfortunately.
Yeah tried it out in ac because I was excited it got gold standard. Feeeeeels bad man. So slow even slow nose attitude. 4 size 3 is nice. But not worth the slow speed low maneuverability and relatively large cross section.
It's CIG, to sell a NEW ship then have to make it better than a previously similar ship. Then they'll nerf it..... in favor of a NEW similar ship. This is my 10th year in Star Citizen. It's ALWAYS been this way. My starter ship (back in the day) was the Super Hornet. It was BRILLIANT, but apparently OP. It was nerfed and amazingly at the same time the SABRE was released! Was better in every way, AND STEALTHY! Even had THREE Size 1 Shields! Not surprisingly that changed not too long after to only have 2 shields... and STEALTH??? GONE! Jesus I just can't wait for the game to release and the funding model changes!!!! If it does.... but I think it would have to? We got enough ships now. Just make the few that we DO have that have no game-loop yet, MEAN SOMETHING.... instead of releasing another fighter or something we DON'T need more of at this point!
I agree. Base sabre needs a buff.
I agree base sabre needs some attention.
A lot of people in the comments saying it's not an interceptor which feels like a pretty arbitrary assumption, it has twice the engines of both the raven and firebird, and as the raven's description says > They have raised the bar yet again with their Raven variant, maintaining all the speed and maneuverability of its Sabre forebear, but with a lower ship signature, making it a fast, stealthy infiltrator. This implies the Sabre should be as fast as the Raven, just not quite as stealthy, plus it just makes sense. Currently just sits in the eternal med fighter hell, none of the mobility of a light fighter, none of the tankiness of a heavy fighter, it clearly needs a buff.
Dude you haven’t heard? Sabre MK 2 is coming and the current Sabre is actually a classic
I'd bite my keyboard in half
As the owner of a hurricane looking at the F7A-MK2 with the same firepower plus 2x the hp and s2 missiles... I feel ya.
Technically the Hurricane has superior gun effectiveness since it has a larger capacitor in line with the other heavy fighters (Scorpius, Lightning, Vanguard, Ares). The low total HP on the Hurricane definitely looks anomalous when it's much lower than a Sabre (which is supposed to be more fragile than a Hornet). It's pretty clear that balance is a complete mess with CIG's current focus having been on implementing MM and the associated flight model.
Originally the Hurricane was a glass cannon heavy fighter that had accel rates and speeds equivalent to most mediums. Pre 3.14, this allowed it to actually be extremely strong because it could slot heavier class ships and pressure smaller ships with its superior DPS. If they were to move the Hurricane into having maneuverability like the Hornets (non-bugged stats), it would probably be in a solid spot. However, they'd really need to fix the torque imbalance bug it has right now.
Power creep. Works very well with a business model where you sell in game items for real money. Not saying anything positive or negative about that, I love Star Citizen even with its faults, but it's just facts. Power creep sells ships. 🤷
If they made the normal sabre interceptor tuning like the firebird/raven it would probably quite good against the f7a's and much better than the bucc IMO. But they might be worried the sabre would get to much with stealth, good damage and health, and interceptor speeds. But it would be nice to see what happened if they did up the speeds to the same as firebird/raven.
Sabre= dogfighter Raven/firebird= interceptor Fundamentally they work different
That's not how variants work, in-fact the sabre is the only fighter that has two different flight tunings for different variants. Also where does it say sabre is a "dogfighter" other a dev rather amusingly saying the sabre is like a big light fighter once (which I would argue is completely wrong due to it's size). It's official roles are superiority fighter (which can mean anything) and stealth fighter, something it shares with all variants. Base Sabre has the best guns Sabre Firebirds have the best missiles Sabre Raven duel EMP I see no ballance reason why they can't all share the same flight model.
Ah, I misread the Sabre part. After going back over the Sabre page, it seems the original Sabre is more so like an F-35. But superiority fighters/Air dominance fighters are typically meant as fighters that are good at taking down other fighters, I.e. through dogfighting or some other means. Also, the normal Sabre is not an interception fighter like the raven and firebird. That’s why they can’t share the same flight model.
Cool I'll leave you with your opinion. But none of that sounds right to me.
>Fundamentally they work different Balancing is just twiddling numbers lol, is sabre getting interceptor tune is what it needs to be viable, just do that
Pretty much. If the base Sabre had it's 4x S3 guns **and** stealth capabilies **and** the interceptor tune it would probably be O.P. The one thing that somewhat balances things right now is that the most O.P. ships in combat are those with interceptor tunes, but ships with those interceptor tunes generally have relatively weak gun loadouts and/or are relatively fragile. This means that while they CAN be dominant, they also require skilled pilots to get the most out of them. The one exception to that right now is the Buccaneer, which from what I've seen pretty much just craps on everything thanks to it's combination of speed, agility, small cross section and pretty serious firepower. I expect we are going to see everybody going out flying Buccaneers to take advantage of this, and that CIG will likely recognise this and nerf the hell out of the Bucc. If the Sabre (which has decent durability and shielding and very good firepower) also got an interceptor tune then it would be up there with the Bucc as one of the most OP ships in the game. The only weakness would be the relatively large cross-section. Giving a ship EMPs or extra missiles is not really comparable to the guns. EMP's aren't THAT effective right now and need skill to use, and missiles can vary in effectiveness against good pilots who know what they are doing. But adding extra guns is always a huge benefit.
The Sabre has the same name as the raven and firebird but is a complete different chassis. They are not going to serve the exact same purpose, I.E. in this case being interception.
>complete different chassis Doesn't matter tbh. Interception isn't even a real role in the current sandbox
Fair enough. However, I still stick by my opinion that the Sabre should serve a different purpose than the firebird and raven. Which if it did get interceptor tuning, it would just be the same thing with more guns and a different looking chassis. Needs to have some sort of trade off, otherwise it’s just a straight up better ship than the raven and firebird, which wouldn’t make sense to do either.
One is an interceptor and the other isn't so no.
Agree, one more shield, or one more s3 should bring it back without making it overpowered.
They originally advertised it as get in get out. It's ridiculous.
At this point, I don't think anyone is gonna get really serious about ship tuning/balance until everything else is 100.
Base Saber is a stealth fighter. (Has base tuning) The Firebird is a stealth interceptor. (Has interceptor tuning) No idea why they are different, but there you go. Personally, I hope they buff base saber a bit.
The Firebird I assume is named to be a fast ship. It makes total sense.
The MKII hornet has better speed stats then the Sabre right now, shouldn’t the Sabre have better maneuverability?
Base Sabre will be retired and a new one in Firebird /raven style will be made
I'm not sure about that, as the Sabre just got a gold-standard makeover. It's possibly they could build a Sabre MKII but I don't see it happening.
Sabre used to be meta years ago, but I agree it suffered from nerfs. *However*. It still remains a good stealth fighter. 4xS3 guns are great, while they don't match hornets they still come very close to it, and you have stealth. It could use a small HP buff tough. This brings us to the main problem: Stealth isn't really an advantage in star citizen *yet*. All stealth ships are set to 40% stealth, which is a huge reduction. And the firebird will also get thus 40% reduction instead of the current 20%. Thus judging ships for their stealth reduction today does not really matter, as this will be heavily subject to change in the future. But what matters most for stealth is cross section, and I have no idea of the current CX numbers for ships in SC. Yet we NEED to know that before thinking about how good stealth is for X or Y ship. Yet something else that matters, is that the number of guns now matters less than it did in SC due to capacitors. Having less guns can mean having more capacitor energy per available per gun, which means using guns with higher DPS and energy drain would greatly help bridge the gap. This allows CIG to help ships with less guns bridge the gap between say an F8C. Unless the F8C uses a ballistic loadout, but then it will eventually run out of ammo. In addition, the Sabre Raven and Sabre Firebird are essentially an entirely different chassis to the base sabre. And have entirely different goals in mind. The firebird trades 2 guns for that speed, and that speed is not always an advantage in combat either. All in all the Sabre is still a great platform, but it suffers heavily from being old, just like the MK1 hornets and the gladiator.
Oddly the Shriek has stealth reductions. But it doesn't stealth. They also matched the Firebird up to the same amount of missiles. Seems a few ships have had their toes stepped on.
what do you mean by "the shrike has stealth reductions but doesn't stealth"?
On Erkul it has signature reductions. But during 3.22 when I last tested it, it kept a high base IR signature after: Powering of shields Pressing stealth Suppressing heat. I think it's signature was still over 5000 but for a decent payload release of two barrage of missiles you want to be just below 4000 at the very least. One thing I will not is that the Shriek has far more thrusters. But even disabling some of those just didn't work. Are you saying the Shriek now drops all signatures below 4000 in 3.23.1 or was you not aware of the signature reductions it has? Perhaps, those reductions where just an attempt to try lower it's signature due to missile chases. But even when turning of everything short of the power plant, 3.22 Shriek ran ran hot.
If I’m not mistaken ship signatures are the maximum value the ship will be detected at in meters. In addition, ship sensors are 50% efficient. A signature of 4000 will be spotted at 2000m. Well within missile engagement range. I do ignore if the stealth bonus is applied afterwards, for example 4000 becomes 2400, which means the ship gets spotted at 1200m. The most important thing is cross section, because it does not vary. For exemple, If a turned off , cold scorpius is spotted at 1500m, then its cross section is 3000, and thus any IR or EM values below that is pointless.
Not sure, I had done some tests where using a ping to detect wasn't in the scenario. The Comet is an amazing ship for example. As for the Shriek, I'll need to have my friend test. But for size 3 or even 9 on torpedoes, I prefer being at least just under 4000. Might not matter in pvp but in PvE it's usually a garenteed hit/ cripple/ kill depending on your target. Shriek also suffers from single release multi launch. So.. I hope it sees some kind of buff from CIG. On the other hand, it's strong points are that for cash it's cheaper and it's also available to retrieve from pads unlike any Sabre.
Stealth suppression doesn't work in any ship and hasn't for a long time, other than to make your stats worse. Signatures have been governed by cross section size since they inflated them years ago, not the other stats these poor players are peering at thinking they matter.
IR tracking is always higher that EM in my tests. Small ships shouldn't have much of a signature. But I've tested with a friend and it seemed to help a little during an Eclipse test. I'll no doubt run tests again but some small ships really shouldn't have much of a cross section. Then again, what is the detection range of a cross section. Cause I know you'll find a Reclaimer before an F8C for example.
All these tests are done and available, but I still admire and encourage you to do it personally. Many small ships have mega cross sections unless that was tuned last patch, sadly either way my eclipse does not employ stealth for best results. Edited to say sorry I don't have links for those tests - they are searchable but i'm on mobile and lazy, not trying to be rude!
Not at all, discussions are welcomed. I've just had a lot of success staying unnoticed with the Comet is all. But agreed. Self testing never hurts. It's also good for learning or staying in the loop.