STAR CITIZEN COMBAT FIGHTER TIER LIST 3.23

0:00 E Tier 1:00 Iconography 2:45 Ares 4:44 origin 6:22 a1 spirit 8:07 eclipse 9:34 F tier 10:57 pisces 12:01 D tier 12:09 Hurricane 13:11 gladiator 13:57 cutlass 15:19 SAN.... you know the rest 15:59 mustang 16:03 aurora 16:49 Tana 17:27 C tier 17:34 arrow 18:42 Sabre 19:10 F8 Lightning 20:35 vanguard 22:08 hawk 22:58 glaive 23:41 blade 24:19 B tier 24:28 Mk II Hornet 26:18 Fury 26:45 gladius 27:01 MK I Hornet 27:48 Scorpius 28:58 Defender 30:36 Khartul 31:50 Talon 32:36 A Tier 32:40 125a 35:12 325a 35:53 Avenger 36:57 Archemedies 38:35 Sabre Raven 39:44 Firebird 40:38 Mantis 42:21 Razor 43:18 S tier 43:27 Bucaneer and M50

Love, that you put so much thought into the skill diamond and TCS-Score. Makes the tier list so much more meaningful.

Thanks, great list, the TCS and pilot skill are welcome additions

The coloured diamonds was a great idea to help people understand why they're not necessarily seeing the same results as you (so long as they're honest with themselves about their skill level!) Case in point, i fair far better in my vanguard than my avenger, so to me it initially seems odd they're positioned where they are. I know i sit at the lower end of the "trained" skill level, so this tells me that its a case of me not getting the full capability out of the avenger, rather than it being a worse ship The TCS thing is great for people learning too. Know you struggle with very fast fragile ships? well, look for something with a high S number.

I'll admit I lost it when I saw the 100 series So bad that you left it out of the 3.22 tier list and now it's better than the Gladius Also the Avenger being better than the ship that replaced it in-lore (Hornet) is ironic

I look forward to the bigger ship tier list and their survivability against fighters.

I had a group of npcs on foot nearly take me out the sky whilst flying my pisces into a compound. It really does have hilariously low hp

I've been a Sabre pilot since she was introduced in the 2.x patches. I've been saying it for years, manuverability is king. The history of the Sabre (and medium fighters in general) proves it. In the 2.x patches, the Sabre was a god of the arena. She had a lot of things going for her at the time, but the main reason? She had gladius like manuverability, as advertised in the FAQ. Time went on, and the flight model was changed in the early 3.x patches, and they slowly increased the gap between ship "classes" to make bigger ships feel more "weighty". Her manuverability was reduced below that of a gladius, but only slightly. This put her at a disadvantage against an equally skilled pilot, despite her extra shield and gun, but you could make up the difference by playing to her advantages. Around this time, the number of medium fighters in competitive PVP dropped dramatically, and the gladius meta was established. There were brief periods of heavy fighter meta, but those were mainly component fueled, but mediums were all but forgotten. Eventually, the arrow was introduced, solidifying the light fighter meta. You still saw medium fighters in the PU, but they were almost nonexistent in AC, with the exception of a few dedicated pilots. Then came 3.14, when they adjusted all of the ships' manuverability to baseline 'archtypes', further widening the gap. This manuverability nerf killed the sabre, even though the 3rd shield was also removed at that time. I made an argument on spectrum at that time, that manuverability gaps are getting too large in general and used the sabre as an example, comparing it to the gladius in competitive PVP. It's only gotten worse since they've widened the manuverability and thruster power gap yet again with master modes and accentuated it with the low scm speeds. The recent F7 thruster bug shows how important manuverability is because this one bug made it go from at best a D tier ship to an S tier just by giving it the main thruster output advantage over all other ships. The bottom line is that ALL fighters have WAY too much of a difference in manuverability. The difference between archtypes is too linear. There needs to be a much smaller delta between interceptor, light, medium and heavy fighters in general but also there needs to be an overlap in flight characteristics so that light/interceptor fighters are not automatically faster and more maneuverable than medium and heavy. They already have a considerable size advantage. Medium and heavy fighters need to have some advantages in different flight characteristics to have options in a dogfight. Mass is just a single part of Newton's 2nd law of motion, one that can be counteracted by thruster force. Manuverability is king for a dogfigter.

Addition of 'TCS' and diamonds is great, adds a huge amount of context which is often missing in theae sorts of ranking vids. Interesting stuff.

“Banana Defender” 🤣😭💀

Great video A1! Thank you so much for the insights. I flew the Bucc for the first in 3.23 by accident and immediately like, this feels amazing!

please make green and yellow colors more darker and whiter for deferentiation, i am colorblind for these colors... prefer darker green, and whiter yellow

Much respect to you for the effort that was needed to make this. Thanks for sharing!

Hornet F7A atm has 0 threat, the turrets die in the first couple seconds haha Also: WE NEED TIMESTAMPS!

Arrow pilots feeling like how us Sabre pilots felt years ago

Outstanding video (funny too!) and I love the new experience triangles and TCS classifications. My gratitude to you and Avenger Squadron for all of the excellent research. This breakdown has helped me solidify my ILW shopping list :)

I’ve always liked the 125a. Bed, interior, and it’s competitive now🤙.

very well thought out and argued. thanks for putting the time into this. great refresher.

Great work. It mus have been a ton of work to get all of this tested and evaluated with this new interesting scoring system. It would be super interesting to see a video where you give feedbackbon what to tweek at specific ships to balance them out a bit more. Cheers

Appreciate your content. Puts a lot into perspective when looking for a ship at my skill level.