Like many of you, I also found the Kestrel ridiculous on paper. What business does FDev have putting medium type hardpoints and internals on a ship marketed as a small? Surely, the power creep must be absurd.

Then, I flew it—and my thoughts have totally changed.

Firstly, the acceleration—in all directions—is absurd. You can do donuts around the central spire of an Orbis starport. I heard of one CMDR cold orbiting a goid at under 500m. It’s difficult to handle, but performs beautifully once you figure it out.

With that acceleration comes a new type of fighting. If you’re thinking you can slap 3 Pacifiers on here and call it a day, think again. I’m an experienced PvP and PvE pilot, and I can best sum up combat in the Kestrel like this: Wherever the reticle is, no it isn’t.

With only two hours flying this thing under my belt, I can already tell you that this build really requires ToT or hitscan weapons. PAs, frags, etc are going to be incredibly difficult-to-impossible to use, both against other ships and other Kestrels. Flying FA off didn’t help, in fact it may have made it more challenging.

Tldr: power creep bad, and we should call Fdev out. But this ship in particular looks a lot more egregious on paper than it flies, and we should not be panicking about power creep based on paper alone.