Why you even care about such statements when they complettely ignore that making shield cells worse will balance pve a lot better too.
Shields/Combat: What's gonna be left?
- Thread starter Andi
- Start date
Why you even care about such statements when they complettely ignore that making shield cells worse will balance pve a lot better too.
Shield Cells are going to have a 5-second delay between pressing the button and getting the recharge. This will definitely make them harder to use, but not solve the problem entirely for me. I think they'll do enough to stop their excessive use in PvE such as we are discussing here, but CMDR's in big ships will still spam them mercilessly. I reckon they should be one per ship and 1-use with a long cooldown or need to be replenished from SYS power. This will bring back more of the combat style of Public Beta and Beta1 with was much more enjoyable IMO, while still extending combat and giving traders that extra bit of survivability. It wouln't hurt to beef up shields generally, as well.
This will obviously make life harder for people like the OP, but an Elite Anaconda should be a very dangerous opponent for a single small fighter. It sould also pay about 10x as much to make it worthwhile for wings (when we get them!) and supermen to pursue as a career. This obviously means that smaller, easier assassination missions and bounties should be available for less powerful opponents.
Advice to the OP? As has been said, make that Viper lighter, for a start. Ditch any gear you don't need that weighs something, like the repair module and never use 'B' grade gear as it is too heavy. If you can't afford 'A' then use 'D'. If you are using all fixed weapons then downgrade your sensors to 'D'. If you only have gimballed MC's then you could probably still stick with D's. Ditch the armour! Viper has strong shields, rely on them. If you are in a Cobra, never go after a fight with fuel tanks more then 50% full; 16t is just ballast. If you are specialising in assassinations then ditch theD3 or A2 for more weight savings. Use chaff abundantly, it will drastically reduce the effect of the Anaconda's weapons. Good luck.
This will obviously make life harder for people like the OP, but an Elite Anaconda should be a very dangerous opponent for a single small fighter. It sould also pay about 10x as much to make it worthwhile for wings (when we get them!) and supermen to pursue as a career. This obviously means that smaller, easier assassination missions and bounties should be available for less powerful opponents.
Advice to the OP? As has been said, make that Viper lighter, for a start. Ditch any gear you don't need that weighs something, like the repair module and never use 'B' grade gear as it is too heavy. If you can't afford 'A' then use 'D'. If you are using all fixed weapons then downgrade your sensors to 'D'. If you only have gimballed MC's then you could probably still stick with D's. Ditch the armour! Viper has strong shields, rely on them. If you are in a Cobra, never go after a fight with fuel tanks more then 50% full; 16t is just ballast. If you are specialising in assassinations then ditch theD3 or A2 for more weight savings. Use chaff abundantly, it will drastically reduce the effect of the Anaconda's weapons. Good luck.
Well for starters, I'll try to make the ship lighter. We'll see where that leads me.
As for the B shield cell bank, I couldn't get an A one. Has less to do with my credits than availability >.<
Found an A now tho and removed the repair unit.
What I wonder now is, what's the perfect weight? I was still way under max mass.
As for the B shield cell bank, I couldn't get an A one. Has less to do with my credits than availability >.<
Found an A now tho and removed the repair unit.
What I wonder now is, what's the perfect weight? I was still way under max mass.
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As far as I understand the system to perfect weight is below optimal to get a bonus to to lateral acceleration, speed, main thruster acceleration, pitch, yaw and roll. E thrusters seem to get 3% bonus, D get 6%, C should get 10%, but currently are buggy and get mostly just 3% like the E. No dev statement on the other thrusters, but I would assume something around 15% and 20% bonus thrust if you are below optimal for B and A.
So your 5 tons reduce your thrusters by ~20% most likely, which might explain why you get so easily hit while others have no trouble to evade.
There are also such and such Anacondas (Dropships, too) on these missions. Some do primarily laser damage, others work a lot with kinetic, others shoot a ton of missiles or do their beam. The one I had yesterday hurt, no matter from which side, until I finally burst it down and tried to be so close, I kept ramming it gently. Dismantled the shield with lasers, broke the hull with missiles.
I normally run a 4x multi setup and fare just fine with it.
I normally run a 4x multi setup and fare just fine with it.
Sounds like you get the hang of it. I had once even a viper as target btw. Though it was a 46k mission, so I was not surprised about.
Which is exactly why a lot of people don't like them. Taking down an Elite Anaconda in a Viper should be hard and take time and skill - just being able to mash the shield cell button really takes away the challenge IMO.
After my comments last night I went and hunted some and came up on an elite. It took two shield cells and 2 ai to distract it and it jumped around 5%. It's quite easy to take down some, and occasionally their ai goes full , but I'd kinda like proof a viper can take down an elite 1v1 without shield cells in under 10 mins. I'll take your word for it if you can describe how it's done exactly, but every 1v1 that I've downed without shield cells has been either very under equipped or it's been an ai seemed to not understand my fa off moves and just heads in a straight line or endless loop letting me hammer it non stop. A human in any of those situations could have made me use my shield cells and bail.
I'd also be interested to hear if anyone has ever killed a cmdr in one 1v1 without using shield cells.
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Does weight effect shield strength?
Only Hull Mass affects shield strength - that doesn't change with your outfitting, it's fixed for the ship.
Frankly my experience is similar to Andi's. No matter what I do, elite anacondas (and a dangerous one as well if I remember correctly) hit me front, right and centre. I tried to keep distance, I use chaffs, but I keep taking hits from turret lasers and they hurts. Actually what seems to work best for me is to stay as close as possible. I'm in an asp tough, which is a bigger target and less maneuverable, I don't know how much a factor this is. Currently with a loadout of 4x pulse lasers and 2x dumbfire missile I managed to use only a single shield cell in my last fight, but still didn't feel like I was much in control of the fight.
I'm not against the nerf to shield cell though. I'd like to know for certain if chaffs works or not against NPCs, since they don't seem to do anything for me.
I'm not against the nerf to shield cell though. I'd like to know for certain if chaffs works or not against NPCs, since they don't seem to do anything for me.
Yes it would.
They aren't, even without shield cells.
I think a million credits for the toughest NPC Anaconda (a random pirate with at least six beam laser turrets, including one where the PA normally is, and what must have been A shields and thrusters) I've ever faced would still have been very excessive. Most are far less challenging than this guy was, and making them worth a million to two million each would make hunting them, even without duplication, a five to ten million credit an hour exercise.
AFM units don't weigh anything. Still mostly pointless on anything but an explorer until they can repair thrusters.
Good advice.
An Asp's profile is several times that of a Viper, is much less maneuverable, slower, and with worse acceleration, while at the same time the Asp only has about 20% better shields, plus two more small hardpoints.
The Asp is not a bad fighter, but the Viper can do these jobs much more efficiently.
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Care to explain why? Note that I think ATM shields are so weak becase SCB's are so powerful. To maintain FD's vision of extended dogfighting you can't nerf SCB's much further without revisiting shield strength.
Let me rephrase my point more clearly: "Anaconda's should be dangerous for a single small fighter, but currently aren't nearly dangerous enough".
Following from my earlier statement, this was a statement of what should be once NPC Anacondas and Pythons were properly dangerous. I wasn't suggesting the assassination missions should pay more with NPC's as is.
Sheilds have been at roughly their current strengths since before SCBs existed.
Many ships have shielding that can take quite a pounding, especially from weapons not specifically suited to shields, and those with weaker shields usually have other advantages to compensate. Without SCBs, people will actually start using armor again, and something like a Cobra with military grade plating can survive so much hull damage that it's shields are likely to need to be dropped two or three times (again, without SCBs) before it's finally destroyed by a similar class vessel that didn't have difficulty getting through it's relatively modest shielding.
By and large, I think shield strengths are fine, and will still be fine even if the resistance that four SYS pips gives is reduced, as is being talked about.
I remember the days before shield cells from PB1 onwards and the fights were enjoyable indeed, but with a loadout like multiple dumbfires or railguns it was too easy to wipe out an opponent before the fight even began. I say 'too easy' because I get the impression FD wanted fights to be more drawn out hence shield cells, which I understand were planned to be in the game from the beginning.
Now that we will be getting a 5s delay on SCB's this will hit small ships worse then big ones as it usually takes less time then this to drop shields on anything up to a Cobra (Viper excepted). Even with ships with shield energy in the low 100's they would have to activate the SCB as soon as they start taking fire from a determined opponent. Pythons and Anacondas facing multiple opponents would be in pretty much the same boat. Combined with the SYS nerf (which might be significant) we may find shields being blown away too easily for FD's liking. Whether you our I like it is really another matter.
Regarding that SYS 'spike' that is due to be ironed out, I actually can't think why pips in SYS should contribute to shield resistance at all. I can see why the mechanic exists, but if shield generators recharged a bit quicker (and shields were maybe 20% tougher generally), then keeping your shields up would be about keeping those bars in your SYS 'stack' and not about 'oh, I'm getting shot at, lets put 4 pips in SYS for a bit'.
Now that we will be getting a 5s delay on SCB's this will hit small ships worse then big ones as it usually takes less time then this to drop shields on anything up to a Cobra (Viper excepted). Even with ships with shield energy in the low 100's they would have to activate the SCB as soon as they start taking fire from a determined opponent. Pythons and Anacondas facing multiple opponents would be in pretty much the same boat. Combined with the SYS nerf (which might be significant) we may find shields being blown away too easily for FD's liking. Whether you our I like it is really another matter.
Regarding that SYS 'spike' that is due to be ironed out, I actually can't think why pips in SYS should contribute to shield resistance at all. I can see why the mechanic exists, but if shield generators recharged a bit quicker (and shields were maybe 20% tougher generally), then keeping your shields up would be about keeping those bars in your SYS 'stack' and not about 'oh, I'm getting shot at, lets put 4 pips in SYS for a bit'.
Mainly because something that broken and rudimentary implemented has received much thought at all.
Actually I think the hundreds or thousands of hours of development time spent on the P2P instancing and netcode are obvious for all to see. Compared to earlier iterations the speed and stability of the online engine are incomparable; I haven't had a single crash or lengthy wait to reenter normal space since the first mad days of release.
Are we talking about two different things? Only you didn't expand your point much...
Are we talking about two different things? Only you didn't expand your point much...