Good change. Now the viper isn't the be all and end all of cost effective pvp.
The Shield discussion thread
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Can someone tell me exectly what the changes are to them?
I have been playing only in group or solo mode (due to all the dumbfire crap, hacks and other baggery) and I have been flying just a souped up Eagle..doing bounties..then a souped up Sidewinder for exploration.
I use the shells if I get in over my head or for when I would accidentally hit a friendly ship and then 5 authority ships are on me.
So if I did that now..how do they work?
I have been playing only in group or solo mode (due to all the dumbfire crap, hacks and other baggery) and I have been flying just a souped up Eagle..doing bounties..then a souped up Sidewinder for exploration.
I use the shells if I get in over my head or for when I would accidentally hit a friendly ship and then 5 authority ships are on me.
So if I did that now..how do they work?
Sounds like the ED crew need to reword their Viper Mk III description:
It is a highly effective combatant, with a turning rate comparable to that of the Sidewinder and the same weapon capacity as the Cobra Mk. III. This has resulted in a "run away from whatever you can't beat" ship which has been known (with sufficient skill) to defeat any other ship class released thus far in single combat.
Ergo, if the ship itself is not capable of facilitating this vaunting, then the Viper just lost its cred.
It is a highly effective combatant, with a turning rate comparable to that of the Sidewinder and the same weapon capacity as the Cobra Mk. III. This has resulted in a "run away from whatever you can't beat" ship which has been known (with sufficient skill) to defeat any other ship class released thus far in single combat.
Ergo, if the ship itself is not capable of facilitating this vaunting, then the Viper just lost its cred.
Haven't tried it but from what I read it seems fine. Having +-18 CSB charges in my Viper always seemed a bit... silly.
Frontier can do what they want for gameplay purposes, but realistically a capacitor would draw power while charging, then hold its power inside to be used. It would NOT use power all the time. Then when you popped it, shields would come up but other things would go down for a few seconds as the capacitor made a huge draw to recharge itself.
Agreed. I think it's good from a balance perspective. Makes the stronger ships more powerful against the small ones without affecting there balance among other big ships. It also makes sense from a design perspective (ship designer) to use an extra system to protect that expensive chassis at all costs, whereas cheap fighters don't need it.
Yeah, I can see it hurting the Eagle A LOT to be honest. It was already very tight when running what anyone would consider a decent setup. I'll test the Cobra out against an Elite conda and see how it goes, but thx for the heads up.
It's also great from the Viper vs Cobra perspective. The bigger, more expensive Cobra can more effectively use a shield cell if the pilot wants, and the Viper now has even more emphasis on offense.
Viper still can defeat any other ship.
Change to shield cells, heat mechanics and NPC AI have made the game more challenging, and IMO a lot more fun. Not sure everyone will like it.
As for PvP, I caused pilots of every other ship to flee during Beta, but didn't run into an Anaconda though so I don't know what would happen there.
On the other hand, I did have to run, or more correctly limp away from a good number of fights though and racked up a good insurance total as well.
Be very wary of Pythons with Turrets!
The explanation you quoted isn't official. That's his take on it.
They might well be just like batteries for all we know. They may not. The bottom line is shields, the module they are linked with, are not realistic at all. FD admitted they are "magic" and constitute one of the few elements of the game that aren't at least founded on practical theories.
So it's really not that important if real life batteries work differently.
That said, you're technically wrong. An emergency phone battery does need power to work. Charging a phone requires electricity. It's a very small amount but the act of taking the charge from one battery to another isn't possible without some power usage. Obviously, that power is taken from the charge but this is fine because it's negligible compared to the benefit of recharging the battery. You don't need much to power a phone charge transfer. And it takes hours to work to completion.
So we can safely assume that the level of raw power being transferred from a cell to these magical shields that use a lot of power, over a period of just five seconds, is not only going to take a large amount of power, it's very much likely to be significantly more than a cell phone...
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Quite - people complain that the Viper lacks power, but the Eagle's got even less headroom.
No, wait. If this is true, they should be able to recharge themselves indefinitely, as long as there is main power, and thus provide infinite recharges. But since charges are fixed and you have to reload them, it makes no sense.
As it should. It is supposed to be the weakest fighter in the game and cost less than 5 tons of Palladium. Eagles should be afraid of fighting anything but Sidewinders, Eagles, and Haulers except in LARGE numbers as a swarm.
Well if we're going for realism, they should have a chance of blowing out the whole shield generator and setting on fire
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I think this is moot if the above explanation of capacitors not constantly drawing power is correct.
Oh please, my ship has a value of almost 80 millions now, it's not expensive to maintain, I make money in it.
I disagree but won't clutter this thread with why.
I believe there may be some people who are confused about defining the space flight paradigm. We are flying "Space Ships" not "Space Planes". Anyone attempting to compare how air planes fly to how ocean going ships sail is making a paradigm mistake. Correctly using ships as a metaphor, a "Dinghy" should not be able to sink a "Destroyer" let alone a "Battle Ship" or "Cruiser". I will add that submarines (On which I have years of experience) fly through the depths of the ocean in all 3 directions. We may informally call them boats, but submarines are ships. Space ships are ships. Larger ships have more power, have hulls built to withstand more damage and carry bigger weapons which inflict more damage. Once the correct paradigm is applied, there should be no further disagreement about how larger ships should be able to easily defend against and destroy smaller ones.
You can talk about pilot skill, and I'd agree with you. But pilot skill means 'skill at not getting hit.' The Eagle supports that by being the most agile. If you get hit, you're toast, though because the ship can't take it.
Yeah it seems that dedicated "Combat" ships have been hit that hard, that they are no longer that viable for the role they were designed for.
A lot of people (Myself included) already thought that the Cobra was just as good in terms of combat capability before the change. Now it's weighed a lot more heavily in favour of the Cobra. I can run the same setup on my Cobra as I did before, but I know 100% that I'll have to drop beams on my Viper now, in order to keep the one A3 rated SCB I had on beforehand.
All they had to do was limit SCBs to one per ship, and that would have solved the issues perfectly... instead they go and take this cackhanded approach.
Personally I would like to see the Eagle, in the hands of a good pilot, prove to be a headache for Viper and Cobra pilots.
Just as a Viper can be headache for Python pilots.