So this started out as a post and it kinda got a bit off topic/large so I am just making a thread about it and copy and pasting it. These are just some things I would like to see changed in Elite: Dangerous. I would like to hear some feed back or ideas from you guys. I know none of any of this will likely be implemented but that's no good reason not to discuss it. Wall of text inc:
So much needs to be reworked as it stands. Take my Anaconda for example. It has 1030 shields and 525 armor. That gives it a base total HP of 1555. But, with SCBs it can add an additional 7710 points of shields. That's insane. Look at the new Imperial Courier. It has ~ 679 total HP when A ranked. With SCBs it can add 1974 shields. And even though SCBs take up a lot of energy, you only had to retract your hardpoints and boom you have more than enough most of the time.
What I would like to see is a system like this:
Each ship can have one SCB.
They take 2x-3x the power the current ones do.
They start at class 3, giving a total of 160 shields over 4 charges.
Class 4 would give 240 over 4 charges.
Class 5 would give 480 over 4 charges.
Class 6 would give 960 over 4 charges.
There would be no class 7 or 8.
Rank would determine how fast it recharges and the delay before it begins recharging. For example an A rank could recharge 3 sec. after popping it and do so in 3 sec. An E rank would take 7 seconds to start and take 6 seconds to apply it.
All ships would regenerate their shields at either 1 point a second or .5% a second, which ever is faster. This would get rid of the absurdly long recharge rates of large shields as well as imo making more sense.
Weapons would be redone entirely. You would have to really think about what you want. Damage per Energy used, total possible damage (as in ammo for kinetic weapons), DPS, penetration rating, and ease of use. As it stands there is little difference. Right now its just stay away from turreted anything, avoid beam lasers if you can, and use the kinetic weapon you can do the most damage with. Right now armor penetration doesn't matter all that much. Oh and a turret buff. As in + 50% DPS (at least for thermal ones, I don't have the damage numbers for the kinetic ones really) and sensor rank would improve accuracy and reduce chaff effectiveness (say to 20%). Sensors eat up a lot of power and aren't exactly free on the large ships. I'll copy and paste a brief pros and cons of it from another thread:
"Pros:
Highest DPE
Can hit in blind spots/wide firing arc
With A ranked sensors they give big ships/low maneuverability ships a chance vs. chaff spamming
Cons:
Expensive
Still would require the use of 50%+ more hard points to achieve the DPS of gimballed/fixed
Almost impossible to bring them all to bear on a single target, making them a support/defensive weapon only.
1.3 mechanics make them less effective at close range vs small, agile ships vs fixed or gimballed."
Mind you this may be unnecessary/very different depending on how weapon re-balancing went.
Also weapons would be far more informative. None of this 1-10 stuff. You would be given actual numbers. And you would be told each weapons modifier. Such as it would look something like this:
Damage: 12
Fire rate: 1.2/sec.
Shield damage multiplier: 1.0
Hull damage multiplier: .7
Armor penetration: +5%
Power: 1.3
Thermal load: 2.23/sec (the thing that drains your WEP energy when you use the weapon)
As it stands ships have a rule of thumb. The highest class weapon it can mount is probably its size. Small, medium, or large. This is important because each time you go a class up you do 33% less damage to the hull. Where a C1 weapon is small, a C2 weapon is medium , and a C3 weapon is large. So a C1 would do 33% damage to a large hull and 66% to a medium. I would add that information on the ship stats screen under something like:
Hull Type: Light (small), Medium (medium), or Heavy (large). Names subject to change.
Also I would include a "Special Notes" section. For example the FDL takes less "small arms fire" than any other ship. I would say how much.
The last bit of info I would is for the internal compartments. When you go to buy a ship it tells you what is equipped, not what can be. So say it says "Cargo rack [x16]" or something but it could hold a class higher. Well I would list it as:
"Cargo rack [x16] (C5)"
where the value in the parenthesis corresponds to the max class that internal slot can have. I know you can google it or buy the ship and take the 10% hit if you don't like it but that not right in my opinion.
Somehow forgot this one: Carry extra ammo in your internals.
May change health of some internal subsystems.
All hull values would be tripled across the board.
All HRP values would be doubled across the board.
The effectiveness of all armor plating types would be reduced.
20% for reinforced.
40% for military.
60%/30% for the others.
Internal sub systems would be immune to damage 'till the hull took at least 25% damage. When the hull was at 75% health 25% of your damage from a direct hit would be converted into damage done to the sub system. So with a direct hit it would do 75% damage to the hull, 25% to the SS. This would go up to the point where sub systems took 50% base damage when the hull was at 50%. Certain weapons penetration ratings would add to this. For example a rail gun could do +20%. So it would do at least 20% damage to subsystems and at most 70% of its damage would go to the subsystem.
Thruster rank/class would have a much greater impact on speed and maneuverability.
Current hull wight would have a much greater impact on speed and maneuverability.
This new system would have many benefits.
1. Ship hull size, which is purely just a game balancing mechanic, will now help to protect subsystems and thus survivability. As it was intended.
2. Armor type will now indirectly help protect subsystems.
3. HRPs will now indirectly protect subsystems.
4. More diversity in terms of what is targeted. External subsystems for heavily armored ships or internal for lightly armored ones.
5. This would place far more importance to weapons armor penetration rating, thus more weapon build diversity.
6. Shield tanking would no longer be the one and only valid way to tank.
7. Becoming more "tanky" would have a reasonable trade off, you weigh more. A lot more.
8. As a result of 7. as well as the ability to carry extra ammo there would be more build diversity. You would have to balance agility/speed/jump range vs survivability vs offensive gunboat
9. More wing diversity. For example you could have a person dedicated to raw damage and a finisher who does low damage but high penetration.
10. More information.
Take this system with my first two examples. The anaconda has 9265 total health and almost all of it comes from SCBs because if they shields drop it's game over. With this new system it would be 1575 hull + 1428 shields (I'd upgrade because I have more power now) + 960 for a total of 3963. Far less than before. But now I can hull tank, the increased shield recharge rate would give me 7.14 shields a second rather than just 1, and I can buff that with HRPs. I could easily add 2400 points bringing my total HP up to 6363. With military grade composite I would have an effective total HP pool of 7953. But with that I add over 200 tonnes of weight to my ship. And that wouldn't mean loosing ~10% maneuverability and speed as it does now. It would mean unless I want to move at say half speed and turn half as fast I would need to upgrade my thrusters. That means more power consumed as well as credits.
Battles would not carry on for as long as they do now but you would start to see a real noticeable difference between ships builds rather than just the ships themselves.
For the other example I used there is the Imperial Courier. It was not meant to be a tanky ship. That's obvious by it high maneuverability and speed. So its total HP would now be 432 + 535 + 160 or 1127 total HP. As it stands an Anacondas potential HP pool is 3.5 x the courier in 1.3. Because the makes sense. With the new system a full tank built anaconda would be 5.6 times more durable than an Imperial Courier. Much more reasonable imo. It would also make more high base armor low maneuverability ships more viable. I'm looking at you FDS.
Edit:
I forgot to something very important that just dawned on me. Every example I gave was assuming 0 pips in sys. 4 pips in systems make your shield's EHP go up by 2.38. So, back to my anaconda. With 4 pips in system its potential HP is 525 + (1030*2.38) + (7710 * 2.38) or a mind boggling total potential EHP of 20801. Back to the Imperial Courier: 144 hull + (535*2.38) + (1974 * 2.38) or 6115.42 total potential EHP. The anaconda is now only 3.4 times as durable. But to think of it another way for the Imperial Courier only 2.3% of its total TPEHP comes from its hull. Its total potential EHP is is is ~ 12 x the hull of the massive anaconda. Of the Anaconda's total potential EHP only ~2.5% of its TPEHP comes from its hull. I don't know why, but to me something seems very, very wrong here. All my numerical data comes from tests done by the very awesome CMDR StarLightBreaker and CMDR Pale Night as well as the ED: Shipyard. I have gone over the numbers a few times but I keep getting the same results. If anyone can spot a mistake I made please let me know because I really think I did somewhere.
So much needs to be reworked as it stands. Take my Anaconda for example. It has 1030 shields and 525 armor. That gives it a base total HP of 1555. But, with SCBs it can add an additional 7710 points of shields. That's insane. Look at the new Imperial Courier. It has ~ 679 total HP when A ranked. With SCBs it can add 1974 shields. And even though SCBs take up a lot of energy, you only had to retract your hardpoints and boom you have more than enough most of the time.
What I would like to see is a system like this:
Each ship can have one SCB.
They take 2x-3x the power the current ones do.
They start at class 3, giving a total of 160 shields over 4 charges.
Class 4 would give 240 over 4 charges.
Class 5 would give 480 over 4 charges.
Class 6 would give 960 over 4 charges.
There would be no class 7 or 8.
Rank would determine how fast it recharges and the delay before it begins recharging. For example an A rank could recharge 3 sec. after popping it and do so in 3 sec. An E rank would take 7 seconds to start and take 6 seconds to apply it.
All ships would regenerate their shields at either 1 point a second or .5% a second, which ever is faster. This would get rid of the absurdly long recharge rates of large shields as well as imo making more sense.
Weapons would be redone entirely. You would have to really think about what you want. Damage per Energy used, total possible damage (as in ammo for kinetic weapons), DPS, penetration rating, and ease of use. As it stands there is little difference. Right now its just stay away from turreted anything, avoid beam lasers if you can, and use the kinetic weapon you can do the most damage with. Right now armor penetration doesn't matter all that much. Oh and a turret buff. As in + 50% DPS (at least for thermal ones, I don't have the damage numbers for the kinetic ones really) and sensor rank would improve accuracy and reduce chaff effectiveness (say to 20%). Sensors eat up a lot of power and aren't exactly free on the large ships. I'll copy and paste a brief pros and cons of it from another thread:
"Pros:
Highest DPE
Can hit in blind spots/wide firing arc
With A ranked sensors they give big ships/low maneuverability ships a chance vs. chaff spamming
Cons:
Expensive
Still would require the use of 50%+ more hard points to achieve the DPS of gimballed/fixed
Almost impossible to bring them all to bear on a single target, making them a support/defensive weapon only.
1.3 mechanics make them less effective at close range vs small, agile ships vs fixed or gimballed."
Mind you this may be unnecessary/very different depending on how weapon re-balancing went.
Also weapons would be far more informative. None of this 1-10 stuff. You would be given actual numbers. And you would be told each weapons modifier. Such as it would look something like this:
Damage: 12
Fire rate: 1.2/sec.
Shield damage multiplier: 1.0
Hull damage multiplier: .7
Armor penetration: +5%
Power: 1.3
Thermal load: 2.23/sec (the thing that drains your WEP energy when you use the weapon)
As it stands ships have a rule of thumb. The highest class weapon it can mount is probably its size. Small, medium, or large. This is important because each time you go a class up you do 33% less damage to the hull. Where a C1 weapon is small, a C2 weapon is medium , and a C3 weapon is large. So a C1 would do 33% damage to a large hull and 66% to a medium. I would add that information on the ship stats screen under something like:
Hull Type: Light (small), Medium (medium), or Heavy (large). Names subject to change.
Also I would include a "Special Notes" section. For example the FDL takes less "small arms fire" than any other ship. I would say how much.
The last bit of info I would is for the internal compartments. When you go to buy a ship it tells you what is equipped, not what can be. So say it says "Cargo rack [x16]" or something but it could hold a class higher. Well I would list it as:
"Cargo rack [x16] (C5)"
where the value in the parenthesis corresponds to the max class that internal slot can have. I know you can google it or buy the ship and take the 10% hit if you don't like it but that not right in my opinion.
Somehow forgot this one: Carry extra ammo in your internals.
May change health of some internal subsystems.
All hull values would be tripled across the board.
All HRP values would be doubled across the board.
The effectiveness of all armor plating types would be reduced.
20% for reinforced.
40% for military.
60%/30% for the others.
Internal sub systems would be immune to damage 'till the hull took at least 25% damage. When the hull was at 75% health 25% of your damage from a direct hit would be converted into damage done to the sub system. So with a direct hit it would do 75% damage to the hull, 25% to the SS. This would go up to the point where sub systems took 50% base damage when the hull was at 50%. Certain weapons penetration ratings would add to this. For example a rail gun could do +20%. So it would do at least 20% damage to subsystems and at most 70% of its damage would go to the subsystem.
Thruster rank/class would have a much greater impact on speed and maneuverability.
Current hull wight would have a much greater impact on speed and maneuverability.
This new system would have many benefits.
1. Ship hull size, which is purely just a game balancing mechanic, will now help to protect subsystems and thus survivability. As it was intended.
2. Armor type will now indirectly help protect subsystems.
3. HRPs will now indirectly protect subsystems.
4. More diversity in terms of what is targeted. External subsystems for heavily armored ships or internal for lightly armored ones.
5. This would place far more importance to weapons armor penetration rating, thus more weapon build diversity.
6. Shield tanking would no longer be the one and only valid way to tank.
7. Becoming more "tanky" would have a reasonable trade off, you weigh more. A lot more.
8. As a result of 7. as well as the ability to carry extra ammo there would be more build diversity. You would have to balance agility/speed/jump range vs survivability vs offensive gunboat
9. More wing diversity. For example you could have a person dedicated to raw damage and a finisher who does low damage but high penetration.
10. More information.
Take this system with my first two examples. The anaconda has 9265 total health and almost all of it comes from SCBs because if they shields drop it's game over. With this new system it would be 1575 hull + 1428 shields (I'd upgrade because I have more power now) + 960 for a total of 3963. Far less than before. But now I can hull tank, the increased shield recharge rate would give me 7.14 shields a second rather than just 1, and I can buff that with HRPs. I could easily add 2400 points bringing my total HP up to 6363. With military grade composite I would have an effective total HP pool of 7953. But with that I add over 200 tonnes of weight to my ship. And that wouldn't mean loosing ~10% maneuverability and speed as it does now. It would mean unless I want to move at say half speed and turn half as fast I would need to upgrade my thrusters. That means more power consumed as well as credits.
Battles would not carry on for as long as they do now but you would start to see a real noticeable difference between ships builds rather than just the ships themselves.
For the other example I used there is the Imperial Courier. It was not meant to be a tanky ship. That's obvious by it high maneuverability and speed. So its total HP would now be 432 + 535 + 160 or 1127 total HP. As it stands an Anacondas potential HP pool is 3.5 x the courier in 1.3. Because the makes sense. With the new system a full tank built anaconda would be 5.6 times more durable than an Imperial Courier. Much more reasonable imo. It would also make more high base armor low maneuverability ships more viable. I'm looking at you FDS.
Edit:
I forgot to something very important that just dawned on me. Every example I gave was assuming 0 pips in sys. 4 pips in systems make your shield's EHP go up by 2.38. So, back to my anaconda. With 4 pips in system its potential HP is 525 + (1030*2.38) + (7710 * 2.38) or a mind boggling total potential EHP of 20801. Back to the Imperial Courier: 144 hull + (535*2.38) + (1974 * 2.38) or 6115.42 total potential EHP. The anaconda is now only 3.4 times as durable. But to think of it another way for the Imperial Courier only 2.3% of its total TPEHP comes from its hull. Its total potential EHP is is is ~ 12 x the hull of the massive anaconda. Of the Anaconda's total potential EHP only ~2.5% of its TPEHP comes from its hull. I don't know why, but to me something seems very, very wrong here. All my numerical data comes from tests done by the very awesome CMDR StarLightBreaker and CMDR Pale Night as well as the ED: Shipyard. I have gone over the numbers a few times but I keep getting the same results. If anyone can spot a mistake I made please let me know because I really think I did somewhere.
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