The SCB (Shield Cell Bank) Thread

[tawittle]

CQC is boring because everyone dies too fast, and you can get screwed over by spawning in a bad place.

Open play is boring because you have to deal with instancing problems/traveling the galaxy, and then once you're actually out of SC and in a dogfight, its mostly just people hitting each other's shields and spamming SCB for 10 minutes, and then 1 person losing shields and high-waking 30 seconds later.

Overall I still prefer open player pvp because it just feels like an accomplishment to actually kill someone, because you know that if they were a better pilot they probably could have escaped. In CQC the combat just feels cheap. The kills are just too easy, alot of the time people are dead before they can even turn around and shoot back.

 

[DaveB]

I think you should stop coming at this from the perspective that there's some kind of PvP lobbying going on, where pilots of certain ships or certain play style want to get the advantage. This isn't about ''winning'', and I wouldn't even say that it's about ''balance'', not completely, at least. I think you'll just be missing people's points if you go at this from that direction.

You have to look at this from a larger perspective, the combat in ED is so many components interacting, so many elements of varying importance... I can go on, but other people have said it in better ways than I can.

I wouldn't say there's "PvP lobbying" going on but it's certainly the PvPers who were most vocal the last time SCBs got nerfed and it's the same folks wanting the bat swung again. SCBs exist for the purpose of making combat last longer. They do that and I can see why some folks find that less entertaining than more fast-paced explosions but they are in no way undefeatable. if you (perhaps in combination with your wingmates) can hand out a high enough shield alpha then you'll get 'em down before the SCB can fire.

Remember that prior to SCBs the multicannon was pretty much king, less heat than energy weapons and still chewed its way through shields moderately well, and without SCBs you could kill most targets without running out of ammo. Now you actually need to consider having a high shield damage component to your loadout and think carefully about burst vs sustained DPS against shields when fitting out your hardpoints. On balance, I'd personally say SCBs add more than they spoil.

 

[Jesse30]

I've been playing since Gamma, back then cells were 3 times more powerful and still I could kill enemy. The enemy had cells and I had cells, it balances out. Now the cells have been nerfed, the modules don't carry as many, they generate heat when used and there is a ridiculous delay of activation. If you can't beat down the shields before a cell is used then you are flying an inferior ship or using inferior tactics. Man up and learn how to do it, 90% of people seem to manage every day. Instead of campaigning for a nerf why don't you lobby for a noob mode so you and the other handful of weak players can have a nice safe game mode where everything you attack dies.

And I been playing since the beginning of premium Beta, so what is your point? And stop talking about my skills SCB implementation is really poor, but you are blind to see it, anyways who told you I had problem beating other Cmdrs?
https://youtu.be/Grl3hUjpUCg

 

[Kyle Brennan]

And I been playing since the beginning of premium Beta, so what is your point? And stop talking about my skills SCB implementation is really poor, but you are blind to see it, anyways who told you I had problem beating other Cmdrs?
https://youtu.be/Grl3hUjpUCg

Give us your nerf list, whats after cells? What else do you find offensive? Where will it end?
I'm not blind to it I just don't have any problems with them either for me or against me.

 

[Coolgroove]

Discussed by weak players as a magic bullet to fix their poor skill levels.

Wow! That was good.
So will you prove your words with a video or all this is just a empty talk?
Your video-proof was requested before but it seems like you had ignored it and still trying to present yourself like a skilled pilot (with a bad attitude) without any facts to prove it...

 

[DaveB]

...who told you I had problem beating other Cmdrs?

Back in PB you fried me pretty good a couple of times and I don't think I successfully knocked you off even once - Haven't seen you since, but I'm sure your skills havent atrophied so anyone saying you might not hold out well against other cmdrs will probably get a laugh from me

 

[Defacto]

I wouldn't say there's "PvP lobbying" going on but it's certainly the PvPers who were most vocal the last time SCBs got nerfed and it's the same folks wanting the bat swung again. SCBs exist for the purpose of making combat last longer. They do that and I can see why some folks find that less entertaining than more fast-paced explosions but they are in no way undefeatable. if you (perhaps in combination with your wingmates) can hand out a high enough shield alpha then you'll get 'em down before the SCB can fire.

Remember that prior to SCBs the multicannon was pretty much king, less heat than energy weapons and still chewed its way through shields moderately well, and without SCBs you could kill most targets without running out of ammo. Now you actually need to consider having a high shield damage component to your loadout and think carefully about burst vs sustained DPS against shields when fitting out your hardpoints. On balance, I'd personally say SCBs add more than they spoil.

They are a terrible tool for making ''combat last longer''.

If we want to accomplish that, we should start by looking at the basic stats of the ships and the weaponry.
Also, shield mechanics. Should an Anaconda have the same recharge rate as a Sidewinder? That's what we should look at if we want combat to be more ''slow-paced''.

Creating an item to accomplish a change like this is not a good idea, especially when we look at the negative effects of SCB's.
Prior to SCB's multicannons and cannons were king, because kinetics did a lot more shield damage. FD realized the problem of how things worked, and changed things by reducing the damage that kinetics deals against shields. Or am I remembering things wrong?

Give us your nerf list, whats after cells? What else do you find offensive? Where will it end?
I'm not blind to it I just don't have any problems with them either for me or against me.

SCB's have already been nerfed, this problem will not be solved by nerfing unless we nerf SCB's so mcuh that nobody uses them. There are better ways to solve this, that keep the SCB's but fix the problematic parts.

 

[Xanador]

I don't understand this. This isn't a war, it is a game, where concepts such as game balance exists.
Once again, this is not about winning.

It is an answer to windscreens comment and I could also use terms like "determine the outcome". My english is maybe not the best but what else does he mean than: "I, as an ace pilot in a viper want to win against an avarage commander in a full combat anaconda"? If he really wants to win against all the bigger ships only because he is ELITE than I am definetly against this kind of balance. An ELITE pilot should also know when to engage and when not.

The ships in ED have all their strenght and weaknesses. The balance is not perfect, but ships like e.g. the slow anaconda has it's strenght in defence capabilities, it is not a good hunter. Other ships with better speed can hunt, but cannot carry so many SCBs like the FDL. I know, the balance is not perfect, but I think you can tune it without nerfing SCBs too much.

So here is my suggestion:

1. SCBs overall MJ -10%
2. SCBs heat generation +10%
3. damage beam laser +5% damage burst laser +3% (I find the pulse lasers a bit too strong for their low heat generation)
4. all laser damage to internals and hull -5%
5. hull packages also increase internal protection (eg 5D: +240 hull and +12% internal hit points to every module...)

Of course, I don't know if the numbers will work, but you see: There are already enough possibilities for FD to tweak the numbers.

 

[Defacto]

It is an answer to windscreens comment and I could also use terms like "determine the outcome". My english is maybe not the best but what else does he mean than: "I, as an ace pilot in a viper want to win against an avarage commander in a full combat anaconda"? If he really wants to win against all the bigger ships only because he is ELITE than I am definetly against this kind of balance. An ELITE pilot should also know when to engage and when not.

The ships in ED have all their strenght and weaknesses. The balance is not perfect, but ships like e.g. the slow anaconda has it's strenght in defence capabilities, it is not a good hunter. Other ships with better speed can hunt, but cannot carry so many SCBs like the FDL. I know, the balance is not perfect, but I think you can tune it without nerfing SCBs too much.

So here is my suggestion:

1. SCBs overall MJ -10%
2. SCBs heat generation +10%
3. damage beam laser +5% damage burst laser +3% (I find the pulse lasers a bit too strong for their low heat generation)
4. all laser damage to internals and hull -5%
5. hull packages also increase internal protection (eg 5D: +240 hull and +12% internal hit points to every module...)

Of course, I don't know if the numbers will work, but you see: There are already enough possibilities for FD to tweak the numbers.

I don't think that's the right way to go. What would those changes accomplish, really?
We should look at where the problems come from, instead.

I don't think there's an issue with SCB's being strong. We can't have SCB's be so weak that they barely refill anything when used, we can't have lasers so strong that they strip any shields rapidly, no matter if you use SCB's or not.
I think it's better to look at where SCB's are problematic.

One simple (but in my opinion, not optimal) solution is to put a limit of one SCB per ship, just like we can only mount one shield generator. I think that there are other solutions though. They can all be disucssed, and I think that many bring their own problems, but these can hopefull be solved by testing and thinking while being implemented.

One idea was to move SCB's to utility mounts. What if we removed Hull reinforcements, too? Give us heavier, stronger bulkhead options instead. This would remove pretty much all relevance that internals have to combat ability. This would of course be a quite hard hit for multipurpose ships and a pretty strong bonus for combat ships, that typically have poor internals.
It really makes sense. How can you improve overall ship armor by fitting reinforcements to a specific internal compartment of your ship? Any such improvement would have to be done to either the hull armoring or the structure of the ship, and that is what the ''Bulkheads'' slot is for.

I've always been in favor of solutions that remove the ammo limitation. I think this is a pretty important part of the problems with the SCB's. What if using an SCB would empty the SYS bar and refill shields equal to the amount of SYS power that was drained? Or what if you could recharge your SCB using an amount of SYS power?
An important thing to note with these solutions is that the performance here would depend a lot more on Power-Dist instead of internals. Also, stacking SCB's becomes pretty pointless with these changes.

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

It is an answer to windscreens comment and I could also use terms like "determine the outcome". My english is maybe not the best but what else does he mean than: "I, as an ace pilot in a viper want to win against an avarage commander in a full combat anaconda"? If he really wants to win against all the bigger ships only because he is ELITE than I am definetly against this kind of balance. An ELITE pilot should also know when to engage and when not.

The ships in ED have all their strenght and weaknesses. The balance is not perfect, but ships like e.g. the slow anaconda has it's strenght in defence capabilities, it is not a good hunter. Other ships with better speed can hunt, but cannot carry so many SCBs like the FDL. I know, the balance is not perfect, but I think you can tune it without nerfing SCBs too much.

So here is my suggestion:

1. SCBs overall MJ -10%
2. SCBs heat generation +10%
3. damage beam laser +5% damage burst laser +3% (I find the pulse lasers a bit too strong for their low heat generation)
4. all laser damage to internals and hull -5%
5. hull packages also increase internal protection (eg 5D: +240 hull and +12% internal hit points to every module...)

Of course, I don't know if the numbers will work, but you see: There are already enough possibilities for FD to tweak the numbers.

A good Viper pilot can still put an Anaconda on the run. SCB's are not stopping him. The point you missed is that in every other aspect of ED's combat system, skill is the majority factor. SCB's break that trend in a bad way.

Changing the statistics of SCB's does not fix the problems with them. Unless they are made useless, they will always cause the same balance problems that they currently do. Either put them in the Utility slot where they belong and then tweak them accordingly, or remove them.

 

[Xanador]

SCB's make everything a fair fight. You're talking to the Prince of Dirty Tricks. You have to know what you're doing to pull under-handed tactics to score a win, you don't have to know jack crap to be able to push a button when you drop down to whatever threshold you've designated is safe for your shields.

Yes, you have to know what you are doing, that dosn't change so much with SCBs, because everybody can use them. And it is crucial to know which capabilities every ship has, so that you know when to engage and when not. The viper is still viable, espacially in wings.

 

[Xanador]

A good Viper pilot can still put an Anaconda on the run. SCB's are not stopping him. The point you missed is that in every other aspect of ED's combat system, skill is the majority factor. SCB's break that trend in a bad way.

Changing the statistics of SCB's does not fix the problems with them. Unless they are made useless, they will always cause the same balance problems that they currently do. Either put them in the Utility slot where they belong and then tweak them accordingly, or remove them.

I don't understand this: a hull package is also a "defense system" and requires nothing. Military armor requires nothing, shield requires nothing, life system requires nothing and the list can go on (chaff only one button, shield boosters, anti missle systems....)

 

[defekt]

Urgh.

Shield Potions.

Urgh.

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

I don't understand this: a hull package is also a "defense system" and requires nothing. Military armor requires nothing, shield requires nothing, life system requires nothing and the list can go on (chaff only one button, shield boosters, anti missle systems....)

If power and heat were going to restrict SCB's where they need to be restricted, they already would have. Instead that is the crux of the problem. SCB's are more valuable to the ships that are less combat oriented, and next to worthless on ships you would expect to see them fitted on.

Pythons are Multi-role ships, Combat is only one of the things they do and they don't do it as well as a combat only ship. What's the logic behind a Python, or any other multi-role ship, being able to use 3 times as many combat oriented modules as a combat ship of equivalent class?

 

[Xanador]

I don't think that's the right way to go. What would those changes accomplish, really?
We should look at where the problems come from, instead.

I don't think there's an issue with SCB's being strong. We can't have SCB's be so weak that they barely refill anything when used, we can't have lasers so strong that they strip any shields rapidly, no matter if you use SCB's or not.
I think it's better to look at where SCB's are problematic.

One simple (but in my opinion, not optimal) solution is to put a limit of one SCB per ship, just like we can only mount one shield generator. I think that there are other solutions though. They can all be disucssed, and I think that many bring their own problems, but these can hopefull be solved by testing and thinking while being implemented.

One idea was to move SCB's to utility mounts. What if we removed Hull reinforcements, too? Give us heavier, stronger bulkhead options instead. This would remove pretty much all relevance that internals have to combat ability. This would of course be a quite hard hit for multipurpose ships and a pretty strong bonus for combat ships, that typically have poor internals.
It really makes sense. How can you improve overall ship armor by fitting reinforcements to a specific internal compartment of your ship? Any such improvement would have to be done to either the hull armoring or the structure of the ship, and that is what the ''Bulkheads'' slot is for.

I've always been in favor of solutions that remove the ammo limitation. I think this is a pretty important part of the problems with the SCB's. What if using an SCB would empty the SYS bar and refill shields equal to the amount of SYS power that was drained? Or what if you could recharge your SCB using an amount of SYS power?
An important thing to note with these solutions is that the performance here would depend a lot more on Power-Dist instead of internals. Also, stacking SCB's becomes pretty pointless with these changes.

Your suggestion with the SYS bar is good, but all your suggestions combined will shift the balance a lot towards combat ships and screw the balance (if the balance is meant the way the ships are built today). That would mean a complete overwork for every ship.... interesting

 

[Defacto]

Your suggestion with the SYS bar is good, but all your suggestions combined will shift the balance a lot towards combat ships and screw the balance (if the balance is meant the way the ships are built today). That would mean a complete overwork for every ship.... interesting

Yes, it would probably mean a complete overhaul. I don't generally think that this is a good thing, but I'm pretty sure it would be a good thing to root out all problems and start over when it comes to this point.
Also, yes, it would make combat ships a lot stronger. To what level can be discussed, but really, I'm not saying no to that. We're getting the Corvette and the Cutter soon, which means that pretty much every ship size will have a tleast one dedicated combat ship. Hopefully, FD will be bold, making the Corvette and Cutter into true combat ships, not ships that have a 30 Ly jumprange and can carry 256 tonnes of cargo while fighting at the same time.

 

[Kowboat]

So here is my suggestion:

1. SCBs overall MJ -10%
2. SCBs heat generation +10%
3. damage beam laser +5% damage burst laser +3% (I find the pulse lasers a bit too strong for their low heat generation)
4. all laser damage to internals and hull -5%
5. hull packages also increase internal protection (eg 5D: +240 hull and +12% internal hit points to every module...)

My suggestion:

1. Take SCBs
2. Put them in the garbage
3. That's it

Once shield cells are in the bin where they belong, we can begin discussing deeper mechanics.

 

[Xanador]

If power and heat were going to restrict SCB's where they need to be restricted, they already would have. Instead that is the crux of the problem. SCB's are more valuable to the ships that are less combat oriented, and next to worthless on ships you would expect to see them fitted on.

Pythons are Multi-role ships, Combat is only one of the things they do and they don't do it as well as a combat only ship. What's the logic behind a Python, or any other multi-role ship, being able to use 3 times as many combat oriented modules as a combat ship of equivalent class?

Hmm, also in combat there are different roles. I see the pure combat ship more as an attacker and the multirole more as the defender. If a multirole ship with short jump range (python) has no meaning in combat than it is a trader.

 

[Alexander the Grape]

They're just overpowered. Mathematically overpowered. 1 A or B SCB module provides triple or more the effective HP of an equivalent armour module. The problem is the high number of charges for the higher rated ones giving 1000+ MJ per bank.

E rated SCBs are fine. 5E SCB gives 400 total MJ, compared to 240 extra hull strength of the 5D armour module. 1.5 times the strength is fair considering that SCBs need power and don't give all their HP at once.

However a 5B SCB gives 800 MJ, that's more than triple what armour gives. That is blatantly, mathematically OP.

Every SCB should give roughly the same MJ as what an E rated one does, only the higher rated ones should do it in fewer charges (5E = 5x80, 5D = 4x100, 5C=3x133, 5B=2x200, 5A=1x400).

That way you have to choose between fast regeneration but having to wait for the perfect moment, or constant use but vulnerable to high sustained damage.

That plus them losing their ammo charges when powered off would fix it.

Oh and Class 6 and 7 armour modules please

 

[Coolgroove]

They're just overpowered. Mathematically overpowered. 1 A or B SCB module provides triple or more the effective HP of an equivalent armour module. The problem is the high number of charges for the higher rated ones giving 1000+ MJ per bank.

E rated SCBs are fine. 5E SCB gives 400 total MJ, compared to 240 extra hull strength of the 5D armour module. 1.5 times the strength is fair considering that SCBs need power and don't give all their HP at once.

However a 5B SCB gives 800 MJ, that's more than triple what armour gives. That is blatantly, mathematically OP.

Every SCB should give roughly the same MJ as what an E rated one does, only the higher rated ones should do it in fewer charges (5E = 5x80, 5D = 4x100, 5C=3x133, 5B=2x200, 5A=1x400).

That way you have to choose between fast regeneration but having to wait for the perfect moment, or constant use but vulnerable to high sustained damage.

That plus them losing their ammo charges when powered off would fix it.

Oh and Class 6 and 7 armour modules please

Hmmm.. not bad! I like this idea.
and with:
- Only one SCB module can be fired at a time. So if there are two modules active and player "pushed the button" only one of them will fire, and on the next push it'll fire the other one.
- If more than one SCB fired (second fired when first is still in a process) it will multiply heat by 4 times, an so on.
it will shine.

as for "Anaconda vs Viper" argument - with you idea, I think if anaconda pilot can't destroy viper with this amount of SCB MJs - then he should blow up his anaconda and save viper's time.