The SCB (Shield Cell Bank) Thread

[NeilF]

I mean ...
Can you imagine me starting a thread about .... PVP players have TOO MANY FIXED WEAPONS.
They should only be allowed to have 2 but not 4 ... and have no choice but to install 2 gimballed or turreted.

Feel free... Put some considered thoughts out there and see if people agree or disagree and what points come back?

I think if you have room ... you should be allowed to install ANYTHING YOU CAN AFFORD.
Hell if you want to install 6 or 8 fuel tanks ..... then HAVE A NICE TRIP.....in fact let me speed you on your way.....

Mutliple Powerplants?
Multiple Shield Generators?
Mutliple FSDs?
How is your statement holding up?

If you want to install ONLY SCB ...... good for you .... I hope someone bothers to waste their weapons capacitors just to entertain you.
Personally if people feel so unsafe ... I would let them install 4 or 5 layers of shields....if the game allowed it......I certainly would not complain about how hard it is to penetrate them.....in fact I wouldn't even interact with them with a laser.
Get where I am going ? I would only complain about how many SCB people had if I desperately wanted to kill them. WHY ??? They do not have ANY CARGO ..... knock knock ... no have any Palladium in this ship ....
lol

I give up ...

[Note: We're talking about PvP issues really]

The problem IMHO at the moment is, and if we take say a Python as an example, is you can happily fit a pair of 5A SCBs in a well fitted ship. This will give you three shield re-charges in a fight. Great!

However, why do that, when you can fit four or more of them, and simply power them up in pairs, at nothing more than a minor weight inconvenience. You can now sit there and recharge your shields over half a dozen times in a single fight.

It's mindless, and rewards nothing... Does it involve consideration or skill? Does it result in better combat?

If only a single SCB module was available, just like so many other modules in the game, and its classes and sizes offered a huge variety of performance, akin to a single current 1E, all the way up to current two 6A units and beyond, with comparable power usage, and shield recharging, then what's the real problem? All we're doing it limiting the uses in X minutes. ie: You'd have say 9 ammo in the unit, but with only 3 cells in it, and each taking say 6 minutes to recharge, you could only us 3 in a single 6 minute period... Done


ps: Have you ever seen an NPC with more than one SCB on board? Have you even seen an NPC in an Anaconda with four of them?

 

[A_Honcho]

Cell banks and stacking banks aren't the problem. Remove them and PvP will pretty much become extinct or will last about as long as the first time anyone got laid (40 seconds)

The issue is Multirole ships with more power than the death star. It's because they have more internal space than any other ship they have room for all of the banks.
Take away some power to make it really difficult to stack banks in things like the Python/conda etc etc then you have a higher chance in evening things out and not killing the Pvp community.

I'll use my python fir example. A6 sheilds with 3 A0 boosters, backed up with stacked A6, B5 and B3 Banks, and I have that twice!! So that's 3 SCB's linked up, and I'm only 1% over my maximum power weapons deployed... Now can you see where th issue is?

 

[Antoniius]

Actually having only one SCB per ship is not a correct fix. You are overpowerin ships with few slot, nerfing the ones which have more slots because, if they are just combat-oriented, they actually have few thigs to put in the slots.

Anyway (i very rarely use SCBs and only load one for emergency purpose) i think they should be somehow "fixed"

 

[NeilF]

Actually having only one SCB per ship is not a correct fix. You are overpowerin ships with few slot, nerfing the ones which have more slots because, if they are just combat-oriented, they actually have few thigs to put in the slots.

Anyway (i very rarely use SCBs and only load one for emergency purpose) i think they should be somehow "fixed"

Can you give an example?

The only side effect I'd expect to see with my suggestion is more cargo space available. ie: If you currently use say two SCB modules, with the new variation, you'd have just one, which behaves much the same. It may not be identical behaviour/performance, but it would certainly be comparable.

 

[Cmdr Ultra]

I tend to be of the opinion that a skilled pilot in a Cobra should be able to take down an Anaconda. Maybe I'll feel differently if, one day, I manage to get an Anaconda myself. It just doesn't seem right to me now.

You will feel differently. I can't remember what an A grade Cobra cost but it must be less than 10 million.

Against a ship that is worth half a Billion credits ( with a 15% Li Yong Rui discount ) it should be insignificant. And it is.

 

[Alexis]

I'm with you here. All we seem to see on the forums these days is someone having a whinge about his pet grief and crying nerf. I wonder if we can somehow nerf the nerfers!

Liking something broken don't make it good. Warframe got killed by that, you all want Elite to follow the same path?

 

[Cruis.In]

The game cannot be balanced down to every POSSIBLE encounter likely. Not can it be balanced to the complete 100% perfection of one player, such as alexander the grape.

So would two pythons or anacondas fight half a day and be annoyed at the length of time? Yeah sure. But that can't be helped for other aspects of game.

 

[Deleted member 38366]

A Python cannot even Cell Bank through that amount of DPS, even my FDL alone burns through them.

Not sure what Pythons you encountered so far... But mine could tank you just sitting there for Minutes on end. No matter what you fire, your Distributor and heat are the outer Limits.
Why? Shield Cell Bank stacks and proper Pips Management.

Allow me to do that in a Conda and if it wasn't for having to press a key to fire the SCBs... hell I could take a cigarette break AFK - and not worry about a thing, if it wasn't for ramming damage (which has far higher potential than any Weapon when executed by heavy Ships).
That's what large stacks of SCBs essentially do.

Instead of working through 1500MJ of Shield energy - now you might have to work through a whopping 25GJ of total energy.

We'll simply see what Frontier will or will not do about it.
If anything - they're certainly aware of the changes SCB stacking did to combat. So much is for sure

 

[BoldRover]

What's wrong with epic multi-wing fights that last 30 minutes or more?
In those fights you need SCB to sustain you when you are primaried by 16 hostile commanders. Even with SCB you might last only 1 minute. You might not even be able to fire them all off.

If you want twitch PvP which lasts 30 seconds (without SCB) there's CQC for you.

So rep for you OP.

 

[Cmdr Ultra]

So would two pythons or anacondas fight half a day and be annoyed at the length of time?

I had a 10 minute shield cell battle with a Cmdr Python and my Anaconda. I ended up High-waking out, he simply had more shield banks than my part time Combat / Miner ship. It was a good balanced intense battle. Even with his Cobra wing-man who I could completely ignore.

 

[jonny taco]

A few cell banks is not an issue. 6+ cell banks is though, it throws the entire classification system of ships (trading,combat,multipurpose) on it's head and clearly favors multipurpose ships over all else.

Cell banks needs to stay in the game, there just needs to be a reasonable upper limit on the number that can be fit. Small ships (2-3), medium ships (3-4), large ships (5) would be a reasonable place to start imo.

 

[defekt]

1. One SCB bank per ship.
2. Turns combat away from the tedious bore that it is now.
3. Still gives the flyer who wants to escape a chance, which is mostly what SCBs were meant to be for.
4. Does something to redress the current silliness that has multi-role ships being more capable than the so-called 'specialist' ships.
5. ???
6. Profit.

 

[NeilF]

I had a 10 minute shield cell battle with a Cmdr Python and my Anaconda. I ended up High-waking out, he simply had more shield banks than my part time Combat / Miner ship. It was a good balanced intense battle. Even with his Cobra wing-man who I could completely ignore.

I did the same a few months back. I had numerous, he had numerous, in the end I just got belly sick with how rediculous and vapid the fight was, I left, shields still at 100%, and more SCBs waiting to carry on the farce.

Now, if we'd instead been limited to one SCB module with more realistic behaviour/balance. eg: Think current twin 5A's, with each of the three cells taking say 8-10 minutes to recharge? Done...

 

[Remklep]

I saw one video recently with the same statement "it comes down to who has the most SCBs"
Here it is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31obck-XM64

If you fight like that - that's not the SCB problem.

That must be the WORST PVP fight I have ever seen.

 

[A_Honcho]

What's wrong with epic multi-wing fights that last 30 minutes or more?
In those fights you need SCB to sustain you when you are primaried by 16 hostile commanders. Even with SCB you might last only 1 minute. You might not even be able to fire them all off.

If you want twitch PvP which lasts 30 seconds (without SCB) there's CQC for you.

So rep for you OP.

This. This all over! But traders will never understand our joy of epic battles

- - - Updated - - -

1. One SCB bank per ship.
2. Turns combat away from the tedious bore that it is now.
3. Still gives the flyer who wants to escape a chance, which is mostly what SCBs were meant to be for.
4. Does something to redress the current silliness that has multi-role ships being more capable than the so-called 'specialist' ships.
5. ???
6. Profit.

That's possibly the worst fix idea I've ever seen. It will kill pvp and kill combat in elite.
IT'S NOT SCB'S THAT NEED NERFED, IT'S THE POWERPLANT ON MULTIROLE SHIPS (only a couple of MJ) but it will help bring things into line and make yoy really think "how can I make this fit" Rather than just slap parts on and still have 5% power to spare.

 

[GunnerBill]

Probably only really need to lengthen the firing cycle of the SCB by fraction of a second to fix it.

Take it away from a tactical device to a strategic one.

 

[KellyR]

If shield cells could have been fitted into utility slots, they would have made sense for a trader. But in the internal bays? That would never work for a trader. Traders are all about cargo space. Heck, some of them run without shields to give them more cargo. So if these were made for traders, that's a fail.

 

[A_Honcho]

Probably only really need to lengthen the firing cycle of the SCB by fraction of a second to fix it.

Take it away from a tactical device to a strategic one.

Not really, people would just arm them earlier

 

[Alexander the Grape]

What's wrong with epic multi-wing fights that last 30 minutes or more?
In those fights you need SCB to sustain you when you are primaried by 16 hostile commanders. Even with SCB you might last only 1 minute. You might not even be able to fire them all off.

If you want twitch PvP which lasts 30 seconds (without SCB) there's CQC for you.

So rep for you OP.

The reason we get unfun focusing by 16+ commanders is because of SCBs. Otherwise pip distribution and evasive flying makes it optimal to engage commanders more evenly, but currently it's better to alpha through those SCBs

 

[Farmboy]

I think there are too many people on this thread assuming that it is only in PvP that SCB are a problem.

I don't play PvP. I'm exclusively PvE, because my combat skills are pretty poor.

For me SCB make it just a bit too easy to take down an Elite Anaconda without taking any hull damage in my vulture. Those encounters ought to be hard (and rarer on the BBs probably better rewarded - on a par with the superior smuggling missions). I imagine if I fitted my python properly for combat with several banks of SCB, that it would be easier still.

I do absolutely take the point several have made that the large shield values you can get on the larger ships combined with the fairly constant recharge rate is a problem. I think multiple SCB aren't the correct answer there. Ideally the time to charge an unboosted shield to max should be more or less constant across ships. I'd make it be 1 unit of time for size 5 shield and size 5 power distributor with 4 pips to SYS. Scale to 2 units of time with 2 pips and 4 with 1 pip. Scale by the ratio of shield size to power distributer size (so size 6 shield and size 4 distributor would be more than 1 unit of time, and size 4 shield and size 6 distributer less - whether you scale linearly or not is an open question - but having a given size distributer provide X MJ/sec of shield which various per distrib size might be simplest).

And then I'd change SCB so they don't draw much power, are one per ship, are much more costly to reload (so they are more emergency use than regular live a little longer in a CZ use), and let them be used whether shields are online or not. If shields come back online at 50% of full charge and an SCB of a given size gives +60% over a few seconds, it would being shields back on over a few seconds. You could also bump the heat cost of their use so you'd be mad to continue to fire while they are recharging your shields (or at least have to dump a couple of heatsinks to compensate).

I'd also uprate the value of armour and especially of hull reinforcements so that the choice of SCB or Hull reinforcement is a hard one or at least varies from ship to ship. I really like the idea of armour-tanking in a FAS (no need for pips in SYS for instance) but I suspect FAS with Shield and SCB vs FAS with armour+hull reinf might still be a bit one-sided in favour of the SCB. It would be an interesting test to do for those who are so inclined.