The SCB (Shield Cell Bank) Thread

I never did PVP but i see complaining about the heat damage and how moduls are exposed and damaged.

I literally never used it but how effective would be the field maintaince module ,that thing that can repair your modules, in such a situation?

I mean taking short amount of heat damage in order to keep your shield up, in order to avoid massive damage to hull/modules together with a maintaince module doesnt seem to be a bad trait off.
AFM's take modules offline to repair them so it's not all that viable in combat, but a good answer for between fights. If we tweak the heat generation down I think it could all work out.
 
These changes make no sense, I really question whether the balance team ever does pvp? Like real, wing v wing pvp? not just a pretend duel. The current meta is wing warfare, that's how most pvp takes place.

If you can't spam SCB how are you supposed to survive multiple people attacking you at once? Being able to tank several people at once is a SKILL. Managing your SYS and ENG pips, turning on/off your banks, remembering to use SCB and chaff, being able to high-wake quickly, those are the skills that will keep you alive in pvp. What is the point of even doing pvp in this game if I can die and have to pay X millions because I am outnumbered? Not because I made a mistake, but simply because I am outnumbered?

Also what is the point of having an expensive ship if they aren't the best for pvp? Seems to me like Micheal is mad that he can't 1v1 an anaconda in a viper? Anyone else get this feeling?

I don't know any pvpers who like this SCB change. It just seems like a change to cater to the gankers and murderers to be honest, so that they can 4v1 people more easily.

This 100% this give it 2 weeks .....

I 'd write a new reply but the above pretty much sums up my view on this.
 
Just downloaded Beta.

As it happened I was in a combat zone so tested some cells.
In a python.
1x6A heat went up from 32 - 130 (tolerable - JUST).
1x6A+1x3A = 130
1X6A+1x5A = 230 and a LOT of trouble!

After a REALLY extensive test of 2 minutes? Not keen on the increase of heat usage. Not good at all. Only good for one solid cell when running away.......

Now. I DID notice the timer for the shields to turn "on". DO like that idea. You'll need to keep an eye on which combo of cells to be using. GOOD.

How about decreasing the heat damage, but keep the timer?

All in my good old "honest" opinion of course!!!:D:D:D
 
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As above. The heat damage is stupidly high...
yes heat is really high at the moment, but combat just got a lot more interesting, those days when you lose your shields and is time to bug out are over. Hull tanking made it better.

[video=youtube;XtQj05qSB_4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtQj05qSB_4[/video]
 
As people were asking for SCBs to be removed completely, I'm not sure there is an "over nerf".

This will show those who are real PvPers and who are just SCB warriors in my opinion.
Any idiot can read a config on the forums and spam SCBs until 2/3 out, then run away.
With luck this change will stop that and people will learn to fly their ships or stay in ship they are competent in.

I hope your "evidence" is genuine PvP fights with common sense use of SCBs and not a set up designed to push your agenda.
I myself will also be looking into this with friends and asking others to try them out - just to be sure the tests are not all one sided.


What?!! Are you truly being serious here?! SCBs prolong fights and make them more fun, especially for larger ships that need to tank in a large scale battle. It's as simple as that and this whole SCB thing has been taken way too far.

I'm quite surprised by your comments about telling people to learn to fly their ships, especially in the company of some of the players posting in here...

yes heat is really high at the moment, but combat just got a lot more interesting, those days when you lose your shields and is time to bug out are over. Hull tanking made it better.

This is a 1v1 video and he hardly hits you? Try this in a larger battle scenario and let's see how well you tank two FDLs, 8 multis and PAs firing at you.
 
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So I've just done some testing on the new SCB heat mechanics, most results were checked twice although they're all quick and dirty numbers. All tests were done on a Python with A6 shields.

SCB Class/Size and Heat

A6 - +100 heat
A5 - +80 heat
A4 - +60 heat
A3 - +50 heat
A2 -+30-40 heat

They seemed to more than stack, ie. A6+A5 together seemed to produce more than +180 heat, around +200-230, I'm guessing this is due to ships being able to only disappate so much heat over time, so 2 together have a greater effect.

In all cases maximum heat was achieved in around 6 secs, with return close to minimum after ~30secs.

Playing safe, a single SCB can be chained every 30 secs, this is a huge change from before when SCB stacks could be fired roughly every 10-12 secs.


Heat Sinks:

Deploy after 5-6 secs.

Only mitigate a fraction of the heat produced by SCBs. eg. An A6 SCB could be prevented from overheating/damaging the ship but heat still rose close to 100%

A single heat sink is limited in the heat it can offset, in the Python that was a single A6 SCB or dual A3 SCBs

Heat sink timing needs further investigation, was trying to deploy as close to SCB as possible but it may be that earlier/later is better.


TL: DR
Playing safe, a single SCB can be chained every 30 secs, this is a huge change from before when SCB stacks could be fired roughly every 10-12 secs.

A single heat sink is limited in the heat it can offset, on the python that was a single A6 SCB or a dual A3 SCB stack.


In my opinion this does not affect PvE much, a lone player can still chain SCBs with a little care. For 1v1 PvP it will just shorten fights, mass PvP tanking (which I've not done any off) just doesn't look like it's possible any more.



Personal Summary:
I've never much liked the concept of SCBs, for me SCB spamming just felt like it dragged out 1v1 fights. However, I've hardly done any mass PvP and that's where most of the opposition to these changes will come from.
I'm guessing this would force mass PvP to choose faster, cheaper ships for fights. I have mixed feelings about this because it does reduce ship options and I can't imagine many people wanting to mass PvP in the new Cutter or Corvette.

I do like the Bi-weave shields however, they could introduce more hit and run tactics given the faster recharge rate.
 
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So I've just done some testing on the new SCB heat mechanics, most results were checked twice although they're all quick and dirty numbers. All tests were done on a Python with A6 shields.

SCB Class/Size and Heat

A6 - +100 heat
A5 - +80 heat
A4 - +60 heat
A3 - +50 heat
A2 -+30-40 heat

They seemed to more than stack, ie. A6+A5 together seemed to produce more than +180 heat, around +200-230, I'm guessing this is due to ships being able to only disappate so much heat over time, so 2 together have a greater effect.

In all cases maximum heat was achieved in around 6 secs, with return close to minimum after ~30secs.

Playing safe, a single SCB can be chained every 30 secs, this is a huge change from before when SCB stacks could be fired roughly every 10-12 secs.


Heat Sinks:

Deploy after 5-6 secs.

Only mitigate a fraction of the heat produced by SCBs. eg. An A6 SCB could be prevented from overheating/damaging the ship but heat still rose close to 100%

A single heat sink is limited in the heat it can offset, in the Python that was a single A6 SCB or dual A3 SCBs

Heat sink timing needs further investigation, was trying to deploy as close to SCB as possible but it may be that earlier/later is better.


TL: DR
Playing safe, a single SCB can be chained every 30 secs, this is a huge change from before when SCB stacks could be fired roughly every 10-12 secs.

A single heat sink is limited in the heat it can offset, on the python that was a single A6 SCB or a dual A3 SCB stack.


In my opinion this does not affect PvE much, a lone player can still chain SCBs with a little care. For 1v1 PvP it will just shorten fights, mass PvP tanking (which I've not done any off) just doesn't look like it's possible any more.



Personal Summary:
I've never much liked the concept of SCBs, for me SCB spamming just felt like it dragged out 1v1 fights. However, I've hardly done any mass PvP and that's where most of the opposition to these changes will come from.
I'm guessing this would force mass PvP to choose faster, cheaper ships for fights. I have mixed feelings about this because it does reduce ship options and I can't imagine many people wanting to mass PvP in the new Cutter or Corvette.

I do like the Bi-weave shields however, they could introduce more hit and run tactics given the faster recharge rate.

That seems fine. The heat may be on the aggressive side, but the way I see it is combat is essentially 3 things.
1. Your Health
2. Your weapons
3. Relative Position

Boosting (number 3) and Firing (number 2) already affect heat build up, so healing (number 1) should also cause heat build up.
It's a balance of tactics. You shouldn't be able to boost, fire rails, and pop a bank at the same time. Dramatically altering any of your traits in a positive way for yourself (health, damage, or position) should involve consequence to the other. Now like I said, the current heat penalty may be a bit high at the moment, but it's a step in the right direction.

Think of it like this:
Heat is a resource pool. Like Mana. You can choose to use it on either Health, Weapons, or Position. Not all three, at least not without consequence.
 
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I seriously wonder the developers actually play the game for real when it relates to some decisions about game balance and enjoyment.

I can't see that many people even bother with SCBs on the smaller ships - you can just run and hide and rebuild your shields somewhere outside the area where you lost them, or in SC.
For larger ships they are only needed because of the ridiculously slow recharge time when you lose your shields. If you have a large ship like an Anaconda you might as well just dock and leave your ship alone for 30 minutes if SCBs didn't exist in game. BORING !!!
Of course you could buy some SCBs, undock, recharge once they're reanabled, and fire off a few more to refill the shields, before docking to sort out your ship again for the next engagement. The damn things don't even recharge when you're offline. Talk about immersion breaking.

The whole concept of shields is seriously flawed:
  • Large class ones take huge amounts of power but actually recharge at the same energy rate as small ones.
  • Boosters affect your overall shield maximum, absorb power, but don't actually boost the recharge rate.
  • SCBs drop energy into your shields, but however they're implemented only serve to reduce the otherwise boring wait for larger ships.
  • Charge rate is unaffected by energy diverted to SYS, but magically the amount of damage done to shields is reduced when you have higher power flow to SYS.

I find it amazing that the original Elite got the concept so right and here we are nearly a year since release and it's still so badly implemented.

The way this should work is:
  • Charge rate is all about how much energy the things use.
  • Charge rate should vary with with power diverted to SYS
  • Shield boosters should boost the charge rate (hence they use power), but not shield maximum strength.
  • Shield Class should affect the overall shield capacity.
  • Shield Rating should affect the overall capacity and charge rate slightly, coupled with the obvious weight/integrity tradeoffs.
  • Shield cells should affect overall capacity, and therefore shield strength, but you should be limited to one slot.
  • You should be able to instantly recharge your shields to full capacity when docked. I don't mind paying a price for this similar to fuel and ammo, but it needs fixing.

Penalising us with heat, adding a delay before they can be fired etc. is not fixing the problem.

Exactly. The nerf is really bad now. It will introduce a stupid TIME SINK
 
What?!! Are you truly being serious here?! SCBs prolong fights and make them more fun, especially for larger ships that need to tank in a large scale battle. It's as simple as that and this whole SCB thing has been taken way too far.

I'm quite surprised by your comments about telling people to learn to fly their ships, especially in the company of some of the players posting in here...

You must have had your eyes closed on these forums for the past year, as people have been screaming out for SCBs to get either removed completely or reduced in effectiveness.
Apart from super stacking without any kind of draw back at all, they completely invalidated the need for the hull reinforcement modules.

Also, "large scale battles"? Sorry, you must be thinking of the wrong game - this is Elite: Dangerous not EVE Online.
The maximum number of ships I've heard of in 1 instance (with tweaking and various trickery going on) is nineteen (19) people.
Not exactly "large scale" and not much of a battle when you have to wing with people to do it.

And sorry to say, but if a large ship comes under combined fire from a wing - it is not supposed to sit there like it's God Almighty and laugh at peoples efforts.
An Anaconda should not be an "I win" versus a wing of ships. If you want to stick around when out numbered, that makes you stupid and you deserve your ship blowing up.
You should not be able to stack and spam SCBs for 30 minutes, laughing at the wing the entire time.

So perhaps people will raise there flight skill abilities, or actually think about situational awareness now and react accordingly.
Not just sit there going SCB, SCB, SCB, SCB, SCB, SCB, SCB, SCB, SCB, SCB, SCB, SCB, SCB............
 
Whilst I'm not a fan of the SCB nerf, I think they've gone a little OTT on it. Perhaps make the first use a little less detrimental?
 
You must have had your eyes closed on these forums for the past year, as people have been screaming out for SCBs to get either removed completely or reduced in effectiveness.
Apart from super stacking without any kind of draw back at all, they completely invalidated the need for the hull reinforcement modules.

Also, "large scale battles"? Sorry, you must be thinking of the wrong game - this is Elite: Dangerous not EVE Online.
The maximum number of ships I've heard of in 1 instance (with tweaking and various trickery going on) is nineteen (19) people.
Not exactly "large scale" and not much of a battle when you have to wing with people to do it.

And sorry to say, but if a large ship comes under combined fire from a wing - it is not supposed to sit there like it's God Almighty and laugh at peoples efforts.
An Anaconda should not be an "I win" versus a wing of ships. If you want to stick around when out numbered, that makes you stupid and you deserve your ship blowing up.
You should not be able to stack and spam SCBs for 30 minutes, laughing at the wing the entire time.

So perhaps people will raise there flight skill abilities, or actually think about situational awareness now and react accordingly.
Not just sit there going SCB, SCB, SCB, SCB, SCB, SCB, SCB, SCB, SCB, SCB, SCB, SCB, SCB............

And again, this is the problem. You have no idea how the current mechanic works in a larger scale PVP encounter. Anacondas do not just sit there for 30mins laughing lol! God almighty, hardly.. Anacondas can be destroyed just like any other ship, but being the huge lumbering things that they are they require a coordinated assault. That's why these ships need to be able to tank a little. To be relevant. Else you may as well park it up on the hanger and leave it alone.

And i've never come across a competent Anaconda pilot in a fight just sitting there without situational awareness. I'd say that Anaconda pilots have to be way more aware than most in a wing battle. They are always gonna be targeted and focused. And i've seen many many many go boom...

Where are you getting your information from anyways?! Not from experience, that i can be sure of..

And larger scale PVP is perfectly valid in this game, it happens all the time and you do not need trickery to do this. Again, where did that come from?
As for 19 players in an instance, we have videos online with more than that many players in an instance.
Also, why take my relative stance on what constitutes a 'large' battle in Elite and then try and make out i'm somehow talking about Eve:Online kind of large?!

24 ship battle

[video=youtube;w-CDyPtfG4s]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-CDyPtfG4s[/video]
 
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