This is bad... VERY VERY bad.
Bad design decision.
If anything I was hoping we'd be able to get more.
AT LEAST allow us to synthesize more on the fly!
You want to reduce the number of heat sinks per laucher? what?
- Thread starter ErichZann
- Start date
This is bad... VERY VERY bad.
Bad design decision.
If anything I was hoping we'd be able to get more.
AT LEAST allow us to synthesize more on the fly!
Well I think as someone else has said elsewhere (or here, dunno)
Frontier have stated SCBs are intended as emergency use items.
Not SCB, SCB, SCB, SCB, SCB, SCB tanking, firing ad nauseum in every single encounter.
That's exactly how they are used most of the time in PvE; an emergency safety net, allowing you to temporarily ward off more damage than normal. The reason why they are spammed in PvP is because it is the only way to survive for large ships.
If they really think that, then why on earth don't they just limit them to one bank per ship. The idea that that promotes cookie cutter identical builds doesn't really follow.
The same with heat sink launchers. If they don't want players having more than a certain amount, place a hard limit on how many you can have.
I was about to say that. They had the solution with limiting it to 1 SCB per ship. Instead they've gone off on this tangent to keep everyone happy and it's been worse than a bandaid since it's very short sighted.
If you want to control heat, SCBs and HRPs, address them directly. Not everything else just to accommodate changes because it throws balance for everything out totally out of whack. Kind of like PGI's approach which was been stagnant ever since they introduced quirks. So much so that every attempt they've done for balance has been a disaster.
What else has been thrown totally out of whack?
Oh I dunno, the meta for one.
The meta is changing? Crikey.
Yes sir.
It completely baffles me where FD got the idea that balancing modules and ships should be done by changing everything except the problematic items.
It's like I'm watering the garden and I want to turn off my hose. If I were Frontier the obvious solution would be to tie the hose in a knot around the rear axle of my truck. Indefinitely. And then go to get a gallon of milk from the store.
Why?.....
Their changes is what brought about the current SCB and HRP meta. Things were a bit more dynamic prior to that, aside from SCB candy popping.
Here's the conundrum. Big ship people want to be viable in large scale PvP (though many posting their opinions don't PvP and some don't even have a large ship), which in turn becomes a mess for balancing around smaller ships. That's why this has been a fiasco. Large ships work under the same rules as the small ships. As long as they continue to try to appease both groups, this is going to continue to be an unachievable goal.
What they need to do is balance the smaller systems (the ones in play now), and add in new specific systems to large ships that smaller ships (small, including the FdL, FAS and iClipper. Maybe even the Python) cannot even use. Then this bouncing back and forth shenanigans wouldn't even be necessary.
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To be honest I'm not really getting what your point is, it's like you're saying change is bad?
"Everything totally out of whack"? Because heat sinks have been reduced from 4 to 3?
i'm just not seeing what's so out of whack, so you can't stack and repeat use quite as many heatsinks?
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Tying SCBs and HSLs together has effectively limited them, because that makes SCBs compete for space with chaff, SBs, KWS, etc. in short, you take a risk by stacking more SCBs than you have HSLs. You can do it, sure, but there IS a drawback to it (in addition to power requirements, the limited number of cells themselves, having to decide when to use them). That's much better than limiting SCBs externally to one per ship. After all some ships do better with paired SCBs, others with singles, some with large reserve banks and others with only a single SCB. This is a good thing for the game.
HRPs by comparison have zero drawbacks. None. They are cheap, they take no power, they barely weigh anything, they are always active, and provide the same flat bonus to every single ship. They provide far too much survivability compared to SCBs, bulkheads, and even shields themselves in some cases (small ships, stealth).
HRPs are the PROBLEM here, not SCBs and not HSLs.
EDIT: also limiting SCBs to one unfairly penalizes large ships and further pushes an HRP meta, because that will be your only option for survival.
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The thing is, that they change a module that is used by different players, playing in different ways, in order to 'fix' one thing, that then potentially messes things up for everyone else. Whether it actually fixes the original problem would seem to be debatable.
Whatever they do, all players will end up adapting (it adds nothing to the gameplay IMO to have to deploy a heat sink if I use an SCB, but heh, I have to do it...), but I still don't see why they don't just say, we only want players to have one SCB module (you choose the size, so compromises will still be needed), and we only want players to have x number of heatsinks, so one launcher with up to that many sinks.
Sorry but what else is "totally out of whack"?
Or even affected to any degree that it actually matters?
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I didn't use the words out of whack as far as I can remember...
But for me then, limiting heat sinks to 3 means that I cannot use my single SCB module to it's full effect as it has four charges. Not game breaking, just a PITA that I'd rather not have when playing the game.
I didn't use the words out of whack as far as I can remember...
But for me then, limiting heat sinks to 3 means that I cannot use my single SCB module to it's full effect as it has four charges. Not game breaking, just a PITA that I'd rather not have when playing the game.
Well sure but that was what I was wondering about in the post you quoted.
People complaining the game is totally out of whack and it's nerfing other roles because heat sinks went from 4 to 3. I just don't see it.
It seems a minor change at best. Absolute worst case scenario seems to be you have to add another heat sink, because having one less SCB round is not acceptable or you can't silent run for quite as long.
Not really "totally out of whack".
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Of course, except I don't have room for another heat sink launcher, without removing another utility module that I consider useful / important, and that's without a point defense that by all accounts may become kind of useful in 2.1...
The thing is that they seem to be trying to coerce people to do things rather than just say hey, you can only have this many / much of this thing, just like they do with shield generators and fuel scoops. It seems kind of a roundabout way of doing things, and at this point, I don't see it adding to fun gameplay. On the other hand, they mentioned that SCBs were going to be very upgradeable by engineers, including heat generation, so perhaps that will make my issue moot.
I think the proposed changes for heat are fine and am looking forward on how they turn out.
For the problem of explorers wanting to be able to craft heat sinks, considering that weapon ammo can be produced i would consider that to be reasonable. At the same time, i would suggest another method to balance this than what was suggested up to now.
- Just putting in crafting time is not helping much, if somebody has two heat sink launchers on his ship, he'll just empty one, order it to produce and use the other one in the meanwhile.
Doing so is some effort for anybody using a normal setup, but as soon as you add in programable input devices, voice attack or similar tools, this can be highly automated and thus looses relevance.
- Adding power requirements is more workable, unless you consider that the idea behind this is to counter the silent running meta. Now take a look at silent running setups and you will see that many of them have plenty of power spare. The engine is vastly overpowered for the needs of the ship, it's just chosen for better heat efficiency. So while this modification is a limitation for some setups, it is without concequences for many silent running setups. It would not achieve the intended goal.
- My suggestion instead would be based on the fact that you basically start a factory inside your ship to produce new ammo. If a factory uses power, it also creates heat. And while there are several different methods the heat sinks could operate, all of those i am aware of would require a strongly exothermic method (read: it creates heat) to produce something which can then be used to absorb heat.
For the explorer this would be no problem. If producing a new load of heat sinks takes anything between 30 seconds and 5 minutes and the ship produces some heat in that time, the explorer would do that while flying around and not being close to a star. During normal conditions (heat vents open, not close to a star, no weapons being fired) the ship would perhaps heat up to 75%, which would not slow down exploration significally.
For somebody in combat things would look very different. Producing heat sinks would pour heat into the ship for the production time. Not only would using a second heat sink launcher make the whole procedure ridiculously
senseless, it even would not be able to fully compensate for the produced heat. Thus in-combat reproduction of heat sink launchers would be blocked. As a bonus this mechanic would also stop the in-combat reproduction of ammo, which again is fine for me. If you can't win a fight with the ammo you brought along, you might want to reconsider your weapon selection.
For the problem of explorers wanting to be able to craft heat sinks, considering that weapon ammo can be produced i would consider that to be reasonable. At the same time, i would suggest another method to balance this than what was suggested up to now.
- Just putting in crafting time is not helping much, if somebody has two heat sink launchers on his ship, he'll just empty one, order it to produce and use the other one in the meanwhile.
Doing so is some effort for anybody using a normal setup, but as soon as you add in programable input devices, voice attack or similar tools, this can be highly automated and thus looses relevance.
- Adding power requirements is more workable, unless you consider that the idea behind this is to counter the silent running meta. Now take a look at silent running setups and you will see that many of them have plenty of power spare. The engine is vastly overpowered for the needs of the ship, it's just chosen for better heat efficiency. So while this modification is a limitation for some setups, it is without concequences for many silent running setups. It would not achieve the intended goal.
- My suggestion instead would be based on the fact that you basically start a factory inside your ship to produce new ammo. If a factory uses power, it also creates heat. And while there are several different methods the heat sinks could operate, all of those i am aware of would require a strongly exothermic method (read: it creates heat) to produce something which can then be used to absorb heat.
For the explorer this would be no problem. If producing a new load of heat sinks takes anything between 30 seconds and 5 minutes and the ship produces some heat in that time, the explorer would do that while flying around and not being close to a star. During normal conditions (heat vents open, not close to a star, no weapons being fired) the ship would perhaps heat up to 75%, which would not slow down exploration significally.
For somebody in combat things would look very different. Producing heat sinks would pour heat into the ship for the production time. Not only would using a second heat sink launcher make the whole procedure ridiculously
senseless, it even would not be able to fully compensate for the produced heat. Thus in-combat reproduction of heat sink launchers would be blocked. As a bonus this mechanic would also stop the in-combat reproduction of ammo, which again is fine for me. If you can't win a fight with the ammo you brought along, you might want to reconsider your weapon selection.
Of course, except I don't have room for another heat sink launcher, without removing another utility module that I consider useful / important, and that's without a point defense that by all accounts may become kind of useful in 2.1...
The thing is that they seem to be trying to coerce people to do things rather than just say hey, you can only have this many / much of this thing, just like they do with shield generators and fuel scoops. It seems kind of a roundabout way of doing things, and at this point, I don't see it adding to fun gameplay. On the other hand, they mentioned that SCBs were going to be very upgradeable by engineers, including heat generation, so perhaps that will make my issue moot.
Doesn't that provide choice though.
I mean for the sake of argument say were talking SCBs, in the current system your SCB has 4 shots and you have a heatsink with 4 ammo.
Now you could limit the SCB, so say we limit it to 3, there you go you get one less SCB round but one extra heatsink ammo you won't use.
Or you can reduce heatsinks to 3 and leave the extra SCB round hanging around.
So with the latter scenario you still have only 3 SCB shots as in the first scenario but you also have an extra +1 that you can use, but that last one you have to make a decision on because it's gonna damage your ship if you do.
Coercing isn't necessarily a bad thing, since ultimately the player still then has the choice, as opposed to Frontier making that choice for you, I mean sure directly limit but it just seems a less interesting solution.
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The thread sure has grown large. Well, me and quite a few people in my squadron have gotten quite angry at this change. 4 per launcher was quite the sweet spot with the tie to SCBs, 3 will break a lot.