As most of you are probably aware, having pips in SYS increases the amount of damage your shield can sustain in a non-linear relationship. Having 1 or 2 pips in SYS has little effect. Having 3 pips in SYS has a noticeable, but fairly moderate effect. Having 4 pips in SYS, however, has a monumental effect: your shield can sustain 2.38 times as much damage as it normally could. Neither of the other two sub-systems have this sort of non-linear scaling to similarly reward having a full 4 pips in them. This leads to CMDRs leaning towards builds that can run with 4 pips in SYS at all times, and put an undue amount of importance on weapon efficiency (since you'll at most have 2 pips to spare) and shield capacity (since you'll have less pips for ENG, and 2.38 times a bigger number is a much bigger number). I propose adding similar non-linear scaling bonuses to the other sub-systems to make fully powering them more attractive, and worth the massive loss in durability you experience by having less than 4 pips in SYS.
ENG:
While there is the easy answer of just making the ship's speed and rotation stats be significantly buffed at 4 pips, I don't think that's the right way to go. Increasing speeds more than they already have been by the engineers further devalues the slower projectile speed weapons, and introduces a variety of other subtle balance issues. Instead, I suggest having 4 pip in ENG significantly increase your ship's acceleration. This will allow you to change you velocity vector more quickly. With higher acceleration, you can more effectively utilize your lateral thrusters, more quickly close on your target without overshooting, better control drift, etc. It makes a big difference on ship maneuverability, without messing with the already delicate and questionable balance of relative rotation rates and speed. It would definitely be worth throwing 4 pips in ENG while you're trying to bring your ship back around after a pass, or trying to closely orbit a rotating enemy.
WEP:
This one's a little tricker, and I don't think I've necessarily got a "best answer". The options I see are as follows:
1) Significantly increase RoF of weapons. This makes sense with most weapons (stronger cooling, faster reloading mechanisms, etc.), but doesn't really benefit slow RoF weapons of opportunity (PAs, Cannons, etc.) Additionally, ammo weapons kinda get the shaft with less effective longevity.
2) Increase damage of weapons. This is universally beneficial to all weapon types, but doesn't make a lot of sense with the kinetic or missile ones. I mean, how does providing more ammo to a gun or missile rack suddenly add more explosive into the shell? Handwavium could be applied, but it just feels kinda ham-fisted.
3) Significantly decrease the capacitor draw of all weapons. Having 4 pips in WEP would thus allow you to not only fill your capacitor back up quickly, but also deplete it far more slowly as long as you keeps 4 pips in WEP. This would make it a very attractive option when you're in an advantageous position, and aren't taking a lot of damage. The problem with this approach is that it doesn't really give any benefit to low-draw weapons, like frags, MCs, and cannons.
4) A contextual combination of all of these. This would be a sort of "best of all worlds" approach. Some weapons would get a damage buff, some would get a RoF buff, and some would get an efficiency buff, depending on what makes the most sense for that weapon type. This would allow the devs to add a little more flavor to the different weapons (Maybe pulses get an efficiency buff, but beams get a damage buff), but also involves the most knowledge overhead for the players to learn.
In any case, the idea is to make putting 4 pips in WEP an attractive choice, when considering the opportunity cost of not having 4 pips in one of the other subsystems.
The perfect-world situation that I envision with this is the player frequently shifting pips around over the course of a fight to best leverage their current situation, instead of just settling into the "best" configuration and staying there. Imagine you get jumped. You go 4-2-0 (SYS-ENG-WEP) to give you some extra protection from the opening salvo, and turn to face your attacker. You boost past them to get out of their weapon arc. As soon as you stop taking the heavy fire, you change to 2-4-0, and utilize your increased acceleration to stop yourself from getting too far from the aggressor while allowing the SYS cap to recharge a bit, and then position yourself in their blind spot. As soon as your weapons get lined up, you throw your pips into a 0-2-4 and open up with all of your weapons, causing major damage. The enemy takes evasive action, so you go back to 0-4-2 to try to stay on their tail, while still allowing yourself some weapon energy. You notice your SYS capacitor is running dry but your shield is still damaged, so you adjust to 1-4-1 to keep some amount of weapon pressure on the enemy, while giving your shields a bit of power, too. The enemy manages to get their guns back on you, so back to 4-2-0 and begin the cycle anew.
That sort of on-the-fly adjustment would be awesome, and really take the combat in this game to the next level. You could stay at 2-2-2 the entire time and do ok, but at any given moment there'd be one of three subsystems that you could be fully-powering to better take advantage of the situation at hand. I realize you can do this now, but the reward for putting 4 pips in the other systems (ENG and WEP) just isn't really there. The main reason you ever do on lots of ships is just to fill the capacitor back up; I'd argue that isn't really much of an interesting decision. What are your thoughts on the matter?
Note: As far as changing the way SYS pips work, well, I'm perfectly ok with that. I'd actually prefer it, in fact. I think that if the other subsystems scale linearly, then so should SYS. I also think that more-than-doubling your shield capacity is WAAAAY too much of a bonus that causes a myriad of balancing issues. I've actually for a while been suggesting / advocating for the SYS pip bonus to be both reduced and made linear, but it hasn't happened. As an alternate approach, I'm suggesting how the other sub-systems could instead be brought up to the SYS level to create meaningful choice.
ENG:
While there is the easy answer of just making the ship's speed and rotation stats be significantly buffed at 4 pips, I don't think that's the right way to go. Increasing speeds more than they already have been by the engineers further devalues the slower projectile speed weapons, and introduces a variety of other subtle balance issues. Instead, I suggest having 4 pip in ENG significantly increase your ship's acceleration. This will allow you to change you velocity vector more quickly. With higher acceleration, you can more effectively utilize your lateral thrusters, more quickly close on your target without overshooting, better control drift, etc. It makes a big difference on ship maneuverability, without messing with the already delicate and questionable balance of relative rotation rates and speed. It would definitely be worth throwing 4 pips in ENG while you're trying to bring your ship back around after a pass, or trying to closely orbit a rotating enemy.
WEP:
This one's a little tricker, and I don't think I've necessarily got a "best answer". The options I see are as follows:
1) Significantly increase RoF of weapons. This makes sense with most weapons (stronger cooling, faster reloading mechanisms, etc.), but doesn't really benefit slow RoF weapons of opportunity (PAs, Cannons, etc.) Additionally, ammo weapons kinda get the shaft with less effective longevity.
2) Increase damage of weapons. This is universally beneficial to all weapon types, but doesn't make a lot of sense with the kinetic or missile ones. I mean, how does providing more ammo to a gun or missile rack suddenly add more explosive into the shell? Handwavium could be applied, but it just feels kinda ham-fisted.
3) Significantly decrease the capacitor draw of all weapons. Having 4 pips in WEP would thus allow you to not only fill your capacitor back up quickly, but also deplete it far more slowly as long as you keeps 4 pips in WEP. This would make it a very attractive option when you're in an advantageous position, and aren't taking a lot of damage. The problem with this approach is that it doesn't really give any benefit to low-draw weapons, like frags, MCs, and cannons.
4) A contextual combination of all of these. This would be a sort of "best of all worlds" approach. Some weapons would get a damage buff, some would get a RoF buff, and some would get an efficiency buff, depending on what makes the most sense for that weapon type. This would allow the devs to add a little more flavor to the different weapons (Maybe pulses get an efficiency buff, but beams get a damage buff), but also involves the most knowledge overhead for the players to learn.
In any case, the idea is to make putting 4 pips in WEP an attractive choice, when considering the opportunity cost of not having 4 pips in one of the other subsystems.
The perfect-world situation that I envision with this is the player frequently shifting pips around over the course of a fight to best leverage their current situation, instead of just settling into the "best" configuration and staying there. Imagine you get jumped. You go 4-2-0 (SYS-ENG-WEP) to give you some extra protection from the opening salvo, and turn to face your attacker. You boost past them to get out of their weapon arc. As soon as you stop taking the heavy fire, you change to 2-4-0, and utilize your increased acceleration to stop yourself from getting too far from the aggressor while allowing the SYS cap to recharge a bit, and then position yourself in their blind spot. As soon as your weapons get lined up, you throw your pips into a 0-2-4 and open up with all of your weapons, causing major damage. The enemy takes evasive action, so you go back to 0-4-2 to try to stay on their tail, while still allowing yourself some weapon energy. You notice your SYS capacitor is running dry but your shield is still damaged, so you adjust to 1-4-1 to keep some amount of weapon pressure on the enemy, while giving your shields a bit of power, too. The enemy manages to get their guns back on you, so back to 4-2-0 and begin the cycle anew.
That sort of on-the-fly adjustment would be awesome, and really take the combat in this game to the next level. You could stay at 2-2-2 the entire time and do ok, but at any given moment there'd be one of three subsystems that you could be fully-powering to better take advantage of the situation at hand. I realize you can do this now, but the reward for putting 4 pips in the other systems (ENG and WEP) just isn't really there. The main reason you ever do on lots of ships is just to fill the capacitor back up; I'd argue that isn't really much of an interesting decision. What are your thoughts on the matter?
Note: As far as changing the way SYS pips work, well, I'm perfectly ok with that. I'd actually prefer it, in fact. I think that if the other subsystems scale linearly, then so should SYS. I also think that more-than-doubling your shield capacity is WAAAAY too much of a bonus that causes a myriad of balancing issues. I've actually for a while been suggesting / advocating for the SYS pip bonus to be both reduced and made linear, but it hasn't happened. As an alternate approach, I'm suggesting how the other sub-systems could instead be brought up to the SYS level to create meaningful choice.
Last edited:
even charge enhanced the capacitor runs dry on most ships with 3 or lesser pips^^ this deactivates fast every sort of countermeasure.
