I just watched a video on youtube that stated that FD is testing some pretty drastic shield/sheild cell nerfs. I was wondering if anyone can confirm this, I haven't engineered my shield yet but if they are going to nerf the hell out of it I won't waste they grind on it!
Sheild Nerfing??
- Thread starter starhawkprime
- Start date
They are not nerfing "the hell" out of it. In fact in some situations they may have made the problem worse. But the shield strength/weapon strength/time to kill balance has been waaaaay out of whack ever since engineers so these changes are definitely needed. You can still go ahead and work on your shields and boosters, but stacking them for maximum megajoules won't be your goal anymore. Aim to build up resistances instead, that's likely going to be the new meta.
No, Plasma Accelerators and Railguns will be the new meta - most likely on a FDL.
As both of these are stronger against "higher tier" ships and Accelerators flatout ignore resitances.
And no, fixed weapons against bigger ships has nothing to do with "skill".
RNGineers has, in effect, flipped the table and the peices are falling where they may. Lurching changes, be them experimental or otherwise, only serve to prove how much of a pickle this has all become.
It's easy to say "told you so" now but the FD really /were/ warned that if RNGineers wasn't handled carefully chaos would ensue. The game designers dropped the ball - again.
It's easy to say "told you so" now but the FD really /were/ warned that if RNGineers wasn't handled carefully chaos would ensue. The game designers dropped the ball - again.
They're not nerfing shields or shield cell banks.
They are introducing diminishing returns on shield booster stacking
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/332706-Shield-Booster-and-ship-armour-changes-feedback-thread
You're still going to be building for resistant shields anyway since raw MJ shields won't be possible anymore (thankfully). Personally I just want them to get all the engineer upgrades malarkey into a state where there won't be a single meta of any kind that everyone strives for. But I'm a pragmatist and know that likely won't happen so long as engineers exist and offer such ridiculous bonuses.
I read somewhere, probably on the beta forum, that the overall effect of the nerf of booster stacking is around 30% loss in overall shield mj.
I stronnnngly disagree cmdr...the game demolishers have been doing a bang up job -pun intended.
Ok, after all the slide rules stop sliding and the spreadsheets are done being analyzed will engineered shields be beneficial or not worth the time investment after the (not nerf). LOL!
Thankfully, this nerf can be easily countered by SCBs, at least in PVE.
I testd the first 2.3 beta in my same corvette setup (I have a lot of shields) .
Going against an elite conda at a hazrez in the 2.3 beta my shields appear (from an hour or twos testing) to be 75% or more weaker.... I can take constant ai fire from an elite conda for around 20-30 seconds per ring of shields (I have an A8 bi-weave and 6 boosters). In 2.3, I was down to the hull in < 20 seconds. I tried this a few times with other deadly and elite AI in 2.3 to see if it was just a luky AI with mega-eng-weaps ... no ... shields feel like ive got a6 fitted with no boosters.
Cell banks also seem to be way down in how much they bring back (< 1 ring vs would bring back 2 rings in 2.2)
I spent a lot of time collecting stuff and visiting the eng's to get my shields to a good level ... i suspect BMW are about to replace all the glass with clingfilm
Yes, with all the other things wrong, lets have another huge swing in balance, just what the game needs.Thanks for the insight! Shooting at moving targets in space is fun but shooting at moving ship builds not so much! lol
Not necessarily nerfed, just they have shifted focus from pure Mj to resistances.
Unless you encounter lots of ramming and PA fire, a lower Mj shield with higher resistances will actually be stronger.
As an example, in the live game my Corvette has 5638Mj shields with ki/th/ex resistances of 63.5/27/69.9. Shifting my focus onto thermal resistances in the beta I get 2830Mj with 61.1/55.2/68.1, the shield's are relatively just as strong and recharge faster. I'm just a bit more vulnerable to damage types that don't fit into therm/kinetic/explosive, like ramming or PA damage.
Unless you encounter lots of ramming and PA fire, a lower Mj shield with higher resistances will actually be stronger.
As an example, in the live game my Corvette has 5638Mj shields with ki/th/ex resistances of 63.5/27/69.9. Shifting my focus onto thermal resistances in the beta I get 2830Mj with 61.1/55.2/68.1, the shield's are relatively just as strong and recharge faster. I'm just a bit more vulnerable to damage types that don't fit into therm/kinetic/explosive, like ramming or PA damage.
Well thats actually ok with me - I'm PvE focused anyways and my Corvette feels invulnerable with 2GJ already.
Giga not Terra lol
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Known as "pure damage."
I testd the first 2.3 beta in my same corvette setup (I have a lot of shields) .
Going against an elite conda at a hazrez in the 2.3 beta my shields appear (from an hour or twos testing) to be 75% or more weaker.... I can take constant ai fire from an elite conda for around 20-30 seconds per ring of shields (I have an A8 bi-weave and 6 boosters). In 2.3, I was down to the hull in < 20 seconds. I tried this a few times with other deadly and elite AI in 2.3 to see if it was just a luky AI with mega-eng-weaps ... no ... shields feel like ive got a6 fitted with no boosters.
Cell banks also seem to be way down in how much they bring back (< 1 ring vs would bring back 2 rings in 2.2)
I spent a lot of time collecting stuff and visiting the eng's to get my shields to a good level ... i suspect BMW are about to replace all the glass with clingfilm
#1 Corvette fits a class 7 shield
#2 Bi-Weaves are always C grade
#3 The 75% you're getting is an exageration. The diminishing returns on boosters is severe, but not that much.
#4 SCBs haven't been touched.
Switch to resistance boosters (2-3 will do) with 1-2 heavies depending on the grade. You wont have nearly thr same MJ as you did, but your shields will be much more effective and recharge more quickly.
BETA Corvette dropped 35% shield health all things left equal.
Fiddling w/ load out may yield a bit back, I got a 10% increase back, so 25% loss overall.
Results will likely vary.
This has more of an effect in Open. Solo doesn't seem to be a big issue, NPC's are still not OP.
But if you lose shields in Open, you are more than likely toast as your modules can still be fried, albeit in a slower fashion, and unless you are tanked to the limits, you must bug ASAP if you don't want a re-buy.
Fiddling w/ load out may yield a bit back, I got a 10% increase back, so 25% loss overall.
Results will likely vary.
This has more of an effect in Open. Solo doesn't seem to be a big issue, NPC's are still not OP.
But if you lose shields in Open, you are more than likely toast as your modules can still be fried, albeit in a slower fashion, and unless you are tanked to the limits, you must bug ASAP if you don't want a re-buy.
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None of the shield / shield booster changes have ever been with the easy as heck PvE in mind. It takes ZERO skill to use gimballed weapons and blast elite NPCs and even wings, away into dust. The sole reason of these nerfs is because of crybabies who have no idea how to properly counter huge shields backed by SCB's (reverb torpedoes for shields, feedback rails for scbs) and expect to be able to use turret or gimballed weapons and not a shred of FA-off to do good against very specific builds for PvP. Everyone will see when PA's are the new meta how the big ships desperately needed the super MJ shields to protect themselves. Increased hull won't mean squat when your modules are exposed to railguns, high yield cannons, and PA's sniping them down. Powerplant will be easy and while you're in the middle of a system reboot or trying to high wake away (that is if your destroyed powerplant doesn't just explode) they'll peck at your drives and FSD and other modules. A packhound salvo or two will (as MRPs will have soaked the other damage already) destroy your exterior hardpoints and utility mounts.
The change is SOLELY because of PvP. Which is quite sad that Frontier will agree with the babies instead of thinking for themselves. But I suppose Frontier will just have to see for a patch or three just how bad the big ships have it. When only a handful (aka PvE'ers ) are flying them and the complaints go right back to complaining about FDLs (who aren't capable of super shields beyond 3000MJ at the loss of other crucial utility mounts such as heatsinks to counter their heat issues) Frontier will realize how badly they messed up.
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To be fair the Corvette really needs the Class 8 shields. For the supposedly top combat ship of the Federation to have an undersized shield generator is quite disgusting. I keep staring at the Corvette I am slowly outfitting and wondering why the Cutter get such exclusive treatment where there is no precedence for it. It's not an exploration ship. It's not the premier Combat ship. And most other trader ships don't run super shields either for a various amount of reasons. The Corvette desperately needs the Class 8 Shield Generator
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