[RFC] Shield Booster mechanics rebalance

[kofeyh]

Frontier tried baby steps. A tiny reduction in stacking effect. Notice how we don't have that now? We don't, because people screamed murder.

No, I actually believe we absolutely need the developer to sort this out, once and for all. Because the endless re-engineering of crap because some recipie changes or values shift is just wasteful and tends to create a negative experience.

Do it once, right. And build the thing to be modular. So it can be adapted and built on. Not endless series of different colour bandages. Sometimes? You just have to pull that bandaid off.

 

[lenna]

Frontier tried baby steps. A tiny reduction in stacking effect. Notice how we don't have that now? We don't, because people screamed murder.

I understand why people did, my proposal could be implemented as a first step towards increasing the significance of shield regeneration rates.

What the next steps could be I am not entirely sure but I am certain FD could make it work in the long run.

My proposal would provide a minor level of impact initially, but as things get rebalanced over time it could perhaps become more significant.

 

[CMDR MERANGO]

No no No no No!

The point in having big ships is that they need to be earned, by rank and credits. The point of the Engineers is to have mods that are again earned, and mod your ship how you want within the limits of the mods.

If players want to kill the big ships they either, git gud or earn the ranks and credits to buy their own.

Or maybe we just have 1 x ship for everyone throughout the entire game, just to stop the whining and moaning of CMDRs who cant be bothered to play the game as intended.

You would not buy a Rolls Royce and then have a Ford Transit engine fitted!!!!!

CMIV

 

[Troy_McClure]

No no No no No!

The point in having big ships is that they need to be earned, by rank and credits. The point of the Engineers is to have mods that are again earned, and mod your ship how you want within the limits of the mods.

If players want to kill the big ships they either, git gud or earn the ranks and credits to buy their own.

Or maybe we just have 1 x ship for everyone throughout the entire game, just to stop the whining and moaning of CMDRs who cant be bothered to play the game as intended.

You would not buy a Rolls Royce and then have a Ford Transit engine fitted!!!!!

CMIV

Does your brain hurt when you come up with this stuff - your analogy makes zero sense!

 

[Vingtetun]

The problem with doing that is that it could break some existing builds, and we would not want some explorer stuck out 1000+Ly from the nearest dock with power management issues. In addition, I think the existing levels of power requirements are bad enough as it is. Also, I feel it would be less well received than either of my proposals in my OP. Not a bad concept though.

Wholly disagree. Why would an explorer have stacked 5+ shield boosters and be that far away? They could of course just turn a few off - and THAT's the point.
The power requirements in relation to the return they give are ridiculously low.

It would force players to make a choice as to whether they wanted to run mega shields, or uber weapons and to use engineering to tailor their choices. Traders would be happy to stack them as they wouldn't be running huge weaponry for instance, but pirates? well they need their hatch breakers and lasers and missiles etc

No one would LOSE anything they had engineered, they would just have to have a rethink about how they used them. Also it is simplicity itself to implement and doesn't require complex programming - just up the values on the power requirements ;-)

 

[Siranui]

It would reduce the amount of time they could stay in the fight and perhaps the low level of regen would make at least some think twice about using such builds.

Not really, no. Shield regen is relatively minor in effect compared to SCBs and heallaz0rz.

After doing these maths, perhaps Thermal resistant engineering upgrades to shields is not such a bad idea.

What? When were they *not*??? It is absolutely the most sensible mod and effectively increases regen time.

when under sustained fire the regeneration effect may not be always noticeable as there would still be a net decrease in shields.

When under sustained fire, your shields do not regenerate at all. There is a period required of not getting hit before regen starts. This is why turrets are occasionally worth while.

I also don't really think it necessary to rail against FD for not implementing player ideas. They are developing stuff themselves, with -- as demonstrated - a far better picture of what is going on.

Ultimately, You have good intentions, but the plan is not a solution for several good reasons. Predominantly due to flaws in your solution which are the result of inexperience with mechanics.

 

[lenna]

Wholly disagree. Why would an explorer have stacked 5+ shield boosters and be that far away?

Actually, I am not just referring to builds with 5+ stacked builds being broken but smaller ships who may be borderline on their power requirements.

The Vulture is a prime example of a ship starved for Power - it can not be properly A-Speced without using an overpowered A class Powerplant for example.

So in short, I believe you are thinking too narrowly.

I did actually originally think of something along the lines of increasing the Booster power draw in proportion to how many MJ it provides but that could break even some of the more modest builds.

 

[Siranui]

I understand why people did, my proposal could be implemented as a first step towards increasing the significance of shield regeneration rates.

What the next steps could be I am not entirely sure but I am certain FD could make it work in the long run.

My proposal would provide a minor level of impact initially, but as things get rebalanced over time it could perhaps become more significant.

Shield regen rates are *not* the issue, though.

All that nerfing them does is make sustained combat ships less unstainable and requiring more downtime. Given that sustained damage builds are PvE by nature and the main issue is in the PvP arena, it is a non-solution.

And I don't see taking baby steps towards a solution as being a good idea, givent hat FD have other things to do. Just fix it an a fell swoop and be done.

Shield regeneration being too high at higher levels of shields would make certain ships practically invulnerable to smaller ships.

Again no, because of the regen delay.

What makes big ships shield monsters is absolutely not their regen rate: It is the sheer MJ+SCB MJ total, which can then effectively be doubled via resistances.

 

[Sathayorn]

What makes big ships shield monsters is absolutely not their regen rate: It is the sheer MJ+SCB MJ total, which can then effectively be doubled via resistances.

Effective strength versus thermal weapons can actually be more than tripled.
Starts at -20% (120% damage taken) and can easily be brought above 60% (less than 40% damage taken)

Edit: This thread provides 0 viable solutions so far.

 

[Sylow]

The reason they were told "sod off" (what does that even mean?) is because despite all the buffs to hull. PA's, Railguns (especially Super Penetrator), Cannons (high yield) made for easy module destruction, neither naturally buffed hull, reactive armor, hull reinforcements AND MRPs could do anything to stop module sniping on the Big Three that are the abusers (myself included) of insane levels of shielding.
[...]

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Hmm, yes. That was what a lot of people kept telling in the beta forums, too. Interestingly enough, a lot of people who kept preaching that at some time had to admit that they did not care to actually test yet or didn't even have beta pccess at all. (Yes, there was a lot of "qualified testing feedback" from people who are known to be X-Box players.
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I mean sure, there was the "evidence" video that a wing of four ships can disable the powerplant of a stationary ship within only a few seconds. Whatever that should prove.
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In contrast, those who actually tested generally opposed the change due to a different reason: the compensating buffs to the ships were too strong. There's the nice video of a corvette agroing and tanking a complete combat zone. After 45 minutes of doing so, with a lot of the time spent without shields and thus hulltanking, the corvette jumps out, still far from risking destruction. Also, those who actually tested found that with two or three module reinforcement packages installed a halfway competent pilot was easily able to keep all internals running without problems, so hull health was the limiting factor. The important part is the -internal- modules. Weapons and utility slots were disabled much quicker (reason for that: how MRPs work), and as soon as missiles entered the picture, all ships which have their weapons mounted closely together could be disarmed in just a few salvos.
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That all being said, on the topic itself, i very much agree that this suggestion fixes nothing. The concept of diminishing returns, which FD pursued already in the last two betas, but rolled back twice, might not have been perfect, but was on the right way. (The way it was implemented, it mostly aimed at capacity stacking, but did litte against resist stacking. )
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I believe that rolling it out would've been beneficial for the game, but we have a number of people here who built their ship around the meta of booster stacking and they already twice successfully cried away the change. (If there is another reason, let me know. But what to think about people who fight tooth and nail against the change, flooding the beta forum on how bad the changes are, while actually not having any beta access, so without having tested it for even one moment? ) Unfortunately i thus am very confident that no matter which change FD will try next to get the shield booster meta under control, it will be cried away once again.
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[lenna]

....

First off, I am not inexperienced with the mechanics, I have been playing ED since Wings was released and while I may have had a hiatus on occasions for one reason or another (mostly RW commitments), I still have ALOT of flight hours under my belt.

Secondly, this is not a thread railing against FD, it is intended to be a constructive discussion thread... if you read my overly long OP properly you should realise that (the important part is in the conclusions section in that regard).

Thirdly, the intent of my proposal is to introduce some form of measured and proportional consequences into the current Booster mechanics without breaking any potential current builds.

Fourth and finally, this is intended to be a discussion thread about how such mechanics could work. I am not claiming it is the whole answer to the underlying issues in play but rather a potentially part of a solution that could rebalance things so that the massive shield stacking is not too OP and so those using such meta builds will have less cause to complain about ED being too easy.

It seems to me that most of the responders to this thread are just nay sayers and seem to be incapable of even an iota of constructive critique. Most seem to just happy to stick their fingers in their ears and say "it can't work, won't work" rather than actually discuss what actually might work.

Earlier I raised some potential modifications to my proposal that could perhaps provide the net effect that we are after (builds basically remain largely the same as they are now but will have some sensible and balanced trade-offs that should not break any existing build while still bringing it more into line of a balance that is sensible for ED) but they seems to have been totally ignored and swamped out what seems to be the la-la-la-I-am-not-going-to-even-discuss-this branch of the community.

For the sake of keeping this thread on track, I shall re-iterate some of the potential adaptations to the original proposal(s) in my OP:-

1. Adding heat penalty that is proportional to the shield percentage gain/regen reduction
2. Adding some form of shield damage resistance penalty that is proportional to the shield resistance gains but not high enough to completely cancel out the benefits of having stronger shields.

Item 1 could use the SCB heat penalty as a basis for it's implementation

Item 2 could be done in such a way as to provide a more balanced net resistance gain when using L5 Resistive boosters.

Suggestions along the lines of increasing power draw are tantamount to the same as what ED tried in the Beta but could have much wider and less desirable side-effects wrt ALL ship builds.

 

[Vingtetun]

Actually, I am not just referring to builds with 5+ stacked builds being broken but smaller ships who may be borderline on their power requirements.

The Vulture is a prime example of a ship starved for Power - it can not be properly A-Speced without using an overpowered A class Powerplant for example.

So in short, I believe you are thinking too narrowly.

I did actually originally think of something along the lines of increasing the Booster power draw in proportion to how many MJ it provides but that could break even some of the more modest builds.

Then a vulture shouldn't be stacking shield boosters and then shouldn't hit the problem.

All the other solutions are adding 'fake' complexity and therefore more likelihood things can go wrong.

Engineers, particularly those that boost power output or make modules more efficient mitigate the problems for those on more marginal ships but that is the point.

By upping the power requirements of the boosters, people seeking top end engineering to their weapons or shields etc need to think smarter.

Given the number of utility slots on the larger ships, there is a huge leap in terms of shields before they hit capacity on the power, I can stack a full set of boosters on my anaconda and not hit the limits of an a grade Power plant. Same with 2 others of the big 4.

It wouldn't take much of an increase to prevent stacking to this level.

 

[fruitbat]

That is a complete fallacy, shields do have a natural regeneration rate(even when under fire) and it tends to be really noticeable if you use Bi-Weave shields and you manage your pips properly (like I do). Even standard shields and prismatics can regenerate in a combat environment, but it might not be quite as noticeable.

Factually incorrect, as has been stated by Mark Allen or someone somewhere in one of the many beta threads regarding shields.


Whilst I was a strong advocate of the various shield changes proposed in the past betas and tested them extensively (which I may add FD actually made even worse by increasing the shield regen which was supposed to be coupled with SB capping then dropping the capping but keeping the increased regen when it when live, go figure, see here https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...ce-the-booster-stacking-nerf-staying-or-going ), there is nothing you have suggested so far that isn't already been discussed to death in this 125 page thread,

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/314820-(very)-Experimental-shield-change

or this 144 page thread,

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...oster-and-ship-armour-changes-feedback-thread

There are also many other threads littered in those 2 beta archives relating to this issue, including part 2 and 3 of the above,

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...-and-Ship-Armour-Changes-Feedback-Thread-Pt-2

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...-and-Ship-Armour-Changes-Feedback-Thread-Pt-3

Since your discussing shields, here's an interesting thread on shield health from Mark Allen,

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/333297-What-lies-beneath-Shield-Health

The unfortunate truth is that it isn't going to change, because FD don't have the balls to do it, even though they have admitted that its not working remotely as intended, as there is a large proportion of the community that like to do AFK fighting and feel very special in there big shiny spaceship playing god. These are generally the same people who cry if the AI threatens to become more of a challenge. They can also whine like you wouldn't believe.

 

[lenna]

Then a vulture shouldn't be stacking shield boosters and then shouldn't hit the problem.

You miss the point, your solution is essentially identical to ED's except it would break any builds on any ships that even have just ONE shield booster and are still tight on power.

 

[lenna]

...

First off, we are trying to just concentrate on the Shield Booster mechanics rather than address shields in general. My idea was to introduce a trade-off rather than a cap which seems to be the only thing I have noted in shield discussions.

Secondly, while the precise nature of shield regeneration I have observed in combat circumstances may not be totally down to native shield regeneration (could be more damage resistance cancelling out damage below some threshold) it seems to have played a significant part in the incidents I have observed using Bi-Weave shields.

Overall, the idea was to introduce subtle changes rather than trying to completely hammer and penalise those who do choose to mega-stack shield boosters. The stacking should come with some form of balanced but measurable consequences which is the angle I am trying to approach the problem from.

Thanks for the links though, when I have time I will look over them but I got the impression from various reactions in these forums that the general principle of my approach has not actually been fully discussed nor properly considered.

 

[Pipko]

90% of the community cried about the proposed shield booster stacking mechanic, that was included in beta of 2.3. You think "those" changes (that imo even more tight and complicated) will go live? Dont fool your self... In order to balance things now, there have to be changes in core mechanics (such as large ships it self for example, because they was always useless in every combat role, they are only decent as trading ships). Balance have been broken since engineers gone live, and its just changed from category "total " to "at least 20% works fine".

 

[fruitbat]

Thanks for the links though, when I have time I will look over them but I got the impression from various reactions in these forums that the general principle of my approach has not actually been fully discussed nor properly considered.

Impressions can nevertheless be wrong.

But hey ho, you never know maybe something new might transpire, i'm just not holding my breath...

Also those links are re shield boosters mechanics.

 

[lenna]

90% of the community cried about the proposed shield booster stacking mechanic, that was included in beta of 2.3. You think "those" changes (that imo even more tight and complicated) will go live? Dont fool your self... In order to balance things now, there have to be changes in core mechanics (such as large ships it self for example, because they was always useless in every combat role, they are only decent as trading ships). Balance have been broken since engineers gone live, and its just changed from category "total " to "at least 20% works fine".

Errmm... firstly, my proposal(s) in the OP is a starter for 10... a basic premise to work from... and are intended to be simple for good reasons (for one, keep the trade-offs simple and balanced so there is little to object to). I personally think the solution that FD trialled in the Beta is the wrong way to approach the problem, and I do not expect the end effect of my proposal to map to FD's SB-capping-mechanic in a direct or measurable way.

As for big ship balance being broken and them being useless as combat vessels - total - even without capitalising on excessive shield booster stacking metas the Anaconda and Corvette can be VERY capable combat vessels - they just need to be flown differently when compared with the likes of the Asp Explorer and the Cobra Mk III. The Python comes close to needing to being flown in a comparable way but can still dog-fight like smaller ships to a large degree.

 

[lenna]

Impressions can nevertheless be wrong.

But hey ho, you never know maybe something new might transpire, i'm just not holding my breath...

Also those links are re shield boosters mechanics.

The last thread is nothing really new, but interesting none-the-less.

I had a skim of part 3 of the mega-thread and TBH from what I saw it is filled mostly with complaints about the shield boost cap (and discussions regarding what range it should be applied over).

My opening proposals is not intended to even emulate the way the SB-cap was intended to work. I personally think the mechanic just needs some balanced trade-offs rather than capping or bespoke variants that could go in specific slots. Overall, I think FD were doomed to have their concept rejected because of the nature of their approach to the problem... it would not be the first time I have seen technical discussions get so tied down to one specific approach that other approaches do not get a fair hearing regardless of their validity.

I created this thread to concentrate on a potential trade-off approach to the problem, not try to rehash FD's broken approach that was trialled in the Beta.

 

[kofeyh]

To be fair, you can fool with Boosters all you like, people will just identify the new meta and then the complaints about TTK (ships being essentially remaining a flying castle) or "AI killed me in five seconds flat" arguments will start all over again.

I think we have seen enough "fiddling". When frontier genuinely tried to shift some core values around a bunch of people had an anyurisim and made a huge amount of noise. I just don't see how the current system is overly salvageable. And I don't really believe for a moment yet another booster shuffle that leads to a raft of fresh meta chasing engineering re-roll will be overly palitable to the community. There's been quite enough blueprint changes already.

Rather, I tend to believe the developer probably needs to fundimentally reset how damage is calculated, so shields, and lots of them, or a metric buttload of resistance, aren't the automatic answer to every question. The fact that the big three are succeptable to module sniping isn't a reason to not fix it, in fact it's a leading reason to fix it. The entire model isn't working the way the developer had intended.

I'm okay with giving them a chance to come up with some changes that rebalance how shields, hull and reinforcement work as an overall system. There are options now, and it would be good to see multiple ways to solve survivability, rather than mad regen and resistance, or endless +10 shields of unending.

I'd far rather that, to be fair, than yet another shield booster tweak, which doesn't actually solve a litany of issues at this point, and instead simply tries to work around the problems; because, no offence? It hasn't worked so far.