Engineers Hull damage FX while shields are up..needs a balance pass ?

[HeavyGroovez]

So I just had a brawl with Spock (aka Morbad or Backer) and he got me down to 12% hull while I still had 3 rings of shield. He was running some rapid fire pulse with dirty hull FX on his Vulture.

Seems a bit busted to me, I'm not grumbling about its function but I do think its strength is OP. You need a really hull focused build to even have a vague chance (which isn't unreasonable I'm all for solid builds).

I'm surprised that this hasn't become super popular because believe you me its bloody devastating.

Spock had to remind me that my hull was at 18% while I was oblivious to the fact because I was still 3 blue rings and blasting away.

Bypassing shields flips the entire gig on its head.

Thoughts ?

 

[Kale Regan]

What ship were you flying and how much hull does it have?

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

well, thats the whole point of shield penetration effect.

 

[HeavyGroovez]

well, thats the whole point of shield penetration effect.

I was hoping for a bit more than that.

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

you didn't write a single word on what YOU did use, so its hart to comment on that.

 

[HeavyGroovez]

you didn't write a single word on what YOU did use, so its hart to comment on that.

A rough build, not exact but a fair representation.

https://coriolis.edcd.io/outfit/fer...AA.EweloBhAOEoUwIYHMA28QgIwV0A=&bn=Dirty Bird

I clearly stated that a hull focused build was required and in that I am lacking a bit but its fundamentally a solid loadout.

 

[Morbad]

They've already reduced the magnitude of the phasing sequence effect...twice, if I recall correctly. I wouldn't expect another balance pass/nerf, so it's wise to be wary of the effect and make sure you have as much additional hull integrity as practical.

It's one of those niche items that is extremely potent against some setups--it can be very effective against overly shield focused Courier and FDLs, in particular--but worthless against others. Ships that don't have substantial base hull need HRPs; lower class heavy duty HRPs add a lot of hull for marginal mass increase.

Best to keep an engineered HRP on hand, mail it to your theater of operations, and swap out your scoop for it when you get there.

 

[HeavyGroovez]

They've already reduced the magnitude of the phasing sequence effect...twice, if I recall correctly. I wouldn't expect another balance pass/nerf, so it's wise to be wary of the effect and make sure you have as much additional hull integrity as practical.

It's one of those niche items that is extremely potent against some setups--it can be very effective against overly shield focused Courier and FDLs, in particular--but worthless against others. Ships that don't have substantial base hull need HRPs; lower class heavy duty HRPs add a lot of hull for marginal mass increase.

Best to keep an engineered HRP on hand, mail it to your theater of operations, and swap out your scoop for it when you get there.

So if I remove the scoop and ship it. I have a class 4 slot available.

I stick an HRP in there you reckon its gonna make a significant difference ?

 

[Morbad]

The encounter in question:

[video=youtube;NBmhBffwo2Q]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBmhBffwo2Q[/video]

Note that my client needed a restart and I was unable to see the visual effect of the PA and possibly some of the earlier rail shots.

So if I remove the scoop and ship it. I have a class 4 slot available.

I stick an HRP in there you reckon its gonna make a significant difference ?

A heavy duty class 4 HRP will almost double your hull integrity. Additional HRPs in the class 1 and 2 slots will nearly triple it. That's going from a bit over 3 minutes, to almost seven, to about ten, vs the damage I was doing. ~1600 hull integrity is practical with your setup without adding significantly more mass...if those are unmodded (or heavy duty) military bulkheads, you could even reduce mass while tripling your hull integrity by applying the light weight mod to the bulkheads and using all the mass saved for heavy duty D4/2/1 HRPs.

It's a significant difference. Whether it's enough or not will depend on your loadout and piloting...with what you had I was able to stay on the offensive virtually the whole time because dumbfires don't do anything to shields and I can usually dodge them, and even focused PA fire, from a less nimble vessel (and almost all vessels are less nimble than a DD5 Vulture). The firepower you had left over was insufficient to force me to be more defensive...but lasting three times as long would have given me much more time to make a mistake.

Edit : Further to the point this destroys any scientific congruence or contextual verisimilitude, which I can roll with, it is a video game after all..but "mah sheeldz!!"

I'm big on verisimilitude, but since shields, as presented in Elite, are hardly kosher by our current scientific understanding, a weapon that can ignore them doesn't seem any more implausible to me. Do note that the shield bubble is completely transparent to visible light...it may as well be significantly transparent to whatever wavelength phasing sequence uses as well.

 

[HeavyGroovez]

The encounter in question:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBmhBffwo2Q

Note that my client needed a restart and I was unable to see the visual effect of the PA and possibly some of the earlier rail shots.



A heavy duty class 4 HRP will almost double your hull integrity. Additional HRPs in the class 1 and 2 slots will nearly triple it. That's going from a bit over 3 minutes, to almost seven, to about ten, vs the damage I was doing. ~1600 hull integrity is practical with your setup without adding significantly more mass...if those are unmodded (or heavy duty) military bulkheads, you could even reduce mass while tripling your hull integrity by applying the light weight mod to the bulkheads and using all the mass saved for heavy duty D4/2/1 HRPs.

It's a significant difference. Whether it's enough or not will depend on your loadout and piloting...with what you had I was able to stay on the offensive virtually the whole time because dumbfires don't do anything to shields and I can usually dodge them, and even focused PA fire, from a less nimble vessel (and almost all vessels are less nimble than a DD5 Vulture). The firepower you had left over was insufficient to force me to be more defensive...but lasting three times as long would have given me much more time to make a mistake.



I'm big on verisimilitude, but since shields, as presented in Elite, are hardly kosher by our current scientific understanding, a weapon that can ignore them doesn't seem any more implausible to me. Do note that the shield bubble is completely transparent to visible light...it may as well be significantly transparent to whatever wavelength phasing sequence uses as well.

An excellent breakdown, I would still argue my original point. I didn't get a chance to fire missiles, you had three rings and rails were my primary. I smacked you a few times but I was working against your shield solution. Had no idea that I was getting hull wrecked for the simple reason that I am accustomed to shield brawl metrics and paid scan't regard to my integrity disposition.

You beat me fair and square but 18% hull with 3 rings is a bit off in my book

 

[Morbad]

Anything unfamiliar can seem overpowered. That's what these friendly tests are for...find out what works and what doesn't so strengths can be noted and weaknesses mitigated.

 

[HeavyGroovez]

Anything unfamiliar can seem overpowered. That's what these friendly tests are for...find out what works and what doesn't so strengths can be noted and weaknesses mitigated.

Will be interesting to see how the loadout works in the field. Given the short amount of time it took for your lasers to wreck my hull through some solidly engineered shields i maintain my standpoint. The FX is a bit wonky.

Edit : watching the video it's scary how much damage you are doing, My hull is getting battered at a frightening rate.

 

[NecasekO]

Phasing attacks only do around 10% of the weapon's damage and the weapon itself is weaker so it isn't really overpowered. I believe the phasing effect is pure damage and doesn't have range falloff but it is still something like 2 dps for a large laser. In my experience it is only effective against ships that have very strong shield and very weak hull, most ships can just ignore it since they lose maybe 10% hull per minute from phasing attacks.

 

[HeavyGroovez]

Phasing attacks only do around 10% of the weapon's damage and the weapon itself is weaker so it isn't really overpowered. I believe the phasing effect is pure damage and doesn't have range falloff but it is still something like 2 dps for a large laser. In my experience it is only effective against ships that have very strong shield and very weak hull, most ships can just ignore it since they lose maybe 10% hull per minute from phasing attacks.

The hull is unengineered (ship is a prototype hence the testing) so I clearly need to get some resists on it.

Thanks for the feedback. Repped.

Mind you the duration of fights nowadays can stretch to 10+ minutes so even with resists I would have been in trouble assuming your numbers (which sound pretty reasonable)

Off to Selene I reckon. Need some resists. Lesson learnt.

Huge fixed beam would have been a better choice than the plassie as well in retrospect. Wasn't doing any damage, managed a couple of rail hits. Will fit it and have another bash.

 

[Morbad]

Phasing attacks only do around 10% of the weapon's damage and the weapon itself is weaker so it isn't really overpowered. I believe the phasing effect is pure damage and doesn't have range falloff but it is still something like 2 dps for a large laser. In my experience it is only effective against ships that have very strong shield and very weak hull, most ships can just ignore it since they lose maybe 10% hull per minute from phasing attacks.

It's 12.5% currently, reduced from 15%, previously reduced from something like 20%. It's also absolute damage, on top of the normal damage, applied directly to the hull, apparently without any falloff...so, it's not that bad. In the case of the weapons I'm using on this setup, which are both 24DPS, thats 6DPS of phasing total.

Some setups are extremely resistant to phasing (most of my hybrid setups, for example, will lose shields several times before taking significant hull damage from the phasing effect itself, but setups that don't have augmented hull integrity are quite vulnerable to it. A prismatic FDL with no HRPs is one of the more extreme examples of this, assuming special measures aren't taken.

The hull is unengineered (ship is a prototype hence the testing) so I clearly need to get some resists on it.

Thanks for the feedback. Repped.

Mind you the duration of fights nowadays can stretch to 10+ minutes so even with resists I would have been in trouble assuming your numbers (which sound pretty reasonable)

Off to Selene I reckon. Need some resists. Lesson learnt.

Huge fixed beam would have been a better choice than the plassie as well in retrospect. Wasn't doing any damage, managed a couple of rail hits. Will fit it and have another bash.

Phasing damage bypasses all resists, positive or negative. You need raw integrity to counter it...though obviously resists are useful against other attacks, should your shields fail.

I still recommend putting some reactive on it, light weight mod with enough rolls to get good mass reduction without losing much integrity, then using at least the class 1 & 2 slots for heavy duty HRPs, spun for integrity first, resistances second.

 

[Truesilver]

It's 12.5% currently, reduced from 15%, previously reduced from something like 20%. It's also absolute damage, on top of the normal damage, applied directly to the hull, apparently without any falloff...so, it's not that bad.

Yes. I thought it was 12% now, not 12.5%, but either way ... as phasing reduces the original damage of the weapon by 10%, then bleeds through c.12% of the remainder, we end up with 10-11% of the weapon's original damage potential bleeding through to the hull.

In other words, it's like shooting a guy's hull with (for example) a pulse laser of about one tenth the strength of a regular pulse laser, albeit while ignoring his shields.

In the last Fish Beta I fought precisely 20 medium v medium duels, as set out in this thread:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/341107-Truesilver-s-Top-Tips-No-3-Gimballed-Duelling

I was using 5 x gimballed pulse lasers, all with the efficient mod, three of which (2 x medium and 1 x huge) were phasing.

The table of TTK (or in many cases TTGG) drawn from the above thread is here:

No	Cmdr	Ship	Build	Opponent's final status	Duration
1	GT	Vulture	Pacifiers	Ran when shield low	6 mins
2	W5	FAS	Cannons	Exploded	9 mins
3	H4	FdL	Plasma, Torps	Exploded	7 mins
4	U	Python	Plasma	Conceded at 27% hull	21 mins
5	K	Python	Plasma	Ran at 44% hull	15-20 mins
6	FCH	Dropship	?	Agreed shield drop only	10 secs
7	NT	FdL	Cannons	Conceded at 3% hull	15 mins
8	NT	Vulture	Bursts	Conceded at 1% hull	10 mins
9	R	FdL	Multis, SCB's	Exploded	6 mins 30 secs
10	B	Vulture	Pulses	Exploded	16 mins
11	YL	FdL	Plasma	Exploded	10 mins
12	AB	FdL	Plasma, rails, SCB's	Ran at 80% hull	4 mins
13	R	Orca	Frags	Ran at 58% hull	7 mins 30 secs
14	M	Python	Plasma, Torps	Conceded at 28% hull	26 mins 30 secs
15	Y	FdL	Multis, plasma, SCB's	Ran at 2% hull	7 mins
16	PS	FdL	Multis, lasers	Exploded	4 mins 30 secs
17	AR	FdL	Multis	Exploded	7 mins 30 secs
18	M	FdL	Multis	Exploded	10 mins
19	SH	FAS	Plasma, Rails, Multi-Crew	Exploded	15 mins 30 secs
20	K	FAS	Plasma, Hammer	Exploded	18 mins

What can be seen from that is that due to phasing, most of the shortest TTK's were on the FdL's - somewhat contrary to the usual rule, which is that FdL's have much higher effective hit point pools against conventional weaponry than, for example, an FAS.

In my own opinion, phasing is far from overpowered and probably should return to 15%. It is simply a very effective counter to an 'all fur coat and no knickers' shield heavy build, which is currently only really used on one ship ... the FdL. By forcing a degree of choice-making, the overall shield health pool of the typical FdL is reduced, which seems to me a good thing.

 

[Cmdr_Benkai]

SO now you have learnt a good lesson. I would go for an engineered hull mod with resistance (on standard hull there is no mass penalty).

 

[HeavyGroovez]

Phasing damage bypasses all resists, positive or negative. You need raw integrity to counter it...though obviously resists are useful against other attacks, should your shields fail.

I still recommend putting some reactive on it, light weight mod with enough rolls to get good mass reduction without losing much integrity, then using at least the class 1 & 2 slots for heavy duty HRPs, spun for integrity first, resistances second.

Well i will do exactly that and we can test it out. Looking at the numbers i can get about 2300 integrity if i go all in which is nearly 6 times what i have on the prismatic prototype.

A more realistic/practical setup would put me at around 1800 which would extend my life considerably against this filthy loadout, certainly long enough to get some guns on and smash that canopy up a bit.

Need to get some mats to go full on but a non engineered setup with just reactive and 3 HRPs swings me 1400 integrity which is possibly in with a shout.

 

[StiTch]

I clearly stated that a hull focused build was required and in that I am lacking a bit but its fundamentally a solid loadout.

You answered your own question here.

A hull-focused loadout isn't required; just something that doesn't skimp. That ship is using no HRPs - just relying on the bulkheads. That's gonna fall to a specialised build designed to ignore shields.

But that's literally the technique (phasing) summed up...a specialised build designed to catch out builds with paper thin hulls. Against any ship that's put conscious effort into hull survivability, phasing is a disadvantage, and rarely carried by anyone going into a serious and pre-arranged duel.

Not to say that experienced CMDRs don't use them sometimes (I personally hate the bloody effect) - just that even they carry it knowing it'll either be a disadvantage, or help them catch out a build so focused on shields that instead of a ten year shield whacking match it becomes a few minutes of watching their hull slowly drop regardless of what shields are doing. And I guess I can't argue with that; props to anything that pulls the trousers down around someone hoping to sit behind a shield wall all day.

 

[HeavyGroovez]

You answered your own question here.

A hull-focused loadout isn't required; just something that doesn't skimp. That ship is using no HRPs - just relying on the bulkheads. That's gonna fall to a specialised build designed to ignore shields.

But that's literally the technique (phasing) summed up...a specialised build designed to catch out builds with paper thin hulls. Against any ship that's put conscious effort into hull survivability, phasing is a disadvantage, and rarely carried by anyone going into a serious and pre-arranged duel.

Not to say that experienced CMDRs don't use them sometimes (I personally hate the bloody effect) - just that even they carry it knowing it'll either be a disadvantage, or help them catch out a build so focused on shields that instead of a ten year shield whacking match it becomes a few minutes of watching their hull slowly drop regardless of what shields are doing. And I guess I can't argue with that; props to anything that pulls the trousers down around someone hoping to sit behind a shield wall all day.

Yeah, like you say, props to builds that catch out cookie cutters.