Target Lock Breaker spamming needs adjusted ASAP

[Truesilver]

Dude, no. That situation is 100% caused by the existence of HRPs. If HRPs did not exist, those ships would have a much more apparent hitpoint gap. Adding more HRPs would be going deeper down the rabbit hole, which is the *exact opposite direction that we should ask Fdev to go in*.

Instead, remove the HRPs.

The state of combat in Elite is such that reduction would add far more to the game, than trying to keep adding more to the spiraling leapfrogging pandora's box of power creep, which includes the hitpoint inflation problem.

As I'm sure anyone who reads my stuff will know, I've been vocal about hit point inflation since early 2016.

However, there's still the question of balance within whatever hit point model is applied.

Furthermore there's the question of carrot'n'stick.

What I'm saying is:

(1) Pretty much all hp should be reduced across the board, to return ED to its glory days when a 5 minute duel was an epic and a 3 minute duel the norm, as opposed to an epic being 40+ mins and the norm approaching 20 mins ... with all the excitement and threat and uncertainty and pilot-driven outcomes of the former. I remember when one guy using 4 pips to Eng in one turn could make a difference because when 4 rails hit you they actually did something.

Concerning wings: It should be borne in mind that all three seasons of the PvP League have been fought unengineered (*one x g1 mod in S3) and the consequence of the above is not to make 4v4 too quick by any means, provided everyone knows what they are doing.

(2) However, whether (1) happens or not, base shield hp are currently preposterously inflated compared to hull hp, particularly taking into account the legion counters to hull, which ofc include high yield cannon shell, super penetrator rail, corrosive and missiles to externals. Hence either way a shield/hull rebalance is desirable.

(3) Looking at carrot'n'stick and kind of returning to the point of this thread: rather than being forced to give up their shields, Cmdrs should be incentivised to do so. Players are not as risk-averse as we all seem to think. Give a guy a really high alpha build which basically only works with limited defence and many will actually take it. This touches upon the points made earlier about power management and the FdL, or about big ships and lack of DPS. Basically Frontier should be making us want to fly more higher risk builds. At least sometimes.

At the moment flying a higher risk build is little more than RP, as there's absolutely zero reason to do so when instead you can have it all...

 

[Bortas]

The problem though is that half damage of a lot of damage is still a lot of damage. A meta-FdL-wing running all plasma'n'rails is going to kill a huge ship quickly regardless. One partial fix might be for Frontier to release the size 6, 7 and 8 HRP's, scaled in an exponential like SCB's.

I don't think it would change anything. Why can't we just accept that big ships are shield tanks and can NEVER be anything else, no matter how many hull hp you throw at them... vital modules will always be exposed and easy to hit on them, so unless you want to remove module damage entirely, there is no way a bigh ship will ever be able to rely on anything but shields. HRPs and MRPs have only one single function on big ships... buy enough time to jump out, once shields fail. Always been like that and never going to change.

 

[Muetdhiver]

I don't think it would change anything. Why can't we just accept that big ships are shield tanks and can NEVER be anything else, no matter how many hull hp you throw at them... vital modules will always be exposed and easy to hit on them, so unless you want to remove module damage entirely, there is no way a bigh ship will ever be able to rely on anything but shields. HRPs and MRPs have only one single function on big ships... buy enough time to jump out, once shields fail. Always been like that and never going to change.

I don't think it's necessarly true.

• Issue#1 is internal modules can get sniped while the ship is at 100% HP. stacking hull does not help.
• Issue#2 is external slots get murdered by missiles very easily. And the start to fail early with damage taken.
• Issue#3 bulkheads don't do much for their price.

Here is what could be done easily :

• HRP's and bulkheads increase hull hardness rating.
• HRP's hit points go first when taking damage. Once a HRP hit point pool hit zero, the hardness bonus is gone.
• Bulkheads hardness bonus is always on. Make reactive/Mirror offer strong hardness bonus vs kin/therm respectively.
• Buff the big three base hull hardness (not as much as what was tested, but still).
• Weapons can only breach the armor if their penentration exceed the armor hardness rating.
• Auto field maintenance unit will start repairing external modules automatically without turning them off. Maybe add repair priorities, like for the power.
• Make external module malfunctions start at 50% instead of 80%.
• Add multiple soft counters to shield tanking*
• Maybe (?) add a "bouncing" mechanic, i.e. if your pen is much lower than the armor, the weapon is ineffective. Eg : small laser vs mirror bulkheads and large amount of HRP's => no effect.

What would it mean :

If you fill up with HRP's and a good bulkhead, your hull becomes much more resiliant to damage, and your modules are safe as long as your HRP's hardness bonuses are on.
HRP's would in effect act as a buffer pool of hit points and ablative armor. Once gone, damaging the modules get's easier. Frag cannons vs hull tanks would be very ineffective (bounce off).
Missile disabling externals would act as a temporary debuff is you pack AFMU's.

Snipping PP while the target is still at 90% health would be a gone thing.

For shields, it seems to me that most of the issues are related to booster stacking to absurd levels. SCB's are hardcountered by feedback, which is meh IMO.

• Make reverb damage boosters first, then generator. Add a long boot time for the boosters.
• When taking heat damage, boosters take damage in priority. Firing several SCB's => fry your booster. Unless you have heat sinks (then you don't have as much boosters). Heat weapons => boosters get damaged first.
• Phasing change : can damage shield boosters through shields by targeting them.

 

[Darty]

Weapons can only breach the armor if their penentration exceed the armor hardness rating.

I'm sorry but this is a big no. Especially if you are buffing the hardness levels of ships AND allowing them to increase it using HRP and bulkheads. As it is, of the large weapons, only the cannon and plasma accelerator have enough piercing to get through the current armor of the big 3 under such a system. The only medium weapons that can get through are rails, torps, and PAs. It would make those ships basically invincible to anything not using a very small arsenal of weapons, and again, this is without any buff to their hardness or the ability to increase it using HRP.

Maybe an alternative would be to change the way the current armor hardness formula works. Instead of

[Actual Damage] = [Piercing] / [Hardness] * [Base Damage]

we could change it to

[Actual Damage] = ([Piercing] / [Hardness])² * [Base Damage]

This is only when the piercing is below the hardness. If they are the same or the piercing is equal, the weapon simply deals full damage and ignores this formula.

Which would mean if you had half the piercing required to get through the armor, instead of doing half the damage you would do a quarter. It would make hardness and AP more important than it is right now but would still allow low AP weapons to do damage.

edit: after re reading that post I realized you were referring to causing module damage not integrity loss. My bad.

Also, when it comes to soft counters to shields, one that I suggested was a mod that increased a weapons DPS by a huge amount (think +200%) but caused it to lose 75% of it's armor piercing. It would be really effective against shields without just bypassing them (really good shields still last a while against one or two of these weapons, just not forever) but it would be weak against hulls. This would shift the meta a bit in the favor of hull tanks without ruining shields (because in order for this weapon to be OP against shields you need a lot of them, which means that even a shield tank should have enough hull to escape after their shields go down.

 

[V'larr]

As I'm sure anyone who reads my stuff will know, I've been vocal about hit point inflation since early 2016.

Hence my puzzlement/indignation that you would propose adding *more* of it.

However, there's still the question of balance within whatever hit point model is applied.
Furthermore there's the question of carrot'n'stick.
What I'm saying is:

(1) Pretty much all hp should be reduced across the board, to return ED to its glory days when a 5 minute duel was an epic and a 3 minute duel the norm, as opposed to an epic being 40+ mins and the norm approaching 20 mins ... with all the excitement and threat and uncertainty and pilot-driven outcomes of the former. I remember when one guy using 4 pips to Eng in one turn could make a difference because when 4 rails hit you they actually did something.

Base hitpoints aren't the problem, though. It's entirely being caused by HRPs and shield boosters (which is only made exponentially worse by Engineer blueprints).

Concerning wings: It should be borne in mind that all three seasons of the PvP League have been fought unengineered (*one x g1 mod in S3) and the consequence of the above is not to make 4v4 too quick by any means, provided everyone knows what they are doing.

(2) However, whether (1) happens or not, base shield hp are currently preposterously inflated compared to hull hp, particularly taking into account the legion counters to hull, which ofc include high yield cannon shell, super penetrator rail, corrosive and missiles to externals. Hence either way a shield/hull rebalance is desirable.

I'd remove SCBs and shield boosters too - perhaps retaining SCBs only, but adjusting how it works significantly to something like what Frenotx has described in multiple threads; less heat, less regen, no ammo restriction (so just 1 per ship, like shield generators/fuel scoops).

(3) Looking at carrot'n'stick and kind of returning to the point of this thread: rather than being forced to give up their shields, Cmdrs should be incentivised to do so. Players are not as risk-averse as we all seem to think. Give a guy a really high alpha build which basically only works with limited defence and many will actually take it. This touches upon the points made earlier about power management and the FdL, or about big ships and lack of DPS. Basically Frontier should be making us want to fly more higher risk builds. At least sometimes.

I don't think it's possible to 'incentivize' players to give up overpowered, poorly balanced tools. It's too late for that, we've gone too far down the rabbit hole.

It just has to be done whilst gritting one's teeth. Assuming one is successful in the task and thereby creates a much better-balanced, and therefore *fun* combat system, anybody who does actually have interest in the game would get over their feeling of loss and embrace the change.

The least Fdev could do, of course, is compensate CMDRs for the credits & materials they've invested into their equipment - that would only be fair. Like they should be doing with the grandfathering mess they're pulling in 3.0.

__

I don't think it's necessarly true.

• Issue#1 is internal modules can get sniped while the ship is at 100% HP. stacking hull does not help.
• Issue#2 is external slots get murdered by missiles very easily. And the start to fail early with damage taken.
• Issue#3 bulkheads don't do much for their price.

Here is what could be done easily :

[*]HRP's and bulkheads increase hull hardness rating.

Making them even more of an obvious choice than before? Great, exactly what we need....

[*]HRP's hit points go first when taking damage. Once a HRP hit point pool hit zero, the hardness bonus is gone.

Sounds unintuitive and overly complicated for little benefit, to me.

[*]Bulkheads hardness bonus is always on. Make reactive/Mirror offer strong hardness bonus vs kin/therm respectively.

I don't think hardness and damage type are related.

[*]Buff the big three base hull hardness (not as much as what was tested, but still).

But what for? The power gaps we have now are already far too wide, it doesn't need to be widened further still.

[*]Weapons can only breach the armor if their penetration exceed the armor hardness rating.

Which just invalidates a lot of small/medium weaponry from being effective. Again, why try to *increase* the power gap?

[*]Auto field maintenance unit will start repairing external modules automatically without turning them off. Maybe add repair priorities, like for the power.

This would be really neat, and would at first glance be how one would expect it to work, wouldn't it...? *coughs and looks at Fdev accusingly*

[*]Make external module malfunctions start at 50% instead of 80%.

Totally agreed here. Malfunctions are obnoxious and too strong as it is, and having them occur so soon is far too punishing.

[*]Add multiple soft counters to shield tanking*

Wouldn't be necessary if shield boosters and SCBs didn't exist/weren't nearly so powerful.

[*]Maybe (?) add a "bouncing" mechanic, i.e. if your pen is much lower than the armor, the weapon is ineffective. Eg : small laser vs mirror bulkheads and large amount of HRP's => no effect.

Again with widening the power gap, which is the opposite of what we want. Plus it sounds like World of Tanks, which is full of jankiness and RNG and is absolutely not what I want to see duplicated anywhere else.

Frag cannons vs hull tanks would be very ineffective (bounce off).

And praytell what the point of frag cannons would be, then? To me they seem like an infighter weapon akin to the Mechwarrior LBX cannons.

Missile disabling externals would act as a temporary debuff is you pack AFMU's.

This wouldn't be as necessary if point defence was actually effective....

[*]Make reverb damage boosters first, then generator. Add a long boot time for the boosters.

Just makes it even more obvious to stack boosters.

[*]When taking heat damage, boosters take damage in priority. Firing several SCB's => fry your booster. Unless you have heat sinks (then you don't have as much boosters). Heat weapons => boosters get damaged first.

I don't like this, and I already think it's stupid that taking an SCB effectively *requires* using a heat sink.

[*]Phasing change : can damage shield boosters through shields by targeting them.

Can't phasing target internals anyhow?

 

[Truesilver]

Can't phasing target internals anyhow?

Wow, long post! About just this last part:

No, people often ask this but phasing merely takes a flat 12% of damage taken by the shield, irrespective of range and resistances, and applies it non-specifically to the hull. It's a directionless, module unspecific bleed-through. In other words your ship doesn't "know" where the phasing struck your shield, or what they were targeting at the time.

One aspect that sometimes causes confusion is that once low on hull, a ship being phased can lose its canopy. This can cause the player to think that their canopy was directly shot through the shield. But it's actually just that an RNG check makes all hull damage have a chance gradually to reduce canopy integrity.

 

[Darty]

No, people often ask this but phasing merely takes a flat 12% of damage taken by the shield, irrespective of range and resistances, and applies it non-specifically to the hull. It's a directionless, module unspecific bleed-through. In other words your ship doesn't "know" where the phasing struck your shield, or what they were targeting at the time.

One aspect that sometimes causes confusion is that once low on hull, a ship being phased can lose its canopy. This can cause the player to think that their canopy was directly shot through the shield. But it's actually just that an RNG check makes all hull damage have a chance gradually to reduce canopy integrity.

Wow, I can't think of a more unintuitive, lazy and stupid way of handling bleed-through and cockpit damage than that.

 

[Frenotx]

As I'm sure anyone who reads my stuff will know, I've been vocal about hit point inflation since early 2016.

However, there's still the question of balance within whatever hit point model is applied.

Furthermore there's the question of carrot'n'stick.

What I'm saying is:

(1) Pretty much all hp should be reduced across the board, to return ED to its glory days when a 5 minute duel was an epic and a 3 minute duel the norm, as opposed to an epic being 40+ mins and the norm approaching 20 mins ... with all the excitement and threat and uncertainty and pilot-driven outcomes of the former. I remember when one guy using 4 pips to Eng in one turn could make a difference because when 4 rails hit you they actually did something.

Concerning wings: It should be borne in mind that all three seasons of the PvP League have been fought unengineered (*one x g1 mod in S3) and the consequence of the above is not to make 4v4 too quick by any means, provided everyone knows what they are doing.

(2) However, whether (1) happens or not, base shield hp are currently preposterously inflated compared to hull hp, particularly taking into account the legion counters to hull, which ofc include high yield cannon shell, super penetrator rail, corrosive and missiles to externals. Hence either way a shield/hull rebalance is desirable.

(3) Looking at carrot'n'stick and kind of returning to the point of this thread: rather than being forced to give up their shields, Cmdrs should be incentivised to do so. Players are not as risk-averse as we all seem to think. Give a guy a really high alpha build which basically only works with limited defence and many will actually take it. This touches upon the points made earlier about power management and the FdL, or about big ships and lack of DPS. Basically Frontier should be making us want to fly more higher risk builds. At least sometimes.

At the moment flying a higher risk build is little more than RP, as there's absolutely zero reason to do so when instead you can have it all...

I think a good first step would be move the various defensive modules into dedicated slots, so FDev isn't struggling to balance both the occasional HRP added to a general purpose build, and someone stacking them in every slot.

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

Wow, long post! About just this last part:

No, people often ask this but phasing merely takes a flat 12% of damage taken by the shield, irrespective of range and resistances, and applies it non-specifically to the hull. It's a directionless, module unspecific bleed-through. In other words your ship doesn't "know" where the phasing struck your shield, or what they were targeting at the time.

One aspect that sometimes causes confusion is that once low on hull, a ship being phased can lose its canopy. This can cause the player to think that their canopy was directly shot through the shield. But it's actually just that an RNG check makes all hull damage have a chance gradually to reduce canopy integrity.

well, has anyone tested phasing in beta?
because somehow that new frag flak weapon is able to pass shields AND do external module damage

 

[Truesilver]

well, has anyone tested phasing in beta?
because somehow that new frag flak weapon is able to pass shields AND do external module damage

Yes, but that's a completely new weapon with deliberately relatively low damage (whilst shields are up).

If phasing started working other than via bleed-through that would be such a super-massive change that it would turn all established combat on its head. A phasing wing could literally shoot out the Overcharged Power Plant on a Cutter whilst it still had 8,000 Mj remaining, for example. I can't believe Frontier would basically abolish shields without telling us...

...albeit interestingly in the recent Livestream they seemed to hint about new weapon tech that might affect the shield meta...

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

Yes, but that's a completely new weapon with deliberately relatively low damage (whilst shields are up).

If phasing started working other than via bleed-through that would be such a super-massive change that it would turn all established combat on its head. A phasing wing could literally shoot out the Overcharged Power Plant on a Cutter whilst it still had 8,000 Mj remaining, for example. I can't believe Frontier would basically abolish shields without telling us...

...albeit interestingly in the recent Livestream they seemed to hint about new weapon tech that might affect the shield meta...

you already assume that a change in the mechanic for phasing weapons would automatically lead to them beeing able to kill INTERNAL subsystems.
why going so far already?
would be enough if those weapons would hit EXTERNAL subsystems - which was true for that new experiemntal Flak.

in those vids i saw from someone testing those, he complained about abysimal low the effect on the target was,
but he totally ignored how his own utility slots failed one after another because he navigated his own ship through the cloud.

how much shield has a cutter left when you kill its shield booster ?

 

[Muetdhiver]

...how much shield has a cutter left when you kill its shield booster ?

That exactly. If phasing allowed to damage them, and heat was to burn them first and reverb damaged them first we would have interesting options to deal with shield with soft counters.

Though there is something else that would help :

If shields had a hard cap on resistances at vanilla value +50% and diminishing threshold at vanilla +25% thermal weapons would retain their edge over kinetic as far as damaging shields is concerned. IMO this would be a good thing. Same for armour.

 

[Truesilver]

you already assume that a change in the mechanic for phasing weapons would automatically lead to them beeing able to kill INTERNAL subsystems.
why going so far already?
would be enough if those weapons would hit EXTERNAL subsystems - which was true for that new experiemntal Flak.

in those vids i saw from someone testing those, he complained about abysimal low the effect on the target was,
but he totally ignored how his own utility slots failed one after another because he navigated his own ship through the cloud.

how much shield has a cutter left when you kill its shield booster ?

Are we speaking now about phasing or a possible new weapon?

Because I agree that a possible new weapon (or effect) is coming that will damage boosters directly, and indeed I've been asking for one since 2016 ... but I don't think we're talking about phasing.

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

Are we speaking now about phasing or a possible new weapon?

Because I agree that a possible new weapon (or effect) is coming that will damage boosters directly, and indeed I've been asking for one since 2016 ... but I don't think we're talking about phasing.

i asked if anyone has tested on the Beta server, if the engineered phasing was somehow changed to the same way phasing works for the new experimental flak.
if not, it would be cool if it was changed to work that way (doing external subsystem damage through shields), while you directly jumped to sniping powerplants through shields