Is this a bug or a message to players, that hull tanking won't be viable against NPCs anymore?

[n13L5]

Got my first Hull Breach Attacks today, while my shields were actually up.

Up until now, they either didn't use those weapons while I had shields up or the attacks are just much less likely to succeed while shields are up.

The huge multicannons took the most damage.
The PP was 102k Credits to repair, but its health was still listed at 100%, as was everything else.
Fuel scoop was next at 80k Thrusters with 45k and all the rest got various minor splatter damage.
Total repair bill 300k.


Contrast that with the same Hull Breach Attack with shields down, but 1660 Hull strength + resistances resulting in instant kills.

And these attacks come from small ships - wasn't fighting equal size ships (The dumb-fires and torpedo launchers only go up to size 2 anyway)


While you might believe that hull tanking ships should be fitted with 800 million in hull tanking paraphernalia, that might make sense if you want to take on PvP'ers or solo-kill wings with 3 NPC Anacondas.


It seems unlikely, that FD doesn't want A-rated, g5 engineered Corvettes to be able to tank a Vulture and a FAS for at least 30 seconds without shields? But go down in 1 second to a penetrator weapon? (this Corvette also has 2x 5D Hull Reinforcements and 2x 5D Module Reinforcements, so idk..)

Minimum breach chance 100%
Maximum breach chance 100% in the description already seems suspicious...

 

[CMDR The Riz]

Got my first Hull Breach Attacks today, while my shields were actually up.

Up until now, they either didn't use those weapons while I had shields up or the attacks are just much less likely to succeed while shields are up.

The huge multicannons took the most damage.
The PP was 102k Credits to repair, but its health was still listed at 100%, as was everything else.
Fuel scoop was next at 80k Thrusters with 45k and all the rest got various minor splatter damage.
Total repair bill 300k.


Contrast that with the same Hull Breach Attack with shields down, but 1660 Hull strength + resistances resulting in instant kills.

And these attacks come from small ships - wasn't fighting equal size ships (The dumb-fires and torpedo launchers only go up to size 2 anyway)


While you might believe that hull tanking ships should be fitted with 800 million in hull tanking paraphernalia, that might make sense if you want to take on PvP'ers or solo-kill wings with 3 NPC Anacondas.


It seems unlikely, that FD doesn't want A-rated, g5 engineered Corvettes to be able to tank a Vulture and a FAS for at least 30 seconds without shields? But go down in 1 second to a penetrator weapon? (this Corvette also has 2x 5D Hull Reinforcements and 2x 5D Module Reinforcements, so idk..)

Minimum breach chance 100%
Maximum breach chance 100% in the description already seems suspicious...

Sounds odd. What is the context for this - PVP or PVE? If it was PVE, was it an assassination mission?

Hull Breach Attacks are simply COVAS callouts for whenever you take internal damage; it isn't strictly tied to Super Penetrators. I've gotten that warning due to heat damage.

 

[Aashenfox]

Got my first Hull Breach Attacks today, while my shields were actually up.

Up until now, they either didn't use those weapons while I had shields up or the attacks are just much less likely to succeed while shields are up.

The huge multicannons took the most damage.
The PP was 102k Credits to repair, but its health was still listed at 100%, as was everything else.
Fuel scoop was next at 80k Thrusters with 45k and all the rest got various minor splatter damage.
Total repair bill 300k.


Contrast that with the same Hull Breach Attack with shields down, but 1660 Hull strength + resistances resulting in instant kills.

And these attacks come from small ships - wasn't fighting equal size ships (The dumb-fires and torpedo launchers only go up to size 2 anyway)


While you might believe that hull tanking ships should be fitted with 800 million in hull tanking paraphernalia, that might make sense if you want to take on PvP'ers or solo-kill wings with 3 NPC Anacondas.


It seems unlikely, that FD doesn't want A-rated, g5 engineered Corvettes to be able to tank a Vulture and a FAS for at least 30 seconds without shields? But go down in 1 second to a penetrator weapon? (this Corvette also has 2x 5D Hull Reinforcements and 2x 5D Module Reinforcements, so idk..)

Minimum breach chance 100%
Maximum breach chance 100% in the description already seems suspicious...

Logs please? If what you say happened, it is a bug. It is not possible to damage modules with shields up.

I expect... you were hit by phasing sequence (damages hull through shields, but NOT modules) and your modules were damaged after your shields went down, or from heat. Or a bug.

 

[sollisb]

Using SCB's on large ships without using HSLs will do this.

 

[n13L5]

Logs please? If what you say happened, it is a bug. It is not possible to damage modules with shields up.

I expect... you were hit by phasing sequence (damages hull through shields, but NOT modules) and your modules were damaged after your shields went down, or from heat. Or a bug.

Thanks for the thoughts on this.

My shields never actually went down on this trip and I did not use SCBs either. I wanted to see how this differed from the time I had full armor one-shotted with shields down on the day before, so I flew to the station to check out the stats.

BTW, on other trips to the CZ today, I used 7A SCBs a few times and while the heat went momentarily to ~180, the damage I got from that seemed negligible.


Since I posted this, I got 3 new Hull Reinforcement Packages and put the Heavy Duty enchant on them... Not liking the extra weight in turns though - Vultures are harder to keep in your sights as this boat gets heavier.



...as for logs - where do I find those? Is that the same thing somebody called "Journals"? When I looked at those earlier, it was just unreadable XML type gobbledigook. Searching for hull breach didn't get any results. I don't even know how I'd pick the right file of the many... after you fly to another system, land etc, it seems to just keep creating more files

 

[Aashenfox]

Thanks for the thoughts on this.

My shields never actually went down on this trip and I did not use SCBs either. I wanted to see how this differed from the time I had full armor one-shotted with shields down on the day before, so I flew to the station to check out the stats.

BTW, on other trips to the CZ today, I used 7A SCBs a few times and while the heat went momentarily to ~180, the damage I got from that seemed negligible.


Since I posted this, I got 3 new Hull Reinforcement Packages and put the Heavy Duty enchant on them... Not liking the extra weight in turns though - Vultures are harder to keep in your sights as this boat gets heavier.



...as for logs - where do I find those? Is that the same thing somebody called "Journals"? When I looked at those earlier, it was just unreadable XML type gobbledigook. Searching for hull breach didn't get any results. I don't even know how I'd pick the right file of the many... after you fly to another system, land etc, it seems to just keep creating more files

Posted by LordKee...

Location is where ever you installed the launcher at. (by default in C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Frontier_Developments\Products\FORC-FDEV-D-1000\Logs) Mind you the FORC-FDEV-D-1000 can be 1002 etc...use %appdata% in Windows explorer to get to the Appdata\Roaming folder...then move back a step in the folder structure.

To have system name stored in the log file you need to add to AppConfig.xml file (found in the product folder)
VerboseLogging="1"
to the Network section, it is off by default. Each patch resets it.

If you got module damage without heat damage and without your shields going down, something is definitely wrong.

 

[n13L5]

Sounds odd. What is the context for this - PVP or PVE? If it was PVE, was it an assassination mission?

Hull Breach Attacks are simply COVAS callouts for whenever you take internal damage; it isn't strictly tied to Super Penetrators. I've gotten that warning due to heat damage.

Thanks for that key bit of info...!

The post relates only to PvE....


Now, I understand what you're saying that the "Warning, Hull Breach Attack" is a COVAS callout - which someone else also told me you only get after the fact - which is odd too, if its supposed to be a "Warning", but I guess you *can* get a warning afterwards, just so you know that it did happen and maybe you'd be best off hightailing it at that point (at least if you were without shields)

Than again, the same Hull Breach Attack can be completely minor one time or a one-second kill from full armor at another time (without shields).

 

[Aashenfox]

Another poster just wrote this in another thread. I haven't looked at my logs since 2.0, so I don't know where they are now. I assume one of these guys is corect, probably the newer info, here...

\Users\<you>\Saved Games\Frontier Developments\Elite Dangerous

 

[Redomus]

Got my first Hull Breach Attacks today, while my shields were actually up.

Up until now, they either didn't use those weapons while I had shields up or the attacks are just much less likely to succeed while shields are up.

The huge multicannons took the most damage.
The PP was 102k Credits to repair, but its health was still listed at 100%, as was everything else.
Fuel scoop was next at 80k Thrusters with 45k and all the rest got various minor splatter damage.
Total repair bill 300k.


Contrast that with the same Hull Breach Attack with shields down, but 1660 Hull strength + resistances resulting in instant kills.

And these attacks come from small ships - wasn't fighting equal size ships (The dumb-fires and torpedo launchers only go up to size 2 anyway)


While you might believe that hull tanking ships should be fitted with 800 million in hull tanking paraphernalia, that might make sense if you want to take on PvP'ers or solo-kill wings with 3 NPC Anacondas.


It seems unlikely, that FD doesn't want A-rated, g5 engineered Corvettes to be able to tank a Vulture and a FAS for at least 30 seconds without shields? But go down in 1 second to a penetrator weapon? (this Corvette also has 2x 5D Hull Reinforcements and 2x 5D Module Reinforcements, so idk..)

Minimum breach chance 100%
Maximum breach chance 100% in the description already seems suspicious...

Why do you only have 1600 hull? That sounds like the problem, I have around 5000 hull with resistance on my vette. Are you carrying a lot of extra internals like limpets?

PS a wise man once told me, 'always use an armoured power plant' He also told me cellbanks are for wusses. Followed that advice with my own spin ever since.

Could well be a bug - but I doubt it. I did an assassination mission last night 6 ships, some with rails and one had some phasing lasers. Only lost 2% hull 2% was probably because it was rounded up - shields never dropped all modules at 100%.

 

[d8veh]

You get only one log for each play session, so it's easy to find the correct one. Each event is time and date-stamped in the log, so easy to find the right place in the log. If you know what station you took off from, you can do a string search for that. Every attack and damage is recorded along with any comments the NPC or your crew made. If you got the message "breach attack", I'me pretty sure that's recorded as well, so you should be able to find it with a string search.

 

[Aashenfox]

Why do you only have 1600 hull? That sounds like the problem, I have around 5000 hull with resistance on my vette. Are you carrying a lot of extra internals like limpets?

PS a wise man once told me, 'always use an armoured power plant' He also told me cellbanks are for wusses. Followed that advice with my own spin ever since.

Could well be a bug - but I doubt it. I did an assassination mission last night 6 ships, some with rails and one had some phasing lasers. Only lost 2% hull 2% was probably because it was rounded up - shields never dropped all modules at 100%.

I agree on 1600 armor not being enough, and on always using armored pp (especially now it has power production bonus and special), but no cell banks in the two free size 7 slots is a missed opportunity. I don't use them often, but I do use them. And I have 3500mj (A rated, not prismatic) and 40% resist across the board. Like you, if my shields did go down, I would have 4000 armor (I guess you have size 5 HRPs in the size 7 slots) and 44% resistance across the board to fall back on.

My last assassination also featured a corvette with phasing sequence, that's what I thought the OP might have meant when he got the 'hull attack' warning. You always get that when an enemy uses phasing sequence.

 

[Redomus]

I agree on 1600 armor not being enough, and on always using armored pp (especially now it has power production bonus and special), but no cell banks in the two free size 7 slots is a missed opportunity. I don't use them often, but I do use them. And I have 3500mj (A rated, not prismatic) and 40% resist across the board. Like you, if my shields did go down, I would have 4000 armor (I guess you have size 5 HRPs in the size 7 slots) and 44% resistance across the board to fall back on.

My last assassination also featured a corvette with phasing sequence, that's what I thought the OP might have meant when he got the 'hull attack' warning. You always get that when an enemy uses phasing sequence.

Pretty much, although I still run double cellbanks, but I run with a bi-weave, the cellbanks are for emergencies only though. I just use high resistance, rocking 2000mj on the shield with lowest resistance being 64.2%. 4700 hull though around 45% as you said. It seems plenty enough to get through the missions.

It spurred me to upgrade because my legacy mods were barely good enough for this new mission.

 

[n13L5]

Why do you only have 1600 hull? That sounds like the problem, I have around 5000 hull with resistance on my vette. Are you carrying a lot of extra internals like limpets?

PS a wise man once told me, 'always use an armoured power plant' He also told me cellbanks are for wusses. Followed that advice with my own spin ever since.

Could well be a bug - but I doubt it. I did an assassination mission last night 6 ships, some with rails and one had some phasing lasers. Only lost 2% hull 2% was probably because it was rounded up - shields never dropped all modules at 100%.

1600 hull has never been an issue for me before, after all, I shield tank, and if my shields drop, I've never lost more than 20% hull before I either killed the NPCs, had my shield come back up or butted out.

But since the hull breach attack, I've put grade 5 heavy duty engineering on 3 HRPs and my armor (with heavy duty engineered light weight alloy) is at 2882 now - at the cost of agility - which turned out to be noticeable when fighting Vultures...

But how exactly did you get 5000 Armor on a Corvette, unless you spent half a billion on a reactive armor or something?

As for an armored power plant - I couldn't run my setup without overcharging my power plant, so...
And yes, I have limpets and a C4 cargo and an A7 fuel scoop and only one A7 shield bank.

This has never been a problem until now, as I've never had a re-buy screen for it yet. And its one of the two ships I use most for combat - Corvette and FDL.


And I do not want to suddenly turn my Corvette into an armor tanker, just because 3.0 hit. I'd sooner shelve my Corvettes and fly something else. Though even with another ship, just don't want to fly an armor tank against NPCs.

 

[nosleepdemon]

I got a hull breach attack out of nowhere last night, I was a little over 100% heat with shields up shooting thin air. My chaff also malfunctioned at the same time, it was on 98%. I think someone messed up and "hull breach attack" actually means something like a critical strike against one of your modules, but not necessarily due to an "attack".

 

[Maka Gucci]

PS a wise man once told me, 'always use an armoured power plant' He also told me cellbanks are for wusses. Followed that advice with my own spin ever since.

Good advice. In PvP you are tryna plant each other, and OC PP's go down like paper. I used to keep my builds low to use em, but these days the new g5 armoured gives you a big increase in power as well, so it's much easier.

As for cell banks, I think they suit certain builds, which suffer enough for relying on em. But as a hull tanker I appreciate the sentiment.

 

[orange_apecs]

Get the warning every time I fight Tharogids and get Caustic damage. Or if I overheat the ship and the module re-inforcement isn't doing it's job.
Never gone from having full hull to explode before though.

 

[Redomus]

I do have reactive yes - earning them credits 1 mil at a time doing 100 ship kill massacre missions Theres a hint in there somewhere for Fdev.

But you dont have to fit reactive - military will do with heavy duty for raw hp then you can use your packages as resistance buffs.

Regarding the powerplant - i hear you. In the old engineer system I lucked out with a +5% armoured pp. It meant i had less than full integrity but the power allowed me to vary my fit up a bit. However new 3.0 engineering much to my surprise armoured PP now has a power boost, and if you add the monstered effect it should result in about 42MW of power give or take (cant remember the exact number) at grade 5. Should be enough for most things while still retaining some hull.

New dirty drive rolls will negate the increased mass. Fully loaded im rocking 377m/s on boost and 18.3ly jump range. Unfortunately its just the re-work due to the engineering changes (not forgetting the npc buff). You can probably use a class 6 fuel scoop - I find its more than enough for getting around considering the jump range, by the time ive navigated the star the tank is full - it will free up a chunk of power too imo. I very rarely take this off myself.

With dirty drive 5 and drag drive experimental you should be able to keep up with eagles/vultures in terms of keeping them in view with some FA off and thruster tricks. PP, thrusters and shields were the first things I did to make the ship useable again. You dont have to go heavy tank by any means, although If im on a farming spree I will drop the scoop for cargo and my module reinforcements for limpet racks.

Its worth checking out the edshipyard beta for 3.0 it might help you plan your ship out a bit better but 2890 is much better you will notice the difference the next time trust me.

Also re-the hull tanking, still hoping some kind of regenerative hull (meta alloy hull reinforcements anyone) would be on the cards - it would give a use for enzyme missiles as a counter, plus allow for more varied builds using amfu and mrps. It would certainly bring more strategy to a fight imo.

 

[Guyperson]

Logs please? If what you say happened, it is a bug. It is not possible to damage modules with shields up.

Flechette launchers can. I've yet to actually see an NPC with them though.

 

[Aashenfox]

Flechette launchers can. I've yet to actually see an NPC with them though.

I just read about that. Very interesting, thnks for the heads up.

 

[Eloy]

Looks like I am am rethinking my plan to buff my fighting rank in CZs and HazRs tonight...