Responce to Yamiks Shield Video.

I don't really know much about Combat but I do agree with that. Everytime is see people saying the OP shields you can get with Engineering are a problem I just think "Nah, the overgarched powerplant is the problem". Remove that mod, adjust powerincrease of mods and we could have a much nicer balance across the board.

OP shields and Weapons are perfectly fine thing to exist in the game imo, but not having to sacrifice anything for it seems to me like one of the weirdest gamebalance decisions ever (no matter if its about PvE or PvP).
Right, but still, as others already posted, Engineers in general made players too strong against NPC. If a mediocre pilot can solo a Wing assassination mission in a ship with about 300Mj of shielding, balance is not right, not just due to shield strength. Limiting power output only wouldn't be enough.
 
Frags are quite niche and if you are are in a ship large enough to really worry about frag boats, you can make a similarly niche 85%+ kinetic resistance setup that can still resist enough thermic/explosive damage to survive most any encounter with other weapons.
Unless Fdev snuck something in on me, the game still hard caps resistance at 75%. Whether that displays or not I have no clue, but the have posted their resistances caps before.
What's the biggest non-engineered shield you can get in the game? Something like a Cutter with 8A prismatic & 8x A-rate shield boosters.

If the game had a hard cap on shield strength (all stats) at whatever that non-engineered max is, then engineering your shield & boosters becomes a slot saving mechanism - how efficiently you can max out your stats, using as few boosters (and as quick a regen etc) as possible.

What would that cap be (I'm not one for stats), and would it be enough?
Personally, hard capping the amount (+% to shields) you can ADD to a ship would be a fast way to start balancing. Newer players with crap engineering unlocks could still stack, and those at the other end of the spectrum could optimize for as few boosters as possible. Personally, I would start at 350% and adjust as needed. However, Fdev would need to start adjusting weaponry balance afterwords.

So yeah, slot saving due to hard capping would be preferable to just capping booster quantity in my opinion.
 
Okay - lol - so I just spotted this post - so much for OP Big 3 Ships being OP for PvE...

This really depends on the mission and your ship. Some of these are easy enough to beat with just a solo FDL/Chieftain. Some are extremely dangerous even for a Hull/Shield tanking beast. I took my fully engineered Corvette (which had never needed SCBs before, even vs swarm waves of police) into a wing assassination mission solo thinking it would be cake. But I a few short seconds later, was facing a Rebuy screen. Went back for a second attempt, and the NPCs killed me even faster! Third attempt and swapped out some cargo and SRV pods for more HRPs MRPs and a crucial SCB. I *barely* survived the third attempt, and had to flee before being able to kill the Target. On the fourth and final attempt, was able to just barely kill the Target Cutter and escape with a limping ship.

I am one of the better pilots in the game and can hold my own in 1v1 PVP vs all but the best CMDRs in the game. Even though the game seems to scale the difficulty compared to your ship/skill level, I would recommend that newer to middling players bring at least one friend on these wing assassination missions, just in case you hit a "difficulty spike" like I did ;)

/thread
 
A high power usage shield killing weapon is the way.

Shields over say 2.5k take the damage. Shields under 2.5k are immune.
When the weapon is fired it completely drains the PD and requires a full PD charge to fire, creates 200% heat rise and strips away 1 full ring of shielding aswell as adding 30% damage to the weapon itself. Once the weapon reaches 10% health after 3 shots fired its humped. 3 shots only, fully fixed, no gimbal, no turrets.

See thats the problem right there, the only ships that have the chance to have high mj are the big 3, they should be able to shield tank if they want, heck my vette has over 8700 mj with my tank build and 5300 mj with my resistance build, they are big ships and big ships should be hard to take down. nuff said
 
I'm not doubting your numbers, but using kinetics against shields is a bit daft. It's not what they are for.

+1 virtual rep!

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Okay - lol - so I just spotted this post - so much for OP Big 3 Ships being OP for PvE...



/thread
Fallacy. Just because he took a vette, doesn't mean he is in one that applies to this topic. My vette chewed up a solo assassination mission the other day, still had a ring left. For a wing of 6 ships, all elite, and the lead ship was a cutter, that shouldn't happen. I didn't even bother with the small ships until the cutter was down, and he was banking for days. I didn't think I would need feedback, so I had to tank them all until I could burn down his banks. Still didn't even crack my last ring. And, for the cherry on top, I only have 4500 Mj with 55ish resist all.
Thermal was only preferred for shields pre-engineering. As soon as resistances could be augmented, whatever you are weakest too is the new thermal. Gotta love the false logic being thrown about today...
 
It was a wing mission and he was able to complete it on his own. The Cutter must be OP. :D
As far as the shielding goes, it needs a balance pass. For the cutter... well, I had coffee this morning and that means the cutter is OP. Honestly, I think the cutter is just a giant floating declaration of white guilt. Mostly because that is what I named mine, just for funsies.

Isn't being white funny sometimes?
 
Okay - lol - so I just spotted this post - so much for OP Big 3 Ships being OP for PvE...



/thread
The Cutter is the toughest target in these missions. I beat it (and all of its company) in a Conda with MC's and a 2000Mj Bi-weave shield without using a SCB, without loosing shields. I am no expert in combat, though.
 
engineering is NOT balanced at all and even devs know that shields are too strong, but because of this sort of backlash, change is not possible!

I really want to have the choice between shields & hull

IMO shields shouldn't be so strong:

  • Shield SCBs require one keypress in combat to get your shield back; Repairing your hull isn't even possible at all and you have to DISABLE modules in order to slowly manually repair each of them with the awkward right-panel interface. This is not really an in-combat thing even if you are nimble-fingered with the right-panel under pressure.
  • Shields can be recovered to 50% out of combat with a R&R for free. Hull tanks don't have that option for their hull or modules.
  • Shields slowly regenerates automatically, hull does not. Full shield regeneration is accelerated in supercruise so you can run away to regen very quickly and then immediately interdict again. Hull tanks really suck for back-to-back repeat skirmishes.
  • Shields mean that your canopy can't be destroyed, your modules all work and you can engineer for low-integrity/high-dps/low-mass; Hull tanks must give up jumprange, speed, agility, dps and output to increase module integrity or suffer the consequences of earlier malfunctions.
  • Shields protect against area damage like explosives/penetrator rounds/high-yield. Hulls take EXTRA damage from these things AND they affect multiple modules simultaneously.
  • Shields completely protect against crippling debuffs like corrosive rounds and scramble spectrum, hulls obviously do not.
  • Shields can be boosted with utility slots, normal slots, and military slots; Hulls cannot be boosted by utility slots and the AMFU does not fit in a military slot.
  • Shields prevent individual modules from being sniped. Even with phasing sequence on a sub-targeted module, the bleed-through damage is only to the hull, not the module! Hull tanks know all about module sniping, and how quickly the MRPs become useless, dead-weight.
  • Shield failure does not result in being sent to the rebuy screen; Hull failure is usually expensive and inconvenient.

So, why - EXACTLY - would anyone want to hull-tank when it's still just so blatantly inferior to shield-tanking in almost every single way?

FD need to improve the outlook for hull tanks - either by weakening shields (which results in community backlash with outbursts and whining) or by improving the QoL of a hull tank in combat by attempting to balance or at least partially balance each and every point on the list above.
 
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The Cutter is the toughest target in these missions. I beat it (and all of its company) in a Conda with MC's and a 2000Mj Bi-weave shield without using a SCB, without loosing shields. I am no expert in combat, though.

I find the Anaconda the toughest target fire power wise, the Cutter just takes a little longer... After a little change in my loadout the npcs don't even try to use SCBs...

If I synthesize ammo I can take 3-5 of these missions in a row, but normally I just take 2 at the time so things don't get too repetitive.

I use my Corvette, 2200 shield (4 boosters), 4150 armour.
 
how about buffing lasers?

they have a stupid dropoff range and need to fully go through resistances, while PA's ignore a majority of it.

Us poor explorers, with class 1 pulse lasers quite agree. :)

That mission was designed to be challenging for A WING OF COMMANDERS IN ENGINEERED SHIPS.

I keep getting hit with "wings" of NPC's, with engineered ships, like the only gameplay, in this game, is combat.
 
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