Youre preechin' to the chior dude.
PvP The death of the FAS\FDS? A outsiders observation into post 3.0 PvP
- Thread starter CMDR Plexus Ironrot
- Start date
-
- Tags
- pvp
Well that's certainly how many play it, and I won't begrudge anyone for taking what they can get from the collection of half-implemented ideas that is ED.
Still, I prefer a more engaging experience, even if it has to be a little contrived under the current systems.
If there is one thing that's clear, it's that shame is a poor substitute for solid gameplay mechanisms.
Last edited by a moderator:
This is pre engineers era shield tank FDL build, there are sacrifices to be made, we don't have hard hitting energy weapons cause of power constraints, alternative is hybrid setup with 2 maybe 3 rail guns, it's balanced tough, FDL still have better laterals, boost, more utilities and better placement of those, as well as better firepower traded for worse internals of comparable ships, but in all it's still better ship, just not as tanky as anaconda
Engineering pretty much ruined PvP, I reckon. I now many will argue against me, but working out the compromise that worked for you on an FDL, or Vulture, was part of the fun. Now I can full power weapons and shields on those ships without a care.
I remember the Python Nerf™, because it wasn't balanced. That was an 80kg person vs a 79kg person on a seesaw compare to what engineers has done to the like of the FDL.
Z...
A minor nitpick, but Engineering predates the addition of MRPs and huge MCs were part of the Engineers update (PA and cannon were the only huge weapons for nearly the first two years of the game). That extra c1 optional also didn't exist.
Prior to 2.1, you would have found a huge/large PA or a large laser of some sort on most PvP FDLs, with the oddball cannon or frag cannon here and there.
Any real FDL power issues disappeared in 1.5/2.0 when they gave it a class 6 power plant. There were some trade-offs with the class 5, but only fairly outlandish builds were constrained at all by the class 6, and the cost in mass was usually more significant than any advantage to be had. Before Engineers, even a 5-10m/s speed advantage was significant.
In fairness, I think the 3.0 buff to HD boosters and reinforced shields were more to blame for this, especially as resist / regen builds weren't really altered.
Couldn’t agree more. I have no issue with massive shields: at least you know where you are based on how fast (or slow!) they are ticking down, it’s the “instant magic shield recharge” that you can’t predict or plan for that winds me up.
Resistance/regen builds were helped nearly as much by 3.0 as the HD/reinforced loadouts, depending on the sort of rolls one was able to achive before 3.0 (I have more legacy HD boosters that are viable than I do resistance boosters, though I replaced all of my legacy reinforced generators long ago). It's just that the prevalence of absolute damage has always made a resistance focused setup questionable while the more numerous counters to hull-focused/hybrid vessels increases both their skill floor and their risks.
Front loading MJ is just easier, and in the hands of most pilots, better. This was the case well before 3.0, and I'd put down any apparent increase in prevalence to the vast reduction in time and effort required to get higher-end rolls post 3.0.
One look at the kind of ship someone is flying and how many SCBs they have will be quite a good indicator as to how much shielding they have in reserve. Just assume the best size and grade combinations for the SCBs you see and anything less than that is a pleasant surprise.
Really? I had resist boosters pre 3.0 that were as good as the new rolls and TR shields that were very close, I don't think anyone had HD boosters as high as +74% (iirc 65ish was considered really good?). After you account for diminishing returns on resist stacking compared to no cap on MJ stacks there was definitely a big shift in the meta. Additionally, HRP and bulkheads didn't get much of a buff either. My FAS went from 3.5k hull to 4k with the same resists, my FdL's shields went from 1.5k to over 2k before banks, which with the new rapid charge were much harder to feedback too.
The HD + super cap boosters do have more shield reinforcement more than I've seen on legacy boosters, at the cost of a resistance penalty, but there are legacy HD boosters that have either 64-66%, plus small bonuses to resistance, often at lower power than current BPs, or a 68-69% boost with no penalties. The new resistance augmented boosters are +18.7% to one resistance and +17% to two, which was equally unachievable before.
However, I do conceed that there is very valid argument that deminishing returns hitting resists, but not raw shield strength, makes the changes to raw MJ more impactful.
HRPs benefited a lot from 3.0's changes: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/known-engineer-god-rolls.379651/post-6045362. The posts there from besieger and I are some of the highest known pre-3.0 HRP figures. A new HD + deep plated HRP has 20 more integrity and 3.5% higher resists across the board relative to pre-3.0 god rolls, and are vastly better than the average you'd get if you rolled say...thirty HRPs and kept the best ten, pre-3.0. My hybrid vette gained over a thousand hull integrity (over a 20% increase) and a few percent hull resists (it was already well into deminishing returns) in the conversion.
Due to the random secondaries, SCBs were all over the place pre 3.0 and despite rolling plenty of them, I don't think I really have enough of a sample size to comment one way or the other about them. I do have one legacy grade 1 fast charge A7 SCB that while having a modest 4 second spin-up and significant increase to heat, restores almost 100MJ more per charge (thanks to duration and charge rate secondaries) than my new A7 fast charge G4 SCBs and even more than the best specialized SCBs that can be created now.
We should never have discussion like this, that 75% is better than 65, if boosters engineering would be on par with other modules where something like 75% is already crazy big. If boosters give extra 17-20% at g5 values are healthy and suer capacitors giving extra 1-2% like resistance experimentals (another LOL balance by FD), and wow gimbals are no longer OP, cause 1 or 2 chaff make sense now. And boosters are still worth it, just because they give more flexibility with banking when base shields are low. With those numbers 4 boosters prism FDL would have 1600-1800MJ without SCB's, i think those are fair values, and i don't see every FDL pilot switching to FAS or chief instantly, of caurse bi-weave hybrids are much stronger now, so resistance nerf to both hull and shield should be applied too, but to lesser degree.
Last edited:
Bottom line: the game is balanced toward lazy, low skill gameplay.
You can predict when someone is going to bank though, and on top of that if you can anticipate it and land the rail shot you negate a decent chunk of their healthpool, which seems like a nice bit of game play to me. Certainly more fun than grinding though a huge upfront stack of MJ.
Youve been here as long as me, how the hell do you still manage that? Genuine question.
And to whom's shame do you refer?
I have told this in several posts and I am going to repeat again:
Frontier should do two things:
With these two changes we would have again a much more variated pvp.
Regards.
Cmdr Fuego Estelar
Frontier should do two things:
- Remove the "micro-gimball" effect on railguns when you snipe a module. It´s totally absurd you can hit a FAS power plant from 5 kms, because the microgimball will help you although the ship is much smaller than the red square to aim at it. If that effect was removed, module sniping from far away would me more difficult and hull tank ships would have their space again.
- Nerf Frags: I think especially in the case of gimballed frags can be seen. Too easy to aim, ridiculous ammount of damage, almost no distributor consumption. Any pilot in a mamba with frags can put in severe difficulties a much better pilot who uses plasmas for example. The plasma pilot have to aim with care and also has to fight moving pips all the time.
With these two changes we would have again a much more variated pvp.
Regards.
Cmdr Fuego Estelar
Can't say much on your first point since I don't use rails much, but I would think your 2nd point would only increase the number of PA/rail builds.
No because that is a great counter to folks using force shells/heat sinks+silent running/chaff/dispersal/TLB. Just mod long-range/penetrator rails, turn on night vision, select a module, stay at 5Km and watch them get angry.
This, why? because if we remove microgimbal from rails nobody remove rails from their ships, this is simple logical reason weapon is OP, we can nerf it and nothing will change in terms of outfitting, except that maybe some hotas guys change it for another PA(not me). There is no level playing field among hotas and relative mouse users, for some reason 80% of best pvp-ers use mouse. Absolute top use ONLY mouse, its like 99.9%.
I haven't watched the video, but didn't a couple of HOTAS users from Prism just win a big PvP tourney?
Anyway, I'm more and more coming around to the idea of a holistic balance pass. It's an enormous amount of work but hey, gotta do what needs doin'.
While I think skill can be applied to anything, I agree that there are aspects of the game that take less skill than others to leverage and that the game strongly incentivizes many of these things.
Different expectations from the game and perhaps more flexible goals.
I'm still nominally playing a character and that adds constraints, challenges, and depth I find interesting, even if the game feels like it's catering to a far more frivolous play style.
Those who feel the need for positive recognition from their peers in the community they identify with, I suppose. There are broadly held perceptions that, for better or worse, influence how some people play the game. Peer pressure can only go so far though, and there are plenty of people who are less than concerned with what the rest of the player base thinks of how they play. So, for there to be any objective standards outside organized contests, the actual gameplay has to reflect it.
Ultimately, there are two sets of rules I follow; the rules of the game, as written and filtered through my personal sense of fair play as a player in an inherently multiplayer experience, and whatever limitations that define the character I'm attempting to portray. Beyond that, it's whatever works. If my CMDR had access to prismatics (he doesn't, because he won't swear himself to any power for reasons he finds to be so petty and he has no particular respect for any of the PP factions, or their leaders) I'd probably have him use them, at least in those situations where they provided a tangible edge. I don't really care if someone else thinks some aspect of my play style is a crutch or evidence of low skill/effort. Likewise, I don't get upset if someone uses tactics I wouldn't prefer were viable against my CMDR...as long as they aren't breaking the underlying rules of the game, it's on me to adapt. I may, quite loudly, call for changes, but until those changes are made, I'm not going to get bent out of shape over people having their CMDRs do what they think will work.
I think long range/focused mods were one of the worst things that happened to combat in ED, especially with regard to hiscan weapons and most especially with railguns. These, combined with increased ship velocity and rotational performance have significantly undermined the value maneuver and positioning in combat. The microgimbal effect on fixed weapons is a significant contributing factor to the effectiveness of such weapons.
Not so convinced of the primacy of frags...it's not terribly difficult to avoid a large portion of frag pellets in most ships, even if one's opponent is careful to only use them at very short range or in conjunction with rams. The last buff to their ammo capacity was perhaps overkill though.
Without the microgimbal effect, even the best of the best mouse users aren't going to be able to pick out which module to hit on a target that is four pixels wide. It's a half degree wide snap-to-target for fixed weapons and makes it trivially easy to line up shots on modules at ranges far beyond that at which they can be visually distinguished.
The mouse vs. stick argument is wholly irrelevant to how powerful that microgimbal effect is. Anyone can leverage it and it trivializes precise aim at longer ranges.
Last edited:
Swear Filter Evasion (Minor)
What the else are they doing?
6 years and no structure to player v player interaction, then layer on layer of knee jerk inflation,
all to the same old tune of grind, find, shine. Jeeezus
Most of the good guys are gone or going. Its boring.
Ps. Sorry Morbad i was so busy being childish i completely missed your excellent post.
Last edited by a moderator: