When health pools can be made big enough to run someone out of chaff within the first 5 minutes of a fight and allowing your auto-aimed gimballed weapons to have 100% ToT after that point all while flying BACKWARDS and have that actually be an effective way to win a fight, there's no other way to put it.
PvP The death of the FAS\FDS? A outsiders observation into post 3.0 PvP
- Thread starter CMDR Plexus Ironrot
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When health pools can be made big enough to run someone out of chaff within the first 5 minutes of a fight and allowing your auto-aimed gimballed weapons to have 100% ToT after that point all while flying BACKWARDS and have that actually be an effective way to win a fight, there's no other way to put it.
Double chaff+dispersal weapon usually solves the problem, but currently taking chaff instead of booster have too much opportunity cost if fighting anything other than full gimbal ship of the same tier.
Reverski speed is long debate, but ships don't have thrust vectoring of main drives, so current FA-of reverse speed, doesn't make much sense. lateral and vertical thrusters are always weaker, even for gameplay purposes it's bad design.
This might be an effective way for forestall defeat long enough for me to leave, but I'm not going to be baited into following someone who can out damage and/or out absorb damage while they fly in reverse.
As far as chaff goes, I virtually stopped equipping it shortly after Engineers. Used to run 2-3 on most ships, now I've got one chaff launcher on a vulture, and none on anything else.
Agreed.
Hell, I'll take another heatsink or a PDT before I take chaff on most ships.
Technically, it's just one thruster module, probably ducted to all the thruster nozzles on the ship. You used to be able to damage the drives by hitting any thruster port, but they removed that because it was confusing people (and because reboot/repair didn't exist yet and tons of people were losing vipers because they got shot in the front of the nacelles).
Anyway, the speed caps are wholly artificial and there is a difference in acceleration based on movement vector, though I do think this could be greater. Also, don't even need FA off to reach full forward speed without using forward thrust. You can fly diagonally with vertical + lateral thrust at full forward speed, or spiral backwards while facing an opponent at ~90% of forward velocity, with FA on. Of course, it's a lot more effective with FA off as you don't need to keep pips in ENG once you've reached peak velocity.
Regardless, when faced with an opponent prone to flying backwards to keep me at range, I mirror their movements. If I cannot quickly catch them or dish out more relative damage while chasing them, I reverse when they reverse, then rush forward when they try to get back within range. Unless they have much better acceleration and longer range weapons, this will destroy their effective time on target. It's not exactly an engrossing combat experience, but if someone is determined to just reverse as fast as possible to keep you at optimal range and they out gun you, it's better than just following them around while they shoot you to pieces.
This I agree with. Keep the target reticle and the ability to see on the ship where the modules are, but remove aim assist. I say that as a HOTAS player who should be praising the micro gimball too. The further away the ship is, the easier it is to snipe a module, that never made much sense to me. The red square reticle in some cases is even bigger than the ship at 5km, which is crazy.
Oh, what about keep the micro gimbal and the red sqaure, but have the square shrink and enlarge depending on the distance? So a smaller square from at 6km essentially.
I dunno just a suggestion. I don't know if FDev read these forums for player feedback anyway XD
You can be run out of double chaff in under 5 minutes.
My personal preference would be to remove the microgimbal effect entirely. This would make landing hitscan shots at extreme ranges be effectively the same as firing at an untargeted opponent...far from impossible, but difficult enough that evasive maneuvering could be effect at such ranges, and that any modules struck would be essentially random.
A related mechanism that has always annoyed me is how precise our sensors are with regard to subsystems. They can barely detect a ship at ~7km, yet can somehow see inside it to determine exactly what modules are in use and what condition they are in?
Instead, I would have only external modules be specifically revealed. All internals would simply have their basic labels. This would work almost the same for fixed internals (which have fixed, known locations), but for optional internals, which are fully modular, all you'd get is a slot number...you'd have to guess, discover via trial and error, or otherwise know what someone had placed in a given slot if you wanted to pick out a specific optional internal (such as a shield gen). I'd also remove the integrity % remaining display from internals, as again, the sensors should not be able to see inside the ship. As partial compensation, I'd have sensors reveal the precise temperature/heat level of an opponent that had it's radiators open (up to a certain level that corresponded to the maximum dissipation rate of the ship). This way you'd get some indirect feedback as to what modules were still functional. For example, you shoot the PP and notice a momentary dip in temperature, which would imply you've caused a malfunction.
I'm sure many people wouldn't like the uncertainty that would come with such a change, but I feel such uncertainty makes combat more interesting, and that the mechanism would make more sense than the current one, given how our sensors are described. I also think it would tip the balance slightly more toward hybrid and shieldless setups, which have their internals exposed to attack far more often.
I think he was suggesting that only using chaff when dispersal was on cooldown would extend the time one would be protected from gimbals. Getting ten minutes, with some short gaps in protection, out of 32 well timed chaff uses and conservative use of a dispersal PA or cannon wouldn't be implausible. It's still not long enough to last the duration of a duel, but it could easily be enough to allow victory against an opponent that dependent on gimbals. Dispersal also doesn't do much good in wing combat or 1 vs many scenarios, when it's impractical to apply to more than one opponent at a time.
Anyway, specifics aside, I completely agree with your core premise that the game makes the easier to use, passive defenses (shield boosters, front-loaded prismatics, etc), generally more effective than many of the ones that require careful timing, or positioning (almost every other defensive utility, regeneration focused shielding, anything having to do with taking hull/module damage, et al) and that this is undesirable.
Against full gimball opponent or more precisely, opponent without long range fixed weapons, you should be able to synth chaff given similar vessels speed, all you need to do is open 3km gap.
I am very impressed by all the knowledge the posters in this thread have. However, wouldn't it be better if micro-gimballing was optional instead of being completely done away with? I am thinking particularly of idiots and scrubs like myself who have difficulty enough with rails and fixed weapons. Some of us will forever be Little League pvpers. I understand that Major League PvPers would actually like a challenge; however, with the already significant hurdle of unlocking engineers and engineering, making an even larger gap between the Guds and Hopelessly Not Guds without optional toggling, may not be in the best interest of the growth of PvP. In comparison to the total population of Elite Dangerous, there are very few PvPers. It would be in the best interest of PvP if we could persuade more Commanders to try it. Widening the gap between the skilled and unskilled must be carefully thought out and optional.
I have read that many highly skilled PvPers are leaving or have already left. The more important observation is why the abandoned top seed positions have not been very slowly, but surely, replaced by an influx of new talent... or have they?
Believe me, I personally love all the suggestions. I love PvP because a high skill level is so dearly earned. If PvP were not so demanding, I would have left the game long ago. However, PvP already has a bad reputation amongst the masses of Carebears; unlikely as it may be, it would be in PvP's best interest to persuade more Carebears to think otherwise and actually try PvP. It is tragic that the most intellectually stimulating aspect of Elite Dangerous is shunned due to ignorance and horrible game imbalance.
o7
I have read that many highly skilled PvPers are leaving or have already left. The more important observation is why the abandoned top seed positions have not been very slowly, but surely, replaced by an influx of new talent... or have they?
Believe me, I personally love all the suggestions. I love PvP because a high skill level is so dearly earned. If PvP were not so demanding, I would have left the game long ago. However, PvP already has a bad reputation amongst the masses of Carebears; unlikely as it may be, it would be in PvP's best interest to persuade more Carebears to think otherwise and actually try PvP. It is tragic that the most intellectually stimulating aspect of Elite Dangerous is shunned due to ignorance and horrible game imbalance.
o7
Reducing the massive health pool inflation that all PvP ships and most well-fit PvE ships have would help get new players into PvP imo, I know I've got no interest in engaging someone I don't think I stand any chance of inflicting any damage upon. If I felt I could at least give them a bloody nose on the way down I'd feel a lot better about popping hardpoints and sticking around when I get pulled instead of just high-waking immediately.
That's kind of the problem, right? Needing essentially perfect timing with chaining dispersal and chaff in order to not get absolutely smoked by an auto-aim weapon in 5 minutes of reverski face tanking.
The shift in PvP meta almost perfectly coincides with the highest-skilled players leaving the game. Meta used to be 2-4 booster bi-weave shields and a mix of PAs/rails, now it's HD stacked prismatics. High skill vs. low skill. I would be willing to say that the current skill level in PvP has never been lower.
Another reason I'd love to see the shield pools lowered. If the low-skill scrubs that make up the more-derided gankers couldn't rely on stacking huge shields to be invincible, they'd have to actually git gud if they didn't want their egos bruised when a T9 chases them off.
It's the poor engineering. Boosting all that shield capacity and compunding with resistances at no cost. Where does all the energy come from? Why does the shield hardening and strengthening not cost more energy.
Same with the weapons. No damage falloff? Should cost energy.
Giving the goodies without cost is what gets you this nonsense.
Same with the weapons. No damage falloff? Should cost energy.
Giving the goodies without cost is what gets you this nonsense.
Any option that is worse isn't really an option.
I have more self-imposed limitations on my play style than most and I'm still using countless things I'd prefer weren't in the game because I find them more effective.
This though. So much this.
Pilots that have lackluster skills build for survivability, which is fine, but not when they can stack so many hitpoints that they can outdoo all the firepower on the opposing ship regardless of skill gap.
It's almost starting to feel like high skill pilots are being punished or alternatively forced into these gimmicky bank tank builds. Gimbals are cheap and easy which again is fine, but given that there is'nt a huge damage gap between fixed and gimbal weapons, they are 90% of the time more effective.
It really does seem like high skill builds are pretty much dead in place of this mess. Noone liked the rando rolls under the old engineering system but at least most of the time it fell under some reasonable numbers.
As a fairly long term PvPer, I find this distasteful.
SCB's need to be limited to one module per ship, maybe two on the large ones, and HD "skill" boosters need diminishing returns after one. First one you get full buff, second one 60%, third 25%, or fourth 5%. Something like that because bank tank {EXPLETIVE DELETED} should absolutely NOT be able to get the level of shielding they do.
There are only a few ships that truly benefit from more than one or two banks. I know a lot of people run two on their FDLs, but given how mediocre class 4 banks are, I've always been convinced that most of these CMDRs were shooting themselves in the foot rather than significantly increasing survivability.
Regarding boosters, it may interest you to note that the start of diminishing returns under the 2.3.x beta test where they trialed this change was at +60% shield reinforcement...so even a single current HD booster would be into diminishing returns.
Hmm, theres quite a few now actually, both Kraits, FDL's, and all the big bois. Hell even pythons can outtank all the base ammo on an FDL now with the stupid amount of SCBs they can stack.
Also, do the math on hull vs total MJ regenerated via banks. C4 banks might be a bit poxy but its still a HELL of a lot more than you'd get out of hull on the FDL.
Yeah I'm aware. That should have gone in with 3.0 and HD boosters should have been capped at 60% per.
Class 6 banks are pretty potent on the Kraits, Python, and even T-10 or Clipper, but if I'm going to make a bank heavy setup with the one of the big three, it's two class 7s on a Vette, a 7+6 on a conda (I'd rather take the double SLF hangar than a third six and the conda doesn't really need a class 7 shield), and the cutter can get stupid levels of upfront shielding with a class 6 generator while a class 8 bank has more MJ in it than three class sixes. Class 8 prismatic + 1xA8 & 3x A6 SCBs are a bit more total shielding than a Class 6 prismatic + 2x A8s, but it's not an enormous difference.
Anyway, all the larger ships are exceedingly vulnerable to feedback cascade from more agile vessels (even with rapid charge 4 cells), and feedback cascade is very common. It's not a good situation, having feedback be near mandatory against large ships, but it is a strong deterrent to relying too heavily on SCBs.
I think mitigating the shields themselves would also be a good deterrent to excessive SCBs as a lot of setups would either be wasting much of the charge from larger banks, or holding off too long to try to maximize how much shield was actually filled, leaving a window for shields to be knocked out. So, while I wouldn't mind banks being tossed or their effectiveness reduced in some way, I think the upfront shielding is a much more serious issue.
A class 4 bank is a bit over 500MJ of shielding. If you have two of these, you may not have the power for a full prismatic+booster setup without using an overcharged PP and you'll almost certainly want a heatsink launcher. If you only take one bank you save a lot of power, don't need any heatsinks and the 624 hull + hull resists you get isn't that much worse...no resists from pips, of course, but also not dependent on them and given the other trade offs, defense is often a wash; can't feedback cascade an HRP either.
If I'm in a biweave setup, I want those HRPs to keep the ship together until shields reform (my FDL has ~2300 hull and 50% hull resists), preferably at least 2-3 times. If I'm not running biweaves, then more hull means I can just turn off the shield gen when sheilds fail and spend all my pips on ENG and WEP. I've tried it both ways, and speaking for myself, I'll last longer and do more damage in most fights with a pair of HRPs than a pair of SCBs...I'm sure there are others with the opposite experience though.
Strength of both scb's and cascades along with big ships vulnerability to even more weapon effects create even more rock paper scissors content, it's a reason IMO that weakening both base shields from boosters stacking and cascades should be priority in pvp balancing. Next step that address mostly big ships is relating sensors class and rate with vulnerability to chaff and TLB/dispersal experimental, if hundreds of tons sensors on vette is as good as 100x times lighter sensor on viper, how this can make any sense? Third is rebalancing ecm and pd to be effective at engineered ship speeds.
Sadly what i expect is new paid expansion that bring engineering to guardian and tech broker stuff and force everybody to new grind, instead of repairing mess we have now.
I was suggesting at least doubling ammo in shock cannons, along with maybe making new weapon that work in similar way, but with plasma weapons drawbacks, it would bring some fresh air to pvp too.
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It's an abstraction and a point of balance, but not an entirely outlandish one.
The sensors are evidently passive and a corvette has dozens of times the surface area of a viper. Think of security camera placement or hydrophone arrays...bigger objects need a lot more hardware for the same coverage.