I get you. I took internal defence as HRP / MRP and external as shields.
Engineering Under Threat - Open Letter etc
- Thread starter Gavin786
- Start date
I get you. I took internal defence as HRP / MRP and external as shields.
In real life, you spend money and time to improve something to have it better - same in game. There will be always a**holes(in game and real life) who will abuse they power, just because they can.
And if you don't improve your ship - try to avoid dangerous situations and have money for insurance.
And if you don't improve your ship - try to avoid dangerous situations and have money for insurance.
I'd love to see resistances scaled to pips so you only get your 60%-vs-all when you're running with all power to defences. Armour resistances are less of an issue since they're generally lower (I've never had better than 45% to all, which is still pretty hefty but that's a fully tanked up, heavy build) and you can still damage modules through it.
Traders and explorers would still be running with 4 pips to shields so they wouldn't lose out, attackers would have to sacrifice being invincible in order to attack. Sure the flat damage reduction from running extra pips to shields is good, but if it affected resists as well it'd be even more prominent on engineered builds.
Plus make stealth great again and count for something.
![[VR] M4st0d0n](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/182/182772.jpg?1569064854){kind=avatar}
Delaying stuff is not an action.
Last time a meta shift was tempted to be introduced, a vocal portion of the PvP crowd influenzas forced drag change to be rolled back the day next to patch day to "preserve their gameplay". I cant see this type of crowd reacting well to getting rid of grandfathered weapons or taking a nerf on their toy without busting in rage and salt. Understandable, considering the unhealthy grind they went through.
Deleted member 182079
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Own an engineered fleet myself, and would be very happy if engineering would get a major overhaul. Power creep is too big, and I always hoped that engineering would be more about side-grades rather than massive upgrades combined with magical special effect weapons.
But it won't happen so I keep playing the game in its current form.
But it won't happen so I keep playing the game in its current form.
Something could do with a change since right now we just steamroller the NPCs. You can't just say the answer is to give all NPCs a buff to bring them up to the same engineering level as players since then you've got the same issue as PvP with battles taking far too long. I get why trying to beat down 7k shields and 10k hull isn't fun.
That leaves reducing the engineered defence values.
That leaves reducing the engineered defence values.
Don't forget, FD already tried once to buff up the NPCs. The result - so much salt was produced by this forum that FD were declared the world leading producer of all forms of salt. The problem is trying to find that balance, where an NPC is a legitimate threat to an experienced Elite Commander in his murderhobo Cutter or FdL and is also an achievable threat (i.e. one that the player can beat with some effort) to the beginner Commander, the trader flying a cargo equipped ship, that explorer returning from 6 months in the black. I just can't see a happy medium for FD unfortunately.
But, if you ignore the problem you then get utterly strange legacy stupidity like zero mass modules- scoops, zero gain heavy lightweight hull, the Anacondas magic hull etc.
I don't understand this. Why an explorer or trader build should have any chance against an Elite NPC ? I can excape NPC interdiction in a T9.
It's rare that i directly agree with a posting of Rubbernuke. I accept his playstyle, but wouldn't enjoy it. We're on far opposing sides of the scale and we are very lucky that the game caters for such diverse playstyles.
But this is something i fully agree: a large part of the PvP crowd and also, unnoticed by the OP, a number of PvE players, would very much appreciate nerfing a lot of the engineering effects. For the mere sake of the games health.
I mean yes, i also have a fleet of fully engineered ships. Of course if engineered was nerfed, they would suffer from that. But honestly, my fully optimized meta ships are mere paperweights and dust collectors. Flying them bores me. Incredibly.
It's quite obvious: you play the game, your ships automatically keep improving. You don't actually have to work any more, just collect the scraps on the way, once a while visit the material trader and you are fine. I have several ships which got fully engineered by using almost only materials which came in by themselves. (The only thing i actually did extra was roaming around a station in my Imperial Eagle for half an hour to do some wake scanning. )
The problem is how much things improve. There are plenty of example around, of murderboats which can survivie insane damage and seem to be immune to about anything you can normally encounter in the game. That's not interesting gameplay. But FD also can't just dial up the threat in the game. It would be murder for those of us, who are not trained so much in combat and don't yet fly fully engineered ships. You always have to consider the new player. Who doesn't have hundreds of hours of flight time under his belt yet. Who doesn't have a fully engineered meta ship available. But interestingly enough, is the one bringing in new money and keeping the game alive for all of us!
The last part is what many people often fail to see: the developers can't feed their families from the hundreds of hours we play. But from the money we spend on the game. And sales for the base game and especially Horizon, according to the last financial report of FD, are still what makes them most of the money. So effectively, any new player is MUCH more valuable than even a dozen of us veterans.
And perhaps that's what the OP really should take along from this: from a financial point of view, we old time players are scum. We are the squatters occupying the place, creating a lot of noise. We're not the ones keeping the game afloat. It's amazing how much FD actully cares for us and how little, in comparison, they over the games lifetime cared for those who actually bring in the money.
So those who actually ask for engineering to be cut down have at least one of the those goals in mind:
1. Improving the PvE experience for all players, but having a better distribution of challenge.
2. Improving the PvE experience for top tier players by allowing diversity of ship setups again. (Engineering shoehorned us into very few optimal ways of building ships. Before engineers we had more options to set up a ship and be successful. )
3. Improving the game experience in the PvP environment, by cutting down defenses and making things more dynamic again.
4. Potentially improving the game experience in the PvP environment by allowing more diverse setups again. (Although most PvP players will gravitate to a meta, no matter how small the advantages will be. )
5. Improving the PvP experience by putting more weight on the player skill and less on the ships setup.
If none of those things feel good for you and you get full satisfaction by lack of challenge in a fully engineered ship, that's of course a personal thing. But i really think that those who want engineers to be nerfed a lot have a good point. FD more than once tried to ever so slightly nerf engineering effects but in the end lacked the guts to actually roll them out. They should finally collect all their courage and go ahead, not with slight nerfs but a significant reduction of engineers power creep.
The other is feature balance. I agree to a point that not every NPC needs to be ninja- however, please make NPCs ninja in the places that would benefit from it.
Example: defection in Powerplay. Powers send nasty folk to kill your traitorous Arx but these guys are soap bubbles. They don't even have interdiction modules! Its here where we need death squads to provide real punishment.
Example: defection in Powerplay. Powers send nasty folk to kill your traitorous Arx but these guys are soap bubbles. They don't even have interdiction modules! Its here where we need death squads to provide real punishment.
so you're saying that you have squandered so much of your time doing senseless grind that you don't want the forced (p2w, actually) unbalance to be fixed. want an applause?
sorry, can't care any less about your lifestyle and would much prefer a better game for all. luckily (or not) for you, worry not, this is not going to change.
sorry, can't care any less about your lifestyle and would much prefer a better game for all. luckily (or not) for you, worry not, this is not going to change.
The kind of mindset you describe, in my opinion, is the jackass one
So, in my opinion at least, my point remains.
I do agree with you. Kind of.
The point I'm making is that the game mechanics as current embodied encourage this mindset.
The mindset itself - we can do nothing at all about that.
The mechanics, however, are within the realms of what can be leveraged by FDev - such that they don't do so much to encourage jackass behaviour.
I am dumbfounded at the discrepancy between the quality of the discussion that followed, and that of the opening post.
(Which, tbh was one of the most idiotic things I ever read here.)
This truly is the day of days! Now I only need Maynard to agree with me and world peace is achieved.
Generally a good starting-point to begin with, but every serious PvPer's already switching PiPs either via muscle-memory or hotas-script. So it'll balance almost nothing.
I dont think FD will touch engineering.
Just take a look at the history of engineering.
First the mods were just sidesteps. Just variations not upgrades, with massive downsides, and enourmous prerequisits. And everybody just ignored it, it simply wasn't worth the hassle.
I remember when I first visited an engineer, read 10 minutes to through all the options there, read an hour through the forum here... and left without makeing a single mod and didn't return until engineers 2.0 came.
Engineers 2.0 reduced the efford massivly, and toned down the sideeffects. It made engineering viable. But it also made 'Godrolling' possible, which totaly ruined the balance.
FDs solution to 'godroling' wasn't to tone it down, but to make it available to everyone, that was on purpose. And that where we are now. The main reason for that was, that retroactivly lowering the stats would have caused enough rage to alienate large parts of the playerbase.
With the current verion, most people are fine. There is no need to rebalance engineering. (Yes, I know. Some people are complaining. Someone is always complaining, no matter what you do)
Yes, you wont win fight with an unengineered ship against a heavily engineered ship. So what? You wont win a fight with a none-combat-oriented ship against a combat-oriented ship anyway. And surviving is laughable easy. Especially with a bit of engineering, and low level engineering is basicaly effordless.
Just take a look at the history of engineering.
First the mods were just sidesteps. Just variations not upgrades, with massive downsides, and enourmous prerequisits. And everybody just ignored it, it simply wasn't worth the hassle.
I remember when I first visited an engineer, read 10 minutes to through all the options there, read an hour through the forum here... and left without makeing a single mod and didn't return until engineers 2.0 came.
Engineers 2.0 reduced the efford massivly, and toned down the sideeffects. It made engineering viable. But it also made 'Godrolling' possible, which totaly ruined the balance.
FDs solution to 'godroling' wasn't to tone it down, but to make it available to everyone, that was on purpose. And that where we are now. The main reason for that was, that retroactivly lowering the stats would have caused enough rage to alienate large parts of the playerbase.
With the current verion, most people are fine. There is no need to rebalance engineering. (Yes, I know. Some people are complaining. Someone is always complaining, no matter what you do)
Yes, you wont win fight with an unengineered ship against a heavily engineered ship. So what? You wont win a fight with a none-combat-oriented ship against a combat-oriented ship anyway. And surviving is laughable easy. Especially with a bit of engineering, and low level engineering is basicaly effordless.
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I'm not sure what an "explorer" build actually is, honestly...
...a "racer" or something would make more sense for min/maxing.