Whatever it takes to make hull tanks great again.
Engineering Under Threat - Open Letter etc
- Thread starter Gavin786
- Start date
good point. In that case why not bring up the stats of the stock ships a bit to make them more useful without engineering rather than take something away.
NOBODY wants to fly a slow brick with useless guns. This is a game and things should be fun.
& since we're talking about unfair advantages...a warning when shot with a premium joystick.
They've already been inflated, and too much in my opinion. The FDL received a substantial boost (that it did not at all need) to power, rotation rates, and thermal capacity in 1.5; most cargo vessels had their hull integrities dramatically increased not long after, and most recently, every ship in the game got at least one extra optional internal.
There were no ship buffs, outside of those to the Asp Scout and Keelback, that I feel did anything other than detract from the game.
The base stats are also what the modified stats are derived from. You cannot improve the unEngineered vessel without improving the Engineered vessel, unless you are willing to reduce the positive effects of the blueprints.
I agree. Engineering was a huge design mistake IMHO. For the sake of trying to give purpose/worth to shallow lazy game loops, it offered hugely overblown weapon power ups, and magical side effects, which damaged PvE and PvP with huge imbalances.
So if there's talk of FD reducing combat related Engineering effects, and balancing the game as should have been does at the outset of Engineers, sign me up!
ps: Where has FD mentioned doing this? Linkage?
You forgot to even mention: those who actually tested found the changes to be good. But there were some people who either openly admitted to not have tested or were console players who simply had no access to the beta, who decided that they would not like it. And the constant crying of this comparatively small group of people was sufficient for FD to cave.
Unless they surprisingly get a large shipment of backbone, all the wishes for nerfs are just bright fantasies, without any chance to ever come true.
Whenever a new ship is introduced, i configure it and take it for a test ride. Zero engineering, no tech broker stuff, plain vanilla equipment. (PP equipment may happen. ) I go to a HAZRes and take on enemies of all sizes and combat rank. From the mostly harmless Eagle to the Elite Anaconda. Even without engineering, i can tell if the ship suits me or not. The interesting point for this thread is that i haven't lost any ship yet when doing that. So even while i am just a mediocre pilot, the ships were good enough for the job.
Thus i think we really wouldn't loose too much if engineering was cut down or even eliminated. The only thing where I agree that i'd miss it would be modified engines. The higher speed is fun, loosing that would be regretable. But hey, the easy fix for that would be to rather have a few new thruster variants on the market. So next to the current thrusters and the already present high performance thrusters, we could have new racing thrusters and high G thrusters available. This would be so much better.
Unfortunately, as already said, i am aware that disposing of engineers is a dream never to come true. Although it would really improve the game.
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Exploration focused ship optimization should revolve around maximizing endurance and redundancy for the risks that should be, but are not, present while exploring, preferably while having to make hard choices between what scientific equipment to take as well.
Nearly always being within a single jump of a scoopable star; never having to worry about misjumps or malfunctions; being able to synthesize nearly everything on the fly...these are all problems that cheapen the risks that should be inherent in even fantasy deep space exploration. As it stands, any competently assembled exploration vessel can be limited in endurance only by it's power plant integrity and the PP can only be damaged by unsafe drops from SC, reckless reboot/repairs (that should never be needed), or weapons fire...everything else can be repaired or replenished on the fly, usually far faster than it's practical to damage them. If my CMDR loses his canopy in one of his fuel scoop equipped ships, there is no where he could possibly be where he wouldn't be able to make it back to civilization before his supplies ran out.
Too late.
More or less than the number that have already quit in disgust over the changes Engineering precipitated?
They never bothered to do this before when early and radical changes upended the whole system. I think about 80% of the G5 modules my CMDR has ever had have been sold to make room for new ones, and even refunding only the modules he still haves would require all the material and data caps to be increased ten to twenty fold.
Combat, PvP included, was fairly well balanced in 1.4. Not perfect by any means, but it's been running in the opposite direction ever since.
These are some of the most problematic changes.
I get why people like them and like most anything else, I'll use the best that's available, but even these appreciably harmed the game, IMO.
Similar problems at singificantly lower magnitude stemming from significantly fewer problematic combinations is not anywhere near the exact same problem.
The resulting magnitude would still be enough to make any reversal pointless. It's like saying getting hit in the head by 2 nuclear bombs is better than being hit by 100 nuclear bombs. In the end the practical result is the same.
As for the extra speed and jump range harming the game, it's a matter of personal perpective. My game is magnitudes better because of it.
In a dark barn deep in the French countryside, the cries of a rusty FAS ring out.
Very much this. I mean we also were discussing balance at that time. Like which small ship is just too good or too bad in comparison to the other small ships. That's not a topic any more these days. Many things which we at that time considered to be a bit above or below the curve are effectively eliminated from todays gameplay. They exist at mere stepping stones for the beginner, during the first few hours of gameplay (if he doesn't use one of the "get rich fast" methods), before he can afford a "real" ship.
So many of those ships, which formerly were discussed so much, by now are rated as "bringing a soggy muffin to a gun fight". They wouldn't even rate as rusty knife and just getting them back to that value would require huge nerfs on engineering.
As far as i know: no.
On the first part: your comparison is deeply flawed. By plainly removing engineers, a number of ships which by now are considered "garbage tier" would suddenly be worth picking again. Most of them still would not be top-dogs. Although the FAS might even manage to mess with them again. But they'd be viable choices again.
So it's really not the same at all. The old balancing problems were orders of magnitude smaller. (Which might be because engineers allowed us to increase stats by up to three orders of magnitude! )
And on what you refer to: i think that jump range is the least of the concerns here. I guess if FD would remove engineers and rebalance all FDSs to now operate as if they were fully engineered G5 FSDs, not many people would object. It really makes no difference to me, if an hostile ship can jump 8 LY or 80 LY. But it makes a difference if i can just kill it in reasonable time with regular weapons, or if i need fully engineered weapons and power distributor, with effectively doubled the firepower to stock weapons, to still take much longer to chew through a targets effective +800% or more of health.
In the first (old time) scenario, a smaller ship of low firepower but high agility is useful. In the second (present time) scenario, the massive health inflation results in the same ship being useless, you have to bring something with more and bigger guns to avoid the frustrating experience of feeling like you're trying to beat your target to death with a wet towel.
So really, i don't mind the FDS engineering. I merely think that explorers would even be more happy if they could just buy the equivalent of a fully G5 engineered FSD from the ship outfitter, instead of being forced to do different things, combat included, to get it. But i do mind the huge problems engineers brought into combat and especially how it eliminated so many formerly great ships from the lineup, as they just fell too far behind due to low number of small and medium hardpoints not being able to compete with the crazy new levels of defense stacking.
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I don't agree.
I enjoyed combat in the game we had then vastly more than I do in the game we have now. I also encountered significantly more variety in effective loadouts, with generally fewer hard counters. 1v1s could be resolved in half the time or less, while wing combats were generally more interesting and lasted longer, with stealth being able to be a factor and it being more difficult to keep a half dozen or more ships at a time within full damage range of a single target. Permaboost wasn't a thing, and actual low-to-moderate speed maneuvering was a large part of combat.
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Waaaayy tl;dr. Anyone able to repost a 1 paragraph condensed version? I feel like I would agree but I have a job and will never get through this wall of text.
Exactly,
and as people think that engineers is only a problem for PvP,
here is an example what engineering did to ruin PvE:
- AFK kill farming without any danger, using collectors and turrets set to fire at will, while 1 ton of commodity triggers pirates to scan -> attack
- shield tanking station fire with healing beams applied (hard countered by FD magical reveb. cascade lasers)
- shield tanking piracy, just sitting there and bleeding the NPC dry (fixed by changing NPC behaviour)
- offsetting the danger any single NPC ship imposes on you, requiring multiple police ships to even be more than a nuisance -> led to ATR
Engineering robbed both PvP and PvE of spice and danger.
And the spice must flow!
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TLDR nerf his engineered stuff he will quit, FD should only listen to open players and blue collar workers are more lazy than doctors and don't deserve much money.
I think that's about it.
Edit ohh and a good few general bingo card whining hits such as unskilled players "hiding" when not in open and the usual missunderstanding of the name elite dangerous.
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No idea, but might not be a good idea to double down on that.
It was a question, there is nothing to double down on.
This seems to be the only part here, where we might disagree. I see where you are coming from, but i do enjoy the higher agility ships have these days.
Mind you, i also think that permaboost is unhealthy and wouldn't mind if it was cut to size. Also, i understand that the higher speed and agility for medium and large ships also is a noticeable (but not the most important) puzzle piece, why small ships have lost so much of their value.
Despite all of this, i have to say that the improved ships agility actually is fun and was the only positive i ever saw about engineers: finally at least some ships in the game feel agile enough to make the games trailers not seem to be complete lies.
Granted that Speed = Fun, but a FDL compared with a Viper III, the FDL should act like:Despite all of this, i have to say that the improved ships agility actually is fun and was the only positive i ever saw about engineers: finally at least some ships in the game feel agile enough to make the games trailers not seem to be complete lies.
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