I don't recall seeing you at any of the regular wingfight events.
FYI, wingfights are quick enough as they are. BTW: you can rarely see uber shields (6 skillbooster FDL's, for instance) there, as gimballed weapons eat them alive (no chaff).
Engineering Under Threat - Open Letter etc
- Thread starter Gavin786
- Start date
I don't recall seeing you at any of the regular wingfight events.
FYI, wingfights are quick enough as they are. BTW: you can rarely see uber shields (6 skillbooster FDL's, for instance) there, as gimballed weapons eat them alive (no chaff).
so what?
fyi: the point of discussion here is hitpoint inflation. i understand you don't consider it a problem. fine, i guess. now comes the part where you lecture everyone who does that they have no idea because you didn't see them in your regular social events?
No, now comes the part where I invite you to such events so that you'll have first hand information about the possible consequences of your proposal.
couldn't be bothered to engineer a ship to that extent, but thanks! anyway, if you see a specific problem with buffing damage to compensate for bullet sponges, other than shortening fights, maybe you could explain?
Well, hitpoint inflation is in fact a thing, but it primarily affects shields, it's less of a problem with hull hitpoints. You can lose hull pretty quickly while under focus, not only to weapon fire but also to ramming, which is a rather inconsistent and sometimes very fishy source of damage (shadowrams).
Shield hitpoint inflation is a more serious problem, mainly because of the MJ multiplier you can get from putting 4 pips to sys. It comes from two main sources. First, shield cell banks. It's the less important problem IMO, mainly because SCB's can be (and will be, most of the time in wingfights) cascaded. If you can successfully recharge your shields in a wingfight using SCB's, you pretty much deserve the extra health points. SCB stacking is also not a real problem in wingfights, because that will leave you with pretty low hull and therefore you'll be very vulnerable to phasing weapons (not even mentioning that once your shield is down you're as good as dead).
The most serious source of shield hitpoint inflation is shield booster stacking. In the last PvP league there was a "max 4 boosters" rule in order to shorten the fights to a certain extent. It was working pretty well as far as I can tell. BTW you cannot really see a six-shieldbooster FDL in wingfights (because that way you cannot have chaff and heatsink launchers).
All the above apply to medium ships only. I'm not the right person to say anything about the hitpoints of large ships like Corvettes and Cutters, because they belong to a different league (and I don't even have one).
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Yea, followed up with, oh wait no, fdev doesn't do anything about it so no one really cares except gankers so it doesn't matter because if you care you're probably a ganker deal with it? That seems to be the stance I've seen from them
To me thats the answer. Less powuh.
Nerf OC powerplants and raise the power requirements of shields and SCBs.
In my dream ED, shields would be a luxury that requires sacrifice to have in some form. It would mean to choose between energy sucking weapons, chunky shields or fast ships. People might also use low power shields too with a straight face.
thanks for the explanation. i see there would be a problem with hull. though hull has been weak for ages, i'm surprised that hull tanking is a thing in wing fights? as for fast death (i.e. when shield drops) i don't see that as a bad thing. you've been out-damaged, you're toast anyway. battles in space should be a matter of seconds, it can be extended a bit for gameplay sake.
just theory crafting, i understand the current state of shields is exactly as intended to suit a wider audience.
just theory crafting, i understand the current state of shields is exactly as intended to suit a wider audience.
When I first got into combat I was all about shield tanking and I operated that way for a long time. But then I was introduced to the concept of stealth builds and various hybrid hull tanks and I was blown away by how much more fun could be had in them. The most enjoyment I've ever had in combat was in a ship with roughly 300 mj's of shielding.
I miss the knife edge Vulture build discussions where everything mattered because of limits imposed.
If only those days came back and were applied everywhere.
I don't agree.
This is another example of where you could see the relative balance in the pre-Engineered system. 1v1s were generally much shorter than they were now, but wing fights were not. Focus fire already had an effective damage increase by making it easier to identify, isolate, and engage targets at increased range.
That's because there are aspects you're not considering.
Offensive capabilities were increased by Engineering too...but some of the most dramatic changes here do not affect 1v1s. Stealth was never a big deal 1v1. Engagement range was rarely a big deal 1v1. You knew where your opponent was and both you and your opponent would try to get close to engage and destroy each other. In group combat this dynamic changes.
I'm a lot more concerned with massed railgun fire than I am with anything that can be put on a gimbaled mount.
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Ultimately, FD does act on EULA breeches - that is what Shadow Banning is for - and punishment would apply to griefers, habitual gankers, and habitual cloggers - there is a point that FD have to prove that any combat logging incident is an actual deliberate combat logging event and not a menu logging event or an incident involving network disruption or software crashes outside of the user's control. I would not be surprised if half of the so called "combat logging" events reported are actually "menu logging" which is fair and reasonable by FD's own rule book.Yea, followed up with, oh wait no, fdev doesn't do anything about it so no one really cares except gankers so it doesn't matter because if you care you're probably a ganker deal with it? That seems to be the stance I've seen from them
But anyway, this is not a thread about combat logging or ganking specifically but Engineering in itself. If engineering were rebalanced with trade offs that only effect the combat balance while maintaining the current state for secondary concerns such as shields as protection during landing then the only people which are likely to lose out are the true griefers and gankers because they should be losing any unjustifiable advantage as a result of engineering.
[EDIT]I thought my proposal a few posts back might help settle the engineered/non-engineered balancing concerns but ultimately it would not resolve one of the main issues which is that engineering has created a power creep situation in a combat setting that at least some are reluctant to forfeit in any way.[/EDIT]
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Well, for instance the typical FDL builds you can see in wingfights include:
- doublebanking prismo builds (4A prismo with 5A+4A SCB's, 4-5 boosters: 1200ish hull underneath 2200-2500ish shield, plus potentially significant shield healthpool in banks, most of which might get cascaded though). Favourite target for a wing with phasing weapons. Almost zero survival after shield drop.
- same but with 5A prismatic shield + 2x4A SCBs (a bit more in the shield gen but less in banks, same hull)
- prismo + hull build (5A prismatic shield, no banks, typically 5 boosters, 2700ish shield, 2200 to 2500 hull). The shield is pretty much a single-use-only one.
- biweave builds: there is a lot of variation, but the maybe most typical one uses an 5C thermal res biweave with 2 (1 to 3) boosters, a lot of heatsinks and chaff. That's only 2500 hull HP's underneath a max 600 MJ (often even weaker) shield (you cannot stack too many boosters, because that will make the broken regen time way too long unless you disable the boosters - from which time on you'll essentially have a 2-booster biweave but much less heatsinks). You can use an SCB, too, but only at the expense of some of your hull hitpoints. Very fun (but pretty difficult) to fly builds, but most of them have less hitpoints than a biweave Vulture. That's not really something that can be called an overly inflated health pool.
None of the above have invincibly strong defences. For comparison, an FDL using 5 PA's can deal 433 total damage per volley, which translates to roughly 350 absolute per shot damage (at 50% resistances). And that's only efficient PA's, not even one of them is short range. On one ship. Multiply it with the number of wingmates.
See why I said it would be a bad idea to quadruple the damage?
still ... not very much. you just described 4 scenarios where a fdl is toast ... when focused by a wing. which doesn't surprise me! now, how long does it take for it to get boom? with 400% damage buff we'd assume that 4x faster. that's such a tragedy? and that's on paper. those 5 slow plasma balls still have to hit an evading fdl. by the way, shouldn't there be another fdl focused in the opposing team too? focusing is just the game with wings, it means massive damage, 4vs1 has to be brutal.
now put a cutter tanked to the eyebrows in there. see why it is a bad idea to balance things around a specific scenario like wing fights?
balance needs to be done 1vs1. everything else is tactics or advantage in numbers, nothing to do with stats.
They only person I'm aware of them taking action on was player who was protesting because they don't take action.
Thats called open and solo/pg
It wasn't just 4 scenarios, it covered pretty much all the viable builds of the FDL. Cutters have nothing to do with it, it's a totally different league, there are no organized ringfights with mixed medium+large ships, for a reason. I repeat, I'm no big ship expert, but I can see no reason why such a big and expensive ship should be more easily killable using small or medium ships.
Thing is that a single plasma FDL with 4x damage would take like 3 shots to kill a biweave Ferdie. It simply wouldn't be fun. 4v1 is brutal as it is, even for the prismatic builds. As things stand now, 2v2 and 3v3 fights are the most enjoyable. 4v4's are OKish, anything above that not so much.
And no, PA shots are not slow, and you cannot just evade incoming PA fire at will, especially not in wingfights (multiple opponents, you know).
Due to the technical AND tactical elements (and also because of their slightly less rock-paper-scissor-ish nature), wingfights are much more FUN than simple 1v1 duels, that's why the game should be balanced around them IMO.
well, it takes a single high speed pass and a single short and precise burst of fixed machine gun fire for some pros to obliterate an opponent in, say, il-2, and people still find it fun. ok, not for everybody. i exaggerated the example just to illustrate that time to kill is a relative factor, and i'm fine with extending the fun time and so broadening the audience. not until we get asleep though! i'm glad to hear you find ttk appropriate in wing fights, as you have guessed i have no good metrics there. to be honest, not even in pvp in general in late years. but most videos are boring and could use a 4:1 compression factor
