The beer cooler from Car Wars lives!We are not flying specialised military vehicles, we are flying the equivalent of Toyota Pick-ups & Jeeps with bed mounted machine guns
Sick of not knowing!!
- Thread starter Aashenfox
- Start date
Convoys aren't as effective in ED as they have been historically, mostly relying on preemptive interdictions to really be useful.
20% is definitely at the high-end of what's required to make a cargo vessel survivable in ED. 10% is more common, but even losing 20% off one's profit is probably better than losing all the profit and facing a rebuy.
See the bit I highlighted. The freighter is not longer capable of carrying frieght, it is in fact freightless. If Morbad has said something along the lines of …"Take a freighter and instead of carrying 100% of your normal freight load, reduce it by half by including extra armour" ....... then your argument would be valid
If I want a combat ship and all I have is hull of a freighter, I don't need to reserve any of it's capacity for freight. I can arm and armor it until it runs out of available displacement.
Plenty of historical cases of commerce raiding conducted by converted freighters. They usually weren't carrying any cargo, they were just converted cargo ships so they were less likely to be accosted by actual warships and could approach real merchant vessels more closely, before opening fire on them.
Go back a bit further and the only difference between a cargo vessel and a ship of the line was that the latter omitted the cargo for more guns and marines.
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In WWII, there was a German auxiliary cruiser (German, Hilfskreuzer), the Kormoran (outfitted with six six-inch naval guns, some lighter guns, some AAA and torpedoes), which fought successfully against an Australian light cruiser. It got close under false colours, then struck. It got heavily damaged in the exchange, and the crew had to abandon ship, but its adversary, the HMAS Sydney, a light Leander-class cruiser, was destroyed, mainly due to the short range of the engagement, the surprise attack, and the highly accurate fire.
Naturally, these auxiliary cruisers were inferior to real warships. To be fair, though, they were not MEANT to go up against dedicated warships, but rather, freighters, tankers, in short, ordinary merchantmen. Kormoran just had no choice, as the light cruiser was intercepting her -- and the best it achieve was, basically, a draw.
@ Riverside
Federal Assault Ship, Federal Gunship, Federal Corvette, Vulture (Viper Mk III and IV, Eagle Mk II). . . very much military vessels. NOT the equivalent of converted pickup trucks with M2 brownings added.
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In WWII, there was a German armed Merchantman, the Kormoran (it was one of several merchantman that had been outfitted with naval artillery pieces, additional armour, bulkheads etc.), which fought successfully against an Australian light cruiser. It got close under false colours, then struck. It got heavily damaged in the exchange, and the crew had to abandoned ship, but their official report was that the light cruiser (a dedicated warship) was ablaze from aft to stern when they broke off.
@ Riverside
Federal Assault Ship, Federal Gunship, Federal Corvette, Vulture . . . very much military vessels. NOT the equivalent of converted pickup trucks with M2 brownings added.
The Kormoran is one of the more prominent examples.
Regardless, converting comerce vessels, and all sorts of peaceful tools in general, to weapons has been nearly ubiquitous throughout history. Large standing armies/navies are not common, but merchant fleets are. It's also far easier to turn a merchantman into a warship than it is to turn a warship into a merchantman. The dedicated warship is superior in a fight, ton for ton, but also much more specialized and vastly more expensive.
If anything, it's not trade or general purpose vessels that should be prohibited from filling up with armor and weapons, it's the dedicated combat vessels that should have more reserved slots.
Plausible or not plausible is not that important when it comes to game play balance.
There are already a bunch of examples in the game of non plausible functions used to affect combat capability.
A few:
There are also a bunch of weapons special effects that are just magic spells. For example you get corrosive effect by modifying the gun, not the ammo. You don't even have to reload.
All these are examples where FD has prioritized convenience over realism. It's after all just a game.
There are already a bunch of examples in the game of non plausible functions used to affect combat capability.
A few:
- MRPs protects all modules, no matter where its placed. It's like putting a lump of concrete in the boot of your car, to protect the engine.
- An A rated Shield booster will give 20% boost to both a class 8 shield and a class 2 shield. It even uses the same amount of power to do this.
- Shield Cell Banks works only on shields and by pass the PD. Logically they are just energy banks and should boost reservoirs in the PD.
- HRPs cost less and adds less weight per hit point that external armour. They also protect the entire hull, even if they are put in a specific compartment.
There are also a bunch of weapons special effects that are just magic spells. For example you get corrosive effect by modifying the gun, not the ammo. You don't even have to reload.
All these are examples where FD has prioritized convenience over realism. It's after all just a game.
Good observations - apart from the SCB. If you consider the SCB is connected directly to the shield generator rather than just pouring umpteen ergs into the PD it will make sense.
The rest we have to use a little more imagination with
Balance should flow organically from plausible constraints.
Every single one of which would be better if plausibility was more of a consideration when they were conceptualized and implemented.
I consider them connected directly to the shield emitters!
That's the word I couldn't find in my head! (not enough caffiene yet...)
Good observations - apart from the SCB. If you consider the SCB is connected directly to the shield generator rather than just pouring umpteen ergs into the PD it will make sense.
The rest we have to use a little more imagination with
The SCBs could be connected directly to the emitters, as morbad says. The question is why?
If you have stored energy cells on your ship, it would be practical to be able to distribute it where it's needed. If I was the producer of fantastic energy banks, I wouldn't make them work only on shields. That would limit my market.
I like your list of debatable examples, but my conclusion is that FDEV should try harder on plausiblity. After they fix serious bugs.
The shields themselves are probably the second biggest science fictional space mystery in ED, right after faster than light travel. But sooo convenient...
True - but then they wouldn't be called SCB's...The SCBs could be connected directly to the emitters, as morbad says. The question is why?
If you have stored energy cells on your ship, it would be practical to be able to distribute it where it's needed. If I was the producer of fantastic energy banks, I wouldn't make them work only on shields. That would limit my market.
But Energy Cell Banks - that would be the Duracell of ED
(and would destroy balance further, surely!)Exactly. It's done for game play reasons, not plausibility. FD has stated several times that game play trumps realism.True - but then they wouldn't be called SCB's...
But Energy Cell Banks - that would be the Duracell of ED
The main objective in combat game play design has been to give players with medium skill and up, the ability to massacre NPCs. They have managed this by giving access to almost unlimited defensive capability.
The amount of asymmetry between those that are stacked with defense and those who aren't, is to big.
The there is also no way to compensate with offensive capability. The TTK in a fight between two equal pilots in meta PvP ships is probably ten times higher than if the same pilots were in standard ships.
The game is purposely unbalanced to benefit the income of PvE bounty hunters. This hurts all PvP encounters. Both symmetric and asymmetric.
Sadly, I am one of the (my bolded) above - so find 'balance' as discussed fairly irrelevent to my game playing (as like the rest of us, I'm playing to enjoy myself) even though I can appreciate the concerns for those who play ED as a PvP game.
I have no desire to 'git gud' - at my age I'm probably as good as I'll get - but I do want to enjoy the game as is, the challenge is just about 'right' to me, so all is fine. Of course this situation doesn't satisfy those who have honed their skill to the point where NPC's, no matter how powerful, present no challenge.
ED has much to offer everyone, but we all see things from our own perspective - leading to many debates over features of the game, representing many differing opinions - we are all 'right' of course, even if we differ.
And overall it is less fun on the long term.
I never do PvP myself. Partly because I don't like the outfitting requirements and how they affect the rest of my game and partly because I'm busy with other activities.
I do however which that FD had keep PvP encounters in mind, before they started piling on the defensive modules. On would think that it would be possible to make the game fun for casual PvE players, without the wild power creep.
I see where FD are coming from. Thousands of kills are what Elite historically has been about. That's difficult to achieve without giving players an edge over their NPC opponents. I just think the dilemma could have been handled better.
Speculating about how ED shields could/should work is difficult as there are few real-world analogs and no clear precedent in-universe, that I am aware of, but the most straight forward explanation I can think of would be that bypassing the standard power delivery systems and connecting straight to the emitters would prevent overloading those systems. Afterall, an SCB has to be entirely modular to work with any shield system it can attach to and the peak discharge rate of an SCB is an order of magnitude higher than the fastest any shield gen or SYS cap can recharge. Connecting it to the distributor or generator may well risk destroying them. Indeed, the SCB may even bypass the standard emitter systems, dumping energy (or energy and matter, or whatever the shield is made of) directly into the shield bubble.
Plausibility and realism are not synonymous.
I take plausibility and verisimilitude into account even when describing high-fantasy settings and mechanisms, and balance is all the better for it. Describing a system and having everything logically proceed from that makes it much easier to deduce the effects changes will have and thus tune them as desired.
The problem with Elite: Dangerous is that it's come to be constructed largely piecemeal, with many mechanisms acting in near isolation and not having any context. Instead of describing how the basics work, they started with the desired effect and didn't spend enough effort on the retcon to properly integrate it. Plausibility, intuitiveness, and balance all suffered because of this.
If we go back to the shield example, describing how shields are supposed to work in some detail (doesn't have to delve into minutiae or even be possible in reality) would also define the constraints under which they operated and how they could be used or modified. Any 'what if' question would have an answer that made contextual sense.
Yes.
Maybe, but I think the baseline is too high rather than the asymmetry itself being the problem.
Most totally unaugmented trade vessel should fold like a wet paper bag.
Yes.
Perhaps? But if we can put an HRP in a compartment and increase the overall hull strength, shouldn't a full cargo rack at twice the mass in the same compartment also increase hull strength? Those containers are quite sturdy and the rack it self should stiffen the hull, one would think.
Seriously they should have put all armour on the outside. Just add stronger and heavier classes for those that want more. Then one could hull tank by skipping the shield generator and adding the freed up weight as armour. All balancing would be so much easier.
Perhaps? But if we can put an HRP in a compartment and increase the overall hull strength, shouldn't a full cargo rack at twice the mass in the same compartment also increase hull strength? Those containers are quite sturdy and the rack it self should stiffen the hull, one would think.
Seriously they should have put all armour on the outside. Just add stronger and heavier classes for those that want more. Then one could hull tank by skipping the shield generator and adding the freed up weight as armour. All balancing would be so much easier.
HRPs (and MRPs) are abstractions. It's not just a lump of armor sitting where a cargo rack would go, it's a certain quantity of armor distributed throughout the vessel, with an internal compartment checked off to account for the reduction in usable mass and volume the reinforcement results in.
Armor doesn't all need to be on the outside either; it just needs to protect systems the ship needs to operate and keep the ship from breaking up. Indeed, it's not always most efficient to armor the outside of a vehicle as that frequently results in armor wasted on non-vital areas.
Using real ships as an example again, this is a cutaway of the armor protection scheme of a Nagato-class battleship:
And the profile view of the armored belt/citadel location & thickness (on the lower right):
Large sections of the bow/stern and superstructure were entirely unarmored...the machinery, magazines, turrets, fuel, CnC, and fire control is all the ship really needs to fight and most of the rest of it was ultimately expendable. On many battleships you could blow off most of the ship above the, waterline except for the conning tower and turrets, without crippling them.
An HRP equivalent would be thickening some of the internal bulkheads around those critical areas and reserving some more volume for voids/spaced protection.
I certainly think there are better ways to represent this stuff than what ED is doing, but FDev went with fast and simple, rather than reworking the entire game. I don't think the concept is that bad and I'm not adverse to some abstraction if it makes things workable. The fundamentals are acceptable, I'd just make some tweaks to the specs...if I couldn't start from scratch.
Merchants never geared up to fight other warships unless their were a deliberate conversion to a task other than freight hauling.
Balance is just as important for a good PvE experience. Rate of progress, Damage output and intake, "killspeed" - all gameplay-relevant stuff.
But I am enjoying a good PvE experience, as I clearly stated, why should I wish things to be changed? The balance is not entirely in my favour (as was illustrated last evening when, in a Med CZ, all 4 Spec Ops ships instanced next to me!) as, even heavily G5 engineering enhanced, NPC's are able to challenge my supremacy very effectively.
Rate of progress... 20 months play Master 75% (as of last evening) in combat, 2 levels of which were 'earned' fighting Thargoid Scouts - reasonable progress I think. I made elite in exploration September 2018, in trade September this year.
How would 'balance' change things to enhance my play, and exactly what is inferred by the term?
I enjoy playing, even with a lot of engineering mine are not 'God' ships as the pilot is only reasonable...