Deleted member 192138
D
Are you suggesting that balance would negatively impact your gameplay?
Sick of not knowing!!
- Thread starter Aashenfox
- Start date
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.
You’re just applying your own handwavium. If it was strenghtening of bulkheads, there would still be room for other stuff. Just a little less.
The way HRPs work is a pure game play choice. They are there as an alternative to SCBs.
To avoid that people stack both, HRPs take a compartment.
Man - abstraction is a concept that's ridiculously hard for most people to comprehend. The only folks I have ever met who are good at it are top notch software programmers/engineers, and theoretical/academic nerds.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.
That said, this post basically puts the nails in that whole coffin. Nice job.
Abstraction is not synonymous with arbitrarieness.
Volume, outside of a few of the smallest ships, is not the limiting factor in what you can put in them. A corvette has more than 250 times the internal volume of a Sidewinder, and proportionally less of that volume devoted to core modules, yet it can't hold anywhere near 250 times the amount of cargo (it tops out around fifty times the cargo capacity). The corvette also has considerably more internal volume than an imperial cutter, but holds less cargo.
Even if volume were a limiting factor there is a good reason to have voids in many protection schemes and even better reasons to check off volume as in-use in a modular capacity management system. It's used in similar real world circumstances to simplify adherence to important constraints all the time.
Intermodal containers are a good example of this. Break bulk cargo, despite being a generally more efficient use of available displacement and/or volume has largely been supplanted by such modular intermodal systems because the later make loading, unloading, and accounting much more efficient.
If one was up-armoring a container ship, it would be wise to reduce the number of containers you expected it to be able to carry by one for every thirty tons of armor you added, because that's about the maximum gross weight of a standard intermodal container.
This is what's being done with our ships in ED. You add a 16T D4 HRP and a class 4 module gets checked off to account for both the mass of the reinforcement and the irregular internal volume that must be reserved for optimal placement of that armor. Even with gaps and voids, assuming they weren't intrinsic to the protection itself, you still couldn't access it for other modules, because those modules are modular, not arbitrary, amorphous, break bulk capacity.
That doesn't at all mean that modular armor packages cannot, should not, or do not actually work in similar fashion as far as the reservation of mass and listed internal volume goes.
The precise capacity of vessels and the stats of modules are largely arbitrary, but using modules to represent a shared mass/volume constraint is not. That's a probably necessary abstraction that makes good sense.
A good, throw-away question, rather than actually addressing my comments... Are they difficult ro read and understand, I did attempt to be simple...
What I am saying, in extremely simple words, is that I find the game to be very good and see no need for change as it currently provides me with a great deal of enjoyment and at a suitable level of challenge., I do understand that such a comcept is incredibly difficult to comprehend by anyone who is not me... Of course, your opinion may differ
Perhaps you would be kind enough to enlighten me, in nice simple words, exactly what 'balance' is, then I could decide if it made any sense...
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Deleted member 192138
D
You're repeating the same points without bothering to address what other people are saying, just being lengthier is saying it. So I don't see why I should give you any more credence. Plenty of balancing options have been suggested and your response has been "don't change things because I'm happy with how they are". You don't address the content of what those balance changes would be, or what effect they have, just reiterate that because your limited scope of gameplay can carry on regardless that other people asking for change are wrong and selfish. It's sort of an absurd position to hold without any further critical comment, even more so to repeatedly restate in increasingly lengthy forms without actually adding anything further.
But you are doing exactly what you claim I am, spouting the same buzzword without any substance...
How limited is my scope of gameplay, by the way? How on earth could you possibly know how I play?
ETA: I read every post here, and in many other topics...
My interpretation of 'balance' as presented over and again equates thus:
Reduce defensive capability as offensive capability has not grown in magnitude to counteract this. Remove 'buffs' because they are not needed in 'our' playstyle...
It is interesting that these views are put forward by a subset of the player base, but not by an overall majority of the entire base.
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Basically everyone who plays open and is not min-maxing for pvp is mostly cannon-fodder if trying to engage in a fight with pvp-min/maxer if not really outclassing the opponents ship with shieldstacks, hull hardness, damage output and/or maneuverability.
Premium Ammo is another factor to calculate. If you are in the more unprepared ship, it could level the playing field a bit for that encounter. On the other hand it can give those pvp min-maxers an additional edge. But if a pvp min-maxer want's to shoot premium all the time, well he'll need to go grinding.
This seems balanced in some way to me. Also premium ammo being kept secret aids the weaker player more then the prepared pvp crack, I guess. So also that'd be fine in my eyes.
But don't get me wrong. If premium ammo would go from the game, I wouldn't cry a tear.
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but I see the poit for duels. It's hard to make a duel fair, when you can't make sure both players play without premium. So for duels premium kind off is mandatory if you can't trust your opponent to stick to some fancy codes of conduct.
Premium Ammo is another factor to calculate. If you are in the more unprepared ship, it could level the playing field a bit for that encounter. On the other hand it can give those pvp min-maxers an additional edge. But if a pvp min-maxer want's to shoot premium all the time, well he'll need to go grinding.
This seems balanced in some way to me. Also premium ammo being kept secret aids the weaker player more then the prepared pvp crack, I guess. So also that'd be fine in my eyes.
But don't get me wrong. If premium ammo would go from the game, I wouldn't cry a tear.
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but I see the poit for duels. It's hard to make a duel fair, when you can't make sure both players play without premium. So for duels premium kind off is mandatory if you can't trust your opponent to stick to some fancy codes of conduct.
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Just because you happened to submit to the hamster wheel doesnt mean others have the same experience with the steep power creep thrown around in the game.
True
but in the main, suggestions for 'balance' are being made by those very hamsters who have scooted all the way to G5 and then discovered it isn't the fun they wanted...Your loathing of engineering has been voiced often, a perfectly valid opinion which none can gainsay.
Just remove the silly ammo thing.
I had a better idea for it, but completely forgot what it was. Lol
I had a better idea for it, but completely forgot what it was. Lol
Bumping this because the other thread in DD today is actually about something else and I don't want to derail it further.
Since posting this, the largest problem it represents came to me in a flash...
In the pvp community we have major problems with cheating. People using a cheat engine to simply increase damage/defense/win interdictions, etc. at the push of a button.
A few days ago it suddenly occurred to me that those I suspect of using premium ammo, could just as well be cheating. I'm not saying they are, but once again the problem is not knowing. You can use the trainer to program a 30% damage increase and simply get away with it, no grind, no fuss. Most players won't be able to tell the difference and even the experienced will just assume you are using premium. This is a major problem, as premium effectively and unambiguously enables and occludes cheating.
Since posting this, the largest problem it represents came to me in a flash...
In the pvp community we have major problems with cheating. People using a cheat engine to simply increase damage/defense/win interdictions, etc. at the push of a button.
A few days ago it suddenly occurred to me that those I suspect of using premium ammo, could just as well be cheating. I'm not saying they are, but once again the problem is not knowing. You can use the trainer to program a 30% damage increase and simply get away with it, no grind, no fuss. Most players won't be able to tell the difference and even the experienced will just assume you are using premium. This is a major problem, as premium effectively and unambiguously enables and occludes cheating.
Premium ammo needs deleting from the game, also on the subject of synthesis... 4 limpets?
thanks for your materials here's your reward;
Cheating is a major problem and one the Devs have never even seemed to hint at being concerned with addressing.
There is generally no will to punish cheaters either even if there was definitive proof of cheating.
This really needs to change and I think only combined action such as recent "open letter" will have any effect at forcing FDev's hand in this issue.
One solution that I though of is that there are detailed combat logs created by both(all) sides in any PvP encounter.
Such like:
{ <time>, <target_ship>, <weapon>, <enemy_distance>, <ammo>, <expected_shield_damage>, <expected_hull_damage>, <effects_applied>, <etc, etc> }, then the status of enemy ship giving it's shield, hull, etc :
{ <time>, <ship>, <shield>, <hull>, <effects_applied>, <etc etc> }
After a player leaves instance one way or another, their combat logs are then sent to an adjudication server. If there are significant irregularities, then the logs are sent to manual review, could even have players who volunteer manually review like mods, and bans of various level of severity are given out to cheating parties, probably starting with 1 week on the shadow server for first offence. Maybe a shame mark on CMDR's name for a period of time also. THERE NEEDS TO BE A ROBUST APPEALS PROCESS ALSO!
I think this is a good method and could actually be done without too much effort, its a couple of guys maybe 2 months to do this, its not a lot and it would stop cheating, and also allow some great new data for 3rd party programs so battles can be visualised later.
I know all hands on deck for "new thing", ie space legs, but this is a serious issue and is not being given the serious consideration it deserves. There ARE solutions, it is not just a case of "well its too hard to fix...".
CMDR Gavin786
There is generally no will to punish cheaters either even if there was definitive proof of cheating.
This really needs to change and I think only combined action such as recent "open letter" will have any effect at forcing FDev's hand in this issue.
One solution that I though of is that there are detailed combat logs created by both(all) sides in any PvP encounter.
Such like:
{ <time>, <target_ship>, <weapon>, <enemy_distance>, <ammo>, <expected_shield_damage>, <expected_hull_damage>, <effects_applied>, <etc, etc> }, then the status of enemy ship giving it's shield, hull, etc :
{ <time>, <ship>, <shield>, <hull>, <effects_applied>, <etc etc> }
After a player leaves instance one way or another, their combat logs are then sent to an adjudication server. If there are significant irregularities, then the logs are sent to manual review, could even have players who volunteer manually review like mods, and bans of various level of severity are given out to cheating parties, probably starting with 1 week on the shadow server for first offence. Maybe a shame mark on CMDR's name for a period of time also. THERE NEEDS TO BE A ROBUST APPEALS PROCESS ALSO!
I think this is a good method and could actually be done without too much effort, its a couple of guys maybe 2 months to do this, its not a lot and it would stop cheating, and also allow some great new data for 3rd party programs so battles can be visualised later.
I know all hands on deck for "new thing", ie space legs, but this is a serious issue and is not being given the serious consideration it deserves. There ARE solutions, it is not just a case of "well its too hard to fix...".
CMDR Gavin786
Great post, I pray for this all the time. And I imagine Boss mods style overlays, etc. <sigh> one day maybe. Let them fix the screenshots first...
- https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/january-update-beta-announcement.530478/
You cant have an ED free of cheaters unless they go for client server networking mode, with strong anti-tamper checks
This however costs, so the game will require a subscription.
But... People dont want to pay - a great lot of the pvp-ers that complain about cheats made it clear they will not pay.
QED
The only other way to play a cheat free ED is to move on Consoles - where, guess what - you have to pay a subscription to be able to play multiplayer games - that includes PG and Open modes for ED.
Not really. You dont need engineering to escape easily actually. If you want to blow up a pvp ship you will need another pvp ship
Totally agree - escaping any encouter is quite easy in any ship but the weakest, if you know the secret moves:
SUBMIT - SELECT ESCAPE SYSTEM - (optional fancy moves: FA-off U-turn, boost, evasion, heatsinks) - HIGHWAKE
In my post I did write "if trying to engage in a fight" ... that's not the same as escaping.
And what's that got to do with premium ammo now?
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Thing is, if you're worried your enemy is using premium ammo, then use premium ammo yourself. Problem solved easily without a bunch of kicking and screaming tears for no reason at all