Today, everyone's favourite and charming blue critter takes on...exploration.
Or more specifically: let mods be more meaningful to explorers than having anorexic ships.
To summarise: what I will term "environmental" damage, primarily dropping from supercruise, is absolute. Very absolute. Not just in that it ignores resistances of all kinds, but that it deals the same proportional damage to a module regardless of health.
What does this mean? Well an explorer fits two AFMUs of equal class and rating, then visits his mechanical booty call Lori Jameson to get to work on his vessel. One of the AFMus is no longer equal, and with some extra special attention, gets a +220% integrity bonus. That's over triple the normal health.
He goes exploring. Taking randomness out the equation, both those AFMUs will break at the same time.
This is something I've personally tested using AFMUs and other modules with integrity bonuses.
I can see basic motivation to make such damage ignore health bonuses and the like but this is highly unengaging gameplay for the explorer and beyond. What motivation is there to make any explorer other than a typical 70LY jump-o-conda with less mass and health than a noodle, especially when PG/Solo is required for high def shots?
The solution? Give explorers a choice. Find a way of applying integrity bonuses to resisting SC dropout damage, even if not proportional - so for instance, a double health module might last 50% longer against pure SC dropout stress.
This has too many implications when heat damage is involved to just whack it in, but could also be an interesting tangent to explore for both exploration and combat. Extra integrity providing resistance to heat damage could be a nifty way to encourage further build dynamics.
Or more specifically: let mods be more meaningful to explorers than having anorexic ships.
To summarise: what I will term "environmental" damage, primarily dropping from supercruise, is absolute. Very absolute. Not just in that it ignores resistances of all kinds, but that it deals the same proportional damage to a module regardless of health.
What does this mean? Well an explorer fits two AFMUs of equal class and rating, then visits his mechanical booty call Lori Jameson to get to work on his vessel. One of the AFMus is no longer equal, and with some extra special attention, gets a +220% integrity bonus. That's over triple the normal health.
He goes exploring. Taking randomness out the equation, both those AFMUs will break at the same time.
This is something I've personally tested using AFMUs and other modules with integrity bonuses.
I can see basic motivation to make such damage ignore health bonuses and the like but this is highly unengaging gameplay for the explorer and beyond. What motivation is there to make any explorer other than a typical 70LY jump-o-conda with less mass and health than a noodle, especially when PG/Solo is required for high def shots?
The solution? Give explorers a choice. Find a way of applying integrity bonuses to resisting SC dropout damage, even if not proportional - so for instance, a double health module might last 50% longer against pure SC dropout stress.
This has too many implications when heat damage is involved to just whack it in, but could also be an interesting tangent to explore for both exploration and combat. Extra integrity providing resistance to heat damage could be a nifty way to encourage further build dynamics.
