Beyond update almost complete. Its time to talk about COMBAT!!

[pato]

Explorers got their cookies finally. Its time for Combat players to receive some love now.

I want to discuss with you about the design philosophy for certain weapons and ships, as well as combat scenarios.
There is still much potential Frontier didnt make use of and plenty modules and ships that fall behind.

Lets talk about what the average Player thinks:

1. When I fight, I want to be as effective as possible

This thinking leads players to use certain ship and weapon Metas.
For PVP this is perfectly acceptable - the Meta is fixed weapons, mostly PA and Rail. Only skill determines which player will win.
PVP Meta ships are mostly FAS, Fer De Lance, Krait Mk2
Great!

How about PVE?
The Meta is gimbal weapons preferable Lasers and Multicannons - fixed weapons require much more effort then is actually needed to fight NPC, thus they should be a dedicated PVP choice only.
You can use almost every ship to engange in PVE, but for sustained combat preferable choices are Anaconda, Fer de Lance, Corvette, maybe Python and Krait too. Most other ships are not tanky enough, lack in DPS, or require much more use of skill.
Turret use is not encouraged as their DPS is just way to low!
In my opinion this is a major design flaw, as combat against NPCs should force you to engange many enemies at once.
Turrets should be a help to fight off small annoying ships, while you can stay focused on the bigger threats. The best example are the two small weapon slots of the Anaconda. They are placed so that they have a very limited fire arc and are therefore the best place to use turrets for. Other ships have these options as well and turret use should be encouraged while fighting NPCs.
Another example are mining ships. A Lakon type 9 miner should not be forced to stop his mining operations just because some nasty sidey or eagle is poking him from behind. Chasing them can be very annoying! Turrets should help to kill of the small threats, but at the same time they should not be completly useless if an Anaconda starts to look what you have in your cargo.

2. My ship is too strong. PVE is boring

The consequence of beeing as effective as possible leads ultimatly to this.
Enemies in Elite Dangerous do not scale. First, this is a good decision!
But fighting NPC in maximum engineered ships gets very boring over time unless you are doing it for the money and materials.
WE NEED BOSS FIGHTS AND REAL ELITE ENEMIES!
Players should be able to find at least equal Elite Enemies with engineered ships, if they want to. From missions, POIs, etc. Those should be a lot harder to deal with it (like when fighting Thargoid ships) and be very rewarding in terms of money or special itmes. You can decide what would be a good drop from such an enemy.
There also should be boss fights that you can not take on on your own, no matter how skilled you are. You need the help of other pilots to kill those mighty pirate lords, Mafia, Drug Lords, desperated military officers, Thargoid motherships and so on.

3. Why should I fly with a small ship when I can have a big one?

So true.. There is no reason unless you want to make combat artifically difficult for you, or simply because you dont have the credits.
Maybe they are good for smuggling, but why should they be restricted to just one activity?
What is the major difference between small ships and big ships? Its their manouverbility and speed.
Why not introduce high speed pursuits where big ships are completly useless but small and nimble ships can chase some robbers that stole the Mona Lisa from XY Station?
They dont want to fight, they just want to get away with it and you must chase them as fast as possible. They try to get off your rader by trying to fly through a small canyon or a very dense asteroid field. Who has the better control over their ship when flying at high speeds, avoiding obstacles, fighting gravitaional effects? And then they launch a rocket or EMP mine to stop you from chasing them.
Another thing is interdicting. It should be significantly harder to interdict a small ship with a big ship as they should have a much easier time to avoid interdiction. Give the interdictor role to the dedicated fighter. They should be your choice for 1v1 engagements. Big ships should be your dedicated assault ship to fight waves of enemies.

4. I dont use missles/torpedos. I cant kill even one enemy with a full load of ammo

Missles have been the weapon of choice for griefers. One or two volleys and most ships go down. The nerf was necessary, but rendered this weapon type completly useless.
The damage output vs ammo is the worst out of all weapons.
Im not sure how to adress this, but a possibility would be to siginificantly buff the damage of missles against NPCs, or make it harder to lock on the target.
Another possibility could be specialized types of missles that serve less as a weapon, but more as a utility for example shield breakers for resistance debuffs, hull crackers for armer resistace debuffs, disruptor for module malfuction or temporay shut downs (like thargoid), caustic for applied damage over time once the shields are down, high explosives for trajectory disruptions, Napalm for overheating and so on.


How would YOU improve todays combat mechanics of Elite Dangerous?

 

[Stigbob]

1: Our ships are OP enough already. Buffing turrets would facilitate people going AFK and pirate farming.

2: The last time NPC's got a major boost the forum went into meltdown as not everyone could cope. Its an MMO so there is no difficulty setting at the menu, you have to set your own difficulty through the shipyard equipment and mission/activity choice. Drop into high level distress signals and solo wing assassinations if you fancy a challenge.

3: Smaller ships are more fun, players can use either though.

4: Missiles have had a buff and they really are deadly again they strip away all the utilities on the outside of the hull. One of the most effective weps in CZ's.

 

[pato]

1: Our ships are OP enough already. Buffing turrets would facilitate people going AFK and pirate farming.

2: The last time NPC's got a major boost the forum went into meltdown as not everyone could cope. Its an MMO so there is no difficulty setting at the menu, you have to set your own difficulty through the shipyard equipment and mission/activity choice. Drop into high level distress signals and solo wing assassinations if you fancy a challenge.

3: Smaller ships are more fun, players can use either though.

4: Missiles have had a buff and they really are deadly again they strip away all the utilities on the outside of the hull. One of the most effective weps in CZ's.

1. Why overdramatizing? If one really wants there is always a way to find balance without making such things possible.

2. If this is an MMO can you give me ANY example of where players where forced to adjust the difficulty through their eqipment?
I also mentioned explicitly that players can engange these threats IF THEY WANT TO. Through missions or POIs makes no difference, so that low level players do not have a disadvantage.

3. there should be incentives to use both. Fun is relative to players.

4. high burst but still very bad damage/ammo ratio. you need to restock after few kills

 

[Stigbob]

1. Why overdramatizing? If one really wants there is always a way to find balance without making such things possible.

Overdramatising ?.

2. If this is an MMO can you give me ANY example of where players where forced to adjust the difficulty through their eqipment?
I also mentioned explicitly that players can engange these threats IF THEY WANT TO. Through missions or POIs makes no difference, so that low level players do not have a disadvantage.

Adjusting difficulty is a player choice thing, its not forced on anyone. People can take on high threats or low threats in whatever ship like already.

3. there should be incentives to use both. Fun is relative to players.

There are, the big three are the deadliest most survivable ships. The smaller ones the most challenging. Either approach can be fun as can medium ships.

4. high burst but still very bad damage/ammo ratio. you need to restock after few kills

I average 30-40 kills per reload using an FDL with a pair of expanded mag missile launchers. No experimental effect on them. Incredibly effective.

 

[Bortas]

1: Our ships are OP enough already. Buffing turrets would facilitate people going AFK and pirate farming.

I agree that turrets don't need a damage buff... but something needs to be done about them anyway. Turrets are currently completely useless in PvP, because they can be hard countered by chaff and dispersal field, which basically everyone is using. You could kinda wait for the enemy to run out of chaff before the engineers were introduced, but high capacity chaff launchers and dispersal field amplified the problem to the point of turrets becoming useless.

 

[pato]

yeah overdramatising, because your argument is simply our ships are op, instead of going into depth of the problem and finding a balanced solution to even out the weakness of an obsolete item.

Of course difficulty is a players choice, but why can i not fly my big 3 ship and have an equal difficulty as with a smaller ship? Imo this is a big limitation.
Bigger ships should not be the solution to make the game super easy for you, but to fight even harder threats.

If you kill smaller ships then Asp with a few missle hits then you can make more kills, but against bigger ships this number goes down. As missles are bad against shields you will lose time against simple laser/MC loadout

 

[pato]

I agree that turrets don't need a damage buff... but something needs to be done about them anyway. Turrets are currently completely useless in PvP, because they can be hard countered by chaff and dispersal field, which basically everyone is using. You could kinda wait for the enemy to run out of chaff before the engineers were introduced, but high capacity chaff launchers and dispersal field amplified the problem to the point of turrets becoming useless.

imo certain items should be used for certain tasks. Turrets should be more of a PVE weapon as PVP, but currently they are neither first nor last. If using for PVP they should be limited to utility functions rather then DPS

 

[Dommarraa]

Some combat, such as CZ get harder in 3.3.
While I think small Turrets could do with a buff, Combat is good enough, you could tinker forever. Just get on with core development.

 

[Stigbob]

yeah overdramatising, because your argument is simply our ships are op, instead of going into depth of the problem and finding a balanced solution to even out the weakness of an obsolete item.

Which has to be done at the level of the majority of players as its an MMO.

Of course difficulty is a players choice, but why can i not fly my big 3 ship and have an equal difficulty as with a smaller ship? Imo this is a big limitation.
Bigger ships should not be the solution to make the game super easy for you, but to fight even harder threats.

As you move up through the ships you get access to tougher and more dangerous ships, that's how ship progression works and its the whole point really. Pick what you like for the task at hand/your preference.

If you fly about in an endgame battlewagon you are effectively invulnerable in PVE, some people like that though for them its the attraction of it.

If you want more of a challenge drop to medium and use fixed weps.

If you kill smaller ships then Asp with a few missle hits then you can make more kills, but against bigger ships this number goes down. As missles are bad against shields you will lose time against simple laser/MC loadout

Never waste missiles on shields, its not what they are for.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Enemies in Elite Dangerous do not scale. First, this is a good decision!
But fighting NPC in maximum engineered ships gets very boring over time unless you are doing it for the money and materials.
WE NEED BOSS FIGHTS AND REAL ELITE ENEMIES!
Players should be able to find at least equal Elite Enemies with engineered ships, if they want to. From missions, POIs, etc. Those should be a lot harder to deal with it (like when fighting Thargoid ships) and be very rewarding in terms of money or special itmes. You can decide what would be a good drop from such an enemy.

Find a system in Civil Unrest or Lockdown, and drop into a Threat 7 Pirate Activity Detected. They're not a match for a fully-engineered player ship individually, but there are a lot of them and they're pretty tough.

I went in with my FDL a few days ago and took out three of them before I ran out of ammo. Still had plenty of shields left so I could have synthesised more ammo, I suppose.

I haven't got around to trying yet, but I hear the high-intensity CZs in 3.3 are even tougher.

 

[Ashnak]

1) Define "effective".
For me, in random PvP, my Sidewinder and iCourier are the most effective ships. They can run away from everything.
In pre-agreed PvP, you use whatever ships you agreed on. With the same loadout on both sides, it desn't matter whether you use stock Sidewinders or engineered to the hilt Cutters. But the Sideys are cheaper and more fun.

NPCs scale very well. From what you write, I get the impression that you've never encountered "mostly harmless" NPC Anacondas or a flock of "elite" Vultures.

That T-9 miner - a T-9 is a slow cargo cow. Still, fitting a few laser turrets will keep a single small fighter at bay. If you're up against a 'conda or FdL, you're in deep trouble - and that's how it should be.

2) Nope. You're contradicting yourself here - first, you state that NPCs are boring, a few sentences later you're quoting Thargs as being hard to deal with. Thargs are NPCs, too. Otherwise, FD have recently introduced high threat scenario USSes. Or try completing one of those high level wartime retrieval missions.

3) Because small ships are fun. See 1) - it all depends on what you want to do in the game. I want to have fun, and for that for me, the small ships are definitely more fun than the big ones. I'll go up to a Krait Mk. II if I need to make some money, but usually the iCourier and the Sidewnder are my favourites. And if you're friendly with a faction in the right state, there are plenty of high paying Sidewinder missions out there (planetary scan, for example - no, you don't even need to bring an SRV for those).

4) So what? If you want to kill a Cutter form a Sidey with one load of ammo, you have a challenge. And I thought you wanted to make combat challenging? Buffing weapons won't make combat more challenging, and distinguishing between NPCs and players won't help, either. Especially since you complained that NPCs already were "too easy" a couple of paragraphs earlier.

 

[MarkAusten]

Explorers got their cookies finally. Its time for Combat players to receive some love now.

[snip]

Not in the slightest. Combat has been the recipient of most of the upgrades for the last couple of years. Exploration and mining have another year at least before Combat gets another turn. Don't be so greedy

 

[o2thaZ]

ORLY yep one exploration update vs a pletora of wombat.
I think cookies are more like crumbs while the combat people are eating giant size extra chunky chocolate chips.
Because of that analogy: you sir are funniest of the day!

Repped!

 

[Shir]

1. I prefer fun from effective. Big ships are fun, but smaller ones are also fun in another way, and it's nice to have both available. Stronger turrets would harm the dog fighting challenge and would make battle dull, so I disagree on buffing them.

2. if you find pve boring, why not use a smaller ship? When my Corvette and other big shops got boring, I went the small ship road, vipers, vulture, etc. More boss fights, sure, but don't miss the challenge and fun factor already present in the game. Fly a vulture after using the Corvette in combat zones and haz Rez, and pve is new again!

3. Fly small for the fun of flying and the challenge. I like the existing balance. You can successfully do combat in almost every ship in the game, just differently. If you only fly big ships you are missing a huge part of what the fun in combat in this game is about.

4. Missiles.. Haven't done pvp yet, so no opinion there since they seem to play a big role in PvP and balancing them is probably difficult.

TLDR: the way I overcome boredom in fighting is by alternating ships. Going from corvette battle overlord that destroys all in seconds, to fixed weapons small ship pacifist that used to struggle to land a shot (and I still do suck with fixed weapons..)

 

[CmdMarty]

The game has 2 versions with no balance between them that play in the same game world, so the need to get everyone on the same playing field before anything will get balanced right and might make the game easier to develop into the future.

 

[GODofDUTY83]

I play on Xbox using a controller.
The biggest change that could really make combat more engaging, for myself at least, is having a combat focused control layout that is activated on hardpoint deployment.

I played with configs on a secondary account and the options available for controls are great. The issue is that having the combat config set as default really hampers the ships functions and use when not in combat and is really not worth having it set as default.

This needs to be made a reality.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Its time for Combat players to receive some love now.

Oh gods, not again. We had two patches dedicated to combat. Can we not have another combat focused update?

How about one for piracy instead? Its combaty. Or perhaps even trade, make it something more than just identifying a good route (or looking it up) and then flying A to B and back over and over again.

However, personally, i'd say forget all those, and focus on things like new SRVs, atmosphere worlds, fleet carriers (of course), and continue to work on the Squadrons to provide more features.

 

[TheMegaTurnip]

Pretty much all the engineering needs another balance pass.


Not a massive one, but things need dialing back when it comes to HP overinflation on shieldboosters. Emmisive needs to be dialed back, high cap missiles need to be dialed back. High yeild shell needs another buff, scramble needs fixing, missiles need nerfing, torps need buffing, as do the effects avalible on dumbfires. ETC..

The NPC's are a different issue. 90% of them are thick as mud. It makes the game boring, but then to us who have been playing a while we forget how hard it was initially and erefore need a challenging element in the NPCs. The "Pirate Activity Threat X" are a good start, but they are pretty much the toughest NPC's in game and they only get G3 engineering, still no viable match for players who have a little skill and G5 ships. This needs to also change. Simply put, threat 8,9,10 Should be more and more heavily engineered and more aggressive NPC's. 10 being like god-tier NPC's that would smash and unengineered player as quickly as a PvP murderboat. Also making the drop rates off them better for the work would be nice, but thats probably wishful thinking.

 

[Lily from anim.o.v.e]

1: Our ships are OP enough already. Buffing turrets would facilitate people going AFK and pirate farming.

2: The last time NPC's got a major boost the forum went into meltdown as not everyone could cope. Its an MMO so there is no difficulty setting at the menu, you have to set your own difficulty through the shipyard equipment and mission/activity choice. Drop into high level distress signals and solo wing assassinations if you fancy a challenge.

3: Smaller ships are more fun, players can use either though.

4: Missiles have had a buff and they really are deadly again they strip away all the utilities on the outside of the hull. One of the most effective weps in CZ's.

the major issue is that FD doesn't utilize the oversized unverse. They simply could amke the inner bubble a lowbie paradies, the outer bubble a bordelrine murder area. hat way you can basically create "difficulty settings" in the same universe by its location. no metldown needed as people not able to cope could stay in the safer areas. Same could be doen with a PVE vs PvP area, The ingame universe is huge core areas of the superpowers could simply be PvE areas. and other areas PVP. That woudl hurt no one, aside some PVP gankers nto getting their easy prey. Evertyhign stays in the same universe and people decide by their location which style and difficulty they want. but sadly, FD doesn't utilize the huge galaxy they have at hand to the potential it bears.

 

[Stigbob]

the major issue is that FD doesn't utilize the oversized unverse. They simply could amke the inner bubble a lowbie paradies, the outer bubble a bordelrine murder area. hat way you can basically create "difficulty settings" in the same universe by its location. no metldown needed as people not able to cope could stay in the safer areas. Same could be doen with a PVE vs PvP area, The ingame universe is huge core areas of the superpowers could simply be PvE areas. and other areas PVP. That woudl hurt no one, aside some PVP gankers nto getting their easy prey. Evertyhign stays in the same universe and people decide by their location which style and difficulty they want. but sadly, FD doesn't utilize the huge galaxy they have at hand to the potential it bears.

The balance is fine as it is, I can find varying levels of challenge as I like (or not if I like). PVP doesn't need designated area's, it already got them all in open.