Break through SCBs instantly with modified railguns (Newletter 121)

[Mephane]

Addendum: another aspect to the problem with this weapon mod: how would the target even know the other ship is using these? Assuming it even mentioned the weapon modification in the component list of another ship, and not just "rail gun", you would have to check the loadout of any ship you encounter in a fight in order to know whether your shield cells would screw you or not.

The idea of a hard counter to shield cells is sound. But this is not just a counter, this is a "gotcha" gun that may very well make shield cells mostly useless because you must always be prepared for the other ship to have this weapon modification.

Also: only a minority of all players even read forums etc. Imagine this weapon mod going live, and a random average player gets attacked with it. Cue email to support with the bug report "activated shield cell, shields instantly failed".

 

[Nerwan]

If you are using an scb, your shields are almost down anyway. This mod doesn't seem to overpowered, as there is already a good chance of rails collapsing weak shields.

Largely untrue.. Surviving in a wing fight against silent runners is all about SCBs, and it's quite normal to pump that SCB at around 66% shields as you get hit by 4 rail de lances etc.. it's the only way to survive wing focus. In effect this change would unbalance the game even further in favor of the current meta, silent ships with rails... Nobody will use shielded ships after this.. (it's already rare outside of PvE) and I think that's a shame.

Note: This is of course assuming that they don't also nerf SR at the same time..

 

[R3d_Dawn87]

For me it should be like Ok it disrupts SCB charging process then why not break tht 1 charge with the shot instead of breaking the whole shield this will allow us to use combat tactics like what if i charge during a boost turn i can charge my shields back up and tht failed scb charge will coz heat damage as well. And it wont make SCB useless Baggage.

 

[lilikin]

I think this is awesome, there is a lot of what ifs stopping this becoming over powered.

You must
1) Have the weapon
2) Have an enemy using the correct module
3) Have to fire at the right time
4) Have to actually hit an enemy with a gun that doesn't even sit on gimbals

seems pretty remote to me but the SCB crowd will cry it off

 

[Derath]

I think this is awesome, there is a lot of what ifs stopping this becoming over powered.

You must
1) Have the weapon
2) Have an enemy using the correct module
3) Have to fire at the right time
4) Have to actually hit an enemy with a gun that doesn't even sit on gimbals

seems pretty remote to me but the SCB crowd will cry it off

If they are in a ship above a certain size all of these are irrelevant except must have the weapon, firing at the right time is extremely obvious, large ships have to use SCB's because they have enormous profiles (and shields to go with them) and hitting targets with rails is about as easy as it gets, even more so if your shooting anything clipper sized up.

It won't last in its current form, will get changed to a damage multiplier I imagine (unless it takes up a full weapon slot and does nothing else)

 

[Zeta Legion]

If they are in a ship above a certain size all of these are irrelevant except must have the weapon, firing at the right time is extremely obvious, large ships have to use SCB's because they have enormous profiles (and shields to go with them) and hitting targets with rails is about as easy as it gets, even more so if your shooting anything clipper sized up.

It won't last in its current form, will get changed to a damage multiplier I imagine (unless it takes up a full weapon slot and does nothing else)

Firing at the right time is even more of a non-factor in a wing. There's four of you, if we're talking FDLs that's about sixteen rails firing pretty much non-stop and not all at the same time. You'd have a better than average chance of hitting the correct window by accident.

 

[lilikin]

If they are in a ship above a certain size all of these are irrelevant except must have the weapon, firing at the right time is extremely obvious, large ships have to use SCB's because they have enormous profiles (and shields to go with them) and hitting targets with rails is about as easy as it gets, even more so if your shooting anything clipper sized up.

It won't last in its current form, will get changed to a damage multiplier I imagine (unless it takes up a full weapon slot and does nothing else)

Only because of the moaners

 

[Derath]

Only because of the moaners

Because its a dumb idea, why don't we have a gun that instantly blows up a target when it presses boost too? It might make sense on a missile, or something that takes skill to use but a railgun? Its basically guaranteed effect it'll get toned down, at which point its a good addition the game for people who want more pressure vs shield cells.

 

[Nyres]

I think this is awesome, there is a lot of what ifs stopping this becoming over powered.

You must
1) Have the weapon
2) Have an enemy using the correct module
3) Have to fire at the right time
4) Have to actually hit an enemy with a gun that doesn't even sit on gimbals

seems pretty remote to me but the SCB crowd will cry it off

Except this all pretty much is is a sure thing with NPCs since even though they claim AI doesn't cheat except for rare cases for "gameplay reasons" the AI seems incredibly good at aiming and timing on their shots and I wouldn't be suprised if every AI ship that has a lot of hard poitns has at least one of these weapons that they'll only use when your about to use an SCB.

 

[Muetdhiver]

While it may be too strong, I say let's wait the beta.
It could be toned down in various ways, e.g.

• cancels the SCB
• cancels the SCB and dump the whole SCB in the ship as heat.

But in the mean time, wait for beta.

 

[sutex]

Part of the point of Beta is to do a little experimentation, this is certainly one that has potential to be nuts (though until you see how all the changes fit together judging based on the current metagame is... unreliable) - we've discussed a few other options internally and will see how this goes when people start using it. Keeping the flavour (bonus against shield cells) but toning down the effect (perhaps jut a damage bonus), and/or introducing major downsides (longer charge time, damage nerf, obscene power draw) are all possibilities as we move through beta.

If the Green lantern , pops up with a super modernizing kinky thermal zap beam , THEN my first question will be , with all this wonderful imaginary tech , where's the Proximity Chat , and the Carries,

 

[Von Shadow]

I think a more balanced version of this weapon could be say that the SCB fires as normal and the shield charges as normal but the strike of this weapon causes a shield bubble instability which allows say a fluctuating 20-60% of weapon damage through for 5 - 7 seconds .... would show up as a shimmering shield bubble so both the attacker and attacked know it.

So its more of a shield disruptor creating a weakspot....A large ship like a conda deploying an SCB at say 30% capacity to lose that shield entirely is a really severe punishment... costing potentially 1000's of defence points
But at least creating a potential penalty for SCB while maintaining the shield means at least an attacker can wittle away the hull slowly before the shields entirely down potentially causing module malfunction.

 

[InMemoriamSirocco]

Great... Now my shield tank FDL is useless. Lol
I can see this causing alot of issues!

Tactic for use:
Poke someone's shields until they try to recharge, then fire this magic railgun.
Then railgun the hull.
Feels like an 'I Win' button! Lol

Choices for defence:
Do I risk changing, at the chance they will be insta-collapsed, rendering my shield tanked ship uselss?
Or just let them collapse?
Or don't take shields anymore. HRPs FTW!

Or are they releasing a "hull eating mega laser beam" one strike while the ship is in space, and boom. No hull.

I'd preferred if they'd done that mod to the PA instead. Atleast you can dodge it! Lol

You can dodge railguns, too.

 

[igor37]

Since it isn't (currently!) possible to know for sure when someone is recharging their shields (although you can make an educated guess!) I would say that this weapon will require some skilled timing to get the best of.

Of course it's possible to see it, recharging via SCBs makes your ship shine like a christmas tree for a few seconds. Although for some reason you never see the effect on your own ship.

 

[Mysturji]

Part of the point of Beta is to do a little experimentation, this is certainly one that has potential to be nuts (though until you see how all the changes fit together judging based on the current metagame is... unreliable) - we've discussed a few other options internally and will see how this goes when people start using it. Keeping the flavour (bonus against shield cells) but toning down the effect (perhaps jut a damage bonus), and/or introducing major downsides (longer charge time, damage nerf, obscene power draw) are all possibilities as we move through beta.

I can haz railgun-repelling magnetic shields plz? [hehe]

 

[Han Brannigan]

Haha wow someone is butthurt getting all technical with a simple example. This CLEARLY shows you have no idea what an example is, be it logical or not is completely irrelevant. I don't fly a DBX. I fly a corvette. So if you wanna hop on over to the Xbox side of things we can have a little 1v1 pvp if you want. My GT is my user name so you can easily find me.

The one who clearly doesn't know what an example is is you. You are welcome.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

I guess you need a little English lesson on what opinion means, observation means and what complaining means.

Some posters here... do you even realize that trying to look condescending while being clueless makes you look like a grade a dork?

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

There is no whinging and I don't understand why you can't understand that

Maybe because all what you are doing is whinging and being condescending towards ppl who clearly are your betters?

 

[Derath]

You can dodge railguns, too.

You can't dodge railguns in a ship above a certain size, generally the size that has to run SCB's for that very reason lol

It would probably be better to say that they are hard to hit with against ships of a certain size too, as they are hitscan weapons you don't really dodge them so much as evading ever being infront of them in the first place (though that's all semantics)

 

[Duedy]

I think that is too OP as it stands, I would say its better and more balanced if it just disrupted the SCB stopping it from recharging the shields, thus making it like the target had not deployed their SCB but took some extra heat for the pleasure. The SCB has a chance to be directly damaged from the attack.

I also think SCB should be a 1 only allowed module, higher the class the more % shield it replenishes, I would also make it unlimited use. It works by recharging a capacitor which then dumps its stored power into the shield generator and generating usual extra heat. Recharge rate is based on 3 factors, Class of SCB, Class of Power distributor and Unused power generated from PP. This will mean people who want to use SCB often on larger ships will have to have larger PP and Distributor at the cost of the extra weight of these modules and thus reducing FSD range and top speed/boost, as well as making sure the % of power they use for all modules is still low, restricting them of weapon No./ size/type and what other class of modules /utilities they use.

 

[lilikin]

I think that is too OP as it stands, I would say its better and more balanced if it just disrupted the SCB stopping it from recharging the shields, thus making it like the target had not deployed their SCB but took some extra heat for the pleasure. The SCB has a chance to be directly damaged from the attack.

I also think SCB should be a 1 only allowed module, higher the class the more % shield it replenishes, I would also make it unlimited use. It works by recharging a capacitor which then dumps its stored power into the shield generator and generating usual extra heat. Recharge rate is based on 3 factors, Class of SCB, Class of Power distributor and Unused power generated from PP. This will mean people who want to use SCB often on larger ships will have to have larger PP and Distributor at the cost of the extra weight of these modules and thus reducing FSD range and top speed/boost, as well as making sure the % of power they use for all modules is still low, restricting them of weapon No./ size/type and what other class of modules /utilities they use.

And yet you haven't even tried it yet.

 

[KG_Jedi]

That weapon modification is way too OP.

At least, should be nerfed, so that it can affect your shield if it hits in 3-4 sec window (after you deploy SCB, and before it starts charging shields). And effect should be so that it stops SCB from charging your shield and disables it, so that defending side have to reenable it in module window. It would be fair. Quite OP still, but fair.