Discuss the heat meta changes

[Deathwatch]

So last night me and my guild leader did a test agains tax my turret heavy vetted vs his FAS with full thermal we pay and 2 missile racks with cascade.

During the fight his layers could only get me to 86 odd percent and his cascade could get me to 110 if he was close enough to get past point defence.

Now is have to go turrets for low heat plus they have efficient weapon upgrades and no special effects of any note.

My only upgrade other than the efficency that would have been my grade two strengthened powerplant which grants extra 6% heat efficiency.

However with my current setup I believe a thermal wing would cause me serious damage.

In the end I did manage to win the lowest module was a empty heat sink at 42% this was due to me firing one of my big banks that require me to pull in my weapons at the time my sinks were out of amount.

The fight ended with him at 3% hull me at 83% hull though that's due to him having a full compliment of grade 5 hull reinforcement and bulkhead.

Heat is still quite powerful but with correct builds 1 on 1 is survivable. However it needs a very specific design.

I believe once my load out is sorted single heat weapon targets will be a minimal threat however multiple may cause more issues.

 

[Jesse Blue]

No player is introducing a meta. This wording can be changed to "most effective" if it would make you feel better.

I like to call it "Most Effective Type of Attack" or META to short things up... Wait.. Wha... ups!

 

[nathdixon92]

Okay, here's my honest thoughts about heat weapons. I do use them and they are pretty damn effective but for me they aren't over powered at all now (previously they were...cascade especially) but I've put some points below.

The heat itself is easily managed with the right build. 2 or 3 heat sinks can give you a good platform to lay down a withering attack as most people will have sacrificed outright shield strength and alpha damage for the heat as they themselves understand how effective it is and will have fitted their own countermeasures.

They other thing to take into account is your own ship build when coming you think you're going to come up against a heat build. Having overcharged this and that affects the integrity of your modules as does having lightweight mounts etc. This means they are more vulnerable to thermal attacks because they have less "health".

Another aspect, again with builds is what mods you have on your thrusters and power plant. Dirty Drives and Overcharged Power Plants have a steep increase in thermal load and while it might not appear much just plodding around in open space, any kind of external heat causes your temperature to sky rocket. This again, makes you more vulnerable to heat based weapons.

The final thing I have noticed is that people panic when their temperature rockets past 100%. The trick here though is to take notice, the moment you hear "Warning: Thermal Attack, gaining heat" you need to pop a heat sink right away. If you leave it, you're probably going to need to continue popping them just to stabilise it but if you've timed it right you'll be able to get a handle of it. Remember, when gaining excessive heat, sinks are the first to go so need to focus on controlling it as early as possible while still trying to give you opponent something to think about.

If you're in a small or medium ship, you need to keep moving. Small ships naturally have poorer heat management than large ships with the exceptions being the Diamondback duo. Your speed and maneuverability is your friend. Most people won't have bother fitting shock or cascade to turrets as the heat build up is scaled with the damage.

 

[nosleepdemon]

Why not just make efficient module mods much better at dissipating external sources of heat, or allowing hull mods that add external vents right into the bulkheads that dissipate heat from external sources at the cost of durability vs other types of damage. One would imagine that the reflective armour type would also be good at resisting heat based attacks.

 

[Runis]

The point is that thermal shock is useless now, 25% damage reduction is way too much penalty for the current state of it (it was too much/too slow even before tbh). So start re-crafting your weapons, maybe with some build that won't be a meta anytime soon, because some around here are ready to complain about anything that they dont like.

 

[MONTItheRed]

1. Make the amount of heat delivered not depend on the weapons damage capability rather the damage the victim really suffers.
Resistance and PiPs to SYS modifies the damage taken. If heat generated by weapons fire could be reduced the same way, you would not be that helpless anymore.

2. set the limit you are able to heat up an other ship to 100%.
This way you will not destroy him, but he will be out of the fight soon. He can't boost, can't use shieldcells, or shoot his weapons without overheating.
So the heateffects will take an enemy out of the fight very soon, but will not actively destroy his ship.

3. remove them completely ( i would prefer this, but i know you won't do that )
Atleast make them only work against the hull, as they worked before the engineer update.

I think you are missing the fundamental complaint against heat weapons; that they bypass defenders and the perception of no counter. Increasing pips to system doesn't reduce damaged taken, merely increasing the damage you can take before the shields drop. Reducing damage taken is through thermal resistant engineer mods. http://inara.cz/galaxy-blueprint/22

I haven't seen testing with thermal resists, so i don't know whether the numbers given are percentage reduction, value reduction, or rate reduction.

disabling a ship through defenses reaches the same result as destroying a ship through defenses.

 

[Midian27]

Your balancing is a joke. Just remove them.

 

[nathdixon92]

Your balancing is a joke. Just remove them.

So people can fly unchallenged in uber ships?

 

[Lunchmunny]

So people can fly unchallenged in uber ships?

No, but for an "Uber" ship, you very well might have to grab a buddy or two to take them down if you yourself aren't in an uber ship.

 

[Deathwatch]

So people can fly unchallenged in uber ships?

I would say thermal weapons need to exist, but no engineer special effect should be the only one you run, you should run a mixture, for example i see a place for using both Thermal Shock/Cascade and Feedback Cascade for use against vessels that use shield banks.

You should never be looking to run just one special effect but should be running many, Thermal Shock/Cascade (in a 1v1) when a player is using all thermal now, if someone spreads that over a team they can thus be far more effective capacitor wise etc.

Its just making it so we promote people flying a mixture over just all one special effect thats what i believe.

For example i still plan to run one bank of thermal cascade pack hounds on my Ice Running Vette, but i also want things like Drag Munitions.

 

[Kastor]

Your balancing is a joke. Just remove them.

And while we're at it... (glares at shield potions)

 

[Gswine]

Has anyone looked at the numbers to discover the modifiers and how they have been changed?

I ask as I have been running a rank 5 Resistance Aug shield and Rank 3 Resistant Aug SB (all three damage types rather than a specialised). I have no base numbers from pre recent patch and would most likely not be much use if I did, unfortunately. However I am becoming convinced that the damage resistance I used to enjoy has been scaled back.

So I'm wondering if the reduction gained from the use of multiple resistance buffs has been lessened somehow via the change in formula that has been done to heat.

Just to note: I get that a change in formula to heat should apply only to heat damage produced but maybe a change in formula in one area has had a knock on effect to another and this has been missed in testing. Or I'm imagining it, which I'd be happy to believe if I could just find some work on the numbers somewhere.

 

[Sole Hunter]

Hello Commander Crimson Kaim!

The changes we have made are to reduce the amount of heat damage from thermal cascade, and in addition, increase the diminishing returns for all heat delivery via weapons (including Thermal Shock and Thermal Cascade), which results in a lower top end cap but that should have negligible effects unless thermal weapons are being used en masse.

The goal of these changes is take the edge off mass heat weapon load outs, without ruining thermal as an effective tool.

When you post patch notes, could you be more accurate and descriptive ''balanced'' is a very subjective word. Communication is a very weak point from your team, you really need to work hard on this.

Thank you,

 

[Nugstar]

Hello Commander Lunchmunny!

The diminishing returns only affect heat incoming from weapon attacks.

However, the reduction is significant, especially when combined with the drop in heat damage from Thermal Cascade attacks, which are one of the better ways to quickly apply catastrophic heat.

The bottom line is: less heat from missiles, less heat applied as the target gets hotter.

However, we're confident that heat is still an effective tool at the very least.

This is potentially just a step; we're looking forward to feedback.

Hi Sandro,

Do you have any news on the changes you've made and how you feel about the state of heat weapons after the patch?

I really hope the team are still working on these weapons because the balance isn't quite where it should be – a lot of my fellow CMDR's have no interest in playing the game in it's current state and are starting to lose faith in FD.

I hope that there will be additional work to help balance the new Engineer Weapons in the near future.