Do shield boosters need looking at?

[Wyldwiisel]

So if I put a specific thermal booster on I gain 25% res
If I put one of each type on I gain 25% but loose 10 gaining 15%
If I put a generic on I gain 12%
That pretty much means to me 2 generic are far better than 3 specific
I know there are diminishing returns and all that but even generally speaking 2 should not be better than 3
I think the negative effects of specific type resistance should be removed

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

SBs are already overpowered. CMDR ships are more or less invincible, particularly in PvE. And PvP is made in to an incredibly dull slogging match.
What they need is a careful nerf. No idea what though.

 

[Lucius-Darcia]

So if I put a specific thermal booster on I gain 25% res
If I put one of each type on I gain 25% but loose 10 gaining 15%
If I put a generic on I gain 12%
That pretty much means to me 2 generic are far better than 3 specific
I know there are diminishing returns and all that but even generally speaking 2 should not be better than 3
I think the negative effects of specific type resistance should be removed

The specific mods for SB's i can only recommand in specific moments. If i use reinforced shields, i need at least 1 thermal resist booster. And on my exploration ship i have 1x class E shieldbooster with kinetic resistance for planetary landing. Never had any use for the explosive resistant one.
Otherwise always the resistance augmented for all 3!

 

[Allchemyst]

The best way for figuring it out is to use a website like edshipyard.com, where you can compare different types of SBs applied to a certain type of shield.

Most builds I use have about 50% thermal resist and 50% heavy duty, in order to maximize total effective shielding.

As stated above, explosive resistance is pretty much meaningless given how already good shields are against explosions... and how infrequently NPCs use them.


But FD does need to look into them. There's a nerf incoming eventually (they tried to nerf them twice already but backed down because of popular outcry) because they're waay too powerful. Somehow, FD devs had forgotten to consider what would happend if a player put all class A shield boosters with G5 upgrades on C8 prismatic shields... Even thought they should've known maximizing them would be the first thing every player would do... Now, since engineering is so g tedious, they can't really take them away because the mistake is purely on them (since those effects were very easy to predict at the development stage) and the community has probably spent thousands of hours engineering impenetrable shields...

The only way I could see FD fixing this would be to take a "take some, give some" approach where players are offered something else.

For an example, they could violently nerf the total shield points available by making SBs less efficient the more you equip them, but in return, make it so that the regeneration rate of a boosted shield is increased proportionally to the % of shielding the nerf took away, with the added difference that multiple SBs greatly increase the time before regeneration kicks in after a hit.

All those who would've just wasted hours upon hours of efforts won't have their efforts wasted since they might lose their "impenetrable" shield walls, but they get shields that regen much quicker, thus making PVP more thrilling and PVE as fun as before.

By the way ED: This wouldn't even be an issue if you hadn't made the whole engineering process so brutally not fun and unrewarding. *wink*

 

[Wyldwiisel]

I wasn't calling for a nerf on my FDL I'm using 2 augmented boosters and 4 heavy duty gives me about 60% resist which I think mostly fair and not really overpowered I just thought it strange that my two augmented ones are better than putting on three specific resist types I think resistance wise 3 augmented should give same resistance as 3 individual specific resist types so it would be an improvement of the specifics resist types and if I were to nerf anything it would be the heavy dutys as they are a bit ott

 

[Siobhan]

Don't look at shield boosters... They'll overheat and cook your ship.

 

[Yure]

Actually they could increase the power requirement and thermal load, making it almost impossible to place more than a few.

This would nerf multiple SB builds with out hitting hard those that only use one or two.

To fine tune they could tinker with how different ships get affected by them.

 

[Rozete]

i had one build in mind (still theoretical), but to save mass i choose to go with reinforced shield + 2 thermal boosters in place of thermal shield + 1 resistance booster and 1 heavy duty booster. last one weights 13t something. big deal for small ship

 

[Teh Smoo]

Diminishing returns?

EVE does that. Quite a lot. I think it's one of the better ideas in the game. It keeps stacking from being silly.

Actually they could increase the power requirement and thermal load, making it almost impossible to place more than a few.

This would nerf multiple SB builds with out hitting hard those that only use one or two.

To fine tune they could tinker with how different ships get affected by them.

Making things harder to fit is a it unfair to anyone without engineers unlocked. Those first 2 hours of the game on Steam are pretty key.

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

FD looked at them, again and again. Diminishing returns were added to resistance boosters. Then they tested diminishing returns to heavy duty boosters while at the same time buffing base shield values a bit. Community was mostly happy, FD scrapped it. Then they tested diminishing returns to heavy duty boosters without the base shield buff. Community was not so happy, FD scrapped it. Come time they'll test another variant, maybe in the 2.4 beta.

 

[Wyldwiisel]

Seems to me the problem is the big numbers on shield just reduce the heavy duty numbers down
Put augmented at +5 on everything as max
And specific at +15 on 1 and no negatives
Leave stock shields alone and if the guys in big ships are getting insta ganked by other players then weps need needing too

 

[StiTch]

Yes shielding needs a nerf...and yet in two major attempts to make it happen, both were dropped due to complaints the solution wasn't right. We've seen a slight drop in resistance boosters already (originally they could reach 15% per resistance as standard and was nerfed to 12%), but the final solution needs to be more elegant than smashing resistance augmented boosters. Don't forget any change can affect the smaller ships as much as their bigger brethren, and no-one is worried about nerfing viper shields - that isn't where the concern lays.

Regarding specific resistance boosters - no, they don't result in an outright better resistance when combined. But if they did, what would be the point of the Resistance Augmented mod? You'd be taking a hit to power draw so get worse resistances on your ship than a set of specific resistances combined.

If you want to boost your resistances all around, the all-round booster should be the correct option, at penalty through power draw. Specific resistance boosters are there to tailor your resistances. To give an example you might have a shield mod that boosts your thermal resistance so high it's biting into the cap alongside explosive, but your kinetic resistance is lacking. Instead of wasting power draw to gain thermal and explosive resistance you literally won't get any use out of, you can simply drop in a kinetic resistant booster. In that case your actual gained resistance may well be superior to a resistance augmented booster.