Doubling down on engineering

So, here's an interesting idea, I'm curious to see what you CMDRs think.

Suppose engineering were modified so that each module could have TWO engineering effects, a primary effect and a secondary effect, and TWO experimental effects? These effects would stack and could be applied in any combination.

So you could double down on efficient, or go with overcharged x rapid fire. Or heck, even double rapid fire if you want to empty those mags in about ten seconds.

The potential combinations would mix up the meta and make things interesting again.

Thoughts?
 
Made the same suggestion a while ago. It would probably be overpowered though.
Without any changes to the existing blueprints, it would definitely be overpowered. Back when the engineering rework was announced for 3.0, I did a bit of theory crafting on a kind of "points system" where each grade of upgrade would cost 1 point and experimental effects would cost 2 points with each module having a total of 7 points available. In theory, a player would be able to go for a lower grade blueprint and have multiple secondary effects or ignore secondary effects in favour of adding a few grades of a secondary blueprint. Eventually, I started coming across some would-be meta defining edge cases (like a G1 long range railgun with cascade, super penetrator, and plasma slug) that were so completely broken that I ended up tossing the whole idea.

Back to OP's idea. Let's say I were to stack G5 efficient and G5 overcharged on a multicannon, then add autoloader and something else as experimental effects. The sustained DPS of such a weapon would be about 2.2 times that of a stock multicannon, with 25% less distributor draw, 48% less power draw, and 54% less thermal load. Quite frankly, it would be absolutely ridiculous.

While I would absolutely love to have more options when it comes to optimizing my ship's modules,in my opinion the amount of changes to the engineering system that would need to be done to make multi-blueprint modules viable as something other than powercreep is a bit excessive for something that players will have figured out how to min-max within a few weeks of release.
 
My suggestion was more like you could total 5 grades of engineering (double engineering would clearly be OP), but even then I'm sure all my weapons would be LR1 + (OC4 or Efficient 4).
 
A) Frontier would break the game horribly in their attempt to make this happen.
2) It would be way overpowered (engineering already is OP). Now if everything was limited to grade 1, then I'd be more open to the idea.

Many argue that engineering has broken the game (along with shield potions, etc), and I tend to agree. I wish not to see it broken further.
 
I've dreamt of having mix and match total of 5 grades. My thing is that I like to match projectile speeds and it takes 4 grades of Long Range or Focused for PA balls to fly at same speed as MC shells. I'd love to be able to use that final grade for something else. It'd lead to crazy OP combinations. I'd at least restrict combining of "opposed" mods like Short and Long Range, and I suppose Overcharged and Efficient would be opposed as well.
 
Without any changes to the existing blueprints, it would definitely be overpowered. Back when the engineering rework was announced for 3.0, I did a bit of theory crafting on a kind of "points system" where each grade of upgrade would cost 1 point and experimental effects would cost 2 points with each module having a total of 7 points available. In theory, a player would be able to go for a lower grade blueprint and have multiple secondary effects or ignore secondary effects in favour of adding a few grades of a secondary blueprint. Eventually, I started coming across some would-be meta defining edge cases (like a G1 long range railgun with cascade, super penetrator, and plasma slug) that were so completely broken that I ended up tossing the whole idea.

Back to OP's idea. Let's say I were to stack G5 efficient and G5 overcharged on a multicannon, then add autoloader and something else as experimental effects. The sustained DPS of such a weapon would be about 2.2 times that of a stock multicannon, with 25% less distributor draw, 48% less power draw, and 54% less thermal load. Quite frankly, it would be absolutely ridiculous.

While I would absolutely love to have more options when it comes to optimizing my ship's modules,in my opinion the amount of changes to the engineering system that would need to be done to make multi-blueprint modules viable as something other than powercreep is a bit excessive for something that players will have figured out how to min-max within a few weeks of release.
Good thoughts, thanks for sharing! A couple thoughts: Obscenely powerful new engineered modules could help balance the "hit point" creep that so many PvP players complain about.

On the other hand, I would expect this "double down" system to apply to defenses too. :)
 
Or make the drawbacks mean something and make sure experimental can't remove the intended drawbacks.

OH NO! Making the damage higher on my multicannon with make it.... Generate more heat??? Such a huge problem!

Also... I can convert it's damage to thermal? So it's like a laser but without the heat drawback? Hmmmmm.

So silly.

Multis should be good for hull, never shields
 
Obscenely powerful new engineered modules could help balance the "hit point" creep that so many PvP players complain about.
But that's just making a bad problem worse, kinda like "They've got too many nukes, so we need more nukes to balance everything out" argument, when in reality, we're better off getting rid of the nukes.

Unfortunately, just like nukes, I'm afraid engineering is here to stay...
 
Hmm. Interesting idea. I think i can up it. I suggest a shield blueprint, which sets all resists to 100%, a sensor upgrade which allows all weapons, even fixed ones, to track targets in a 360° arc around the ship, without being affected by chaff or anything and a power distributor upgrade, which boosts damage of all weapons to be able to one-shot any ship in the game. (Except those with 100% resist, of course. )

According to my impression here, it'll take the forum about 12 hours till the first one claims that those things are too weak and need to be buffed.
 
Hmm. Interesting idea. I think i can up it. I suggest a shield blueprint, which sets all resists to 100%, a sensor upgrade which allows all weapons, even fixed ones, to track targets in a 360° arc around the ship, without being affected by chaff or anything and a power distributor upgrade, which boosts damage of all weapons to be able to one-shot any ship in the game. (Except those with 100% resist, of course. )

According to my impression here, it'll take the forum about 12 hours till the first one claims that those things are too weak and need to be buffed.
Well duh, absolute damage bypasses resists. PAs on the super distributor should be able to one-shot ships regardless of which shield they are using, not just the ones that don't have 100% resists. Completely useless, FDev plz buff.

:p
 
I think reverb torpedoes should, with this new engineering proposal, have a Max travel speed of 1000m/s, and a blast radius of around the size of an anaconda.

Also, only one Torp should be needed to destroy any shield generator.

As a drawback, it should take a little more distributer drain, and a smidge more heat to fire one.

Also Torp launchers should now have a magazine size of 9000
 
Also Torp launchers should now have a magazine size of 9000
The large torp launchers or the small ones? If the large torp launchers are getting an ammo capacity of 9000 I don't see a problem with that, but the small torp launchers getting 9000 torps is a wee bit imbalanced imo.



In all seriousness though, can we get a rebalance on torps? Please?
 
The large torp launchers or the small ones? If the large torp launchers are getting an ammo capacity of 9000 I don't see a problem with that, but the small torp launchers getting 9000 torps is a wee bit imbalanced imo.



In all seriousness though, can we get a rebalance on torps? Please?

Oh of course, only the large ones get 9000, medium would get around the 8999 mark, and small something like 7964.

I hope that helps you out with that.
 
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