Why? It's a purpose built trading ship not a flying fortress. For a 20th century parallel, compare a 3,000t ww2 destroyer to a modern 100,000t container ship. Guess which one would require more hits to sink?
Goodbye Open til SCB issue is sorted
- Thread starter Achilles7
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Why? It's a purpose built trading ship not a flying fortress. For a 20th century parallel, compare a 3,000t ww2 destroyer to a modern 100,000t container ship. Guess which one would require more hits to sink?
Actually it's an 'obvious choice' thing. SCB's are an obvious outfitting choice as they are hands down the best defence, particularly with the game geared towards shields. It of course hurts PVP but mostly because of the tedium lol - and I can agree although I don't PVP, it would be boring as hell to fight a battle of SCBs. because it would pretty much come down to who has the most.
They're the latest scapegoat in the never-ending "balance quest" that will serve only to turn ED into a nice bowl of oatmeal.
It shouldn't be impossible to destroy but should take a lot more work than currently. It's not even on the same level as a B-17 regards defence and they even flew in formations for added protection.
If players were more focused on not destroying but pillaging it's inner goodness for candy then things might make a bit more sense. pirates would be a lot happier for one. I don't even Pirate but they should be able to make the trader run, yet get some goodies, without getting the kill bounty, just the smaller "fired upon" one which is minimal. Sure, trigger happy security forces but they should be in and out quickly, so shields are light, hull is strong, and maybe like the Anaconda's Power Plant, cargo hatch is weak. Forces the Pirate to make the call when to stop attacking and when to start collecting.
But like all big ships and especially Traders, the main reason to attack such things is to nick stuff, not destroy and as long as they aren't really combat effective then it's not such a big deal.
Repairing Hull damage cost money...so trader runs. Pirate gets some, yet not all candy, turns a profit for a couple of hundred cred bounty in that system.
Trader loses some from their profit yet not all.
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Pirating a T9 should be a great deal....a lone Viper or Vulture shouldn't be a problem despite the shield strenght....trading ships should be almost Hull ''invulnerable'' and you should have at least 4 vipers or 2 Vultures for engage such a behemot ship like that IMO.
It would make gamepley more spectacular and involving the wing factor to a more organized playstyle from pirates.
I've always thought that trading ships should have more Hull strenght than combat vessels, since the fighters should sacrifice hulls from mobility....maybe with sronger shields, but less tanky. Tjis would be the general approach, and multiroles in the middle.
Again, SCBanks unbalance all of this too much in the way them are implemented in game now.
I think the game generally suffer from balancing....a single Vulture shouldn't be allowed to go in a Strong Signal Source and destroy 3 NPC anaconda alone...this is insane and i did it many times with my A Vulture.
SSS Should be just for wings and organized <Gameplay....well Devs failed with those balances too...and the SCB should be the ''Fix'' for this?
No thanks
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Essentially the argument is going around in circles. No one can agree, we aren't getting anywhere and neither will we.
What I think is that if we're debating the finest details of ship management and their survivability then the game must be pretty well balanced already.
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This thread is a microcosm for what happens when a games balance is based on PvP. My early reaction was to tone down SCB's, but I have changed my mind. Not about SCB's, but whether FD should do anything about it. My general opinion is FD should create the ships, mods, and weapons as they see them, and let the PvP chips fall where they may. It looks like that just may be what they are doing.
Partially agreed, it's just like trowing a stone in the water and see what happens...i'm ok with this kind of intention by FDevs, but their role is to look at water, and if things doesn't work as intended, or water falls outside the pool only in one side they should change the stone
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Most CMDRs take more SCB than power output , ant they have on power only one at the time , so during the battle they (me too ;p ) swich off depleted SCB and turn on next full SCB.
Easy solution is to make that SCB always have to be on power (like powerplant) , since they drain a lot of power and you cant switch them on/off then you will think twice how many SCB you equip on your ship.
... or SCB have time to charge after you will switch them on , 20-30 sec ?
Easy solution is to make that SCB always have to be on power (like powerplant) , since they drain a lot of power and you cant switch them on/off then you will think twice how many SCB you equip on your ship.
... or SCB have time to charge after you will switch them on , 20-30 sec ?
Valid points.
A single hit and run Pirate should however, be able to disable shields and attack a lone T9 trader, with some situational awareness, and make it leak some goodies. It would probably take forever for them to kill it but that should never be the point. A trader, in defence mode, should be able to make it that bit more difficult by protecting their cargo hatch. That's a pretty cool element in it's own right.
This isn't about what obviously isn't working, it's about offering suggestions about how to fix it whilst removing the stacking because the SC bank stacking makes this whole style of play invalid currently.
I think we all know it needs work.
As for the SSS thing, I kinda agree but like mentioned, balance is well off. Something we all should continually discuss to get it fixed.
What might work would be like a waveform indicator on the "source" you are approaching, the more "active" it looks, the bigger threat or activity, for example, a weak signal source like some cargo like Rebel Transmissions would flatline almost. Big ships present, would be well up there. Weapons fire could also add a factor if there was pew pew going on but I'm probably running before I can walk but you get the idea.
It would make players maybe not waste their time with some if looking for a specific thing, like cargo. Something that might make the game less generic. Some things may even cross over, as in look similar.
However, if the balance is right, better game for all.
Repping this post, and followed the link to rep the original poster as well. Great post.
I remember some old threads asking "if you don't want to be pirated, then outfit your ship to defend yourself" - which leads back here with people trading in a Vulture as it's the safest choice. I didn't word my response nearly as well as the above.
Look, I ain't no pvp type of guy.. bu I do know one thing.
Regardless of circular arguments and the ever-popular "But you can do it too, so it's fair!", the fact is that.. simply, if there's smoke there's fire.
One module should never be allowed to be SO powerful that an entire game mode ends up depending on it. If Frontier doesn't adjust it I'd be amazed.
Regardless of circular arguments and the ever-popular "But you can do it too, so it's fair!", the fact is that.. simply, if there's smoke there's fire.
One module should never be allowed to be SO powerful that an entire game mode ends up depending on it. If Frontier doesn't adjust it I'd be amazed.
In the original game Pythons and Anacondas weren't the all powerful beasts they are today, in a wing you'd have one Conda/Python and then escorts. Yeah the Pythons and Condas took more taking down but it was doable. Admittedly now they are player controlled they are tougher but the power plants allow that many SCBs that no skill is involved for the player, they just sit there dishing out their big pulse lasers whilst popping SCBs, so basically yeah one ship type rules all, that's an imbalance! A wing of Cobras should take down any ship in the game but that's not the case, I'd bet a Python or Conda could pop enough SCBs to win out. Just my opinion
Good dev flag thread this.
You can only carry one refinery at a time, so I suppose limit, of one SCB per ship might help?
You can only carry one refinery at a time, so I suppose limit, of one SCB per ship might help?
It can't be an isolated thing though. There should be value to having a large ship like an Anaconda or Lakon T-9, and my concern with just limiting or removing SCBs without other changes is that people will just refuse to fly a large ship like the Anaconda in open.
They need to take a look at armor levels and overall balance at the same time as any limitation. Encouraging people to try to disable large ships, but making it more difficult to completely destroy them, would help a lot here. Right now the SCB situation is driven by the speed at which you can lose 20+ million credits once your shields drop. What we need to look at is making sure that pirates can have an easier time actually pirating, especially in Anarchy systems, but not put traders in a spot where they're constantly being destroyed.
I can't agree with this more. The current Shield mechanics break the game for Piracy. If the SCB's get nerfed, then the hull needs to go up in relation to how big te Ship is. But the Cargo hatch has to be set at a degree where it drops cargo, but at a balanced level.
Pirates should get their candy, but not at the expense of the Trader losing their ship or they'll never come back.
Destroying your best source of income is never wise.
I'd also add, after a long haul fight and kinda inebriated while playing PP, I ran down my module health a fair bit. I got interdicted with Hudson supplies / limpets and came across a ship with Gimballed weapons. Being not at my best (Banana's aren't known to be very good flyers), Shields went down and I started dropping cargo. The NPC kept on asking for more because I was dropping limpets primarily maybe, I dunno how that works. But, the whole idea that Gimbals, even by accident, target the cargo hatch made the whole thing seem more valid.
They were appearing to stop me transporting my cargo.
They should also be using hatch limpets, to stem the flow of supplies.
This works regards realism.
If they even stopped when they got enough would be good also yet debatable.
It's kinda like they're there to do a job so let them.
Would make solo that bit more challenging because currently it's kinda rare and I have to do most of the damage to my ship myself.
And usually when drinking.
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Introduce ECM missiles, that do significant damage to shields and have them cancel the SCB effect. They would do very little damage to the hull.
And make it so you can actually carry a cargo hold of ammunition rather than having to restock all the time at a station (but making it so moving the ammunition from the cargo hold to your weapons take a significant amount of time so as only to be used outside of combat).
Then make it so you can load various types of ammunition from this special cargo hold and then introduce more types of ammunition with various +damage modifiers. For example, multi cannon ammunition with less hull damage but more penetration (module) damage. Incendiary ammunition that causes great amount of heat (and potentially damaging the ship with heat damage).
There are tonnes of ways combat and the game in general could be made more interesting if FD took a bit more time to consider more than basic options for weaponry.
And make it so you can actually carry a cargo hold of ammunition rather than having to restock all the time at a station (but making it so moving the ammunition from the cargo hold to your weapons take a significant amount of time so as only to be used outside of combat).
Then make it so you can load various types of ammunition from this special cargo hold and then introduce more types of ammunition with various +damage modifiers. For example, multi cannon ammunition with less hull damage but more penetration (module) damage. Incendiary ammunition that causes great amount of heat (and potentially damaging the ship with heat damage).
There are tonnes of ways combat and the game in general could be made more interesting if FD took a bit more time to consider more than basic options for weaponry.