Ground and air combat should not be in the same triangle

[MarCoVi Ren]

I'ma be honest I've had my ship torn apart by little laser men and it's stupid there destroying size 7shields with energy rifles.
What's worst is they tear down ship armor like there on par with a ship...
I disagree whole heartedly with this. Unless their using rocket launchers or Vulcan mounted energy cannons ground troops should not be able to fight ships, especially with the way elite combat is set up...

 

[Riverside]

I have had Odyssey since before launch, and have still yet to fire shot from a hand held weapon with intent. I simply do not see the point in using hand weapons to achieve anything when I have fully armed & armoured SPACESHIPS available to me. My fusion powered spaceship should be able to level any structure in a settlement and even just use the main drives to melt to slag anything close enough that isn't shielded.

But it's a game, with some assets that must remain indestructible and that kind of 'air' superiority just wouldn't be as much fun for anyone choosing to go on foot if they didn't really stand a chance.

So here we are


I strongly suspect the poor game designers that were asked to find a way to make ground combat workable in ED were well aware of how improbable the rules we currently see were when they came up with them.

I don't have a problem with automated ground turrets & skimmers taking down ships, and I can sort of see that a SAM Bazooka is a cool alpha strike weapon against an unprepared target.

 

[metatheurgist]

Only thing that's effective vs hull is the rocket launcher afaik. On a "dead" CZ I had fun rocketing the vultures to death, everything else barely scratched it. So, I have to wonder what your ship is made out of.

 

[GraphiteGB]

Not every body flys paper thin ships... with no engineering..
Grade 5 size 8 prismatic Power play shields exists combined with 8 grade 5 shield boosters on a single ship...
To make Ground pounders have a fighing chance they need some help...
So when you turn up in a paper thin clipper who hull is to big for size 7 shield in the first place. it shields will suck as its only got 4 boosters slots.. It going to go down easy...
Once the shield gone the power plants are wide open for RNG death shots...
Did you put in the military hull with grade 5 reinforcement engineered and deeplated...

 

[Maolagin]

I have had Odyssey since before launch, and have still yet to fire shot from a hand held weapon with intent. I simply do not see the point in using hand weapons to achieve anything when I have fully armed & armoured SPACESHIPS available to me. My fusion powered spaceship should be able to level any structure in a settlement and even just use the main drives to melt to slag anything close enough that isn't shielded.

Well sure, don't do foot combat if you don't care for it, but that's kinda silly reasoning. There's loads of reasons why you might want someone to go away without causing massive collateral property damage. Perfectly justifiable to simply say, I don't take those jobs because I'm a starship pilot, not a foot soldier.

 

[Riverside]

Well sure, don't do foot combat if you don't care for it, but that's kinda silly reasoning. There's loads of reasons why you might want someone to go away without causing massive collateral property damage. Perfectly justifiable to simply say, I don't take those jobs because I'm a starship pilot, not a foot soldier.

I think what you say here is all fair enough, obviously I don't think my reasoning is silly but the rest I agree with.

If I want to be stealthy to puzzle solve, steal stuff or do a 'clean' assassination, going in on foot makes sense, and it makes sense that a ships sensors would be unable to detect an on-foot target or cold-ish running vehicle, requiring the pilot overhead to aim by eye or rely on splash damage.

But a ground CZ? What motivation do I have to get out of my ship to face the enemy on foot? In ED, air superiority has won because the ships aren't (well, don't have to be) made of tinfoil in order to be able to stay in the air. They aren't vulnerable to ground attack in the way modern air combat planes are.

I suppose what I have in mind is something like the events in Star Wars Rogue One where on foot characters are doing stealth, assassinations, solving puzzles & theft but the on-foot combat is to achieve the objective (or prevent the enemy from completing theirs), the combat itself isn't what wins any particular battle, only capturing the flag does.

 

[Fnord Velkor]

....
I strongly suspect the poor game designers that were asked to find a way to make ground combat workable in ED were well aware of how improbable the rules we currently see were when they came up with them.
....

I however strongly suspect they bought-in some FPS coders that developed a ground-combat game which was then hammered together with the actual Elite Dangerous game.



Wings now = Teams how stupid that looks in space to a returning player like me.

 

[zikolach]

ground troops should not be able to fight ships

I would do a couple of exceptions:

1. there could be a way to set a magnetic mines to the landed ship hull if on foot commander managed to come close enough to the ship, maybe new grenade type with timer to detonate. It could be e.g. 30 seconds timer so ship owner can prevent detonation from outside (dismounting grenade from the hull) or from inside (e.g. by triggering ECM).
2. there could be a way to modify handheld rocket launcher similar to reverb cascade for torpedoes, so Dominator suit could have 2 rocket launchers simultaneously - one for shutting down the shield and another one for hitting the drive (and forcing ship to fall onto the ground).

 

[Maolagin]

But a ground CZ? What motivation do I have to get out of my ship to face the enemy on foot? In ED, air superiority has won because the ships aren't (well, don't have to be) made of tinfoil in order to be able to stay in the air. They aren't vulnerable to ground attack in the way modern air combat planes are.

I suppose what I have in mind is something like the events in Star Wars Rogue One where on foot characters are doing stealth, assassinations, solving puzzles & theft but the on-foot combat is to achieve the objective (or prevent the enemy from completing theirs), the combat itself isn't what wins any particular battle, only capturing the flag does.

Agreed that GCZs are perhaps where the logic is most strained. Though since the combat is nominally about capturing data packages or something, it makes sense that starships wouldn't be of much help, especially if you pretend the terminals were actually destructible.

Star Wars is an interesting comparison, since both universes are built around a similar "make space combat feel like WW2 dogfighting" premise. In SW ships and ground forces rarely engage directly, since infantry weapons can barely scratch even non-combat ships, and without supernatural assistance ship fire is wildly inaccurate (but highly lethal to personnel if it connects). In EDO people are running around with rifles that do similar damage to ship guns and personal shields that can shrug off direct hits from a starship weapon, but also ships are allowed to hover and fire with pinpoint accuracy. While this does raise questions like "why can't I duct tape 1000 plasma shotguns to a hard point meant for a four-ton cannon?" it does put ships and personnel on weirdly even footing, at least st close range. Or would, except that ship missiles are disproportionately effective against infantry, and completely safe to use since they don't damage property.