PvP How often do you run out of ammo before the fight is over?

[bladebss]

It keeps happening to me. I use cannons so i should expect such things but even with plasma and rails i run out before the fight ends. Or rather it end as no one has any ammo left.

I often see youtube vids of 1v1s end the same way often before eather party is below 50% hull.
Even mulitcannons i see run out often.

Lasers are infinite ammo but they just plain suck in pvp (excluding huge hardpoints on ships with large distributors) so the fight will just go on forever. Or even more forever...

Any one else?

 

[Audaxxx]

Yep. All due to hit point inflation going through the roof and weapon damage not keeping up. How Fdev don't recognise this is beyond me. Could have something to with;

a) not playing the game
b) not having any testers (in house or out)
c) not giving a **** about pvp

 

[bladebss]

Thing is hit point inflation was kind of attempted a wile back but it was kinda shouted down and it was not realy touched since.. in fact its got worse since.

So im shure they are aware of it as a problem, especially as its been shouted from the roof tops quite a bit over the years and many rather indepth and detailed posts have been made analising the problem and sugestions on how to sort it.

I think in the case of the development ot just that they are super busy with other things. They are doing thargoids, gardians, the gnossis and other events in the past, multiplayer aspects such as multicrew and wing missions, theres a big explorer update on the way and making new ships and fiddleing with mining and trading and i asume working now on the next chapter. Its just so one after the other in every direction it seems to take a long time to get back to retweeking old content. Especialy as its not whats in focus at the moment. I kinda get it as thargoids is a thing you can only do once.

I did hear quite some time ago at the advent of the focused dissgusion forum about shield some things happening but so far not yet and no word since but there was a wisper of some great plan to bring diferent solutions to how we deal with shields and other balance issues with combat, but its probably in the next chapter they arnt talking about yet.

It would be nice to get a bit of a plaster on some of the bigger wounds in the mean time though as it can be a challeng some times to squeeze some fun out of things in there current state.

Yea i get that there is ammo so its suposed to run out or whats the point, BUT, it would be nice to finnish a fight with some left.

In pve i can kill mabe 10 to 20 ships with rails and plasma before i need to rearm so thats nice and perhaps quite reasonable in terms of longevity. Saying that if we doubled the ammo of cannons, multis, frags,and mabe plasma? It would help.

Rails missiles and torpedoes are i think more utility wepons. I mean missiles will melt every gun and utility on most ships way before you run out of ammo. Rails have an ok amount of ammo.. just! They are rather powerful and hit scan and can be used to take out modules in seconds with just a few good hits. And torpedoes obviosly dont realy need more as its kinda there thing to be a one hit wunder.


Mabe lasers are the real meta as they have the ammo to actualy kill.. eventualy. And all ammo wepons are utility wepons?


No TLDR here but if you read the first sentance of each paragraph im shure you will get the jist

 

[Achilles7]

This is the standard beginning to far too many conversations in the aftermath of a duel...

Hence the answer to your question is, pretty much always...unless the opposition is a bit crap!

I predominantly use fixed multis, LR rails, efficient APAs & pacifiers. Rails are the only weapons that generally last for a whole fight against someone who knows what they're doing but that's due more to the specials than anything; super pen & feedback cascade (aka Sandro magic) which artificially shorten the duration of any fight with arbitrary nonsense. With other weapons, exchanges can last 20-25 mins which was fun/interesting the first three or four times as a tactical exercise, but now I lose the will to live - literally, in-game - after about 10 minutes.

My last fight was with xpressive (I was in my pacifier Vulture, he in a Viper III) & ended because I bailed first with zero ammo after ~15 mins :|; therefore I technically lost this fight, despite having 100% hull, two rings of shields & 4 SCBs remaining, whereas my opponent was down to ~40% hull. We had a good chat afterwards & it turns out he had run-out with his shock cannon too (which btw, was hilarious when it connected, resulting in my ship pointing 90 degs from where I was previously aiming [big grin]). The severity of the ammo problem is mitigated somewhat in this example because this particular cmdr in a Viper was exceptionally difficult to hit with pacifiers & must be one of the best I've fought in terms of evasion abilities, but the issue remains ubiquitous in the game.

I refuse to use-up my hard-won materials during a fight, out of principle, but also because I detest the SRV with a passion & using synthesis only means having to drive it sooner. I have absolutely no problem with the replen mechanic per se, but I don't understand why we can't simply buy ammo to store in our ship. Given the ludicrous shield hit-points of many PvP ships, this seems like a good compromise.​

 

[bladebss]

Yes in deed xpressive is very evasive as can be many an oponent what with grade 5 dirtys and faoff it can be almoste circus like to try and hit with projectile wepons.

I often work out the total damage potential of wepons im fitting to try and make shure i have enough damage to kill some one with.

Extended ammo can double your damage. No other mod does this. Overcharged only adds 70% same as all the others. But long range make the projectile speed much faster so you might hit the enemy more so in the case of an evasive player it would seem to make sence... untill you realise that because you have long range you dont have the damage potential to kill them as your ammo wont go far enough. Unless you hit 100% of your shots...

This leads to a bit of a catch 22. You eather have the ammo/damage potential but miss so much you run out. Or you have better hit ratio but not enough damage to win.

Projectile speed or extra ammo or more damage is needed ont top of engeneer options so you have the damage and the speed/accuracy to kill. Or some thing like that.

i do feel like doing so would make pve even more laughably easy than it currantly is however and it would be nice to be able to find a challenge in pve some times. I currently fly eagles and vipers in pve in haz res just for a bit of challeng but i still often return to base with not a scratch and no ammo.


Mabe it realy is hit point inflation that is the problem? And that alone. If they just nerfed shield boosters mods way back in 2.3 we could have been having way more fun for years and saved our selves from doing alot of math.

 

[TheMegaTurnip]

Eh, only against the harder opponents in terms of ship size, often placing shots is more about superiour timing over your opponent than it is about a race to kill them. Fly evasively until your opponent messes up a turn/roll and place your shots then, 90% evasion, 10% shooting. Plus this often makes your target panic some as they find you near on impossible to hit, thus further ensuing they make more mistakes, again, in turn, giving you the opportunity to land more well placed shots.

Hit point overinflation is a serious issue that being said, the supa-shields in 3.0 for example, being the be all and end all of most PvPers build choices. Personally I think the fault lies with the shield boosters and the ability to stack multiple SCB modules. (The latter DEFINATLY needs limiting to one per ship IMO).

All the weapons that do significant enough DPS (As has been stated above), typically have lower ammo pools, which should they be increased, could circumvent the issue at least to a point, but then a significant drop to HP stacking on shields would be a better choice, say 40% on the Heavy duty SB's would be more effective.

 

[Alwayslate]

The answer could vary with level of skills, but high-tier PVPers could run short of ammo too.

Might be that the defense (mainly shield boosters and HRPs I think) was buffed, but weapon ammo/damage was not.

 

[Morbad]

In the situations where ammunition limited weapons are my main damage dealers, they are larger sized OC MCs, or some form of PA, both of which have rather solid total effective damage capability. I've also been having a lot of fun with plasma slug rails lately as a ship with a 16 or 32 tons tank can fire several hundred shots before getting too low to high-wake. Anything really limited by ammo count I use more for their specials than their damage. I also think lasers still have a place, though the smaller ones are exceedingly poor at dealing damage to hull heavy targets.

IMO, any fight that is going to last so long that ammo becomes a limiting factor usually isn't worth fighting in any sort of organic encounter. It means that one side or the other should have brought enough people to focus down their targets in a reasonable period of time.

Inflationary shield and to a lesser extent, hull, values are a major issue, but not the only one.

 

[Winterwalker]

interesting thread

 

[CMDR Cknarf]

Assuming 1v1s:

I've ran out of ammunition fighting Cutters on several occasions.

I've had some vulture duels where both parties ran dry, but only a few times.

Been having a blast fighting people in unengineered ships, where there's usually enough ammo to finish each other off lol. Pre-engineers combat must have been great, where Vulture vs FDL could easily go either way.

 

[Powderpanic]

Yep. All due to hit point inflation going through the roof and weapon damage not keeping up. How Fdev don't recognise this is beyond me. Could have something to with;

a) not playing the game
b) not having any testers (in house or out)
c) not giving a **** about pvp

This!! The development team do not play their own game and do not listen to the feedback they desperately pretend they value.

The end result is you can 95% sit AFK in a CZ and farm while watching Netflix or fly into a planet at full speed and not die.

Such content, much wow.

Powderpanic
The Voice of Griefing

 

[Frenotx]

Welcome to the wild world of shield boosters, shield cell banks, guardian shield reinforcement, hull reinforcement packages, module reinforcement packages, and engineering boosting all of them in a non-linear fashion via affecting resistances. Weapons can't be made strong enough to keep up, otherwise anything that wasn't in a fully-defense-stacked optimized and engineered ship would be obliterated even more comically faster than it already is. Defensive modules that compete for space with all other modules was a terrible game design choice in a game like elite, and the way the engineering of them was handled compounded that choice most spectacularly.