Sandro Sammarco said on 12 December 2016:
“The issue we see is how stacking shield boosters, and heavily engineering them, creates shields that can be an order of magnitude more powerful than improvements available to weaponry.
This presents most obviously when flying the “big three” and FDLs, thanks to their abundance of booster-capable utility mounts. As an aside, these changes won’t affect smaller ships unless you are cramming all your utility mounts with boosters.
The end result is top tier ships with shields can be almost impossible to break in 1v1 PvP engagements, and can make PvE engagements somewhat risk free.”
Yes, although it’s not just the Big 3 + Ferdie. And it’s not just shield boosters. Hit point inflation has many sources. It affects every apex PvP and PvE build in the game. And in my opinion, it desperately needs arresting.
Last week I went to the CG in my Engineered Courier, looking for PvP duels.
As usual in this game, guys still early on the learning curve can expect to be defeated quickly, notwithstanding their larger ships. No news there, I know, and working as intended.
However, I also had four duels against guys who certainly did know what they were doing
(o7, one and all!) Here are the durations of those fights and the ships used:
Courier v Viper IV | 18 mins |
Courier v Viper III | also about 18 mins |
Courier v Courier | about 20 mins, then abandoned |
Courier v Viper III | 45 mins (yes), would have been abandoned except for phasing |
So much for 1v1 TTK in apex small ship builds. Do I need to say anything about bigger ships?
We all know about Ferdie. We know about 2.2.03 and the as yet unimplemented shield booster stacking limits. We also know about the introduction of additional military slots for some ships. And about the introduction of MRP’s preventing or limiting the shortcut to victory of a powerplant or other essential module kill.
But let’s go a bit further back in time before returning to the ‘
one step forwards, two steps back’ of 2.2.03 and hit point inflation.
The early stages of hit point inflation
In the earliest stages of the game (before even my time) there were no SCB’s. Then SCB’s came in, increasing health pools in some cases by more than five times the base shield. Then shield boosters came in. Hull reinforcement packages were introduced at the same time. Then in 1.5/2.0, hull reinforcement packages were buffed significantly. And also in 1.5/2.0, SCB’s were buffed significantly at higher sizes.
Throughout this entire period of the game there was not one single significant improvement to weapon damage, except that in 1.5/2.0 Beta, FDev corrected an error concerning the c2 plasma accelerator, which had been given a trivial damage stat by mistake.
So, on the defensive side: SCB’s, shield boosters, HRP’s, then buffed HRP’s, then buffed SCB’s. On the offensive side: nothing.
2.1 Engineering
Then 2.1 Engineering dropped and the game has never been the same since. At first, in Beta 2.1, Cmdrs were dropping like flies, and not just to thermal cascade / thermal shock (since nerfed).
Incendiary (also now nerfed) was very strong and frankly I think most of us were too excited about weapons specials to really get our heads around the defensive changes – which seemed irrelevant anyway when if you failed to heat sink early, next moment your heat might be above 1,000%
Weaponised heat, correctly, caused an outcry. However, by the time that was coming to a head, most of us had started to understand the full force of the shield buffs. Admittedly, early consideration was slightly more on resistances than stacking heavy duty boosters but that was soon fully understood also.
I have a longstanding interest in the game’s damage mechanics. For example, check out my weapon stats thread here …
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/246086-Official-FDev-Damage-Stats-for-Every-Weapon
… if you haven’t already.
That followed on from my earlier ‘Truesilver’s Tests’ series and was followed by my ‘Truesilver’s Top Tips’ series, which I’ll soon be adding to, if RL permits.
Because of that interest, by mid-2016 I was seriously worried. On 15 July 2016 I posted threads on both forums, entitled:
“Heat Meta –v- Ultra-Resistant Shields: FDev’s Damage Dilemma”
The threads began with the words:
“What follows is intended to address the evil of hit point inflation without an effective by-pass: something that I am quite sure FDev have been giving careful thought to since before 2.1 but which I have yet to see directly discussed on the forums.”
I went on to caution that when heat was nerfed, the game would remain unbalanced but in a different way – in favour of 2.1 engineered hit point inflation – because thermal shock and thermal cascade were the only truly powerful counters to the same. When they were nerfed, I argued that FDev would need to buff the other counters or invent new ones, because otherwise the game would be dominated by ‘
damage per hour’ fights, and the ‘
completely passive, skill-free, input-free mechanic that rewards only he or she who ground hardest’ in the form of titanic, impenetrable defence.
Heat was duly, justly nerfed in Beta 2.2.01. No buffs to damage or other specials were introduced by way of compensation.
Then we had the Beta 2.2.03 combat rebalance. I will admit to having had high hopes that here we would finally see a real, positive, reduction in TTK on apex builds.
This is what actually happened at the end of Beta 2.2.03:
Principal offensive changes in Beta 2.2.03
- Overcharged was nerfed
- Rapid Fire was nerfed
- Phasing Sequence was nerfed
- Feedback Cascade was nerfed
- Plasma acquired an absolute damage component but only 60%, not 100%
Principal defensive changes in Beta 2.2.03
- Shield regen was BUFFED (to a considerable degree on the larger shields, especially bi-weaves)
- Military module slots were introduced for several ships
- Module Reinforcement Packs were introduced
- Resistant boosters received a tiny (2%) nerf
- Stacking of heavy duty boosters was left in place
I am not saying that 2.2.03 was unwelcome. We are now seeing more ship/build diversity, which is great. But from the perspective of hit point inflation, it really was one step forwards and two steps back.
The titanic shields that required the guns of space stations to be buffed TWICE are still in game – and we Cmdrs haven’t been given space station guns. Regen is buffed. Modules are better protected. Guns are nerfed.
Hit point inflation is out of control. It appears to be worsening with each patch. The earlier days of PvP skill, where the game revolved around achieving a shield burst (preventing the enemy from accessing their entire SCB pool by bursting them down through the last ring) or a module snipe (preventing the enemy from accessing their entire hull tank health pool) are receding into memory.
Ships now come with an unpleasant combination of some or all of bloated base shield, bloated hull, iron-hard internal modules and speed sufficient to enable them to clear range in order to benefit from high passive regen.
Basically, all you need to do now is one boost, FA-off at g5 speeds, drift away … shield already starting to regen. Or use a SCB. Or both! And even if your base shield drops, reform regen on a bi-weave is ultra-high. And you have plenty of HRP’s and MRP’s and there’s that military module slot …
etc …
etc.
What few workarounds there are (such as emissive + stacked packhounds to destroy the guns on a hull tank or hybrid, or reverberating cascade torps on the sleepier big ships) risk being even cheaper than the hit point inflation itself.
Feedback cascade remains very relevant to SCB’s, I accept, but overall there appears to be an overwhelming consensus amongst those of us who have been PvP-ing since the earlier stages of the game that patch after patch we depart further from what had been achieved by around 1.2 to 1.4.
In short, Sandro’s laudable objective of dealing with ‘
unbreakable’ top tier PvP ships and
‘risk-free’ PvE remains unrealised.
Wings
What about wings…? Oh, come on. We all know that in a game with 6 axes of motion there will be a point when anything can be focused down by multiple attackers. But let’s be serious. While I was looking for duels at the CG, some of my former Adle’s Armada buddies were there fighting other PvP group wings. I texted Erich Zann, my old PvP League wingman, to ask how they were getting on. Erich’s reply came back:
“Lots of pew pew but as usual nobody’s dying.”
This is the joke in the acronym “TTK”. It isn’t Time-to-Kill at all. It’s just time to yawn’n’jump. A guy with effective shielding of 10,000 + Mj plus g5 dirty drives basically needs to be either asleep at the stick (
or very brave, o7) to be unable to get out.
Look at the two seasons of the PvP League. They were conducted before damage went up by +40% and hit points by +400%, and time to first kill was hardly swift in many matches even then, even in 6v6. It was perhaps about right, neither better nor worse. Then hp went through the roof.
I started a duel the other day which began with a control system crash, leaving my ship paralyzed but still in the instance. My opponent shot my stationary ship for a while before realising something was wrong and honourably stopping. I felt sorry he’d wasted some ammo. My shield
was taking damage but so slowly you could actually barely see that I had been shot at. This is absurd.
And then of course we come to the healing chains. I will not comment on that personally, because I’ve been taking a break from wing fighting, but I would welcome comments from others. I have been very reliably informed, though, that it takes the hit point inflation cake and puts more than just the one cherry on the top.
If anyone with greater personal familiarity with wing-healing fights wants to comment in this thread, I would welcome that.
What am I asking Frontier to do?
I’ll repeat my usual proviso that I’m not a games designer, just a customer who collects data, does testing and has been into PvP for a long time now. I prefer to flag problems and let the more creative forum users propose solutions, before the Developers do their thing.
In broad terms, though …
It should be clear that imposing diminishing returns on stacked shield boosters will be just a starting point. One popular Ferdie build right now is 2 x resistant boosters, 2 x heavy duty boosters, 2 x chaff. That actually will not even be affected by this measure. Neither will the typical FAS / Clipper build of 2 x resistant boosters and the other two slots chaff/point defence.
None of the ships I mention in my duelling times above (18 mins, 18 mins, abandoned at 20 mins, 45 mins) would be affected by this measure.
What is needed, I suggest is a
wholesale dial back on 2.1 inflated hit points, including:
- Limits on heavy duty booster stacking
- A harsher curve on the existing resistance diminishing returns
- Reduced hp from
all applicable shield, bulkhead and HRP mods
And an increase in damage solutions. Now, here I accept that there is a limit to what the PvE players should have to put up with. I don’t accept that reducing hp crosses that line. The current Engineered Cmdr v Unengineered fish-in-barrel NPC thing is a just a ludicrous God Mode. You will still have a massive advantage over NPC’s even with reduced hp.
However, I do accept that we probably don’t want to buff vanilla weapons themselves (except that I continue to believe that fixed cannons and multis offer too little compared to their gimballed counterparts, particularly now that the time taken to run a guy out of double chaff can be only the start of the fight, and with the gimbal sensor nerf unimplemented).
Although I don’t want to force any PvP-er, me included, into more Engineering, it probably is the only way forwards now.
Because NPC’s do not have Engineered specials, this will not affect PvE players.
I would continue to ask that Frontier consider a range of de-buff type specials, such as:
- A ‘
corrosive for shields’, that reduces enhanced Engineered resistances
- A ‘
phasing/feedback cascade for boosters’, that directly attacks boosters of all kinds through the shield
- More
internal module health de-buffs of some kind, to balance against MRP’s in some way, which when combined with AFM may have pushed the hybrid / hull tank’s internal (not external) module protection too far post 2.2.03.
Whether you agree or disagree with my wall, if you have an idea that could help with this issue, please do put it forwards. We need as many as we can get.
But whatever Frontier do, all I really want to ask of the Developers is the title of this thread:
“Please, guys, don’t give up on dialling back the hit point inflation.”