Kill? No, but if I shoot 4 engineered plasma accelerators at a corvette several times and it's shields don't even budge, well, it's disconcerting.
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My plea to Frontier for 2.3: “Please, guys, don’t give up on dialling back the hit point inflation”
- Thread starter Truesilver
- Start date
Kill? No, but if I shoot 4 engineered plasma accelerators at a corvette several times and it's shields don't even budge, well, it's disconcerting.
I don't think I have much opinion on the OP really, but I will add this. Frontier themselves have acknowledged that most players do not participate in PvP combat. Therefore, combat balancing MUST be driven by PvE combat requirements first, PvP second. That might not be ideal as far as PvPers are concerned, but that's how it must be. That's not to say the OP's suggestion doesn't accord with that, just stating where the balancing priorities must lie. And I would argue PvP balancing went out the window with Wings and Engineers introduced, and multicrew will simply make that more pronounced, in my opinion. Besides, maybe things are where they're at now because we're going to need it just to survive against our alien adversaries, let alone defeat them.....?
Had another think about this.
1) The answer to the question of "What's the ideal TTK?" has not been answered.
2) I don't think there is an ideal TTK because;
3) There are too many factors involved in Space Battle in this game : Ship Size, Ship Loadout, Ship Engineering, Pilot Flight Skill, Pilot Combat Skill, Ship Suitability, Number of Opponents, and probably a few others I haven't thought of.
4) Noting about the length of time some battle took in the Op - Truesilver; Does every fight need to end in an explosion? I mean, when you go up against an opponent, is there no room for a stalemate situation where one or both of you go "Okay, this ain't going anywhere. I'm off." and just call the whole thing off and just part company?
1) The answer to the question of "What's the ideal TTK?" has not been answered.
2) I don't think there is an ideal TTK because;
3) There are too many factors involved in Space Battle in this game : Ship Size, Ship Loadout, Ship Engineering, Pilot Flight Skill, Pilot Combat Skill, Ship Suitability, Number of Opponents, and probably a few others I haven't thought of.
4) Noting about the length of time some battle took in the Op - Truesilver; Does every fight need to end in an explosion? I mean, when you go up against an opponent, is there no room for a stalemate situation where one or both of you go "Okay, this ain't going anywhere. I'm off." and just call the whole thing off and just part company?
... as long as the titanic destroyer also doesn't have a chance unless the speedboat stands still. Otherwise why would anyone fly a small ship (and taking that to its conclusion, why would anyone fly anything other than a corvette).
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It's disconcerting to me that you don't quite understand that you are shooting at the Pinnacle of Human excellence. The very best that humanity has to offer in warfare. It has the Shields to take the pain and the Hardpoints to give it back. Such a powerful Military Vessel is restricted only to the best of the best in the Federal Navy. Which is without saying the best Navy Humanity has to offer. And you think you should have a chance inside of your off the dealership lot, hunk of metal?
Gotta move those goalposts often, huh?
One has to be very careful here... otherwise you end up with the No Man's Sky game design for ships, where they are all basically the same except for their looks, and the game got a lot of flak over that.
Well....
Hmm....
Nope. Still right where I put it.
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Good god no, that's the exact opposite.
Ever played Eve? 240 some odd ships, every last one of them fun in it's own right, completely different style of gameplay for each, and still manage to keep their character and fun factor despite being glorified spreadsheet entries.
Whose enjoyment though?
And define "playability". I don't really know what that means so cannot comment on it, as you haven't really made any points other than mention two words
Care to elaborate on both "playability" and "enjoyment"? I'd like to know what your definition of the former is and to whose 'enjoyment' you are referring to.
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Sure, I'm not really arguing for an invulnerable ship though, contrary to how a few in this thread have been trying to misrepresent my argument (mainly through their own poor reading comprehension).
I'm arguing that in most CZ's that exist in the game, the distribution of ships on each side is balanced to allow players with high endgame ships to realise the high durability of those ships. That in my opinion is perfectly ok and doesn't in anyway equate to "hit point inflation"; as is the actual topic in discussion. Of course some may disagree.
I will argue that there needs to be an expanded range of difficulty, however, that puts top endgame ships in combat scenarios where they certainly don't feel anywhere near as durable; e.g. a hypothetical Extreme Insensity CZ, which pits the player up against two sides of ships exclusively populated with high-fire power craft.
As much as the OP has been taking about hit point inflation, we can also recognise the progressive nerfing of ship's offensive capabilities which will invariably have the same effect on TTK. What the game might benefit from is, instead of nerfing defensive capabilities across the board by making sweeping changes to the defensive values, the developer focus on creating more high end play spaces that present greater challenge for the highest-end player ships.
By nerfing everything to fall into a narrower range between the min and max. offensive and defensive parameters, across all ships and weapon modules, you invariably limit the sense of player progression and achievement; especially considering at the bottom end, your ship and outfitting probably costs you an hour of playtime, whilst at the very top end it can be well in excess of 200-300x that number... after all, players need to feel that the A-rated engineered Corvette they spent hundreds of hours grinding for is worth it, over the FDL they bought and outfitted within a week.
On the other end, widening the range between the absolute min and max. offensive and defensive parameters, across all ships and weapon modules, makes PvP extremely difficult to balance. So I can appreciate the dilemma in design that FDev faces (in many cases a problem of their own making, by having a single set of parameters governing combat that is common to both PvP and PvE modes).
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No, ED is my first MMO. The sad thing is that ED's ships do have a lot of individual character in their artistic design, but their stats let them down. Flying the big three should be drastically different than flying a small ship, instead a well engineered corvette can out-turn an eagle, which is ridiculous.
You're kidding me right? The only ability that those ship filter while trying to unlock them is time and patience for grinding, not skill or anything. You make it sound so cool but cutter and corvette are just a modified and slightly better version of an anaconda hidden behind a timegate.
And don't call my dbs a hunk of metal, it has feelings you know.
Well, without having a solution to the "What is the ideal TTK" question, I will say the situation has gotten out of hand. No one is suggesting that fights should be instantaneous, or that the big three shouldn't have the edge in many departments, but on the other hand, a compelling argument can be made for the fact that this uber shielding isn't just affecting PvP, it's hurting the game across the board. I can appreciate Fdev's position of having to skew things slightly in favor of the unskilled by allowing them access to shields that artificially inflate their capabilities, but a line has to be drawn somewhere and I'm willing to bet that the average player of this game feels that down deep. You really don't have to be into PvP to get that the current system is broken.
The apology is nice and all...but, eh. When the post has, amongst other things, in-bold "NOBODY PAY ATTENTION TO THIS GUY", I have no regrets about making it clear I'm going to report that.
I have given both you and Frenotx many a reputation in various places on the forum with good reason, it's been a real shame to me that meaningful discussion went out the window despite my efforts to the contrary in that thread.
About the Courier discussion, as well - I admitted what I was wrong about, and I stuck to my guns that other builds besides the Enh. Perf. Thruster fully-min/max-ed loadout are viable and that HRP/MRP builds on ships like that can be effective. I see that as a difference of perspective, not choosing to be irresponsible.
Referring to your Cytoscrambler research, why not point that out from the get-go and share the impressions you've had so far about the weapon and compare that & what you would do to fix the weapon, to the conclusions I drew in my list? Surely that's more constructive than labels and disdain?
Regarding frag cannons, I have tested them since then, and I still see little reason to use them given the other choices available. Hence I feel totally validated in proposing changes to frag cannons, though I'll be honest and admit that off the top of my head I don't even remember which discussion that was a part of.
JGM may be a special guy for his work on coriolis, but I don't see how that suddenly means me & my own view on frag cannons is suddenly completely invalid. My viewpoints are just as valid as yours, his, and any other player's or poster's.
The game being complex and the danger of far-reaching changes should, if anything, be more motivation to openly carry on discussions, such as about what's contained in my list, rather than tell anybody off who doesn't get your permission first. That would benefit the developers the most, in the end, as well.
Moving on to that meaningful discussion:
Interesting. So what's the benefit, exactly, of larger MRPs...? Higher capacity for soaking damage, I'd guess? But from what you're saying it's largely superfluous, at least for 1v1 PvP.
Well, they are FDLs...most of that fight, I'd imagine, was spent chewing through shields, and I don't honestly know much about which ships have good module shielding - does the FDL have good module protection?
I wonder how that would have gone with a plasma FDS/FAS/FGS duel?
You know, lately, I too have noticed some difficulty in taking down NPC modules - I didn't think of them using MRPs though! So it's not just incompetent combat on my part....
Alright, I'll get on board with taking a closer look at MRP balance then. I wonder how easy that would be at the same time as changes to bulkhead and HRP strength & resistances though...can we get a dedicated beta test, eh, Fdev???
I know this was in response to another poster, but taken differently, that's saying you'd increase the power gap between small ships and huge ships?
I suppose so long as there's exponential increases in effectiveness the larger things get & Fdev intends things to be like that, that's going to be inevitable, but *ideally* I'd want to even up the peaks and valleys of the playing field.
I think this is exactly right. More hitpoints directly correlates into combat moving towards "sustained DPS is king", and away from risky tactics. I'm sure nobody wants it go too far in either direction, but yeah, this "DPS meta" gets a bit stale.
I feel like the raw quantity of kills a player must achieve to rank up combat is partly to blame for this, though - individual kills after a while start becoming a blur, practically meaningless on their own; I myself rarely pay attention to how many kills I get anymore, when doing combat, and only glance over to see how many millions of bounties I've collected. And at the same time, with how tanky ships can be, each of those kills feel like time-consuming chores.
Out of all the activities I've done in Elite, combat is the most *boring* to me, because of the hitpoint inflation. I almost want to give myself a good hard stare for how bizarre that sentence sounds....
If individual kills were more rewarding (and probably more challenging to compensate), I think less folks would be concerned with being as survivable (and hence, sustainable) as possible - which I see as the reason SCBs, HRPs, shield boosters, MRPs, and so on were thought up in the first place.
Well, there I think we see exactly why I was cautious about hearing MRPs have gone to the other end of the spectrum! Still, whichever end it's at, extremes are undesirable and I hope a middle ground can be found.
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Once you get one of the big three engineered, equipped and learn the rudiments of combat/tactics, PvE NPC's are toast in nearly all encounters.
You can camp out in any CZ and just shoot them down and w/ just a bit of sit/aw, you won't die. The only exception seems to be if you take a totally tanked combat load into a CZ, the AI is turned up a notch and even then, if you are careful you will survive.
FD is stuck trying not to choke off new players and keep the older, more experienced players happy.
It's to the point where there should be systems that new CMNDR's should inhabit until they learn the ropes, and gradually work into systems where you go at your own peril.
Until there is change, all we can do is post and discuss and hope for a solution.
Grinding to a big three is not an indication or guarantee of skill, and neither is elite status, Those levels can be achieved through perseverance. Very possible that is why we see the posts about losing an Anaconda or other big frequently, too much, too soon.
Previous posts that indicate "too much hand-holding" by FD have a good argument as a detrimental factor.
You can camp out in any CZ and just shoot them down and w/ just a bit of sit/aw, you won't die. The only exception seems to be if you take a totally tanked combat load into a CZ, the AI is turned up a notch and even then, if you are careful you will survive.
FD is stuck trying not to choke off new players and keep the older, more experienced players happy.
It's to the point where there should be systems that new CMNDR's should inhabit until they learn the ropes, and gradually work into systems where you go at your own peril.
Until there is change, all we can do is post and discuss and hope for a solution.
Grinding to a big three is not an indication or guarantee of skill, and neither is elite status, Those levels can be achieved through perseverance. Very possible that is why we see the posts about losing an Anaconda or other big frequently, too much, too soon.
Previous posts that indicate "too much hand-holding" by FD have a good argument as a detrimental factor.
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I feel that an important issue here isn't just offence vs defence, but also related to our ability to specialise our ships into them.
For defensive builds, you have multiple options in almost every single category. You can load up on SBs, Heatsinks and various anti-missile solutions in the utility slots while the optional/military slots have shields, SCBs, MRPs, HRPs and AFMUs. Many of these modules can also be engineered to further enhance their effectiveness, as well as sometimes providing multipliers to ship effective HP.
Compare this to offensive builds, which have next to nothing. You max your weapons and Power distributor, maybe keep a heatsink launcher around if you are using some high-heat weapons, and you have fully maxed out your offensive capability.
This overall means that almost everything except the most stripped-down explorers have effectively the same firepower. All remotely combat-specced ships, ranging from armed traders all the way through to dedicated CZ brawlers, will have the maximum firepower that their ship type allows them to. Defensively though, you can strip out plenty of things to get higher effective HP. Not going bounty hunting? Ditch that KWS for an extra booster. Not doing much trading? Swap out that 64T cargo bay for an 8T one and get yourself a decent SCB. Not travelling far enough to properly use that Fuel Scoop? Might as well pick up another HRP. This overall means that the only option players have for increased combat performance is to get more defensive boosts as they have already maxed out their offensive potential with just weapons and the PD.
Until we get some decent offensive options for optional, military and utility slots we will likely see this pattern continuing. Nerfing the hell out of all the defensive modules would just turn combat-specced ship into cargoless traders, which is not a desirable outcome as it just renders defensive modules too weak. The problem isn't that the defensive modules are too strong (at least some of them, I think the shield booster engineer mods are somewhat out of line), it's that there's literally no alternative to them. If there were options for things like shield frequency scanners, ammunition loader racks, supplementary power distributors for optional and utility slots such that a ship could choose to become a DPS glass-cannon monster rather than a sumo wrestler in a padded suit like we currently have, then we might start seeing more balance in combat.
For defensive builds, you have multiple options in almost every single category. You can load up on SBs, Heatsinks and various anti-missile solutions in the utility slots while the optional/military slots have shields, SCBs, MRPs, HRPs and AFMUs. Many of these modules can also be engineered to further enhance their effectiveness, as well as sometimes providing multipliers to ship effective HP.
Compare this to offensive builds, which have next to nothing. You max your weapons and Power distributor, maybe keep a heatsink launcher around if you are using some high-heat weapons, and you have fully maxed out your offensive capability.
This overall means that almost everything except the most stripped-down explorers have effectively the same firepower. All remotely combat-specced ships, ranging from armed traders all the way through to dedicated CZ brawlers, will have the maximum firepower that their ship type allows them to. Defensively though, you can strip out plenty of things to get higher effective HP. Not going bounty hunting? Ditch that KWS for an extra booster. Not doing much trading? Swap out that 64T cargo bay for an 8T one and get yourself a decent SCB. Not travelling far enough to properly use that Fuel Scoop? Might as well pick up another HRP. This overall means that the only option players have for increased combat performance is to get more defensive boosts as they have already maxed out their offensive potential with just weapons and the PD.
Until we get some decent offensive options for optional, military and utility slots we will likely see this pattern continuing. Nerfing the hell out of all the defensive modules would just turn combat-specced ship into cargoless traders, which is not a desirable outcome as it just renders defensive modules too weak. The problem isn't that the defensive modules are too strong (at least some of them, I think the shield booster engineer mods are somewhat out of line), it's that there's literally no alternative to them. If there were options for things like shield frequency scanners, ammunition loader racks, supplementary power distributors for optional and utility slots such that a ship could choose to become a DPS glass-cannon monster rather than a sumo wrestler in a padded suit like we currently have, then we might start seeing more balance in combat.
Yes anyone can. Again it was either purposefully done or both sides were terrible pilots. None of those ships even with all SCB equiped can equal the output and damage that the medium and small size weapons can output. Either both sides sucked at shooting or it was a set up. So yes I have killed many a skilled PVP pilot in small and medium ships. I flew the Vulture and the Viper MKIII for almost a year.