Nerfed a bit too much? Shield Banks *delay*?

[jabokai]

Good players get on with it and bad players complain about it.

Then, you should get on with working out how to take down bigger ships with your little ship. If you can figure no sure-fire tactic then you add a friend and work together. I have no issue with money buying "advantages" - it's the way of the world and will be the way of things in 3300 most likely. No it shouldn't be absolute, but even an average pilot in a pimped Conda should be pretty much unkillable by any pilot in a single Viper IMHO. It's not about buying a win but adding some reason and variety to the game, encouraging some team play even.

 

[tagos]

You can't go "all or nothing" on this issue.
You can't say "it's a bigger ship so it must win 100% of the time", because that completely negates combat skill in favor of time spent getting money
You can't say either "ship size should never matter, skill must rulez" because you end up with bigger ships being completely useless. In trading, bigger ships ARE usefull. That should also be the case for combat.
There's a fine line to walk

The stance of "fighting 1 big with 2 little" is a viable one, imho.

I'm pretty clearly not saying either of those things. The good thing about shield cells were that they gave smaller ships a chance. Even if a viper had 2 shield cell banks and the pilot was skilled at switching power management to use one at a time an anaconda should win. If they don't that is the fault of the pilot not the existence of shield cells.

The anaconda pilot needed to get better. They needed to fly and fight better. They needed to rethink their loadouts in comparison to their skill level. They did not need to go to the forums and wail on about shield cells being 'unfair' or OP.

 

[Irritant]

You are CHOSING to use a suboptimal shield and suffered no damage from this choice because of the way former SCB worked. This was wrong, if you chose to be suboptimal, suffer the consequences. This choice should leave you with a lesser ship combat wise, and a bette ship trading wise. This is what you have now with the current SCBs.

My point is not that SCBs is purely about the fact that they used to be useful regardless of your setup. Whatever you had, they added to your ship (at the sacrifice of whatever else you could equip in their place). Now, they are not useful for all setups. If you have a shield that can be drained faster than the charge-up time for the SCB, they cannot be used with or without skill. For that reason, I'm not using them with my current setup any more.
.
If this current design of weaker shields not benefitting from SCBs is the intention of FD, fine. I suspect it is not, though. Some of the recent "balances" seem to be so extreme that it suggests that not enough thought was going into the intentions and purposes of the design of the modules and ships in the first place, or people are quickly forgetting the original design decisions and over-reacting to perceived imbalances.

 

[tagos]

Then, you should get on with working out how to take down bigger ships with your little ship.

I do and will be again. However as soon as I do the forum will be full of people saying how 'unfair' it is and crying out for more 'balancing'.

just to add - I'm more usually in the not very skilled Big Ship category, struggling against more skilled players in 'lesser' ships. The difference is - I accepted that as a sign I need to get better. That's my approach to PvP in any game.

 

[cpy]

The flip side of this is it's now easy for pilots in bigger ships to kill whatever they like because now smaller ships cannot fight back effectively. So these changes means the game has now become even easier for people in good ships.

Says noob! I can use asteroids as my shield when fighting condas in my cobra. Top gun ftw! You can be sure that they won't catch me since i can hide faster than they can move.

 

[MrK]

I'm pretty clearly not saying either of those things. The good thing about shield cells were that they gave smaller ships a chance. Even if a viper had 2 shield cell banks and the pilot was skilled at switching power management to use one at a time an anaconda should win. If they don't that is the fault of the pilot not the existence of shield cells.

The anaconda pilot needed to get better. They needed to fly and fight better. They needed to rethink their loadouts in comparison to their skill level. They did not need to go to the forums and wail on about shield cells being 'unfair' or OP.

You have to compare a SCB-fitted Viper with a non SCB fitted Conda, there, pre SCB nerf. Imho the skill gap between both was all but good. The Viper was able to get out of Anaconda LoS pretty much all the time, forcing the use of gimbal/turrets, while having the big punch guns at his disposal to get at the Conda.

If your answer is for the conda to also get SCB, then you make SCBs a PREREQUISITE to combat, and thus they should be integral part of every ship, not optionnal. A "prerequisite option" is indicative of something gone wrong in the game design.

 

[Don_Von_Hulio]

I dont see what the problem is... If you are not confident enough to try to fight then you should run anyways.

 

[Coccolino]

Very well said.
And yes, bad design bout the ship's feedback. But I wouldn't ask for a feedback, I just hope this silly feature will be removed, as it makes them unusable. They already have their recharge/restore time in which everything can happen. Just limit them to 1 module and it will be fair enough.

 

[wstephenson]

The flip side of this is it's now easy for pilots in bigger ships to kill whatever they like because now smaller ships cannot fight back effectively. So these changes means the game has now become even easier for people in good ships.

But weren't the people in good ships already packing one or more SCBs too? If the charge time change only makes SCBs impractical in ships in situations where the TTDS (Time To Drop Shields) is less than the charge time (5s) then the shield cell was only buying them another few seconds of life. Since Hyperjump charge time is 14s, that's enough time for the strong attacker to drop their shields again and wreck their FSD or destroy the ship entirely. Might as well accept the inevitable and try and stay out of situations where you're always going to get killed. Having a <shield cell count> sized Girdle of Invulnerability isn't a good mechanic.

 

[Elpapo]

Goodbye cell banks * for Small ships *

These changes was good. Viper or Cobra aint supposed to take several hits from 3 or 4 large pulses and go away with full shields because used 2-3 cells at once.

In other hand, cells have much less charges, and require lots of energy. So ships with highest powerplants like Pythons(30MW) or Anacondas(36MW) can still have mutiple cells at once powered up. But this again cost a fortune, for having such ability.. Not many can afford 8A Powerplant for 150 mils... and these who can, its very few of them.


If my ship its worth 150-300 mils, atleast now it can have protection. Unless wolf packs, its impossible to take on Anaconda or Python with cells using smaller ship without cells. This is how it was supposed to be. I bet many grefiers stoped playing when 1.1 did came. How poor.

 

[tagos]

You have to compare a SCB-fitted Viper with a non SCB fitted Conda, there, pre SCB nerf. Imho the skill gap between both was all but good. The Viper was able to get out of Anaconda LoS pretty much all the time, forcing the use of gimbal/turrets, while having the big punch guns at his disposal to get at the Conda.

If your answer is for the conda to also get SCB, then you make SCBs a PREREQUISITE to combat, and thus they should be integral part of every ship, not optionnal. A "prerequisite option" is indicative of something gone wrong in the game design.

If that Ana pilot could not use all the skills he had and the flight facilities he had to kill a measly Viper no matter how many cells it had then yes, he deserved to lose. And yes, if he cannot defeat a Viper with shield cells without having shield cells himself then he should have shield cells. Or become a better anaconda pilot.

 

[moonsword]

The flip side of this is it's now easy for pilots in bigger ships to kill whatever they like because now smaller ships cannot fight back effectively. So these changes means the game has now become even easier for people in good ships.

But I guess you must agree that a small ship (not piloted by a Jedi Knight) is not able to take out a corvette alone.
You need wingmen to take out larger ships and this will come in Wings soon.

Therefore I like this change.

 

[ianw]

Have to agree the shield cell mechanism has always seemed a bit odd.

Clearly a small ship like the Viper should have faster acceleration, a higher top speed (for gameplay purposes) and be more manoeuvrable.

It makes no sense that it should somehow be able to absorb high powered gunfire from a much more powerful ship with higher spec weapons such as the Anaconda by using magic shields when it already has the capacity to avoid those weapons in the hands of a skilled player.

It's choices should be - flee - or if being flown well - stay in the blind spot for long enough to take the ship down. And people were doing that pre- shield cells.

On the other hand - as others have said - multiple small ships against a solo Anaconda should put the Anaconda on the back foot.

 

[tagos]

But weren't the people in good ships already packing one or more SCBs too? If the charge time change only makes SCBs impractical in ships in situations where the TTDS (Time To Drop Shields) is less than the charge time (5s) then the shield cell was only buying them another few seconds of life. Since Hyperjump charge time is 14s, that's enough time for the strong attacker to drop their shields again and wreck their FSD or destroy the ship entirely. Might as well accept the inevitable and try and stay out of situations where you're always going to get killed. Having a <shield cell count> sized Girdle of Invulnerability isn't a good mechanic.

Shield cells only work if you have shields. Only the bad pilots of bigger ships couldn't handle pre 1.1 small ships. But luckily they won the forum war and the devs changed things for them.

 

[Sir.Tj]

Unmerged thread.

 

[Coccolino]

Unmerged thread.

Amazing job. Thanks for the efforts.

 

[Krieger]

Just reporting my recent experience.
Assassination missions. Two of them, both unsuccessful (I was used to succeed before).
FULL kitted Cobra (mirrored/4A shields/4A distributor, etc.).
2 medium beam lasers, 2 small dumbfires.
2x 4A Shield cell banks. Their max ammo is 3.

First of all, let me say: WHAT? Now Shield cell banks have a DELAY? They engage *seconds* after being triggered!
Not a lot of problems with overheating, happened a couple of times, but not dramatic.
Chaffs... I died probably before having fired them all, but the enemy was still pretty OK, so I needed more.

It's become a hard work to deal with those Anacondas now. They have a lot of firepower against a small ship.
Shield Cell Banks were probably the only way to deal with them, because to escape those beams you need really good pilot skills. You need to be *always* behind his thrusters. I think the main problem is the delay in firing the SCB. You need to preview a lot if you are going to need them or not. A couple of times I fired them while I had ONE blue shield ring and they triggered after shields where cut off. This is insane.

Am I that bad?

Adapt the way you fight to the new SCB characteristics and capitalize on the strengths of your Cobra (and its outfitting) relative to the Anaconda. The Cobra is fast enough to break off the fight with an Anaconda at any time. Use that to create a lull in the fight for your shields to regenerate (don't wait until shields are down but anticipate, e.g. when only one blue ring is left: break away). Once free of the Anaconda you can pop a shield cell to have shields regenerate quickly (disadvantage for the Anaconda assuming it has no SCB) or wait until the shields have regenerated using power from your power plant (even with Anaconda). After that reengage the Anaconda.

If you use SCB's in this way the new 5 sec delay is no problem. The critical point is to break off the fight before shields are down.

 

[sorcer3r]

In a B rated Clipper there are no issues against elite anacondas.
I only have to reload shield banks more often in stations and therefore conflict zones are less interesting (until you get credit rewards for killing hostile ships in conflict zones... hopefully some day)