Open Play - Ship Balance

[cmdr Ramius007]

With guardian shield reinforments, any medium ship can be shield tank now, you can have prismatic FAS with 3k MJ total shields, alliance ships with over 4k, point is that some ships as hybrids can do that other ships cant, of course FDL is my primary combat ship now, but do i want to fight simialrly skilled pilot with gimbals in challanger or chieftain in my bank tank FDL with 1 chaff? No i dont, do i want to fight reverski phantom in my FDL, no, I have frag mamba for this.

 

[Misty_Dark]

View attachment 197785
This is just an FDL all fixed multicannons fully G5 overcharged, autoloader on all mediums, corrosive on the huge. 154 dps.

If you were running anything less than 1k shields, 1k hull you would have just a few seconds - max.

This is not meta. This is just an example of the asymmetry in the game.

If you are comfortable with the asymmetry (I am), then this is more about C&P, security states, and pve pvp partitioning.

I took my Krait M II with pacifiers burst build, with some 253 DPS and I put it up against a non engineered Type 9 for Cargo Hauling, meaning Military hull, standard 5A shield and two A rated shield boosters, Coriolis says that the Type 9 will survive 11 seconds... assuming you can land all those pellets, ie some close range shooting..

Of course this is not even a fair fight, but we can improve this a bit, we could add 2 hull reinforcements (to have 752T of cargo capacity) and max out with shield boosters, we are only gaining 1 second, so we will now last a 12 seconds... and have access to 5A Prismatic shield, buys us another second, so now we are now at 13 seconds. So any escape is unlikely in this situation.


So there is no surprise that an engineered ship combat ship vs a non-engineered ship is a very unbalanced story. but if you skimp on hull and stick with the standard light weight, then it would be over in just 6 seconds.


So lets get creative and do full engineering and add all the best parts to our Type 9, for maximum survivability... then we end up with a 364 million Type 9, that can carry 752T.
Now we get some 21 seconds before we are destroyed, this should be enough time to escape...



For PvE, engineering is mostly fine, here the power creep is not that detrimental, but when it comes to PvP, the difference is quite noticeably. But as can been seen, there are ways to improve the odds of survivability, but for most players they have very little incentive for doing this, and it is for the most part often better to avoid open and play in solo/pg, where you are much less likely to encounter heavily engineered ships that are out to destroy, you.


I am not really liking the huge power creep engineering gave us, what I find most troubling, is that much of these unbalanced attacks seems to be occurring in system where the security status is high... and there is no real downsides to be player killer to kill mostly defenceless players, C&P is a joke in this department, if there actually would be some real consequences for doing this, then I would be find with players in dedicated player killer ships exists, as they can't keep doing this in high security systems without lots of skills and effort. As they gain notoriety, infamy whatever we want to call it, they also attract the authorities attention, and they could have a standby task force to deal with this criminal... with persistent ships hunting them, etc, etc, so they cannot simply stay in supercruise looking for their next victim, as authorities will be all over them and interdict them etc, so that makes it harder to hunt player in certain systems. not impossible, but harder.


To summarize
I do not like the current disparity, as the engineering bonus are to big.
There is always going to disparity when it comes to power between combat ship and ships outfitted for other tasks.
The game does not really have any risk/reward mechanics in place. it is far to easy to play a murder hobo and then go switch ships and play as a lawful player in a different system.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

I know, but thats it not really issue for hulltanks veteran pvp'ers. They just use AMFU to keep cockpit alive long as possible, and when they lose it, they keep on.

Look, Im not fan of hulltanks myself, but there is enough of them around so got I forced to have carry missiles with me for most of time, since if would use a bulid without it, usualy would end in instance where is aleast one of hulltank.

I'm a big fan of shieldless hulltanks, flying a few of them because they're fun and I like the concept of not having to worry (much) about sys pips, but yeah running one when facing PvPers feels like doing them a favour as the various (silly, imo) engineer experimentals work a treat directly on hull.

 

[Snowygerry]

So lets get creative and do full engineering and add all the best parts to our Type 9, for maximum survivability... then we end up with a 364 million Type 9, that can carry 752T.
Now we get some 21 seconds before we are destroyed, this should be enough time to escape...

For PvE, engineering is mostly fine, here the power creep is not that detrimental, but when it comes to PvP, the difference is quite noticeably. But as can been seen, there are ways to improve the odds of survivability, but for most players they have very little incentive for doing this, and it is for the most part often better to avoid open and play in solo/pg, where you are much less likely to encounter heavily engineered ships that are out to destroy, you.

Good post there...

But how often do you have to haul 752T into a system heavily guarded by other players ?

I seems to me most players in open are being busy, minding whatever it is they are doing, and hardly notice me at all

 

[Renato Bozoni]

T9 last night in Paratis.

Mamba in SC in front of managed to easily loop behind me regardless so submit. Couple of tickles with laser on 1st ring then bang! 65% hull left but by then they had actually boosted past me...too late Im already gone, see ya. Just boring for me, no chat no fun, no excitement just ABC yawn escape. I may just block these no hopers in future. Admittedly I did then dock and engineer the shields ready for the next time in Remote Engineering.

How long do you need to survive to escape? Thats the only thing that matters. If you didnt have to line up for the jump you could do it with eyes close. Its the same buttons in the same sequence at the same time every single time.

What I do: submit the interdiction...Select OTHER system in the navigation panel to jump. All pips in system and 2 in eng - chaft + FAOFF.
While the fsd are cooling, u can use mines too.

Well, works fpr me everytime ( with little hull damage or none damage. ).

Try tro use a prismatic shield and modules armor. ( What i see in open, almost every player are using plasma weapons..SO u need raw shield ( as much as you can ) - In PVE we want thermal protection but in open u need as much shield you can have.

Note: When I was doing the cg - fed vs empire war a few weeks ago, with a vette, players interdict me A LOT. gank - 4 FDL vs a vette.....Just run baby...JUST RUN ! HAHAHA ( I hate gankers )

Sorry for my english btw

 

[Screemonster]

I do not like the current disparity, as the engineering bonus are to big.

Yeah, especially with shields. Multiple boosters stacking in effectiveness was fine when the best you got was 20% per booster, but now you can kick that up past 70% and cram resistances north of 60% on there, and get the benefits of cell banks (with each MJ being 60% resistant!) and get pips into the bargain, it becomes a case of "why would you fit literally anything other than a shield booster, by the way the FDL can fit six of them"

Now that engineers are part of the base game I don't see any reason not to get rid of booster stacking, or at least cap the effect at "your biggest individual booster or the sum of the unengineered boosters, whichever is larger". Do the same to resistances while you're at it, if you have more than one booster fitted you get the one with the best stat for each resistance and that's it.

I'm not even worried about "oh no but if shields are weaker then gankers will be able to gank with their engineered weapons" because frankly you could gank some of the builds I've encountered with a wet towel already, it'd make literally no difference the vast majority of the time.

There is always going to disparity when it comes to power between combat ship and ships outfitted for other tasks.

Yeah. There's a difference between "disparity" and "for all intents and purposes invulnerable unless someone manages to pull off a reverb gank while you're not looking" though.

The game does not really have any risk/reward mechanics in place. it is far to easy to play a murder hobo and then go switch ships and play as a lawful player in a different system.

OH BOY HOWDY DO I HAVE OPINIONS ABOUT THAT

Switching ships and coming back to the same system, WHEW. At the very least you should be lying low, very much wanted and if the cops realise who it is that's flying that suspiciously-well-behaved ship that's coming in to dock they'll blow you out of the sky.
The only reason for "bounty attached to ship, not cmdr" was to stop people switching to sideys and letting their buddies claim them after going on a murderspree in something expensive and I don't think that was the right solution.

What should have happened imo is that switching ships would make you "clean" on a basic scan, but your bounty could still be KWS'd and if claimed then it tagged an insurance fee onto the ship equal to the bounty that must be paid off before you can legally use it again. Likewise, in the systems where you're actually wanted but lying low, you'd be restricted to anonymous acces.

If you don't pay the insurance fee, then rather than some gamey "it magically won't take off", if you have it docked at an an anarchy station or fleet carrier then you can take it out, but flying an uninsured ship would be essentially "you are free game, everywhere, any lawful port will shoot you on sight, by the way you have no rebuy while uninsured". Obviously a lawful port would be like "nah, you can't switch to this uninsured ship until you pay the fees and you can't transfer it out either". Wanna be dangerous and play loose with your uninsured murderboat? Better hope you've got a carrier or anarchy port nearby because you can't dock anywhere else.

 

[cmdr Ramius007]

I'm a big fan of shieldless hulltanks, flying a few of them because they're fun and I like the concept of not having to worry (much) about sys pips, but yeah running one when facing PvPers feels like doing them a favour as the various (silly, imo) engineer experimentals work a treat directly on hull.

weapons effects is a crux of a problem, scramble spectrum even on c1 weapon can shutdown thrusters on hybrids with low emmisions power plant, emisive effect have no cooldown-why?, changes to those effects would not affect pve, but rather encourage and promote variety. emmisive laser +packhounds is 0 skill build that make hulltanks obsolete, but effect of this strategy is that those missile lovers are facing another FDL, and it not make things easier for them when running missiles.

 

[cmdr Ramius007]

Of course this is not even a fair fight, but we can improve this a bit, we could add 2 hull reinforcements (to have 752T of cargo capacity) and max out with shield boosters, we are only gaining 1 second, so we will now last a 12 seconds... and have access to 5A Prismatic shield, buys us another second, so now we are now at 13 seconds. So any escape is unlikely in this situation.

if anybody flying 750 tons cargo t-9 in contested system in open, he deserve rebuy, 600 ton cargo t-9 (still much more than anaconda, corvette or t-10 with c7 prism and 3 boosters have around 1.5k mj, we can use point defence to shoot down groms, c3 SCB that cost us only 8tons but gives another 350mj, 1.8k mj and around 2k hull is a lot, but even more hauling focused t-9 with c6 prism using 2-3 smallest internals for defences end with over 1kMJ and 2k hull, problem is that a lot of t-9 pilots consider docking computer and cruise assist as must have, and those 2 things come at cost of lower survivability. Remember that 4 pips in system gives 2.5 shield multiplier, and there come resistances....

 

[Oytis57]

Hello!

Dear Frontier Development Team, please take a look at current state of open play PvP encounters.

Regular (non-meta) ships are unable to do any considerable damage to min-maxed meta ships, or survive long enough to escape.

That kills any joy of playing in Open Play. If you got interdicted by Fer-de-Lance or Mamba, you are dead, because they got massive amount of shields, superior firepower and speed. Those ships are able to kill any ship except another meta Fer-de-Lance or Mamba in less than 10 seconds.

Please, do something about that.

You've made this exact post on reddit and it does not make sense,every multiplayer game involving Pvp has athe usual ladder to climb to upgrade your stuff,why should a totally unengineered ship be on par with a paper plane? Try to PvP on Destiny/Division and the likes with basic stuff and see what happens....

 

[Chaparral]

I took my Krait M II with pacifiers burst build, with some 253 DPS and I put it up against a non engineered Type 9 for Cargo Hauling, meaning Military hull, standard 5A shield and two A rated shield boosters, Coriolis says that the Type 9 will survive 11 seconds... assuming you can land all those pellets, ie some close range shooting..

Of course this is not even a fair fight, but we can improve this a bit, we could add 2 hull reinforcements (to have 752T of cargo capacity) and max out with shield boosters, we are only gaining 1 second, so we will now last a 12 seconds... and have access to 5A Prismatic shield, buys us another second, so now we are now at 13 seconds. So any escape is unlikely in this situation.


So there is no surprise that an engineered ship combat ship vs a non-engineered ship is a very unbalanced story. but if you skimp on hull and stick with the standard light weight, then it would be over in just 6 seconds.


So lets get creative and do full engineering and add all the best parts to our Type 9, for maximum survivability... then we end up with a 364 million Type 9, that can carry 752T.
Now we get some 21 seconds before we are destroyed, this should be enough time to escape...



For PvE, engineering is mostly fine, here the power creep is not that detrimental, but when it comes to PvP, the difference is quite noticeably. But as can been seen, there are ways to improve the odds of survivability, but for most players they have very little incentive for doing this, and it is for the most part often better to avoid open and play in solo/pg, where you are much less likely to encounter heavily engineered ships that are out to destroy, you.


I am not really liking the huge power creep engineering gave us, what I find most troubling, is that much of these unbalanced attacks seems to be occurring in system where the security status is high... and there is no real downsides to be player killer to kill mostly defenceless players, C&P is a joke in this department, if there actually would be some real consequences for doing this, then I would be find with players in dedicated player killer ships exists, as they can't keep doing this in high security systems without lots of skills and effort. As they gain notoriety, infamy whatever we want to call it, they also attract the authorities attention, and they could have a standby task force to deal with this criminal... with persistent ships hunting them, etc, etc, so they cannot simply stay in supercruise looking for their next victim, as authorities will be all over them and interdict them etc, so that makes it harder to hunt player in certain systems. not impossible, but harder.


To summarize
I do not like the current disparity, as the engineering bonus are to big.
There is always going to disparity when it comes to power between combat ship and ships outfitted for other tasks.
The game does not really have any risk/reward mechanics in place. it is far to easy to play a murder hobo and then go switch ships and play as a lawful player in a different system.

Think in terms of hours of game play for a casual player. Is a casual going to grind prismatics, all the engineers for defensive measures, sacrifice 30-40% of internals to survive a G5 gank? Not a chance. The asymmetry is baked in. It cannot be countered without hundreds of hours of experience and specific engineering to address the threat. Asymmetry cannot be fixed. C&P consequences can be "fixed" however.

 

[VirtueXOI]

I agree , make the mamba turn faster and boost faster , it's a shame that clipper outrun/turn him.

 

[Cervantes01]

I was shot out of the sky in my orca the other week by a chieftain, this is exactly as you'd expect one was a passenger ship engineered for jump range the other a dedicated warship engineered to be tough. This is exactly as it should be. I accidentally turned up at a knife fight with a packet of tea bags.

 

[Amanojaku]

I smoked a CMDR in a Vette a couple CGs ago, another CMDR in a ram Orca about a week later, and most recently a meta Mamba a few days ago.

In a Clipper.

I will say that some aspects of ship balance need to be addressed. For instance, heavy duty boosters need a slight nerf. But imo drastic changes do not need to be made. CMDR skill still matters way more than the type of ship you use, and certain builds are just countered by other specific builds. Yeah, you need engineering to be competitive, but I've never seen a MMO that didn't have some form of power creep. In fact, I'd say ED is light on power creep compared to a lot of games.

And if it sounds like I'm bragging, I'm not even good. If CMDRs were tiered from S rank to D rank, I might fall somewhere in the B tier. I could take a meta FDL up against another CMDR in a DBS, and if they are "S or A tier" I'm probably dead meat.

 

[Rebel Yell]

How about other combat ships (FAS, FGS, Chieftan) that are stomped by FDL?
Oh, and you think something like Python or Krait is a "soapbox car"?

Do you think this is acceptable state of things, to have 1.5 viable combat ships?

I have seen a shieldless Cobra in 1vs3 holding up the dogfight and killing an FDL before exploding...

 

[rekurzion]

Hello!

Dear Frontier Development Team, please take a look at current state of open play PvP encounters.

Regular (non-meta) ships are unable to do any considerable damage to min-maxed meta ships

horizons is now free. which means you are now free to upgrade your ship. please do so.

or survive long enough to escape.

not true. select the correct ship and apply the standard, well known, video recorded oft discussed basic steps to survival which require no engineering at all.

...If you got interdicted by Fer-de-Lance or Mamba, you are dead, because they got massive amount of shields, superior firepower and speed. Those ships are able to kill any ship except another meta Fer-de-Lance or Mamba in less than 10 seconds.

and?

the FDL is the premiere killing machine in the game. of course it can mop the floor with lesser ships. especially pilots who refuse to defend themselves. you know, like Nate Robinson who spent thanksgiving weekend walking into punches.

Please, do something about that.

they have by making engineering a thing. you can also use these forums to ask for advice and help. the choice is yours.

 

[fus roh potato]

My 1000/1 KD is from being good, not because 99% of my victims are unengineered nooblets. JUS LERN HOW TO ESCAPE BRO

 

[Snowygerry]

So - last night I took my unengineered Adder, which is actually one of my starting ships, and smuggled 5 ton of Tritium and some liquor into Mandh in open, a CG system which is sure to have some good fighters hanging around, 2000 hrs. on a week day in my timezone.

My first attempt to jump into the system ends in retreat when a lone Krait circling the star, suspiciously manoeuvres towards my rear, I have all the time I need to select a nearby system and High Wake out. No interdiction.

Second attempt some 20 min. later, same Krait is still circling, now joined by a few others, a Corvette among others, one of them has hardpoints deployed, they may be fighting eachother or waiting for a target, I don't hang around to find out. No interdiction.

Third attempt is succesful - upon entry I immediately notice in system chat, the Krait is gloating about a "Shiny" Clipper or Cutter he's just blown up, so I decide this is my time and beeline for my target, in this case the FC there that offers the best price for my Tritium, no chase, no interdiction and after a short and uneventful flight I land unmolested and crack open the liquor

 

[Waselon]

I was shot out of the sky in my orca the other week by a chieftain, this is exactly as you'd expect one was a passenger ship engineered for jump range the other a dedicated warship engineered to be tough. This is exactly as it should be. I accidentally turned up at a knife fight with a packet of tea bags.

I'm not talking about extreme cases like Orca or Type-6. I'm talking about a bit more suitable ships like Krait, Python, Clipper.
I'm not saying unengineered ship should kill fully engineered FDL.
I'm saying that the gap between non-meta ship and meta ship is so huge, that the only option you ever had is to run. I dont like that. I want a chance to fight back.

 

[fus roh potato]

I'm not talking about extreme cases like Orca or Type-6. I'm talking about a bit more suitable ships like Krait, Python, Clipper.
I'm not saying unengineered ship should kill fully engineered FDL.
I'm saying that the gap between non-meta ship and meta ship is so huge, that the only option you ever had is to run. I dont like that. I want a chance to fight back.

I don't understand what's so controversial about this. I also don't understand how someone can misfire so disastrously that they'd explain to someone, who's asking for a fair chance at combat, how to escape and avoid interdictions...

Some people take pride in snaking and cheating their way through certain circumstances, for example through solo and blocking, because their system, to them, was a creative and 'intelligent' development. Yet, how is it not extremely embarrassing for them to project that onto someone who wants a chance to fight back? Does it insult them so much, to conceive that their ways of cowardice are not preferred by all, that they have to make this incredible leap to pretend you are like them? That you too, just need help learning how to escape? woooowy wowy wow wow wowy wow

 

[rekurzion]

I'm not talking about extreme cases like Orca or Type-6. I'm talking about a bit more suitable ships like Krait, Python, Clipper.
I'm not saying unengineered ship should kill fully engineered FDL.
I'm saying that the gap between non-meta ship and meta ship is so huge, that the only option you ever had is to run. I dont like that. I want a chance to fight back.

the krait and the python have a greater mass lock factor than an FDL. you don't need to be engineered to build a ship tough enough to survive the short time it takes to jump out. none at all.