Plasma Accelarator's upcoming "kame hame ha buff" - Is it appropriate or a no go ?

[Hannibal07]

Plasma Accelerators:
These weapons have many of the same drawbacks as cannons, with the added cost that they are very power hungry and hot. Rather than just buffing them to be “hot purple cannons” we’d like to carve out a distinct role for these powerful weapons – breaking through the heavy damage resistance of tough engineered vessels.

• Plasma Accelerators now have access to the Plasma Slug special effect, which allows them to consume fuel rather than ammo.
• Reload time for all plasma accelerators has been reduced to 6 seconds from 8. Which is about an 11% increase to sustained DPS.
• All Plasma Accelerator damage increased by 35%.
• Plasma Accelerators now totally ignore damage resistances and deal Absolute damage.
  
  
  Self-explanatory.

 

[GilliganTX]

Cool.

An equalizer for non-engineered ships.

Sounds good to me.

 

[Bryan K]

Finally. Considering how much skill is required to use it effectively it should definitely be more devastating. Good to see FDev concurs.

 

[Gunnet]

I have a feeling it will get toned down by the end of the beta. Although maybe not. The general direction of the changes make it pretty clear that highly manoeuvrable medium-size ships with good suitability for fixed weapons (*cough*FDL*cough*) are intended to be dominant in combat.

Don't forget Mark mentioned that they're considering making PAs ignore resistance from pips to shields as well.

 

[Knightshark]

I have a feeling it will get toned down by the end of the beta. Although maybe not. The general direction of the changes make it pretty clear that highly manoeuvrable medium-size ships with good suitability for fixed weapons (*cough*FDL*cough*) are intended to be dominant in combat.

Don't forget Mark mentioned that they're considering making PAs ignore resistance from pips to shields as well.

As they should.

 

[bubbabenali]

Protip:
See a NPC? Run for your live!!

 

[Ziljan]

The way they describe it in the notes, it sounds like the Absolute damage is a bit of a nerf. Perhaps the Abs dmg is calculated differently from thermal/kinetic/explosive ? Idk, but according to my understanding having Abs dmg vs 50/50 thermal/kinetic would be a damage buff in most cases. They are saying it's a roughly 20% nerf at the base end with unmodded shields, so apparently it is calculated differently from my understanding of resistance modifiers.

But lets put this in context. The PA is notoriously hard to land a shot with. Even harder than the regular kinetic Cannons since there is no gimbal option. I for one don't see a problem with this kind of buff. The only case where it would be powerful would be with small ships zipping around and hitting a big slow ship that can't dodge. Most of those can use SLF to take out the small ship, or simply just blast it to bits so no harm no foul. Lord knows that NPCs can't even hit large ships with PA if you attempt to dodge *at all*.

For PVP it could create a chance for legitimate skill vs skill encounters. So win-win.

 

[drzdeano]

Something about the thread title really doesn't seem appropriate.

As if fdev have to ask permission to balance the game, otherwise we riot.

I think everyone will agree there needs to be balance changes, but most will argue about the details. Which would be the more important question.

So to answer yes definitely appropriate, but how it's done is more important

 

[bubbabenali]

Something about the thread title really doesn't seem appropriate.

As if fdev have to ask permission to balance the game, otherwise we riot.

I think everyone will agree there needs to be balance changes, but most will argue about the details. Which would be the more important question.

So to answer yes definitely appropriate, but how it's done is more important

Well that has to be tryed out first, but I think 5xPA + Heat Sink FDLs will have a rosy future.

 

[Gunnet]

As they should.

Previously I would have assumed that the ideal would either be all combat ships being roughly equal, or the relative effectiveness of combat ships correlating with their value. Depending whether the aim was to tend more towards the RPG style of later game gear being objectively better, or the competitive game style of everything being viable at all stages.

It has little to no impact on me either way since I'm not interested in PvP in games with persistent characters (more arena shooter, less MMO PvP server). But having combat geared towards a small group of ships in a medium price range isn't what I would have expected to be Frontier's ideal.

 

[TomP]

Waaah. Wah Wah Waaaah. My 'meta'. Waaaah.

Continued for another 94 pages.

 

[BostromNZ]

I'm okay with a big buff. PAs have serious drawbacks - fixed only, huge power drain, huge heat generation - their damage output should be high. I haven't been in a RES for a while but I'd like to see what the new 2x overcharged huge PAs do to NPCs as they sit dead still in front of me waiting for their KWS to finish.

 

[SnowyNI]

Finally. Considering how much skill is required to use it effectively it should definitely be more devastating. Good to see FDev concurs.

Wonder if that thought will still be the same once the "We never miss, nor overheat" NPCs get hold of it....

 

[BostromNZ]

Wonder if that thought will still be the same once the "We never miss, nor overheat" NPCs get hold of it....

That's my major concern, it's already bad enough when you get focused fired on by a group of PA/railgun weilding Asp Scouts in a CZ.

 

[nanite2000]

I'm looking forward to this new challenge. Combat-wise, it'll make for an interesting head-to-head situation: if your opponent has PA's, forget about putting any more than 2 pips to shields.

In fact, screw the shields altogether - 3 pips to engines and weapons.

I like the new tactical dimension this offers.

- - - Updated - - -

Wonder if that thought will still be the same once the "We never miss, nor overheat" NPCs get hold of it....

I've repeatedly seen NPC's miss with their PA's when attacking head on. Just use vertical thrusters or boost when you see the flash of purple. They only *seem* accurate when you haven't noticed them attacking you, and all of a sudden your shields have gone.

 

[Para Handy]

............... The PA is notoriously hard to land a shot with.

..............
.

Unless you are an NPC!


Is this a mechanic to make us PvE people actually bother with engineering mods?


I'm certainly not looking forward to a FAS bearing down on me with the already hugely damaging PA (that never misses) now having immensely more destructiveness. (Don't get me started on pirate furrylancers.)

 

[Lycan_Bravo]

That's my major concern, it's already bad enough when you get focused fired on by a group of PA/railgun weilding Asp Scouts in a CZ.

In my experience NPCs don't lead their shots at all so the only reason they ever hit with these is because of jousting or they hit you will turning in a big ship.

Railguns on the other hand are hitscan so since the NPC always attempts to aim directly at you they have great aim with these types of weapons.

 

[Jastebro]

Is it just me that's exited about the special effects mod that uses fuel as ammo for this weapon?

 

[KR4K40]

I'm okay with a big buff. PAs have serious drawbacks - fixed only, huge power drain, huge heat generation - their damage output should be high. I haven't been in a RES for a while but I'd like to see what the new 2x overcharged huge PAs do to NPCs as they sit dead still in front of me waiting for their KWS to finish.

Overcharged? nononononono, what you want is thermal conduit focused. With the upcoming blueprint changes, that'll be the new meta.

Imagine that: heat efficient, damage increased, armour piercing PAs that get up to 100% bonus damage with heat levels.

Now let's run the numbers: PAs get buffed 35% more damage per shot. That's ~160 damage for a huge PA. Add focused bonus on top of that (+40%) for ~226 damage, and +100% best case for thermal conduit. You get a weapon that does 500 damage per shot, with an added 11% buff to reload speed, with none of the drawbacks of Overcharge which is going to be gently massaged by the nerf hammer? When you look at the numbers, Focused gets 90% of the effect of Overcharge, with none of the drawbacks. Oh yeah, a fire rate drawback. What wil I ever do now that I can't spam fire my FIVE HUNDRED DAMAGE A SHOT PURPLE PIMPIN DOOMCANNONS

Now, would you get overcharged or focused? Oh yeah and it's true damage, because lolwhatisdamageresistance

Personally, those are going to be my PVP weapons, with newly rerolled long range high yield cannons for PVE. Oh yeah, because long range blueprints are getting buffed something good.

 

[Adhock]

Is this a mechanic to make us PvE people actually bother with engineering mods?

Quite the opposite actually.

Barring the fact I was still able to dodge/get clipped by PAs it's a changer but it's meant to make you focus in the OPPOSITE direction.

It's an equalizer.

From how they described it, here's how it works.

For the sake of ease of example, we'll say the PA does 100 points of damage.

Jimmy Newbwinder is fresh to the game, he just bought his first Cobra MK3 and takes it into a CZ. It's been upgraded at the outfitters but he hasn't taken it to the engineers.

NPC Python 2xPlasmaMcBadass in the CZ launches his dual Plasma rounds at Jimmy Newbwinder's Cobra. Jimmy tries to dodge and takes one to the face. He take 100 points of damage. No resistances because he hasn't take it to the engineers.

Now Tommy "TwoTon" FDLPvPGod takes his heavily modified FDL with as many armor modifications into the same CZ and gets shot at by the same NPC Python 2xPlasmaMcBadass. And takes one to the face.

As of before this change. Tommy would normally just laugh at the Plasma round as it plinks off him doing only 20 points of damage since he managed to engineered his ship armor resistances to 80% (just for the sake of the example, I don't know if this is actually possible). With this change, Tommy might be g out more because it would be doing the full 100 points of damage ignoring his 80% overengineered armor.

Jimmy on the other hand wouldn't notice any such damage increase because it's doing the exact same damage to him anyway.

So you have two ships. One engineered to resist all forms of damage, the other does not. The PA doesn't care and will do the same damage to both with this change.

This change will give the ILLUSION of a damage increase if you're used to seeing lower numbers due to higher resistances. If you're used to flying an unengineered ship, you won't see any change what so ever.

Think of the PA as an equalizer to put PvE people on even footing with the PvP maniacs who overengineer their resistances and help you tackle higher ranked NPCs Dangerous, Deadly, and Elite who are likely to also have these engineered mods. If you're used to taking full damage anyway, you won't see any such change and will just shrug and carry on like normal.

So to unengineered ships, this is a nerf. Against engineered tank gods, this is a huge buff.