One of the issues regularly seen is that of the ganked ship being destroyed in seconds, another is that PvP battles take too long. Both of these common complaints boil down to optimised combat builds being so tough that it's affecting how enjoyable combat can be.
Now with the ganked ship that is destroyed 'in seconds' a lot of that comes down to player experience (or naivety), in simply not realising just how much firepower a well equipped ship can bring to bear in an alpha strike (that first big hit that does as much damage as possible before the wep cap is drained).
Massive shields can certainly help, but that consumes internal and external module slots that ideally the player would prefer to use for much more common activities, and without direct experience of how much defence is needed to survive it's difficult for the inexperienced player to plan their build with defences appropriate not only for regular NPC encounters, but for PvP encounters too.
Currently the majority of NPCs a non-combat focused player meets on a day-to-day basis have un-engineered weapons, and for content that is delivered to the player (rather than specific scenarios the player opts into, like challenging missions or alien stuff) I believe that's the correct path.
However when encountering engineered weapons once the shield goes down it's usually game over for the non-combat loadout without a pretty severely compromised loadout.
Many have suggested that engineers is the problem, that SCBs, Shield boosters and other hitpoint buffing modules should be removed, and I would be in favour of that. But that's going back, and with power creep an inevitability in modern games I'd like to suggest an alternative:
I propose the base hull hitpoints for all purchasable ships be buffed across the board.
This allows the TTK (time to kill) to be extended once shields go down, it also means all those hitpoint inflating modules still work, but their extra defence represents a smaller portion of the overall toughness of any build.
This also means NPCs will take longer to kill, but by extending the player's own TTK it allows the minimum safe build to be a little less combat focused, for example the trader could carry more cargo and still have time to jump away from danger.
Now this will of course extend these frustrating PvP combat ship vs combat ship battles even further, so we need another buff to get shields down faster.
I propose that all weapons become more effective against shields, but no change against hull damage.
These two buffs will allow all ships to be more tanky, and move combat away from ultimate shield strength and more about hull strength.
Please, pull this apart and find a downside. If you find a flaw point it out, if you can propose a solution to the flaw you find. Even if you just like or don't like the idea, please reply to give your opinion visibility, as per Brett's sticky thread.
Now with the ganked ship that is destroyed 'in seconds' a lot of that comes down to player experience (or naivety), in simply not realising just how much firepower a well equipped ship can bring to bear in an alpha strike (that first big hit that does as much damage as possible before the wep cap is drained).
Massive shields can certainly help, but that consumes internal and external module slots that ideally the player would prefer to use for much more common activities, and without direct experience of how much defence is needed to survive it's difficult for the inexperienced player to plan their build with defences appropriate not only for regular NPC encounters, but for PvP encounters too.
Currently the majority of NPCs a non-combat focused player meets on a day-to-day basis have un-engineered weapons, and for content that is delivered to the player (rather than specific scenarios the player opts into, like challenging missions or alien stuff) I believe that's the correct path.
However when encountering engineered weapons once the shield goes down it's usually game over for the non-combat loadout without a pretty severely compromised loadout.
Many have suggested that engineers is the problem, that SCBs, Shield boosters and other hitpoint buffing modules should be removed, and I would be in favour of that. But that's going back, and with power creep an inevitability in modern games I'd like to suggest an alternative:
I propose the base hull hitpoints for all purchasable ships be buffed across the board.
This allows the TTK (time to kill) to be extended once shields go down, it also means all those hitpoint inflating modules still work, but their extra defence represents a smaller portion of the overall toughness of any build.
This also means NPCs will take longer to kill, but by extending the player's own TTK it allows the minimum safe build to be a little less combat focused, for example the trader could carry more cargo and still have time to jump away from danger.
Now this will of course extend these frustrating PvP combat ship vs combat ship battles even further, so we need another buff to get shields down faster.
I propose that all weapons become more effective against shields, but no change against hull damage.
These two buffs will allow all ships to be more tanky, and move combat away from ultimate shield strength and more about hull strength.
Please, pull this apart and find a downside. If you find a flaw point it out, if you can propose a solution to the flaw you find. Even if you just like or don't like the idea, please reply to give your opinion visibility, as per Brett's sticky thread.
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