Responce to Yamiks Shield Video.

[SoundestCat4341]

Dear Cmdr Yamiks, Open Letter.

I recently saw your video about shields and while I respect your opinion, I must disagree with your current stand on shields.

First off: As you stated at the start, Shields are currently fine the way they are in PvE. I will add that it is also okay in PvP environments, save for engineered equipment which you claimed to be OP. Maybe, then again, wasn't that one of the goals of the engineer's mechanic?: to give Cmdrs a means to conjure something to give em an edge over potential threats (such as...what gamers refer to as Gank Squads for example). Now I get it that you're just arguing that Shields should be toned down (or countered some other way) a little bite. However, history has shown that whenever someone finds a little game mechanic that could benefit from a slight debuff somewhere, FDEV simply targets the whole thing (and everything related) and bring upon it Thor's Hammer; now that particular game mechanic is totally useless. Remember what happened with the 3.0 Skimmers missions?

Second: if anything, ships actually need a shield buff instead; or at least half the ships in the fleet do. See, according to third party sites like Coriolis.com for example, most ships start out very weak shields; it doesn't take much to crack those eggs. Of course shields can be upgrade with bigger sizes, higher quality, and boosters (I'm purposely leaving out engineers on this portion BTW). Even so in many cases it is not enough.

In most SciFi generas, Deflector Shield tech should advanced enough to be able to produce a forcefield strong enough to match the estimate hull/structural integrate of whatever it is protecting, give or take a little margin of error; a 1/1 shield strength to hull integrity ratio if you will. With that in mind, I've taken the liberty of comparing potential shield strength/hull integrity of different vessels; the formula used here is that each ship is equipped with largest Class-A Shield Generator it can use (depends on largest optional internal slot available), plus no more that 3 Class-A boosters available: no engineers involved. In my research, I found that while some ships do meet the 1/1 ratio standard (and a few like the Icourier for one, have a significantly greater than 1/1 ratio) roughly half of the ships available have a less than 1/1 ratio (some like the FAS are even closer to .7/1 ratio) of course some of these vessels are made to be hull tankers, but not the majority of them. Don't believe me, go ahead and do you're own research on whatever third party sites you choose; you'll see what I'm talking about.

Third: While standard (unengineered) Shields seem okay for most Cmdrs, I will admit that engineered shielding can be a bit much. But that's not because of the Deflector Shields themselves. It seems to be the case of Cmdrs' preference of the Heavy Duty type engineered Boosters; one can argue that they are overpowered, with their 56% boost in shield strength (not the 70% as you claim BTW). If I had a say at Frontier, I'd propose the Heavy Duty engineered boosters only produce roughly about 30-40% boost. Furthermore, I'd also propose to limit the number of booster to no more that 3 per ship, assuming they have that many utility slots available. That should all but solve your OP Shield problem, don't you think?

That's all I'm gonna say. To recap...Shields are fine (some, but not all, ships may actually need a buff instead), Don't want FDEV to bring down Thor's Hammer again, # of boosters on a ship should be limited to 3 and engineered HD boosters need to have their % multiplier in shield strength reduced.

Anyway sorry if I was disrupting any activity you were doing and thank you for your time.

Sincerely.
Cmdr Soundest.

P.S. +++REP for your vids; liked and subscribed.

 

[Eriseley]

Here's my comments:

It's annoying to me that all these countermeasures exist but it doesn't matter because shield booster stacking is the best. I want heat sinks, chaff, ECM and PD to mean more. There's already variety available, just make it mean more.

Also there's no reason Elite needs to follow some kind of Star Trek deflector shield metric. Smaller ships have less shields but they move faster, are smaller targets, resolve on scanners at smaller distance, are usually faster. This usually works in the game, just not always. But yeah, any nerf to shields for Cutters, if it hits smaller ships too, will hurt. I personally would like to see Silent Running be the counter to this, and maybe some speed increases for some smaller ships like the VP MKIV and LK T6, or what have you. Just me though. Mostly I want those countermeasures to mean more.

 

[Stigbob]

Why not reply in that thread, so Yamiks gets to see it.

 

[Truesilver]

OP, the third party sites are amazing but they are ... third party ... so speaking personally I try never to 'correct' another Cmdr by reference to a third party site, except by way of a question to them.

HD boosters in 3.0 come in at just over +73% with experimental, not the +56% you saw on Coriolis (which was actually nowhere near hard ceiling even in 2.1-2.4). So Yamiks at +70% is (nearly) right and your correction is not, sorry.

Anyway, about the shields, what most players either don't know or appear to have forgotten is that in March 2016, when 2.1 increased some potential shield strengths five times over, Frontier intended the counter to be weaponised heat.

In other words, full boosters was plain suicide in 2.1, due to rock/paper/scissors game play. Full boosters = no heat sinks = dead.

The current (continually worsening) fiasco is the legacy of Frontier's failure to take the remedial steps necessary when they (otherwise correctly) nerfed weaponised heat.

I may glumly refer to my anticipation of this of July 2106:

Heat Meta v Ultra-Shields: Frontier's Damage Dilemma

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...Ultra-Resistant-Shields-FDev-s-Damage-Dilemma

Re-reading the above I focused a bit too much on resistances rather than hp but as the point was that hp inflation would be uncounterable once heat was nerfed, the point was and remains unanswerable.

In fantasy game terms, many will be familiar with the 'Iron Giant' variant of enemy in the Final Fantasy series: a figure with colossal resistance to physical attacks but a merciful weakness to magic.

Weaponised heat was Frontier's magic. Because they nerfed magic without changing anything else, we are all Iron Giants now.

P.S. 11,300 Mj will be 'fine' in PvE the day that NPC's have 11,300 Mj. On that day this forum will demonstrate a remarkable change of opinion on balance issues. The other 2.1.x nerf, let us not forget, was to NPC's. Those two steps (heat nerf + NPC nerf), taken without balancing remedies, paved the way for the 'entitled 2B god' era. Think meme of Frontier now sitting in the corner of a room next to a paintpot, entire rest of floor painted...

 

[Lily from anim.o.v.e]

how about buffing lasers?

they have a stupid dropoff range and need to fully go through resistances, while PA's ignore a majority of it.

 

[crushdepth]

There are alternatives to shield tanking. Try a (very) fast ship.

 

[zombieapocalypse]

I could not disagree more. Shield can get stupidly OP. However I don't think the answer is to nerf shields. IMO the fix is to nerf how much power your ship can produce. Currently a Cutter can have enough pwer to outfit 8A prismatic shields, 8 shield boosters (2 thermal resist, 6 heavy duty), a class 6 SCB, a huge plasma accelerator, and all the other hardpoints fitted with beam lasers, and all A rated internals. Not saying that's a good build or anything, just making a point that you can cram every power hungry module on your ship with no need to compromise.

ED Shipyard Cutter build: https://goo.gl/9mmP8f

I think power should be more limited so you have to make compromises and interesting choices between offense and defense. You can be good at both, you can go max offense and decent defense, or max defense and average offense. But you should not be able to max offense and defense both.

I would argue the problem is engineering. Modifications need much larger downsides, forcing you to make compromises and interesting choices. In its current form, engineering is simply power creep that pretty much lets you have everything. That said, SB stacking has been an issue ever since they were introduced.

 

[Crimson Kaim]

Can't rep you more, Truesilver

@OP: "Shields are fine in PvE". Ofcourse shields are fine in PvE as long as you are invulnerable since modern game society assumes NPCs are always meant to be weaker than the player by design. This is false and it hasn't always been like this.
The old dogs here (no, not the 1984 Elite players ... (sorry )), that have started playing Elite at 1.0 know what it takes to accept a mission with a 150k credit payout ... which spawned a deadly Anaconda you'd have to face in your Viper ... unengineered, equal and fair equipment accessability. And yet, the only thing that amde AI weaker was their lack of "I" .. intelligence.
A player is always in advance due to better decision making capabilitites.

Now with shields and engineers and most importnalty NPCS not having access to engineered modules we screwed that balance further. Even more that engineering a ship and making it 5 times more powerful than its vanilly counterpart doesn't add up to the rebuy of a ship makes PvE incredibly unbalanced ... in favor of the player. I mean come on, I run around with my 210 MJ Assault Ship and almost never losing my shields. And if I do, it's because I rammed something. However, even after my shields dropped, NPCs would have to face a 3600 hitpoint hull (or use noob seekers) in 30 seconds before my shields come back online with 105 MJ.

That said, shields are indeed OP. They protect you from almost anything except for phasing and cascades. No module damage, no corrosion, damage reduction through pips plus damage reduction through resistances ... it's just too much. the TTK (time to kill) goes beyond hours in certain scenarios and ammo based weaponary are often not suited as you run out of ammo before you have grinded through someone's shields. Likewise with NPCs. They'd run out of ammo and would have to spawn a couple of waves before there is even a risk of a 11k MJ Cutter losing shields ... by that time the Cutter has no ammo itself, retreats and comes back again, fully loaded.

To counteract this, we need a slight shield nerf that, especially heavy duty stacking (deminishing returns) and some blueprint changes so that we don#t have a straight 55% resistance spread across thge board, Make it so we have to choose to go for either resistance OR straight MJs.

Furthermore, give NPCs fully engineered ships starting from dangerous and ending up at elite. Give harmless ships no access to engineers ... maybe give them access at competent ranks. This will make PvE balanced again and stops this nonesense we have now.



... bonus: give NPCs a "skimmer cannon" that shoots skimmers at you. Since skimmers deactivate your shields AND thrusters upon physical contact you are screwed

 

[Muetdhiver]

...
P.S. 11,300 Mj will be 'fine' in PvE the day that NPC's have 11,300 Mj. On that day this forum will demonstrate a remarkable change of opinion on balance issues. The other 2.1.x nerf, let us not forget, was to NPC's. Those two steps (heat nerf + NPC nerf), taken without balancing remedies, paved the way for the 'entitled 2B god' era. Think meme of Frontier now sitting in the corner of a room next to a paintpot, entire rest of floor painted...

So true. That day we'll have to ask frontier to add a new "salt" commodity to the market to absorb the huge offer that we'll have on our hands.

Worst part : 11K MJ is without SCB's AFAIK, so it's even worse than that.

If being invincible against NPC's is fine, then yeah shields are A-ok for PvE. It's a bit the god mode cheat codes of old
And I though elite was about the player not being a hero with special advantages. And here we are, flying ships more than 10x more powerfull than NPC's

 

[Truesilver]

So true. That day we'll have to ask frontier to add a new "salt" commodity to the market to absorb the huge offer that we'll have on our hands.

Worst part : 11K MJ is without SCB's AFAIK, so it's even worse than that.

If being invincible against NPC's is fine, then yeah shields are A-ok for PvE. It's a bit the god mode cheat codes of old
And I though elite was about the player not being a hero with special advantages. And here we are, flying ships more than 10x more powerfull than NPC's

Yep, 11300 Mj base shield.

With 4 pips to shields, 28,250 Mj equivalent.

Against kinetic, due to resistances, approx 56,500 Mj equivalent.

To put that in perspective, one of the most popular PvE weapons is the gimballed c2 multi-cannon.

The entire ammunition pool of a c2 gimballed multi-cannon equals 3,360 damage.

A full Mj Cutter can sit stationary, without losing shields, Cmdr AFK, while the entire ammo pool of a c2 gimballed multi-cannon is emptied into it ... SIXTEEN TIMES OVER ... without losing shields.

Yes, folks, a full stack of four gimballed c2 multi-cannons could be fired at that Cutter, until ammo is empty, to remove less than one quarter of its shield.

Four gimballed c2 multi-cannons could be fired, at 100 m range, until empty, FOUR TIMES OVER, to make that ship still not lose its base shield.

That would require 32 basic synthesis reloads. (NPC's actually have infinite multi-cannon ammo, but by way of illustration.) And the shield would still be up after 16 full magazines and 32 basic synth reloads.

This is, y'know, fine...

P.S. Sorry I forgot. CZ's would be too difficult otherwise. Judas H...

 

[Frenotx]

The comment I left on youtube:

"
YES. Please more attention drawn to the problem of shielding!

I maintain, however, that shields will always be extremely difficult if not impossible to balance in their current implementation. you pointed out, shields protect you 100% from everything (with the rare exception of some special effects). Once your shield is down, every hit is doing non-regenerating damage to you hull, modules, and thus, bank account. Yes I know repairs are cheap, but that's not how people look at it. The majority of folks will remain in the camp of "my shield is almost down, time to run." This stems from the absolute protection of shield, and the stark transition from "totally safe" to "actually in danger" that occurs when your shields fail.

For shields to be balanced, I believe they need to be redesigned to no longer provide absolute protection. Instead, they should act like a damage -reducer-, intercepting a portion of the incoming damage. The percentage of the damage they intercept should scale with how full they are, so a full shield will intercept most / all of the first hit, but allow more and more to bleed through as the shield gets drained. With such a system, the shields up -> shields down transition would not be as abrupt, and thus the "time to run" moment would be a lot more open to individual preferences / bravery. All of the combat mechanics would remain relevant for the whole fight, instead of things like armour hardness, system targeting, and AIM only mattering for the last sliver of the fight (e.g. the tiny percentage of total health that isn't shield). Most importantly, people would feel like they're actually MAKING PROGRESS during the fight, instead of watching their shots crash into a massive absolute wall that keeps rebuilding itself. Queue that family guy scene where the Amish people keep rebuilding the barn. YAWN.
"

 

[Martind Forlon]

... I little wonder why you guys always use as example just this one clearly unbalanced overpowered ship (cutter). Try your counts versus other normal ships

 

[Stigbob]

Yep, 11300 Mj base shield.

With 4 pips to shields, 28,250 Mj equivalent.

Against kinetic, due to resistances, approx 56,500 Mj equivalent.

To put that in perspective, one of the most popular PvE weapons is the gimballed c2 multi-cannon.

The entire ammunition pool of a c2 gimballed multi-cannon equals 3,360 damage.

A full Mj Cutter can sit stationary, without losing shields, Cmdr AFK, while the entire ammo pool of a c2 gimballed multi-cannon is emptied into it ... SIXTEEN TIMES OVER ... without losing shields.

Yes, folks, a full stack of four gimballed c2 multi-cannons could be fired at that Cutter, until ammo is empty, to remove less than one quarter of its shield.

Four gimballed c2 multi-cannons could be fired, at 100 m range, until empty, FOUR TIMES OVER, to make that ship still not lose its base shield.

That would require 32 basic synthesis reloads. (NPC's actually have infinite multi-cannon ammo, but by way of illustration.) And the shield would still be up after 16 full magazines and 32 basic synth reloads.

This is, y'know, fine...

P.S. Sorry I forgot. CZ's would be too difficult otherwise. Judas H...

I'm not doubting your numbers, but using kinetics against shields is a bit daft. It's not what they are for.

 

[Riverside]

Seems to me if a player wants to have the massive shields & not get popped that's fine. It's having weapons fitted to the same ship that creates a problem.

 

[Phazon Xenomorph]

The problem is no matter how much you buff hull stats to soak damage, if you want to fly any of the Big Three (especially in Open, and against thargoids to a lesser extent especially against basilisk and medusa, the latter of which ripped my corvette to shreds) then you need high levels of shields. Unless Frontier goes and makes modules take a fraction of the damage they take right now when hit or exposed to heat, then shields are needed. No one wants to have the grind to a big ship like Conda, or even worse, Corvette or Cutter due to rank grind, a-rate it including something like reactive armor or mirrored, engineer it, only to have it drop in a few seconds because it's shields are paper thin versus the easy of just getting an FDL, FAS, FGS, Python, or even a Vulture and just using those. With the current way modules take damage the moment shields drop, things like Elite NPCs gain the ability to Module Snipe, and if you fly in Open that leaves players open to actually attacking and destroying you as you sit there with no powerplant and no thrusters or FSD due to something like High Yield Shell on Cannon.

You can't ask for a shield nerf of any kind, despite the values are so damn highly inflated, unless you get Frontier to at the same time adjust how modules take damage which would also mean re-tuning engineer effects like those for Cannon. And to get Frontier to do everything at once is a huge ask. Last time Frontier tried to touch shields they did zero adjustment to any of those and just lowered shields and restricted how many we could equip. The result on the Beta server was Big Three ships being shredded in seconds by loadouts that weren't Cascade Torps or Mines due to not having the shielding to keep up, while being unable to fire at what was attacking them since even the Vette turns like a brick due to it's size (even tho its the most mobile big three). Smaller ships just humiliated them. At that point what's the reason for buying or owning a Big Three when someone can (even Elite NPC wings) just trash it in seconds and send you to a rebuy screen where even if you outfitted and bought in LYR space, you're pushing 50+ mil rebuys, versus a Mediums ships anywhere from like 6 to maybe 20 mil?

Sadly unless Frontier does EVERYTHING overhauled at once and not just one small section, the nerf will just eliminate big ship players. There's a reason why hull tanks are a joke of a ship, module sniping is a thing and all the hull in the world doesn't protect you.

 

[deuzerre]

Not all ships are meant to hull tank. I'm fine with ships that can hull tank and have huge power capacity, as long as thesehave weak hulls.

Balance yanno.

 

[Lily from anim.o.v.e]

Yep, 11300 Mj base shield.

With 4 pips to shields, 28,250 Mj equivalent.

Against kinetic, due to resistances, approx 56,500 Mj equivalent.

To put that in perspective, one of the most popular PvE weapons is the gimballed c2 multi-cannon.

The entire ammunition pool of a c2 gimballed multi-cannon equals 3,360 damage.

A full Mj Cutter can sit stationary, without losing shields, Cmdr AFK, while the entire ammo pool of a c2 gimballed multi-cannon is emptied into it ... SIXTEEN TIMES OVER ... without losing shields.

Yes, folks, a full stack of four gimballed c2 multi-cannons could be fired at that Cutter, until ammo is empty, to remove less than one quarter of its shield.

Four gimballed c2 multi-cannons could be fired, at 100 m range, until empty, FOUR TIMES OVER, to make that ship still not lose its base shield.

That would require 32 basic synthesis reloads. (NPC's actually have infinite multi-cannon ammo, but by way of illustration.) And the shield would still be up after 16 full magazines and 32 basic synth reloads.

This is, y'know, fine...

P.S. Sorry I forgot. CZ's would be too difficult otherwise. Judas H...

Well frontier could buff energy weapons ot make them highly efficient vs shields but REAL POOP vs hulls, that way 1 or 2 energy weapons can drain shields quickly, But currently energy weapons pay alot of heat and energy for not much damage vs engineered shields. But doing this will cause more issues on the PvP end because ships and their shields differe WAY too massively.

and yes whats the point of having various CZ when they hardly feel different. Isn't from a pvE point fo view exactly this the reason they exist? to give the less tougher ships an area they can be played while the supertough ships get their challange in the higher ones? Same for Res sites, but in the end past ship X nothing feels much different anymore.

 

[B1rdy]

I'm not doubting your numbers, but using kinetics against shields is a bit daft. It's not what they are for.

Given a reasonable 50% thermal resistance of the shield, it will most likely take even longer if you chose a C2 laser, due to even less DPS than a MC.

 

[Truesilver]

I'm not doubting your numbers, but using kinetics against shields is a bit daft. It's not what they are for.

Actually, no, Mr Stigbob:

My numbers were using unengineered multis to be indicative of NPC DPS if using a popular PvE weapon (as a comparator to the position of a player).

If you run the same numbers using unengineered lasers, it would actually take considerably longer to down that shield, due to Distributor constraints.

Then if you say, 'OK let's engineer for efficient, then' - all you do is emphasise the gap between player and hapless NPC yet more.

EDIT, ninjad:

Given a reasonable 50% thermal resistance of the shield, it will most likely take even longer if you chose a C2 laser, due to even less DPS that a MC.

The 11,300 Mj shield has poor thermal resists but you are still correct anyway.

 

[Eriseley]

Actually, no, Mr Stigbob:

My numbers were using unengineered multis to be indicative of NPC DPS if using a popular PvE weapon (as a comparator to the position of a player).

If you run the same numbers using unengineered lasers, it would actually take considerably longer to down that shield, due to Distributor constraints.

Then if you say, 'OK let's engineer for efficient, then' - all you do is emphasise the gap between player and hapless NPC yet more.

EDIT, ninjad:



The 11,300 Mj shield has poor thermal resists but you are still correct anyway.

True, what I want to know IS. Are fixed cannons viable yet.