Rethink collision damage

[Cmdr. Numa]

Collision damage in ED has been nerfed into triviality, while engineering made ships more resilient on top.

We are at a point where people can boost into stations and use the rear wall for braking with the shields barely getting scratched. There have also been reports of people boosting nose first into a planet, and the shields held.

Two solutions are possible:

1. Increase collision damage, a lot. That's the simplistic approach and easy to tweak to find a suitable balance.
2. Use the SRV damage model for ships too. Shields stop weapon fire, but collisions go right through to hull. I would very much prefer this one.

In either case reckless/careless flying should be more punishing. Not in the way of higher fines, but big repair bills and possible rebuy. It used to be like that in the early stages of the game, and I lost a few ships that way myself.

 

[dm06]

Just nope.
I believe that lowering damage is exactly the reason why engineering applied.
How suggested damage should affect to paper ships?..

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

Paper ships would have to be flown with care, just as it should be. And OP shield tanks would have to take great care to evade rams in combat, as well as abstain from ramming themselves.

 

[Vandaahl]

Collision damage has been re-thought (because of paper ships) and the result is what it is now. There's no point in making the same mistakes again.

 

[dm06]

Paper ships would have to be flown with care, just as it should be. And OP shield tanks would have to take great care to evade rams in combat, as well as abstain from ramming themselves.

Good.
Now let's imagine that everybody get huge damage on collision.
Let's consider collision between cobra mk3 and t-10. Cobra rams T-10. Both destroyed.
Cobra mk3 piloted by expirienced commander which is rather bored with playing regular ED with billions cr.
T-10 piloted by noob.
Could you please guess who will moan louder?

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

Matter of balancing. If a ram from a Cobra III could kill a T10, this would be overdoing it. At least a "normally" built Cobra III would have a lot less hull than a T10. And it's not like a Cobra III built for a gank and piloted by a veteran would destroy a noob T10 anyway.

 

[RolloTreadway]

People who deliberately crash into station walls should have to pay for station repairs.

 

[Morbad]

The original collision damage was 150% higher than it is now. It never should have been reduced.

This was well before Engineers, and the reduction in damage, plus the inflationary effect of Engineering, has made collisions comical.

How suggested damage should affect to paper ships?.

It should destroy them, just like sufficiently high speed collisions with objects of similar or greater mass used to do to essentially all ships.

 

[Deebz__]

Yeah, agreed. Collision damage needs to be reworked.

 

[Alec Turner]

Yeah, agreed. Collision damage needs to be reworked.

Actually, as we discovered in the "Prison Break" Buckyball Race (making unscheduled stops on a series of unauthorised landing pads), one of the fastest ways to land is to just smack nose first into the pad at top speed and worry about the fine details of landing afterwards. Here's some outtakes.

Source: https://youtu.be/PMAlsNNuQYk

 

[Deebz__]

Actually, as we discovered in the "Prison Break" Buckyball Race (making unscheduled stops on a series of unauthorised landing pads), one of the fastest ways to land is to just smack nose first into the pad at top speed and worry about the fine details of landing afterwards. Here's some outtakes.

Source: https://youtu.be/PMAlsNNuQYk

Lol wow.

Honestly though, I wouldn't get my hopes up. This game is so hilariously unbalanced in so many ways, and the developers seem so completely incapable of fixing it, that I doubt this will ever be addressed.

Ever heard of that healies4feelies operation that SDC did? They proved that healing beam lasers were insanely OP by sitting inside of a station, tanking its weapon fire, and blowing up other players while doing it. Fdev responded by adding reverb cascade to the station lasers.

 

[Ian Skippy]

The issue is that the community is very diverse, and that increasing collision damage would make the game harder. That is a massively big No No for too many players. ED has become increasingly easy in every conceivable way since launch since there simply aren't enough 'hardcore' players to support the game compared with people who just want to dork around in a spaceship with as little consequences as possible. So we gave everyone 10x more hitpoints, 5x more damage, reduced collision damage, refuel/repair/re-arm cost, massively increased income many times over practically making insurance irrelevant etc etc.

This removes a ton of fun from the game if you played for hundreds or thousands of hours. But it makes the game more fun for new players. And new players = new money.

 

[Deebz__]

The issue is that the community is very diverse, and that increasing collision damage would make the game harder. That is a massively big No No for too many players. ED has become increasingly easy in every conceivable way since launch since there simply aren't enough 'hardcore' players to support the game compared with people who just want to dork around in a spaceship with as little consequences as possible. So we gave everyone 10x more hitpoints, 5x more damage, reduced collision damage, refuel/repair/re-arm cost, massively increased income many times over practically making insurance irrelevant etc etc.

This removes a ton of fun from the game if you played for hundreds or thousands of hours. But it makes the game more fun for new players. And new players = new money.

Yeah that’s a realization I’ve been coming to lately. It’s like they’ve been gutting the experience of the game in order to make more profit from newer players. That joke of a cosmetic store doesn’t help defend this point either.

Kinda seems like Fdev have lost the passion that created this game, and are now just trying to squeeze as much money out of it as possible. This makes me deeply concerned about the 2020 update. If it actually is space legs, I have no doubt that it will be as shallow and ignorable as the other mechanics they have added to the game post-launch. I also bet that cosmetic store is going to double in size with ship interior crap. If this is the case, I just can’t see myself buying it. That’s a damn shame too, because I really wanted this game to be great.