Sandro. Please don't nerf resistant shield boosters

[Limoncello Lizard]

Sandro has made this comment in the Beta forum:

I believe we are also looking into increasing diminishing returns for damage resistance from shield boosters and hull reinforcement packs (currently, with stacking, you can get some fairly monumental resistances, which we're not too fond of).

Sandro. If you think resistances become "monumental", you are clearlyplaying a different game to the rest of us.
Resistant shield boosters max out at 75%, so you will always take shield damage from a hit.

The Condas, Cutters and Corvettes with nigh invulnerable shields aren't doing this solely with resistant boosters, most of the boosters on these ships will in fact be heavy duty shield booster modifications.

The ships you are going to hurt with your planned nerf won't be the big ships with 8 utilities to spare, or even the meta build FDLs. You will be hurting players with smaller ships with only 4 utility slots. These ships have a choice of sacrificing the benefits of any other utility to gain some resistance with 3 or 4 resistant boosters.

I have an Asp with 75% resistant shields, butits shield strengthis only 92MJ, hardle excessive. But it is survivable. Nerf the resistance and this ship won't survive an interdiction.

I have resistant shields on a Vulture. It is the first time since 2.1 hit that I have been able to survive in a CZ for more than 30 seconds. Please don'tdestroy this ship for me.

Please don't nerf resistant shield boosters. We all know how FD goes with the nerf bat, all too many ships. weapons, utilities have been rendered a complete waste of time by the FD nerf bat.

As an NPC has just said to me "You are making a big mistake."

 

[digitalscream]

This is a very fair point. Those of us who choose to stay in smaller ships always tend to bear the brunt of nerfs like this. Look at the SCB nerf - prior to that, I had a kickass Vulture which could hang with the best of them (yes, even the ships who were the intended target of the nerf). After that...it was almost useless in PvP.

Here's a thought - make the nerf mass-related, so it only kicks in on ships above a certain mass. I'm sure it'd be pretty easy to come up with an in-game jusification for that.

 

[lysan]

I find that constant nerf and buff is not good for the overall game. You don't see this in other games that frequently.

 

[Siranui]

Sandro. If you think resistances become "monumental", you are clearlyplaying a different game to the rest of us.
Resistant shield boosters max out at 75%, so you will always take shield damage from a hit.

A quarter of the damage. Which then regenerates four times faster, effectively as the regen rate remains the same on a shield effectively four times stronger. You stick 6 things on your ship and you multiply shields by a factor of four. That is monumental.

It makes ships comfortably more than five times tougher to kill, while weapon modifications have at most doubled DPS.

You also probably in error claiming 75% resists on your Asp. Due to the diminishing returns system, you'd need a much higher resist than that on paper to reach an actual 75%. I don't think you can do that on the Asp, by a long chalk.It's the big ships are getting far more benefit out of this than the small ones to boot. Small ships can stack less of them and a difference of two boosters (25%) is effectively the difference between a multiplication level of damage. 50% resist halves damage, 75% quarters it, and 25% isn't really doing much. You need a lot of slots to make them truly effective. I believe your supposition that small ships are getting more mileage out of this to be very erroneous.

They also need balancing with the heavies. As it is, resists are just better than heavy boosters right now. They make your shields effectively bigger and regen faster while still being lighter and lower power than heavy duty boosts.

 

[Mc80]

I find that constant nerf and buff is not good for the overall game. You don't see this in other games that frequently.

Yes, yes you do. A quick look on most multiplayer titles will tell you that.

 

[Shintai]

Stacked resistance simply needs a nerf. Same applied for stacked damage.

 

[hs0003]

I have an Asp with 75% resistant shields, butits shield strengthis only 92MJ, hardle excessive. But it is survivable. Nerf the resistance and this ship won't survive an interdiction.

No you don't. Even a dev with 10 resistance boosters at 20% resistance each couldn't get it below 69% resistance.
After 50% there is an extra layer of diminishing returns.

 

[bitstorm]

Just on this, if the proposal is diminishing returns, wouldn't this benefit smaller ships?

I mean if just one gives you a large boost, say +10%, and the second not so much say +5%, it weights towards less slots giving you more bang for your buck?

Under non-proportional, two slots gives 20%, one 10%, for proportional 15% and 10%, meaning small ships get a bump relative larger ships?

 

[Poseidal]

Just on this, if the proposal is diminishing returns, wouldn't this benefit smaller ships?

I mean if just one gives you a large boost, say +10%, and the second not so much say +5%, it weights towards less slots giving you more bang for your buck?

Under non-proportional, two slots gives 20%, one 10%, for proportional 15% and 10%, meaning small ships get a bump relative larger ships?

Good point.

Also, with diminishing returns (which IMO should apply for Heavy Duty as well), other defences like PD, or things like scanners start looking more valuable.

 

[metatheurgist]

Well...people wouldn't be stacking heat resistance if there weren't ridiculously overpowered heat weapons floating around.

 

[Siranui]

Just on this, if the proposal is diminishing returns, wouldn't this benefit smaller ships?

I mean if just one gives you a large boost, say +10%, and the second not so much say +5%, it weights towards less slots giving you more bang for your buck?

Under non-proportional, two slots gives 20%, one 10%, for proportional 15% and 10%, meaning small ships get a bump relative larger ships?

No. *The Proposal* is not for diminishing returns.

The *current mechanic* has diminishing returns after 50% resist is met.

The OP is in error in believing that adding all his resists together is equalling 75% and therefore he has 75% resist.

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Well...people wouldn't be stacking heat resistance if there weren't ridiculously overpowered heat weapons floating around.

Yes they would.

They aren't going to say "Oh, there's no heat weapons, I'll take a few of these resist boosters off", are they now?

 

[bitstorm]

No. *The Proposal* is not for diminishing returns.

The *current mechanic* has diminishing returns after 50% resist is met.

But if the proposal is to increase diminishing returns then the same argument applies?

 

[Siranui]

But if the proposal is to increase diminishing returns then the same argument applies?

Yeah, sure it does. You'd get more by having less. I'm not sure why the OP thinks that it'll hit him harder.

 

[Hatchepsut]

Hi CMDRs
Just trying to figure out what everyone is talking about.
Either everyone is EXTRAORDINARILY lucky on their engineer slot machines or we must be talking about a different game.
After farming materials for MONTHS ... ....I have managed to make 1 of my Boosters +6 more resistant to Laser and Kinetic fire (so basically minus 34 resist instead of minus 40) but twice the boost.
Another of my boosters greatly increased to 41% shield boost at the cost of it weighing 12 tons ... and it has a -2 loss to kinetic ( so basically my resist is only -36 now)
The other boosters have about 25% to 30% boost to shield pool but no discernible resistance but once again TWICE the tonnage.
So my ship is now heavier and harder to control and does not jump as far as it possibly could. SO as punishment they want to nerf the current resistance?
I can perhaps DREAM one day of achieving this so called 75% resist at the cost of ALL MY GAME time spent on Engineer Slot machine games.
I can safely say that MOST players would only ever achieve AVERAGE results from engineers and that FD should not worry too much about spoiling or Nerfing anything.

 

[Nugstar]

Hi CMDRs
Just trying to figure out what everyone is talking about.
Either everyone is EXTRAORDINARILY lucky on their engineer slot machines or we must be talking about a different game.
After farming materials for MONTHS ... ....I have managed to make 1 of my Boosters +6 more resistant to Laser and Kinetic fire (so basically minus 34 resist instead of minus 40) but twice the boost.
Another of my boosters greatly increased to 41% shield boost at the cost of it weighing 12 tons ... and it has a -2 loss to kinetic ( so basically my resist is only -36 now)
The other boosters have about 25% to 30% boost to shield pool but no discernible resistance but once again TWICE the tonnage.
So my ship is now heavier and harder to control and does not jump as far as it possibly could. SO as punishment they want to nerf the current resistance?
I can perhaps DREAM one day of achieving this so called 75% resist at the cost of ALL MY GAME time spent on Engineer Slot machine games.
I can safely say that MOST players would only ever achieve AVERAGE results from engineers and that FD should not worry too much about spoiling or Nerfing anything.

You'd be surprised how many pvp players max out resistance on shields. It's not difficult and it doesn't take too long either.

 

[biohazard15]

I do agree with OP - do not touch shield boosters! You want to balance PVP, but in the process of doing so you will hurt many PVE builds, especially small ships and explorers who use light shields and E-class resistant boosters.

 

[bitstorm]

Yeah, sure it does. You'd get more by having less. I'm not sure why the OP thinks that it'll hit him harder.

Well the issue being presented by OP is one of player related to an NPC.

Yes if resistance stacking is increased then ALL players will lose power relative to NPCs (who are prevented from using Engineer mods ).

But small player ships I think will gain a (potential) boost relative to large player ships.

It's the three way relationship that complicates it a bit, and at which point in that relationship the balance is being assessed.

 

[m0rl0ck]

Removing engineer modified shield boosters of course just makes too much sense

 

[Dean Demon]

Just imagine if FDev actually disabled stacking, this would pretty much not have the need to nerf and would make for some very interesting builds and approaches to gameplay as well but it's worth considering.

 

[Siranui]

It's the three way relationship that complicates it a bit, and at which point in that relationship the balance is being assessed.

There isn't really much balance at the moment, though: It's resist boosts or go home. They make PvP combats last a week and are hands-down unbalanced against NPCs who lack access to such modifications.

As mentioned, doubling or tripling shield hits is a huge advantage over the NPCs. Do we *need* to be three times more hardy than them AND have twice the DPS in order to beat them? Is that 'balanced' against the environment?

Anecdotally, I use resist boosters and haven't had a ship shot out from under me in several weeks. Haz REZ in the FDL with resist boosts is so brainlessly easy that I switched to a courier. The resist boost path is simply extremely good and far better than the heavy booster alternative.