Shield Booster Diminishing Returns- Stop the Stack

Snoiperman

S
How long do you want to shoot at someone's shields? 1 minute? 2 minutes? 10 minutes?

https://s.orbis.zone/coue (My build)
This build can handle 23 minutes of 200 mostly absolute damage per second coming at it. The counters to waiting 30 minutes to drop the shields is to use Reverb Torps or Mines, both of which can be countered easily, or building a super DPS machine like this (https://s.orbis.zone/couj) that has 1200 DPS a second yet still takes a minimum of 8 whole minutes of overheating to drop the shields. Nobody wants to fight for upwards of forty minutes.

This one can handle again, 22+ minutes of constant damage per second, with the only counters better DPS or reverb cascade torpedoes or mines. Nobody wants to fight for 40 minutes.

This is not fun; who wants to wait 30-45 (accounting for breaks while in jousting, etc.) minutes to drop the shields on a cutter? I propose a solution; Make the shield booster and engineering have greatly increased yields for the first 2-4 boosters, (depending on ship) but exponentially decrease returns for the rest. This is to give greater incentive to players to take advantage of other utilities, and to give greater diversity. Fdev could even use this to create new content, like new combat utilities that can be used for certain things. Second, if implemented correctly, this change would drastically change the abnormally high kill times for ships of large and medium sizes, and allow for quicker, yet still long enough battles.

Hypothetical shield booster values:
1a G5 HD
1x +55%
2x +60%
3x +64%
4x +50%
5x +39%
6x +24%
7x + 20%
8x +12.5%
Even this may not be enough to stop the shield meta, since a 200% increase in shields with 4 boosters is still extremely high.
 

Trollymctrollerson

T
I agree something really should be done. In another thread i had suggested doubling or tripling the power draw of HD booster blueprints. That would allow hyper obstinate 'PVE' people to keep the boosters on their unarmed trader builds but anyone equipping weapons would have to make some serious sacrifices to either offense or defense.
 

gorankar

gorankar
PvPers, and gankers asking Fdev to sacrifice everyone else's playstyle to improve their own again.
Though, I will agree emphatically that any further defensive and offensive power creep needs to be opposed.
What I don't want, is to go back through all of my ships and refit them because someone wants to be able to make "ship go boom" quicker. Few people like to give up what they already have, to give someone else something we don't even agree they should have.
 

Danieros

D
I agree that shields are out of line, but I hate arbitrary diminishing returns like this with a passion.

Engineered power plants give so much bonus power that we've been able to pretty much cap out on shield boosters, with blueprints that increase their individual power draw, fit thermal kinetic weapons (stuff like PAs and railguns, which were meant to be pretty power hungry) and still not run into power problems.

I was thinking more along the lines of coupling all shield boosters power draw together, so the biggest offenders (heavy duty and resistence augmented blueprints) would generate massive extra power costs if you're running a ton of boosters.
 

Trollymctrollerson

T
Right now a HD g5 booster increases power draw by 25% over a stock OA booster. I think if there was a linear relationship between shield reinforcement and power draw it would help. 50% shield boost =50% increased power draw. 65% boost for 65% more power. The current system doesn't even make sense. The shield is an energy barrier measured in MJ. Where did that energy come from if it got dramatically more energy put into it for a minimal amount of extra power? I know its a farce to attempt applying logic or expect consistency in this game but seriously, the shield boosters operate on magic right now.
 

CMDR DragonHorn

CMDR DragonHorn
2 easy solutions would solve it IMO:
  • Swap Boosters to Cell Bank: Utility > Optional. Because Cell Banks are Utility by function, and boosters are like hull/module reinforcements. It's a flat buff with no drawbacks.
  • Make each SB, especially of bigger size, draw helluva lot more power, effectively overcapping any monstered, overcharged PP if stacked. Because right now, SBs really operate on magic.

It will make few things better:
  • You'll have to commit for either having fat shield or fat hull with MRPs, because right now you can easily have both.
  • Shields are meta at the moment and trump hulls on every square, but with crippling power requirement, you won't be able to go crazy with it, like you can now. HRP/MRP doesn't need any power, so with sheer capacity, hulltank might become actually viable.
  • Standards/Prismatics will heavily rely on SCBs, and you will have to find nice balance between bringing more HS or grill yourself like a juicy steak.
  • Bi-Weaves with much lower res capacity will now be quite risky, so not 90% of good choice for every ship, and more fun.

Of course it would take certain amount of balancing, like taking good look at power/cap proportion, preferably taking a good long look at corrosive experimental and at modules durability overall, but it's not impossible.

Right now, running risk free shield tank on every ship is silly, at least in PVE that is.

P.S. Extra suggestion (wanted make thread about it, really) is to introduce stealth - rework SR. Possibly introduce new hull plating that makes target acquisition much harder, especially based on heat profile (heavily buffing regular values) and as a bonus, for that hull to stop shining like a christmas tree in NV, effectively making it immune. I think someone suggested it already, possibly thousand time over, but anyway, whaddya say?
 
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Captain Willard

Captain Willard
gorankar said:
PvPers, and gankers asking Fdev to sacrifice everyone else's playstyle to improve their own again.
Though, I will agree emphatically that any further defensive and offensive power creep needs to be opposed.
What I don't want, is to go back through all of my ships and refit them because someone wants to be able to make "ship go boom" quicker. Few people like to give up what they already have, to give someone else something we don't even agree they should have.
Click to expand...
To true. Engineering change to owning 20 ships with legacy modules was a nightmare
 

Thomas Wagner

T
Snoiperman said:
How long do you want to shoot at someone's shields? 1 minute? 2 minutes? 10 minutes?

https://s.orbis.zone/coue (My build)
This build can handle 23 minutes of 200 mostly absolute damage per second coming at it.
Click to expand...

Hello!

I have a question.

Is this the ultimate shield build?

On the paper this is looks like a powerful build but he has:

-40% Distributor Draw penalty and
-10% Broken generation rate.
-10% Power Draw

On my big ships i have Thermal resistance + thermo block on the Prismatics
 

Bigmaec

Bigmaec
Thomas Wagner said:
Hello!

I have a question.

Is this the ultimate shield build?

On the paper this is looks like a powerful build but he has:

-40% Distributor Draw penalty and
-10% Broken generation rate.
-10% Power Draw

On my big ships i have Thermal resistance + thermo block on the Prismatics
Click to expand...

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous
s.orbis.zone s.orbis.zone

Your (assumed) build with thermal resistance and thermo block has 1800 mj absolute less, and between 1000 and 4000 mj less in the resistance categories.

On prismatics, going absolute is just the best.

edit: and the distributor doesn't count, you either reboot your prismatics or jump out. Relying on regeneration on prismatics doesn't work.
 

Makaan

Makaan
Tbh, FDev should have probably put a cap on how many SB's you could install from day one. Say half of available utility slots, so 4 on the Cutter, Vette, Conda for example.

Too late for that now though I think, unless they allow you to get engineering materials back from trading in a module to an engineer (or a certain percentage at least).
 

Daniel Klimchuk

Daniel Klimchuk
Don't think anything needs to be changed here. Large ships have good shield and hull strength but lack manoeuvrability, medium and small ships have worse shield and hull strength but are much faster and can easily outrun and outmanoeuvre a large ship. This allows for two different playstyles and makes combat more interesting.

To compensate for its shield tanking potential, the Cutter has the worst firepower of the big three, and considering that it can also be outmanoeuvred by smaller ships, one or two average PvP builds can easily take it down, provided that their pilots aren't lazy gankers who expect all their victims to not have decent defences. ;)
 

DemiserofD

D
Personally, I think that the shield meta should be countered by making other utility modules more necessary. The problem right now, is that there is little reason to use anything except for shield boosters. If, for example, missiles were made more threatening than they currently are, then that wouldn't be possible anymore, meaning people would need to swap utility slots out for Point defense or ECM, which would indirectly results in lower shield totals.
 

Snoiperman

S
Thomas Wagner said:
Hello!

I have a question.

Is this the ultimate shield build?

On the paper this is looks like a powerful build but he has:

-40% Distributor Draw penalty and
-10% Broken generation rate.
-10% Power Draw

On my big ships i have Thermal resistance + thermo block on the Prismatics
Click to expand...
This is close to the optimal build, and using prismatics is the meta for PVP, since it gives much higher base shield totals which lead to drastically inflated shield values. The distributor draw really does not matter with 4 pips in shields and broken regen won't matter since you would have left before your shields have dropped. For a cutter, the meta is 3 resistance boosters and the rest heavy duty with experimentals of your choice.
DemiserofD said:
Personally, I think that the shield meta should be countered by making other utility modules more necessary. The problem right now, is that there is little reason to use anything except for shield boosters. If, for example, missiles were made more threatening than they currently are, then that wouldn't be possible anymore, meaning people would need to swap utility slots out for Point defense or ECM, which would indirectly results in lower shield totals.
Click to expand...
If you do so, the meta will shift towards 1 ecm or pdc and 7 boosters since there is no incentive for less boosters. Boosters will still be extremely broken, with 8x boosters giving a total of 592% better shields than normal and using 2 ecms or pdcs would still make boosters OP. (444% better shields than normal ships)
Also, buffing missiles gives another drawback: Missiles will become main weapons rather than the support weapons they were meant to be. Although this might reduce shield totals, a Cutter that takes 15+ minutes to kill with 1 ecm and 2 pdcs is still wayyyy too much, which is why I support giving diminishing returns onto shield boosters.
 
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