Shield Cells OP

[fergal]

If they can't be removed or changed their cost should go up.

A size 2 beam laser cost about 300000 cr.
It has a mass of 4T
It need around 1 MW of power.

If I want to increase my damage I can buy a second beam laser.
This will cost the same 300000 cr add 4T more of mass and need another 1 MW of power.

This wont double the damage output though, the power distributor can't be "doubled" so the 2 beams will shoot for half as long.

Twice the cost, not twice the overall damage.

A3 shields, about 500000 cr, 5T, 2.4 MW.

A3 shield cell, 50000 cr, 5T, 0 MW.

You get 6 charges on the A3, thats adding a possible 6 full shields worth of health. If you need more than that it does nothing.

That seems too cheap to me.

 

[heartorhead]

Cost balancing is not good way. It does not matter to people who own Anaconda or other big ships. Effect is too strong. If a B4 bank has 11 charges I wonder how much have the higher class for an Anaconda. It will be simply immune in hands of a player.
If banks will stay like this and NPCs will get them too, the fights will last even more than now.

 

[Miimis Maks]

Does it matter what size/class shield cell bank is? Theres b2 cell bank which has 9 cellbanks just for 20k. Works well on cobra.

 

[Blackat]

yes size does matter.. however putting huge cell banks on small shields is useless.

big shields (size 6) benefit a lot more from cell banks size 5 then size 1 for example.. size 1 will hardly refresh a ring .. size 5 will almost fully refill it

As a thumb of rule.. put a cell bank 1 size smaller then your shield and your fine

also bigger size is more charges

 

[defekt]

I think they are a good idea, they remove the "massive alpha damage gank" from a pvp fight and actually force players to fight instead of just stacking up on whatever high-alpha weapons are fotm.

Then allow shield potions to be used once and only once.

Doesn't matter how it's cut, these shield potions cheapen the ED experience significantly. Personally, I'd prefer to see them removed entirely.

 

[Jordan Cobalt]

Then allow shield potions to be used once and only once.

Doesn't matter how it's cut, these shield potions cheapen the ED experience significantly. Personally, I'd prefer to see them removed entirely.

Only once will make them irrelevant to combat. Have them "recharge" as shields would making them effectively a second shield generator. Then, Give them the downsides of such(high cost, high sys drain and power draw).

Or even remove them and let us equip 2 shield generators, but removing them takes away another internal component which are few and far between.

 

[Im_Lost]

They need at least a 1 minute cooldown and the amount of charges halving tbh.

Or they should cause huge overheating and damage the shield generator module, to many uses and it just breaks and goes offline completely until repaired.

Either way they should be limited to 1.

 

[fergal]

Cost balancing is not good way. It does not matter to people who own Anaconda or other big ships. Effect is too strong. If a B4 bank has 11 charges I wonder how much have the higher class for an Anaconda. It will be simply immune in hands of a player.
If banks will stay like this and NPCs will get them too, the fights will last even more than now.

I think you misunderstand the costs. I agree the cr cost is basically meaningless once you have some money.

The mass will change the jump range and speed so isn't meaningless, but the mass of equipment is much more important to eagles and vipers, and not as important to pythons and anacondas.

The power needs to be looked at. Power is used right now to balance the equipment you put on your ship. Each ship has a hard cap on max power and you can't just put everything you want on each ship.

 

[defekt]

Only once will make them irrelevant to combat.

No, it will put them in the place of being a 'caught off guard, better chance of avoiding jail' play, and not a 'sit here all day, hardly moving, and still winning' play as they currently are.

It's a very great shame that FD chose to take this route; ED should be better than adding healing potions.

 

[CARLOS3]

yes, yes, the killer boys can not even back
kill fast enough. looooooooolll

 

[Jordan Cobalt]

No, it will put them in the place of being a 'caught off guard, better chance of avoiding jail' play, and not a 'sit here all day, hardly moving, and still winning' play as they currently are.

It's a very great shame that FD chose to take this route; ED should be better than adding healing potions.

What would be the difference between the different grades? The classes already effect the amount your shields recharge.

And if you can only use it once without a trip to the station to resupply, why even buy one? It just adds a chore between each use or won't matter in any other battle.

I'm on your side that it should be toned down but, once is too little to the point of uselessness. Once a battle maybe, but anything worse than that is really bad.

 

[Don_Von_Hulio]

Anyone who says NPCs dont use shield cells should be discredited for lack of ingame experience.

Afaik the only things they dont use are fuel scoops.

 

[fergal]

I bought a new viper.
Put all D equipment on it. And added a B3 and an A2 shield cell. Would have put a size 1 shield cell on too but the station I bought the viper at only had those 2 types.

The B3 cell has 10 charges, the A2 has 5. Both of them fully charge a D3 shield in about 4 seconds, so 15 extra shield charges.

I went and accepted another assassinate elite anaconda mission, you would think the empire wouldn't still be unfriendly after about 20 of them

First problem was the viper, I'm used to A thrusters, the D aren't good, I wasn't able to avoid fire like I normally can, but I had 15 shield cells. I put 2 size 1 multicannons and 2 size 1 beam lasers on it.
The smaller beams with the D distributor took much longer to take down the anacondas shields.

The insurance cost of my other viper is about 150000cr I think.
This one is 15734cr.

15 shield cells, at 100cr each to make up for about 3 million cr in upgrades.

[video=youtube_share;icBPr2Ma-8U]http://youtu.be/icBPr2Ma-8U[/video]

I'm not sure what happens when I activate my shield cell key binding with more than one shield cell so I set up 2 separate fire groups, swapping between them was slightly annoying the first few times, but not that big a deal.

 

[5PIDER]

NPCs are like the clone troopers form Star Wars, they couldn't hit the side of a planet. I pop PvP Cobras with shield cells daily using heat-seekers and multi-cannons.

 

[Jordan Cobalt]

NPCs are like the clone troopers form Star Wars, they couldn't hit the side of a planet. I pop PvP Cobras with shield cells daily using heat-seekers and multi-cannons.

And how much does that loadout cost in ammo and power costs? Im willing to bet waaay more than the shield cells.

A quad rail viper can take out a shield cell cobra but the cost is insane.

 

[Antenociti]

Its like healing potion in any mmorpg.
It needs at least some kind of cooldown. Or make it generate heat in your ship (shield generator overworked? or something),or take energy from system so it would require some tactic as you cant spam then everytime. It breaks PvE.

they really need to ditch shield=cells entirely, and make the use of shields/systems, and variety of types of shields, much more important.

I really cant see how shield-cells do anything but render parts of the 3-way power system being largely invalid: you dont need to manage shields if you've got shield cells.

So just remove them entirely - if shield cells were a plug-in for some gaming aspect that was being abused (or design goal not reached) then sort that problem out, dont band-aid it with shield cells.


quite happy to see them canned entirely.

 

[5PIDER]

And how much does that loadout cost in ammo and power costs? Im willing to bet waaay more than the shield cells.

A quad rail viper can take out a shield cell cobra but the cost is insane.

I'm way past the money grind. My credit balance is not a concern. Full restock is 16,000Cr

 

[fergal]

I'm way past the money grind. My credit balance is not a concern. Full restock is 16,000Cr

aren't railguns about 1/2 a million each?
Not sure how you could power 4 of them on a viper, would they use 5-6 MW?

 

[Defacto]

NPCs are like the clone troopers form Star Wars, they couldn't hit the side of a planet. I pop PvP Cobras with shield cells daily using heat-seekers and multi-cannons.

That is, like, really good. Nice!

I don't see what that has to do with the problems that shields cells have right now, though.

If you never could take out players that used shield cells at all, then I don't see how anyone, in any way, possibly could argue that Shield cells are a problem.

 

[heartorhead]

I'm not sure what happens when I activate my shield cell key binding with more than one shield cell so I set up 2 separate fire groups, swapping between them was slightly annoying the first few times, but not that big a deal.

If you use key binded then both (or more) banks fire at once. So using fire groups is a must. I ticketed this (allow only one bank or make system use them up one after the other).