Well I do have not dared to test it, when I land on high G's and stop the engines (and at very low height) I take serious shield damage, and some times hull damage with my Krait...
Straight lithobraking likely would destroy the ship....
Should Lithobreaking be more dangerous?
- Thread starter Fost
- Start date
Straight lithobraking likely would destroy the ship....
Plus there is one other thing...anybody who has seen AUTOPILOT messing its landings would like shields protecting against ground collisions very much. Some months ago autopilot decided to fly my Cutter straight to ground, and when that did not work repeated it again. My hands flew pretty fast to button for dismissing ship...
Heh, thats actually a situation where it should be fine even realistically speaking. Nothing fleshy on board to get red misted by the deceleration.
It only takes a few tons of HRPs to double the hull integrity of an Anaconda and few more to radically boost it's shielding. Even most smaller ships will run out of slots before their jump range is seriously compromised.
But much like jump range or speed, how much is enough? there's always the potential an explorer might meet a situation where they want more
(one of the advantages of travelling on a carrier, we can bring different ships built for different purposes).
I disagree what you are saying in low G planets you survive . You try that on higher G worlds and you do not survive so I think they have worked it out already
I just don't think flying directly into the ground should be survivable in any circumstances and that would make flying low more fun in the same way it is with combat sim games.
I agree that this would have to still work somehow with High G planets so it's possible to land on those.
But much like jump range or speed, how much is enough? there's always the potential an explorer might meet a situation where they want more
(one of the advantages of travelling on a carrier, we can bring different ships built for different purposes).
The fact that most defensive modules decline in protection vs. mass as HRP size or shield booster rating increase essentially decides that for you. Just fill the ship with what you absolutely need, then, if it's a ship with a lot of base hull, add D1 lightweight + deep plating HRPs until all free internal slots are full and as many E rated heavy duty + supercapacitor shield boosters as can be powered. For ships with less base hull, make the HRPs heavy duty.
There are some exceptions. Most notably small ships with weak shields may benefit most from guardian boosters, rather than conventional boosters or HRPs.
In general, this maximum protection for minimum mass, while filling as many slots as practical, approach will result in a ship that is not going to explode from almost any single conceivable collision. There are probably some outliers, but if one isn't trying for every last ly or fraction there of, and one has access to the components, there is little reason not to take advantage of all that low-opportunity-cost defensive inflation.
It certainly is much easier to build a ship with few significant compromises now. I regularly fly a Cobra MkIII that is unarmed but otherwise capable of fulfilling all my daily non-faction support needs, it jumps over 40ly, boosts to 605 or so, has decent shields & hull and can repair itself. Nor sure whether I could boost it into the ground & survive but I have clipped mountains at high speed and shrugged it off.
However two of my best moments in the game (while exploring) have come while flying ships very much compromised in one direction or another.
One was flying a max jump range conda that couldn't even boost back to dock with the data that would get me to Triple Elite in early 2016 (I persuaded a friend to escort me in, I had sweat pouring off my brow for an entirely uneventful 500ls while they flew next to me wondering what all the fuss was about), the other was getting a 19ly Corvette to Beagle Point in 2017 (took 7 months, didn't dock for over a year).
I like to plan for contingencies, I am rarely reckless but that is, as I am sure you will agree, quite a boring way to play. Trying to achieve something your ship isn't built to do (and a high-G shieldless landing without taking damage would be a good example) keeps me entertained.
That you have too many reinforcements and boosters to back up your high end shields, that or you aren’t crashing right, I can and recently have got the full rebuy while not even at full throttle and was nowhere near the boost button.
It's a catch 22. Play to the best of one's ability and challenge evaporates, or handicap one's self...which doesn't feel right to me either.
I misjudged a surface approach last night* - wasn't paying enough attention, esp. to the gravity - and almost destroyed my DBX**. Took out the shields and left the hull at 20%.
Hadn't boosted, but realised a little too late that I wasn't approaching in a gentle/useful "boop the nose" kind of lithobraking fashion, but more of a non-gentle "crunch"; possibly worsened it by pulling up the nose just in time to belly flop. Doh. (I didn't record it but I think I hit at "only" 250 - 300 m/s.)
This got me to wondering about how the shield and hull are affected by impacts and that led me here...
I was convinced I had read somewhere that hull reinforcements didn't help with impacts (or some kinds of impacts?) since certain damage is proportional to the hull strength, but this thread suggests that actually HRPs do help with collision damage so I have presumably got that mixed up with something else. There's also a hint above that belly flopping might make it worse - is that the case? Pointers welcomed.
As for shields, is there a way (other than experiment!) to guesstimate how much you need on a given ship to be able to smack into a planet at say 300 m/s and not take it down?
[* I was approaching an "impact site" at the time, for added irony]
[** My DBX has a chequered past so it's a rather weird build that I should redo at some point. Started life as a bubble taxi (early in my ED career, so limited engineer access), then had adjustments for various other tasks, including mats gathering, light exploring, and most recently jumping around for ground missions and searching for pre-upgraded kit. Am pondering Dolphin and Krait II for doing a better job on the ground mission stuff.]
Hadn't boosted, but realised a little too late that I wasn't approaching in a gentle/useful "boop the nose" kind of lithobraking fashion, but more of a non-gentle "crunch"; possibly worsened it by pulling up the nose just in time to belly flop. Doh. (I didn't record it but I think I hit at "only" 250 - 300 m/s.)
This got me to wondering about how the shield and hull are affected by impacts and that led me here...
I was convinced I had read somewhere that hull reinforcements didn't help with impacts (or some kinds of impacts?) since certain damage is proportional to the hull strength, but this thread suggests that actually HRPs do help with collision damage so I have presumably got that mixed up with something else. There's also a hint above that belly flopping might make it worse - is that the case? Pointers welcomed.
As for shields, is there a way (other than experiment!
) to guesstimate how much you need on a given ship to be able to smack into a planet at say 300 m/s and not take it down?[* I was approaching an "impact site" at the time, for added irony
][** My DBX has a chequered past so it's a rather weird build that I should redo at some point. Started life as a bubble taxi (early in my ED career, so limited engineer access), then had adjustments for various other tasks, including mats gathering, light exploring, and most recently jumping around for ground missions and searching for pre-upgraded kit. Am pondering Dolphin and Krait II for doing a better job on the ground mission stuff.]
I misjudged a surface approach last night* - wasn't paying enough attention, esp. to the gravity - and almost destroyed my DBX**. Took out the shields and left the hull at 20%.
Hadn't boosted, but realised a little too late that I wasn't approaching in a gentle/useful "boop the nose" kind of lithobraking fashion, but more of a non-gentle "crunch"; possibly worsened it by pulling up the nose just in time to belly flop. Doh. (I didn't record it but I think I hit at "only" 250 - 300 m/s.)
This got me to wondering about how the shield and hull are affected by impacts and that led me here...
I was convinced I had read somewhere that hull reinforcements didn't help with impacts (or some kinds of impacts?) since certain damage is proportional to the hull strength, but this thread suggests that actually HRPs do help with collision damage so I have presumably got that mixed up with something else. There's also a hint above that belly flopping might make it worse - is that the case? Pointers welcomed.
As for shields, is there a way (other than experiment!
[* I was approaching an "impact site" at the time, for added irony
[** My DBX has a chequered past so it's a rather weird build that I should redo at some point. Started life as a bubble taxi (early in my ED career, so limited engineer access), then had adjustments for various other tasks, including mats gathering, light exploring, and most recently jumping around for ground missions and searching for pre-upgraded kit. Am pondering Dolphin and Krait II for doing a better job on the ground mission stuff.]
I believe resistance boosts don't help with impact damage, which counts as absolute damage (I am no expert on this).
Practice, and experience will allow you to find what's optimum for you. I have a reasonable idea of how careful I need to be in any given situation to survive in the ship I'm in, whether that's a rough landing while exploring or being shot at by other players while I try to complete an objective, but still sometimes I get caught out & that's when it gets interesting
Slightly off-topic, but does anyone remember the “good old days” of the first beta in 2014 when just lightly scrapping a nav beacon would destroy a Cobra? Those things were lethal! Good times.
Actually, come to think of it, I became so wary of nav beacons at that time that to this day I back off really slowly if I find myself getting too close during a scan. Can anyone confirm if they are still as deadly? Or do I just have an irrational (though surely understandable) fear of nav beacons?
Actually, come to think of it, I became so wary of nav beacons at that time that to this day I back off really slowly if I find myself getting too close during a scan. Can anyone confirm if they are still as deadly? Or do I just have an irrational (though surely understandable) fear of nav beacons?
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Pretty sure I wrapped myself around one a while ago (I like to refer to it as 'compromising') and didn't do anything more than fuzz my shields a little.
Well that’s reassuring. Maybe I should get out there and try a few light scrapes with nav beacons, as a sort of desensitisation therapy. Like arachnophobes do by handling spiders. Or, “how I learned to stop worrying and love the beacon”.
The trick is to make yourself look small and unthreatening, so you don't spook them.
If you take an Adder you have the additional benefit that you can barely see the beacon, and you won't be so scared yourself.
Wouldn't that be realistic though? The damage goes both ways. Cast in the never ending nerf/buff wars, that'd be a buff to hull tanks. Not exactly a bad thing, no?
There is also the C&P aspect of ramming to consider though, the rules on whether and at what point collision damage becomes a crime would need to be considered.
You make a decent point though, any change would favour one aspect of play at the expense of another and motivating players to toughen up their hulls would have plenty of benefits.
Having lost my Imperial Cutter (valued at >1bn credits, you can calculate the rebuy) with around 1bn worth of exploration data on the way back from Distant Worlds II due to a landing mishap (and despite having shields and a non-paper hull), I can say quite definitively that lithobraking has its risks.