My take on it, is that shield boosters shouldn't increase your shield strength/resistance by a percentage, but by a fixed amount. A shield booster is the same size on all ships, so why does it boost larger ships shields more then a smaller ships? It makes no sense.
Simple proposed fix to PVE and PVP balance
- Thread starter Part-TimeWarrior
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- balance engineering pve pvp shields
percentage actually makes sense because they are shield boosters, not shield generators.
they work to augment the containment field that your shield generator envelops your ship with to cycle an energy field around as a form of protection. its basically projecting electrons around your ship and keeping them there with electromagnetic fields.
the boosters just strengthen that field but they dont generate energy themselves your shield generator is still doing all the hard work, as such theres an upper-limit to how much energy your shield can keep in the field without aditional help because its still consuming power to keep electrons cycling around your ship as electrons will decay or fly off without being in a stable energy state. So think of them as auxiliary field projectors.
If one projector goes down then that reduces the containment capability in that section of the field. They increase capacity by slowing the rate at which electrons decay. Eventually the shield generator will reach equilibrium for the field and anything more will immediately decay into space.
This is part of why shields turn off during silent running to reduce electronic emissions.
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No it doesn't make sense. Why would a shield booster boost a bigger shield more then a smaller shield. They are the same size, use the same amount of power but for some inexplicable reason the boost bigger shields more.
Nope, not seeing it. It should be a set amount, not a percentage.
I'd love ED to part ways with the current ship building approach that can transform a trader ship or a luxury passenger liner in a murder gunboat with incredibly strong shields and/or incredibly resistant hulls (read as: full of SB, SCB, MRP, HRP) and remove the PVP (military) builds entirely.
But i do not see that happening.
Back to the suggestion, no thank you.
There are specific means to deal with shields:
So, there are ways, but why playing outside of the Meta?
But i do not see that happening.
Back to the suggestion, no thank you.
There are specific means to deal with shields:
- reverb cascade mines and torpedoes can kill shield generators even on most powerful ships
- flechettes can ignore shields entirely and directly deal hull and module damage
- size 1 Cytoscramblers give even smalls ships the ability to wear down the shields of larger and slower ships. With Phasing, it can damage the hulls too while them shields are active.
So, there are ways, but why playing outside of the Meta?
As I recall it ( I might be wrong here), they announced it for beta, and then the outcry was so big that FDev did not even test it in beta.... which is sad, as that is what they can do in betas, tests how things works and see what people do with it... not everything in beta needs to be approved for implementation...
[rant about stupidity of shield booster engineering]
E-rated heavy duty, 2T (0.5T), 50.7% (4%) boost to shield, draws 0.25MW (0.20MW)
compared to
A-rated heavy duty, 14T (3.5T), 73% (20%) boost to shield, draws 1.50MW (1.20MW)
Somehow E-rated boosters can be enhanced almost 13 times from its original value, while an A-rated booster can only be increased almost 4 times....
And that is because the boost from the engineering is not BOOSTING the actual value, but ADDS to the actual value.
ie.
Engineering is not to affect the current value of the shield boost, ie. if the engineering was give 50% more, it would make more sense for it to work like this
4% boost increased by 50% -> 4% *1.5 -> 6% shield boost! not as it currently seems to works, 4%+50% -> 54%
There is a huge difference between 6% and 54%.... or 9x the difference....
and if we do the same with A-rated
20% boost increase by 50% -> 20 *1.5 -> 30% boost, not as it currently seems to works, 20%+50% -> 70%
And yes, this would mostly make the E-rated, D-rated etc shield boosters pretty useless, now they are valid, since engineering still gives them a really HUGE boost with out very few of the negatives.. like much less impact of their mass...
[/rant about stupidity of shield booster engineering]
The metagame is about popularity, not about effectiveness (it is by definition, the game beyond the game, or the application of knowledge from outside the game mechanics). Sure, they are often quite correlated, but in a well designed and balanced game the metagame should continually evolve as players find new strategies or fashions change even if the actual gameplay mechanics stay the same.
The problem occurs when there's glaring balance issues that remove significant amounts of potential solutions, which in turn arguably means that the popular and overpowered strategy isn't actually a metagame, but actually a developer sanctioned official way to play the game. The less balanced a game is, the less balanced the meta aspects become.
Either way, this idea won't solve the idea of a "meta". Because that's not how it works.
If everyone is using Rocks, some people are going to start using Paper. Then Paper gets pretty strong, and suddenly Scissors is the hot new build. If you think Rock is too strong, you haven't fixed the meta, you've just moved it to Scissors.
If everyone is using Rocks, some people are going to start using Paper. Then Paper gets pretty strong, and suddenly Scissors is the hot new build. If you think Rock is too strong, you haven't fixed the meta, you've just moved it to Scissors.
Since I did it once, why not do it twice and quote my post again...