PvP The death of the FAS\FDS? A outsiders observation into post 3.0 PvP

Depends on why you are fighting.

Being able to actually destroy ships is an important part of any appreciable attrition or deterrent value combat could potentially have.
At this point in ed i can honesty say its just a rando' jaunt in a flight sim.
Any point, relevance, story, pretext or logic has been ground down to a nub.
Pity - This game could have been epic.
 
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ryan_m

Banned
My concern with such a dramatic increase to regeneration rates, especially active regen, is that it would overly incentivize repeatedly engaging and disengaging with faster vessels, or ones that weren't likely to be able to be masslocked. Remember when poping into SC restored shields to full? That's not the sort of engagements I'd like to go back to.

Obviously, a change like this would require MANY additional changes to balance properly, SC recharge being one of them. An armor rework would be required as well, along with module damage.

Anything to add depth to the combat in this game to expand beyond prismo stack FDLs with PAs face tanking and ramming for 20 minutes before a high wake.
 
At this point in ed i can honesty say its just a rando' jaunt in a flight sim.
Any point, relevance, story, pretext or logic has been ground down to a nub.
Pity - This game could have been epic.

Well that's certainly how many play it, and I won't begrudge anyone for taking what they can get from the collection of half-implemented ideas that is ED.

Still, I prefer a more engaging experience, even if it has to be a little contrived under the current systems.

And see, there was a year or so where everyone flying prismo stacks got shamed endlessly for using a low-effort build, but since the overall skill in the PvP community dropped with the hemorrhaging of high-skill players, prismos came back into favor.

If there is one thing that's clear, it's that shame is a poor substitute for solid gameplay mechanisms.
 
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This is pre engineers era shield tank FDL build, there are sacrifices to be made, we don't have hard hitting energy weapons cause of power constraints, alternative is hybrid setup with 2 maybe 3 rail guns, it's balanced tough, FDL still have better laterals, boost, more utilities and better placement of those, as well as better firepower traded for worse internals of comparable ships, but in all it's still better ship, just not as tanky as anaconda:)

Engineering pretty much ruined PvP, I reckon. I now many will argue against me, but working out the compromise that worked for you on an FDL, or Vulture, was part of the fun. Now I can full power weapons and shields on those ships without a care.

I remember the Python Nerf™, because it wasn't balanced. That was an 80kg person vs a 79kg person on a seesaw compare to what engineers has done to the like of the FDL.


Z...
 
This is pre engineers era shield tank FDL build

A minor nitpick, but Engineering predates the addition of MRPs and huge MCs were part of the Engineers update (PA and cannon were the only huge weapons for nearly the first two years of the game). That extra c1 optional also didn't exist.

Prior to 2.1, you would have found a huge/large PA or a large laser of some sort on most PvP FDLs, with the oddball cannon or frag cannon here and there.

Engineering pretty much ruined PvP, I reckon. I now many will argue against me, but working out the compromise that worked for you on an FDL, or Vulture, was part of the fun. Now I can full power weapons and shields on those ships without a care.

Any real FDL power issues disappeared in 1.5/2.0 when they gave it a class 6 power plant. There were some trade-offs with the class 5, but only fairly outlandish builds were constrained at all by the class 6, and the cost in mass was usually more significant than any advantage to be had. Before Engineers, even a 5-10m/s speed advantage was significant.
 
And see, there was a year or so where everyone flying prismo stacks got shamed endlessly for using a low-effort build, but since the overall skill in the PvP community dropped with the hemorrhaging of high-skill players, prismos came back into favor.

In fairness, I think the 3.0 buff to HD boosters and reinforced shields were more to blame for this, especially as resist / regen builds weren't really altered.
 
I would be happy if FDEV scrapped SCBs

Couldn’t agree more. I have no issue with massive shields: at least you know where you are based on how fast (or slow!) they are ticking down, it’s the “instant magic shield recharge” that you can’t predict or plan for that winds me up.
 
In fairness, I think the 3.0 buff to HD boosters and reinforced shields were more to blame for this, especially as resist / regen builds weren't really altered.

Resistance/regen builds were helped nearly as much by 3.0 as the HD/reinforced loadouts, depending on the sort of rolls one was able to achive before 3.0 (I have more legacy HD boosters that are viable than I do resistance boosters, though I replaced all of my legacy reinforced generators long ago). It's just that the prevalence of absolute damage has always made a resistance focused setup questionable while the more numerous counters to hull-focused/hybrid vessels increases both their skill floor and their risks.

Front loading MJ is just easier, and in the hands of most pilots, better. This was the case well before 3.0, and I'd put down any apparent increase in prevalence to the vast reduction in time and effort required to get higher-end rolls post 3.0.

Couldn’t agree more. I have no issue with massive shields: at least you know where you are based on how fast (or slow!) they are ticking down, it’s the “instant magic shield recharge” that you can’t predict or plan for that winds me up.

One look at the kind of ship someone is flying and how many SCBs they have will be quite a good indicator as to how much shielding they have in reserve. Just assume the best size and grade combinations for the SCBs you see and anything less than that is a pleasant surprise.
 
Resistance/regen builds were helped nearly as much by 3.0 as the HD/reinforced loadouts, depending on the sort of rolls one was able to achive before 3.0 (I have more legacy HD boosters that are viable than I do resistance boosters, though I replaced all of my legacy reinforced generators long ago). It's just that the prevalence of absolute damage has always made a resistance focused setup questionable while the more numerous counters to hull-focused/hybrid vessels increases both their skill floor and their risks.

Really? I had resist boosters pre 3.0 that were as good as the new rolls and TR shields that were very close, I don't think anyone had HD boosters as high as +74% (iirc 65ish was considered really good?). After you account for diminishing returns on resist stacking compared to no cap on MJ stacks there was definitely a big shift in the meta. Additionally, HRP and bulkheads didn't get much of a buff either. My FAS went from 3.5k hull to 4k with the same resists, my FdL's shields went from 1.5k to over 2k before banks, which with the new rapid charge were much harder to feedback too.
 
Really? I had resist boosters pre 3.0 that were as good as the new rolls and TR shields that were very close, I don't think anyone had HD boosters as high as +74% (iirc 65ish was considered really good?). After you account for diminishing returns on resist stacking compared to no cap on MJ stacks there was definitely a big shift in the meta. Additionally, HRP and bulkheads didn't get much of a buff either. My FAS went from 3.5k hull to 4k with the same resists, my FdL's shields went from 1.5k to over 2k before banks, which with the new rapid charge were much harder to feedback too.

The HD + super cap boosters do have more shield reinforcement more than I've seen on legacy boosters, at the cost of a resistance penalty, but there are legacy HD boosters that have either 64-66%, plus small bonuses to resistance, often at lower power than current BPs, or a 68-69% boost with no penalties. The new resistance augmented boosters are +18.7% to one resistance and +17% to two, which was equally unachievable before.

However, I do conceed that there is very valid argument that deminishing returns hitting resists, but not raw shield strength, makes the changes to raw MJ more impactful.

HRPs benefited a lot from 3.0's changes: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/known-engineer-god-rolls.379651/post-6045362. The posts there from besieger and I are some of the highest known pre-3.0 HRP figures. A new HD + deep plated HRP has 20 more integrity and 3.5% higher resists across the board relative to pre-3.0 god rolls, and are vastly better than the average you'd get if you rolled say...thirty HRPs and kept the best ten, pre-3.0. My hybrid vette gained over a thousand hull integrity (over a 20% increase) and a few percent hull resists (it was already well into deminishing returns) in the conversion.

Due to the random secondaries, SCBs were all over the place pre 3.0 and despite rolling plenty of them, I don't think I really have enough of a sample size to comment one way or the other about them. I do have one legacy grade 1 fast charge A7 SCB that while having a modest 4 second spin-up and significant increase to heat, restores almost 100MJ more per charge (thanks to duration and charge rate secondaries) than my new A7 fast charge G4 SCBs and even more than the best specialized SCBs that can be created now.
 
We should never have discussion like this, that 75% is better than 65, if boosters engineering would be on par with other modules where something like 75% is already crazy big. If boosters give extra 17-20% at g5 values are healthy and suer capacitors giving extra 1-2% like resistance experimentals (another LOL balance by FD), and wow gimbals are no longer OP, cause 1 or 2 chaff make sense now. And boosters are still worth it, just because they give more flexibility with banking when base shields are low. With those numbers 4 boosters prism FDL would have 1600-1800MJ without SCB's, i think those are fair values, and i don't see every FDL pilot switching to FAS or chief instantly, of caurse bi-weave hybrids are much stronger now, so resistance nerf to both hull and shield should be applied too, but to lesser degree.
 
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ryan_m

Banned
We should never have discussion like this, that 75% is better than 65, if boosters engineering would be on par with other modules where something like 75% is already crazy big. If boosters give extra 17-20% at g5 values are healthy and suer capacitors giving extra 1-2% like resistance experimentals (another LOL balance by FD), and wow gimbals are no longer OP, cause 1 or 2 chaff make sense now. And boosters are still worth it, just because they give more flexibility with banking when base shields are low. With those numbers 4 boosters prism FDL would have 1600-1800MJ without SCB's, i think those are fair values, and i don't see every FDL pilot switching to FAS or chief instantly, of caurse bi-weave hybrids are much stronger now, so resistance nerf to both hull and shield should be applied too, but to lesser degree.

Bottom line: the game is balanced toward lazy, low skill gameplay.
 
Couldn’t agree more. I have no issue with massive shields: at least you know where you are based on how fast (or slow!) they are ticking down, it’s the “instant magic shield recharge” that you can’t predict or plan for that winds me up.

You can predict when someone is going to bank though, and on top of that if you can anticipate it and land the rail shot you negate a decent chunk of their healthpool, which seems like a nice bit of game play to me. Certainly more fun than grinding though a huge upfront stack of MJ.
 
Still, I prefer a more engaging experience, even if it has to be a little contrived under the current systems.



If there is one thing that's clear, it's that shame is a poor substitute for solid gameplay mechanisms.
Youve been here as long as me, how the hell do you still manage that? Genuine question.

And to whom's shame do you refer?
 
I have told this in several posts and I am going to repeat again:
Frontier should do two things:
  • Remove the "micro-gimball" effect on railguns when you snipe a module. It´s totally absurd you can hit a FAS power plant from 5 kms, because the microgimball will help you although the ship is much smaller than the red square to aim at it. If that effect was removed, module sniping from far away would me more difficult and hull tank ships would have their space again.
  • Nerf Frags: I think especially in the case of gimballed frags can be seen. Too easy to aim, ridiculous ammount of damage, almost no distributor consumption. Any pilot in a mamba with frags can put in severe difficulties a much better pilot who uses plasmas for example. The plasma pilot have to aim with care and also has to fight moving pips all the time.

With these two changes we would have again a much more variated pvp.
Regards.

Cmdr Fuego Estelar
 
I have told this in several posts and I am going to repeat again:
Frontier should do two things:
  • Remove the "micro-gimball" effect on railguns when you snipe a module. It´s totally absurd you can hit a FAS power plant from 5 kms, because the microgimball will help you although the ship is much smaller than the red square to aim at it. If that effect was removed, module sniping from far away would me more difficult and hull tank ships would have their space again.
  • Nerf Frags: I think especially in the case of gimballed frags can be seen. Too easy to aim, ridiculous ammount of damage, almost no distributor consumption. Any pilot in a mamba with frags can put in severe difficulties a much better pilot who uses plasmas for example. The plasma pilot have to aim with care and also has to fight moving pips all the time.
With these two changes we would have again a much more variated pvp.
Regards.

Cmdr Fuego Estelar
Can't say much on your first point since I don't use rails much, but I would think your 2nd point would only increase the number of PA/rail builds.
 
I have told this in several posts and I am going to repeat again:
Frontier should do two things:
  • Remove the "micro-gimball" effect on railguns when you snipe a module.
No because that is a great counter to folks using force shells/heat sinks+silent running/chaff/dispersal/TLB. Just mod long-range/penetrator rails, turn on night vision, select a module, stay at 5Km and watch them get angry.
 
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