The Shield discussion thread

Do you think Shield Cells are:

  • Good the way they are in 1.03

    Votes: 62 20.3%
  • Ok but should be limited to 1 bank per ship

    Votes: 93 30.5%
  • Ok but Limit to 1 bank per ship and only a few cells (4?)

    Votes: 66 21.6%
  • Broken Mechanic - Should be removed from game

    Votes: 68 22.3%
  • Other : please leave comment

    Votes: 16 5.2%

  • Total voters
    305
You can talk about pilot skill, and I'd agree with you. But pilot skill means 'skill at not getting hit.' The Eagle supports that by being the most agile. If you get hit, you're toast, though because the ship can't take it.

I was thinking more in terms that all ships should be playable (as per FD's supposed plan). Nerf the little ones and they end up only being stepping stones. By the way - IMO the Viper has the advantage in maneuverability over the Eagle (at least when it comes to avoiding getting hit) due to it's over-the-top thrusters. It can lateral/vertical thrust with boost better than the Eagle, or just boost away (IMO all small ships should have the same thrust/weight ratio and same top speed, but that really is off-topic).
 
The viper is heaviest hit from the change.

Tell that to my Eagle please ^^ I already had to manually activate / de-activate some modules in complement to a careful use of all the 5 power priority levels to use everything I had on it effectively. I had to downgrade her sensors, SCB and FSDI to make her flyable again while keeping the SCB. Not really complaining though, I knew that would be the case since I first saw the beta patch notes. But I just wanted to point out that the Viper is not THE ship that got hit the most by the change.
 
Why should they punish larger ships by limiting them to only 1 scb? Do we limit the Anaconda to 4 guns just because the Viper can only fit 4 guns?

What the hell has this got to do with a Viper? And the comment "Why should they punish larger ships" is hilarious frankly. The problem isn't about ship sizes, it's about being able to fit that many SCBs that you can carry stupid amounts of charges... it should effect all ships, not just a handful, as the problem is universal.
 
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. . .

Be very wary of Pythons with Turrets!

What, so turrets now work? I kept seeing posts pre-1.1 that turrets are/were bugged and a waste of creds. So they are now working as intended in the larger ships that lack maneuverability??
 
Viper still can defeat any other ship.

Change to shield cells, heat mechanics and NPC AI have made the game more challenging, and IMO a lot more fun. Not sure everyone will like it.

Yeah that was my experience too. I kill a lot of elite anacondas in 1.07 and my first three tries in 1.1 ended in fleeing twice and dying once (the death was mainly bad luck - thruster malfunction plus plasma accelerator). After I adjusted tactics I won, but the margin of error is smaller.
 
You phone doesn't instantly heat your house in seconds, it just plays Candy Crush and it still needs power constantly to stop it discharging throughout the day otherwise you would have a 6 month standby time.
Bad analogy. It's using power all the time to remain connected to the network, that's why it needs recharging more regularly.

A better analogy would be a Car battery. Over a very long period, it may lose it;s charge but you can charge it and store it for a month or more before using it without consequence. The Cell should work the same way. When it's discharged into the shields, it should draw power to recharge but once it's fully recharged, there is no need for any power draw.

I just can't understand the 5 second delay. It should be charged and ready to use from the start, not have to charge up to be used. What's the point in having something that needs charging when the power to do that could have been diverted to the shields anyway? I thought the idea was to charge them up while you're not drawing full power, like when you have weapons retracted and not in combat.

I have a battery booster for my car. If my battery dies and I can't start the car, I connect the battery booster to give my car the power it needs to start. I don't run off to find a charging point to charge my battery booster first, if I did, I may as well disconnect the car battery and put that on charge instead. The whole idea of having it is because it's already pre-charged. It might need a little top up every few weeks but it's constantly on full charge and ready to use, it's not on constant charge while not in use, it only gets a recharge after it's been used once.

Shield cells should work the same way as my battery booster or it really makes them a bit pointless.
 
Way too much "EXPENSIVE MUST BEAT CHEAP!" posts in here.

Indeed... "Mah sheep cost meh 40 mirrion, it must easy keel your ASDA smartprice boat wif eeez innit bruv"

The moment you say "Well in that case, a Type 9 should faceroll your Python" they quickly flounder.
 
Yeah it seems that dedicated "Combat" ships have been hit that hard, that they are no longer that viable for the role they were designed for.

A lot of people (Myself included) already thought that the Cobra was just as good in terms of combat capability before the change. Now it's weighed a lot more heavily in favour of the Cobra. I can run the same setup on my Cobra as I did before, but I know 100% that I'll have to drop beams on my Viper now, in order to keep the one A3 rated SCB I had on beforehand.

All they had to do was limit SCBs to one per ship, and that would have solved the issues perfectly... instead they go and take this cackhanded approach.

First, don't drop the beams on your Viper. Use B2 SCB instead. You won't get a full recharge of shields but you can fit it with Beams and it weighs 1T less.

Secondly, SCBs on Cobras are fairly pointless now. With beams on a Viper you can often break a Cobra pilots shields before their first shield cell has spooled up. Doesn't matter if they have 25 shield cells if they never get to use any.
 
I believe there may be some people who are confused about defining the space flight paradigm. We are flying "Space Ships" not "Space Planes". Anyone attempting to compare how air planes fly to how ocean going ships sail is making a paradigm mistake. Correctly using ships as a metaphor, a "Dinghy" should not be able to sink a "Destroyer" let alone a "Battle Ship" or "Cruiser". I will add that submarines (On which I have years of experience) fly through the depths of the ocean in all 3 directions. We may informally call them boats, but submarines are ships. Space ships are ships. Larger ships have more power, have hulls built to withstand more damage and carry bigger weapons which inflict more damage. Once the correct paradigm is applied, there should be no further disagreement about how larger ships should be able to easily defend against and destroy smaller ones.

Well, isn't the very purpose of small torpedo/missile boats to sink big battleships? Yes, they are likely to get destroyed trying to do that, but if they can strike, down goes the big ship. So killing a bigger starship should be hard, but not "impossible".
 
The Eagle is still a fine ship for its size and price, and its still viable for PvE. I just tested out in a combat zone and took down a couple of Elite Anacondas/Pythons with BurstLaser/MultiCannon/Cannon combo. (No cells equipped)

So since the Combat Zone Anacondas are much better than the RES ones, you can still use one of the cheapest ships in game to do pretty much everything combat-wise but Elite Assasination missions(Maybe even those with some kiting). Not bad Imo, you just have to be more careful now, and it may require a little more skill.

I can't say anything about PvP tho, but I think the only reason the Eagle was used so much for PvP was the super dumbfires.
 
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. . . Once the correct paradigm is applied, there should be no further disagreement about how larger ships should be able to easily defend against and destroy smaller ones.

Agree only to a point. Using your analogy, please keep in mind PT boats (not much bigger than that dingy) could take out cruisers and even battle ships. Yes, while running terrible risks getting shredded in the process, but still.... Watch the old John Wayne classic "In harms way" for reference.

Argggg! Ninja'ed :)
 
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Way too much "EXPENSIVE MUST BEAT CHEAP!" posts in here.

True, but speaking from (not for, mind you!) the CHEAP side: things could be made a bit more difficult. Niot just against the AI (you shouldn't be able to 'farm' elite anacondas in a Viper, it should be super dangerous but doable) but also against other cmdrs. These changes seem to steer it more in that direction, and I'm glad for it.
 
What, so turrets now work? I kept seeing posts pre-1.1 that turrets are/were bugged and a waste of creds. So they are now working as intended in the larger ships that lack maneuverability??


Certainly working whenever I faced them.

Chaff doesn't affect them much at close range either.

At 1.5km and up, chaff works quite well, but if you're 1.5km away from a Python you're probably about to be hit by far worse than the turrets.
 
I'm experimenting with different shield cells to fit into a Viper... but with how few there are now (seems A-grade SCBs have as much as their class size now?) I don't see a point in having one now. That, and with how power hungry they are now, they don't even seem viable for Vipers anymore. Guess I'll just have to get better at dodging lasers...
 
Have you ever seen what the Phalanx Gun will do to a small torpedo ship, let alone missles. Big ships have defences agains fast torpedo boats.
 
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