Why do all the PVP builds I see posted not use shields?

[erock25]

Hey. I haven't played E for quite a while (Pythons and Clippers ruled the day at that time), and it seemed like everyone shield cell bank tanked in PVP back then. I just got back into the game and I see everyone setting up hull tanking PVP ships without any shields at all. What changed that made this the "go-to" strategy? Do these builds only hull tank so they can use silent running more effectively? What benefits do you get from going into silent running vs another player? Thanks!

 

[Feldspar]

Silent running means your target can't lock onto you and you don't appear on the radar, combine that with a black ship and you have stealth mode.

 

[GilliganTX]

For the 1.4 update, smaller sized SCB's took a heavy nerf to their recharging abilities. Bigger sized SCB's actually got a bit of a buff in that regard, but they also generate quite a bit of heat now in doing so. I'ts recommended to fire a heatsink simultaneously with a SCB these days.

At the same time, bulkheads and HRPs got a buff to make them more effective.

Also, ships like the FAS were introduced ,which has a paltry amount of energy in its shield, but very high armor ratings stock. ''

The combination of all this means that in general, the most effective PVP builds are stealth/silent running FASes with mil spec bulkheads and stacked HRP and rail guns.

I also see lots of stealth/silent FDLs with mil spec bulkheads, HPRs, and rail guns.


Lots of variety.

 

[Asp Explorer]

That is why I find PVP so dull - you have to build for the current FOTM meta. There's no point in flying a Combat Asp, when all I want to fly is an Asp.

 

[Bacalao]

That is why I find PVP so dull - you have to build for the current FOTM meta. There's no point in flying a Combat Asp, when all I want to fly is an Asp.

Yes, it is unfortunate and somewhat inevitable (though the scales of balance don't always have to be tipped so dramatically as they have been going from the SCB to the HRP dynasties). Hopefully they continue to refine the system, they have a lot to work with and I think they can come up with some creative solutions that are more amenable to a variety of builds.

 

[Zylark]

Short of it is that they gimped SCBs so much (heat generation + delay in triggering), that getting through shields on all but the largest ships is a breeze. And once shields are down on a ship stuffed full of SCBs, it is pretty much toast within seconds. So instead running silent with every nook and cranny of ones ship filled with Hull Reinforcement and a plentiful supply of Heat Sink launchers proved more viable in a PvP situation. As an extra bonus, not having to spend all that power on shields, means one can pretty much run 4 pips to weapons all the time.

Some ships lend themselves more to this than others though. The FAS in particular makes for one hull-tanking beast.

I'm not a big fan of this meta though. I'd much rather see the devs make Shields + SCBs more viable again. Throttle back the heat generation a bit and half the triggering delay.

 

[Tetryl]

Maybe the current PvP 'balance' was just a way for Frontier to make money on black skins? ;-)

 

[Majinvash]

"Meta"

SR and HRP are so OP at the moment on small to most medium fast ships

Majinvash
The Voice of Open

 

[Slack]

Short of it is that they gimped SCBs so much (heat generation + delay in triggering), that getting through shields on all but the largest ships is a breeze. And once shields are down on a ship stuffed full of SCBs, it is pretty much toast within seconds. So instead running silent with every nook and cranny of ones ship filled with Hull Reinforcement and a plentiful supply of Heat Sink launchers proved more viable in a PvP situation. As an extra bonus, not having to spend all that power on shields, means one can pretty much run 4 pips to weapons all the time.

Some ships lend themselves more to this than others though. The FAS in particular makes for one hull-tanking beast.

I'm not a big fan of this meta though. I'd much rather see the devs make Shields + SCBs more viable again. Throttle back the heat generation a bit and half the triggering delay.

Once you get to ships with compartments bigger than 5, SCB's/shields start to makes sense in PvP. As you can use the largest compartments for Shields and SCB's. And fill the rest with HRP's.

For example on a Corvette, I have a total of around 10,000mj in shields (including SCB's) Im only using 3 modules to get that shield value, which means I only have 1200 less armor vs a pure HRP Corvette. Ill take that shield value over the small armor loss any day of the week. Especially since when shields are up, specific modules cannot be targeted and weapons like Pulse Disruptors dont cause malfunctions. Also kinetic weapons arent as effective. I use 2 x enforcer cannons/2 x multi-cannons plus a mix of pulse/burst. So I can have 4 pips to shields while putting out serious damage with just 2 pips to weapons (especially to an unshielded target) Also use fixed, so SR/Targeting is no issue. This will improve even more when Large/Huge hardpoints, get introduced. Imagine when your HRP build is getting hit with 2 huge multi-cannons, and the other 5 hardpoints are hitting you with energy weapons. Right around then people might start thinking hull tanking isnt the end all be all.

10k shields is a lot to go though (just a guess, but thats probably the capacity of 3-4 FDL's) and if they ever do go down, I still have a crap load of armor, with upgraded bulkheads, so its 4 pips to weapons and time for hull tank. I think a pure HRP Corvette would have a very rough day vs a Shield/Armor combo Corvette, and thats today. Wait till the Engineers update, that gap will grow even more. On smaller ships however, I think pure HRP builds will still be very viable.

 

[Julio Montega]

Silent running means your target can't lock onto you and you don't appear on the radar, combine that with a black ship and you have stealth mode.

That is not totally correct.
Silent running does reduce the range in which you can lock onto a target,
and using a heatsink reaching minimum heat does cancel the lock.

Missiles are way more affected by this mechanic than gimballed weapons.
In the 1.5 Beta i had to close below 400 meters to get seeker missiles to start locking,
with A rated sensors.

 

[DanaM]

Imagine when your HRP build is getting hit with 2 huge multi-cannons, and the other 5 hardpoints are hitting you with energy weapons. Right around then people might start thinking hull tanking isnt the end all be all.

True, if you're a good enough pilot to hit a stealth FAS/FDL, especially with a Corvette. I think the above quoted statement might more accurately reflect ED combat realities for most pilots if it was changed to: "IF your HRP build......." rather than "when."

 

[erock25]

Thanks for all the replies everyone. I think I might go out and make a hull tanking DBS until I can afford a hull tanking FDL. I probably should make a whole new topic, but can anyone give a quick run down on any MUST HAVE special powerplay items for PVP? I quit before Power Play so I never grinded my way to getting any of them. Is there anything out there that is just leaps and bounds better than the vanilla items?

 

[GluttonyFang]

Silent running, hull tanking, and rail gunning are the meta. Shield meta is in the past exception for large ships and a few exceptions.

 

[Derath]

the shield meta wasn't really a thing its just people were too lazy to play appropriately for SCB so they toned them down, I'm not sure a silent runnings meta is better though I can certainly understand why its so popular.

I think the primary issue is it counters its own weakness, or rather it highlights that kinetic weapons are probably too weak at the moment. Ideally you should be addressing a hull only build a combination of ramming + kinetics, however kinetics don't have the bullet velocity to be accurate at anything other than point blank. Combine that with ships that have out of whack stat budgets (FAS/FDL) and you have a dominant spec/build that is very hard to run anything else against.

I can probably beat a majority of players running this spec in a one on one, but only if there was a skill differential in my favour, once we got to even skill I suspect i'd need to swap to the same build or accept repeated losses.

Interestingly If they gave us gimbals with limited aim it would help vastly with this problem, because predictive aiming using kinetics is impossible with fixed (because they always point forwards so aim speed is tied to your ship), and gimbals do it automatically which is frequently wrong, and they obviously shut down vs silent.

 

[GluttonyFang]

the shield meta wasn't really a thing its just people were too lazy to play appropriately for SCB so they toned them down, I'm not sure a silent runnings meta is better though I can certainly understand why its so popular.

I think the primary issue is it counters its own weakness, or rather it highlights that kinetic weapons are probably too weak at the moment. Ideally you should be addressing a hull only build a combination of ramming + kinetics, however kinetics don't have the bullet velocity to be accurate at anything other than point blank. Combine that with ships that have out of whack stat budgets (FAS/FDL) and you have a dominant spec/build that is very hard to run anything else against.

I can probably beat a majority of players running this spec in a one on one, but only if there was a skill differential in my favour, once we got to even skill I suspect i'd need to swap to the same build or accept repeated losses.

Keen observation, I agree.

 

[GilliganTX]

Thanks for all the replies everyone. I think I might go out and make a hull tanking DBS until I can afford a hull tanking FDL. I probably should make a whole new topic, but can anyone give a quick run down on any MUST HAVE special powerplay items for PVP? I quit before Power Play so I never grinded my way to getting any of them. Is there anything out there that is just leaps and bounds better than the vanilla items?

Imperial Hammers are quite popular with the PvP crowd. They're multi-shot rail guns (3 round burst) that have some distinct advantages over normal rail guns.

 

[Crimson Kaim]

Because people can't use SCBs properly so they just stack HP. It's an easy alterternative and beginner friendly but still highly effective. I hope this gets changed in the engineers update.

 

[Chongo]

I dunno folks - I hope they keep stealth viable for the long run. It's a lot more fun than scb fests. You really get a kick out of watching two condas scb spam against each other?

You get all these posts about titfor tat flying styles and FD is tempted to spend too much time fixing a problem that's only a problem for a segment of the community.

Fighting stealth wings is fun. Flying in stealth wings is fun. It needs to stay, and it's sad it doesn't work well against AI. Yes, it's admittedly easy to stack hrps on small ships which gives them some advantage with the flat rate hrps. But I love the fact that I'm fighting vipers and cobras and dbs's instead of just a bunch of tired old condas and pythons spamming scbs. Small, fast, and hard to track ships should be dangerous. If a good wing of hrp'd stealth DBS's make my vette run - awesome! I should've not been an idiot and instead mounted a grade sensors, and turrets in conjunction with fixed. It's boring to just fight the same big ships. The new mechanics are downright fun and combat, if anything, is more varied.

And the claim that folks are using hrps because they can't use SCB's properly is humorous. There's little challenge in timing, and even less in switching. May as well contend managing heat while silent is mind boggling if that's going to be a real argument.

Shield builds still do great. And people are finally figuring out how to track silent builds and invest in sensors. It's a fine learning curve addition.

FD should be working on fixing/ improving the soul of the game (and the bugs of the game) instead of falling into the titfor tat balance debate.

 

[Anopheles]

It seems the rock paper Spock lizard scissors of pvp has got out of whack. Needs a type of ship which works excellently against hull tanks and stealthed ships, but is suboptimal against shields or against subsystems.

Elite is limited, so far, in it's variety of defences:

Speed
Stealth
Shield
Armour

If it could add a few more, like erm, ah, electronic warfare, numbers and drones, fo name a few, then there should always be counters.

 

[Julio Montega]

It seems the rock paper Spock lizard scissors of pvp has got out of whack. Needs a type of ship which works excellently against hull tanks and stealthed ships, but is suboptimal against shields or against subsystems.

Elite is limited, so far, in it's variety of defences:

Speed
Stealth
Shield
Armour

If it could add a few more, like erm, ah, electronic warfare, numbers and drones, fo name a few, then there should always be counters.

Yup that is true, and more means of countering stuff always are very interesting to me.
I'm a bit experimenting with hybrids, as constant fighting and showing presence is hampered,
when you get damaged in every encounter.

Currently the gameplay PvP build wise is very homogenous,
and i have put up some thoughts in a recently posted thread.
I think working with the modules we have at hand before introducing new ones is a means to progess.

If you'd let the chaff have a use against fixed weaponry for example,
by blocking the auto-convergence of the fixed hardpoints relative to distance and subtarget/center of mass,
we would have an argument against long range engagements and get back to close engagements,
where gimbals do have a use.
I'd even go so far as that a chaffing ship does force the attacker to shoot with the default weapon convergence
seen when you deploy hardpoints and have no target selected.

There are also possibilities to elaborate on that, making skillfull decisions necessary, like manually
setting your weapons to converge at a fixed distance with keybinds (like you can set radar range).

In the end this still leaves uses for specialized weapons,
but limits them to very close hardpoints.
As an example a 5 railgun FDL would have issues at range,
but equipping it situationally with 2 railguns on a side to snipe and deal precision damage
at larger distances, leaving space for brawler gimbals would enrich the scape again.