Why is Combat so Boring?

[Achilles7]

The flight mechanics are great, but there are a few problems with the details!

PvE - I never joust...I outturn everything in my Vulture!

PvP - Frontier's ridiculous design decision to make 4 pips in sys so advantageous & their decision to make reversing so fast...which has resulted in the whole reverski meta prevalent to apex PvP - this effectively eliminates the max manoeuvring capabilities of any ship, ergo, any dogfighting & this results in a relative face-tanking exercise where both ships basically float in space with one cross-over point when the chasing ship gets too close to the reversing one ie about 1-1.5km whereby the reversing cmdr will boost past, FAOFF 180 & the whole scenario is reset! This goes on for approx. 12-20 mins & one ship wins by attrition.

Oh yeah, on top of that..the action is a bit slow - like watching slow motion..it's as if Frontier think the playerbase is mostly old dudes with slow reactions or something? *cough!*

 

[TERMINATRIXXX]

Try fighting humans instead of NPC's. Ofcourse it's boring to fight a scripted object, they are static and not creative, just scripted behaviour

 

[Bryan K]

Just an endless joust. That's it. Forever grinding down enemy shields while we fly head on at each other and then circle back. Using FA off on a Courier with performance drives and still getting out maneuvered by a Viper IV. Not that it matters; as a game play activity its an awful experience.

I am just wondering WHY its so bad. Do ships really need all this shielding to grind through? I feel like Medium weapons are worthless against even small and medium ships...making what should be a brief, explosive, adrenaline fueled experience into an absolute slog.

OP, if you learn to fly properly, you'll have more fun. If you can't break out of the "joust", then it's all on you, not the game.

 

[StiTch]

Just an endless joust. That's it. Forever grinding down enemy shields while we fly head on at each other and then circle back. Using FA off on a Courier with performance drives and still getting out maneuvered by a Viper IV. Not that it matters; as a game play activity its an awful experience.

TL;DR: I have no idea how to fly and would rather blame the game than seek advice.

Come back if you manage to swallow the indignation and I'll point out how an iCourier should be flown.

 

[Infiltrator_2K]

"Boring"? I'm new to the game and I'd definitely say combat is 'NOT' boring. In fact, I'd say it's the most exciting part of the game. I'm hitting hi-res sites in a Viper IV using a beam laser and multi-cannon and it's a blast when you take down Condas with the Feds

The devs BTW have so far IMO done a cracking job with the AI. They're a lot more less predictable than they were. Combat takes a lot of skill to stay ahead of your adversary.

 

[d8veh]

Pack a few HRPs and MRPs. Charge up your engines capacitor, 4 pips to shields and ram them when they come face to face- much more satisfying and quite exciting. That works well for when they have SCBs too.

In this one, I didn't fire a shot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4XwGuFl5HU

 

[Heavenly-Hammer]

Sad thread. OP doesn't understand how to fly, is using a poor choice of thrusters for a full combat loadout...and blames the game for being ineffective at combat.

SMDH.

 

[Aris_]

The flight mechanics are great, but there are a few problems with the details!

PvE - I never joust...I outturn everything in my Vulture!

PvP - Frontier's ridiculous design decision to make 4 pips in sys so advantageous & their decision to make reversing so fast...which has resulted in the whole reverski meta prevalent to apex PvP - this effectively eliminates the max manoeuvring capabilities of any ship, ergo, any dogfighting & this results in a relative face-tanking exercise where both ships basically float in space with one cross-over point when the chasing ship gets too close to the reversing one ie about 1-1.5km whereby the reversing cmdr will boost past, FAOFF 180 & the whole scenario is reset! This goes on for approx. 12-20 mins & one ship wins by attrition.

Oh yeah, on top of that..the action is a bit slow - like watching slow motion..it's as if Frontier think the playerbase is mostly old dudes with slow reactions or something? *cough!*

Not if you fight like this :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEe3_hGt2oE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLI50wb-1f0

when you go to a res take some cargo and can also try against multiple threats either npc or players see if you can win

 

[Krieger]

The flight mechanics are great, but there are a few problems with the details!

PvE - I never joust...I outturn everything in my Vulture!

PvP - Frontier's ridiculous design decision to make 4 pips in sys so advantageous & their decision to make reversing so fast...which has resulted in the whole reverski meta prevalent to apex PvP - this effectively eliminates the max manoeuvring capabilities of any ship, ergo, any dogfighting & this results in a relative face-tanking exercise where both ships basically float in space with one cross-over point when the chasing ship gets too close to the reversing one ie about 1-1.5km whereby the reversing cmdr will boost past, FAOFF 180 & the whole scenario is reset! This goes on for approx. 12-20 mins & one ship wins by attrition.

Oh yeah, on top of that..the action is a bit slow - like watching slow motion..it's as if Frontier think the playerbase is mostly old dudes with slow reactions or something? *cough!*

You are right on commander. The problem with PvE is the exact same. The AI improvement in 2.1 made the NPCs mimick the behaviour of PvPers. Since then (higher ranked) NPCs try to do reverskis every time (it' s practically all they do and). Players not specialising in combat obviously don't take time to analyse the NPCs' behaviour in detail and get suckered into the reverski-joust trap and then have a hard time to defeat the NPCs. Next they do the obvious thing (to them) and resort to building shield tanks and just brute-force their way through the reverski-joust trap or simply run from every NPC encounter.

Personally, I think it was a mistake by FDEV to adopt the reverski tactic for NPCs because it breaks combat for the average skilled and/or casual player. It would have been better to make reverskis less effective by lowering maximum reverse speed with weapons deployed. Or go the other way and give FA-off the same level of rotational damping we have in FA-on so accurate aiming in FA-off becomes possible for the lesser gods too.

 

[{SAS}Stalker]

It never used to be, it used to be something that got the old heart racing. Now though because (IMHO) Engineers, SCB, Hull tanks, Shield Tanks, Fish tanks, hot water tanks, Shield mods and healing wizard beams of fail its become a game of death by a billion cuts.

You stand more chance of your opponent falling asleep than you do of killing him*

* There are obviously caveats and exceptions added to this statement and are available upon request.

 

[Aris_]

You are right on commander. The problem with PvE is the exact same. The AI improvement in 2.1 made the NPCs mimick the behaviour of PvPers. Since then (higher ranked) NPCs try to do reverskis every time (it' s practically all they do and). Players not specialising in combat obviously don't take time to analyse the NPCs' behaviour in detail and get suckered into the reverski-joust trap and then have a hard time to defeat the NPCs. Next they do the obvious thing (to them) and resort to building shield tanks and just brute-force their way through the reverski-joust trap or simply run from every NPC encounter.

Personally, I think it was a mistake by FDEV to adopt the reverski tactic for NPCs because it breaks combat for the average skilled and/or casual player. It would have been better to make reverskis less effective by lowering maximum reverse speed with weapons deployed. Or go the other way and give FA-off the same level of rotational damping we have in FA-on so accurate aiming in FA-off becomes possible for the lesser gods too.

Better faoff control can be achieved by Keyboard and mouse or specialized mice for designers, for hotas you need serious calibration both of them takes time and sweat .
Reverski can be denied by dd5 and keep your speed up but i agree it needs a serious nerf, if we want to see maneuvering combat

 

[Shinra]

All I can say is this:

1) Keep on your enemies 6.
2) Find the sweet spot. You need to be able to shoot your enemy while denying them the ability to shoot at you.
3) Manage your pips. This is paramount. manue
4) Maybe find a better combat ship?

Number four really depends on your combat style. I like to keep my ship light and have damned good maneuverability.

Best of luck CMDR o7

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

Combat does need a full rebalance.

We've got invincible reversing Cutters, and Torpedo wielding Vipers that can strip a 1bn CR Corvette of it's shields in 1 volley.

PvP is essentially ruined, PvE is too easy.
I'm all up for some mods, like FSD, and drives, and whatnot.

But nearly every weapon mod needs a drastic change.

As for endless jousting, try playing the original Elite and FE2. Lol

Or I-War.
Or any other Newtonian physics space shooter. Lol

The core of EDs combat is rather good, it's just ruined by weapon mods, and near invincible shields.

 

[Vingtetun]

It is way more fun now you have military slots, toughened hulls and survivability. You can nibble away at their components without instagibbing then again.

 

[Lightspeed]

A lot of Commanders, myself included, forget about the fun factor available in the little ships, such as the Eagle. Mostly because we saw these only briefly when we were unskilled and wanted to progress to bigger things.

But the Eagle offers a lot of fun keeping on an enemy six and firing a plasma pulse at them from behind. Just don't expect the shields to hold up if you allow him time to target you, however. The Eagle will sharpen up your fighting skills very quickly, and you will have fun doing it. The rebuy is trivial.

 

[Vorxian]

If you don't look like this, your'e doing it wrong!

I stopped doing combat when I went through too many 'down' micro switches on my joystick. Pulling back too much in the blue zone kills hardware, especially when both you are pulling back in the blue zone.. the winner is the one with the newest / most robust micro switches [haha]

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

Combat is boring because people who don't want to learn demand that the game be reduced to something that can be played by a vegetable.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

I fly an Orca. I fly a python.
I do not joust.
I ram.

Try ramming an opponent once or twice, they'll quit trying to joust real fast when they realize that you're crazy. Then it gets interesting.

 

[Krieger]

Combat is boring because people who don't want to learn demand that the game be reduced to something that can be played by a vegetable.

If the word 'condescending' didn't exist yet it should be invented for your comment.

 

[goemon]

I fly an Orca. I fly a python.
I do not joust.
I ram.

Try ramming an opponent once or twice, they'll quit trying to joust real fast when they realize that you're crazy. Then it gets interesting.

to add to this - i fly a 3 frags speed courier... that's timed and fine tuned jousting ... zoom in, frag them, sitting out of their firing arc, fly away...

or i fly a missile cobra mkIII with a longrange beam .... fly evasive, eat their shields, and than finish them off quickly.

in many cases a different outfitting forces you to fly differently.

also, i tend to outfit my ships very lightweight - in most ships i have no chance to facetank.