A look at shield strength and weapons.

[PIE_OF_DOOM]

When playing on a 50+ people server and seeing how most battles go, I found that battles don't last more then a few seconds at best. Another thing also is that most players are scared to go into battle because ships are now harder to replace. So a server that is suppose to be PvP is feeling more like a PvE server. From what I seen most fights end fast because and least one combatant is going for one shot kills with missiles. Now I'm not suggesting to weaken missiles because that would make them pointless and not feel like a missile should. Weapons can only be weakened so much and at the moment I think we don't got much room to alter weapons without making them over powered or under powered. The main point I'm getting at is that battles should not be 5 seconds but much longer. Battles between 4 million block ships should take maybe an hour or so if both pilots and ships are even.

current shields math:

• 1 million shield capacitors approx ~ 50 million shields with ~50 shields per capacitor.
• 1 missile module dose 75 damage per shot without supports and more with pulse or beam support.

So with 4 million block ships fighting, one of them has 1 million blocks to shields but the other ship just has to get a little over 750000 missiles modules in an array to one shot it. This is worse when we bring in beam support where even less missile modules are needed and you are likely sniped from a different sector. For an example on my server there is a player with a missile array with over 150 million direct damage. With the server max size being 4 million no ship could survive that and still be able to shoot and move properly. For same ship size it should not be possible to one shot each other as it makes for vary unfair PvP or in some cases discourages PvP.


To fix this issue I am suggesting an 10 times increases to the shield capacity to make ALL ships last longer in battle.

This would make it highly unlikely for same size ships to one shot each other, so 4 mill block ship vs 4 mill block ship battle would last much longer.
An 4 million block ship with 1 million shield capacitors would have about 500 million shields making it much harder to kill. This is for all ships not just big ones so ships would survive longer in general.

Missiles would still have a use but ships would need better damage per second weapons like cannons or beams to win in the battle.

Another suggestion that could be added once shields are increased is that the dps for beam and cannon weapons be increased from 5 dps per block in system to 10 dps per block in system. This would make them preferred for taking out shields compared to missiles. And to give beams an advantage besides instant hit, beams should do 1.5 x damage to shields but only 0.5 damage to blocks. This allows fighters with beams weapons to be better at shield breaking and have missiles once the shields drop. Also gives reason to get into close range combat.

Small turrets may also be more useful due to them not dying as quickly. This makes anti missile arrays more practical because one stray missile would no longer gut 5 turrets.

One of the best advantages of doing theses changes is that most ship don't have to be gutted and refitted as no ships beside ones with no shields would have to be refitted. This makes it so we as players can spend more time building what we want or playing then refitting a ship.

If you have any suggestions I'm ok for hearing them, just don't use arguments like doing arranged battles or that it should be 1 shot battles. And don't say build a better ship plez. Also keep in mind that I know that they plan on making armor more useful but I think that shields still need to be increased as I don't see armor stopping 150 million damage volley. I also know that you can change the shield values in block configs but I bring this up as the battles unless the server intends it should not be first shot wins as a default config.

 

[Criss]

Lol uh. The devs just made it harder to get shields via crafting. We are also getting a health system. I see absolutely no reason to increase the capacity to shields. Other methods are being worked on to ensure fights are more meaningful but increasing shield capacity is not the best solution.

Also, saying that its a good solution based on the premise that we do not have to refit the ship is a bad idea. This is alpha. We are here to test what works and what doesn't. People play as if they it a complete game when it's not. We need to keep in mind that the devs might change entire systems that force us to build differently. We should EXPECT to have to rebuild ship systems at one point or another.

 

[Glutton]

I agree that offensive power is way more powerful than defensive in this game right now, I believe what we need most is greater hull integrity. Its okay for shields to be dropped by a nuke, as long as the rest of the ship can deal with the remaining blow. The nice thing about hull being maxed out is the ability to scale well with ship size and power. If you want to make something that will not be instantly destroyed, use some of the space and mass to add protection. Sacrifice weapons for defense abilities. Another nice thing about hull is the ability to move around to avoid having the same place hit twice. Shields are gone everywhere once they run out, but with hull, you have to keep a consistent target on a ship or start from scratch on a different location. This will also encourage small quick fighters in titan battles to be able to focus on areas to get through the hull, regardless of if the large ship is turning or moving.

Random tangent of thought there.

 

[PIE_OF_DOOM]

Ya im happy for the progress they are doing with hull but problem is that if missiles do more damage then the shields they drop the shields and do there full damage to hull.

This is actually ok if you have a death star attacking a ship but for equle size ships not so much.

If the shield where 10x there current then the hull mite have a chance since for equle sized ships they wont have extremely strong missiles. And the disadvantage of shields would still be there in that anywhere u shoot it will bring it down. Hull will likely still not be stronger then shields but you can turn the ship to reduced the damage.

 

[Ithirahad]

Ya im happy for the progress they are doing with hull but problem is that if missiles do more damage then the shields they drop the shields and do there full damage to hull.

This is actually ok if you have a death star attacking a ship but for equle size ships not so much.

If the shield where 10x there current then the hull mite have a chance since for equle sized ships they wont have extremely strong missiles. And the disadvantage of shields would still be there in that anywhere u shoot it will bring it down. Hull will likely still not be stronger then shields but you can turn the ship to reduced the damage.

...Or, if missiles are the problem, you could just nerf the damage increase from scaling on missiles... Which I support.

 

[PIE_OF_DOOM]

Lol uh. The devs just made it harder to get shields via crafting. We are also getting a health system. I see absolutely no reason to increase the capacity to shields. Other methods are being worked on to ensure fights are more meaningful but increasing shield capacity is not the best solution.

Also, saying that its a good solution based on the premise that we do not have to refit the ship is a bad idea. This is alpha. We are here to test what works and what doesn't. People play as if they it a complete game when it's not. We need to keep in mind that the devs might change entire systems that force us to build differently. We should EXPECT to have to rebuild ship systems at one point or another.

It takes months for with for most players to build a large ship and the average life time of one in combat is the same as a fighter, 5 seconds.
I'm playing on a big server and most people are playing PvE. Even the PvP players are having a hard time fighting people because everyone dose not want to lose there ship without a chance. I doute that hull increases will fix the problem completely so increases shields could help. And having it so we don't to re due our ships is kinda a nice thing for most players considering we are likely having to do it enof times already. Shield increases is the easiest solutions I see that will be fair for all ships.

 

[jayman38]

Based on what I've seen in TV and movies, I think missile systems should be nerfed against shields.

Also, I suggest a drop in damage with a better reload rate. Weaker weapon systems that can be fired more often are typically more fun for the average player.

Finally, I recommend a distance-based nerf on missile target-tracking. The farther away a missile is, the more likely it will be to... I dunno... Lock onto a star instead or blow up spontaneously.

 

[PIE_OF_DOOM]

...Or, if missiles are the problem, you could just nerf the damage increase from scaling on missiles... Which I support.

Base damage of missiles would have to be decreased and weapons where nerfed already. I still want good missiles and the scaling factors are for supports are not that high. Better shield would do the same thing without discriminating agents most ships. Also better shields gives more room for different types of weapons that would be considers op with current values. ex... better damage pulse primary weapon range.

 

[Criss]

It takes months for with for most players to build a large ship and the average life time of one in combat is the same as a fighter, 5 seconds.
I'm playing on a big server and most people are playing PvE. Even the PvP players are having a hard time fighting people because everyone dose not want to lose there ship without a chance. I doute that hull increases will fix the problem completely so increases shields could help. And having it so we don't to re due our ships is kinda a nice thing for most players considering we are likely having to do it enof times already. Shield increases is the easiest solutions I see that will be fair for all ships.

I have lasted over five minutes in a fighter fight. I am positive jath has recorded some nice fighter tournaments that lasted longer than a minute which is good. It depends on how focused you are on balancing a ship. In a game based on our own creativity, we are just as responsible for balancing our ships as the devs are. We have no idea how the new health system will work. Right now you're concerned about core killing but if the new health system prevents exactly that then I'm not sure how we can be so easily dismissive. That is what the health system is there to do.

Increasing shields is the direct opposite of what the devs wanted. They increased the price on shields for a reason; to push the use of other defensive systems on us. And yes it would be nice if we didn't have to refit our ships but as I said, this is alpha. Entire AAA games have been scrapped and built from the ground up because it didn't work. We should not opt out of a good mechanic simply because the players were too lazy to rebuild and test it.

 

[godmars]

Ill just put my .02 and let my rant follow, but IMO scaling for missiles should be altered so you can just add more and more for ridiculous 1 shot power at the price of making the missile 'projectile' larger/more noticeable and slower. I was thinking missiles shouldnt do max dmg vs shields too like someone else mentioned. Cannons and Beams do varying damage vs shields and hull, dont they?

I keep seeing people complain about missiles and then say they dont need a nerf and something else is the issue but all my testing indicates otherwise (besides invisible missile bug).

So sitting here thinking about it, assuming thats fixed, we can actually SEE missiles fired from 1908740124km away and/or some sort of warning when we are being locked on or what have you, would it still be an issue? AI aim isn't perfect (and it shouldnt be) so a volley of missiles that get through still should not be capable of taking down a ship that isn't agile enough to evade or shoot them down..they should have some capacity to do something before that 300 km/h nuke blows a massive hole blown into them.

I feel like when anyone talks about missiles, they are not talking about all of them, it's either
A.) Missile/Beam
or
B.)Missile/Missile

Look at hulk missiles. Hit someone with one of those with the shields down and its basically GG, but they are sllllllllloooooow. Dumbfires need to be aimed. There is a flaw with missile/missile, but who needs allies when you can slaughter everything within 10km.

 

[ltmauve]

Cannons and Beams do varying damage vs shields and hull, dont they?

No, they don't. With no effects, the damage done to hull and shields is equal, for all weapons types. And that's the way is should be.

And here's one aspect of the problem: the damage a ship can output scales with the volume of the ship. The damage hull can absorb scales with the thickness of the hull. But the damage shields can absorb scales with the volume of the ship. Once a ship is large enough, hull stops being very effective because the damage to hull one-shots it.

 

[Lecic]

I don't know what you're talking about with fights lasting 5 seconds. The fleet combat videos from right before the total reset of one larger server were 20+ minutes long. Singular ships themselves may die a bit faster than you expect in combat, but fleet combat is the way it's meant to go, not 1v1.

I'd say any shield rebalancing should wait until after the HP update.

beams should do 1.5 x damage to shields but only 0.5 damage to blocks

That's what effects are for. No thank you.

 

[Snk]

I usually participate in fights that involve 2k mass ships or lower. With a radar jammer, I find the time it lasts really depends on the skill of the pilots involved. Could last anywhere from 30 minutes to 5.

 

[PIE_OF_DOOM]

Ok first of all guys I'm from a 50+ server and also It is suppose to be pvp. This means that 90% of the people do balance there ships but that last 10% go for the one shot kills. Im talking about not haveing a ship that is of equal size die in one shot. Coreing don't matter when your 600m long ship dies in one shot. Also missiles atm with beam support do 3x normal per block so there ant to much room to change the scail factor. Nukes are a non problem atm because of how slow they are too. And also remember most combat is not fleet combat just as a heads up and it likely wont be even when the game is done. Everyone I see is talking about nurfs and I put the post up to present a buff for once that would be for everyone and not just nerfing one part of the community. And when you talk about fighter combat remember that most ships on a server are frigate and larger and to say that you want most people to use fighters would be unfair. Also that better shield capacity mite just allow your fighter to survive long enof to do some damage too. So if there are more post can we plez keep away from nurfing missiles and talk about other solutions because if they ant missiles some one would do the big amc array that would do the same thing in 10s so really nurfing missiles would defeat the point.
[DOUBLEPOST=1421722638,1421722293][/DOUBLEPOST]btw I would not mind an increase to only the nuke missiles due to how slow moving they are but only if shield where increased. This way it is still a vary bad idea to not have any anti missile defense to deal with nuke missiles.

 

[Snk]

Ok first of all guys I'm from a 50+ server and also It is suppose to be pvp. This means that 90% of the people do balance there ships but that last 10% go for the one shot kills. Im talking about not haveing a ship that is of equal size die in one shot. Coreing don't matter when your 600m long ship dies in one shot. Also missiles atm with beam support do 3x normal per block so there ant to much room to change the scail factor. Nukes are a non problem atm because of how slow they are too. And also remember most combat is not fleet combat just as a heads up and it likely wont be even when the game is done. Everyone I see is talking about nurfs and I put the post up to present a buff for once that would be for everyone and not just nerfing one part of the community. And when you talk about fighter combat remember that most ships on a server are frigate and larger and to say that you want most people to use fighters would be unfair. Also that better shield capacity mite just allow your fighter to survive long enof to do some damage too. So if there are more post can we plez keep away from nurfing missiles and talk about other solutions because if they ant missiles some one would do the big amc array that would do the same thing in 10s so really nurfing missiles would defeat the point.
[DOUBLEPOST=1421722638,1421722293][/DOUBLEPOST]btw I would not mind an increase to only the nuke missiles due to how slow moving they are but only if shield where increased. This way it is still a vary bad idea to not have any anti missile defense to deal with nuke missiles.

Put a ton of AMS.

 

[PIE_OF_DOOM]

Put a ton of AMS.

tried that but to be effective the turrets need to be of the smallest type and then they die far to fast. Replacing 30 something turrets every time sucks. Also anti missile defense ant garinted and often has problems with missile beam systems. And before you comment I'm lazy, replacing the turrets is from pirates which shoot far less missiles then they one shot kill ship people encounter.

 

[Lecic]

Ok first of all guys I'm from a 50+ server and also It is suppose to be pvp. This means that 90% of the people do balance there ships but that last 10% go for the one shot kills. Im talking about not haveing a ship that is of equal size die in one shot. Coreing don't matter when your 600m long ship dies in one shot. Also missiles atm with beam support do 3x normal per block so there ant to much room to change the scail factor. Nukes are a non problem atm because of how slow they are too. And also remember most combat is not fleet combat just as a heads up and it likely wont be even when the game is done. Everyone I see is talking about nurfs and I put the post up to present a buff for once that would be for everyone and not just nerfing one part of the community. And when you talk about fighter combat remember that most ships on a server are frigate and larger and to say that you want most people to use fighters would be unfair. Also that better shield capacity mite just allow your fighter to survive long enof to do some damage too. So if there are more post can we plez keep away from nurfing missiles and talk about other solutions because if they ant missiles some one would do the big amc array that would do the same thing in 10s so really nurfing missiles would defeat the point.
[DOUBLEPOST=1421722638,1421722293][/DOUBLEPOST]btw I would not mind an increase to only the nuke missiles due to how slow moving they are but only if shield where increased. This way it is still a vary bad idea to not have any anti missile defense to deal with nuke missiles.

Giving shields a 10x boost is not going to end one shot missiles from same-size ships. You'll just have people design their ships with more powerful missile systems. They'll scrap most of their shields (and hey, with 10x the power they won't need as many for protection from cannon/beam) and replace them with more missile and beam modules.

And yes, fleet combat is the future. We're getting AI fleet command eventually, and it just makes more sense from a tactical and economic standpoint. You lose less blocks when you lose one corvette of ten instead of one battleship out of one. A commander can do a lot more with 9 corvettes than 1 smoldering battleship. Separate ships can target separate enemies or focus fire. The time of one man armies with a titan each is over.

 

[Megacrafter127]

Based on what I've seen in TV and movies, I think missile systems should be nerfed against shields.

Kinda reminds me of how missiles worked in the old days: next to 0 shield-damage, but a huge blast radius when there are no shields in the way. The "meta" in that time was: "get their shields down with AMCs, and then fire 1-2 missiles to eat through the entire ship."

 

[jath]

I personally think shields are too powerful. In real life, if there is a good pilot flying a tiny plane with good armaments, he can seriously damage a naval vessel 1000s of times his size. He'll probably get shot down anyway, and the boat will be fine in the end, but damage will have occurred. In this game, it doesn't matter how skilled the smaller ship is, he's got no chance of even nicking the hull. The shield mechanics are to blame.

I personally think shield capacitators should only immediately protect an area within a certain distance of the group of capacitators. There should then be some time where the capacitators are recharged by other capacitators not in that group. The redistribution of charge would be faster than normal charging, but slow enough to enable a small ship with fairly accurate shots to the same small area break down his shielding in one spot. In this way, groups of small ships have the chance to wear down an enemy over time.
[DOUBLEPOST=1421734382,1421734305][/DOUBLEPOST]Larger ships against each other would hardly notice the shield difference because thier damage would be spread over larger areas naturally.

 

[Criss]

I'd rather just have shields mitigate damage based on the percentage of the ship they take up, with a hard limit being there too. Small ships will hardly hit a large hull, but the shots will still get through. Equally sized ships will get a bit more damage through. All the while, the damage is applied to shields and hull at the same time. More so to the shields, since it is mitigating the damage that gets through. Eventually you breakd down the shields and do full damage to hull.

Think about it. How often have we seen the enterprise have consoles blow up when the shields were still at 70+ percent. Shields should take the brunt of the force but I'm not sure they should be invulnerable. Or maybe they should only be invulnerable up to a certain point. The more shield recharges you have, the longer it takes before shots start going through the shields and hitting hull. I think that's a solid start to fixing shields. If anything they need to be nerfed, not buffed.