A look at shield strength and weapons.

[Panpiper]

I agree that damage is too strong relative to defense. I've been building a big ship and going all out to make it as defensive as possible , and I have no less than two complete sets of armament on that same ship that can each destroy an equivalent ship with a single salvo. The killer is that missiles cannot be effectively countered. Existing cannons cannot track effectively and even if they could, point defense turrets are simply too logistically cumbersome to use, given how they get all shot up constantly. To that end...

Have beams be usable for point defense. Their instant hit will do away with the tracking problem currently plaguing cannons for point defense. Have turrets gain partial protection from ship's shields, at least 50%, so half the damage sustained by a turret is mitigated. This will make small turrets somewhat more viable. Fix BobbyAI so it can use technobeams, and enable them to be usable in turrets mounted on a ship, so turrets will be able to repair themselves as well as a ship taking damage.

The Hull HP system being worked on will go a long way towards increasing ship survivability, not to mention repairability apparently as well. While I can sympathize with the OPs sentiments regarding increasing shield size, it might be best to wait to see how that new HP system works out. Also if I were to increase shield effectiveness myself, I would not boost them by ten, but maybe only a factor of two or three, just enough so that those one shot kills can be absorbed at least once. However I would also significantly increase the in combat shield regeneration capacity.

 

[ltmauve]

If you want to end one-hit kills, you'd want to set up a system that punishes overkill in combat.
I'm thinking a "second chance" where an overly powerful attack will remove all shields, but then get blocked from doing any hull damage.

 

[HerrColonel]

I liked it at first but Hp system will do it well

Additionnaly, Itmauve's idea is very good and could be putted in the HP system

 

[Panpiper]

I'm thinking a "second chance" where an overly powerful attack will remove all shields, but then get blocked from doing any hull damage.

The problem with that is that it is not a single weapon 'shot', but a single weapon 'salvo'. Yes, if it was a single nuke missile or cannon shot, it would be easy to program that a shot that takes down shields does not do any additional damage. But the salvo attack launches a hundred or more missiles, all of which hit, and combined take down the shields as well as do horrendous hull damage. If the one of those missiles that happens to be the one that ends the shields does no hull damage, it is of no matter, as dozens more are striking that 'will' do hull damage.

 

[Proxima_Centauri]

I see absolutely no reason to increase the capacity to shields.

Do you not know how to read, or did you just ignore everything that was said in the OP?

I personally think shields are too powerful. In real life....

There are no shields "in real life" and Star Wars is NOT an accurate indicator of how space battles would happen.
If you approached a real warship in a makeshift skiff, you would get blown away before getting within 100 meters.
Just ask those Somali pirates.

The time of one man armies with a titan each is over.

My Sides
AI fleet control is AT BEST more than a year away still.

 

[ltmauve]

Yeah, it's not that simple.

 

[Lecic]

My Sides
AI fleet control is AT BEST more than a year away still.

It's not here yet, but trials just with human pilots are already showing that fleets are superior to singles.


I mean, watch for yourself. This fleet annihilated any solo ship that came against them for a long time. It wasn't until the ENEMY ATTACKED IN GROUPS that they started taking loses.

 

[Criss]

Do you not know how to read, or did you just ignore everything that was said in the OP?

I can ask the same of you, considering I explained the reasoning in my posts. It is the complete opposite direction of what the devs wanted. Not only did they state that shield defense was supposed to be harder to achieve, they increased the cost for crafting them. If they wanted to bump up the capacity, don't you think schema could have done that already? They want to force the player into making decisions on what modules they place on their ships. Not make it easier to fill them to the brim with every module in the game.

Lecic also stated something that I had thought of. With a capacitor increase, people are prone to use a few less shield blocks. This leaves room for more weapons and in the end we have hardly taken a step in the right direction.

 

[PIE_OF_DOOM]

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.

Ok as a counter to this the guys doing the 150 million have no shields atm. These guys warp in right on or near you, hit you with sniper missile array and then warp away. Yes people could use less shield capacitors and work more on weapons but allowing for stronger shields would mean it would be possible to build a tank ship to take the hits. atm no reasonable tank ship could survive a 150 million damage missile array if the max blocks are 4 million. Also as shields are more expensive maybe having them give you more capacity is a way to go as no 4 million block Titan should die to an equal sized ship or lower in one shot. It should take a death star to one shot a Titan. Also there is the chance that if capacity was much higher then weapons may be able to be adjusts better without a vary small change making one weapon useless or op (more buffer room for balance and adding new weapons systems).

 

[Lecic]

Ok as a counter to this the guys doing the 150 million have no shields atm. These guys warp in right on or near you, hit you with sniper missile array and then warp away. Yes people could use less shield capacitors and work more on weapons but allowing for stronger shields would mean it would be possible to build a tank ship to take the hits. atm no reasonable tank ship could survive a 150 million damage missile array if the max blocks are 4 million. Also as shields are more expensive maybe having them give you more capacity is a way to go as no 4 million block Titan should die to an equal sized ship or lower in one shot. It should take a death star to one shot a Titan. Also there is the chance that if capacity was much higher then weapons may be able to be adjusts better without a vary small change making one weapon useless or op (more buffer room for balance and adding new weapons systems).

If capacity is 10x the size, you need 10x less blocks to maintain your current shield count. You can replace all that dead space with missile modules and power capacitors and utterly destroy every enemy you see. I have no idea what you're trying to say here, but it's not going to counter that. Just making shields super strong is not going to solve anything.

 

[PIE_OF_DOOM]

I can ask the same of you, considering I explained the reasoning in my posts. It is the complete opposite direction of what the devs wanted. Not only did they state that shield defense was supposed to be harder to achieve, they increased the cost for crafting them. If they wanted to bump up the capacity, don't you think schema could have done that already? They want to force the player into making decisions on what modules they place on their ships. Not make it easier to fill them to the brim with every module in the game.

Lecic also stated something that I had thought of. With a capacitor increase, people are prone to use a few less shield blocks. This leaves room for more weapons and in the end we have hardly taken a step in the right direction.

Ok so maybe I should be asking how do we stop unfair pvp where the opponents ship has only weapons thrust and power? The guys doing the 150 million have no shields. An increase would prevent the possibility of making a one shot ship of equal block count. And if you are saying use fleets then remember that I'm speaking from a server where you are lucky if you got 3 active members and there is consistently 50+ people. One if the amount of capacitors is decreased too much then people will still die to the 150 million damage players so there's only so much they can take away. Also the recharge increase would be about the same so shields lost would not recover as fast (recharge is limited by power recharge). Another suggestion I would make to counter increase capacity a bit would be to have recharge not recharge at all (instead of its current 6% or 14%) for 1 or 2 seconds this would mean that if people don't have the large amount of capacity but go with more weapons, power and shield recharge then fast shooting weapons would ripe them apart due to there recharge not effecting them.

Ok now on to another of your post where I Do agree with you.

Vanhelzing: "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." (sorry didn't see the post till now. XD )

Know what I do like this Idea. It still don't solve the one shot problem but maybe it could balance a 10x increase to shield. So with more capacity comes the problem that your shields are not perfect. So the 4 million block titan with 1 million shield capacitors would maybe not die in one shot but instead it can survive because it has 500 million instead of 50 million But it would still suffer damage due to a bleed effect. This would give more room to balance and add weapon systems to the game but also would work vary well with the upcoming Hp system.

See with something like this it would mean that hard hitting weapons would be devastating for internal damage but the fast shooting weapons would be what takes the shields down in the long run. Would also give fighters a chance as they can launch a point blank nuke and actually scratch the Titan without out right destroying it.
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If capacity is 10x the size, you need 10x less blocks to maintain your current shield count. You can replace all that dead space with missile modules and power capacitors and utterly destroy every enemy you see. I have no idea what you're trying to say here, but it's not going to counter that. Just making shields super strong is not going to solve anything.

Om that's why I picked 10x is because even if you can make just a glass cannon with no shields it would not be possible to one shot a equal sized ship with descent shields (atm it is vary easy to do so) thou 10x was also picked because it was an easy value so it may be possible to get the same effect from lesser values. Also I do agree with Vanhelzing idea of damage bleed through but only if there was an increase to shield capacity.

 

[Criss]

How about we wait till the health system before we start making drastic changes like upping the shield capacity by 10x ? I think after those changes we might not have to worry about it or there might be entirely separate issues. They have plans for a solution. Lets actually see what they have before we go altering other things like shields.

 

[PIE_OF_DOOM]

How about we wait till the health system before we start making drastic changes like upping the shield capacity by 10x ? I think after those changes we might not have to worry about it or there might be entirely separate issues. They have plans for a solution. Lets actually see what they have before we go altering other things like shields.

Ok I can agree to that at least just thought I should bring up that there are some problems on large servers with pvp but yes we should see what the Hp update would do.

 

[jath]

Since when does fighter jet = skiff?

The real issue here is that you don't know how to use radar jammers, ion effect, or punch through effect.

The other thing is, the balance issue isn't between shields and weapons, honestly. The balance is between shield blocks and armor blocks. Why put 1000 armor blocks down that will only protect me on one side by 1/1000th the total hp of that bock, when i can put 1000 shields down and get 1000 shields worth of protection even on that little tiny decorative light rod you put on the top?

 

[Lecic]

I'm speaking from a server where you are lucky if you got 3 active members and there is consistently 50+ people

I'm curious as to what server this could possibly be. EE? Ragnarok? Mushroom Fleet? Please elaborate.

 

[Criss]

Since when does fighter jet = skiff?

The real issue here is that you don't know how to use radar jammers, ion effect, or punch through effect.

The other thing is, the balance issue isn't between shields and weapons, honestly. The balance is between shield blocks and armor blocks. Why put 1000 armor blocks down that will only protect me on one side by 1/1000th the total hp of that bock, when i can put 1000 shields down and get 1000 shields worth of protection even on that little tiny decorative light rod you put on the top?

Thats why I want shields that mitigate damage, not completely block it. I wonder if there is a way to set that up with server settings.

 

[jath]

Thats why I want shields that mitigate damage, not completely block it. I wonder if there is a way to set that up with server settings.

I'm not a fan of treating shields as armor from the get go. I think 100% shields should protect 100% damage for how strong they are, at least for the first couple shots. I can see however, shooting repeatedly in one spot, even though the shields might still be at or near 100%, perhaps repeated shots start fatiguing the shields in that spot where some of the damage gets through. That would make highly accurate small ships more viable, and would make boarding a possibility.

However, i also think that blocks should be destroyed differently. I think that destroying a block should simply put a hole through that block, not delete it completely from the ship. Only when all adjacent blocks area also destroyed should that block be removed completely. Destroyed but present blocks should also mitigate damage slightly as well. This would also make Astro beams more widely used. Astro beams should gain piercing capabilities as well.

 

[NeonSturm]

Facts:

• With 2x ship size, 1 hull block becomes 2x2x2 hull blocks (as in : fire power per block)

• You don't want to barely lose a fight and do absolutely no damage just because shields are 10x as strong as hull.

• Shields take 1 power point per shield point to regenerate (or has it changed?) while weapons take 10x as much.
  • once you rely on power regeneration (power tanks depleted) you will notice this possible invulnerability.

• 2x scale = 8x power.

My opinion:

• Fights should last longer to give players time to react, but not only because of shields.
  • Alternatively you should be able to evade combat.

• Ships should not have 70% of their blocks just because of fights.
  • Better require power for engines and deflector shields + have relative small weapons.

 

[Proxima_Centauri]

I can ask the same of you, considering I explained the reasoning in my posts.

You didn't explain shit, other than "the devs can do no wrong and everything will be OK".

Unless you don't play the game at all (I'm guessing you don't, judging by your post), you would know that missiles are extremely OP against anything right now.
I built a 5000 mass missile turret that could kill 200,000 mass ships in a single shot. You call this balanced? Give me a break.
Combat is essentially "warp as close to the enemy as possible and loose missiles then jump away" right now.

Also, "X is going to be changed soon therefore you can't criticize it " is not a valid criticism. Directional docking was supposedly fixed more than a year ago, and yet it still doesn't work.

 

[CyberTao]

If the problem is players warping too close, unloading and then leaving, I vote we fix it so they can't warp that close, or have 2 jumpdrives to support that tactic. I'm really confused by the OP of this, since the idea sounded like "If we make shields 10x greater, people will be more willing to pvp", and by the end I was even more confused about what was being said.

What I do know is a weapon block gives 5 dps across all weapons. Missiles have the advantage of being able to break a lot of blocks with few groups (due to a multiple-group power nerf to prevent waffle cannons). I haven't played multiplayer in a while, so I don't know how abused this is, but maybe improving Point Defence slightly and adding in a minimum range to lock on missiles (they wouldn't lock) would help there?

Another thing to note is you get 55 shields per shield capacitor, 11 times more shields then weapon dps per block. So a half weapons/half shield ship would last 11 seconds if fighting itself. I remember Calbiri talking about this in chat while he was building the original configs as well, so it was done purposely.

I dunno, the game seems to be moving away from shield dependency. Problems with lock-on missile ambushes? Be more aware and invest in a Radar Jammer, that stuff is useful beyond belief. I don't expect them to warp close enough for Dumbfires to be an immediate issue, just Swarm missiles would seem to be an issue (but they are useless in most cases, because allies, so you can't really take this from them).

If you're on a server that suffers from a great number of glass cannons using jump tactics, I'd recommend getting a flight buddy. I'm not even sure how jumpdrive ambushes work honestly, unless they use a Scanner first maybe? But even then, space is big. I question how they even find you to ambush.