Can the devs give us an official ruling on PS transfer

[GRHayes]

Right now the only info I can find on power shield transfer is that it is supposed to transfer 1200 for every 1500 spent.

However, we know shield transfer throws an shield module into a mode where it thinks it is being attacked.

And the power transfer beams sure as heck don't transfer at the 1200 rate once you put an decent number of them in to use.

If you are wondering why I am bitching about power transfer. I went through calculate out the max on 755K since the transfer beam is 2 seconds long doubled the blocks for each. Beam. I noticed I was still only getting about 40% of the 80% I should be getting so instead of getting 1200 a block I was getting 480. I also noticed it really wasn't taxing even 1/3 of the Power supply. So I added more blocks. Sure enough it started pulling more power but the transfer rate didn't go up instead I started getting 141 a block.

So in short wondering if this is intentional or a bug? What the actual formula is supposed to be would be nice.
I can file a bug report but not sure if it is a bug because lack of information.

 

[Comr4de]

The shield supply beam issue is listed as a bug on the bugtracker, I'm pretty sure it isn't intended.

I don't know where you're getting the 1200 power supplied/block figure from. Block config right now has the following.

Spoiler: Powersupply beam config

<PowerSupply><BasicValues><TickRate>0.5</TickRate>
<!-- tick time in seconds, beam must remain on target entity or this timer resets -->
<PowerIncOnTargetFromBeamPower>1.0</PowerIncOnTargetFromBeamPower>
<!-- percentage (0 to 1) of SupplyPerHit that gets added to the target -->
<PowerConsumptionOnShooterFromBeamPower>0.0</PowerConsumptionOnShooterFromBeamPower>
<!-- percentage (0 to 1) of SupplyPerHit that consumed (additionally to PowerConsumptionPerTick) on shooter -->
<SupplyPerHit>240</SupplyPerHit><PowerConsumptionPerTick>300</PowerConsumptionPerTick><Distance>0.24</Distance>
<!-- 1 is equal to 100% sector radius -->
<!-- timeBetweenHits = 1 / (unitSize^pow)*mult -->
<CoolDown>5</CoolDown>
<!-- Time it takes to fire beam again from the start-time it first activated -->
<BurstTime>2.5</BurstTime>
<!-- Time the beam will fire -->
<InitialTicks>0</InitialTicks>
<!-- Ticks to do at the initial contact of beam with a block -->

For each block it supplies 240 power at the cost of 300 (so basically you're paying 60 power to supply 240). Did you have a slave on the power supply? That may have affected the power supplied, especially if you're using a cannon slave.

 

[lilheartless]

The shield supply beam issue is listed as a bug on the bugtracker, I'm pretty sure it isn't intended.

I don't know where you're getting the 1200 power supplied/block figure from. Block config right now has the following.

Spoiler: Powersupply beam config

<PowerSupply><BasicValues><TickRate>0.5</TickRate>
<!-- tick time in seconds, beam must remain on target entity or this timer resets -->
<PowerIncOnTargetFromBeamPower>1.0</PowerIncOnTargetFromBeamPower>
<!-- percentage (0 to 1) of SupplyPerHit that gets added to the target -->
<PowerConsumptionOnShooterFromBeamPower>0.0</PowerConsumptionOnShooterFromBeamPower>
<!-- percentage (0 to 1) of SupplyPerHit that consumed (additionally to PowerConsumptionPerTick) on shooter -->
<SupplyPerHit>240</SupplyPerHit><PowerConsumptionPerTick>300</PowerConsumptionPerTick><Distance>0.24</Distance>
<!-- 1 is equal to 100% sector radius -->
<!-- timeBetweenHits = 1 / (unitSize^pow)*mult -->
<CoolDown>5</CoolDown>
<!-- Time it takes to fire beam again from the start-time it first activated -->
<BurstTime>2.5</BurstTime>
<!-- Time the beam will fire -->
<InitialTicks>0</InitialTicks>
<!-- Ticks to do at the initial contact of beam with a block -->

For each block it supplies 240 power at the cost of 300 (so basically you're paying 60 power to supply 240). Did you have a slave on the power supply? That may have affected the power supplied, especially if you're using a cannon slave.

block shoots 5 ticks of 240 over 2.5 seconds and uses 1500 over 2.5 seconds or 1200/1500

 

[Comr4de]

Durr I'm a smarticle. In that case I guess it WOULD be dependent on the slave or it's just straight up bugged.

 

[lilheartless]

Durr I'm a smarticle. In that case I guess it WOULD be dependent on the slave or it's just straight up bugged.

honestly i'm not sure how this should go and i'm pretty sure the devs don't exactly know what to do either ... if they make the shield supply modules not go in combat when they are used but only when the entity is hit then they would be super broken and people would start just using docked shield supply beams instead of putting rechargers on their ships cause 80% of 100 is far superior to the 5 - 10 % of 100 u get for in combat regen which is honestly incredibly low.

honestly there really isn't any good way to balance it with the way shield rechargers are now aka incredibly crappy beyond belief shield supply beams will never see either their intended uses as a support ship "weapon" nor will they see use as docked shield reactors.

Shield rechargers are just too weak which means shield transfer as a whole is weak and not a viable system you can't increase their effectiveness without increasing the recharge rate and doing that just buffs shield ships.
I'm not actually opposed to this i'm not sure why shield recharge is so low in the first place it makes no sense why you get both an energy penalty and a recharge penalty that doesn't even make sense logically either or i would understand

- the shields are taking damage so it takes more power to maintain them under fire thats fine.

or

- the shields are taking damage and are less stable and unable to build up as fast.

but there is no logical way to fit both scenarios into the same system which is what we have now.

 

[GRHayes]

honestly i'm not sure how this should go and i'm pretty sure the devs don't exactly know what to do either ... if they make the shield supply modules not go in combat when they are used but only when the entity is hit then they would be super broken and people would start just using docked shield supply beams instead of putting rechargers on their ships cause 80% of 100 is far superior to the 5 - 10 % of 100 u get for in combat regen which is honestly incredibly low.

honestly there really isn't any good way to balance it with the way shield rechargers are now aka incredibly crappy beyond belief shield supply beams will never see either their intended uses as a support ship "weapon" nor will they see use as docked shield reactors.

Shield rechargers are just too weak which means shield transfer as a whole is weak and not a viable system you can't increase their effectiveness without increasing the recharge rate and doing that just buffs shield ships.
I'm not actually opposed to this i'm not sure why shield recharge is so low in the first place it makes no sense why you get both an energy penalty and a recharge penalty that doesn't even make sense logically either or i would understand

- the shields are taking damage so it takes more power to maintain them under fire thats fine.

or

- the shields are taking damage and are less stable and unable to build up as fast.

but there is no logical way to fit both scenarios into the same system which is what we have now.

Actually there is a great way to balance it get the rid of the stupid pointless combat nurf all together.
Seriously the only time we really need shields is in combat. I can careless what the recharge rate is out of combat.
I mean if they are going to do this they may as well just set the shield recharge to 1/10 what it was to start with. Then you wouldn't need the nurf.
Using modules was at least a work around that people had to dedicate some space and power to they didn't get back. It already had a penalty.
And what in Gods green earth where they trying to accomplish with the stupid nurf?
It might have to do with the massive increase in power requirements they stuck on various weapons.
They could have avoided that by making the same changes they did recently to combat and not just requiring the core to be hit.
In fact if they went to full power shields and dropped the power requirements to better levels people could shield against bigger attacks and also dish out greater damage. It would have been self balancing.

You have not just shield recharging as an issue docked power modules are also hosed from my testing.

Its like they want to limit everyone to 1M ships and make everyone equal. That will never work even if they designed the ships and only allowed people to use the ships they design someone is going to fly better and have a better strategy. But who knows the way this insane nurfing is going it wouldn't surprise me they go to the point of the only thing you can do is sign in and the game plays everything for you.
Yep, you wouldn't need to think or do anything just sit their mindlessly and let it run.

I agree with a lot of what they did. I agree with the explosions should not damage anything they haven't got to. I agree with changes to what requires a ship to go into over heat is much better and other stuff.

Anyway its just my view and it isn't my game so ultimately it is their choice. Right now I am wondering if I am just wasting time with it at this point I stopped building anything as of this week why should I since it doesn't work properly or if this is meant to be proper well then I am just wasting my time with game I don't agree with. In short either it gets fixed or I move on.

 

[Mork2]

I may be using the wrong definition for buff tanking: I think its using massive HP to absorb damage longer than your opponent.

The combat system in starmade at the moment is mostly around a buff tanking system no regeneration tanking. Hence why the combat regen penalty. So out of combat your shields regenerate fast but in fights you don't have that high regen rate so you can't really regen tank fights. Fights are designed to take time but not be so that someone is completely invulnerable to you because of regeneration rate, unless they truly out mass you by a large margin.

At the moment the way the shield transfer beam is setup its not for constantly regenerating shields but just transferring shields to a ally with depleted shields keeping him alive a while longer while reducing your own. Keeping with the buff tanking system.

Just need a way to use it to support another ship without the penalty while stopping a ship with docked entities from abusing it.

A couple ways you could balance it maybe is:

If shield transfer beam entity gets combat mode penalty only if the target it is hitting has combat penalty. That will stop massive regeneration using docked entities feeding the main ship that's in combat. But will allow you to supply a ship that isn't in combat if the entity with the shield transfer beam isn't being shot. The main ship can be fighting and the docked shield transfer system logic activated with its own rechargers would be good to support a ship that isn't in combat. Not great but better than now.

If you allow a shield supply beam to support a different ship in combat without the combat penalty, (that means it will take the combat penalty supporting anything up or down the docked chain) then the crazy regen problem then applies to the ship being supported getting you straight back to the regen problem, just requires a tag team of ships to run. This would depend if the devs want to give a large advantage for teamwork like some games do and go away from the buff tanking system.

Another idea is instead of the shield transfer beam taking shield regen combat penalty how about a transfer to target penalty to the transfer efficiency if the shield transfer module is hitting something that isn't in the same chain and is under combat. Say around 20% effectiveness. This results in:

Supporting yourself with a docked shield transfer module while under fire: Both take combat shield regen penalty. But you could transfer

stored shields on a docked entity to the main ship at 80% effectiveness.​

Supporting yourself with a docked shield transfer module while not under fire: Full regen and 80% transfer effectiveness.
Supporting someone else under fire: Shield transfer efficiency bad but the shield transfer beams shield regen is fine. This will allow you to

Support someone without the regen level being crazy. Unfortunately it kills the current use of shield transfer beams for buff tanking.
The object doing the supporting must not be shooting anyone and not be taking hits or the shield regen penalty will effect it.​

Supporting someone else not under fire: Full regen and 80% transfer effectiveness.

In the end I suspect the direction the game will go will depend on which combat mechanic they want to go with. Buff tank or regen tanking.

But it would be nice for it to work outside of combat properly though, hence the bug ticket.

 

[GRHayes]

I may be using the wrong definition for buff tanking: I think its using massive HP to absorb damage longer than your opponent.

The combat system in starmade at the moment is mostly around a buff tanking system no regeneration tanking. Hence why the combat regen penalty. So out of combat your shields regenerate fast but in fights you don't have that high regen rate so you can't really regen tank fights. Fights are designed to take time but not be so that someone is completely invulnerable to you because of regeneration rate, unless they truly out mass you by a large margin.

At the moment the way the shield transfer beam is setup its not for constantly regenerating shields but just transferring shields to a ally with depleted shields keeping him alive a while longer while reducing your own. Keeping with the buff tanking system.

Just need a way to use it to support another ship without the penalty while stopping a ship with docked entities from abusing it.

A couple ways you could balance it maybe is:

If shield transfer beam entity gets combat mode penalty only if the target it is hitting has combat penalty. That will stop massive regeneration using docked entities feeding the main ship that's in combat. But will allow you to supply a ship that isn't in combat if the entity with the shield transfer beam isn't being shot. The main ship can be fighting and the docked shield transfer system logic activated with its own rechargers would be good to support a ship that isn't in combat. Not great but better than now.

If you allow a shield supply beam to support a different ship in combat without the combat penalty, (that means it will take the combat penalty supporting anything up or down the docked chain) then the crazy regen problem then applies to the ship being supported getting you straight back to the regen problem, just requires a tag team of ships to run. This would depend if the devs want to give a large advantage for teamwork like some games do and go away from the buff tanking system.

Another idea is instead of the shield transfer beam taking shield regen combat penalty how about a transfer to target penalty to the transfer efficiency if the shield transfer module is hitting something that isn't in the same chain and is under combat. Say around 20% effectiveness. This results in:

Supporting yourself with a docked shield transfer module while under fire: Both take combat shield regen penalty. But you could transfer

stored shields on a docked entity to the main ship at 80% effectiveness.​

Supporting yourself with a docked shield transfer module while not under fire: Full regen and 80% transfer effectiveness.
Supporting someone else under fire: Shield transfer efficiency bad but the shield transfer beams shield regen is fine. This will allow you to

Support someone without the regen level being crazy. Unfortunately it kills the current use of shield transfer beams for buff tanking.
The object doing the supporting must not be shooting anyone and not be taking hits or the shield regen penalty will effect it.​

Supporting someone else not under fire: Full regen and 80% transfer effectiveness.

In the end I suspect the direction the game will go will depend on which combat mechanic they want to go with. Buff tank or regen tanking.

But it would be nice for it to work outside of combat properly though, hence the bug ticket.

Your missing the obvious. Massive shield regeneration would be countered by increased weapons damage if they got rid of the excessive power requirements on weapons they just added. Then the shields and weapons would counter each other.

 

[Winterhome]

excessive power requirements on weapons they just added

The power requirements on weapons have been the same for months, if not years.
10 energy per point of damage has been the base setting for a very long time.

 

[GRHayes]

The power requirements on weapons have been the same for months, if not years.
10 energy per point of damage has been the base setting for a very long time.

It is still fairly recent they made the changes. It is recent enough the pirates in the game have ships that can't even fire. Not to mention half Most of my previous ships had to be trashed because of the weapons failures.

It honestly doesn't matter when the change was made other just that it was made. Or does that fact escape you?

 

[Winterhome]

It is still fairly recent they made the changes. It is recent enough the pirates in the game have ships that can't even fire. Not to mention half Most of my previous ships had to be trashed because of the weapons failures.

That's because damage was doubled. Also, the pirates have always been broken.

 

[GRHayes]

That's because damage was doubled. Also, the pirates have always been broken.

No the pirates haven't always been broken I can remember a number of times I got hit with the larger missile in the past. Even when I first started and lost huge chucks of a ship and entire ships to them. Since I haven't even been playing a year that puts it since December 2014 they had worked. So why lie? You've been on this game longer than I have so you had to have seen them fire differently as well.

If they used a common sense idea of something like converting 1e to 1 damage and 1e to 1 shield the entire system would be evenly balanced.

Then any issue or fault of imbalance would be purely because of players choice. It would be because they focus on X vs Y.

It would mean you could build to identical size ships if one went entirely weapons damage and the other went entirely shields then you would end up with a stalemate however if they choose any other options it will come out who has the best strategy and made the best choice to for the strategy.

There would be zero need to nurf anything like that.

 

[Winterhome]

It's already balanced out as 10 energy per 1 damage and 10 energy per 1 shield.

As it stands, a ship that focuses heavily on shield recharge can defeat a ship of equal size that focuses heavily on machineguns.

 

[lilheartless]

It's already balanced out as 10 energy per 1 damage and 10 energy per 1 shield.

As it stands, a ship that focuses heavily on shield recharge can defeat a ship of equal size that focuses heavily on machineguns.

no it can't because 1 block of gun gives 10 damage 1 block of shield recharger gives what is it .5 - 1 per in combat shield regeneration? which means you need 10 - 20 shield rechargers to every 1 weapon block in a ships of equal size battle the person who focused entirely on shield regeneration wouldn't have the power to power their shield rechargers so they would both do no damage and not be able to tank the enemy thats just straight up math

 

[GRHayes]

It's already balanced out as 10 energy per 1 damage and 10 energy per 1 shield.

As it stands, a ship that focuses heavily on shield recharge can defeat a ship of equal size that focuses heavily on machineguns.

False this is the current shield power system formula
https://starmadepedia.net/wiki/Defense_Systems

The big thing is weapons don't take an equal hit to them like shields do when under combat.
Weapons have various amounts per damage point.
But that isn't even half the issue.
Take cannons for example it takes 11 blocks to do 100dps. 18.18 blocks not in combat it takes 363 blocks in combat to equal 100 shield recharge. So no with that huge spacial difference weapons will always win out over shields.
Plus a weapon system is only reliant on power recharging and doesn't have to deal with a combat nurf. Shields have to recharge as low as 1/20th their normal rate.

What that means is if both ships had 1 million power and the person with the weapon system fires the shielded vessel will end up only recharging shields at 100K maximum while the gun ship can use up all 1 million in on weapons damage and be able to fire over again the very next second. That doesn't even take in if both ships had equal capacitance for power the shield ship would get nothing at all out of it the weapons ship could use it to pull ahead of the shield ships recharge forcing it down further.

It also doesn't even touch the fact that weapons difference block count vs that of shield count means those spare blocks could be turned into power generation were the shield ship wouldn't have it.

Its simple math.

 

[Keptick]

Make sure that the power supply beams are actually hitting something, it gets whacky when they're fired at empty space.
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honestly i'm not sure how this should go and i'm pretty sure the devs don't exactly know what to do either ... if they make the shield supply modules not go in combat when they are used but only when the entity is hit then they would be super broken and people would start just using docked shield supply beams instead of putting rechargers on their ships cause 80% of 100 is far superior to the 5 - 10 % of 100 u get for in combat regen which is honestly incredibly low.

honestly there really isn't any good way to balance it with the way shield rechargers are now aka incredibly crappy beyond belief shield supply beams will never see either their intended uses as a support ship "weapon" nor will they see use as docked shield reactors.

Shield rechargers are just too weak which means shield transfer as a whole is weak and not a viable system you can't increase their effectiveness without increasing the recharge rate and doing that just buffs shield ships.
I'm not actually opposed to this i'm not sure why shield recharge is so low in the first place it makes no sense why you get both an energy penalty and a recharge penalty that doesn't even make sense logically either or i would understand

- the shields are taking damage so it takes more power to maintain them under fire thats fine.

or

- the shields are taking damage and are less stable and unable to build up as fast.

but there is no logical way to fit both scenarios into the same system which is what we have now.

There's a power cost to keep the shields up, there's a power cost for them to recharge, and that recharge is disrupted in combat.

The problem is that we can't see when shields are under fire. The used to be a % indicator of shield recharge rate, so it was easy to tell. Idk why that was removed (or not re-added with the new HUD). Due to this I know that when your shields are recharging and you're NOT being shot at you'll actually get 100% regen rate. However, it's impossible to know for someone that has never seen the old HUD, so it's a bit confusing.

So if you leave combat your shields will eventually start recharging at 100% rate (if they weren't fully recharged yet). The reason it's like that is to avoid invulnerable ships. I have a 50k mass ship sith 250k shield regen, if that was always at 100% I don't even think that the ship would be able to crack it's own regen (since you'd need more than 250k dps). It would make large ships practically invulnerable to ships smaller than themselves. For example, my titan is going to have around 12 million shield regen and 500 million shields. Even with, say, 20 million dps (which is a ridiculously large and improbable amount), it'd still take 62 seconds to crack my shields. Now imagine a smaller ship trying to kill me: absolutely impossible. Even if you had a ship specialized in shield damage you'd be unable to break my armor before dying, so I'd still win. Either that or neither ship would die.
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nurf

NERF*

Also, you're really exagerating. It's not a nerf, it's a game mechanic that's been there since the start and I don't recall anyone ever complaining about it (for the reason in the paragraph above). Also, weapons were BUFFED!!! Their damage was doubled and the power cost per damage point stayed the same, so you only need half the amount of weapons as before to do the same damage. Now of course if you're using a ton of outputs the power cost will go through the roof, because each additional output costs 10% more power. However, it's been like that for two years. The pirates can't fire because they're super outdated, not because they're broken....
[DOUBLEPOST=1445234893][/DOUBLEPOST]

no it can't because 1 block of gun gives 10 damage 1 block of shield recharger gives what is it .5 - 1 per in combat shield regeneration? which means you need 10 - 20 shield rechargers to every 1 weapon block in a ships of equal size battle the person who focused entirely on shield regeneration wouldn't have the power to power their shield rechargers so they would both do no damage and not be able to tank the enemy thats just straight up math

And one shield capacitor gives 110 shields, so 11 seconds worth of fire from 1 weapon blocks. Why the hell are you guys so focused on wanting invincible ships? Seriously... The only reason 1 shield recharger doesn't give 10s/sec is so that combats freaking end some day. Take two ships of equal mass and power regen, the one with more shield capacitors than weapons (compared to the other) will win, assuming 100% accuracy and no alpha weapons. It's simple math

Also, hayes, there's literally no point in increasing regen if you also increase weapon damage. Go ahead and give yourself a billion shield regen, I'll just make a weapon that kills your shield capacity in a single shot :p (the point being that regen isn't everything).

I almost forgot: ARMOR TANKING, USE IT!

 

[Mork2]

Originally the weapon systems in starmade was based on a system where the larger the weapon the less damage per block it did. This resulted in massive checkboard arrays with one block outputs and generally creating massive lag. I think the original isanth was designed back then. Not sure if they got a revamp with the primary slave effect update.

During that weapon update for primary, slave and effect every weapon block regardless of slave or effect pretty much dealt 5 dps per block including all the blocks in slave and effects up to 100% of the primary. If the isanths were updated they were updated to run under those weapon systems. All previous ships were pretty much had to be refitted to work properly again. A lot weren't or due to design type couldn't. Shields capacitor was 55 per block. All weapons had the same energy cost which was 10 x the damage, so 50e/sec per block.

However a few updates ago all guns and beams got buff as well as shield capacitors. Shield capacitors went to 110 per block. Making combat last longer. All cannon and beams got double dps to 10dps/block but there power cost per damage didn't go down so now every weapon block doubled the damage but used twice the power. Unless you adjusted the designs by reducing number of weapons blocks your previously power stable ships would run out of power. So again you had to refit ships to make them power stable. I don't think the isanths have been updated to reflect that. Missiles were also updated with the different damage mechanic. It looks like they doubled the base damage of missiles as well to 10dps per block and then doubled it again cause the damage radiates outward so half is usually away from the target. This combined resulted in missiles that do 4 times more listed damage compared to the original and double the power usage so its now 20dps per block and 100e/sec. In effect though its mostly 10dps per block since usually you hit a flat surface and half the damage radiates away from the target. This resulted in missile ships needing to be refit as well to be power stable.

There are a lot of ship designs all over the place that are outdated and broken as the game is updated and mechanics change. Same with a lot of the youtube videos you can find. Like mushroom fleets hailstorm capital ship used for combat testing under the original weapon system.

 

[GRHayes]

Make sure that the power supply beams are actually hitting something, it gets whacky when they're fired at empty space.
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There's a power cost to keep the shields up, there's a power cost for them to recharge, and that recharge is disrupted in combat.

The problem is that we can't see when shields are under fire. The used to be a % indicator of shield recharge rate, so it was easy to tell. Idk why that was removed (or not re-added with the new HUD). Due to this I know that when your shields are recharging and you're NOT being shot at you'll actually get 100% regen rate. However, it's impossible to know for someone that has never seen the old HUD, so it's a bit confusing.

So if you leave combat your shields will eventually start recharging at 100% rate (if they weren't fully recharged yet). The reason it's like that is to avoid invulnerable ships. I have a 50k mass ship sith 250k shield regen, if that was always at 100% I don't even think that the ship would be able to crack it's own regen (since you'd need more than 250k dps). It would make large ships practically invulnerable to ships smaller than themselves. For example, my titan is going to have around 12 million shield regen and 500 million shields. Even with, say, 20 million dps (which is a ridiculously large and improbable amount), it'd still take 62 seconds to crack my shields. Now imagine a smaller ship trying to kill me: absolutely impossible. Even if you had a ship specialized in shield damage you'd be unable to break my armor before dying, so I'd still win. Either that or neither ship would die.
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NERF*

Also, you're really exagerating. It's not a nerf, it's a game mechanic that's been there since the start and I don't recall anyone ever complaining about it (for the reason in the paragraph above). Also, weapons were BUFFED!!! Their damage was doubled and the power cost per damage point stayed the same, so you only need half the amou t of weapons as before to do the same damage. Now of course if you're using a ton of outputs the power cost will go through the roof, because each additional output costs 10% more power. However, it's been like that for two years. The pirates can't fire because they're super outdated, not because they're broken....
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And one shield capacitor gives 100 shields, so 10 seconds worth of fire from 1 weapon blocks. Why the hell are you guys so focused on wanting invincible ships? Seriously... The only reason 1 shield recharger doesn't give 10s/sec is so that combats freaking end some day. Take two ships of equal mass and power regen, the one with more shield capacitors than weapons (compared to the other) will win, assuming 100% accuracy and no alpha weapons. It's simple math

Also, hayes, there's literally no point in increasing regen if you also increase weapon damage. And go ahead and give yourself a billion shield regen, I'll just make a weapon that kills your shield capacity in a single shot :p (the point being that regen isn't everything).

I almost forgot: ARMOR TANKING, USE IT!

Keptic thanks for the reply first.

Here is the issue. As I pointed out in my last follow up.

Ok assume you have two ships being built, both ships have currently identical generators producing 1M it takes 7000 blocks and both are being given 10,000 more block space. One ship is being built to maximize firepower the other ship is being built to defense.

There is no possible way defense will ever keep up with fire power. You can convert the defense ship to the best shield and armor configuration you want but the offense ship will slaughter it.

Just think about this part. It takes 10 blocks for a cannon to reach 100 dps, it takes 19 under non-combat for regen to make that. During combat it takes 363 blocks to make that. That is an disadvantage of 353 blocks. Now scale that up to the full 10K and it only gets worse.
10/353 ratio. Weapons recharge is based on power recharge. Which isn't weighed down by combat. It doesn't have that mechanic as you called it.

Sure you can add ion effect to shield and punch through to increase armor protection. However, weapons has 35 times more block space to work with to increase its damage and power storage. Per http://starmadedock.net/threads/a-simple-graph-for-weapon-linking.3751/ it would take 55% of the entire ships block count not just the 10K blocks we limited to above. To make full use of the punch, peirce, ion, and explosive effects. considering it takes about 7K blocks to make the 1M power gen I limited us to as the beginning of the thought experiment. That means the ship is about 17K total so That means 9.35K of the 10K would have to be used to make use of them all fully. But maybe you just want punch and ion. That is still 30% = 5.1K of the 10K we allotted to either shield,armor vs weapons. What are you going to gain on the ion and punch. 80% punch and 60% on the ion.

In comparison weapons on the other hand I can double and triple my damage rate, I can even add more power capacitance so that I could fire something larger or longer in duration.

Armor tanking is a joke. That same ship used in left mouse vs right mouse cut through that orange block in a few seconds. I literally used it to cut the block from right to left and top to bottom in half that is 20 thick advanced armor and it was like taking a hot knife through butter. Add to that armor weighs you down to death. It would be better used just to cloak and jam the ship or give it jump so you could ambush and run.

This entire thing is funny considering they made the recent change to avoid one shot kills and that could have been easily prevented to start with if they included block count in balancing offense vs defense capability.

Then you point out that they did this so combat would end one day but it was a recent patch they attempted to eliminate 1S1K. They went to requiring 50% structural damage for a core to over heat. In which it just massively extended combat length between two equal ships.
You get that those two things are exactly the opposite of one another!

Then there is the entire thing of 10X power consumption of shields and no gain from it along with the so called game mechanic. It makes no sense at all. When you dump 10x power into something you should get an equivalent output or at least some out put. not a negative output. if the shield caps are using it to maintain shields then it should get 10X shield damage absorption, if the generators are using it they should produce 10x the amount they where. Even if you were to through in heat loss the from electrical or power you should still get something like 8x more for that 10X. It is literally the most counter intuitive and illogical thing I ever seen in a game the only thing I seen comparable was a bug a company had on a strategy game where the men face the wrong direction from what they were ordered. That bug was fixed in short order though.

 

[Panpiper]

The thing that irks me the most ("irk" is far too tame a word for how I really feel about this), is that this nerfing of shield regen in combat is effectively concealed from players. I have spent the last year thinking that the listed amount of shield regeneration, 5.5 per module, was in fact the amount of shield regeneration we got. Every ship I have built in the last year was designed based on this assumption. The fact that this gets degraded to one tenth or one twentieth the listed amount in combat is so effectively hidden that I was absolutely oblivious to it. Moreover absolutely everyone I have chatted with about this in game is 'also' oblivious to it.

Everyone thinks the listed amount of shield regeneration is what they get. Everyone builds their ships based on that assumption.

I agree 100% with GRHayes, if you want in combat shield regeneration to be one tenth of what the listed amount is, then reduce the listed amount to one tenth and get rid of the in combat nerf. List the shield regeneration quantity as being what they actually get in combat. Give people the shield regen that is listed with the modules, so people build the ships they think they are building. If you want shields to regenerate faster out of combat, then 'boost' the regen out of combat to ten times listed instead.

As it is however, knowing what I do now, if I could I would go back and rip out 90% of all my shield regenerators and replace them with capacitors. Shield regenerators are absolutely Fing useless the way they are now, for one on one equal duels or major fleet engagements. All they are good for now is for being able to ignore pirates in ships that are SO huge, they could virtually ignore them regardless.

 

[Keptick]

GRHayes Ok, first off you're only considering shield regen, and not capacity. Balancing strictly on regen means that battles between different sized ships will HEAVILY favor the larger ship, if not make it outright invincible. That's what would happen if regen and weapons had the same values. Lets face it, combat between ships of identical mass never happen (or it's really really rare), unless it's a tournament or contest. Besides, at the moment it's entirely feasible to have a better shield defense than offense for similar mass ships, if you use CAPACITORS!!! I'll pull out calculations in a few minutes to prove it (I'll make an other post). Balancing based on capacity instead of regen is a lot better, since it ensures that you don't get situations where a ship is immortal, unless there's a sizeable size difference.

Secondly, the reason combat regen is a thing is because it's entirely possible to pull out of combat, regen a bit and come back. It actually favors team based tactics where you rotate with team mates and let your shields recharge while they fight. I agree with Panpiper that it's annoying not knowing what state the shields are in, idk why that was removed. There should at least be an indication of combaf regen values somewhere.

Thirdly, armor tanking is no joke. Look at the armor and structure HP bars, not the hole you're putting in the enemy ship (even if you penetrate their armor doesn't mean you're doing much damage).
[DOUBLEPOST=1445265396,1445265346][/DOUBLEPOST]I don't remember the specifics of armor tanking, so it'd be great if Lancake could explain them (please). What I do know is that can provide beast mode defense in certain situations and if done properly.