Old shields.

[Trollerbobman]

Maybe its because nothing was firing back at the enemy vessels to keep them away?

Common logic:

Put lots of turrets on big ships to tell smaller ships to \"stay away\"

 

[vernes]

Turrets are for when your ship is huge.

You do not dogfight with capital ship.

 

[Crusade]

Problem here is that turrets are easily defeated. As far as i know they dont share the motherships shielding, so it is literally 2-3 well placed AMC blasts to take one out. Easily achieved when fighting AI.

Bring old shields back, or introduce a damage threshold before shields take damage, that is decided by mass of ship and shield capacity.

 

[Trollerbobman]

he probably wasnt firing back.

 

[Trollerbobman]

then make turrets that have giant shield capacity.

dont add power blocks, it can use power from the main ship.

 

[Trollerbobman]

Also did you think of using \"weapons\" when \"fighting\" these pirate ships.

And, if you have a giant heavily shielded ship with lots of weapons and you lose to a basic Isanth pirate ship, its just sad.

 

[DracoNB]

You have 7 turrets that have ~600 AMCs each?



600 AMC =

Damage: 619.70
Range: 1,269.80
Reload: 78.60
Speed: 77.00
Attacks Per Second: 12.72
Power Used Per Second:7,633.56
Damage Per Second: 7,884.22

Total Power Used Per Second for turrets: 53,434.92

And you say these are on a Jamming Ship?? How the hell can you afford that much power? Or does your jammer not actually work at all because it uses so much power it turns off right away?

 

[Hatter]

So after more than one of the well known players have actually commented and given support, Even if it was over time and a bit of testing...

clearly we can see that shield nerf is just unfair as is. Personally I\'d love to see an update that comes out in a few days that fixes this. It\'s not like re coding a entire chunk of the game. It\'s just a few small things... I\'d like to see combat regen return, Maybe a bit higher regen... big ships feel so weak now...Even with turrets.

turrets are weak as (pardon the language) but turrets are weak as piss now as well. A good aimed amc that does 200 damage in one shot can prolly take down a lot of turret sizes in a few hits. You\'d have to have a thunderclap for any effectiveness. and even that thunderclap isn\'t that op anymore. I just want this to be returned or put right

 

[TerrorSoul]

You are correct that big ships feel weak now and this needs to be changed whilst allowing smaller ships to still have the chance in combat although not much chance as realistically it would need to be a fleet of small ships to take down a big ship. The balance of the shield system needs to be repaired soon before the game gets too far into development. As a temporary fix for now, I\'ve had to adjust the amount of damage in which a Hard Hull can withstand.

 

[MrFURB]

The shield changes are a step in the right direction, although if it\'s a leap too far or not is up to people\'s personal opinion. I think that shields need a buff, but not to regen, to capacity. It is my opinion that no ship should ever be completely invincible to any threat, but the larger the ship, the more of a beating it can take before any damage becomes permenant. A fighter fighting a capital ship should be fighting against all odds as it would need to keep it\'s target isolated, turretless, friendless, for an extended period of time in order to actually make it\'s time worthwhile, and at the same time a capital ship meant to output enormous amounts of damage at very long ranges should be able to melt anything in front of it but rely on friends and strength in numbers to support it\'s flanks.

The way the game is heading, it will require multiple people to effectively use larger ships, but those multiple people will make that larger ship a god of the battlefield.

 

[DracoNB]

And that (hardened hull armor) is what is really needed

Right now there is no reason other than aesthetics to use hull. It is hardly stronger than any other item, so all it does is add mass. Its much better at this time to just create a ship covered in power, shield and weapons than any hull.

I think Hardened hull needs to be closer to faction blocks in damage reduction and HP.

AMCs need to have their damage against blocks reduced a lot as well, and make missiles worthwhile for using by giving them high damage against hull (they still need to be reduced in their AoE by not having it go completely through hull but have the blast reduced by each layer)

 

[DracoNB]

Exactly.



I just made a post right above yours that explains what I think some of the next steps should be. Shields should not be the 100% answer to reducing incoming damage. Hulls should have a purpose and AMCs need to be weaker against them.

 

[Nootau]

The turrets are energy stable on their own for one, and for two I am producing 850,000e/sec. More than enough power to Jam, move AND fire onboard cannon arrays. Jamming is only 500e/sec, Not that expensive.

 

[DracoNB]

Jamming is 500e/sec per mass...



Edit: And who is to say that the larger ship can\'t perform some of these same min/maxing for stats? If you are fighting a ship made for looks with a ship made for pure damage that is a difference in more than just shields.

 

[Ludovsky]

The game is in alpha.
Yes the shield change feels sudden.

But you know, if they changed it maybe it was because the developper did -not- want to see players purely depending on their shields. Perhaps he originally only envisionned it indeed as a very much temporary layer of protection meant to just add some additional time for one to maneuver and attempt to take out attackers when under fire, to put again a better emphasis on ship designs in other areas or piloting skills... but hadn\'t expected to see the results of how the numerical values would scale up.

Maybe he had entirely different reasons even.

But right now it\'s one balance change, in a game still in a very development process where it hasn\'t reach it\'s final form yet... and where it might still be trying to decide -what- kind of final form it should take.

Let\'s say the block destruction value of missiles is drastically scaled back next, along with the firing rate of the more damaging cannons. Suddenly, the shield nerf might not feel like as much of a nerf if such destructive capacities were to be suddenly so scaled back. In fact, perhaps we would even see people asking for weapons to be buffed again because \"shields are too strong again with the weapon nerf\".

Maybe evening things out to a scale that will feel less \"ridivulous\" -is- some of the intended goal. We can only wait and see.

 

[Ludovsky]

Then perhaps the problems is not that shields have been weakened, but that hulls haven\'t been strenghtened in turn to compensate.

Or that weapons which destroy lots of blocks like the missiles haven\'t been looked into yet.

Recall, this is not a complete game.
It\'s not even a beta.

It\'s an alpha. This kind of change, especially for a one man team which can\'t do everything all at once, can and will take place until the \"finalized\" concept of the game truly finally start to take shape.

Do not design anything based on a single viewpoint assuming this viewpoint of the game concept and mechanic will be able to hold on in perfect form throughout all of the game\'s development.

Starbound, another sandbox game still in development started with players starting in a static upgradable space stations from which they could launch operation a-la X-Com. In development, they quickly phased out said space station entirely and replaced them with upgradable spaceships acting as a mobile base and player character home.

And finally, one of their devteam\'s \"secret weekend project\" might bring back space stations in some modified forms not as a centralized hub and player base but as purchasable Player Clans bases/properties,

Expect to see potentially as many sudden and wide sweeping change and additions or perhaps even removals to hit Starmade as well.

 

[Ludovsky]

Then perhaps there should be just an addition to remote-control turrets and their ilk.

Or perhaps you should consider getting friends to play the turret as is done with a realistic multiple-crewmen ship.

Or you know, try to go for another design than a lumbering capital ship you do not have the manpower to man by yourself.
There\'s a reason real-life capital ships have had this habit of having so many weapon mounts and turret, or you know, anti-aircraft defensive guns. That\'s because they know that they are a \"Very Big Target.tm\"


At the end of the day, the game is in development. An alpha even. The developper\'s vision is prone to change on many issues or subjects. And just what might be the playstyle of \"big ships\" might verily be one of those things he could develop a different visions than some of the playerbase.

And at the end of the day.... it\'s his game and vision.

 

[Ludovsky]

To be fair, in this regard, I wonder if the issue is really the new weakness of shields(many do agree the nerf was a good thing to rebalance things a little) but rather the still impressive(if not sometimes ridiculous) abilities of weapons to vaporizes blocks when reaching a certain point.

Many people will often boast of their ship\'s abilities to crack down on entire planetoids, when it\'s not talk of how they vaporized an entire space stations in 3 missiles alone.

I would say, see a rebalancing of weapons and the shield nerf would probably become much more palatable and perhaps even see a more enjoying combat experience where it\'s not anymore a matter of either tanking shots for hours with little care or suddenly annihilating your enemy and leaving but dust behind when you overcome their shields. We could see more things like ships still continuing to fight despite holes in their hulls, while repair ships and beams suddenly get more of an use if hull blocks are strengthened or weapon weakened so they do not pulverize them so much(or both).

In this viewpoint, a preleminary weakening of shield might yield a good first step prior to rebalancing weapons(allowing them a desired level of protection that can still be overcome, but not annihilated, by a later weapon rebalance).

 

[Ludovsky]

Personally I see the shield nerf as a good first step toward the rebalance of weapons, who will annihilate a ship that is without shields.

Annoying for the suddeness of it and te fact weapons haven\'t been touched yet... but neccessary to bring down to the level of desired reflection of how they should protect so that later rebalanced weapons can still be able to penetrate such protection without annihilating the ship underneath so much.

Once when that happens, the shield nerf might feel perfectly acceptable and we could see situations where ships can still continue to fight with holes made in their hulls after shields dropped, because weapons wouldn\'t annihilate blocks quite so much as to reach or destroy the ship core within instants of shields dropping.

These are aspects people should think about when making criticism of changes brought to a game, I\'d like to remind, is still very much only an alpha.

 

[Ludovsky]

That\'s one of the things I\'m arguing.

People focus so much on the shield change that they forget everything else around the ship.

Why are people angry about the shield change? Because their ship can be very rapidly annihilated once their shields drops.

Why are their ships annihilated so quickly?
Because of the numerical way weapons scale up in size, and the fact that currently even relatively basic weapons go through hull block with some relative ease.

Then perhaps the current issue is not the debuffing of shields, which might be required if weapons are to be later weakened, but that currently the weapons are still too strong and annihilate a ship whose shields have dropped, cutting their way to the ship core in instants.

Ergo, perhaps the problem as such was no shields, but the ability of weapons to go through blocks. However a reduction of weapons capacities to a more balanced state will in turn require a reduction of shield capacity.

In the future, what we might see is a situation where shields are indeed but a temporary layer of protection able to ignore some enemy shots before dropping, to put a greater emphasis on ship menuvering and positionning.... but where ships are still able to continue fighting despite still smoking holes in their hulls when their shield has dropped and is still recharging, coming through even through the situation felt hopeless.

It\'s an alpha, give things time because you never know what else might change in the future.