Recent Shield Nerf

[Trinova]

This rebalance (not plane nerf since only regen got nerfed while capacity was buffed) was a good step for the game. The problem that\'s left is that AMCs DPS grows faster than shield capacity.

Example:

• 1k Shield Disperser vs 1k AMC: 80k d/ 11.7k dps = 6.83s
• 2k Shield Disperser vs 2k AMC: 128k d/ 18.9k dps = 6.77s

Seems like the time stays constant. Oh wait. What if i just build two 1k AMCs instead of one 2k AMC?

• 2k Shield Disperser vs 2x 1k AMC: 128k d/ 23.4k dps = 5.4s

And if i split it up even more the dps increase even more (4x500 -> 4.7sec, 8x250-> 4.4sec). And this effect gets even stronger for even bigger amounts of blocks.

• 10k Shields vs 40x250 AMC: 374k d/ 144.8k dps = 2.6 s

I think everyone sees where this leads to. While Shields do not benefit from beeing build into many non-adjacent arrays, AMCs do. This leads to a situation where shield capacity is rediculus small in relation to damage dealt in capital vs capital combat.

 

[Aryl]

...You don\'t play much command and conquer, do you? Tiberian Sun\'s grenaders can take out some tanks 1 on 1, Dawn\'s rocketmen, if you get into the red alert series there\'s a shitton more...

 

[MrFURB]

Ah, good use of facts. This is true, and I believe that weaponry will eventually be changed much like all other aspects of the game. It\'s best to put your feedback in early.

 

[HerrJuggernaut]

With the new nerf, I like some things, I dislike others. The biggest thing I like about this is that it makes those smaller fighters/frigates/etc actually dangerous to those giant doomsday titans. The biggest problem I see with the setup currently though is that it makes those smaller ships a little TOO dangerous to the giant titans, though thats in my opinion caused partially by the way weapons are set up in this game

What I would like to see: Partial Regen while under fire (say maybe 1/3-1/4). This would ideally keep a swarm of small ships that are hard to hit a valid counter to a titan, while making it so that one single gunship cannot easily swat a much bigger target out of the sky without getting touched. And dont tell me turrets, cause i can juke that AI all day with ease, and even against players, it aint that hard to dodge AMCs. Missiles are another story, but even still, you can outrun those

I also would like to see a change to the way weapons worked. I feel that while all weapons should indeed gain power (dmg/dmg radius) and range, i feel that instead of increasing reload speed, that larger weapons should decrease the reload speed, and possibly the projectile speed as well in the case of missiles. Think about it, small little machine gun type cannons give way to semi-auto but still reletively quick tank guns to slow firing battleship type artillery pieces. As far as missiles go in that, i\'d like to see small, quick rockets for anti-fighter duty all the way up to massive, long range but relatively slow cruise missile types fired out of the massive arrays.

TL;DR - Partial regen for shields under fire (1/3-1/4) and weapon rebalance: more blocks = MORE dmg, range and radius / LESS reload speed, projectile speed

 

[Torrel]

Ive been reading the post about the recent changes and wanted to get a well-rounded view before I posted. I definitely think the changes to shields are a stop in the right direction. Frights should last longer and like someone has said in this post before, it shouldn\'t be a case of a ship being either invincible or insta death. I\'m tet to test it out fully but from what I can ascertain so far, shield capacity isn\'t going be high enough compared to weapons to achieve balence YET.

I will leave it up to devs and others to work out the belance between shield strength and power of weapons to achieve sustained enjoyable combat. A simple implementation that from what I can tell hasn\'t yet beeen suggested could help solve the QQing currently going on while also helping to reach this balence and making gameplay more enjoyable.

Regen has taken a hard blow which I feel is a very good imlemenation, however the main cause for concern is how the shield doesnt\' recover while in combat...how about allowing shields to reocer at full or even half the recvised shield system rates, but only when the ships shields fall below 20%?

 

[Racr]

On my big ship, the missiles don\'t ignore the shields, nor do they damage them...

 

[FutileSine]

I\'ve enjoyed the comments starting to emerge about the possibility of weapons changes!

I\'ve always envisioned AMCs as a weapons systems that the more blocks you add, the more of a \"capacitor\" charge they require to get up to full damage. As in you can spam your mouse button for fast firing goodness, but the damage output is low because your power transfer systems just don\'t have enough time to load up a stronger charge into the cannon, whereas slower shots give it time to beef up towards max damage (of course that max is based on # of blocks you\'ve got together). My friends on my server currently enjoy making giant hot knifes of death out of massively long AMC arrays, and while funny, I\'d love to see a large target turn towards me, and know he\'s sitting there holding a mouse button, building a charge, and BOOM.

 

[blise518B]

I think Shields and weapons are Good now but the amor... In my opinion the amor should be 5times stronger. If the shield is down you are prettymutch dead... One strong missile and half of your ship is dead. Sorry for the bad english im from germany (~;

 

[KuramaFox]

The exponential multiplier for the diminishing returns mechanic was what, 0.66 or something? Increase that number a bit, so the diminishing returns kick in a bit more slowly.

The regeneration delay after damage is good though. If it bugs you, you need to design better ships, put a couple turrets on them, or learn how to properly fight small ships (hint: you do not just stand still and try to turn towards them people).

 

[Rodentsnipe]

rather than having to fix my ship after every encounter with a small fighter

 

[Hanspeter Schnitzel]

They just to make it easier to fix your ship afterwards. It\'s the alpha, the game\'s balance will change often and you guys will have to redesign and rebuild your titan ships often, especially when combat gets more patches and updates, more weaponry, more utility stuff, more tactical weapons, etc etc etc.

 

[Player00010100]

The thought is good since iv had ships that are impossible to beat only for shields but this nerf is insane. not just is the shield regen down but while being shot it wont regen. I can understand less regen IF and only if it regened still while being shot at. now the regen doesnt matter because it wont even help you in a fight only if you run. and even then the ammount of regen lost is a bit overkill. it is like minecraft fire. first it was abosolute overkill then it became useless and now it is just right. time for schema to do the same with shields.

 

[zgeek1]

I\'ve been messing around with it. It would not be SO bad if there was a passive regen. Now someone with a pistor can kill a capitol given a few hours. Without chain docking you cannot dock large carriers that rely on turrets.



It\'s riddiculious, the regen was sliced, and there is no longer a way for the shield to passive regen while being attacked? Went from one problem to the next, it\'s almost as if the soft caps are put here to discourage players from making allarge ships in the first place. Not becuase of a ballance issue.

 

[MrFURB]

You\'re actually onto something here. The \'nerf\' to shields achieved three things.



First it narrowed the gap of combat capability between differently sized ships. A big one will still be better than a small one but it won\'t be on a completely different scale.

Second, it increased the importance of shielding against ships of equal caliber. Used to be that shields would go down in a single volley from an enemy ship that matches your size. Now they have a higher capacity making fights in general longer; especially so when the two combatants are equally outfitted.

Third, it lessens the end-all-be-all importance of the \'size game\'. This is very healthy for servers as well as overall game balancing. Schema is now free to think of the game with any shape, size, or purpose in mind for ships instead of just \'bigger and bigger\'.



So yes, you are correct in that it is partly a measure to stop people from spamming servers with 500+ meter long dreadnaughts. They are beautiful, they are useful, but they shouldn\'t be the norm for obvious reasons.

 

[zgeek1]

Large ships vs small ships has always been interesting. You don\'t want to make one man armies, but at the same time you don\'t want large ships to be comparatively useless. The problem now is that a ship of any size, no matter how small, can kill a ship of greater size. Becuase there is no regen, or ability to regen while beign shot, no matter how little damage is being done. This goes from one side of the scale from one man army, over to comparatively useless. I liked the change in regen, the capacity on large ships barely changed, and the ability to regen in battle was lost. I feel the slider should be moved back over, to allow large ships a sense of security, which there is none, that they cannot be defeated by a single, small, cheap ship. The smaller ship, to the much larger and more awkward vessel is almost in a way it\'s own army. Able to defeat it with little effort and no teamwork.



Your second point is big odd, this logic applies to small ships,. But it does not apply to large ones, who have inferrior shield capacity, and extreme firepower. Take for instance a faction flagship, that has 10million shilds. It is a simple task to put 30-40 turrets on a large ship, bringing it\'s dps in the range of 4-5million. You can kill another shp of your size in less than 10 seconds, there is no defense for that. Small ships though, they have greatly increased capacities and relativly low DPS. This allows much longer \"dog fights\" between small vessels, but anything pushing more than 50k shield blocks is on the other end where it\'s own firepower far outmatches its shield capacity. This is a problem, but not the one I\'m talking about.



The size game is a big game (no pun intended), but it is difficult and invested game. Should time, effort, and skill not have a higher reward? A flagship can take weeks for a faction to build, it is extremely valuable and needs to be protected at all costs. But it\'s a flagship, you are supposed to bring it out, show it off, use it. You cannot have any assurance or confidence that is can or will survive an onslaught by a single individual. You cannot dock it, so you remove all it\'s turrets, but the effort to place them back is to great everytime you want to use it. The ship ends up collecting dust and people move on to small more usable ships.



The size game has long ended, there isn\'t a size game any more. It was crushed by soft caps. It would be great to see it \"revived\" allowing factions to duke it out with each other, allowing massive faction projects to be a thing again. Large ships are just not worth the time/effort, when they are so vulnerable.



Edit: I was thinking about this, the lack of motivation to make anything large. People on the server I play on and I discussed it, and it came down to large ships being too vulnerable. There isn\'t a practicle way to defend them or keep them alive. It\'s not worth the time investment to make them when you cannot use them.

 

[Zovc]

ummm, might he mean that he lost 95% of hes regen? dont go into numbers like that, just simplify it.

 

[MrFURB]

There seems to be a very strange opinion going around as of late. People are getting it into their heads that the less blocks a ship has, the more powerful it is. I uh... I have no clue where this is coming from or where it\'s going.

Of course a big ship is going to be vastly superior to a small one. The big ship is the culmination of a ton of time, effort, and credits. Having it taken out by a fighter weilding tiny weapons and having only a few shield blocks makes no sense... And it doesn\'t happen unless the pilot is AFK or gone.

Big ships aren\'t useless, and they aren\'t in any way more vulnerable than smaller ships. Their only downside is their turning rate (Anything small enough to have a better turning rate is too small to hold anti-capital weapons anyways) which can be made up for with directional weapons, turrets, drones, heatseekers, pulse cannons, or simply flying one direciton at max speed while turning towards your now helpless opponent.



Given all that, ANY ship will be lost if unguarded. Even with the old shield system, an inactive capital ship is just asking to be jacked. Make sure you\'ve got your ships docked to a faction homebase so people don\'t destroy them while you\'re not online.

 

[CaptainTaz]

i kinda agree with the others, ive been hosting a multiplayer server with my friends, and I created a Ginormous (Space station sized) ship, with over 30,000 shielding units and turrets, and yet two of my friends brought modified Izanth VIs and ahnialated me faster then i could react (and my shields were at full capacity and everything)



honestly, a 1/4 regen rate under fire seems reasonable.... (i spent like 3 days on that ship.....)

 

[MrFURB]

Wait, you had a huge ship and got wrecked by two ships only as big as an Isanth? Many, many things are wrong with that. Once again, make use of all the space a capital ship has so that it is statistically superior to other ships in every way possible. Use turrets/drones to distract and wither the enemy down, and heatseekers/pulse weapons to turn the tables if they manage to get behind you. If you\'re getting killed in only a few seconds by fighters then you need to add shielding to your ships because they last a lot longer than that.

For example, my Wyvern has 1.5 million hitpoints in shielding as well as an average of ~75 blocks between an enemy and the core. My heavy fighter only does just under 2K DPS with it\'s AMC arrays, which means waaaaay more than enough time to swat it like a fly.

 

[Nootau]

I wanna see this derp myself.