Recent Shield Nerf

[XHawk87]

I think this is a step in the right direction for the reasons stated so eloquently by those above. However, I agree that the capacity does need to increase further to bring them into balance with the weapons. That or weapons need a nerf in raw destructive power. Battles should last longer. I think much higher capacity, much higher regen, and much longer on-hit delay.

I would really like to see server owners being able to plugin their own values into these formulae, would be great for modding and customising servers. Being able to enable/disable the on-hit regen would be useful for those who don\'t like the change.

 

[Morrigi]

Dear god, don\'t nerf the weapons. This is how it all starts....



Heavy-handedly nerf the defenses, then nerf the weapons, then nerf the defenses because you screwed up the weapon nerf, then nerf the weapons because you screwed up the defensive nerf, then nerf the defenses.....

Has no one learned from history here? Big nerfs are always followed by other big nerfs, which are always followed by other big nerfs, to the point that the game becomes nearly unplayable and the developers must either rebalance everything or give up.

And @ Hawk, this is less a step in the right direction and more of a plummet down the stairs.

 

[Nootau]

You lost capacity? Regineration was nerfed but capacity was buffed. Can you give an instance where it was otherwise?

 

[MrFURB]

Morrigi, shield capacity went up (Albeit I still think it should scale up a little bit more) meaning a 50 mass fighter/bomber is going to have to spend hours shooting at a 5,000 mass capital ship to break it\'s shields, whereas the capital ship has turrets, supporting craft, and literally the same maximum speed as the fighter. If you find your expensive ships getting destroyed by a clever pilot in a smaller ship, that\'s a problem with something entirely unrelated to shield balance.



With the current shield system, shields are BUFFED against ships that have equal size, nerfed agaisnt ships slightly smaller than you, and it doesn\'t even matter against something that\'s tiny compared to you because it takes them a year to get past your shields. You shouldn\'t be worried about fighters as much as medium sized destroyers/gunships flanking you when you don\'t have supporting craft to ward them off.

 

[MikeV37]

Where are you getting that number? Shield capacity INCREASED, at times by as much as three times what it was.



I don\'t think nerfing the weapons is necessary, I think we should buff hull, which you described as \"heavy, expensive cardboard\"



How large are your 11 block cannons btw? I\'m trying to do some math in my head.



Also, hard to hit generally means up the cannon\'s speed at the expense of damage. we don\'t need 350,000 dps, to take out a fighter ( I would hardly call a 200 mass ship a small fighter, btw)

We do, however, need the shots to get there faster to effectively lead the fighter.



Another point, capital ships can turn and move about as fast as smaller ships in this game. Why is it so hard to lead 200 mass \"fighters\" with the main gun?

 

[LoLzboi]

Thats all I think the shields need. Something that (has been stated over and over) rewards those with massive ships, massive shields with low regen (and yes I want regen back).

*stats are just for argument*

i.e I have 200 hp in shields, my recharge should be 100 per second while the OMGLMFAOHAHANOOB ultra carrier has 10 000 shields with 500 per second in recharge.

This way the smaller vessel only waits 2 seconds to get it\'s shields fully recharged while the OMGLMFAOHAHANOOB ultra carrier has to wait 20 seconds to recharge his shields back to full. No silly little waiting period for when you aren\'t getting hit as the fighters around it are not going to stop firing once they get your shields down, If anything they are going to go harder. This would let the larger ship have the advantage in terms of damage absorption, but the fighters would have the avantage in damage dishing (assuming the ultra carrier doesn\'t catch one in its sights) thus the current balance is 1:1... perfectly balanced fight.

This is just the way I see it, sure the ultra carrier is overpowered, but only to that lone asshole trying to merc other players at spawn. This gives those massive ships a bit more caution to who exactly they wipe out of existance, since that person could come back with 5 of their buddys to take him out.

 

[lupoCani]

I wrote my last comment befor mr furb did, but when someone puts it that way, I think i\'m in favor of this nerf. Or rather, I agree with and recognize myself in every single word, but that is presuming they reflect well on the change. I hope they do, that would we much less terrible for the game, and it\'s reasonable they should, they\'re the closest to an official word we\'ve gotten on this since the changelog, but I\'d still like those values to get an opinion of my own. Or a fix for the startup crash, that would do just fine as well.

 

[XHawk87]

I personally like the changes, and think they are heading in the right direction. I don\'t expect everyone to agree with me, and I would like to see server owners being able to customise their servers to suit their tastes. Variety is awesome.

That why I would really like to see server owners being able to plug their own values into these formulae, and being able to enable/disable the on-hit regen. You can already buff the hull, and I have done so on my server, making battles last much longer and it is much more fun this way. Give us the same ability to customise how shields work.

 

[MikeV37]

I\'d like to be able to do that, how do you do so?

 

[XHawk87]

Open the StarMade/data/config/BlockConfig.xml file or in the game launcher click Modding -> Block Editor in the menus. Both can be used to do the same thing.

Then find all of the different types of hull, you can modify both the hitpoints and armour. The hitpoints can be set to anything in the range 1-1024, however if you do change them there is a graphical error that means all altered blocks display as partially damaged on clients.

The armour is the percentage damage reduction on shots. To avoid the graphical errors, I increase the armour to just under 100% giving effectively much tougher hull while leaving hitpoints unchanged. You can play around with the values in there to customise it to your liking.

 

[Nootau]

Wouldn\'t missiles still respond with, \'Lol, BOOM!\' and remove large spheres of hull?

 

[MrFURB]

Depends, do they do over 100 times as much damage as the hull has HP? If yes, you\'ve got not only a ship destroyer, but also a planet destroyer.

 

[Nootau]

Missiles simply remove blocks, they don\'t need to overcome the hull\'s protection, only AMC does from what I\'ve seen in tests on unshielded target dummies.

 

[MrFURB]

Missiles have to deal damage to destroy anything. If you have heavy hull and you fire a 1-block dumbfire missile at it, the hull will only take a little bit of damage.

 

[Nootau]

Err.. I guess I was wrong. I just redid a few tests now and what you said was true. Making a larger testing area also showed that the surface was hit and took damage but also every block under that hull also took damage. I currently only tested for 5 blocks deep will continue testing.

 

[MrFURB]

That\'s true, missiles deal damage to everything in their radius, even if it isn\'t within line-of-sight to the explosion. How do you think this should be changed?

 

[Nootau]

Option A
Add in a mechanic of penetration. Each time damage passes through a block to the block behind it, the block behind it suffers only 2/3 or 1/2 of the damage of the block before it.

Option B
Increase the explosion\'s surface area but reduce the depth a missile can effect. Ex: Increase surface radius by +50% but reduce depth of explosions by -75%.



Both options give a reason to layer hulls but also it gives a reasonable amount of layers needed to protect from missile bombbardment. What do you think?

 

[Fireside]

all you idiots talking about keeping the sheild nerf act like theres no other wepon other then antimatter cannons. or did you guys forget that missles literlly ignore sheilds. its simple:

small ship vs large ship with lots of sheilds? use missles

Smallship Vs small ship? use antimatter.

maybe if people actully diversed there building of ships insted of just spamming the same type of wepons. this wouldent be an issue in the first place. i\'ve made freaking DRONES, AI controled mico ships. that can take out ships 10X there size. simply because they have missles.

the probablem is that players want to be able to join the game and alreday have a fighting chance againt players who have been in game building there ships for weeks. they need to learn to run away, build up, and play the game smart insted of bitching and moanng that they cant kill a huge mother ship with there starting fighter. sheilds dident need a nerf. even the most OP ship ive ever made could loose its sheilds if 2 or 3 other large ships attacked. and like that even mattered if they had any type of missile.

on a side note i do think its way to easy to get allot of money. i found 1600 T5 awesomite in one station. thats just stupid. and it needs to be fixed. either make the stations MUSH harder to kill. or make the loot less OP.

 

[MrFURB]

Missiles aren\'t supposed to pierce shielding, but damage it. The same bug happens with other AoE effects such as Dis-Integrators.

 

[Nootau]

Missiles do not ignore shields. What gave you the idea that they did?