Shielding

[Hanspeter Schnitzel]

Nobody commented on "Shields should always use power in order to balance huge capacities" or did someone?
Capacity should matter more in combat than regeneration in my opinion. Small ships should be able to take out bigger ships, as long as the small ship actually flies better and uses tactics. Of course a small starfighter shouldn't be able to take on a titan.

EDIT: Little side-question: Are "conversations" kind of like PMs in this forum? So can only the participants see it?

 

[Lecic]

Nobody commented on "Shields should always use power in order to balance huge capacities" or did someone?
Capacity should matter more in combat than regeneration in my opinion. Small ships should be able to take out bigger ships, as long as the small ship actually flies better and uses tactics. Of course a small starfighter shouldn't be able to take on a titan.

EDIT: Little side-question: Are "conversations" kind of like PMs in this forum? So can only the participants see it?

I'm a supporter of charged shields continuing to drain a bit of power as some sort of "upkeep cost." And yes, conversations are PMs.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Nobody commented on "Shields should always use power in order to balance huge capacities" or did someone?
Capacity should matter more in combat than regeneration in my opinion. Small ships should be able to take out bigger ships, as long as the small ship actually flies better and uses tactics. Of course a small starfighter shouldn't be able to take on a titan.

EDIT: Little side-question: Are "conversations" kind of like PMs in this forum? So can only the participants see it?

That is a very viable option for balancing super tanky ships but it doesn't solve the current problem. It solves capacity being too high, now why would you punish these pathetically weak shields with an always on power requirement? Adding a power requirement also would also bring with it a complete overhaul to the power generation and storage system because if you add a new drain hole it will affect the balancing on everything else that uses power. While it may discourage tanky ships it will still be possible to create them simply by expanding your power. If you sacrifice weapons for shields and power once again we venture into the stalemate zone.

 

[Hanspeter Schnitzel]

Hm, true. Don't want to punish small ships.
Another issue perhaps is that weapons scale linear, while shields don't? You will always need more shield blocks to protect against more guns, the bigger the guns get, the greater the amount of shielding. Perhaps shields should scale linear, too? Would make big ships have more shielding again but.. hm. This is quite the complex problem here, isn't it?

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Hm, true. Don't want to punish small ships.
Another issue perhaps is that weapons scale linear, while shields don't? You will always need more shield blocks to protect against more guns, the bigger the guns get, the greater the amount of shielding. Perhaps shields should scale linear, too? Would make big ships have more shielding again but.. hm. This is quite the complex problem here, isn't it?

AFAIK their goal is to have shields with diminishing returns but be closer to linear than the previous version (pre .15).

 

[KiloZulu]

I don't agree with the notion of balancing to allow small craft to take on big ships. The balance should simply be in the build. If you put in the time, material, and credits to build big, you should expect it to be worth the investment. There comes a point when you have to recognize limitations, and if you make a small vessel you are building something of more limited capability. If I spend weeks building a capital ship, the last thing I want to know is that someone who spent an hour making a fighter has a decent chance of beating it. It would make zero sense and reek of contrived game mechanics.

You're not punishing smaller ships by allowing bigger ships to dominate them. Smaller ships, unless they show up in quantity, are not meant to fight bigger ships and survive in the first place. Until the introduction of anti-ship torpedoes, fighters and small craft are meant to play in the shallow end of the pool.

 

[Hanspeter Schnitzel]

I'm not saying a fighter should take on a capital ship, but a 50,000 blocks ship shouldn't easily dominate a 35,000 blocks one. (might be bad example numbers) The 35k blocks one should at least have a chance as long as it flights right and uses tactics or its weapons better or whatever.
It shouldn't just be bigger = better.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

I don't agree with the notion of balancing to allow small craft to take on big ships. The balance should simply be in the build. If you put in the time, material, and credits to build big, you should expect it to be worth the investment. There comes a point when you have to recognize limitations, and if you make a small vessel you are building something of more limited capability. If I spend weeks building a capital ship, the last thing I want to know is that someone who spent an hour making a fighter has a decent chance of beating it. It would make zero sense and reek of contrived game mechanics.

You're not punishing smaller ships by allowing bigger ships to dominate them. Smaller ships, unless they show up in quantity, are not meant to fight bigger ships and survive in the first place. Until the introduction of anti-ship torpedoes, fighters and small craft are meant to play in the shallow end of the pool.

I am saying a fighter in theory should be able to take the shields down on a capital. The problem comes up is you will never be able to defeat the turrets our out gun the main guns. The shields would be incredibly strong and while you could bring them down, it would take forever, perhaps even like an hour of steady fire. If you build a titan that falls to a single fighter that's on you not the game. A titan should not be the end all be all craft. You should not win or be unscratchable simply because you built big. In the future we will also be getting the ability to have fleets, and if the titan is this indestructible monster than everybody will just want to have 5 wing-titans (economy points notwithstanding). In a system where Titans may be vulnerable to strategic bombers you'll need to invest more in defence against that than just building big. Put time, materials, and credits into building smart and not just big. Invest in additional craft that can defend your titan against such attacks. There is a reason carrier battle groups exist in real life.

 

[mrsinister]

While that is a great feature, it should still be a priority for there to be a balanced default for people to use, as most servers are going to want to stick to that to avoid alienating players with existing ships they'd like to bring in.

and I do certainly agree with you a great default value hopefully will be discovered.

 

[KiloZulu]

The number of blocks works for an example if you're comparing apples to apples, in which case I would expect the larger vessel to win. It's when the bigger ship creates an absolute lemon that the smaller ship has a chance. That was my fruit pun.

The question of how many blocks one ship has versus another is irrelevant. The design decisions of players are what should drive a ship's capabilities. I've create any number of fluffy capital ships that could do little more than fend off a wave of NPC pirates. I've had others that could obliterate opponents before they ever got in firing range. I don't want every encounter to be a fair fight. I build a ship with a purpose and I don't expect it to be particularly good beyond what it was built to achieve.

When I have the resources to build a capital ship, I'm building one to allow me to criss-cross the galaxy with impunity. To explore and trade in the deep reaches of space without worrying about getting cored and waking up back at 2,2,2. I will bristle with turrets and heavy ship weapons capable of taking big bites out of planets. I try to avoid tiny access vents that lead directly to my ship core, so I really don't want the developers to be adding screen doors of their own.

 

[Planr]

Linear shield returns for blocks doesn't work. It only furthers the cause of giganticism.

What some people tend to overlook is that ships scale exponentially in size the longer they are (95% of the time, deliberate needle-ships excused). What does this mean? Well, it means a 400-meter ship has up to 8 or even 16 times as much interior volume as a 200-meter ship of the same design does, which naturally means that on a linear system, shields on titans are always exponentially higher compared to smaller ships.
A good example of this in the common world of scifi: The Galaxy-class Enterprise D is a little over twice as long as the Constitution-class Enterprise-A, but yet it has over 18 times the interior space.

But, on a system of diminishing returns (aka exponential curves) for shields, those big ships suffer sharp shield curvedowns in terms of returns, but their exponential size in turn means they are still able to compensate and still in the end have more shields than smaller ships, but at a much more appropriate rate that doesnt make them invincible god-ships whose shields take a pack of frigates hours to wear down (that's precious time that smaller ships don't have in the face of a titan's also-superior firepower!)

Another thing that people tend to overlook, which scares them away from supporting exponential systems, is that they assume exponential means bigger returns the more shields there are. This is partially true but exponentials are not only about getting increasing returns. On a graph, something exponential just curves in a particular direction, giving either greatly-increasing or greatly-diminishing returns in relation to its input amount. On a linear graph, it's just a straight line, where you always get a proportionally equal amount of what you put in.
So to repeat that, exponential also can mean decreasing returns, and here that is the case.

We've gone over this shield issue previously in my suggestion thread, and we've seen both sides of the party present their points, but the only way we can truly know what works and what doesn't is by testing it in-game. We have tested both shield systems now, linear and exponential, and exponential has by far functioned the best for balancing titan combat. That's not an opinion, that's a fact.

 

[Hanspeter Schnitzel]

Just to clarify: I know what exponential means.
But if shields are exponential, so must be weapons.
The shields, no matter if exponential or not, do certainly need more capacity though and more regen (at least out of combat).

 

[Planr]

Just to clarify : I know what exponential means.
But if shields are exponential, so must be weapons.
The shields, no matter if exponential or not, do certainly need more capacity though and more regen (at least out of combat).

I think their capacity is mostly fine right now, they're roughly close to how it was pre-v15 and I think they work well that way with the nerfed and drastically different weapon mechanics we have now.

With weapons, I agree they should be exponential too, but I know that combat works best when weapons inherently are slightly stronger than the shield block equivalents they are trying to take down. So I do want to see an exponential curve for weapons too, but not as harsh as shields. This way you can have balanced combat that doesn't result in stalemates between ships, which i'm sure nobody wants.
Power-taxing the hell out of larger weapon setups is a vital step too in discouraging the use of buzz-lightyear turrets (obnoxiously big 100-meter turrets of death). The power requirements for weapons, I think, should be exponential in terms of increasing power requirements for larger turrets, which again works well with titans that have exponentially more space than smaller ships.

I think another big part of this issue is to get people to stop being so hooked on having lots of shields. A buff in armor values or a new type of armor block would quickly remedy that, giving people a somewhat-second-alternative to simply stockpiling the shields. Weapons still, as always, are still rather like a knife through butter on even hardened hull.

 

[Hanspeter Schnitzel]

Haven't you seen the calculations some people have done? Weapons blow away shields in literal seconds as of now. Turrets and small craft have no chance at all to survive any hit.
I do agree though that hull needs to gain way more importance in combat. Right now it's more of a decorative block than anything.

Also I've an idea, it might seem a bit odd at first, not sure:
Someone here spoke of anti-ship torpedoes, to make bombers viable. I suppose they meant torpedoes that surpass shielding. That gave me an idea. People seem to be against turrets being protected by the host ship, since then you can't pick them off without damaging the host ship first. But what if the turrets -are- protected by the hostship, but there's a effect block that allows a missile to surpass the shields of a -turret- but not the shield of the hostship. The turret would stand under the protection of the shield of the hostship, but the missile ignores that shield and the turrets own shield and damages the turrets hull, but -only- the turrets hull. The mothership itself would just take shield damage when the impact point is its own hull.

 

[Planr]

To be fair, no, I have not seen very many calculations people have done, but I know that weapons overall do slightly less damage now than they did pre-v15, when AMCs reigned supreme with very long ranges and strengths. Back then, shields usually didn't last a super-long-time either.

I like your bomber idea, it reminds me a lot of the battle sequences of the Garmillan bombers vs the Yamato in the Battle of the Rainbow Cluster in 2199. I agree that fighters need to be given their own unique anti-capital weaponry, because docked disintegrators just don't cut it.

My personal idea for this to work would be to add a tertiary effect block that is power-costly like the cloaking system (so it becomes a small-craft-specific thing) but applied for special missile effects that are able to surpass shielding. An even better way to help specialize such a class of bombers would be to make those effect blocks very heavy, meaning you now see the emergence of both bomber-specific strike craft and anti-fighter-specific strike craft.

I also think fighter-to-fighter combat as a whole needs vast improvements as well, because given how jumpy and laggy ships are in online play, it means it is almost impossible to hit another small craft with anything other than a bullet-spamming AMC-AMC setup. The lockon missiles don't cut it because it takes FAR too long to lock on, both due to lag spikes jumping the enemy ships out of view long before you can complete the lock-on, and also because the slavelink for lock-on effects also severely slows down the weapon and makes it too power-costly for fighters to use. We need a type of missile effect that heatseeks or at least locks on instantly, but moves very fast and isn't so power-costly, so fighters can use it. Kind of like the lock-on weapons in Star Fox

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

If they added a weapon that could ignore shields regardless of the cost it would be OP. Why use any other conventional weapons when you can just throw on the shield ignoring one and just destroy your target no matter how strong the shields are?

And yes with the current shield strength all ships with a 1:1 weapons to shield block ratio will die in under 10 seconds if faced against itself.

 

[der_scheme]

Just to clarify: I know what exponential means.

Apparently, none of you do.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_growth

Also Planr, your argument about size is flawed. A ship with twice the length will have eight times more mass. That mass has to be moved, and the systems have to be powered.
Linear growth is the only growth that doesn't favor large nor small ships. Inverse cubic (apparently that's how shields currently scale)/inverse exponential growth favors small ships, uncapped cubic/exponential favors big ones.

 

[Hanspeter Schnitzel]

If they added a weapon that could ignore shields regardless of the cost it would be OP. Why use any other conventional weapons when you can just throw on the shield ignoring one and just destroy your target no matter how strong the shields are?

And yes with the current shield strength all ships with a 1:1 weapons to shield block ratio will die in under 10 seconds if faced against itself.

Well my idea wasn't a missile that can ignore all-shields, but only the shields of objects docked to turret docks. That way turrets can be protected by the mothership's shield, without being invulnerable until the mothership's shield is down since a bomber strikecraft could engage it easily, but not the hostship itself which would only take shield damage when hit by the special missile.
The missile/effect for missiles would, like I said, have its reload time or power requirement based on the ship's mass, so that big ships cannot effectively use it. It also would refuse to fire when a docked object (turret, ship) tries to use it, no matter if AI or player, to prevent shield-avoiding missile-turrets.
I only want to put the turrets of a ship under the ship's protection so the turrets can be kind of small and still be effective, since they don't need to waste space on shieldblocks or regen blocks.

 

[Mariux]

Why don't they just do the shields linearly? 1 block-100 hitpoints, 2 blocks-200 and so on.

 

[Comr4de]

Linear growth is the only growth that doesn't favor large nor small ships. Inverse cubic (apparently that's how shields currently scale)/inverse exponential growth favors small ships, uncapped cubic/exponential favors big ones.

Pfffft what is this silliness

Linear growth leads to literally the exact same endgame as uncapped/exponential growth; bigger is ALWAYS better

Why don't they just do the shields linearly? 1 block-100 hitpoints, 2 blocks-200 and so on.

Because linear scaling = bigger is ALWAYS better and that's fucking awful