buff shields nerf hull

[lIceColon]

partially inspired by this thread

the very idea that caps have such a high hull count (and therefore more bots) is preposterous. take rl for example. real battleships have much better firepower than say a gunboat, but are fragile as a mother and rely only on flaks and counter-missile missile thingies and support craft to prevent itself from exploding- successfully dump 2 or 3 good missiles on it max and you'll sink it.

now when you take this into the space context, a cap's defensive capabilities will be represented less by its hull, but more by it's power core and therefore the weapons and shields it can sport. Right now in my opinion hull is OP (especially with the armor upgrades), and shields are wayy underpowered.

so if you buff shields to match its power core, and nerf hull (maybe nerf equipment hitpoints as well), it will provide a more authentic experience, as well as eliminate the problem of bot feeding since a cap won't have much bots to begin with- since its hull will only be max 10x that of a fighter. As for bat-feeding, it would at least feel much mor authentic and explained as the fighters having a quick recharge.

the idea of course will render our ever-lovely armor upgrades useless, but here's an easy solution: say instead of having armor upgrades, we have shield capacitors that act as shield multipliers- this coupled with a proper shield buff will make shields much more viable, and also make people think twice before deactivating shields, making cloaks etc less OP.

also adding a shield capacitor to your ship sounds much simpler and more realistic than ship-of-theseus-ing your ship at a shipyard.

buffing shields and nerfing hull may or may not improve the gameplay, but that's why it's an idea that I think has a certain viability.

discussion.

[Highland Laddie]

Sounds interesting. I don't necessarily see why it would make armor upgrades useless. If anything, maybe it would make them more essential. Kinda like how flying around in a snub WITHOUT an UA8 is dangerous, so flying around in a BS without a Cap IV+ will become more dangerous.

[Govedo13]

This thing can work only if the Dev team changes it ways and grows in numbers at least 4-5 times its current size. They have not the manpower to do big changes, also such change would require a lot of legwork, as it seems they does not want to extend and open the development to the whole community so they can use the community members willing to contribute to do the said legwork.

Caps and snubs are different types of ships and need different approaches, the current cap balance is stupid. Everything up to fighter need new balance, caps does not need more then 4-12 guns even on the biggest boats. The current smaller cap guns need to be a combined in 3 to 1 ratio and placed near the centrer of the ship. Also another addon to caps could be to keep their hull at current levels, if the proposed missile fix works in 4.86 then cap ship with max 10-12 guns could be disabled by lets say bombers by just destroying its anti snub defences first. Also the other thing that requires fix is the cap ship dodging, everything marked as "light" in its class dodges a way too good and outrprefroms the "heavy" of its class- different shields and guns for "heavy" and "light" can solve this.
This approach is really complicated and requires a lot of work and deep analysis and a lot of tests in order to be implemented.
I would also combine it with 2-3 tier types guns for GBs and above.
Tier 1- the current useless peashooters that are not much used- cheap to buy and taking not so much cargo space- think current solaris guns and gb cerbs..
Tier 2- a bit better guns that are on the level of current useful stuff like BS cerb, GB basic gun etc. Expensive and easy to damage with high cost repairs like cheetah thruster now, they also should take moderate space so one cannot run with cap8 and full tier 2 set on "light" ship classes.
Tier 3- A bit better guns- POB produced only, 50% chance to loose them on death, they should take a lot of cargo space so even the heaviest stuff cannot put cau8 and full set of it.
Same story goes for transports as well fully loaded battletransp should have no cargo space left for actual cargo- lets say 400-800 space only but it should preform on light cruiser level. The same could be implemented in shield types too.

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Official faction players that are often accused of elitism, never deploy them and have those weird, immersion killing "fair fight/dueling" suicidal hobbies. (yes, i've seen enough of those lolduels, where house military with overwhelming force on the field willingly loses a pilot in a duel. ffs.)

[Omicron]

"Real battleships" do not even exist anymore. WW2 era ones (which were the last to be built) were extremely highly armored for their time.

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[Hone]

I say keep shields the same, remove armour upgrades / provide alternatives such as shield upgrades and damage upgrades.

Its ridiculous how many his it takes to kill things, am I firing wet paper hankies? Its supposed to be Antimatter, and enough nuclear bombs to blow up a planet!

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[EisenSeele]

Right now in my opinion hull is OP (especially with the armor upgrades), and shields are wayy underpowered.

You've got it in reverse. Shields are what make ship-classes so different. The whole gap between Shield regen of a particular ship and the DPS potential of another particular ship is the largest consideration in whether or not an attack is viable. If you think about it, class offensive capabilities are balanced in large part against the shields of what said class is supposed to be fighting.

For instance, fighter DPS can handle the shields of fighters/bombers/freighters/gunboats, but requires much larger amounts of players to balance or overcome battleship shields. Even battleships that are piloted by complete idiots can easily survive one or two snubs even by flying in a straight line because their shield regen more or less can neutralize the fighter dps.

Also, shields are the MOST important defensive asset of snubs, given that shield points are free and can regenerate - it allows fighters/bombers to soak damage and regenerate without having any lasting damage - while allowing them to deal damage consistently without worrying about dying.

In the same way, shields are the MOST important defensive asset for caps - given that they render smaller shipclasses less effective against them (or rather useless), depending on their regen - and inter-class cap warfare is entirely based on the smaller cap kiting like a bomber would, dealing damage while shields soak up damage, and then leaving to regenerate.

Shields are much more important than hull. Shields determine whether you survive or not, and hull just tells you how long you've got before you die.

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[Hone]

Wrong, hull is what determines wether you get insta'd or not.

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[Druen78]

I support this idea: making invincible hulls requires absurd technologies in shipwright and materials; also no matter what incredibly resilient alloys you use, antimatter would still annihilate the entire hull section effortlessly, and produce an explosion big enough to vaporize the rest of the ship. So, my solutions:

-Remove any and all references to antimatter: it doesn't make sense. Not only an antimatter weapojn of any kind would realistically be able to kill a battleship with one shot, but a tiny bomber would never have the necessary energy to contain all that antimatter before shooting it. Call them plasma cannons, or whatever else.

-Nerf hulls to realistic levels: hull protection should be the last ditch defense, if you start hearing bangs on your hull it means you already lost your combat.

-Boost shields with different balances. Fighter shields should be able to deflect only a handful of hits, but regenerate in 1-2 seconds (also would be a nice idea that if the damage received overcomes the shield capacitor of a set amount, the remaining damage bleeds through the shield; it doesn't make a lot of sense that a fighter can survive a heavy mortar shot, only because the shield protects it compeltely). Capital shields should be able to withstand the brunt of a battle, but take at least a couple minutes to regenerate, because it would need to reset and restart the capacitors.

[Tankman]

When I saw this I thought to myself "Battleships should take hull damage proportional to the health of their components."

Makes a little more sense than damaging the hull directly, especially if it's covered in components everywhere. Also I agree with removing the antimatter references, technically a single shot from a SNAC should destroy half of a planet (I did some small calculations based on the size of the antimatter glob).

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How do I spaceship?

[tothebonezone]

r firepower than say a gunboat, but are fragile as a mother and rely only on flaks and counter-missile missile thingies and support craft to prevent itself from exploding- successfully dump 2 or 3 good missiles on it max and you'll sink it.

Stopped reading there.

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