Custodian panic thread

Game Discussion Ships
1

So with the impending release of Custodian and the drip feed of previews from Mr Orca my inner ‘arm chair developer’ has woken up and raised an eyebrow or two at the state of some of the Custodian’s modules and furthermore… the plasmatron as a whole.

So then – first point of concern:

_ This is a ship we’ve been grinding for over 100 days for _

 

If it’s kit deploys in an overly underwhelming state it’ll be passed off as fodder and overall a waste of effort. So for the sake of comparisions I’ll be drawing parallels to Boremys a lot during this thread as it is as a whole; Custodians direct competitor and potentially just an outright superior version of the ship.

Second point of concern:

 

Frontal shield looks pretty damn small

 

8TwAXnT.png

 

 

In Orca’s preview video as well as the Custodian’s roaming dreamland one thing has caught my attention consistently – protective barrier doesn’t cover enough of the ship.

Why is this a concern?

 

Unlike Boremys which is a federation guard, Custodian is Jericho and furthermore inherently slower by design – unfortunately including rotation speed. I get that Custodian was designed to be played aggressively akin to Boremys but the kit overall does not support such a play style.

 

Fighters can outmaneuver the shield/Custodian
Frigates can simply splash through the shield
Destroyers can splash through the shield and punch through it with modules
Interceptors can simply go outright behind the shield and shoot your hull directly

 

One suggestion would be to make the shield cover a small portion of the side of the ship, perhaps 5-15% of the hitbox extending towards the back and furthermore lower or remove the shield resistance debuff. There are so many sources of damage able to bypass the barrier it simply isn’t warranted.

 

_ Second point of concern: HOLY HECK THAT THING IS BRIGHT _

KyN5W8t.png

 

Need I say more?

The current frontal shield FX is so bright it’d outright give away the Custodian’s position in darker maps and highlight what portions of the shield are exposed to LRFs.

Suggestion: Make the effect closer to diffusion shield/frontal shield.

This would make the Custodian less visible as a target and make the exact area of the barrier less clear from range, making LRFs miss potentially easy shots.

 

Now for the glaring issue: PLASMATRON LOOKS HORRIBLE

 

Not only is it tied to the Custodian – a ship teased for over 100 days, but the projectile speed as both Rakza and I feared, is far too low. In the demo although implants were not shown  (not that it even matters)  the projectile could barely hit a near stationary frigate at medium range and a bot fighter at CLOSE RANGE.

 

This is both an inherent issue with being a thermal weapon as the damage type lacks any kind of ammunition that boosts projectile speed (an old issue made more and more obvious with the further releases of projectile based thermal weapons. The passive of the weapon (projectile speed increase based on charge time) also seems to be too weak if the fear is the ship will too easily bully interceptors then need I remind you Boremys has access to ‘Aim assisted cannon 17’ which literally homes in on the target upon connecting the first shot.

 

Aside from projectile speed issues, the damage looks too low for the fire rate/charge times – the innate lower critical modifier looks nearly unwarranted given how hard it is to land a shot. Orca was leading targets perfectly in the demo and more than 75% of shots MISSED. This is also further exaggerated by the fact the Custodian has only 1 CPU slot and no passives for crit chance. It simply isn’t possible to make a crit build for this ship without the aid of a Dart.

 

And for the last panic thread comment:

 

Custodian doesn’t have access to Conformist booster.

This is literally the modifier that lets Boremys shield tank massively before stacking its special module on top of it. If Conformist was turned into a standard modifier that only allowed for one to be installed it would bring Jericho guards slightly back up to date and able to compete with well… Boremys. It’s basically the de-facto guard right now.

 

And that’s all for now – I’m going to continually internally scream for the next four days and then cry on the fifth.

 

<If you haven’t seen Orca’s preview video then check it out>

 

2

In my and Custodian defense, the ship is insanely tanky and when u pile up the frontal shield that apparently has no upper limit to how much damage it can take, granted you have 45k+ shield volume with steady damage reduction and once that goes off, you get to have the dart frontal shield but without the energy part sooo yeah.

I also havent played on generic guard special which could be good with mods provided but in any case, i provided links to the corresponding stream footage with each video so you can look at it in all detail, i probably missed lots of things. Plasmatron is weak thats for sure but somehow i dont think its going to stay weak, something like the object buff is bound to happen but until then you will have the easiest guard ship ever to play with + some extras.

3

Yeah, I did make this as the title says as a bit of a panic thread - we’ve been waiting for so long to see the custodian being controlled by a player and with it so close there are some things that certainly are a cause for alarm.

 

As I said regarding the protective barrier however its more of a visibility issue since not only is the bloody thing going to be visible across the map but seeing stuff  through  it is a pain too since y’know… a lot of stuff has radar cloak nowadays.

4

“Yay a kill. Finally.” was my favorite part.

And yeah for an “invisible” barrier it sure is easy to spot.

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Also its worth specifying that the barrier is invisible when the ship is invisible and that’s how mafia works!

7

If a guard needs a Conformist to be a proper shield tank then it means that it’s something wrong with guard ships(entire class) themselves, that’s my opinion.

 

Anyway, the special module gives 65 resistances and the active one 70 resistances. Not too bad I think. Plasmatron seemed like a bad idea even on a paper in my opinion and in reality is even worse. Seeing it on NPCs on new map clearly showed that the weapon will be bad but the damage on the video shows that it’s worse than bad.

The problem with fighters/interceptors getting around Custodian frontal shield is also something I would expect from a ship like that and it’s not something that can be fixed. I will get that module only for 65 passive resists anyway. Problems listed there are something I expected. For me the frontal shield is something more for a ship that keeps distance and not for aggressive ship. This special module and pursuit algorithm are items that contradict each other in my eyes.

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12 hours ago, Gon009 said:

If a guard needs a Conformist to be a proper shield tank then it means that it’s something wrong with guard ships(entire class) themselves, that’s my opinion.

 

Anyway, the special module gives 65 resistances and the active one 70 resistances. Not too bad I think. Plasmatron seemed like a bad idea even on a paper in my opinion and in reality is even worse. Seeing it on NPCs on new map clearly showed that the weapon will be bad but the damage on the video shows that it’s worse than bad.

The problem with fighters/interceptors getting around Custodian frontal shield is also something I would expect from a ship like that and it’s not something that can be fixed. I will get that module only for 65 passive resists anyway. Problems listed there are something I expected. For me the frontal shield is something more for a ship that keeps distance and not for aggressive ship. This special module and pursuit algorithm are items that contradict each other in my eyes.

During the guard class ‘buff/overhaul’ there was a fair bit of the class’ downsides outright removed such as the low overall speed, dependance on regen and almost inability to brawl at all. Conformist was one of the key modules that allowed certain guards/premiums to be able to tank obscene amounts of damage/brawl with the enemy team at front line (is the class even defined as guard at this point or just tank). Shield tanking as a whole has been falling down quite a bit with the introduction of so many modules/weapons that outright bypass shields, strip undefined amounts over time or chunk percentile amounts out of shields, so conformist has been the backbone of what shield tanks still remain.

 

I pretty much agree as a whole on the latter points the passive resistance gain from using protective barrier although it doesn’t appear on the ship’s stat card is very nice much like Bastion shield’s passive resistance gain (that module needs buffing still too) but the drop to 0 resistance when the barrier is activated is what I was more or the less worried about as what shields you do have at activation can be burned away easily via splash, punch through or gravi spam (a module that needs nerfing still).

9

Conformist Booster is perfectly fitting guards supposed to Engage/Be Engaged at close Range. Not All Guards are supposed to do that.

You don’t want to see a Mass of Guards, all with Conformist Booster. For the Sake of the game.

 

Custodian is different. Like all the New Jericho Ships if you look closely.

 

Pilgrim = Atypical Special Module

Zhen = Atypical DPS capacity for a Control Ship

Singulairy = Atypical Drone Oriented Gameplay

 

Custodian isn’t exempt of this. You just need to find the way it was supposed to be played like.

 

I already know exactly how I will play my Custodian and when I will have to use it and when not. Thing that will not be soon since I can’t farm at the moment !

 

[@ORCA1911](< base_url >/index.php?/profile/254263-orca1911/) GIB CUSTODIAN ! (Or 1 Manual Controller)

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I feel like there’s gonna be a lot of people short by 1 control system part.

11

I think it’s pretty good.