Here is a few things i see that can vastly improve the games defensive mechanics.
Active, passive… its all the same.
we can really use things like shield expanders, resistances slots etc that are passive in nature, but go in the active slots. Active mods are just not holding their weight, they need to be the primary source of income for healing.
Energy, Whats that?
Energy is just not valuable. we need the mods to cost a lot more, Specifically the single target mods. After burners should go on their own bar. Energy should not be used for afterburner, rather the afterburner should run on the same mechanics are weapons fire does at the moment, use it to much and it over heats. make it so that if it took 25 seconds to use the afterburner at max energy, that is what it is for the afterburner. However, make it so that for every second you use it, you have to wait for it to regenerate that amount.
General Addresses And module Modifications needed
A few changes to the game will make customization of ships better. These modifications will also help to serve unique play-styles, and develope new tactics and ways of combat. Here is a few things we can use.
Slot Changes
Remove tuning specific slots, and rename them to ship-upgrades. Enable the ability to use any upgrade in these 3-5 slots (Adding a script that will reduce the effect by stacking the same item down to 10% Effect)
Nerf Passive shield regeneration (currently capacity) mod to 30-40% Like the current shielding capacity spec’s.
Passive modules
Hull
Hull Regeneration increased to 1% up from 30/s
Hull Regeneration now added at the same time as passive shield regeneration
Increase individual resistance to 35
Shielding
Shield Extender Passives Buffed from 4.5% To 15%
Increase individual resistance to 35
Capacitors
Shielding
Adaptive shielding matrix increased to 25, up from 10
Capacitor power relay (Shield Regeneration) reduced from 100% to 25%
Supplementary Shield generator (Shield regeneration) reduced from 50% to max of 25%
Hull
Armor Extender passives buffed from 4.5% To 10%.
Add All resistance passive for 35 all resist.
Increase individual resistance to 65
Increase individual resistance to 50
Armor Plating : Remove speed reduction, Now reduces resistance by 7
Regenerative armor now regenerates 1% of health per second, up from set amount (30/s)
Composite armor now gives 35 all resistance.
Passive Armor tool tip changed instead of “increases hull regeneration” it now displays “improves hull repair effects”
Energy
Extended compacitor reduced from 30-50% to 10%.
Speed
Inertial stablizers reduced to 12.5%
Weapon
All damage capacitors reduced to 5%
Computers
Proton shield well reduced from max of 30% to max of 5%
Enhanced scanner reduced from max of 50% to max of 10%
Added a new serious of computer chips, that
Type 1 : increases cloaking duration by 10%
Type 2 : reduces cloaking cool down by 10%
Type 3 : improves movement speed while cloaked by 5%
Hull
Synopsis
at the moment this is armor tanking, or tanking with hull / life. But this poses a serious issue
if you get low in hull, your modules becomes damaged, and not usable. For the reason, hull should become a static preset amount of points per ship class, and should not change.
Current State
Hull tanking is not dependable, like many of the other forms of tanking.
Recommended change
-
add armor tanking
-
set static amounts to ships for hull HP based purely on ship size and nothing else. make this amount none-upgraded or expandable.
Example
Interceptor :
Hull: 250
Armor ??-??
Shields: ??
Attack ship:
Hull: 550
Armor ??-??
Shields: ??-??
Frigate:
Hull: 1550
Armor ??-??
Shields: ??-??
This also adds breathing room for armor tanks when under pressure because of energy or silence effects.
Armor (New)
Synopsis
Armor tanking should differ from shield tanking. the regeneration of it should be slow, and in larger chunks. Armor should also have atleast double the effective tank of shielding by default. I’ll explain below in some math for the none-dev followers/readers.
Current State
At current regeneration on shielding is way to high, and the armor regeneration effects are to poor. we need a serious change to these.
Recommended change
-
Add armor tanking.
-
Make it regenerate twice the amount shielding mods do, but at half toe frequency
-
Balance the armor so that in general (Per the average player), the damage reduction is about 15% More then shielding
Math
Effective HP is the amount of effective damage you can take. For example, if you have 100,000 life, and 0 resistance, your effective tank is 100,000 damage that can be taken before death. If you however have 100,000 life, and 50% damage reduction, your effective tank now becomes 150,000. so the effective tank of armor should be double, this is because the rep cycle is slower, if it was equal to shielding, then armor would melt like a hot knife in butter. The reason for armor tanking to have low, larger burst heals, is because you have passive shield regeneration taking effect while you armor tank. However, this is not the case of shielding, where you have no such absorb, so shielding should be very hard to break through for a shield tank, and for this reason, should melt like butter when you hit the armor of a shield tank.
Shielding
Synopsis
Shields are the primary defense of shield tanks. As a result, they should have high life, and high regeneration. This is because regeneration is effected by base amounts of SP (Sheild points) due to the fact that shield regenerates at X % of max SP. the trick here however, is not to make it to high, or the passive regeneration to high, or a combination of the two, as it will over power the defense.
Current State
At current regeneration on shielding is way to high, and the the stability of Active mods are way undependable.
Recommended change
-
Stabilize passive regeneration. Make it so that active tanking is also good. The best way to do this is to make it so that if you have 5 capacitor slots, and use them all for resistance + active tank, its the slightly better (2-5% more effective hp) as passive regeneration. This fine line between the two needs to be close.
-
Make shielding extenders (passive nature) for active slots
in general if passive tanking, you should free active slots, but it should be inferior (slightly) tanking to active. this way the shift from passive tank is to offer more offense, while active tank offers more defense.
New UI
i actually put recharge time here for the afterburner, for some odd reason just so you all know