28x maximum speed (not afterburner).
Gates are fixed speed because otherwise you’d have collisions of people warping though the same gate.
Survivability =! EHP. Survivability doesn’t count phase shield.
Both are guard ships, so both have Phase Shield.
Both are guard ships, so both have Phase Shield.
You’re missing the forest for the trees. Consider which part of health pool is affected by phase shield, and which ship has significantly more of that portion of health pool.
First off, the visuals at high texture are stunning… I mean absolutely stunning. Makes me sad when I play on my laptop and have to lower them down. That being said on the low side of the texture graphics I am getting random FPS drops. I’ll be hovering around 50-70 fps and drop down to 9 fps in high combat sessions.
Making engineers useful was a plus I don’t think they are overpowered unless in a Large Group together. I’d suggest a diminishing return on Remote hull/shield repair. If one is used within X number of seconds of the last one it only heals 50% of what it’s capable of doing. Just as an example. Right now cluster engineers are hard to break up especially Empire engineers.
28x maximum speed (not afterburner).
Gates are fixed speed because otherwise you’d have collisions of people warping though the same gate.
Abandoned Outpost is the worst culprit for warp collisions.
I went through one of the gates and one of my allies crossed in front of me. Idiot…
Frigate balls are a huge problem in T3 that didn’t go away after the engineer nerfs, and came back with brutal vengeance after this patch. Countless games with well over half the team flying a double brick or a cross now. At least they’re somewhat killable now, after you hit them with 3:1 and 4:1 number ratio. Anything less and you get slaughtered. Heck, even with 4:1 you sometimes get slaughtered because of random minefield/pulsar/jericho torp.
I agree. The main advantage of smaller ships are their mobility. Having small healing radius means they have a nice role as fast strikers that can penetrate deep into enemy territory and return to engineers for heals. But when you can cover massive areas with engineers then there is no reason not to use the slow but highly durable frigates and command ships. They can occupy and defend area much better than an interceptor and they win games.
This leads to a very stagnant game-play where winning is determined by mass more than anything else. The team that’s better able to stay as a massive death-ball will win the game. You can pretty much tell which team is going to win 3 minutes into a game. An individual player would feel that there is very little they can do to help the team win from behind.
The current issue with frigates and death balls may not be due to the strength of ships but rather due to game mode, map, and the point system design.
Here are a few things that may help with the issue and improve gameplay in general:
1/ Reduced healing radius but slightly increase healing rate. This would let engineers contribute to the team while staying behind the lines. (Its also very important to give engineers points for healing).
2/ Secondary objectives that disperse the fighting across all areas of the map . If a team is losing the contest for the main beacon, they can go for the secondaries. These objectives should give the losing team a better chance to come back but should not just act like an extra beacon. This would also give individual players a sense of agency - that they can impact the game by doing these objectives.
3/ Better map design. Make the maps more oriented to the game mode. Beacon hunts maps should be more cluttered with objects that prevent direct gating between beacons. This would allow smaller more intense fighting to develop as ships travel between beacons or fight over secondary objectives.
4/ Point system redesigned to better reflect a player’s contribution and encourage good team play. Healing should definitely give points to engineers. They should be awarded for “close saves” such as healing a teammate when their hull is below %15 percent. Extra points should be given when a teammate saves an ally by killing an enemy. Buff assists such as those given by command ships should be given less points. Points should also be given for de-capturing a point as well as capturing a points. In emp mode, extra points should be awarded for killing or assist in killing the bomb carrier etc.
5/ More consistent re spawn timer that makes clear the risk-reward of killing a enemy. Currently, when you kill someone, they may spawn in a few seconds or they may sit out for over a minute. It is hard to decide whether you should chase after a kill or go help with the objective when you are not sure for how long you can incapacitate the enemies you kill.
6/ An in-game quick message system (similar to tribes:ascended) that allow pug players to communicate more effectively. This could be implemented in both English and Russian to have added benefit of allow teammates to cross the language barrier.
I believe when balancing or adding new content to this game, the devs may want to focus on fostering smaller more intense engagements over large camping battles; and on closer, see-sawing matches where winning or losing wont be decided until the last second.
I think there are few things the devs can consider to foster more intense gameplay
1/ Reduced healing radius but slightly increase healing rate.
[Hello there](< base_url >/index.php?/topic/19405-healing-is-overpowered/)
Increasing Healing is the last thing they should do.
Thanks to the Tutorials I’ve been dipping into Tier 1 again, and I was in awe of how different it was to what I expected. My impressions are here:
Tier 1:
This tier has slow movement, but fast play.
The ships in Tier 1 don’t move very fast, and there are no Warp Gates to speed up play. However, because there aren’t many modules and ships are generally weaker, ships go down faster. The result is that you don’t get the Frigate Balls you do in higher tiers; instead you get fighter and interceptor packs that tear each other apart in the clash. It feels much more intense than T2 or T3 because of that.
Healing is weak, if it’s there at all.
There are no Nanodrone clouds in Tier 1, and shield heals seem to be pretty slow. Combined with the fact that Engineers are made of tissue paper, the only way to get ‘decent’ heals is to use the self heal modules, which means you need to sacrifice your Class modules.
The utter lack of healing is part of why there are no Frigate Balls. It also keeps the game running fast and furious as once hull damage happens it’s not going away.
The LR is King
Hands down, Tier 1 is the greatest tier for LR Frigate pilots. Disintegrators are nightmare weapons in Tier 1, able to one-shot-kill Interceptors and cripple Fighters in a single hit (remember, Hull healing is probably not going to happen). In T2 and T3 I view Empire LR’s as a pest, and they are only dangerous when combined with other attackers. In Tier 1, the LR can solo-kill you, and with less weapons and modules it’s much harder to attack them in return.
I know I’m bound to get some angry comments, but the weakness of ships in Tier 1 is a part of its appeal, and higher tiers need more of that. I’m not saying they need the “you can’t flee” nature of Tier 1, but I would probably enjoy the game more if I knew that causing hull damage - any hull damage - is not likely to be healed by the enemy, or cannot be healed quickly. Now, in Tier 2 and doubly so in Tier 3, damage is pretty much moot. There is no long-term damage because the Engineer spam restores everything.
Imperial LR is fully capable of one shotting interceptors at T3. I got killed by it yesterday.
Imperial LR is fully capable of one shotting interceptors at T3. I got killed by it yesterday.
Have yet to see that. Which kind of interceptor? Aren’t… Recons supposed to be the weakest? If it hit a Recon maybe that would explain it…
Have yet to see that. Which kind of interceptor? Aren’t… Recons supposed to be the weakest? If it hit a Recon maybe that would explain it…
Happened to me quite a Few times in My T3 Kite before I stopped flying Interceptors T 3.
I suspect it depends on a lot of things. Disintegrator damage scales with weapon quality, and it will also depend whether he’s using Weapon Overcharge on that shot and whether you’ve gone with both submatter shield and lightweight hull or left one of them for tank.
LRFs killed my engineer plenty of times moving from asteroid A to asteroid B. getting sniped in my interceptor whilst busy with someone else happens more often. I wouldn’t say 1 shotted coz that implies having perfect health before being hit. Normally it’s the case where shields were down and like Binky postulated, I had other things for my hull mods when it should’ve been resist or cap. EB is love, EB is life.
The LR is King
Not so much for lack of healing but damage to survivability in T1 is much higher than all the later tiers. I assume the Devs thought peeps in T1 can’t aim and get better later on so they made it easier to kill / die in the rookie arenas.
I suspect it depends on a lot of things. Disintegrator damage scales with weapon quality, and it will also depend whether he’s using Weapon Overcharge on that shot and whether you’ve gone with both submatter shield and lightweight hull or left one of them for tank.
Current disintegrator does more then enough damage to one shot any speed specced interceptor that has EB on cooldown. I’ve seen it one shot interceptors more then once. It’s just that yesterday was the first time since 0.8.0 that I actually got hit by one when I didn’t have EB up.
You’re missing the forest for the trees. Consider which part of health pool is affected by phase shield, and which ship has significantly more of that portion of health pool.
I understand that point, but the fed shields are not that much lower that 10k EHP is worth it.
I understand that point, but the fed shields are not that much lower that 10k EHP is worth it.
Then you do not understand what EHP means.
“Effective health points” refer to amount of damage you can take before you die. For guard frigates, this calculation is not done correctly by the game because it doesn’t take into account the fact that they have a much larger portion of their total health under +100 resist against one type of damage.
Essentially, the actual EHP on crus type S is usually higher then on anakonda-m, even after the buff.
Then you do not understand what EHP means.
“Effective health points” refer to amount of damage you can take before you die. For guard frigates, this calculation is not done correctly by the game because it doesn’t take into account the fact that they have a much larger portion of their total health under +100 resist against one type of damage.
Essentially, the actual EHP on crus type S is usually higher then on anakonda-m, even after the buff.
The Cruis Type S has 3445 more shield points then the Anaconda M. Assuming 1/3rd of incoming damage matches the Phase Shield, then the Cruis S has 2296 EHP more from it’s phase shield then the Anaconda M does. Yet they are starting with the Anaconda M being up by 10k EHP. That is my irritation. If we wanted parity with the ship classes, I could see the Anaconda getting up to 5k EHP more with it’s optimum setup then the Cruis S, since as you said the phase shield isn’t taken into account with the calculation, but 10K seems excessive when tacked on the additional missile slots and increased speed. I’m also assuming that the guard frigs posted here have taken the Jericho implants for resistances. If they haven’t, that just widens the discrepancy.
The Cruis Type S has 3445 more shield points then the Anaconda M. Assuming 1/3rd of incoming damage matches the Phase Shield, then the Cruis S has 2296 EHP more from it’s phase shield then the Anaconda M does. Yet they are starting with the Anaconda M being up by 10k EHP. That is my irritation. If we wanted parity with the ship classes, I could see the Anaconda getting up to 5k EHP more with it’s optimum setup then the Cruis S, since as you said the phase shield isn’t taken into account with the calculation, but 10K seems excessive when tacked on the additional missile slots and increased speed. I’m also assuming that the guard frigs posted here have taken the Jericho implants for resistances. If they haven’t, that just widens the discrepancy.
What kind of utterly awful pilot only absorbs 1/3? If you have damage text enabled, you can easily absorb far more.
What kind of utterly awful pilot only absorbs 1/3? If you have damage text enabled, you can easily absorb far more.
If you are doing your job with a guard frigate, you are usually in the thick of things, which means getting shot by several opponents with different damage types, plus missiles and mines. So no matter what you have set, you are going to take damage from other sources. A 1/3rd breakdown in damage is a good estimate of what you can conceivably intercept in that situation.
Of course, even assuming that you only have one opponent, you are still only looking at a 6k EHP difference, which is close to what I suggested as comparable. With the Anaconda M coming in 10k higher, plus the extra speed and missile slots makes it slightly better overall. Which was my initial point.