Is combat really this broken?

[DaLagga]

So after making a small fortune from Opal mining I decided to try my hand at some combat. I hadn't really done much before outside of one bounty mission and a few cases where I was interdicted and mostly just made a run for it.

I grabbed a mission to hunt down 10 or so enemies in combat zones and picked up a Vulture to have at it. I decked it out with plenty of high end bling bling (mostly the highest tier A class modules I could equip) along with two 3D Pulse Lasers. I found a combat zone and engaged a Federal Assault Ship. While his shields went down reasonably fast his hull was another matter entirely. It took something like two full bursts in order to bring his integrity down by ~1% which resulted in a 15 minute or so battle before he finally died.

I figured that maybe the problem was that Thermal weapons weren't great against enemy hull so I traded one of them for a 3C Cannon. Despite having a low RoF and relatively slow travel time, a direct hit to a Cobra MK3 did a whopping 2% damage to its hull after the shields were down.

So what gives? Why do enemies seem to have ungodly amounts of health? Am I doing something wrong or is there some kind of crazy level scaling or something going on where the AI is just allowed to completely ignore the rules of the game in order to provide an artificial "challenge" for the player?

[Kevlar]

1. thermal weapons are indeed generally not the the best vs hulls/

2. enemies in combat zones have their ships modified., the same way that players do with engineers. In particular they have the max level of armor possible.

3. they are not ignoring the rules of the game. you are simply A rated and not engineered and they are. An engineered vessel is some 2 to 3 times more resilient.
I strongly advise to get away from combat zones until you engineer some stuff as you will need the extra damage, weapons special effects and shield enhancements that come from engineers

[Jankules]

You need well engineered ship for cz,and some better ship for fast kills...Did you try low cz,instead of medium and high?

[xPEDx]

try your combat practice in a high rez site, there you can fight with help and NON-Engineered ships.

[Hobo Misanthropus]

Yeah, CZ ships have every internal slot loaded with an HRP giving them around 5x the Hull points as a HazRez pirate, that usually just has cargo racks.

[Chibbity]

Combat zone enemies are tough as nails.

You'll have better luck hunting pirates for bounty in resource zones until you get some engineering. (Most planets with a ring have one.)

If you can get some contracts to hunt pirates of a specific faction in a nearby resource ring system, so much the better.

[Korben]

I generally hang out at the nav beacon by the star of the system that has the certain enemy types. As others have said, combat zones have much harder enemies.

[HairballHacker]

Just because you have not learned how to do combat effectively in ED does not imply it is "broken".

[Agony_Aunt]

CZ ships are bullet sponges, so outfit your ship appropriately.

I've found PAs work well.

[DaLagga]

Thanks for the responses. It just seems like horrible game design to have starter missions that send you to death zones where you have no real chance because the enemies are in drastically better ships than anything you could possibly have at that point.

Originally posted by HairballHacker:

Just because you have not learned how to do combat effectively in ED does not imply it is "broken".

So "getting gud" is going to magically make my weapons actually kill enemies instead of tickling them?

[Dolphin Bottlenose]

Cannons are good against modules, no so much against the hull. Try a multi-cannon (keep in mind that big ones take 1-2 secs to spin up before they start firing).

[Edelweiss ✿]

Originally posted by DaLagga:

So "getting gud" is going to magically make my weapons actually kill enemies instead of tickling them?

Actually yeah, more time on target and understanding what weapons work on what

[Tokfan]

Vulture got two large weapons, that's simply just not good enough for doing a CZ in what you'd call a "time efficient" way, fun sure, but not time efficient.

Engineering is where it's at, also with the choice of armaments and the amount of guns you bring.
i.e. A python/krait not only get another large weapon over the vulture, but two medium which could be used as "utility" weapons - one SCB interrupting rail and one corrosive MC. Suddenly your extra large weapon no longer increase your relative damage by 50% but a whopping 87% more damage just because of that corrosive MC, and that's not even including what boost you'd add with engineering the large ones.
Then you can throw resists on shields to literally be unkillable by anything but the large ships or big wings.
Not to mention tinker with your power plant to actually let you equip whatever you fancy without using above 100% power.
Or how about a ~33% increase of top speed?
Or why not having any overheating issues ever again?
And the jump range... oh boy the jump range of a combat ship... yeah.... you want to engineer that ♥♥♥♥.

As for the missions I wouldn't call them "starter missions", I mean they do tell you what you're up against and rough estimate regarding combat rank. It's just another type of mission.
There's no progression when it comes to what missions are avaliable, just starport faction reputation.

Then there's the thing with what you call "making a small fortune"... maybe you're simply not "there yet" when it comes to gearing up a combat ship, your ship choice, the lack of engineering and the lack of engineering of that specific ship literally screams "NO, don't". Also, why not target sub-systems?

Re-invest into your void opals scheme instead, keep going until you have a top notch void opal miner, then any spare cash you can fart around with and invest in combat ships.

[DaLagga]

So I just went to a resource extraction zone to fight ships without all the engineering upgrades and enemies were going down quite quickly. It felt about "right" to me. So basically, it looks like this engineering crap just breaks the game. If you don't have it, engineered ships are almost impossible to kill. If you do have all the upgrades, then any ship that isn't engineered is a trivial joke. Can't say I'm a fan of this power imbalance.

On a side note, it is rather infuriating how many of your instruments like throttle and radar get cut off when you pitch up. It's absolutely absurd game design.

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/947349010932898511/60A6517B386F82DE692DE10F3118E37D967521CB/

[Zi]

Hey, OP, you got it well though.
CZ was fun a while ago and profitable.
Not anymore.

Cuz they got `fixed` by devs who really don`t play their game.

Now CZ somewhat doable only in 2 cases
1. You heavilly engineered.
2. Youre with wing of guildmates.

Also grading CZs is broken too.
Low cz usually more dangerous than Hi.

But as been said, better stay away from this broken content.
And I even not touching massacre missions which tooks now aeons to complete...

[Laurreth]

Originally posted by DaLagga:

On a side note, it is rather infuriating how many of your instruments like throttle and radar get cut off when you pitch up. It's absolutely absurd game design.

You can work around that with a headtracking solution or by pressing the "UI focus" button which centres and widens the viewport.