[Discussion] Proliferation of Shield Penetration weapons

[Mattoropael]

It's getting ridiculous, if I'm honest.

Just now while testing Combat Update I, some headhunters warped in, loosed two shiny new torpedoes and before I could react, I've taken massive hull damage that wrecked a wide area of my ship (which has full integrity field coverage), bypassing my shields entirely.

It is understandable that some enemies should be strong against shields, but when enemies that ignore shield entirely appear en masse, it begs the question of why shields even exist: They don't help against collisions (i.e. no bulldozing through an asteroid field, no kamikaze protection), they take quite a lot of space on your ship before it's good, and even then it's extremely unreliable at protecting your ship with all the comical shield penetration going on.

If you think shields are OP, then the logical conclusion would be to introduce large shield damage bonuses on anti-shield weapons (like Plasma Cannons already do, but even higher), not having them ignore that 1 million shield entirely and wreck its hull directly.

[ravien_ff]

Probably bad luck.

[Quxudais]

My issue with it to this point was pulse cannons and their ability to tear parts (and turrets) off your ship in seconds with no practical counter measures. I had ships with such low damage they could never hope to actually kill me, cost me hundreds of thousands in repairs after only a few seconds combat because of this. The nature of the game using block size as the single determining factor in terms of strength means that the only way to prevent getting picked apart by pulse weapons is to build with zero small details, which in a game primarily about designing your own ships is moronic.

I haven't experienced torpedos yet but I would hope there are some serious drawbacks for using them (drawbacks that also apply to the AI). I would say they should be completely dumbfire, relatively slow in common models, and easy to see comming. Not sure how many, if any of these the current implementation follows but these are the minimum to me.

if shield penetration is going to continue being a thing then they need to add more countermeasures and make armor more effective. I'd also say it should be much easier to find cannons and railguns that are long range (9km+). I made it to the core with a small fleet and a lot of time invested but I was still fighting inside 5km simply because finding (or making) turrets with range higher than that is absurdly tedious.

Also my first fear after reading your experience is that AI torpedo boats will make your own AI controlled fleet nothing but a liability considering they have no abililty to make effective use of evasive maneuvers.

[Swedish Meat Lover]

you can shoot down torpedos and turrets on autofire(independent targeting) prioritize torpedos and fighters.so i dont see whats the problem is?

[ravien_ff]

Originally posted by Quxudais:

My issue with it to this point was pulse cannons and their ability to tear parts (and turrets) off your ship in seconds with no practical counter measures. I had ships with such low damage they could never hope to actually kill me, cost me hundreds of thousands in repairs after only a few seconds combat because of this. The nature of the game using block size as the single determining factor in terms of strength means that the only way to prevent getting picked apart by pulse weapons is to build with zero small details, which in a game primarily about designing your own ships is moronic.

I haven't experienced torpedos yet but I would hope there are some serious drawbacks for using them (drawbacks that also apply to the AI). I would say they should be completely dumbfire, relatively slow in common models, and easy to see comming. Not sure how many, if any of these the current implementation follows but these are the minimum to me.

if shield penetration is going to continue being a thing then they need to add more countermeasures and make armor more effective. I'd also say it should be much easier to find cannons and railguns that are long range (9km+). I made it to the core with a small fleet and a lot of time invested but I was still fighting inside 5km simply because finding (or making) turrets with range higher than that is absurdly tedious.

Also my first fear after reading your experience is that AI torpedo boats will make your own AI controlled fleet nothing but a liability considering they have no abililty to make effective use of evasive maneuvers.

Some of the issues you've raised are handled in the update. Torps are seeking but PDCs can defend you.

As for pulse cannons, make mounts for your turrets out of armor blocks and protect them with integrity field generators.

[Meep The Insane]

I have major issue with the Sabot and Ion torpedos. It is easily possible to overwhelm PD when using fighters in tandem with torps even if you have 20 PD weapons. Meaning to counter a player using torps and fighters you must dedicate over half your weapon slots to PD

top end sabot do 300.000 damage a hit while traveling at 5500. one or two volleys can wipe out most ships.

Timing Ion and antimatter torpedoes is actually more devesating though as Ion completly shut down shields for several seconds while top end antimatter torpedos do .9 mil damage

PD weapons can be expected to take down only 2-3 if they are busy with fighters and you can 10 torps per volley. even massive 5 mil hull ships die in one or two volleys.

[Grumpy Old Gamer]

Armor is extremely ineffective, to the point once you build a shield boat, there is no point in having it except for collision protection.

Shield penetration projectiles, but not shield busting,, should be a turret target table item, so you can at least have point defences against them.

[Quxudais]

Originally posted by ravien_ff:

Some of the issues you've raised are handled in the update. Torps are seeking but PDCs can defend you.

As for pulse cannons, make mounts for your turrets out of armor blocks and protect them with integrity field generators.

I did, oganite armor blocks surrounding avorion rock or hull blocks with full-ship integrity field coverage. I still routinely lose turrets to ships that can't hope to kill me but also can't be one shot by me. I wouldn't mind it so much if turrets just "died" but didn't actually fall off your ship, as having to manually replace a bunch of turrets after fighting pulse ships for 30 seconds is tedious. Also annoying that, as said, any small detail work done gets chewed apart rapidly for super high repair cost, I'd be less concerned about that if the repair cost for basic non-system, non-armor blocks was significantly smaller.

[ravien_ff]

Those are both good suggestions. I agree that repair cost of non functional blocks (such as hull or armor) should be cheap.

[Teralitha]

I havent got in to test it yet, but are you saying that torpedoes bypass shields? I mean... they shouldnt, I would think. Could be a bug. If you are playing the beta you can simply give yourself unlimited resources to build your ship again.

[Meep The Insane]

Originally posted by Teralitha:

I havent got in to test it yet, but are you saying that torpedoes bypass shields? I mean... they shouldnt, I would think. Could be a bug. If you are playing the beta you can simply give yourself unlimited resources to build your ship again.

Its not a bug one type of missles will bypass your shields 100% of the time and another shuts them down for 2-4 seconds. They are designed this way.

[ravien_ff]

PDCs, PDCs, and more PDCs!

Think The Expanse.

[halloween20]

there is the problem. you cant fit that many PDCs for the amount of torps AND fighters you have flying arround

[Drithyl]

Maybe if PDCs could take less than 1 slot, so be able to place enough to counter a critical mass of fighters and torpedoes.

[Teralitha]

Maybe the solution is to build a fleet, rather than 1 ship that can take on the world alone. Perhaps one escort ship with nothing but point defense guns.

[ravien_ff]

Originally posted by Drithyl:

Maybe if PDCs could take less than 1 slot, so be able to place enough to counter a critical mass of fighters and torpedoes.

I'm hoping for this myself. OR a new turret type dedicated to PDCs only. Or something.

Originally posted by Teralitha:

Maybe the solution is to build a fleet, rather than 1 ship that can take on the world alone. Perhaps one escort ship with nothing but point defense guns.

Problem is the AI isn't the best and you'd have to make sure your escort is always flying next to you.