All about 3.14

[Bambooza]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olnPAFQ314g


Things of note:

• Fighter ship's shields are changing to be bubble shields instead of quadrant-based large ships will still have 4 quadrants.
• Capacitor introduction has changed from being a boost to being integrated into the energy distribution of the ship.
• Heat has been changed to being a long-term impact/effect and energy drain being short term. They specifically mentioned not being able to hold down the fire button on energy weapons and have it continuously shoot that it would drain the weapons individual capacitor which would require recharging before it would fire again.
• Co pilot missile use has caused all of the ships to be rebalanced

 

[stockish]

So who wants to re-enact Hunt For Red October in the depths of Crusader?

 

[FZD]

24 min mark is probably the most interesting info. Personally I've been a bit worried that they'd slip in the sort of direction that you'd *require* a co-pilot to be able to fire missiles at all in larger ships, but sounds like at least for now the pilot is still able to do it.

 

[Cugino83]

...
Things of note:

• Fighter ship's shields are changing to be bubble shields instead of quadrant-based large ships will still have 4 quadrants.

...

In wonder: if the four facing shield will be gone for the smaller ship (please insert "smaller ship" definition here...) that will also mean that we won't be able to re-adjust the shield pool on different side?
I suspect the answare is yes...
According to some answare on the Railen about shield emitter there is, in most case, one emitter for shield faces, can we then assume that:
- the Railen is considered in the "small ship" category and will have the bubble shield version?
- all the small ship expecially fighter will have a since shield emitter?

The second assumption if real, it will be white dramatic and will change combat drastically: taking out the shiels emitter of an opponent will be a in a hight position on the "to do" list, that will also mean more mixed load out with a combination of ballistc and energy weapon. First the ballistic to take out the emitter, then the energy to quicly deal with the enemy.
Combined with the capacitor system that will be quite a change and if that is the case I'l expect a lot of crying baby out there with the release of 3.14..

24 min mark is probably the most interesting info. Personally I've been a bit worried that they'd slip in the sort of direction that you'd *require* a co-pilot to be able to fire missiles at all in larger ships, but sounds like at least for now the pilot is still able to do it.

Actuallly as far as I know the option for pilot to fire his ship's missiles has always been there, the difference is that "missile operator mode" will take over the use of normal weapon, so a solo pilot will need to switch beteween the two, like a Prospector pilot have to switch beteween "mining mode", "scanning mode" and normale flight interface.
That will be a quite interesting change, I dont' use missiles often but the idea to having to choose the "weapon of engagement" is a nice one, more in line with the today combat aricraft.

 

[FZD]

The second assumption if real, it will be white dramatic and will change combat drastically: taking out the shiels emitter of an opponent will be a in a hight position on the "to do" list, that will also mean more mixed load out with a combination of ballistc and energy weapon. First the ballistic to take out the emitter, then the energy to quicly deal with the enemy.
Combined with the capacitor system that will be quite a change and if that is the case I'l expect a lot of crying baby out there with the release of 3.14..

Honestly, most smaller ships, by the time you would've taken out the shield emitter you'd probably already dropped that shield. Even if the smaller ships now get the full benefit of the full shield HP pool, that's still just 2-7 seconds to take out one S1 shield. Now, maybe with something like vanguards that got a pair of S2 shields, that could be a thing. Then if we look at ships that got S3 shields, I somewhat doubt the shield emitter would be so vulnerable that you can just shoot it through the shields. If there is just one shield emitter, that would probably mean it can emit the shield through solid matter, so it could be an internal component on larger ships, or at the very least well shielded and protected. It'd be just too imbalanced if you can bypass 150k hp pool by just shooting at an component a bit, like maybe it'd be somewhat doable but it would need a lot of doing.

Actuallly as far as I know the option for pilot to fire his ship's missiles has always been there, the difference is that "missile operator mode" will take over the use of normal weapon, so a solo pilot will need to switch beteween the two, like a Prospector pilot have to switch beteween "mining mode", "scanning mode" and normale flight interface.
That will be a quite interesting change, I dont' use missiles often but the idea to having to choose the "weapon of engagement" is a nice one, more in line with the today combat aricraft.

Yes, it has, but I've just been worried that they might, at any moment go like "Hey, now that we've made this reason for a co-pilot to exist, we don't need the pilot on larger ships doing that."

 

[Cugino83]

Honestly, most smaller ships, by the time you would've taken out the shield emitter you'd probably already dropped that shield. Even if the smaller ships now get the full benefit of the full shield HP pool, that's still just 2-7 seconds to take out one S1 shield. Now, maybe with something like vanguards that got a pair of S2 shields, that could be a thing. Then if we look at ships that got S3 shields, I somewhat doubt the shield emitter would be so vulnerable that you can just shoot it through the shields. If there is just one shield emitter, that would probably mean it can emit the shield through solid matter, so it could be an internal component on larger ships, or at the very least well shielded and protected. It'd be just too imbalanced if you can bypass 150k hp pool by just shooting at an component a bit, like maybe it'd be somewhat doable but it would need a lot of doing.

I think you miss the points of my consideration.
Yes, on smaller ship you probably hava already depleated the shield by the time you have taken out the emitter, but here is a difference:m shield does recharge, damage taken do not.
A shot here and there on the emitter could at the end taken it out even if the shield are never dropped out compleately.... and once is gone is gone, no more "take your distance while shield build up again".
This of course will be even more important on large ship with larger shield and even more in long battle. Think for example at a Prowler with the Tavarin shield: yuou have finally drop all the shield of the Prowler and start to dealing damage when the enemy QT away to have his shield recharged... if you manage to take his emitter(s) this trick can't go on much longer (and I suspect even a partially damaged shield emitter will cripple somehow your shield).
For larger ships I'll expect they'll have several emitter on every face: I don't see an Orion, for example, having a single shiled emitter for each side, so to compleately destroy a shield on a large vessel you'll porbably have to deal with several emitter... after that yes you can remove 154k of shield pool... that's why larger vessel shouldn't travel alone on dangerous area (and you are suppose to have a proper crew and not solo them).


[/QUOTE]
Yes, it has, but I've just been worried that they might, at any moment go like "Hey, now that we've made this reason for a co-pilot to exist, we don't need the pilot on larger ships doing that."
[/QUOTE]
I doubt it: CIG is now proceding in developing mechanics that work at 360° doing that will need to have some restriction and additional code to discern solo ship from multicrew vessel and need to define another variable to manage and a logic to implement.
I can't predict the future, but in the medium term I really don't think so, plus since they'll allow player to slave turret it will be a non sense taking away the ability to use missiles.

 

[maynard]

Things of note:
...
...

[RANT]
this is why I can't be bothered to theorycraft about which ship will be best suited to any given purpose

we're still at the stage where everything is subject to change

I won't be buying any more ships before release

I'm not 'saving' any money by buying ships early that wind up not doing what I buy them for

LTI is a status symbol, not an advantage

bah humbug, et cetera
[/RANT]

 

[FZD]

I think you miss the points of my consideration.
Yes, on smaller ship you probably hava already depleated the shield by the time you have taken out the emitter, but here is a difference:m shield does recharge, damage taken do not.
A shot here and there on the emitter could at the end taken it out even if the shield are never dropped out compleately.... and once is gone is gone, no more "take your distance while shield build up again".

Well, it really depends on how long a ship survives after the shield goes down, small fighters at the moment blow up basically instantly (as long as you hit them properly) and I'm not too sure that would change... Heavy fighters and anything larger than that, sure. But small fighters will go up like TIE-fighters in Star Wars afaik.

This of course will be even more important on large ship with larger shield and even more in long battle. Think for example at a Prowler with the Tavarin shield: yuou have finally drop all the shield of the Prowler and start to dealing damage when the enemy QT away to have his shield recharged... if you manage to take his emitter(s) this trick can't go on much longer (and I suspect even a partially damaged shield emitter will cripple somehow your shield).

If it quantums away, it might as well have someone fix the emitter, regardless of whether it's internal or not, if it's totally out of combat like that. If it can't have the emitter fixed, I don't see why it would return to the combat... well, if the goal is to have it out of battle for a while then sure, that is accomplished.

For larger ships I'll expect they'll have several emitter on every face: I don't see an Orion, for example, having a single shiled emitter for each side, so to compleately destroy a shield on a large vessel you'll porbably have to deal with several emitter...

Yes, Orion is a capital ship, and capital ships will still have multiple emitters (think they said that somewhere). But seems like they're more or less the only ones that will, if Gatac Railen with 2xS3 shields will only have one.

after that yes you can remove 154k of shield pool... that's why larger vessel shouldn't travel alone on dangerous area (and you are suppose to have a proper crew and not solo them).

If you can just negate 154k shield pool easily like that, it will make escorts pointless. That shield is the key component of escort gameplay, because it stops attackers from directly assaulting the escorted ship, giving escorts time to do their job. Taking down an S3 shield must take time regardless of what method you use, if you can just pop in, reduce the target to salvage and then contemplate what to do with the escorts, allow them to scram or reduce them to extra bit of salvage, well, wouldn't make much sense to hire escorts.

I doubt it: CIG is now proceding in developing mechanics that work at 360° doing that will need to have some restriction and additional code to discern solo ship from multicrew vessel and need to define another variable to manage and a logic to implement.
I can't predict the future, but in the medium term I really don't think so, plus since they'll allow player to slave turret it will be a non sense taking away the ability to use missiles.

Well, yes, that makes sense.

 

[Shadow Reaper]

I couldn't finish this, it was so disorganized and boring. I can't hel- but hold a little resentment when people put up unedited, crappily planned, waste-my-time vids and this was yet another.

So I didn't see the end but it looks like they gave no info on the huge update on sensors. Still no info when we'll have real sensor choices and components that can be swapped? I was pretty shocked they didn't think this important enough to headline, like either it's not happening or they somehow don't get it's an even bigger deal than capacitors.

 

[FZD]

I couldn't finish this, it was so disorganized and boring. I can't hel- but hold a little resentment when people put up unedited, crappily planned, waste-my-time vids and this was yet another.

So I didn't see the end but it looks like they gave no info on the huge update on sensors. Still no info when we'll have real sensor choices and components that can be swapped? I was pretty shocked they didn't think this important enough to headline, like either it's not happening or they somehow don't get it's an even bigger deal than capacitors.

I think the noobifier condensed the important bits to roughly 3 min 46 seconds.

 

[Shadow Reaper]

Yeah, I saw that much, but thanks for sharing the condensed version.

Em. . .there was this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/nggdhy View: https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/nggdhy/314_looks_pretty_empty_after_latest_roadmap_update/


&^$)#!

 

[Bambooza]

Well, it really depends on how long a ship survives after the shield goes down, small fighters at the moment blow up basically instantly (as long as you hit them properly) and I'm not too sure that would change... Heavy fighters and anything larger than that, sure. But small fighters will go up like TIE-fighters in Star Wars afaik.


If it quantums away, it might as well have someone fix the emitter, regardless of whether it's internal or not, if it's totally out of combat like that. If it can't have the emitter fixed, I don't see why it would return to the combat... well, if the goal is to have it out of battle for a while then sure, that is accomplished.



Yes, Orion is a capital ship, and capital ships will still have multiple emitters (think they said that somewhere). But seems like they're more or less the only ones that will, if Gatac Railen with 2xS3 shields will only have one.



If you can just negate 154k shield pool easily like that, it will make escorts pointless. That shield is the key component of escort gameplay, because it stops attackers from directly assaulting the escorted ship, giving escorts time to do their job. Taking down an S3 shield must take time regardless of what method you use, if you can just pop in, reduce the target to salvage and then contemplate what to do with the escorts, allow them to scram or reduce them to extra bit of salvage, well, wouldn't make much sense to hire escorts.



Well, yes, that makes sense.

I have a feeling while it would be possible to take out the shield emitters so far everything I have seen on them makes them rather small so not at all an easy target on a stationary target let alone a moving target. So while it could be technically possible to take out the shield emitter and drop the remaining shields in that quadrant or small ship's entire shield it would be such a lucky/skilled shot that for the most part would be of little concern.

The other aspect is that armor is not yet in the game and while they have talked about armor and penetration values much like World of Tanks armor penetration it has at this moment not been implemented and so ships do pop very quickly after the shields go down.

The third aspect is that they plan on moving away from a hull health pool to a component health pool so that combat is not about draining the hull pool to zero but about targeting components and damaging them so that they don't work or hitting the reactor and making it go critical.

Given these three parts to ships not yet online I expect with the introduction of each one, the ship fleet will be upended with rebalancing passes. It's not that they don't have an idea of where they want to take the ships and how they want to balance them against each other, it's more that the systems that make an impact are not online yet.

[RANT]
this is why I can't be bothered to theorycraft about which ship will be best suited to any given purpose

we're still at the stage where everything is subject to change

I won't be buying any more ships before release

I'm not 'saving' any money by buying ships early that wind up not doing what I buy them for

LTI is a status symbol, not an advantage

bah humbug, et cetera
[/RANT]

I totally get the rant and it's why I have to remind myself I am buying the ship for its intended role and mostly look not about what it can do at the moment. All of the ships will continue to evolve and change until after beta, and even then it's fully expected that they will have tweaks made as the game progresses. We have seen this for ages with any MMO as they balance player weapons and armor.

So who wants to re-enact Hunt For Red October in the depths of Crusader?

I was thinking this is one of the first things I'd want to do with the Carrack.

In wonder: if the four facing shield will be gone for the smaller ship (please insert "smaller ship" definition here...) that will also mean that we won't be able to re-adjust the shield pool on different side?
I suspect the answare is yes...

That was my understanding as well went they said no longer quadrant based but a bubble shield thus the shield itself has a fixed hp and while you can route more power to increase the recharge rate you'll no longer need to move the shield focus around while attempting to dog fight.

Actuallly as far as I know the option for pilot to fire his ship's missiles has always been there, the difference is that "missile operator mode" will take over the use of normal weapon, so a solo pilot will need to switch beteween the two, like a Prospector pilot have to switch beteween "mining mode", "scanning mode" and normale flight interface.
That will be a quite interesting change, I dont' use missiles often but the idea to having to choose the "weapon of engagement" is a nice one, more in line with the today combat aricraft.

It is. I also like the idea that on larger ships the pilot doesn't need to try and get the nose on the target for the missile operator to get a lock. It's really going to let ships like the constellation once again shine as it's been struggling for a while in any combat situation.

 

[vahadar]

In wonder: if the four facing shield will be gone for the smaller ship (please insert "smaller ship" definition here...) that will also mean that we won't be able to re-adjust the shield pool on different side?
I suspect the answare is yes..

I am very curious about that because I use it a lot in PvP. I hope managing the shield is still possible. That would be a step backwards otherwise.

 

[FZD]

I have a feeling while it would be possible to take out the shield emitters so far everything I have seen on them makes them rather small so not at all an easy target on a stationary target let alone a moving target. So while it could be technically possible to take out the shield emitter and drop the remaining shields in that quadrant or small ship's entire shield it would be such a lucky/skilled shot that for the most part would be of little concern.

Well, on larger ships it'd likely be larger. Larger ships are also slower. If it's something that's sticking out of the hull of the ship, it could make the larger ships easiest targets to disable shields on, which then means we'd be basically limited to using Sukorans on larger ships or something like that, lest the shields be entirely useless and subsequently the escorts pointless. I would rather hope it's an internal component on larger ships, so the engineer can go and repair it in a pinch and that to get to it would mean you need to penetrate the hull, so it wouldn't be something that you can do right at the start of the battle.

Given these three parts to ships not yet online I expect with the introduction of each one, the ship fleet will be upended with rebalancing passes. It's not that they don't have an idea of where they want to take the ships and how they want to balance them against each other, it's more that the systems that make an impact are not online yet.

Yes, these three parts are what I based my speculative comment about TTK on. To reiterate, I do believe that TTK will go up for medium and large ships, but I'd rather think that small fighters will still go up like TIEs, they're so small that majority of the ship is either engine, fuel tank, generator, pilot or something else that takes the ship out when destroyed. And maybe engine or some other component exploding wouldn't take out a large ship, but with a small ship there is probably something else that can explode right next to the exploding component, taking everything out in one go.

 

[Cugino83]

I have a feeling while it would be possible to take out the shield emitters so far everything I have seen on them makes them rather small so not at all an easy target on a stationary target let alone a moving target. So while it could be technically possible to take out the shield emitter and drop the remaining shields in that quadrant or small ship's entire shield it would be such a lucky/skilled shot that for the most part would be of little concern.

True, we will likely see more and more of the internal system of a ship came online in the future (near future I hope...), shield emitters will just be the first one (actually second since engine are already there...).
I also espcet larger ship to have more emitter for each side both due to the side of the ship (an Orion with a single emitter per side??) or for redundancy like any another ship componenst.

It is. I also like the idea that on larger ships the pilot doesn't need to try and get the nose on the target for the missile operator to get a lock. It's really going to let ships like the constellation once again shine as it's been struggling for a while in any combat situation.

I'm not sure about that... I'll expect that the missile lock system will be basically the same, just separated from the other weapons control.
Different story is if the missile operator could be engaged form a turret seat, in that case a 360° of engagment (or whatever is the turret arc) should be possible.
A possibile advantage on multy crew ships will probably be the ability to engage multiple target at once, with the pilot targeting a ship while the missile operator locking on a different target in front of the ship...

I am very curious about that because I use it a lot in PvP. I hope managing the shield is still possible. That would be a step backwards otherwise.

I doudbt it will remain, more likely 'tho shield will became beefier, since the same pool now need to cover all 4 side.
You'll be able to pllay to with the recharge rate eventually, and considering how long take for shield to be relocated, that could be even better.

Well, on larger ships it'd likely be larger. Larger ships are also slower. If it's something that's sticking out of the hull of the ship, it could make the larger ships easiest targets to disable shields on, which then means we'd be basically limited to using Sukorans on larger ships or something like that, lest the shields be entirely useless and subsequently the escorts pointless. I would rather hope it's an internal component on larger ships, so the engineer can go and repair it in a pinch and that to get to it would mean you need to penetrate the hull, so it wouldn't be something that you can do right at the start of the battle.

Escort are NEVER pointless.
The job of an escort is not to destroy the attacker while they are engaging the tanker target, is to prevent it, If an attacher slip trough the escort shield then your escort failed in theryr job, no matter how your shield are.
The abnormal situation is the curret situation, where larger ship are able to move relativily safe since the larger shield pool to tank them, and that's why several layer continusly demand to have pilot controlled weapon even on larger ship...
The more phisical damage and components came on-line tyhe easyer will get to cripple a ship and render it un-operative.
Be mind that "easier" is much much relative: ship like Idiris and Javellin (just to take some big example) won't go donwn easily, but chould be disable and severarly damaged more easily by intentions or by a "lucky shot".
Take in Idris, and remove a couple of manuvering truster do to damage: good luck keeping that beast on course and mobile... and once that is done, the fighting ccapability will be reduced.

 

[Lorddarthvik]

Yeah, I saw that much, but thanks for sharing the condensed version.

Em. . .there was this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/nggdhy View: https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/nggdhy/314_looks_pretty_empty_after_latest_roadmap_update/


&^$)#!

Wait, what?!

Out of 18 points planned for this patch, we are getting 7??
This is getting ridiculous.
Lemme get this straight:

-We get a planet, yes it's insane eyecandy, I love it but it's "just" another location still.
-We get a ship that that was long overdue but doesn't bring anything new to the game, apart from some more money for cig...
-We get a missile rehash with another mode to fire them, at least it is a gameplay feature I guess...
-We get new radar and scanning, but it's not really broken down anywhere I could find, what are we actually getting apart from some visual changes?
-We get to surrender which will make the law system probably even more broken and exploited to hell, but at least it's something new and probably useful?

-We get capacitor gameplay that is not even in the list, which is actually a new gameplay feature!

That's it?
Where the new gameplay loops? Medical? Hacking? Anything happening to the unplayable trade or hauling missions? Anything changing with the refinery gameplay loop so its not a net loss? No inventory system still? Fps radar? At least a Fucking Compass for God's sake!!??? No?

Great...
I know I'll be spending a couple of days flying around on Crusader cos just look at it, amazing, but that's about it I guess.
I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed.
If I want to be an apologist fanboy, I'd argue that we will get all the interesting new stuff at end of year when we get a "surprise" 4.0 release with meshing and Pyro. But actually I don't have my hopes up even for that at this point.

 

[FZD]

Escort are NEVER pointless.
The job of an escort is not to destroy the attacker while they are engaging the tanker target, is to prevent it, If an attacher slip trough the escort shield then your escort failed in theryr job, no matter how your shield are.

I know that our auroras will blot out the sun, but I don't think we'd still have enough to form an impassable iron sphere between attackers and the escorted ship. Exactly what would stop an attacker from just flying up to the escorted ship? Nothing. There is no 'escort shield'. The only reason you'd take out escorts, is if taking out the escorted ship takes long enough for the escorts to pose a threat to you if left alone. Otherwise you'd go directly to the target vessel and disable it, or depending on the target ship, blow up a section of it.

The abnormal situation is the curret situation, where larger ship are able to move relativily safe since the larger shield pool to tank them

No they can't. Even a player operated HH can be trivially blown up by a single solo player with something like Freelancer MIS. Now, maybe 890 jump is a bit tougher, but capital ships are supposed to be tougher. Honestly, I'd kind of wish that military grade large ships were tougher than this as well, but at the very least they shouldn't be made weaker.

 

[Cugino83]

Wait, what?!

Out of 18 points planned for this patch, we are getting 7??
This is getting ridiculous.
Lemme get this straight:

-We get a planet, yes it's insane eyecandy, I love it but it's "just" another location still.
-We get a ship that that was long overdue but doesn't bring anything new to the game, apart from some more money for cig...
-We get a missile rehash with another mode to fire them, at least it is a gameplay feature I guess...
-We get new radar and scanning, but it's not really broken down anywhere I could find, what are we actually getting apart from some visual changes?
-We get to surrender which will make the law system probably even more broken and exploited to hell, but at least it's something new and probably useful?

-We get capacitor gameplay that is not even in the list, which is actually a new gameplay feature!

That's it?
Where the new gameplay loops? Medical? Hacking? Anything happening to the unplayable trade or hauling missions? Anything changing with the refinery gameplay loop so its not a net loss? No inventory system still? Fps radar? At least a Fucking Compass for God's sake!!??? No?

Great...
I know I'll be spending a couple of days flying around on Crusader cos just look at it, amazing, but that's about it I guess.
I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed.
If I want to be an apologist fanboy, I'd argue that we will get all the interesting new stuff at end of year when we get a "surprise" 4.0 release with meshing and Pyro. But actually I don't have my hopes up even for that at this point.

Well a lots of those content are moved to 3.15 so, at least in theory, late september/october.

BTW, campass, from all the image that CIG are showing for the new HUD interface, looks like is cominig in this patch, at least for ships. I have some doubt about it after le last SCL since Jhon Crew state that in these release they are releasing the "standard layout" of the HUD: does this mean simple conversion of what we have now to building block with no changes?? I hope is not becouse that will be a big trolling and higtly disapponting.

For scanning yes, it defenetly need some rework: is really inconsistence on what you could find, especially in very clogged up server. Sometime while mining you can have a contact with one ping, move toward it... and don't have it at the second ping you fire. in astorid field is even worst with contact vanish as close you get to them.
Plus if CIG can improve visibility aginst bright backround that whould be much appreciated.

I major disappintment is that while is releasing a new planet and the associated landing location there is no new mission giver.
Since Arcorp got released we didn't have any new mission giver, in fact we actually loose the Levsky one.
Eddy Par that was supposed to drop in Microtec got scrapped a year ago and is missing since then, Orison doesn't seams to have one planned either (even if I expect Echart to be moved again)

 

[Bambooza]

I know that our auroras will blot out the sun, but I don't think we'd still have enough to form an impassable iron sphere between attackers and the escorted ship. Exactly what would stop an attacker from just flying up to the escorted ship? Nothing. There is no 'escort shield'. The only reason you'd take out escorts, is if taking out the escorted ship takes long enough for the escorts to pose a threat to you if left alone. Otherwise you'd go directly to the target vessel and disable it, or depending on the target ship, blow up a section of it.


No they can't. Even a player operated HH can be trivially blown up by a single solo player with something like Freelancer MIS. Now, maybe 890 jump is a bit tougher, but capital ships are supposed to be tougher. Honestly, I'd kind of wish that military grade large ships were tougher than this as well, but at the very least they shouldn't be made weaker.

You are taking the current ship dynamic and projecting it forward while some of it is true you are overlooking the impact armor is going to have. Even if the shield is down or the attacking force is using shield penetrating ballistic ammo it still has to penetrate the target ship's armor before doing any significant damage. Right now we just have a health pool for the shield which seems to be working mostly as indented and then a health pool for the hull which they have said multiple times is not at all how they want ships to work in the near future. If I am shooting at the wrecked husk of a Gladious's struts any more shots into them is not going to do anything else to the operation or lead to further damage on the ship. Where currently it will continue to widdle down the ship's hull health pool and lead to it blowing up. When these systems come online it's going to change the metric from ttk to ttd (time to disable) as blowing up anything larger than a fighter is going to be increasingly difficult. In ships like the 890 Jump, Carrack and Reclaimer the reactor is deep inside the ship and outside of boarding, and either directly targeting it with rockets or utilizing the self-destruct functionality I imagine is going to be near impossible to cause the reactor to go critical. On the other hand, damaging the main engines, destroying the shield emitters and other components would be the goal and allow for further gameplay opportunities.

So ships like the Hammerhead right now its easier for small ships to destroy it and get a nice glorious explosion but I can see once the power distribution and modular system come online outside of bombers like the Retaliator and capital ships like the forward gun on the Idris or torpedos on the Polaris the Hammerhead will not go up in a ball of fire but would simply be partially disabled.

This all leads to military ships like you wished to be tougher as they have more armor which will greatly impact how much damage they absorb and how much penetrates to damage/destroy power conduits and ship modules.

The TLDR is we are simply playing with a simplistic version of the ships with global health pools and no armor. In the near future, each part of the ship is going to have its own health pool functionality and armor which will drastically change combat.

And I really do feel is going to be in the near future as its a requirement of SQ42 and all the prereq are almost completed. We have already seen the tech demo for power distribution. Ships are starting to get the gold standard pass for ship components, Shields are now using the new SDF shields. Components on some ships can be damaged. So all we are missing is armor and the physicalized components across all the ships currently in the game.

 

[Sky Captain]

Wait, what?! Out of 18 points planned for this patch, we are getting 7??

What we don't hear about is how much 3.14+ work was deferred to get the Invictus event working.