Not only that but typically they are already starting to work on CitizenCon that is only 4 months away.
All about 3.14
- Thread starter Bambooza
- Start date
Well I think CitisenCon's work this year won't be that much since it will be a virtual one... again.
There will be a lot of work to do, but no live show I think it make all the planning much much simpler.
Not really. I merely don't think the armor will entirely replace the shields. But if you can drop S3 shields with couple well placed shots like that, then the armor would need to entirely replace the shields, because you simply wouldn't gain any benefit from the shields.
Besides, if you can knock out the shield emitter in such easy fashion as @Cugino83 is describing, then certainly armor wouldn't be able to protect the engines either.
No, I'm specifically speculating that it won't be that easy. Large ships will become more tanky, not weaker. And this is specifically required for escort gameplay to make sense.
Shadow Reaper
Space Marshal
Salvage was not moved to 3.15, but rather 3.16.
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Shadow Reaper
Space Marshal
The shield emitter and armor upgrades are supposed to make placed shots and heavy ballistics on large and cap class vessels useful. That doesn't mean any ship will come down easier or harder. No matter what they do with placed shots, they'll balance afterwards. I think the thing to take away here is that ships designed with heavier armor will see a real benefit from this. Civilian ships with less armor will likely suffer some (Lancer) while military ships with extra armor will benefit some (Hoplite), but they won't benefit much past what they already do with greater/lesser hull points. It's really just defining in detail where the differences in hull points actually are.
The take away concerns damage to specific components as opposed to simply the ship going boom. Yeah, your components may go out earlier, but that is a kind of warning to get out of Dodge, and should result in more players escaping combat with their craft damaged past generic hull points and needing expensive replacements. When death in the verse actually has a player felt cost, this will matter and should result in more complex and fulfilling gameplay. It also means a lot of people will be running away when they can, and of course this is all necessary for pirating to be a real thing.
So it is a move in the direction of realism and better gameplay in the long run, IMHO.
This move is going to see the same player objections as the energy weapon faction had against heavy ballistics. Lets think about this for a moment.
In the past, weapons like the Sledge Mass Drivers were considered too powerful and got nerfed. The Sledge was slow to target, small number of shots available, heavy power draw, high heat generation, short range, low repetition rate--pretty much everything players hate. In exchange it was intended to penetrate shields and do real damage from the first shot. Turned out it did so much damage the best players were constantly making others go boom before they had a chance. The temporary fix was nerf the Sledge, but that is not a real fix since it does not reward players who are willing to use a much more difficult weapon in order to get a real advantage.
When armor and components damage are introduced we should expect another balance pass on weapons, and the energy weapon peeps are gonna be pissed. Tough luck. If a player chooses to use a weapon that has crappy range, fire rate, energy consumption, heat generation and ammo available he deserves to get serious benefits from hitting the target. That benefit is no longer going to be knocking generic hull points down instantly, but rather knocking specific armor and components down instantly. I think when that happens we'll see the popularity of Mass Drivers and ballistic cannons back with a vengeance.
The take away concerns damage to specific components as opposed to simply the ship going boom. Yeah, your components may go out earlier, but that is a kind of warning to get out of Dodge, and should result in more players escaping combat with their craft damaged past generic hull points and needing expensive replacements. When death in the verse actually has a player felt cost, this will matter and should result in more complex and fulfilling gameplay. It also means a lot of people will be running away when they can, and of course this is all necessary for pirating to be a real thing.
So it is a move in the direction of realism and better gameplay in the long run, IMHO.
This move is going to see the same player objections as the energy weapon faction had against heavy ballistics. Lets think about this for a moment.
In the past, weapons like the Sledge Mass Drivers were considered too powerful and got nerfed. The Sledge was slow to target, small number of shots available, heavy power draw, high heat generation, short range, low repetition rate--pretty much everything players hate. In exchange it was intended to penetrate shields and do real damage from the first shot. Turned out it did so much damage the best players were constantly making others go boom before they had a chance. The temporary fix was nerf the Sledge, but that is not a real fix since it does not reward players who are willing to use a much more difficult weapon in order to get a real advantage.
When armor and components damage are introduced we should expect another balance pass on weapons, and the energy weapon peeps are gonna be pissed. Tough luck. If a player chooses to use a weapon that has crappy range, fire rate, energy consumption, heat generation and ammo available he deserves to get serious benefits from hitting the target. That benefit is no longer going to be knocking generic hull points down instantly, but rather knocking specific armor and components down instantly. I think when that happens we'll see the popularity of Mass Drivers and ballistic cannons back with a vengeance.
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While I agree with more or less everything else you said, I don't think civilian ships would really suffer tbh. Any ship that's large enough to have escape pods, should give players inside that ship a realistic chance to use those escape pods, otherwise they're just decoration. So even the civilian ships will become more durable compared to what they are now, although the military ships will probably become comparatively more durable.
And the way that ships get destroyed would probably change as well, like, some would basically not get fully destroyed at all. Fully disabled and posing no threat in ship-to-ship combat, sure. But take something like caterpillar for example. It's long, and all the critical components are on one end. You could probably blow up every component you can think off, and few of those cargo-compartments could still be perfectly intact. Which would probably be desirable for someone planning to steal that cargo, but it could also mean that even after all that destruction, you'll find couple angry crewmen with railguns and SMGs laying in ambush among the cargo.
Now, would the ship not getting fully destroyed solve the issue with decorative escape pods? Not really. Escape pods are supposed to save your life, not serve as a fun alternative way to exit the ship. If you can just stick around the ship and nothing bad will happen, then you don't need those escape pods. Ideally it'd be something like, the ship is mostly gone but has like 10-20% of fight left in it when you can choose to either evacuate or fight to the last. So those 10-20% should then cover such span of time as it takes for the crew to exit their stations and get to the escape pods, in lancer exiting the pilot seat, going through the door, getting on the escapepodbeds and then launching the pod would probably take like 20-30 seconds. Currently in 1v1 it takes far less time than that to just blow up a perfectly fine freelancer, 12-19 seconds on a Cutlass black (assuming you hit. But once you start hitting it, it's gone.). So I would see the TTK of a lancer go up quite a bit as well. However, ships that have military armor probably benefit disproportionally more.
Yep, I like the sound of that!
As I said many times before, TTK needs to be way longer for the whole modules/systems/escape pods system to make sense, and I hope you are right that with armor this will come. Along with that should come longer "death throws" animations as parts start to blow off and the lights go out and more explosions and then BOOM... so you have some humanly perceivable length of time before detonation to at least start running for the pods. Also, reactor meltdowns on timer when that component hits 0% HP or something like that would be nice,.. But we shall see how deep this system goes, someday.
What I would expect with all the talk about fire advection and room systems that, loosing air pressure, spreading fires, artifical gravity going dead and such happennings will be the risk factor on a ship that is "just disabled". Obviously on a single seat fighter you got life support and fires in the cockpit only (we have seen this already) but on larger ships it could provide more fun for the boarding party and the crew as well to play with these mechanics. So yeah, that just disabled ship should still provide loads of options on how to approach it or defend it.