Yes! Engineer the shit out of shield boosters! And wait 2 minutes on station when the lights in the entire facility are out because they have to charge your shields
And that's why the FDL is the true meta. Sure, it can't match the Cutter's shield, but it's still quite high, and good luck landing a clean rail shot on that thing against a competent pilot. Meanwhile the Cutter is the size of a skyscraper and turns like a whale, so it's easier to punish.
Actually thats a hack where you intercept packages from your client and modify them to make your shield completely invincible aka remove all damage taken.
Though i agree, prismatics are disgustingly powerfull in Elite especially when boosted to kingdom come. good that there are ways arround that, aka reverb torps and phasing sequence, so even a ship with hyperprismatics isnt completely save, especially considered that underneath those massige shields usually sits a body made from paper and cardboard.
7:24 Generally speaking, people don't like nerfs. I think the people who voted against don't know the problem. I also didn't know that that was a problem.
@@carloschaparro07 Well, let's go back to when they nerfed hauling missions because of sothis/ceos poo runs where players were making a whopping 500k an hour or so. After the nerf there were trade missions with negative payouts. When they nerf they take the nuclear option, collateral damage be damned.
@@platiuscyndar9017 to use HRPS or MRPS because you will get domed by phasing sequence. Also, they only give like 800 extra shield, less than one grade of heavy duty shield boosters. HRP's can give me 1800 hull and 40% resists while reducing subsystem breach chance, and 2 MRPS will reduce all module damage by 86%, further increasing module defense.
Yeah seriously. Just change the heavy duty from adding percentage to the booster to increasing the booster's effectiveness by that much. In stead of having 20%+53%=73% per booster just set it so that the boosters are increased by 53%, 20%*1.53=30.6%. It would bring them in line with the rest of the upgrades and stop them from being broken.
@@GabrielGreedy Make engineers free, make horizons the default game. Make the grind easier. Or nerf everything's into the ground so engineering is optional.
One thing I've learned about this kind of game over the years is that the devs will always add a new grind, and a new grind after that, and balance is not a concern. The Grind will never end.
Yamiks illustrating that Fdev can't tell the difference between "Percentage" and "Percentage units". Two terms that means the difference between +50% shields and + 1200% shields.
I have actually run out of PD ammo in a high intensity CZ, of course my other 2 PD's still had 5000 rounds but it did leave a blindspot on my Conda's starboard side.
Boosters already have diminishing returns if you stack them. The problem is the heavy duty mod still makes boosters 400% more effective. I think that's only half the problem though. The other half is prismatic shields
I would bet FDEV thought that people would engineer ONE booster to max and then only have the one booster in a utility slot. They foolishly trusted the players to not shield tank and then go on a superman spree of just wreaking havoc at will with no concern for dying...
actually i looked closer and the hull reinforcement upgrades do the same "percent of a percent" that the shield boosters do. i loaded up a stock anaconda on coriolis and added a 5d hull reinforcement. that brought the total thermal hp to 1369. after applying the heavy duty g5, which says it will give up to 15% increase in thermal resistance (was actually only 14.63%), brought the total thermal hp to 1950. that is a 42% increase. it brought the thermal resistance from 2.5% to 17.1%, an increase of 273%.
Here's an idea for when your voice is feeling better; Maybe try comparing the most overpowered parts of ED directly to see which is the most game breaking. Ships, upgrades, meta's, the worst of the worst, all at once! You didn't give the stats for how broken the super capacitors are and I think it would be hailarous to watch you rip out the worst of the worst of the balancing issues directly all in one video. I'd imagine it being like watching an opera of ranting at work, x'D
Just get rid of thermal resistance boosts. Keep the rock paper scissors idea going. It makes sense that an all multicannon build is snuffed out by a shield tank, because they melt through hulls. But when your laser build is ineffective against their shields it becomes broken. Flechettes need a modular damage boost, or more ammo. Ignoring shields and trigering a selfdestruct at 50% health and full shields is very satisfying, against a shield tank.
I was thinking my Chieftain would be pretty fun to build into a super solid hull tanker, but I'm really getting the feeling that I should forget about it and try for shields. Which sucks because I like the idea of a ship that doesn't let up once its shield is down.
@@TheYamiks going to be honest, that intro kinda went over my head ^^; But if other people get it I'm sure it's just me. Also, on an unrelated note; When your voice is feeling better and you feel like having another rant, maybe try comparing the most overpowered upgrades directly to see which is the most game breaking. You didn't give the stats for how broken the super capacitors are and I think it would be hailarous to watch you rip out the worst of the worst of the balancing issues directly all in one video. I'd imagine it being like watching an opera of ranting at work, x'D
I didn't realise that about the shield boosters... I hadn't been going HP on them, I´ve been using resistance Bi-Weaves... I mean, I guess I'll be sorted if they correct it, but since I get Prismatics in a week or so, hell, I may as well break the game and have a full laser build sit still in a CZ and be immortal...
Resistance Bi-Weaves are pretty good in situations where you can avoid damage long enough to recover shield strength for a bit, so they aren't useless or bad. You'll find that with prismatics, you will eventually reach a point where your shields are at risk of going down and without SCB you'll basically be shieldless for an uncomfortably long amount of time. I realize you were probably being slightly sarcastic, but you will definitely feel that lack of natural regen after flying bi-weaves.
I heard no mention of "diminishing returns" which means each booster/reinforcement after the first adds less bonus than the advertised amount, meaning that 100% to 120, 140, 160, etc is more like 100% to 120 with the first then something like 135, 150, etc. There are a number of flaws with this that I'm sure most people can work out for themselves. Needless to say that the 5th and 6th Shield Boosters on a 6-slot ship, such as a FDL, are each contributing less than 50% of their potential boost, meaning you're running two to get the boost of one but they all draw the same power.
I noticed yamiks left that out too. Probably because it doesn't really matter and nobody gets more than 4 anyway. The boost you get from 4 of them is OP enough as it is
@@BenYork-UBY He left it out because it was never implemented. There are no diminishing returns on the percentage shield boost applied by Heavy Duty boosters. Even though two betas back in the 2.x days tried to get the idea pushed through. There was too much pushback from the players so FDev left it alone.
@@BenYork-UBY Yeah they never put it in the game. Although it's also worth noting that this was in the days of Sandro Sammarco. I'm pretty sure the "fix" was tried out in both the 2.2 and 2.3 betas. But the level of dissent at the possibility was legendary. Along the level of the response to the mining changes recently, if not worse. So they didn't follow through with it.
Point defence is the ultimate defense against non-consensual pvp. You put 5 point defence and no fsd resetting missile or hatch limpets will ever get to your ship.
Elite dangerous is a perfectly balanced game with no exploits No watch me become immortal and the game is perfectly ok with this. yes fdev are sat in there office drinking a cup of fine Yorkshire tea thinking yes, let's make this a flat % increase and we can all now go to the pub and do British things like salute queen and do a Brexit. Let the players enjoy this quality gameplay with no exploits at all, no we have it coverd. -if the spiffing brit did an explote video on ed
When I have new pc I will start doing some elite exploration videos. Am going to have to get a new pc as my current pc chugs like a runaway steam train even on low settings. It chugs less now thanks to @yamiks over clocking video
Lmao I reported the heatsink bug in *2016* Also RIP my hulltank FAS... and I dont have money to redo my engineered *HULLTANK CONDA* into a shieldtank. Fuck.
A rebuttal for you, courtesy of Coriolis. These are shield HP counts (absolute, explosive, kinetic, thermal) for an Alliance Chieftain with every internal slot but the 6 and the 1 filled with guardian shield reinforcements, a 6A G5 engineered shield w/ hi cap, and four G5 engineered 0A shield boosters w/ super capacitors: 2813 6224 5186 2593 = reinforced shield + heavy duty boosters 2009 7929 6608 3304 = reinforced shield + resistance augmented boosters 2356 4352 3022 3627 = thermal resistant shield + heavy duty boosters 1773 5844 4058 4870 = thermal resistant shield + resistance augmented boosters The results came out the same when I used a 6C G5 biweave w/ fast charge and those same booster engineering combos. In every case, the four resistance augmented was much better against all three damage types than the four heavy duty, in spite of having a lower absolute shield strength number. My thesis: guardian shield reinforcements are fucking bonkers.
Honestly, they're great for ALL slots, especially in PvE. If your shields are too tough to bring down, the entire rest of your ship won't have a scratch on it.
You still should have some form of raw HP due to npc enemies also using plasma accelerators, and things like collisions don't care for resistances. While the resistances on the last one look great, plasma tears through you like no-ones business, and bumping high resistance shields off is a valid tactic too. But yeah, all in all, a pure shield tank can't do anything else really. What do people use that even for? Conflict zones? And what weapons do they use with so much of the powergrid being eaten up? I think all these people doing builds like that do it only to internally shout "it's over nine thousaaaaaaaaaaand"...
you have 13k shields... and all optional slots free fro anything you want... that includes HRPs ... giving you ~6-7k hull underneath that ...sooo ~20k hp ship total... is that normal?!
@@TheYamiks cutter+HiCap Reinforced 8a Prism. shield+ x8 0A HD SC Boosters is actually only 11.350 MJ... also you need 8 5D guardian shield boosters to reach 13k, so only free optional is class 4, class 3 and class 1, which is 1200~ armor HP if there would be HD+DP reinf.packages... which is not too much, also this piece of horse shit would have only 7,05MW on PP to install any weapons and do some modification to its core internals(if it has overcharged monstered PP). This build is SHIT. Even in terms of counter absolute damage it is still shit, couse it will sustain something like 19k damage from plasma or so, when it could be over 35k. So yeh.. 20k hp ship _total_ ... no it is not normal, it is several thousand HP too thin to be called such
@@ZakNaZul It's nice to see someone understanding the underlying issue of theoretical builds that live in a universe of offline play without experiencing the hard counters :)
I will have you know I ran out of TWO point defense weapon ammo stocks in one combat zone on my corvette. Apparently the AI never realized that torpedos are 1) useless 2) tasty snacks for PDWs
I'm not going to lie I use those broken ass Shield boosters, but I'm on Xbox which is pretty dead so even though I play in open I essentially never get involved in PvP. And I wouldn't complain one bit if they removed it from the game. I don't really feel I have the right to. No reasonable person would look at that and say they aren't broken, even those who are willing to exploit it like myself
I hate those evil shield boosters. I didn't know what exactly wrong with them, but the effects were pretty clear regardless with the 13k shield cutters and all the recommended builds being full of those damn things.
Now I maybe a critic of some if your videos, I'll always be fair and equal. This was probably the best video you've done for ages. As the past few including the live streams were like going through the motions. Being a critical of FD means you have to accept critics of your work too. Keep up the better standard Yamicks.
is this really? hmm.. well i would say there was plenty of things that I would say were mediocre with this one and not the best for most people. This was just atid-bit of info and not the trully full scope of issues to be called good for that aspect. Since this is a series on what to pick & what not to, I didn't go into that detail and focused more on the upgrades themselves, but I get your point! =}
Next to the raw shield power build, there als also builds that have shields based on high regeneration and high resistance. They can end up with 50% resistance and still have some capacity left for extra hp. These are the ultimate pvm builds and can last forever if not hit too much, as they tend to regenerate quite fast. There's not one OP build, there are two, both about 10 times as effective as unengineerd ships
Hey Yamiks if you know of the 3 Insurgent models in GTA 5/Online see if you and the whole community can tempt the DEVS to make an SRV MK 2 with all 3 of them put together as the base with the originals rim thrusters.
You're using a rather extreme example to illustrate Heavy Duty boosters. Putting vast amounts of raw shield health onto your ship severely limits it in other areas. Not everyone is flying around in Cutters with in excess of 10,000 megajoule shield health. In fact, I'd be surprised if it was even a decently high percentage. If anything, it's the class 8 shield cell banks which contribute more to the ship's survivability than heavy duty shield boosters. I can build a Cutter with around 140,000 effective shields WITHOUT using a single heavy duty shield booster, or super capacitor experimental effect. So I kind of think you're giving them heat unnecessarily. Not to mention that since 3.3, the NPC ships have been buffed to provide more of a challenge. Particularly the engineered ships in the high threat pirate signal sources, and the Spec Ops wings in conflict zones. While it may seem like shields are vastly overpowered if all you do is hunt master gunships in a Haz Res, if you go into more capable combat environments, you soon find that they aren't as overpowered as you think they are. The engineered ships have shields approaching the level of strength that you have yourself, if not more, and they attack you in groups. Take a stock ship, or a ship with very little shield engineering into a medium or high intensity conflict zone, spawn a spec ops wing, and see how long you last before you have to jump out again. As for PvP, there are weapon engineering effects designed specifically to deal with shield tank ships. And weapon loadouts that can exploit the weaknesses which come from a maniacal desire to just dump as much raw health on your ship as you can physically fit. Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should do it. Or that it makes sense to do it. Building a ship for the "ZOMG look at the size of my shield health!" shows a bit of a fundamental ignorance of, or inexperience with ship building in general.
Thank you for putting into experienced words and with examples given what my initial thoughts and impressions were of just looking at the modules and the engineer stuff available. My question in that regard would be though; at which point do resistances become pointless and should be swapped for pure HP, as in, how proliferated are enemies with plasma accelerators? From what limited encounters I had ( PvE against deadly Anacondas from Wing missions and such) , they're not quite that exclusively used and are always part of a mix of regular weapons. So I assume the usual method of tanking applies when going for the unknown, with resistance and hp being a balanced combination. I also wondered if it's worth it to plug the resistance hole in either shield or hull and then focus on that type of tanking exclusively. Same as with if it's worth to tank against one type of damage. I don't think there ever is a point in the game where you're only whacked with thermal or kinetic damage, right? What does get stuck in my mind though is the general idea of reversing the weakness preferences. I still notice that some npcs open up with thermal attacks and when the shield is down they're prioritizing their kinetic attacks. I wonder if it is a good idea or not to go for thermal resistances on shield, and kinetic resistances on armor. Or was that just a fluke and they're usually just unloading whatever they have at once? (( Thargoids are shooting caustic as far as I understand, but what do they tank against? )) Also, I saw in my notifications that you answered to me in regards to repair limpets and hull tanking, but whenever I click the message, it doesn't show up, and neither it does when trying to search for the message here on this video. So I can't read your full reply, only what is shown in the preview :(
@@Khunvyel In terms of PvE, the most most dangerous plasma accelerators you're likely to find are on Corvettes in Assassination missions, or in CZs. They put them on their dual class 4 hardpoints. Anacondas also put them on their class 4, too. Although the thing to understand with PAs is that only 60% of the damage is Absolute, and they take an age to fire repeatedly. In the hands of NPCs, they're nowhere near as dangerous as in the hands of players. In terms of NPC combat, PAs are the exception rather than the rule. Most smaller ships prefer railguns or thermal/kinetic weapons instead. Or, for whatever optimistic reason, missiles. Even the larger ships don't use them as often as you might think. As for how much resistance is too much, that's a large matter of personal preference and experience for each individual commander. Based on how they fly. You have to think of it in terms of effective shields rather than raw shield health. A ship with 2000 Mj of shields + 50% resistance to thermal damage will have 4000Mj of effective shield health vs that damage. Compared to a ship with 4000Mj of shields with the standard -20% resistance to thermal damage because they've just gone for shield health, giving them actually 3200Mj of effective shields instead. This is compounded if you're carrying shield cells, or a fast charging Bi-Weave generator. Since shield cells heal a fixed amount of megajoules when they're deployed, they are more effective per use the lower the raw HP of your shield is. If you increase your effective shields via resistances rather than piling on the megajoules, then you end up with far more survivability than you otherwise would. Speaking only for myself, I try to give my ships as close to 60% balanced resistance to kinetic and thermal damage as I can. With a naturally higher resistance to explosive due to the nature of the engineering mods used. That's the point I feel comfortable. Once I've done that, THEN I concentrate on putting on enough health to survive the types of encounters I'm engaging in, depending on things like how long I think I'm likely to be under sustained fire and what kind of offensive loadout I want to fit. It's really a balancing act that comes from trial and error and there isn't a one-size-fits-all answer. By drawing power and resources into your defence, you take it out of your offence and utility. And as the old adage goes, sometimes the best defence is a good offence. Things can't shoot you if they're in a million pieces. Some of my ships, like my Type 10, have a relatively low base shield health (1400Mj), but extremely high resistances (73%/67%/67%). Add to that a class 8 shield cell bank that restores 90% of her shields each time I use a charge, because of how low the raw health is... her effective shields are actually extremely high. And with a lower shield health you benefit from recharging lost shields much faster. She's up from 50% to full in just 2 minutes 41 seconds. I use her for bounty hunting and CZ work, where I have enough downtime to be able to recharge the shields, or to practically completely restore them in an emergency, so it works for me. I can even take on wing assassination missions solo if necessary, although the health is a little low for that scenario to make me feel comfortable doing it. For PvE combat, I rarely worry about the hull. The only thing I do is fit reactive surface composite then add a small thermal resistant HRP, simply to have a bit more defense against the phasing weaponry that engineered NPCs sometimes use. But I don't tend to make my ships hybrid, because I've never found the need. Again it's what works for each person. You may feel differently and that's perfectly okay.
@@Kaethena I'm really sorry to answer this late... at least I can see the message now, but your other message was not showing up in my notifications. Good thing that I don't rely and trust on automagical things and keep checking up manually. So. HELLO :) I'm really glad you took the time to reply in such depth, especially with your mindset of playing as I can relate to exactly that kind of thought process behind it. It's not just pure numbers, and despite the game mechanic math being important, the actual viability and playability is often neglected. Thankfully you're one of those who "keep it real". Kind of like I keep telling people that DPS alone is worthless, because there are so many factors attributed to that. Including the ability to actually hit the enemy :D While I can't precisely say how dangerous those Deadly Anacondas on Wing missions are who shoot with Plasmas, I can certainly say that the ships the game throws at you are somewhat randomized. Some don't have PAs at all but fire oodles of missiles, some don't have missiles, etc. I think they're either randomly generated or quasi-random (aka; choosing from predefined loadouts). NPCs are engineering themselves up with higher difficulty rating too. And yes, thanks for mentioned that PAs are not JUST absolute damage. It's funny how people tend to forget that :) I almost feel a little bad that you wrote so much in explicit detail, especially since I'm savvy with game mechanic math in general and like to sink my teeth into that. Like in Eve online for example, I never understood the people who ran omnitanks in PvE. IT doesn't take long to learn the resistances to tank against, gear your ship accordingly, and you'll never have a problem. I don't know if this is possible in ED too. Like, for example, if certain factions prefer certain weapons to the point where you would live longer if you go for more thermal resistances if they tend to use more beams etc. I keep contemplating to plug the thermal resistance hole and in turn use a reactive composite to beef up explosive and kinetic. I even contemplate as far as to push kinetic and thermal to the detriment of explosive on armor, if if turns out that well placed Point defences (and more than oen) are worth it. But if not, it's back to keeping explosive on par. Is an 8 Shield cell not totally overkill if you don't have that much shield HP or is that meant to "overflow" the shields to a point where no matter what hits you, the shields are kept up regardless? How much do you have to deal with heat or are you engineering the shield cells for less thermal output or something? My "issue" with the reliance on shield cells and heat sinks in tandem is, that they are ammo based so the question is if in prolongued fights one can still mantain all this without resupplying. I mean I guess it's player-skill to quickly restock through synthesis on the fly :) I enjoy the Type 10 as flying fortress kind of thing, with all weapons as turret mounts so I don't have to try to wield this big chunky piece of metal in a direction in an attempt to get a shot. Maybe once engineering everything up to max becomes a nobrainer and easy to attain, I will think differently about ship loadouts. I do tinker around in edsy and coriolis with "functionality" in mind, but I don't know how long it will ultimately take to put all those important modules to max rank. So I rather don't want to take that for granted. For now, I still lose shields in combat and have to rely on hull and module reinforcements, especially in wing missions when multiple enemies pound on you. I suppose going from what you say my thought of having ships geared specifically for combat only and making no compromises there because they don't NEED to do anything else is a worthwhile thought. Naturally the question remains how much auxiliary modules they need, like collector limpets and kill scanners for extra bounty, and so on. But that's the beauty of figuring some things out while simply trying :) Again, thanks for your detailed insight.
@@Khunvyel Just to address a few of the points you raised: Firstly, no, it's not really possible in Elite to pump one specific resistance to the detriment of others. You kind of have to omnitank. Ship loadouts are random to an extent, but it's not just that. The AI don't think like human pilots do. A lot of human commanders think "Okay I'll use thermal weaponry to strip the shields, then kinetic/explosive weaponry to shred the hull. It's playing to stock weaknesses in ships. Although I don't personally subscribe to that approach but that's a different conversation. The AI don't subscribe to it either. Their philosophy is "Fire everything you've got, for as long as you can!" So you need balanced resistances to give you the best chances. Especially if you're facing more than one ship with more than one loadout. Secondly, a class 8A Shield Cell Bank, fully engineered with Grade 4 Specialised + the Boss Cells experimental, will give you just shy of 1300Mj of shield health over 17 seconds. So it's not overkill if your ship has more than that. This is partly why I designed my Type 10 to have 1400Mj. So I could deploy one just as my shields were about to go down and they would be completely restored. But even if you don't use one then, they give you a sort of "invulnerability window" where your shields are recharging much faster than you're taking fire. So if you're not super confident in combat you can give yourself some breathing room while you get into position, or decide what you want to do. As for Heatsinks, I don't use them. I use beam lasers with the Thermal Vent experimental effect. They act in much the same way as Heatsinks. If you're shooting a ship with them, they cool you down. They can be used to mitigate the heat from deploying a shield cell charge fairly effectively. Allowing you to free up a utility slot. Thirdly, if you haven't got the Guardian Shield Reinforcement Package unlocked yet, I highly recommend you do so. This allows you to use Shield Boosters to customise your resistances, and the SRPs to add health. Allowing you much more flexibility. As I said in my original comment, it's easy to tailor a super tanky ship without relying on a single heavy duty booster. Yes, you have to make the choice between shield or hull/module reinforcement, but I've always been of the belief that in PvE, if your shields are good enough, you don't NEED any hull modules. And I haven't lost a ship in over 3 years. By "good" I don't mean "huge" either. More "well thought out". Lastly, if I'm making a pure combat ship, it depends on how agile it is. Sometimes I add collector limpets, on the slow lumbering brutes. But mostly I don't. Mostly because I don't collect materials from combat. I trade down at the material traders. It's much less work. So I breed my ships for one thing and one thing only. And that makes them rather good at it. The saying "jack of all trades, master of none" applies.
@@Kaethena Hm, I could've sworn I got more laser attacks on my shields than kinetics, and more kinetics on my hull than lasers. HOWEVER. I totally concede that could be a point of "npc weapon capacitor is close to empty, or it's getting hot and thus stopping with the lasers, so the kinetics keep hammering" :D Well, playing against the stock weaknesses is technically useful as long as you do just pve I suppose. With pvp it certainly is a different kind of beast, and with the limited scouting and intel you can do it's questionable anyhow. Often more a thought of where you are in space to know if you will meet up against the meta or against newer players who might not know their stuff all that well. And if you know what damage comes, you can push use your shield AND armor resistances against it instead of having the stop gaps open. Shield Cells: Wait, only 1300Mj? Oh right, I made a big reading mistake. Coriolis shows the TOTAL amount of shield regenerated when you put out 5 Cells. That's where I thought it's overkill. And I already thought this is a stupidly high number :D I personally wouldn't feel comfortable playing so close to the shield limit but I guess it's just experience to see when one would need to pop it with the wind up time included. The beam laser mod is one of those reasons why I mentioned that tanking against specific damages is worth it. There are people exclusively running missiles, or in your example, exclusively running thermal weapons. Others revel in the heat and use the additional damage, others use the thermal vent to keep silent running at a distance in smaller ships to never be targeted by automatic fire weapons. It also totally depends on which kindof ship one is to choose between fixed, gimballed and turreted weapons. I looked into the guardian stuff, yes, I just don't want to play ahead so much of my group and rather keep the pace with them. They've only looked into engineering now after I keep telling them of the benefits :D My philosophy on limpets in combat and material exactly. What was fun though is the higher level of repair limpets to shoot some drones to my friends when I'm in a Type-10 after they finished their fight in their smaller ships. Kind of a "return to the mothership for aid" :D So it's kind of a shame that the repair limpets don't work IN combat really. Explains why Some of them really didn't do much. I kind of think it's a bit sad that in deep space, you are not really in danger or some things are simply not needed. I think it would be a much more interesting ship design choice to try and rig a completely autonomous ship that HAS to try and do all (currently that would be either Corvette or Anaconda) or you have to rely on your companions and plan your expeditions with their time slots in mind too so that these ships can aid one another and fill more niches. But there is other stuff that prevents one from proper TEAM playing in game too, so there is that. I hope we get a few fixes for that in time. It's rather a fairly shallow team game so far. And for other things you have to rely on and are forced to use outside information to even get a glimpse of certain things that you otherwise simply wouldn't find or see in time. Thanks for all the time you spent answering, I appreciate it :)
Uh ? That why i loose my shield first, because the guy in face of me have maybe +3000% shield boost HP ... God damn it... , having a more "strategic" shield with balanced resistance is useless...
umm no... just that their shield probably is loaded to max & have some nasty weapons .. probably, but still it is quite apparent how crazy the shields are
What happened to the live stream video ‘open play as cruel as it seems’ that was posted just before this, but has now disappeared? I got the message about it, but when i tried to watch it said it was removed.
14T. In a combat build though it doesn't really matter. You're not trying to jump places. I ship my combat vessels around places so I don't have to worry about it. You do have to worry about the counters such as thermal weapons being able to strip them down super fast and such so a proper booster build actually accounts for resistance not just pure MJ since that only deals with absolute damage but weapons powerful in thermals will punch right on through since the shield only has a -2% (yes negative) resistance to thermals if you use all heavy duty boosters. As in it's weak to them and your relative MJ to thermal damage will be less than your absolute.
@@MinistryOfMagic_DoM I guess I am playing the game a bit different to you. I tend to decide to play some combat quite spontaneously and don't really plan ahead, just picking up random system where I feel like combating. So I don't like to ship my ships, prefer to fly them myself, so jump range is important to me. Probably why I am still hesitant to try FDL with its poor jump range. Not sure about trying Federal Corvette either when it's available to me later on (after the Federation rank grind) with its also poor jump range.
i voted 'no nerf' as a knee-jerk reaction to the mining nerfs happening at the time - apologies! I didn't fully understand just how absolutely busted boosters [and combat] are on a mathematical level. [I just want the rest of the guardian tech to be useful too. the FSD booster and MAYBE the shield reinforcement jave purpose but..... outside of AX ship builds the rest of the unlocks see so little use, but cost and weigh/drain more than regular parts.]
It is comparable to NMS, at a certain point when you put all S upgrades on your ship literally it gets to the same ridiculous power creep that Ed does.
@@TheYamiks No it doesn't? You don't need to sacrifice one balance point for the other. But the fewest developers understand that making pve enemies more player-like is the key for a fairly easy balance across the board. ED has just that potential because with the exception of Thargoids, you clearly only fight "player ships" in a nutshell. The problem is how they're labelled (from novice to deadly) and how they're fitted like that. There seems to be no indication if you scan a ship if the modules installed are engineered under the hood or not. If they'd rework the threat level into something scalable that can be compared to how you fitted your own ship, that would be a far better indicator of what we're about to face. Plus, not to mention, they can start some build variety and have certain factions prefer certain things for example. It's not hard to balance, and it certainly doesn't have to be balanced around pvp. There is a golden opportunity for the perfect middle ground, if only they could see it...
Huh? I Haven't played for a while, what happened to dimishing returns for shield boosters? Wasn't that a thing at some point? I mean, not that it would make a big difference, Frontier just can't balance anything.
I’ve just started playing elite and I’ve been watching RUclips videos to learn. What’s with that single frame cartoon character at the beginning of the video?
Ffs just do as in Warframe... Example: take a weapon with 20% critical chance per shot. There's a mod called "point strike" that says "+150% crit chance". Now, if it was the fuckers of frontier who developed this, it'd mean that if you use that mod on that 20% crit chance weapon you'd get in total 170% right? Luckily it isn't: it's a percentage APPLIED to another percentage, so in the end you get 20*(1+1.5)=50% crit chance. They Could have used something similar on boosters.
But at which point do these things matter? How far do you have to be in the game to engineer the shield stuff to the max, repeatedly do so to get the secondary effects desired, get the guardian shield reinforcements, and so on? I mean the Cutter is just happening automatically at that point I suppose. But all in all, without heavy engineering anyone who starts out will just throw one or two shield boosters on, and will still lose their shields in npc combat, even on big ships. I'd wager to say they're fine. Engineering is what's broken. Shield boosters are a sympton of the root problem that is engineering, if anything. And without guardian shield reinforcements they also wouldn't be that overpowered. The main "problem" with engineered / guardian shield tanking in general is, that you have a lot more slots at your availability. Optional internals AND utility slots. If hull tanking would get something for utility slots, then this would be an entirely different story. Oh, and a different question: what's your recovery / regeneration? Because that's based on total hitpoints. Shield boosters do not add regeneration speed. So how many shield cells do you have to pump out and how many heatsinks do you have to drop before you sit there frantically fiddling with your module screen to turn off all the shield boosters to get that broken shield up faster? Resistance and total HP wise I didn't quite do the math yet how a properly rigged hull tank edges out with repair limpets. Because in a pack, anyone who gets targeted, others with a similar build can just send more limpets to the way of the designated target. A shield tank cannot get help from outside. I'm sure engineering "imba'd" shield tanks to a point, but as with everything I've learned through all those years in games; only because it's the Meta doesn't mean it's the best. Sometimes it's only the least-effort-widest-use case. Even an ungodly shield tank like that has a weakness, and can be properly countered. The tears of those suffering from that are worth the effort to some.
The trouble with repair limpets is that they're absolutely atrocious. On a ship with any sort of hull tanking setup they do next to nothing. Even the decontamination limpets repair more of your ship's hull than repair limpets do. Although sadly you can't use them unless you're repairing thargoid damage. I have a hull tanked Anaconda, sitting at around 7000 armor health with around 45% in all three damage type resistances. Even using a class 7 repair limpet controller, through the entire repair cycle of the limpet, it didn't even repair 1% of my hull. Not to mention that the limpets can be shot off your hull, or just destroyed before they even reach it, with point defense from hostile ships. And the limpets stop repairing if your hull takes further damage, so it's practically impossible to repair the hull while actually under fire. Making them quite dreadful as any sort of mitigation in combat. And that's the main issue with hull tanks. They have a much higher skill level to use effectively since you have to rely on avoidance rather than mitigation. Which, I suspect, is why more people just shield tank. Because there are way more benefits to it than there are hull tanking. And that's a shame. Ideally both would be equally viable, with support modules to make hull "tanking" as effective as shield tanking and a genuine alternative. As it stands, any ship with a weapon that has Corrosive Shell makes a mockery of hull tanking.
@@Kaethena Ooooh... there is so much important information here that otherwise simply doesn't show up. Thank you! That's really a bummer about the repair limpets that they're interrupted once you're attacked... are these attacks against the hull or also attacks against shield in general? What I don't understand though why the 7A repair limpet doesn't scratch 1%. 7A repairs 450 points of hull, so you should've at least seen 6% . Also important to know that point defense shoots down limpets. That explains why some of my hatch breakers in "search and rescue" missions didn't make it to the target, and here I thought I was not attentive enough and they ran out of range. And yes, the big issue being that shield tanking offers optional internal AND utility hardpoints. We need something in utilities and get a fix for repair limpets or something like that. About the corrosive shells though; something similar can be said about anti-shield weapons too. The question is always if they are fitted or not, if we're talking pvp or not, and how often the randomized npc ships use corrosive shells too.
Totally agree on the point defense. I have a railgun/frag cannon Krait MK2 that would completely run out of ammo in CZ (before I figured out a better loadout) but when I would go to resupply at a station the "restock all" bar was barely even below 75%. Is the point defense turret just 90% ammo? How small are these rounds? Is it like human-sized pistol ammunition?
@@TheYamiks Which is exactly what I figured out. It used to be a mining/trading ship and I would use the PD to keep hatch breakers away. But I seriously wonder why they have so much ammo. A Phalanx (imagine a giant 20mm multi-cannon that shoots down rockets, mortars, and artillery rounds at 3k rounds per minute) in Afghanistan doesn't even carry that much and that bitch weighs 5 tons and is the size of a small house.
Do you think engineering has been the death or the salvation of the game. As broken as it is, it at least gives something for players to do. That said they way it's done is some what game breaking. What do you think?
engineering : a really cool idea to allow very unique ships and cool variation for them......BUT due to massive failure at BALANCING and making sure that the system is FAIR has been a cause of NUMEROUS issues!
thats his source of income (if the videos arent getting demonetised, i dont know if so). you wont see him not raging. its his very own signature that seperates him from the other trillion elite dangerous youtubers. if there is nothing to rant about in this game, he will probably shut this channel. so...what was the question again?^^
I like this feature of the game, it's the whole point of being in a bigger ship👍 plus they already 'tried' to balance it with their crappy shield bank/overheating patch which ruined the game for me & my friends. Also now you take infinite hull damage when you overheat to a few hundred percent...wtf is that sh!t lol my cutter never used to have these problems smh
Yes! Engineer the shit out of shield boosters! And wait 2 minutes on station when the lights in the entire facility are out because they have to charge your shields
So true! My ships shields take over twenty minutes to fully charge rn and they’re not even maxed out
I love doing that.
i bow to my oath: if shield are cutting edge, m weapons shall not cut though health.
1 hour cutter shield recharge
Frontier doesn't need to care about all of this as long as core players will swallow and not complain about anything and silence those who complain.
You could say that the current state of affairs is a complete fARX...
nah thats what the leftist media does.. unless your implying frontier is liberal
Everyone : I am unkillable in my cutter that has 13k shields!
Me: *laughs in reverb cascade*
1st hit someone with that ....cutter's not as easy if you are cautious about approaching enemy!
4 second arming time,sub 200 m/s speed, yeah , no.... even mines now have an obtuse arming time so you cant use them :P
And that's why the FDL is the true meta. Sure, it can't match the Cutter's shield, but it's still quite high, and good luck landing a clean rail shot on that thing against a competent pilot. Meanwhile the Cutter is the size of a skyscraper and turns like a whale, so it's easier to punish.
God, this explains why there are players that seem to be invincible in pvp. Thanks frontier
yep!
Actually thats a hack where you intercept packages from your client and modify them to make your shield completely invincible aka remove all damage taken.
Though i agree, prismatics are disgustingly powerfull in Elite especially when boosted to kingdom come. good that there are ways arround that, aka reverb torps and phasing sequence, so even a ship with hyperprismatics isnt completely save, especially considered that underneath those massige shields usually sits a body made from paper and cardboard.
7:24 Generally speaking, people don't like nerfs. I think the people who voted against don't know the problem. I also didn't know that that was a problem.
Especially when you consider how FD does nerfs....
@@MordethKai How is that?
@@carloschaparro07 Well, let's go back to when they nerfed hauling missions because of sothis/ceos poo runs where players were making a whopping 500k an hour or so. After the nerf there were trade missions with negative payouts. When they nerf they take the nuclear option, collateral damage be damned.
Bi-weave with thermal resist / low-draw, two resistance-augmented boosters and one heavy duty booster. Call it a day.
The Cutter has three military slots for hull? you mean for Guardian shield boosters and cell banks right?
Why would you use guardian shield boosters on a Cutter?
@@brianlam5847 why wouldn't you?
@@platiuscyndar9017 to use HRPS or MRPS because you will get domed by phasing sequence. Also, they only give like 800 extra shield, less than one grade of heavy duty shield boosters. HRP's can give me 1800 hull and 40% resists while reducing subsystem breach chance, and 2 MRPS will reduce all module damage by 86%, further increasing module defense.
Shield boosters don't need a nerf, heavy duty does.
Yeah seriously. Just change the heavy duty from adding percentage to the booster to increasing the booster's effectiveness by that much. In stead of having 20%+53%=73% per booster just set it so that the boosters are increased by 53%, 20%*1.53=30.6%. It would bring them in line with the rest of the upgrades and stop them from being broken.
@@epyon542 that's logic, but FDEV doesn't use logic...
Or just, buff everything else.
@@achtung_panzer6905 if you buff everything else engineers become even more broken and P2W.
@@GabrielGreedy Make engineers free, make horizons the default game. Make the grind easier. Or nerf everything's into the ground so engineering is optional.
Abolish shield boosters all together. Holy hell throw out classic ED without engineers. Make pvp about skill again
One thing I've learned about this kind of game over the years is that the devs will always add a new grind, and a new grind after that, and balance is not a concern. The Grind will never end.
Yep.
Just git gud and you can knock down shield tanks easily.
@@MinistryOfMagic_DoM pffft *laughs in 11k mj cutter"
@@MinistryOfMagic_DoM Git gud you mean like grind moar?
Yamiks illustrating that Fdev can't tell the difference between "Percentage" and "Percentage units". Two terms that means the difference between +50% shields and + 1200% shields.
I have actually run out of PD ammo in a high intensity CZ, of course my other 2 PD's still had 5000 rounds but it did leave a blindspot on my Conda's starboard side.
Ooof, and here i thought its a good time to return after dropping the game since engies were introduced. Thoose boosters boosts are disgusting.
the only thing about I am interested in ED is Yamiks videos
they can just put diminishing returns on booster additions,I would just move the excess boosters to my other ships
Boosters already have diminishing returns if you stack them. The problem is the heavy duty mod still makes boosters 400% more effective. I think that's only half the problem though. The other half is prismatic shields
I would bet FDEV thought that people would engineer ONE booster to max and then only have the one booster in a utility slot. They foolishly trusted the players to not shield tank and then go on a superman spree of just wreaking havoc at will with no concern for dying...
actually i looked closer and the hull reinforcement upgrades do the same "percent of a percent" that the shield boosters do. i loaded up a stock anaconda on coriolis and added a 5d hull reinforcement. that brought the total thermal hp to 1369. after applying the heavy duty g5, which says it will give up to 15% increase in thermal resistance (was actually only 14.63%), brought the total thermal hp to 1950. that is a 42% increase. it brought the thermal resistance from 2.5% to 17.1%, an increase of 273%.
an anaconda with all d rated g5 heavy duty/deep plate hull reinforcements and military armor has total hp of all damage types around 25-26k.
Here's an idea for when your voice is feeling better; Maybe try comparing the most overpowered parts of ED directly to see which is the most game breaking. Ships, upgrades, meta's, the worst of the worst, all at once! You didn't give the stats for how broken the super capacitors are and I think it would be hailarous to watch you rip out the worst of the worst of the balancing issues directly all in one video. I'd imagine it being like watching an opera of ranting at work, x'D
......while I am certainly down for this idea, I also don't want to hear Yamik's brain implode from here.
Just get rid of thermal resistance boosts. Keep the rock paper scissors idea going. It makes sense that an all multicannon build is snuffed out by a shield tank, because they melt through hulls. But when your laser build is ineffective against their shields it becomes broken. Flechettes need a modular damage boost, or more ammo. Ignoring shields and trigering a selfdestruct at 50% health and full shields is very satisfying, against a shield tank.
I was thinking my Chieftain would be pretty fun to build into a super solid hull tanker, but I'm really getting the feeling that I should forget about it and try for shields. Which sucks because I like the idea of a ship that doesn't let up once its shield is down.
Well that intro was disturbing...
as was the rest of the video...
was it that bad? good orrr?
@@TheYamiks It's in your style, for sure... but even this seemed to stretch it to the hilarious extremes.
sooo good? =}
@@TheYamiks going to be honest, that intro kinda went over my head ^^;
But if other people get it I'm sure it's just me.
Also, on an unrelated note;
When your voice is feeling better and you feel like having another rant, maybe try comparing the most overpowered upgrades directly to see which is the most game breaking. You didn't give the stats for how broken the super capacitors are and I think it would be hailarous to watch you rip out the worst of the worst of the balancing issues directly all in one video. I'd imagine it being like watching an opera of ranting at work, x'D
I didn't realise that about the shield boosters...
I hadn't been going HP on them, I´ve been using resistance Bi-Weaves... I mean, I guess I'll be sorted if they correct it, but since I get Prismatics in a week or so, hell, I may as well break the game and have a full laser build sit still in a CZ and be immortal...
Resistance Bi-Weaves are pretty good in situations where you can avoid damage long enough to recover shield strength for a bit, so they aren't useless or bad.
You'll find that with prismatics, you will eventually reach a point where your shields are at risk of going down and without SCB you'll basically be shieldless for an uncomfortably long amount of time.
I realize you were probably being slightly sarcastic, but you will definitely feel that lack of natural regen after flying bi-weaves.
@@Drummerx04 resistance bi-weaves have been my standard and go to, to be fair. I just feel like trying something else, maybe.
don't forget to get a long range mod on one of your lasers.....pull them to you from 4.5km and you won't have to touch your throttle :-)
I heard no mention of "diminishing returns" which means each booster/reinforcement after the first adds less bonus than the advertised amount, meaning that 100% to 120, 140, 160, etc is more like 100% to 120 with the first then something like 135, 150, etc. There are a number of flaws with this that I'm sure most people can work out for themselves. Needless to say that the 5th and 6th Shield Boosters on a 6-slot ship, such as a FDL, are each contributing less than 50% of their potential boost, meaning you're running two to get the boost of one but they all draw the same power.
I noticed yamiks left that out too. Probably because it doesn't really matter and nobody gets more than 4 anyway. The boost you get from 4 of them is OP enough as it is
@@BenYork-UBY He left it out because it was never implemented. There are no diminishing returns on the percentage shield boost applied by Heavy Duty boosters. Even though two betas back in the 2.x days tried to get the idea pushed through. There was too much pushback from the players so FDev left it alone.
@@Kaethena so they actually went back on that plan? After so much talking about it, I thought they put it in
@@BenYork-UBY Yeah they never put it in the game. Although it's also worth noting that this was in the days of Sandro Sammarco. I'm pretty sure the "fix" was tried out in both the 2.2 and 2.3 betas. But the level of dissent at the possibility was legendary. Along the level of the response to the mining changes recently, if not worse. So they didn't follow through with it.
That intro...
... I need an adult...
...
Wait I am an adult oh fu-
Point defence is the ultimate defense against non-consensual pvp. You put 5 point defence and no fsd resetting missile or hatch limpets will ever get to your ship.
Elite dangerous is a perfectly balanced game with no exploits
No watch me become immortal and the game is perfectly ok with this. yes fdev are sat in there office drinking a cup of fine Yorkshire tea thinking yes, let's make this a flat % increase and we can all now go to the pub and do British things like salute queen and do a Brexit. Let the players enjoy this quality gameplay with no exploits at all, no we have it coverd.
-if the spiffing brit did an explote video on ed
TheStemal yamiks and spiff is something I would watch.
im always open for colabs!
When I have new pc I will start doing some elite exploration videos. Am going to have to get a new pc as my current pc chugs like a runaway steam train even on low settings. It chugs less now thanks to @yamiks over clocking video
@@batonnikus yamiks and spiff would be something special
Lmao I reported the heatsink bug in *2016*
Also RIP my hulltank FAS... and I dont have money to redo my engineered *HULLTANK CONDA* into a shieldtank. Fuck.
The Intro clip is just FUCKING comedy gold to me Yamiks.
A rebuttal for you, courtesy of Coriolis. These are shield HP counts (absolute, explosive, kinetic, thermal) for an Alliance Chieftain with every internal slot but the 6 and the 1 filled with guardian shield reinforcements, a 6A G5 engineered shield w/ hi cap, and four G5 engineered 0A shield boosters w/ super capacitors:
2813 6224 5186 2593 = reinforced shield + heavy duty boosters
2009 7929 6608 3304 = reinforced shield + resistance augmented boosters
2356 4352 3022 3627 = thermal resistant shield + heavy duty boosters
1773 5844 4058 4870 = thermal resistant shield + resistance augmented boosters
The results came out the same when I used a 6C G5 biweave w/ fast charge and those same booster engineering combos. In every case, the four resistance augmented was much better against all three damage types than the four heavy duty, in spite of having a lower absolute shield strength number. My thesis: guardian shield reinforcements are fucking bonkers.
Guardian shield boosters are great for filling up unused class 1 or 2 slots.
Honestly, they're great for ALL slots, especially in PvE. If your shields are too tough to bring down, the entire rest of your ship won't have a scratch on it.
You still should have some form of raw HP due to npc enemies also using plasma accelerators, and things like collisions don't care for resistances. While the resistances on the last one look great, plasma tears through you like no-ones business, and bumping high resistance shields off is a valid tactic too. But yeah, all in all, a pure shield tank can't do anything else really. What do people use that even for? Conflict zones? And what weapons do they use with so much of the powergrid being eaten up? I think all these people doing builds like that do it only to internally shout "it's over nine thousaaaaaaaaaaand"...
I kind of wish hull tanking was more viable...
LiL Failed it (kinda) is, if you ram them pipsqueaks.
6:38 zaebal blyat' with that 13k cutter. This kind of shield made out of paper and can be destroyd in 20 seconds. By medium ship.
you have 13k shields... and all optional slots free fro anything you want... that includes HRPs ... giving you ~6-7k hull underneath that ...sooo ~20k hp ship total... is that normal?!
Yes perfectly normal no issues whatsoever
@@TheYamiks cutter+HiCap Reinforced 8a Prism. shield+ x8 0A HD SC Boosters is actually only 11.350 MJ... also you need 8 5D guardian shield boosters to reach 13k, so only free optional is class 4, class 3 and class 1, which is 1200~ armor HP if there would be HD+DP reinf.packages... which is not too much, also this piece of horse shit would have only 7,05MW on PP to install any weapons and do some modification to its core internals(if it has overcharged monstered PP). This build is SHIT. Even in terms of counter absolute damage it is still shit, couse it will sustain something like 19k damage from plasma or so, when it could be over 35k. So yeh.. 20k hp ship _total_ ... no it is not normal, it is several thousand HP too thin to be called such
@@ZakNaZul It's nice to see someone understanding the underlying issue of theoretical builds that live in a universe of offline play without experiencing the hard counters :)
@@Khunvyel i don't know why he think that it is something formidable , i really don't. It is shitty build even on paper in offline play universe)
I will have you know I ran out of TWO point defense weapon ammo stocks in one combat zone on my corvette. Apparently the AI never realized that torpedos are 1) useless 2) tasty snacks for PDWs
I'm not going to lie I use those broken ass Shield boosters, but I'm on Xbox which is pretty dead so even though I play in open I essentially never get involved in PvP. And I wouldn't complain one bit if they removed it from the game. I don't really feel I have the right to. No reasonable person would look at that and say they aren't broken, even those who are willing to exploit it like myself
I really can't wait for your video on GalNet and Drew's reply to Frontier's incompetence.
I hate those evil shield boosters. I didn't know what exactly wrong with them, but the effects were pretty clear regardless with the 13k shield cutters and all the recommended builds being full of those damn things.
......I knew heavy duty shield boosters were bad...but I didn't know they were THAT bad.....jesus.
Me: Want new ships, better balance and atmospheric landings in ED as well as more RCT3 features for Planet Coaster.
Frontier: animals
nerfing boosters will just make fights last shorter.
Now I maybe a critic of some if your videos, I'll always be fair and equal. This was probably the best video you've done for ages. As the past few including the live streams were like going through the motions. Being a critical of FD means you have to accept critics of your work too. Keep up the better standard Yamicks.
is this really? hmm.. well i would say there was plenty of things that I would say were mediocre with this one and not the best for most people. This was just atid-bit of info and not the trully full scope of issues to be called good for that aspect. Since this is a series on what to pick & what not to, I didn't go into that detail and focused more on the upgrades themselves, but I get your point! =}
@@TheYamiks It is the eye of the beholder. And I'm grateful for the reply. Remember it's not what you do.. it's how it's done. Keep up the good work
at some point in elite pvp is going to just become people sitting still in the corner of a system just shooting each other with no movement whatsoever
So should I just use the heavy duty engineering or should I also use some of the damage resistant ones as well
Maybe Devs should make it so only 1 or 2 shield boosters could be equipped at a time. 1 for small and medium ships and 2 for large ones...... idk....
Next to the raw shield power build, there als also builds that have shields based on high regeneration and high resistance. They can end up with 50% resistance and still have some capacity left for extra hp. These are the ultimate pvm builds and can last forever if not hit too much, as they tend to regenerate quite fast. There's not one OP build, there are two, both about 10 times as effective as unengineerd ships
i miss 2015 elite
Skill Boosters
Hey Yamiks if you know of the 3 Insurgent models in GTA 5/Online see if you and the whole community can tempt the DEVS to make an SRV MK 2 with all 3 of them put together as the base with the originals rim thrusters.
0:44 stare hard at the vulture's canopy...
You're using a rather extreme example to illustrate Heavy Duty boosters. Putting vast amounts of raw shield health onto your ship severely limits it in other areas. Not everyone is flying around in Cutters with in excess of 10,000 megajoule shield health. In fact, I'd be surprised if it was even a decently high percentage.
If anything, it's the class 8 shield cell banks which contribute more to the ship's survivability than heavy duty shield boosters. I can build a Cutter with around 140,000 effective shields WITHOUT using a single heavy duty shield booster, or super capacitor experimental effect. So I kind of think you're giving them heat unnecessarily.
Not to mention that since 3.3, the NPC ships have been buffed to provide more of a challenge. Particularly the engineered ships in the high threat pirate signal sources, and the Spec Ops wings in conflict zones. While it may seem like shields are vastly overpowered if all you do is hunt master gunships in a Haz Res, if you go into more capable combat environments, you soon find that they aren't as overpowered as you think they are. The engineered ships have shields approaching the level of strength that you have yourself, if not more, and they attack you in groups. Take a stock ship, or a ship with very little shield engineering into a medium or high intensity conflict zone, spawn a spec ops wing, and see how long you last before you have to jump out again.
As for PvP, there are weapon engineering effects designed specifically to deal with shield tank ships. And weapon loadouts that can exploit the weaknesses which come from a maniacal desire to just dump as much raw health on your ship as you can physically fit. Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should do it. Or that it makes sense to do it. Building a ship for the "ZOMG look at the size of my shield health!" shows a bit of a fundamental ignorance of, or inexperience with ship building in general.
Thank you for putting into experienced words and with examples given what my initial thoughts and impressions were of just looking at the modules and the engineer stuff available. My question in that regard would be though; at which point do resistances become pointless and should be swapped for pure HP, as in, how proliferated are enemies with plasma accelerators? From what limited encounters I had ( PvE against deadly Anacondas from Wing missions and such) , they're not quite that exclusively used and are always part of a mix of regular weapons. So I assume the usual method of tanking applies when going for the unknown, with resistance and hp being a balanced combination. I also wondered if it's worth it to plug the resistance hole in either shield or hull and then focus on that type of tanking exclusively. Same as with if it's worth to tank against one type of damage. I don't think there ever is a point in the game where you're only whacked with thermal or kinetic damage, right?
What does get stuck in my mind though is the general idea of reversing the weakness preferences. I still notice that some npcs open up with thermal attacks and when the shield is down they're prioritizing their kinetic attacks. I wonder if it is a good idea or not to go for thermal resistances on shield, and kinetic resistances on armor. Or was that just a fluke and they're usually just unloading whatever they have at once? (( Thargoids are shooting caustic as far as I understand, but what do they tank against? ))
Also, I saw in my notifications that you answered to me in regards to repair limpets and hull tanking, but whenever I click the message, it doesn't show up, and neither it does when trying to search for the message here on this video. So I can't read your full reply, only what is shown in the preview :(
@@Khunvyel In terms of PvE, the most most dangerous plasma accelerators you're likely to find are on Corvettes in Assassination missions, or in CZs. They put them on their dual class 4 hardpoints. Anacondas also put them on their class 4, too. Although the thing to understand with PAs is that only 60% of the damage is Absolute, and they take an age to fire repeatedly. In the hands of NPCs, they're nowhere near as dangerous as in the hands of players. In terms of NPC combat, PAs are the exception rather than the rule. Most smaller ships prefer railguns or thermal/kinetic weapons instead. Or, for whatever optimistic reason, missiles. Even the larger ships don't use them as often as you might think.
As for how much resistance is too much, that's a large matter of personal preference and experience for each individual commander. Based on how they fly. You have to think of it in terms of effective shields rather than raw shield health. A ship with 2000 Mj of shields + 50% resistance to thermal damage will have 4000Mj of effective shield health vs that damage. Compared to a ship with 4000Mj of shields with the standard -20% resistance to thermal damage because they've just gone for shield health, giving them actually 3200Mj of effective shields instead. This is compounded if you're carrying shield cells, or a fast charging Bi-Weave generator. Since shield cells heal a fixed amount of megajoules when they're deployed, they are more effective per use the lower the raw HP of your shield is. If you increase your effective shields via resistances rather than piling on the megajoules, then you end up with far more survivability than you otherwise would.
Speaking only for myself, I try to give my ships as close to 60% balanced resistance to kinetic and thermal damage as I can. With a naturally higher resistance to explosive due to the nature of the engineering mods used. That's the point I feel comfortable. Once I've done that, THEN I concentrate on putting on enough health to survive the types of encounters I'm engaging in, depending on things like how long I think I'm likely to be under sustained fire and what kind of offensive loadout I want to fit. It's really a balancing act that comes from trial and error and there isn't a one-size-fits-all answer. By drawing power and resources into your defence, you take it out of your offence and utility. And as the old adage goes, sometimes the best defence is a good offence. Things can't shoot you if they're in a million pieces. Some of my ships, like my Type 10, have a relatively low base shield health (1400Mj), but extremely high resistances (73%/67%/67%). Add to that a class 8 shield cell bank that restores 90% of her shields each time I use a charge, because of how low the raw health is... her effective shields are actually extremely high. And with a lower shield health you benefit from recharging lost shields much faster. She's up from 50% to full in just 2 minutes 41 seconds.
I use her for bounty hunting and CZ work, where I have enough downtime to be able to recharge the shields, or to practically completely restore them in an emergency, so it works for me. I can even take on wing assassination missions solo if necessary, although the health is a little low for that scenario to make me feel comfortable doing it.
For PvE combat, I rarely worry about the hull. The only thing I do is fit reactive surface composite then add a small thermal resistant HRP, simply to have a bit more defense against the phasing weaponry that engineered NPCs sometimes use. But I don't tend to make my ships hybrid, because I've never found the need. Again it's what works for each person. You may feel differently and that's perfectly okay.
@@Kaethena I'm really sorry to answer this late... at least I can see the message now, but your other message was not showing up in my notifications. Good thing that I don't rely and trust on automagical things and keep checking up manually.
So. HELLO :) I'm really glad you took the time to reply in such depth, especially with your mindset of playing as I can relate to exactly that kind of thought process behind it. It's not just pure numbers, and despite the game mechanic math being important, the actual viability and playability is often neglected. Thankfully you're one of those who "keep it real". Kind of like I keep telling people that DPS alone is worthless, because there are so many factors attributed to that. Including the ability to actually hit the enemy :D
While I can't precisely say how dangerous those Deadly Anacondas on Wing missions are who shoot with Plasmas, I can certainly say that the ships the game throws at you are somewhat randomized. Some don't have PAs at all but fire oodles of missiles, some don't have missiles, etc. I think they're either randomly generated or quasi-random (aka; choosing from predefined loadouts). NPCs are engineering themselves up with higher difficulty rating too. And yes, thanks for mentioned that PAs are not JUST absolute damage. It's funny how people tend to forget that :)
I almost feel a little bad that you wrote so much in explicit detail, especially since I'm savvy with game mechanic math in general and like to sink my teeth into that. Like in Eve online for example, I never understood the people who ran omnitanks in PvE. IT doesn't take long to learn the resistances to tank against, gear your ship accordingly, and you'll never have a problem. I don't know if this is possible in ED too. Like, for example, if certain factions prefer certain weapons to the point where you would live longer if you go for more thermal resistances if they tend to use more beams etc.
I keep contemplating to plug the thermal resistance hole and in turn use a reactive composite to beef up explosive and kinetic. I even contemplate as far as to push kinetic and thermal to the detriment of explosive on armor, if if turns out that well placed Point defences (and more than oen) are worth it. But if not, it's back to keeping explosive on par.
Is an 8 Shield cell not totally overkill if you don't have that much shield HP or is that meant to "overflow" the shields to a point where no matter what hits you, the shields are kept up regardless? How much do you have to deal with heat or are you engineering the shield cells for less thermal output or something? My "issue" with the reliance on shield cells and heat sinks in tandem is, that they are ammo based so the question is if in prolongued fights one can still mantain all this without resupplying. I mean I guess it's player-skill to quickly restock through synthesis on the fly :)
I enjoy the Type 10 as flying fortress kind of thing, with all weapons as turret mounts so I don't have to try to wield this big chunky piece of metal in a direction in an attempt to get a shot.
Maybe once engineering everything up to max becomes a nobrainer and easy to attain, I will think differently about ship loadouts. I do tinker around in edsy and coriolis with "functionality" in mind, but I don't know how long it will ultimately take to put all those important modules to max rank. So I rather don't want to take that for granted. For now, I still lose shields in combat and have to rely on hull and module reinforcements, especially in wing missions when multiple enemies pound on you.
I suppose going from what you say my thought of having ships geared specifically for combat only and making no compromises there because they don't NEED to do anything else is a worthwhile thought. Naturally the question remains how much auxiliary modules they need, like collector limpets and kill scanners for extra bounty, and so on. But that's the beauty of figuring some things out while simply trying :)
Again, thanks for your detailed insight.
@@Khunvyel Just to address a few of the points you raised:
Firstly, no, it's not really possible in Elite to pump one specific resistance to the detriment of others. You kind of have to omnitank. Ship loadouts are random to an extent, but it's not just that. The AI don't think like human pilots do. A lot of human commanders think "Okay I'll use thermal weaponry to strip the shields, then kinetic/explosive weaponry to shred the hull. It's playing to stock weaknesses in ships. Although I don't personally subscribe to that approach but that's a different conversation. The AI don't subscribe to it either. Their philosophy is "Fire everything you've got, for as long as you can!" So you need balanced resistances to give you the best chances. Especially if you're facing more than one ship with more than one loadout.
Secondly, a class 8A Shield Cell Bank, fully engineered with Grade 4 Specialised + the Boss Cells experimental, will give you just shy of 1300Mj of shield health over 17 seconds. So it's not overkill if your ship has more than that. This is partly why I designed my Type 10 to have 1400Mj. So I could deploy one just as my shields were about to go down and they would be completely restored. But even if you don't use one then, they give you a sort of "invulnerability window" where your shields are recharging much faster than you're taking fire. So if you're not super confident in combat you can give yourself some breathing room while you get into position, or decide what you want to do. As for Heatsinks, I don't use them. I use beam lasers with the Thermal Vent experimental effect. They act in much the same way as Heatsinks. If you're shooting a ship with them, they cool you down. They can be used to mitigate the heat from deploying a shield cell charge fairly effectively. Allowing you to free up a utility slot.
Thirdly, if you haven't got the Guardian Shield Reinforcement Package unlocked yet, I highly recommend you do so. This allows you to use Shield Boosters to customise your resistances, and the SRPs to add health. Allowing you much more flexibility. As I said in my original comment, it's easy to tailor a super tanky ship without relying on a single heavy duty booster. Yes, you have to make the choice between shield or hull/module reinforcement, but I've always been of the belief that in PvE, if your shields are good enough, you don't NEED any hull modules. And I haven't lost a ship in over 3 years. By "good" I don't mean "huge" either. More "well thought out".
Lastly, if I'm making a pure combat ship, it depends on how agile it is. Sometimes I add collector limpets, on the slow lumbering brutes. But mostly I don't. Mostly because I don't collect materials from combat. I trade down at the material traders. It's much less work. So I breed my ships for one thing and one thing only. And that makes them rather good at it. The saying "jack of all trades, master of none" applies.
@@Kaethena Hm, I could've sworn I got more laser attacks on my shields than kinetics, and more kinetics on my hull than lasers. HOWEVER. I totally concede that could be a point of "npc weapon capacitor is close to empty, or it's getting hot and thus stopping with the lasers, so the kinetics keep hammering" :D
Well, playing against the stock weaknesses is technically useful as long as you do just pve I suppose. With pvp it certainly is a different kind of beast, and with the limited scouting and intel you can do it's questionable anyhow. Often more a thought of where you are in space to know if you will meet up against the meta or against newer players who might not know their stuff all that well. And if you know what damage comes, you can push use your shield AND armor resistances against it instead of having the stop gaps open.
Shield Cells: Wait, only 1300Mj? Oh right, I made a big reading mistake. Coriolis shows the TOTAL amount of shield regenerated when you put out 5 Cells. That's where I thought it's overkill. And I already thought this is a stupidly high number :D I personally wouldn't feel comfortable playing so close to the shield limit but I guess it's just experience to see when one would need to pop it with the wind up time included.
The beam laser mod is one of those reasons why I mentioned that tanking against specific damages is worth it. There are people exclusively running missiles, or in your example, exclusively running thermal weapons. Others revel in the heat and use the additional damage, others use the thermal vent to keep silent running at a distance in smaller ships to never be targeted by automatic fire weapons. It also totally depends on which kindof ship one is to choose between fixed, gimballed and turreted weapons.
I looked into the guardian stuff, yes, I just don't want to play ahead so much of my group and rather keep the pace with them. They've only looked into engineering now after I keep telling them of the benefits :D
My philosophy on limpets in combat and material exactly. What was fun though is the higher level of repair limpets to shoot some drones to my friends when I'm in a Type-10 after they finished their fight in their smaller ships. Kind of a "return to the mothership for aid" :D So it's kind of a shame that the repair limpets don't work IN combat really. Explains why Some of them really didn't do much.
I kind of think it's a bit sad that in deep space, you are not really in danger or some things are simply not needed. I think it would be a much more interesting ship design choice to try and rig a completely autonomous ship that HAS to try and do all (currently that would be either Corvette or Anaconda) or you have to rely on your companions and plan your expeditions with their time slots in mind too so that these ships can aid one another and fill more niches. But there is other stuff that prevents one from proper TEAM playing in game too, so there is that. I hope we get a few fixes for that in time. It's rather a fairly shallow team game so far. And for other things you have to rely on and are forced to use outside information to even get a glimpse of certain things that you otherwise simply wouldn't find or see in time.
Thanks for all the time you spent answering, I appreciate it :)
Uh ? That why i loose my shield first, because the guy in face of me have maybe +3000% shield boost HP ...
God damn it... , having a more "strategic" shield with balanced resistance is useless...
umm no... just that their shield probably is loaded to max & have some nasty weapons .. probably, but still it is quite apparent how crazy the shields are
@@TheYamiks Absolute damage weapon : resistance is futile
The Engineers broke the game - at least before they were released it was skill that was king...
Did they every fix this? That's day-one-patch material and frustrating to see.
best intro EVER
Wait are boosters really that strong?!
*looks at engineering*
*unholy screeching*
So, yeah -- maybe they'll fix these right after addressing the hull mass of the Anaconda.
What happened to the live stream video ‘open play as cruel as it seems’ that was posted just before this, but has now disappeared? I got the message about it, but when i tried to watch it said it was removed.
Yamiks removes live streams
Seems I need to replace my resistance mods with heavy duty...
best results are 3HD & 1resist / 4 HD & 2 resist / 5HD & 3resist (depending on amount of utilities u got)
But aren't A-rated shield boosters with grade 5 Heavy Duty engineering bloody heavy?
14T. In a combat build though it doesn't really matter. You're not trying to jump places. I ship my combat vessels around places so I don't have to worry about it. You do have to worry about the counters such as thermal weapons being able to strip them down super fast and such so a proper booster build actually accounts for resistance not just pure MJ since that only deals with absolute damage but weapons powerful in thermals will punch right on through since the shield only has a -2% (yes negative) resistance to thermals if you use all heavy duty boosters. As in it's weak to them and your relative MJ to thermal damage will be less than your absolute.
@@MinistryOfMagic_DoM I guess I am playing the game a bit different to you. I tend to decide to play some combat quite spontaneously and don't really plan ahead, just picking up random system where I feel like combating. So I don't like to ship my ships, prefer to fly them myself, so jump range is important to me. Probably why I am still hesitant to try FDL with its poor jump range. Not sure about trying Federal Corvette either when it's available to me later on (after the Federation rank grind) with its also poor jump range.
i voted 'no nerf' as a knee-jerk reaction to the mining nerfs happening at the time - apologies! I didn't fully understand just how absolutely busted boosters [and combat] are on a mathematical level.
[I just want the rest of the guardian tech to be useful too. the FSD booster and MAYBE the shield reinforcement jave purpose but..... outside of AX ship builds the rest of the unlocks see so little use, but cost and weigh/drain more than regular parts.]
It is comparable to NMS, at a certain point when you put all S upgrades on your ship literally it gets to the same ridiculous power creep that Ed does.
power creep is OK for PVE game.. but not PVP and ED like it or NOT MUST be balanced around PVP
@@TheYamiks No it doesn't? You don't need to sacrifice one balance point for the other. But the fewest developers understand that making pve enemies more player-like is the key for a fairly easy balance across the board. ED has just that potential because with the exception of Thargoids, you clearly only fight "player ships" in a nutshell. The problem is how they're labelled (from novice to deadly) and how they're fitted like that. There seems to be no indication if you scan a ship if the modules installed are engineered under the hood or not. If they'd rework the threat level into something scalable that can be compared to how you fitted your own ship, that would be a far better indicator of what we're about to face. Plus, not to mention, they can start some build variety and have certain factions prefer certain things for example. It's not hard to balance, and it certainly doesn't have to be balanced around pvp. There is a golden opportunity for the perfect middle ground, if only they could see it...
Don't need shields if you don't get hit
(Rubs a shield booster on Yamiks) Something vexes thee? :v
Huh? I Haven't played for a while, what happened to dimishing returns for shield boosters? Wasn't that a thing at some point? I mean, not that it would make a big difference, Frontier just can't balance anything.
carebears VOTED against that change and devs were too spineless to balance the game!
Waiting for the caffeine crash.
we NEED to send this vid to FDev.
I’ve just started playing elite and I’ve been watching RUclips videos to learn. What’s with that single frame cartoon character at the beginning of the video?
And nice dreads dude.
Ffs just do as in Warframe... Example: take a weapon with 20% critical chance per shot. There's a mod called "point strike" that says "+150% crit chance". Now, if it was the fuckers of frontier who developed this, it'd mean that if you use that mod on that 20% crit chance weapon you'd get in total 170% right? Luckily it isn't: it's a percentage APPLIED to another percentage, so in the end you get 20*(1+1.5)=50% crit chance. They Could have used something similar on boosters.
Or any other game that deals with multipliers. Path of Exile might be the most complex one
Is it still like this?
But at which point do these things matter? How far do you have to be in the game to engineer the shield stuff to the max, repeatedly do so to get the secondary effects desired, get the guardian shield reinforcements, and so on? I mean the Cutter is just happening automatically at that point I suppose. But all in all, without heavy engineering anyone who starts out will just throw one or two shield boosters on, and will still lose their shields in npc combat, even on big ships.
I'd wager to say they're fine. Engineering is what's broken. Shield boosters are a sympton of the root problem that is engineering, if anything. And without guardian shield reinforcements they also wouldn't be that overpowered.
The main "problem" with engineered / guardian shield tanking in general is, that you have a lot more slots at your availability. Optional internals AND utility slots. If hull tanking would get something for utility slots, then this would be an entirely different story.
Oh, and a different question: what's your recovery / regeneration? Because that's based on total hitpoints. Shield boosters do not add regeneration speed. So how many shield cells do you have to pump out and how many heatsinks do you have to drop before you sit there frantically fiddling with your module screen to turn off all the shield boosters to get that broken shield up faster?
Resistance and total HP wise I didn't quite do the math yet how a properly rigged hull tank edges out with repair limpets. Because in a pack, anyone who gets targeted, others with a similar build can just send more limpets to the way of the designated target. A shield tank cannot get help from outside.
I'm sure engineering "imba'd" shield tanks to a point, but as with everything I've learned through all those years in games; only because it's the Meta doesn't mean it's the best. Sometimes it's only the least-effort-widest-use case. Even an ungodly shield tank like that has a weakness, and can be properly countered. The tears of those suffering from that are worth the effort to some.
The trouble with repair limpets is that they're absolutely atrocious. On a ship with any sort of hull tanking setup they do next to nothing. Even the decontamination limpets repair more of your ship's hull than repair limpets do. Although sadly you can't use them unless you're repairing thargoid damage. I have a hull tanked Anaconda, sitting at around 7000 armor health with around 45% in all three damage type resistances. Even using a class 7 repair limpet controller, through the entire repair cycle of the limpet, it didn't even repair 1% of my hull.
Not to mention that the limpets can be shot off your hull, or just destroyed before they even reach it, with point defense from hostile ships. And the limpets stop repairing if your hull takes further damage, so it's practically impossible to repair the hull while actually under fire. Making them quite dreadful as any sort of mitigation in combat. And that's the main issue with hull tanks. They have a much higher skill level to use effectively since you have to rely on avoidance rather than mitigation. Which, I suspect, is why more people just shield tank. Because there are way more benefits to it than there are hull tanking. And that's a shame. Ideally both would be equally viable, with support modules to make hull "tanking" as effective as shield tanking and a genuine alternative.
As it stands, any ship with a weapon that has Corrosive Shell makes a mockery of hull tanking.
@@Kaethena Ooooh... there is so much important information here that otherwise simply doesn't show up. Thank you! That's really a bummer about the repair limpets that they're interrupted once you're attacked... are these attacks against the hull or also attacks against shield in general?
What I don't understand though why the 7A repair limpet doesn't scratch 1%. 7A repairs 450 points of hull, so you should've at least seen 6% . Also important to know that point defense shoots down limpets. That explains why some of my hatch breakers in "search and rescue" missions didn't make it to the target, and here I thought I was not attentive enough and they ran out of range.
And yes, the big issue being that shield tanking offers optional internal AND utility hardpoints. We need something in utilities and get a fix for repair limpets or something like that.
About the corrosive shells though; something similar can be said about anti-shield weapons too. The question is always if they are fitted or not, if we're talking pvp or not, and how often the randomized npc ships use corrosive shells too.
Totally agree on the point defense. I have a railgun/frag cannon Krait MK2 that would completely run out of ammo in CZ (before I figured out a better loadout) but when I would go to resupply at a station the "restock all" bar was barely even below 75%. Is the point defense turret just 90% ammo? How small are these rounds? Is it like human-sized pistol ammunition?
in CZ or other NPC combat places... just boost shield as much as you can and get weapons with no ammo need and sit there forever!
@@TheYamiks Which is exactly what I figured out. It used to be a mining/trading ship and I would use the PD to keep hatch breakers away. But I seriously wonder why they have so much ammo.
A Phalanx (imagine a giant 20mm multi-cannon that shoots down rockets, mortars, and artillery rounds at 3k rounds per minute) in Afghanistan doesn't even carry that much and that bitch weighs 5 tons and is the size of a small house.
shield booster is not the sole reason this game sucks... but it's a pretty big one.
"neglitude" is totally a word
Who cares about this in pve? The more overpowered you are the more you can do in pve bots don´t care if you nuke them or chew them down.
Heavy duty only goes to 38%... dunno whatchu mean
[Laughs in Reverberating Cascade]
It wouldn't even be a nerf, it would just be fixing a math mistake to make them work as originally intended!
Time to farm mats for heavy duty shield boosters....
Really good balance is bring up the worse stuff in line with best stuff not nurfing things
i wish FD listened to you
Do you think engineering has been the death or the salvation of the game. As broken as it is, it at least gives something for players to do. That said they way it's done is some what game breaking. What do you think?
engineering : a really cool idea to allow very unique ships and cool variation for them......BUT due to massive failure at BALANCING and making sure that the system is FAIR has been a cause of NUMEROUS issues!
Shield build? Indestructible? Lol?
I want a booster that increases regen rate...
Coffee?
I voted for the Nerf. The shield tanks are just too OP
If the devs do better stuff with the game will that settle your anger issues?
thats his source of income (if the videos arent getting demonetised, i dont know if so). you wont see him not raging. its his very own signature that seperates him from the other trillion elite dangerous youtubers. if there is nothing to rant about in this game, he will probably shut this channel. so...what was the question again?^^
Ed has become a complete joke. Carebears....
I like this feature of the game, it's the whole point of being in a bigger ship👍 plus they already 'tried' to balance it with their crappy shield bank/overheating patch which ruined the game for me & my friends. Also now you take infinite hull damage when you overheat to a few hundred percent...wtf is that sh!t lol my cutter never used to have these problems smh
😂🙈🙉🙊
Keep everything just add ability to player to player transactions and GET RID OF REBUYS!!!!