I personally think shield recharge shouldn't be affected at all by incoming fire, therefore a larger ship with a shield recharge rate higher than the incoming damage of some light fighter might just consider that fighter a pesky little gnat buzzing around them. However, with distortion damage, a certain amount of the damage should be mitigated by shields, then some should accumulate as heat directly to shield modules, when the coolers can no longer sink off the heat, shield module shuts down leaving no recharge on shields until module cools.. shield buffer remains but no recharge at that point. At some point we're going to have to face the reality that an ARROW is just not meant to be able to solo a hammerhead and have a snowballs chance of success.
Haven’t finished the video but something I was talking to my guys about is energy vs ballistic weapons and distortion. Would be a cool differentiation if you couldn’t distort ballistics.
I think you'll see equipment specified to damage types in the future. So, if you buy attrition laser repeaters in the future, they may have huge distortion resistances. Same thing with certain brands of components. That's my speculation anyway. It'll be interesting to see.
I think there is slightly more nuance than "distos have lower time to disable" due to the reduced DPS on shields comparatively. I think I agree with all your suggestions, but I disagree that distos are better in all instances. For example, a manned scorp has so much flat damage with laser repeaters that you drill through the shields and destroy light to heavy fighters faster than if you were mixed distos trying to disable guns. I haven't calculated it, but from trialling it that's my observation. I would think the number of hardpoints (and hence the difference in DPS comparatively) matters a lot - hence the scorp seeming to perform better with 8 panthers. I do 100% agree that this should be tuned such that disabling takes longer with distos, for all the reasons you stated.
When you can effectively shut them down faster than destroying them. There is no downside to running them. I love using them but they don't feel properly balanced. Id love if the was a type of emp missiles instead of lasers
Ballistics should be immune to distortions and counter them (not sure if they do or dont currently). With MM, ballistic ammo should be bumped up and make them more usable for longer durations (they are already pretty good in PU). Also distortions should be like 90% blocked by shields instead of start causing distortion damage before shields are down. You should have to shut down shields before you get to disable components.
Distortions should simply deal ZERO damage to shields. Lasers > regular damage to shields > low damage to hull Ballistics > low damage to shielded targets > regular damage to hull Distortions > zero effect on shield targets > no damage to hull > distortion damage to components
All other things being equal (ie. ship type, armor, shield, etc) and both ships blazing away with 100% hits on target ballistic weapons should have a shorter TTK than energy weapons (at the cost of limited ammo supply), and distortions should have a longer TTD than laser TTK (the price you pay for being able to leave your opponent intact.)
I think in the future its going to take more then pure brut force and offensive firepower for some fights , think distortions were designed for bounty hunting were you need to disable them to take your opponent in before killing them. This still needs to be balanced witch will be more of a thing when we are in beta i think , this is a bit of the growing pains of the game as it develops, but we are supposed to see more development of bounty hunting this year so we will see what happens.
Counterpoint: Distortions should be the meta for a lot of the 'verse, and that's a good thing. If anything, the game needs the equivalent of distortions for FPS. The vision for SC seems to be a persistent universe where death is rare but inevitable, where battle scars are formed. In the long term, death is supposed to be at least somewhat of a PITA, as is losing a ship, as is getting caught doing the crimes. If indeed CIG achieves these goals, it's going to make friendly fights a thing of the past, and losing a cargo ship or your life a lot more of a setback. That's gonna drive players away unless the unofficial/natural RoE evolves to a fight to disable rather than a fight to the death, most of the time. Disto meta allows for harsh death and ship loss penalties to exist, which encourages the traders to negotiate, the pirates to board and steal. It encourages ejecting or hitting the escape pods, which itself gives a reason for your org to have a SAR team in addition to a medical team. It gives a reason for oxy pens outside of prison escapes, and forces you to make more hard choices about your loadout before your leave. Sick of seeing traders in a white-suit? Thank the current destruction meta. Is the area denial effect of the HH pretty much useless? What if the pilot ejected in a hot zone because that's preferable to the death penalty and now the med ship needs to get in without getting their shit handed to them? Suddenly a km or so of area denial sounds real, real good. Fights in asteroid belts, even friendly ones, are actually risky. Especially if distos can cause misfires in addition to shutdowns, as they probably should. It gives more license for differentiating security levels between zones. After all, Sol, with it's resources, can probably afford to ban everything but distos. Stanton probably doesn't want an ArcCorp exec getting his shit handed to him during a press conference from ballistics that were fired from a hammerhead in a battle 30 years ago, so those are out, but it's a little too dangerous to not allow pilots to carry at least a couple of energy weapons. Lawless zones are lawless zones. PVPers probably go with a mixed loadout. If the friendly disto fight turns out not so friendly, they can activate the one or two energies they equipped and permanently disable an engine or two. Leave the idiot to his own devices. Even in today's systems, carrying a couple of weapons and turning them off frees some extra mag in the remaining ones, blunting the penalty some for mixing your loadout without robbing you of the choice entirely. Do you remember all the bunkers rendered inaccessible by the husks of ships after 3.18? Not a problem, and no need for a silly cleanup mechanic if ships just don't die all that often. Indeed, a disto meta makes salvaging a more PVP-competitive game loop, gives actual value to large claims (or the intel on battle sites). Disto meta means consequences can actually be added, which means that stupid things like hard armistice can finally start to go away. It could be the best thing to happen to the game in a long time. It could be the best thing to happen to PVP in a long time. At the least, it's certainly got a lot more interesting possibilities than the nerfed arcade flight model we seem to be careening towards. Also, this problem is stupid easy to fix in AC: Just add rules to the game modes. Disto only fights, no disto fights, mixed fights. Hell, CIG should probably actually do this ASAP and put in all sorts of crazy options just to see what people find interesting, engaging, and fun. Missiles only? No missles? size 1s only? Lights only? Heavies only? Capitals only? I mean, the possibilities are really endless, and even with a small population it should be pretty obvious what people like doing and what they don't. AC is just the simulator mode anyway. What use is a simulator if you can't simulate scenarios to see the results? CIG needs to make disabling as or more satisfying than boom so that the playerbase can form more complex ideas about win conditions than boom = win. Shit, look how much fun it was flying around with that stupid Suckerpuch Blue today and shutting people off. Doesn't that make the day a W? Take your crappy AC fight. What if you think of it as a boxing match where you won 3/5, and then murdered him at the end for some reason? (Or whatever, I was listening to you talk, not watching the fight that closely.) Seems like a W to me, and a lot of fun. The only thing missing here is some reward for the disable beyond 500 points you don't care about. As another side effect, the harder you push disto meta, the wider your "PVP slider" for the whole game, the more room you have to implement various consequences, all implemented in a way that's immersive, natural, and fun, without any actual slider to select, or any stupid game rules like hard armistice, all in one happy fake universe that ranges from lawless to carebare. A space for everyone and everyone's game style. And all still with the possibility of flying a fleet of kitted ballistics ships to Earth and messing shit up. You know I'm right. Bow to your new disto meta overlords!
I did some testing with ships that can outrun everyone else and the time it took to get my shields to start regenerating again was always around 2 minutes, which is BS. Why would I stay in the fight without any shields for 2 minutes? Of course I won't. And that's fine in the PU but not in the AC, cause then nobody will play AC anymore.
I thought ballistics was the meta. Distortions are what the former UEE emperor was thinking about when he decreed all ships must be armed even non-combat ships. It's all I use on the Prospector and Vulture because I can kill with the miner/salvager if I don't want to run and my go to suggestion for all non-combat ships/pilots. Distortions also are not random what it shuts down anymore. They have splash damage and only affect the systems in the splash area once shields are down, but a fighter is small so splash probably covers most of it. There's also bugs with them still. The splash damage is meant to be big enough to penetrate larger ships, but they maybe need to scale it with the weapon size better. I took out a 600i in my Vulture by aiming for the rear area where the power plant is. Shooting the nose his weapons and power never went down so rear shots was the only way to get them down. In your example you may be too loaded with distortions and not enough damage DPS. A pair of S3 is more than enough distortion damage. Engineering gameplay needs to get here because it will have a counter to distortions if someone force reboots the device affected to shave off the 5 minutes to seconds. Once armor is also in fighters won't be penetrating larger armor without an antiship weapon so if they disable it, it's a boarding action. Distortion meta duelist fighters are also not the best benchmark for all of ship combat. Optimizing duelist builds usually ruins games. For PvE Vanguards quad s2 and a fixed S5 light strike laser cannon in pretty sweet and ok at PvP.
I agree this is a problem. It's not fun. There are many ways to solve this. I think distortion weapons should be AOE and affect the attacker as well as the target. This makes it fair and encourages more ships to work together and coordinate.
One thing I don't understand is do people learn about distortion repeaters just now? Those have been in the game for a very long time. I've been using distortion (and I'm sure many people also) for quite a while. So why only now the community has this surprised Pikachu face?
One more great video, congratulations!!!! But I have a question. What is the best balance between laser and distortion to stop (killing or turning off) the other ship? Tks!!!
Best solution would be to just remove the ability for distortion of any kind, (EMP included) to affect shields. Basically have it so that you need to chew the shields down with weapons before distortion even can reach components. on top of that, decrease the radius of impact so that you basically need to aim in proximity to the physical position of the components you want to disable. for bigger ships this opens up for more future emerging gameplay in component maintainance/hotswapping. For smaller ships, it still requires you to have good DPS against decent shields, thus making a 80/20 distortion build struggle with stronger shields. Another benefit of this would be that it would be an incentive for teamplay. as you stated but the other way around. one of a pair could go full distortion the other one full damage. unless the shields are down distortions are useless, but when they are, the target is in trouble. It also opens up for more active shield management, both in priority but also directions on bigger ships. This would IMO be the best immidiate balance change they can do to distortions. 🤔
{this lengthy comment is additive, not argumentative} your thinking of this as a fighter pilot looking to find and end a fight quickly. i come to this channel for insight in piloting a fighter effectively and this video is great for the fighter prospective. this change isn't for fighter pilots. this change is for pirates who want a ships haul intact for boarding and egress of cargo and large ships like cargo or capital ships who want a chance at surviving and the chance at making a stand by deploying the on board fighters or having a chance at living long enough to spool a jump point. in your example at 10:30 you talk about disabling a ship with heavy armor and chewing on them for 20 minutes and yes while that is an annoyance for the gang of fighters initially it gives the defending party a chance to "scramble the jets" and engineers (in future gameplay) to man their stations and get systems operational. engineers wont always be in the component bays and pilots in a capital ship capable of deploying fighters wont always be in their cockpits ready when they get engaged theyre most likely going to be in the livery's or chow halls of the ships. 11:25 you say "if i want to disable that ship specifically to board it, i should have that option" and you do with these changes. if youre looking to quickly end a fight after you disable someone this is a great opportunity for the gladiator and her s5 torps to maybe have a place in the field of warfare. the time to kill should always be longer than the time to disable if based only by what each of those words mean. 14:33 this is mainly who distortions are for and is the side of the coin where my main talking points originate from so we do not disagree as you are making the same points to a degree. to sum up ballistics have highest ttk, low ammo stores (give and take), energy weapons are a good all rounder, and distortions are highly effective at their job like ballistics just on the opposite end of the spectrum. sorry for the essay pilots. o7
Those who started playing Star Citizen 4-5 years ago vividly remember how fantastic PVP was in the game, largely thanks to the variety of weapons. The worst that could happen was reducing combat to the use of laser repeaters with identical stats. And if you recall, there was a time when attritions on overheat did more damage, and Pyroburst shotguns helped get rid of the pesky flies who'd buzz right under your nose with their laser repeaters. The weapon stats included different values for projectile speed and range. And EMP guns, capable of knocking out several opponents in one go, added even more thrilling gameplay. The worst that could happen in the game was the AvengerheckinOne factor. "Oh no, I got killed by a Pyroburst! They need to be nerfed immediately!" Damn those shotguns, which should, in principle, do more damage up close than your laser repeaters! This urgently calls for a 20-minute video that a bunch of newcomers will sign off on, then CIG notices and nerfs the shotguns to the point where using them becomes pointless. The same happened with EMP and ballistics, now with Distortion. Why? Because a very narrow-minded person is trying to impose his playstyle on others. Let's now nerf Time To Disable once again in favor of laser repeaters... Or maybe enough of this? Thus, PVP in this game is doomed as long as the community likes videos with utterly idiotic suggestions that completely kill the diversity in the game, and with it, the game itself.
he is completely right though on the fact that distortion weapons leaves the other player completely unprotected. There should be ways to counter it or the distortion should work differently, causing malfunctions or delays in the performance of spacecraft's systems. He is raising attention to a problem and that is the right thing to do. It is CIG's fault that they deal with the problem in the fastest way possible - nerf or buff. Taking the current state of the game - I don't blame them, I am confident that ship weapons are going to get a massive rework that will make all of them different. The whole story of problems is connected to other parts of game too - armour is a good example. Currently light fighters are a complete meta, but the ones that are limited to small size weapons will have reduced damage against larger targets. Snubs are insane, but they will take their place in the food chain as the devs shape the game and get closer to the intended design. The decisions the devs made so far are just damage control actions to make the game less frustrating. 10 mins in a fight of which half of the time you don't fight is frustrating and gets boring. A fight when you get your weapons disabled very fast and can't do anything is frustrating. Is it because A1 posted this or other videos? No, it is because the distortion weapons are unbalanced and the way the weapon affects the ship is not well designed. Read other comments, people have some great ideas how to make distortion weapons interesting without making them weak or obsolete.
it utterly breaks CIG's stated "realism" intent. If there were a weapon system this effective in universe, mitigation/redundancy/countermeasures would be required on all combat ships. From a game play perspective it stops the fight before it gets past opening moves. Bottom line it needs a serious nerf.
Well, honestly the title of this video should be "light fighters meta" as well... 😂 cos it only applies to small shield ships mainly. Also the solution is proper ships components! CIG normalized all those... military components should have high resistance. Shutdown/stun locks is part of pvp, frustration is part of pvp imho. The frustrating fight you showed was fun to watch 😅
Distortions shouldn't exist in the game. I used them also. They are not fun and I feel ashamed to use them. They are for cowards. There are ships with emp for distortion damage with their emp. Just remove distortions and make the game skill based again
Yea i have fallen to this so many times. It really pisses me off some times. but if you cant beat them join them imma be making a distortion build because have ran into players with less skill disable me and im just a sitting duck.
One big thing I'd like is counterplay. Like putting power into a system massively increases the time for it to purge distortion More component resistances. You can take slightly worse components or components prone to overheating because they're insulated against distortion.
@@TokonF Yeah I would just love some way to have it that when in distorted there's something I can do to make the recovery much faster. So its more a case of disengage, purge and come back in.
Not sure how I feel about time to disable vs time to kill. As a player that generally would prefer to disable vs kill, I like the idea of being able to disable you before you can kill me as long as I can get away. To me, there are two purposes behind distortion: 1) defensive player that just wants a chance to get away from the fight, and run to play another day. 2) the bounty hunter that is trying for a "live" bounty. In which case you absolutely need to have a ship that can disable before getting killed (either by tanking more damage, doing more distortion, or out maneuvering the enemy - bring the right tools and tactics to the fight). I suppose you could also argue that distortion could provide a tactical advantage to role base team play too - but I am limiting this to a more one-on-one discussion. To summarize, if you don't want to kill the enemy you should use distortion... so it should at least allow you a fighting chance to achieve that goal... so maybe equal time is appropriate, with the pilot skill determining which play style wins. In the end, we will not know until we have a chance to test things out. Side Note: Distortion needs to disable long enough for a bounty hunter to fully disable their prey (without killing - most likely by using distortion to disable, then physical weapons to sub-target items until the ship cannot fight or run away), then be able to board the ship and capture the crew/pilot alive. In the case of fighters without interiors, that means maybe having to hack or cut the individual out of the ship. Once the new damage system is in, I doubt weapons will be effective on anything that is significantly larger than you on the battlefield. You may be able to destroy sub-target items like turrets, etc. & maybe cause the ship to be "dead in the water" but ultimately you will not be able to pierce the hull to kill the crew (outside them suffocating due to life support shutdown) or cause a catastrophic explosion to destroy the ship. The ships may be "out of the fight" for a while, but they will NOT be "destroyed" as such. If they have a good (engineering) team on board, such a ship should still get up and running again if at least the minimal systems can be repaired before life support runs out - and limp "home" (worst case, call for a tow). As a smaller ship, you may "win" the fight in that you disable a larger ship, but you may not be able to "destroy" it as such. Significantly larger ships will simply be unaffected by smaller ships, unless they are absolutely mobbed by larger numbers that keep it out of the fight long enough - but never actually kill it. If they let up the pressure at all the larger ships will simply recover and become operational again. Another side note: I am wondering if/when CIG will introduce a mechanic that has direct affect on the pilot/crew? Something that is specifically designed to disable the pilot/crew (balanced of course). Something that could disable or disorient without actually causing damage to the ship or person directly. Possibly, something that just temporarily blinds, or dazes you, etc. but has no other affect. Perhaps some of the ship hacking could produce such an effect via messing with the life support or other systems? I'm always looking for alternate ways to "win" the day while avoiding direct confrontation.
I disagree with the time to disable being longer than the time to kill. I do however think that distortion damage should not do direct damage to the shielding. If this was the case, bringing distortion would be an investment that would only benefit you once the shields were taken down and it would be a large net DPS loss. This would mean distortion would still have benefits other than the memes but you would have to do more initial work to make capitalize on them.
I like this idea. Maybe also have the distortion damage take out less essential systems first so: life support, quantum drive, coolers, thrusters, shields(that are already down), then weapons and powerplant.
I kinda like a lore idea that distortion weapons would be much more available across the board because distortions would solve so many issues: you don't have every yahoo armed with real weapons and any issues in combat would be more likely to be non-lethal. UEE doesn't really need to regulate non-lethal weapons whereas they might be a bit upset about all those Size 9 torps you keep hauling into Pyro. You would know right away the intention of the person attacking you: if they come with lasers and ballistics they probably aren't interested in your cargo. Also if you disable another ship because you mistook them as hostile, they're probably going to be annoyed at a delay in going about their business rather than running out of the nearest Kel-to to call their Org/UEE/Lawyer after you blew them up.
Couldn't agree more with your analysis and suggestions for improvement. I love the idea of distortion weapons, and I think they should have their place, but the time to disable weapons right now is a big problem. It forces PvP into a singular effective strategy and is simply not fun.
One way to make distortion disabling very interesting and situational is to have distortion damage keep adding power to the target ship. This extra power will eventually overload the target ships power system, but in the buildup time it will cause enemy laser guns stronger. Keeps distortion in lore and makes applying distortion valuable but dangerous, and that danger can be mitigated if you're aware of the target's load out.
I tend to disagree for several reasons. 1- In a certain way, TTD also exists with "conventional weapons" like lasers and ballistics, and is much quicker than TKK. It's when you lose an engine or a weapon due to the damage you have taken to a part of your ship. "Conventional TDD" is far more efficient than distorsion TDD since it is permanent (you do not recover from a lost part of your ship) and it can happen even before losing your shields (ballistics). On many ships, losing an engine is equivalent to death and is far more critical than having your weapons temporarily disabled. 2- I do not see any situation where it is more interesting to disable the oppnent rather than just killing him (except for piracy but that is a different gameplay, and boarding a disabled ship brings the victorious assailant in a situation he has roughy 50% chances to lose). What is the advantage of temporarily disabling an opponent over just killing him? Especially in fights involving several ships. You want to get rid of the oponents as fast as possible. Hence it makes sence that TDD is faster than TTK. 3- During the time you apply distorsion damage to enemy guns, the enemy is supposed to hit you and damage your hull as well. So if he desengages several times to recover from your distorsion, in the long run, he will have the upper hand since you do not recover from the damage you take to your hull ofc. So O m not sure distorsions are so PP of the oponent breaks combat and comes back several times It s kust a different way of fighting. 4- Currently, TTK is faster than time to completely disable a ship, in my opinion. 5- to those who object that distorsions should not be able to disable Hammerheads and big ships: that should never happen if the ship is manned, given the power of the turrets with full capacitors. The real danger and balance issue for big ships is not distorsion, it's torpedos (especially when the bomber - retaliator - has more HP than the Hammerhead...).
I really think TTD should be dynamically impacted by a ships level of armor/integrity. A fresh hammerhead or redeemer like listed as an example should require a **ton** of distortion to disable. Not impossible, but enough to make you really consider your groups loadouts if thats what you really want to do. Take that same Hammerhead/Redeemer thats already been chewed up over the course of several fights, suddenly it has much less distortion resistance in those damaged sections. Not sure how feasible that is or what CIG actually intends to do, but having armor (among other factors like component type, upgrades, etc) act as a counter to initial distortion could make people much more hesitant to automatically pick distortions unless their intended targets were less armored civilian vessels... like hauling ships.
Other option is distortion armor like physical armor. Seems silly that a light fighter can disable a capital or sub capital, at least as quickly as they do currently.
@johnboyd9713 True, S2s in general or even S3 distortion repeaters would be really odd being able to disable primary components on really large ships. Maybe they could disable a turret or exterior component, but that should be about it.
Similar to what you said, I'd like to see distortions changed to instead of quickly disabling a ship's components, it causes them to malfunction instead. As an example, your lasers will fire erratically, your shields might let some laser damage pass through & not effectively blocking the damage. Your targeting system struggles to keep track of your target etc. This all happens up until the point that enough distortion is applied to eventually shut down the system completely, which should be longer than the time to kill. So a skilled pilot that can evade shots & land shots still has a good chance to stay in the fight if they choose to. Then as a second part to that, the larger your target vs your weapon size, the longer these effects will take to be applied. An Arrow with 2 size 1 distortions should almost not be able to disable a Hammerhead as an example. You'll need multiple Arrows to be able to apply enough distortion to disrupt the Hammerhead. Another interesting mechanic could be to have different shield generators. So you could for example get a shield generator that is effective at blocking distortion lasers, but not as effective against normal lasers, and combinations of it on a scale. So now you can start changing your whole ship loadout based on what you think you might encounter.
If you're fighting a hammerhead with "only a few fighters" and none of them are Eclipses or Ares, you shouldn't be able to kill it. Knock it out? Sure, I suppose an argument can be made for that, but if when ship armor comes, they should never be threatened by a small group of a handful of light and medium fighters. If every fighter has distortions, then its absolutely reasonable for the HH to get disabled, but not for a full EMP duration, that recovery should be extremely quick, because its simply not a Capital gun disabling it. That also means they should be going through some absolutely bonkers maneuvers to get it disabled. HH's are anti-starfighter corvettes and they are absolutely horrid at their jobs at the moment. A group of light fighters shouldn't be able to overcome a HH that's fully crewed unless the corvette is legitimately out of ammo or already damaged by one of the bigger ships you're escorting.
I would just copy CoD Warzone's approach to an extent, where if hit the armor is damaged but all the weapons are intact, thus one will be extremely vulnerable to enemy fire but at least be able to shoot back. One way to apply this to SC, if i am hit with distortion guns, i should have a choice. Since i have less power i can either have my shields up or be able to use my weapons but not both. This would mean if i am confident i can continue the fight especially if the enemy ship is also damaged, me hoping that the next shot will destroy the enemy ship.
I don't like the fact it can turn off weapons. It should maybe slow them down. And maybe have less effect on ballistics, given they use less electronics. It might also need the ability to have a choice what your distortions are tuned for, giving e.g. a distortion setup only full weapon disable abilities, if other effects are minimized. I dislike too heavy roles on certain ships, instead it should be configuration, and some ships should just be better at certain things. But for the sake of emergent gameplay, so new mechanics rising to counter enemy strategies, the game should keep it's focus on modules over roles.
Yeah, I feel distortion should always be inferior to outright kill - it should be a tool used to capture bounties alive once this game loop is ingame, not "spece frost magic".
@@Telesto_Timelost Well, self destruct should be a choice. If someone wants to low their own ship it's LESS intrusive than other players destroying them - but I agree, once the ship is down it should not be able, it would make th mechanic make a lot more sense in terms of capturing (bounties OR cargo). If it was 100% implemented I'd even argue soft kils hsould be nerfed to destroy SOME cargo unlike it is ATM, so people would have a reason to use (the then weaker than lethal weaponry) distortion options.
@@Tentaclthat’s what i mean. Once shut down it shouldn’t be able to initiate self destruct. But tbh I don’t know why that even is a choice. Self destruct provides no benefit towards gameplay other than annoying pirates
@@Telesto_Timelost i think it's fair play - if you can deny other player his game loop and waste his time, he can also waste your time. But yeah, EMPing the ship should turn every systrm off, this too.
Honestly this has always been around it would just work from patch to patch but technically not really new. I think CIG should leave it but make certain shields and power planets have a lower percentage of getting knocked out by distortions. Hell without distortions an arrow or gladius does 1 pass on me and my shields go down instantly is more of a problem imo. I mean all weapons need some type of shine. I think the Attritions meta was the worst and most annoying in the game before this it was GG when someone overclocked their loadout.
Only three minutes in and I hate hearing that it's meta right now. I've always planned on going distortion heavy and a meta now just means they'll get nerfed before the game is even out.
Man, I couldnt agree more. This what ive been saying. Distortion guns should be for special applications not general combat. And the sound distortions make is annoyingly high pitched.
The Rings III we've been waiting for - thanks for shedding light on this. The distortion meta in dogfighting is pretty bad, even when it's fun to be on the winning side of an engagement. It creates really bad gameplay, and boring fights. Another good suggestion I've heard: remove distortion repeaters from the game entirely. Disto cannons only that are mostly ineffective against maneuverable fighters, but good tools for disabling larger vessels. But if we need disto weapons to be effective against fighters, as a tool for bounty hunting v2 when we need to take in our bounty alive possibly, guns should never turn off before a full shutdown. It's bad gameplay if if a few shots means you can take away your opponent's ability to fight back.
Distortions and repeaters/laser cannons should remain allowable in the current mixed load outs. My suggestion is that you have to “choose” which weapon system your power supply will power. Switching between each system will be met with a short 8 (or more) second delay before the selected weapon system begins to recharge/reload. With master modes, this will allow the distorted ship to recover if hit with a distortion payload while nerfing the mixed load out. You can choose to disable the ship for boarding purposes or switch for killing but be met with that penalty. Same reload penalty if switching from distortion to laser to physical. Now you must be decisive in your decision on how to end the fight. You either disable, or destroy.
Easy solution is stop disabling anything until full disable and full disable should be 1.25x of regular TTK. Makes disabling a skill based endeavor and would make bounty hunting something skill based and allow hirer rewards for "alive" target turn in
I totally feel this, any mechanic that isnt fun shouldnt be a mechanic. Any mechanic implemented should improve options for gameplay not reduce them. Dogfights shouldnt be drawn out back and forths. I would just make Distortions do same TTK/D as lasers but used as a non-lethal weapon that wont destroy the ship... simple. A chess game where you cant take peices off the board would be shit (in most cases).
Distortion will be handy for bounties, and taking people alive. I do think TTD needs to be tweaked, as it is more powerful than TTK atm. TTK should be the fastest route. What I would like to see is Distortion affecting engines, and ship speed/agility.
100 pct. i think distortion loadouts and the effects are neat, but there needs to be a balance. maybe they dont penetrate shields at all. im fine with the idea thats proposed. to make ttk the same or lower than ttd, i just want to see it evolve and not be as boring as it is.
Afaik CIG were intending to have distortion only work by directly aiming it at a component. It now seems to work wherever you're hitting the hull. Having distortion only take down shields quicker and not do anything to other components might work. Me I am strongly for distortion becoming bespoke weapons for just a couple of EW focussed ship models and not have it as an option on any regular fighters. By going that route fleet fights become more interesting and EW pilots will have to be trained / specialized in their job within the squad / fleet.
The splash damage for either the XJs or the sucker punches is so huge! You can distort yourself by shooting the walls of your hangar. I would wager all they need to do to fix them is to reduce the splash to a meter or less.
I'm late to the conversation, but realistically it makes the most sense for the TTK to be quite a bit faster than time to disable. IMO, disabling a ship should be a SKILLED thing mainly geared at size 2.5 ships and above; Anyone can kill a bounty or blow up a ship, but disabling the ship to capture the bounty/crew ALIVE and loot it's contents/cargo should be both more lucrative and difficult to pull off. Getting disabled shouldn't feel like a cheesy trick that is unfair to fight against, or a "welp... time to be a sitting duck for 10 minutes until I finally can't move or die." It should feel like "hats off to them, they're a hell of a pilot and I was just simply outclassed."
I've been saying the same to my group I've been with. Time to distort/disable is too short, and the order of which systems are lost is problematic. Losing your ability to fire back should not be the case. If I could suggest a flow/progression of which systems were disabled it would be: Quantum Drive, Shields, Coolers, Thrusters, then power plant (MFD, lights, internal doors, elevators). Stop your target from fleeing primarily. Then, just continually degrade their capabilities until we have a floating brick.
A few points first. 1. Distortions were left behind with 3.14 weapon rebalancing 2. Shorter TTD than TTK is clearly the direction that CIG is taking, for other gameplay to occur. 3. We are still waiting for a rebalance of the whole distortion damage (EMP include) I suspect that the issue is more on the fact that Distortion weapons are doing splash damages, hitting more components than expected, and disabling them without the need to aim. Still, this is an issue to have this kind of meta LIVE.
Eh, I think the distortion time to disable being higher than TTK is better. It encourages the use of bringing distortions, which discourages the use of monoboating. It also makes killing more tedious for sadists, while theoretically shifting the balance ever so slightly toward non-sadistic players. I also find you're being a little disingenuous with claiming to want skill-based gameplay. Skill-based players don't need to monoboat; min-maxing DPS is a crutch, not a skill.
I've actually recently taken distortions OFF of my ships. They're good against a lower tier pilot but incredibly frustrating against a good pilot.. they know how to dip and delay while everything comes back up. You just end up trying to follow someone for ages and it's boring. I don't even find distortions that useful in piracy tbh as they take too long to shut down large ships. It's easier to soft, breach, and "acquire"
You keep atlking about “the problem”. But I do not really see the problem. If distortion is better and laser just to finish someone of in case you DO want to kill them. Then what’s te prob? Everyone has acces to distortion right? I think the only problem indeed lays in size difference. Certain size guns should not be able to dm certain size armor/shields. That’s pretty much all that needs to be done.
How about fixing the power plant plus energy weapons meta properly. Idea: Distortion weapons disable energy weapons, shields and power plants only whilst not affecting ballistic weapons, nor turret/gimbals atleast not unit full shutdown is a better option to nerfing distortion. This would break the power plant + energy weapon meta. This would allow increased difficulty against other ships. That way mixed energy/ballistic or full ballistics become a defensive loadout, a choice. There absolutely needs to be a defensive meta to counter an offensive meta. The game shouldn't have ONLY an offensive meta, as has been the case since the start.
I am curious for how long this is considered a meta, as I've heard a long time ago about it, I've tried it, but went back to lethal weapons because I like the KABOOM!!! Many have had great suggestions, such as having the dist weapons partly affect components, gradually, which will not make the one affected by these weapons unprotected. And it makes sense for the TTD to be longer than TTK, cause catching someone alive is more difficult and should be paid more. Thus these weapons will still be viable, as they could slow shield regen rate and weapon regen rate, may be cause trouble for the aim system and coolers, make ballistics fire with a slower fire rate or smth like that, but not make a lamb for the slaughter out of your foe. Great vid and I really enjoyed some of the comments, some good ideas over there!
The problem is what about component damage by ballistics and or laser weapons? With all we know the TTK is only going up in the future, components can and will be damaged by weapons fire during a fight especially with the precision aiming... therefore I just think there is just no place for distortion weapons anymore besides an actuall EMP like the Scorpius and others bring to the field (otherwise those would also be completly redundant)
Make DC only operable if the users' shields are down. And or make DC damage the users' shields if he chooses to use them while shields are up. DC should really only be used to buy a stealth operator, IMO. This would add to the silent running aspect of gameplay again, IMO.
I'm trying to but I haven't gotten into PvP that deep yet, so I've only seen someone talk about distortions being op in chat once.. That was until I left GH in my blade once. Didn't notice the dude, he just sprayed me with distortions from behind and by the time I had turned to face him I couldn't fire my weapons anymore. He was in a Super Hornet and don't get me wrong now, I know I'm not an ace pilot but I honestly think he was a worse pilot than me as I could dodge most of his shots, but in the end he won because I just couldn't shoot back. The cherry on top of it was when he said that "even if it was a fair fight I would've beat you".. But of course he backed out when I told him to fight me proper then. Now I know it's my fault as I didn't wait for my shields to charge and so on, but I was honestly not expecting a fight as it was late and people were chill.. In the end though I learned my lesson.
I don't think Distortion weapons should have ANY use outside of disabling ships. No combat advantage whatsoever. Only a choice on how that combat will end. Death or disabled.
The fix IMO would be to have components with attributes that matter. Distortion resistance, laser resistance, ballistic resistance etc. Your build should reflect what you're doing for its intended purpose, not just what the meta is.
Using distortion weapons should put you at a huge disadvantage in an even fight. Anyone bringing a distortion loadout to a difficult fight should lose. Badly. So who would ever want to use distortions then? Bounty hunters that need to capture their target alive to get paid. Police patrols chasing fleeing suspects they aren't legally allowed to use lethal force against. Pirates that want to avoid damaging cargo or components on their target ship. The navy when they can't interrogate the enemy pilot if he's dead. There are so many cases where distortion weapons can be simultaneously bad in combat and very useful. The common thread in all these scenarios is that the people using distortion weapons have a big enough advantage over their target that they could easily destroy them, but have reasons to essentially expend their advantage in order to capture intact. Distortion weapons that are optimal in combat creates problems that can't be resolved. Distortion weapons that are very weak in combat but have niche utility cases where they're used DESPITE this, make for more interesting and diverse combat scenarios, and allow for battles in which one combatant is much stronger than the other to actually be engaging and difficult. There is a clear right answer here. I think the belief that distortion weapons must be competitive in all combat scenarios or useless stems from an inability to imagine combat scenarios other than a symmetrical duel to the death.
I think upping the ammo on ballistics and immunity to distortion disabling would give some kinda cool counter-play. But we’d have to buff laser weapons in some way because there really wouldn’t be a reason to take them
It would be cool if distortion take down shields, and disables ships indefinitely instead of destroying ships. Repaired power supply and/or replaced batteries could get the ship started again. Minimal dps. It would create an amazing slot for boarding ships.
What if distortion, instead chipped away at all three points of the power triangle simultaneously, making it harder to manage the power triangle in general. This would be same same but different. It might make someone whos still got the use of their full ship stay in a fight longer cause their guns arent just clean off. But you'll feel the lack of a clip and or shields and or boost all at the same time. People would still end up disengaging to "reset" but the choice in when to do so might changing if your not resetting just to get your guns back. Then maybe when the power triangle hits the center, because youll slowly be draining from all points of the triangle the shit will completely disable. In this way if people really wanted to pirate via with distortion the more they focused on full distortion guns to really take out all pointa of power. But while dogfighting its just a different way to control the opponents
Are there any plans on doing a follow-up report on the griefers you previously covered? I think it would be cool if you did another report to discuss CIG and the community’s response to your story.
The worst part is that if you are distorted you cant reengage for a full minute, if you survive long enough to get guns back all they have to do is land a single shot and youre screwed again. some of my favorite fights have been hull battles where we both could just peck at each other keeping shields down as we scraped paint. i like the no effect till full shutdown at the same ttk, a peaceable but competitive option that works for boarding's since component dist hp is far lower than hull hp but fighter v fighter its still a competition. I just really hope it gets addressed soon. i know all components will be reworked in time but until that happens dists are a cancer upon pu pvp and have generally downgraded the experience across the board. Pretty much every pilot ive talked to say they hate that its the meta but dog eat dog you have to run it to keep up
I don't think the issue is the TTD. TTD MUST be lower than TTK, otherwise there is no point in it. I think the issue lies in the mechanics of how exactly distortions work and the mechanics of our counter measures, or lack thereof.
you could make it a skill where there is no or a significantly reduced splash damage so you need to specificly aim for componets... i undstand that would have issues with larger ships, so mabe its just a dramatic damage fall off over range, or just requires larger distortion cannons to shut down larger ships
Distortion balance will become critically important soon because of the maelstrom system as well as bounty hunting v2. Hard to capture bounties when their bleeding out and surrounded by raging fire.
Time to disable being longer than time to kill wouldn't be bad. I've been around since 3.3 and I've seen disto and emp being buffed and nerfed so many times. I think the changes in 3.14 where all ship components were homogenized solidified distos, or at least helped it. CIG could change the emp/disto resistance of the components, but they haven't touched that since 3.14, iirc. A buff to ballistic weapons could be that they aren't affected by disto weapons. Their targeting would be, and the heat management from cooler damage would, but their ability to fire wouldn't. It might bring them back slightly into the meta.
Making distortions a charge up weapon would solve the problem. This would bring it back in line with bounty hunting and disabling targets as opposed to light fighter combat usage. Having to take down a targets shields before blasting their ship with the distortion cannon with a 1.5 sec charge to disable said ship as opposed to light fighters trying to get the first distortion shot off and chasing each other's useless ships around like chickens
I am always mostly interested in many v many or 1 v many loadouts rather than 1v1. I hope whatever happens, the game balances so that 1v1 specialist loadouts are not the same as a cargo escort loadout for example! Maybe i am a dreamer 😅
So why would anyone use distortion if you can softkill the ship instead and take cargo same way? Distortion should be faster but it should eat energy more. So someone cant sustain distortion output same as with lasers.
The solution is to have localized damage and distortion would affect onlycomponent it directly hit bypassing shield... not damaging the shield... so to disable the shield you would had to land direct hit on shield generator to disable the shields
I think its fair to remove the ability of distortion guns to disable at all, and leave true disabling to EMP generators, and just have distortion guns to nuke shields faster and do no hull damage.
Imo distortion should not shut down ships but impede or overload the ships function, to the point that the defendant needs to shut down or restart the effected components. Shooting the engines with distortion should make it so it cannot input any control into it. Shooting it with weapons should make it so it takes damage and is eventually destroyed.
Honestly if u see mainly distortion weapon on ships it needs to be nerfd a little. We need ppl to a reason not to use soo mnay distortion or only distortion. Cig has never been asked to balance anything that great. It dosent help no ship has mass either .or armor
In master modes distortion would be even more op because disengaging is much harder so you won’t have the time to reset and let the distortion wear off
I personally think shield recharge shouldn't be affected at all by incoming fire, therefore a larger ship with a shield recharge rate higher than the incoming damage of some light fighter might just consider that fighter a pesky little gnat buzzing around them. However, with distortion damage, a certain amount of the damage should be mitigated by shields, then some should accumulate as heat directly to shield modules, when the coolers can no longer sink off the heat, shield module shuts down leaving no recharge on shields until module cools.. shield buffer remains but no recharge at that point. At some point we're going to have to face the reality that an ARROW is just not meant to be able to solo a hammerhead and have a snowballs chance of success.
"The odds of surviving a direct assault..."
This seems like the most well reasoned approach
Haven’t finished the video but something I was talking to my guys about is energy vs ballistic weapons and distortion. Would be a cool differentiation if you couldn’t distort ballistics.
I think you'll see equipment specified to damage types in the future. So, if you buy attrition laser repeaters in the future, they may have huge distortion resistances. Same thing with certain brands of components. That's my speculation anyway. It'll be interesting to see.
Do the Neutron weapons such as the NN-14 Cannon or the NDB-30 Repeaters, also do distortion damage?
No
Nope
All these videos so quickly! Big week! Love it!
I think there is slightly more nuance than "distos have lower time to disable" due to the reduced DPS on shields comparatively. I think I agree with all your suggestions, but I disagree that distos are better in all instances. For example, a manned scorp has so much flat damage with laser repeaters that you drill through the shields and destroy light to heavy fighters faster than if you were mixed distos trying to disable guns. I haven't calculated it, but from trialling it that's my observation. I would think the number of hardpoints (and hence the difference in DPS comparatively) matters a lot - hence the scorp seeming to perform better with 8 panthers. I do 100% agree that this should be tuned such that disabling takes longer with distos, for all the reasons you stated.
On today’s episode of “What CIG put absolutely no thought into”
When you can effectively shut them down faster than destroying them. There is no downside to running them. I love using them but they don't feel properly balanced. Id love if the was a type of emp missiles instead of lasers
Ballistics should be immune to distortions and counter them (not sure if they do or dont currently). With MM, ballistic ammo should be bumped up and make them more usable for longer durations (they are already pretty good in PU). Also distortions should be like 90% blocked by shields instead of start causing distortion damage before shields are down. You should have to shut down shields before you get to disable components.
CiG actually nerfed gun distortion hp over the last few patches from like 1100 to 700 in size 2s for example really confusing
Distortions should simply deal ZERO damage to shields.
Lasers > regular damage to shields > low damage to hull
Ballistics > low damage to shielded targets > regular damage to hull
Distortions > zero effect on shield targets > no damage to hull > distortion damage to components
All other things being equal (ie. ship type, armor, shield, etc) and both ships blazing away with 100% hits on target ballistic weapons should have a shorter TTK than energy weapons (at the cost of limited ammo supply), and distortions should have a longer TTD than laser TTK (the price you pay for being able to leave your opponent intact.)
I think in the future its going to take more then pure brut force and offensive firepower for some fights , think distortions were designed for bounty hunting were you need to disable them to take your opponent in before killing them. This still needs to be balanced witch will be more of a thing when we are in beta i think , this is a bit of the growing pains of the game as it develops, but we are supposed to see more development of bounty hunting this year so we will see what happens.
Counterpoint: Distortions should be the meta for a lot of the 'verse, and that's a good thing. If anything, the game needs the equivalent of distortions for FPS.
The vision for SC seems to be a persistent universe where death is rare but inevitable, where battle scars are formed. In the long term, death is supposed to be at least somewhat of a PITA, as is losing a ship, as is getting caught doing the crimes. If indeed CIG achieves these goals, it's going to make friendly fights a thing of the past, and losing a cargo ship or your life a lot more of a setback. That's gonna drive players away unless the unofficial/natural RoE evolves to a fight to disable rather than a fight to the death, most of the time.
Disto meta allows for harsh death and ship loss penalties to exist, which encourages the traders to negotiate, the pirates to board and steal. It encourages ejecting or hitting the escape pods, which itself gives a reason for your org to have a SAR team in addition to a medical team. It gives a reason for oxy pens outside of prison escapes, and forces you to make more hard choices about your loadout before your leave. Sick of seeing traders in a white-suit? Thank the current destruction meta. Is the area denial effect of the HH pretty much useless? What if the pilot ejected in a hot zone because that's preferable to the death penalty and now the med ship needs to get in without getting their shit handed to them? Suddenly a km or so of area denial sounds real, real good. Fights in asteroid belts, even friendly ones, are actually risky. Especially if distos can cause misfires in addition to shutdowns, as they probably should.
It gives more license for differentiating security levels between zones. After all, Sol, with it's resources, can probably afford to ban everything but distos. Stanton probably doesn't want an ArcCorp exec getting his shit handed to him during a press conference from ballistics that were fired from a hammerhead in a battle 30 years ago, so those are out, but it's a little too dangerous to not allow pilots to carry at least a couple of energy weapons. Lawless zones are lawless zones.
PVPers probably go with a mixed loadout. If the friendly disto fight turns out not so friendly, they can activate the one or two energies they equipped and permanently disable an engine or two. Leave the idiot to his own devices. Even in today's systems, carrying a couple of weapons and turning them off frees some extra mag in the remaining ones, blunting the penalty some for mixing your loadout without robbing you of the choice entirely.
Do you remember all the bunkers rendered inaccessible by the husks of ships after 3.18? Not a problem, and no need for a silly cleanup mechanic if ships just don't die all that often. Indeed, a disto meta makes salvaging a more PVP-competitive game loop, gives actual value to large claims (or the intel on battle sites).
Disto meta means consequences can actually be added, which means that stupid things like hard armistice can finally start to go away. It could be the best thing to happen to the game in a long time. It could be the best thing to happen to PVP in a long time. At the least, it's certainly got a lot more interesting possibilities than the nerfed arcade flight model we seem to be careening towards.
Also, this problem is stupid easy to fix in AC: Just add rules to the game modes. Disto only fights, no disto fights, mixed fights. Hell, CIG should probably actually do this ASAP and put in all sorts of crazy options just to see what people find interesting, engaging, and fun. Missiles only? No missles? size 1s only? Lights only? Heavies only? Capitals only? I mean, the possibilities are really endless, and even with a small population it should be pretty obvious what people like doing and what they don't. AC is just the simulator mode anyway. What use is a simulator if you can't simulate scenarios to see the results?
CIG needs to make disabling as or more satisfying than boom so that the playerbase can form more complex ideas about win conditions than boom = win. Shit, look how much fun it was flying around with that stupid Suckerpuch Blue today and shutting people off. Doesn't that make the day a W?
Take your crappy AC fight. What if you think of it as a boxing match where you won 3/5, and then murdered him at the end for some reason? (Or whatever, I was listening to you talk, not watching the fight that closely.) Seems like a W to me, and a lot of fun. The only thing missing here is some reward for the disable beyond 500 points you don't care about.
As another side effect, the harder you push disto meta, the wider your "PVP slider" for the whole game, the more room you have to implement various consequences, all implemented in a way that's immersive, natural, and fun, without any actual slider to select, or any stupid game rules like hard armistice, all in one happy fake universe that ranges from lawless to carebare. A space for everyone and everyone's game style.
And all still with the possibility of flying a fleet of kitted ballistics ships to Earth and messing shit up.
You know I'm right. Bow to your new disto meta overlords!
I did some testing with ships that can outrun everyone else and the time it took to get my shields to start regenerating again was always around 2 minutes, which is BS. Why would I stay in the fight without any shields for 2 minutes? Of course I won't.
And that's fine in the PU but not in the AC, cause then nobody will play AC anymore.
I thought ballistics was the meta. Distortions are what the former UEE emperor was thinking about when he decreed all ships must be armed even non-combat ships. It's all I use on the Prospector and Vulture because I can kill with the miner/salvager if I don't want to run and my go to suggestion for all non-combat ships/pilots. Distortions also are not random what it shuts down anymore. They have splash damage and only affect the systems in the splash area once shields are down, but a fighter is small so splash probably covers most of it. There's also bugs with them still. The splash damage is meant to be big enough to penetrate larger ships, but they maybe need to scale it with the weapon size better. I took out a 600i in my Vulture by aiming for the rear area where the power plant is. Shooting the nose his weapons and power never went down so rear shots was the only way to get them down.
In your example you may be too loaded with distortions and not enough damage DPS. A pair of S3 is more than enough distortion damage. Engineering gameplay needs to get here because it will have a counter to distortions if someone force reboots the device affected to shave off the 5 minutes to seconds. Once armor is also in fighters won't be penetrating larger armor without an antiship weapon so if they disable it, it's a boarding action. Distortion meta duelist fighters are also not the best benchmark for all of ship combat. Optimizing duelist builds usually ruins games.
For PvE Vanguards quad s2 and a fixed S5 light strike laser cannon in pretty sweet and ok at PvP.
I love your videos so much man ❤️
I agree this is a problem. It's not fun. There are many ways to solve this. I think distortion weapons should be AOE and affect the attacker as well as the target. This makes it fair and encourages more ships to work together and coordinate.
Hear hear! I too hate the disto meta, but you're handicapping yourself if you don't run it.
unfortunetly this is the truth :)
One thing I don't understand is do people learn about distortion repeaters just now? Those have been in the game for a very long time. I've been using distortion (and I'm sure many people also) for quite a while. So why only now the community has this surprised Pikachu face?
One more great video, congratulations!!!! But I have a question. What is the best balance between laser and distortion to stop (killing or turning off) the other ship? Tks!!!
Best solution would be to just remove the ability for distortion of any kind, (EMP included) to affect shields. Basically have it so that you need to chew the shields down with weapons before distortion even can reach components. on top of that, decrease the radius of impact so that you basically need to aim in proximity to the physical position of the components you want to disable. for bigger ships this opens up for more future emerging gameplay in component maintainance/hotswapping.
For smaller ships, it still requires you to have good DPS against decent shields, thus making a 80/20 distortion build struggle with stronger shields. Another benefit of this would be that it would be an incentive for teamplay. as you stated but the other way around. one of a pair could go full distortion the other one full damage. unless the shields are down distortions are useless, but when they are, the target is in trouble. It also opens up for more active shield management, both in priority but also directions on bigger ships.
This would IMO be the best immidiate balance change they can do to distortions. 🤔
{this lengthy comment is additive, not argumentative} your thinking of this as a fighter pilot looking to find and end a fight quickly. i come to this channel for insight in piloting a fighter effectively and this video is great for the fighter prospective. this change isn't for fighter pilots. this change is for pirates who want a ships haul intact for boarding and egress of cargo and large ships like cargo or capital ships who want a chance at surviving and the chance at making a stand by deploying the on board fighters or having a chance at living long enough to spool a jump point. in your example at 10:30 you talk about disabling a ship with heavy armor and chewing on them for 20 minutes and yes while that is an annoyance for the gang of fighters initially it gives the defending party a chance to "scramble the jets" and engineers (in future gameplay) to man their stations and get systems operational. engineers wont always be in the component bays and pilots in a capital ship capable of deploying fighters wont always be in their cockpits ready when they get engaged theyre most likely going to be in the livery's or chow halls of the ships. 11:25 you say "if i want to disable that ship specifically to board it, i should have that option" and you do with these changes. if youre looking to quickly end a fight after you disable someone this is a great opportunity for the gladiator and her s5 torps to maybe have a place in the field of warfare. the time to kill should always be longer than the time to disable if based only by what each of those words mean. 14:33 this is mainly who distortions are for and is the side of the coin where my main talking points originate from so we do not disagree as you are making the same points to a degree. to sum up ballistics have highest ttk, low ammo stores (give and take), energy weapons are a good all rounder, and distortions are highly effective at their job like ballistics just on the opposite end of the spectrum. sorry for the essay pilots. o7
why are my messages displaying for you the entire time XD. Agreed on the distos btw.
Distortion not beinga able to disable balistic weapons might be nice
Those who started playing Star Citizen 4-5 years ago vividly remember how fantastic PVP was in the game, largely thanks to the variety of weapons. The worst that could happen was reducing combat to the use of laser repeaters with identical stats. And if you recall, there was a time when attritions on overheat did more damage, and Pyroburst shotguns helped get rid of the pesky flies who'd buzz right under your nose with their laser repeaters. The weapon stats included different values for projectile speed and range.
And EMP guns, capable of knocking out several opponents in one go, added even more thrilling gameplay.
The worst that could happen in the game was the AvengerheckinOne factor. "Oh no, I got killed by a Pyroburst! They need to be nerfed immediately!" Damn those shotguns, which should, in principle, do more damage up close than your laser repeaters! This urgently calls for a 20-minute video that a bunch of newcomers will sign off on, then CIG notices and nerfs the shotguns to the point where using them becomes pointless.
The same happened with EMP and ballistics, now with Distortion. Why? Because a very narrow-minded person is trying to impose his playstyle on others. Let's now nerf Time To Disable once again in favor of laser repeaters... Or maybe enough of this?
Thus, PVP in this game is doomed as long as the community likes videos with utterly idiotic suggestions that completely kill the diversity in the game, and with it, the game itself.
he is completely right though on the fact that distortion weapons leaves the other player completely unprotected. There should be ways to counter it or the distortion should work differently, causing malfunctions or delays in the performance of spacecraft's systems. He is raising attention to a problem and that is the right thing to do. It is CIG's fault that they deal with the problem in the fastest way possible - nerf or buff. Taking the current state of the game - I don't blame them, I am confident that ship weapons are going to get a massive rework that will make all of them different.
The whole story of problems is connected to other parts of game too - armour is a good example. Currently light fighters are a complete meta, but the ones that are limited to small size weapons will have reduced damage against larger targets. Snubs are insane, but they will take their place in the food chain as the devs shape the game and get closer to the intended design.
The decisions the devs made so far are just damage control actions to make the game less frustrating. 10 mins in a fight of which half of the time you don't fight is frustrating and gets boring. A fight when you get your weapons disabled very fast and can't do anything is frustrating. Is it because A1 posted this or other videos? No, it is because the distortion weapons are unbalanced and the way the weapon affects the ship is not well designed. Read other comments, people have some great ideas how to make distortion weapons interesting without making them weak or obsolete.
it utterly breaks CIG's stated "realism" intent. If there were a weapon system this effective in universe, mitigation/redundancy/countermeasures would be required on all combat ships.
From a game play perspective it stops the fight before it gets past opening moves. Bottom line it needs a serious nerf.
Well, honestly the title of this video should be "light fighters meta" as well... 😂 cos it only applies to small shield ships mainly.
Also the solution is proper ships components! CIG normalized all those... military components should have high resistance. Shutdown/stun locks is part of pvp, frustration is part of pvp imho. The frustrating fight you showed was fun to watch 😅
Distortion fighting is designed to take your opponent’s ability to fight back. This is far piracy gameplay not pvp.
Laughes in full power size 2 shield😂
The lip-syncing is terrible.
?
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooh....... I just got that LOL!!LOLLOL
@@Avenger__One 😋
Distortions shouldn't exist in the game. I used them also. They are not fun and I feel ashamed to use them. They are for cowards. There are ships with emp for distortion damage with their emp. Just remove distortions and make the game skill based again
Yea i have fallen to this so many times. It really pisses me off some times. but if you cant beat them join them imma be making a distortion build because have ran into players with less skill disable me and im just a sitting duck.
One big thing I'd like is counterplay.
Like putting power into a system massively increases the time for it to purge distortion
More component resistances. You can take slightly worse components or components prone to overheating because they're insulated against distortion.
Honestly this. Or batteries which CIG said is coming. Make the batteries able to help purge distortion.
@@TokonF
Yeah I would just love some way to have it that when in distorted there's something I can do to make the recovery much faster. So its more a case of disengage, purge and come back in.
Not sure how I feel about time to disable vs time to kill. As a player that generally would prefer to disable vs kill, I like the idea of being able to disable you before you can kill me as long as I can get away. To me, there are two purposes behind distortion: 1) defensive player that just wants a chance to get away from the fight, and run to play another day. 2) the bounty hunter that is trying for a "live" bounty. In which case you absolutely need to have a ship that can disable before getting killed (either by tanking more damage, doing more distortion, or out maneuvering the enemy - bring the right tools and tactics to the fight). I suppose you could also argue that distortion could provide a tactical advantage to role base team play too - but I am limiting this to a more one-on-one discussion. To summarize, if you don't want to kill the enemy you should use distortion... so it should at least allow you a fighting chance to achieve that goal... so maybe equal time is appropriate, with the pilot skill determining which play style wins. In the end, we will not know until we have a chance to test things out.
Side Note: Distortion needs to disable long enough for a bounty hunter to fully disable their prey (without killing - most likely by using distortion to disable, then physical weapons to sub-target items until the ship cannot fight or run away), then be able to board the ship and capture the crew/pilot alive. In the case of fighters without interiors, that means maybe having to hack or cut the individual out of the ship.
Once the new damage system is in, I doubt weapons will be effective on anything that is significantly larger than you on the battlefield. You may be able to destroy sub-target items like turrets, etc. & maybe cause the ship to be "dead in the water" but ultimately you will not be able to pierce the hull to kill the crew (outside them suffocating due to life support shutdown) or cause a catastrophic explosion to destroy the ship. The ships may be "out of the fight" for a while, but they will NOT be "destroyed" as such. If they have a good (engineering) team on board, such a ship should still get up and running again if at least the minimal systems can be repaired before life support runs out - and limp "home" (worst case, call for a tow). As a smaller ship, you may "win" the fight in that you disable a larger ship, but you may not be able to "destroy" it as such. Significantly larger ships will simply be unaffected by smaller ships, unless they are absolutely mobbed by larger numbers that keep it out of the fight long enough - but never actually kill it. If they let up the pressure at all the larger ships will simply recover and become operational again.
Another side note: I am wondering if/when CIG will introduce a mechanic that has direct affect on the pilot/crew? Something that is specifically designed to disable the pilot/crew (balanced of course). Something that could disable or disorient without actually causing damage to the ship or person directly. Possibly, something that just temporarily blinds, or dazes you, etc. but has no other affect. Perhaps some of the ship hacking could produce such an effect via messing with the life support or other systems? I'm always looking for alternate ways to "win" the day while avoiding direct confrontation.
Blame R4m…they are so butt hurt about the possibility of losing to a scrub it’s all they use
Yea they been chaseing me around in AC with FULL disto loadouts, no doubt trying really hard too "ruin" a stream by makeing me perma defensive
I disagree with the time to disable being longer than the time to kill. I do however think that distortion damage should not do direct damage to the shielding.
If this was the case, bringing distortion would be an investment that would only benefit you once the shields were taken down and it would be a large net DPS loss.
This would mean distortion would still have benefits other than the memes but you would have to do more initial work to make capitalize on them.
I like this idea. Maybe also have the distortion damage take out less essential systems first so: life support, quantum drive, coolers, thrusters, shields(that are already down), then weapons and powerplant.
I kinda like a lore idea that distortion weapons would be much more available across the board because distortions would solve so many issues: you don't have every yahoo armed with real weapons and any issues in combat would be more likely to be non-lethal. UEE doesn't really need to regulate non-lethal weapons whereas they might be a bit upset about all those Size 9 torps you keep hauling into Pyro.
You would know right away the intention of the person attacking you: if they come with lasers and ballistics they probably aren't interested in your cargo. Also if you disable another ship because you mistook them as hostile, they're probably going to be annoyed at a delay in going about their business rather than running out of the nearest Kel-to to call their Org/UEE/Lawyer after you blew them up.
Couldn't agree more with your analysis and suggestions for improvement. I love the idea of distortion weapons, and I think they should have their place, but the time to disable weapons right now is a big problem. It forces PvP into a singular effective strategy and is simply not fun.
One way to make distortion disabling very interesting and situational is to have distortion damage keep adding power to the target ship. This extra power will eventually overload the target ships power system, but in the buildup time it will cause enemy laser guns stronger. Keeps distortion in lore and makes applying distortion valuable but dangerous, and that danger can be mitigated if you're aware of the target's load out.
I tend to disagree for several reasons.
1- In a certain way, TTD also exists with "conventional weapons" like lasers and ballistics, and is much quicker than TKK. It's when you lose an engine or a weapon due to the damage you have taken to a part of your ship. "Conventional TDD" is far more efficient than distorsion TDD since it is permanent (you do not recover from a lost part of your ship) and it can happen even before losing your shields (ballistics). On many ships, losing an engine is equivalent to death and is far more critical than having your weapons temporarily disabled.
2- I do not see any situation where it is more interesting to disable the oppnent rather than just killing him (except for piracy but that is a different gameplay, and boarding a disabled ship brings the victorious assailant in a situation he has roughy 50% chances to lose). What is the advantage of temporarily disabling an opponent over just killing him? Especially in fights involving several ships. You want to get rid of the oponents as fast as possible. Hence it makes sence that TDD is faster than TTK.
3- During the time you apply distorsion damage to enemy guns, the enemy is supposed to hit you and damage your hull as well. So if he desengages several times to recover from your distorsion, in the long run, he will have the upper hand since you do not recover from the damage you take to your hull ofc. So O m not sure distorsions are so PP of the oponent breaks combat and comes back several times
It s kust a different way of fighting.
4- Currently, TTK is faster than time to completely disable a ship, in my opinion.
5- to those who object that distorsions should not be able to disable Hammerheads and big ships: that should never happen if the ship is manned, given the power of the turrets with full capacitors. The real danger and balance issue for big ships is not distorsion, it's torpedos (especially when the bomber - retaliator - has more HP than the Hammerhead...).
I really think TTD should be dynamically impacted by a ships level of armor/integrity. A fresh hammerhead or redeemer like listed as an example should require a **ton** of distortion to disable. Not impossible, but enough to make you really consider your groups loadouts if thats what you really want to do. Take that same Hammerhead/Redeemer thats already been chewed up over the course of several fights, suddenly it has much less distortion resistance in those damaged sections.
Not sure how feasible that is or what CIG actually intends to do, but having armor (among other factors like component type, upgrades, etc) act as a counter to initial distortion could make people much more hesitant to automatically pick distortions unless their intended targets were less armored civilian vessels... like hauling ships.
Other option is distortion armor like physical armor. Seems silly that a light fighter can disable a capital or sub capital, at least as quickly as they do currently.
@johnboyd9713 True, S2s in general or even S3 distortion repeaters would be really odd being able to disable primary components on really large ships. Maybe they could disable a turret or exterior component, but that should be about it.
Similar to what you said, I'd like to see distortions changed to instead of quickly disabling a ship's components, it causes them to malfunction instead. As an example, your lasers will fire erratically, your shields might let some laser damage pass through & not effectively blocking the damage. Your targeting system struggles to keep track of your target etc. This all happens up until the point that enough distortion is applied to eventually shut down the system completely, which should be longer than the time to kill. So a skilled pilot that can evade shots & land shots still has a good chance to stay in the fight if they choose to.
Then as a second part to that, the larger your target vs your weapon size, the longer these effects will take to be applied. An Arrow with 2 size 1 distortions should almost not be able to disable a Hammerhead as an example. You'll need multiple Arrows to be able to apply enough distortion to disrupt the Hammerhead.
Another interesting mechanic could be to have different shield generators. So you could for example get a shield generator that is effective at blocking distortion lasers, but not as effective against normal lasers, and combinations of it on a scale. So now you can start changing your whole ship loadout based on what you think you might encounter.
If you're fighting a hammerhead with "only a few fighters" and none of them are Eclipses or Ares, you shouldn't be able to kill it. Knock it out? Sure, I suppose an argument can be made for that, but if when ship armor comes, they should never be threatened by a small group of a handful of light and medium fighters. If every fighter has distortions, then its absolutely reasonable for the HH to get disabled, but not for a full EMP duration, that recovery should be extremely quick, because its simply not a Capital gun disabling it. That also means they should be going through some absolutely bonkers maneuvers to get it disabled. HH's are anti-starfighter corvettes and they are absolutely horrid at their jobs at the moment. A group of light fighters shouldn't be able to overcome a HH that's fully crewed unless the corvette is legitimately out of ammo or already damaged by one of the bigger ships you're escorting.
I would just copy CoD Warzone's approach to an extent, where if hit the armor is damaged but all the weapons are intact, thus one will be extremely vulnerable to enemy fire but at least be able to shoot back. One way to apply this to SC, if i am hit with distortion guns, i should have a choice. Since i have less power i can either have my shields up or be able to use my weapons but not both. This would mean if i am confident i can continue the fight especially if the enemy ship is also damaged, me hoping that the next shot will destroy the enemy ship.
I don't like the fact it can turn off weapons. It should maybe slow them down. And maybe have less effect on ballistics, given they use less electronics. It might also need the ability to have a choice what your distortions are tuned for, giving e.g. a distortion setup only full weapon disable abilities, if other effects are minimized.
I dislike too heavy roles on certain ships, instead it should be configuration, and some ships should just be better at certain things. But for the sake of emergent gameplay, so new mechanics rising to counter enemy strategies, the game should keep it's focus on modules over roles.
Yeah, I feel distortion should always be inferior to outright kill - it should be a tool used to capture bounties alive once this game loop is ingame, not "spece frost magic".
It also shouldn’t allow for self destruct. It makes them useless for piracy
@@Telesto_Timelost Well, self destruct should be a choice. If someone wants to low their own ship it's LESS intrusive than other players destroying them - but I agree, once the ship is down it should not be able, it would make th mechanic make a lot more sense in terms of capturing (bounties OR cargo).
If it was 100% implemented I'd even argue soft kils hsould be nerfed to destroy SOME cargo unlike it is ATM, so people would have a reason to use (the then weaker than lethal weaponry) distortion options.
@@Tentaclthat’s what i mean. Once shut down it shouldn’t be able to initiate self destruct. But tbh I don’t know why that even is a choice. Self destruct provides no benefit towards gameplay other than annoying pirates
@@Telesto_Timelost i think it's fair play - if you can deny other player his game loop and waste his time, he can also waste your time. But yeah, EMPing the ship should turn every systrm off, this too.
@@Tentaclwell piracy is their game loop. you deny it by not getting cought, escaping or winning the fight
Honestly this has always been around it would just work from patch to patch but technically not really new. I think CIG should leave it but make certain shields and power planets have a lower percentage of getting knocked out by distortions. Hell without distortions an arrow or gladius does 1 pass on me and my shields go down instantly is more of a problem imo. I mean all weapons need some type of shine. I think the Attritions meta was the worst and most annoying in the game before this it was GG when someone overclocked their loadout.
Only three minutes in and I hate hearing that it's meta right now. I've always planned on going distortion heavy and a meta now just means they'll get nerfed before the game is even out.
Man, I couldnt agree more. This what ive been saying. Distortion guns should be for special applications not general combat. And the sound distortions make is annoyingly high pitched.
Check it. Everything you said sounds good but it's missing one simple thing: Distortion chance to crit a component
The Rings III we've been waiting for - thanks for shedding light on this. The distortion meta in dogfighting is pretty bad, even when it's fun to be on the winning side of an engagement. It creates really bad gameplay, and boring fights.
Another good suggestion I've heard: remove distortion repeaters from the game entirely. Disto cannons only that are mostly ineffective against maneuverable fighters, but good tools for disabling larger vessels.
But if we need disto weapons to be effective against fighters, as a tool for bounty hunting v2 when we need to take in our bounty alive possibly, guns should never turn off before a full shutdown. It's bad gameplay if if a few shots means you can take away your opponent's ability to fight back.
id rather see those guns take loads more power, and have the advantage come from numbers
Distortions and repeaters/laser cannons should remain allowable in the current mixed load outs. My suggestion is that you have to “choose” which weapon system your power supply will power. Switching between each system will be met with a short 8 (or more) second delay before the selected weapon system begins to recharge/reload.
With master modes, this will allow the distorted ship to recover if hit with a distortion payload while nerfing the mixed load out. You can choose to disable the ship for boarding purposes or switch for killing but be met with that penalty. Same reload penalty if switching from distortion to laser to physical.
Now you must be decisive in your decision on how to end the fight. You either disable, or destroy.
Easy solution is stop disabling anything until full disable and full disable should be 1.25x of regular TTK. Makes disabling a skill based endeavor and would make bounty hunting something skill based and allow hirer rewards for "alive" target turn in
I totally feel this, any mechanic that isnt fun shouldnt be a mechanic. Any mechanic implemented should improve options for gameplay not reduce them. Dogfights shouldnt be drawn out back and forths. I would just make Distortions do same TTK/D as lasers but used as a non-lethal weapon that wont destroy the ship... simple. A chess game where you cant take peices off the board would be shit (in most cases).
Distortion will be handy for bounties, and taking people alive. I do think TTD needs to be tweaked, as it is more powerful than TTK atm. TTK should be the fastest route. What I would like to see is Distortion affecting engines, and ship speed/agility.
100 pct. i think distortion loadouts and the effects are neat, but there needs to be a balance. maybe they dont penetrate shields at all.
im fine with the idea thats proposed. to make ttk the same or lower than ttd, i just want to see it evolve and not be as boring as it is.
Afaik CIG were intending to have distortion only work by directly aiming it at a component. It now seems to work wherever you're hitting the hull. Having distortion only take down shields quicker and not do anything to other components might work. Me I am strongly for distortion becoming bespoke weapons for just a couple of EW focussed ship models and not have it as an option on any regular fighters. By going that route fleet fights become more interesting and EW pilots will have to be trained / specialized in their job within the squad / fleet.
The splash damage for either the XJs or the sucker punches is so huge! You can distort yourself by shooting the walls of your hangar. I would wager all they need to do to fix them is to reduce the splash to a meter or less.
They should massively up the power draw from distortion weapons so it becomes harder to use multiple with a size 1 powerplant
I'm late to the conversation, but realistically it makes the most sense for the TTK to be quite a bit faster than time to disable. IMO, disabling a ship should be a SKILLED thing mainly geared at size 2.5 ships and above; Anyone can kill a bounty or blow up a ship, but disabling the ship to capture the bounty/crew ALIVE and loot it's contents/cargo should be both more lucrative and difficult to pull off.
Getting disabled shouldn't feel like a cheesy trick that is unfair to fight against, or a "welp... time to be a sitting duck for 10 minutes until I finally can't move or die." It should feel like "hats off to them, they're a hell of a pilot and I was just simply outclassed."
I've been saying the same to my group I've been with. Time to distort/disable is too short, and the order of which systems are lost is problematic. Losing your ability to fire back should not be the case.
If I could suggest a flow/progression of which systems were disabled it would be: Quantum Drive, Shields, Coolers, Thrusters, then power plant (MFD, lights, internal doors, elevators).
Stop your target from fleeing primarily. Then, just continually degrade their capabilities until we have a floating brick.
And once the powerplant is down, no self destruct anymore either. Yeah, that should work just fine.
A few points first.
1. Distortions were left behind with 3.14 weapon rebalancing
2. Shorter TTD than TTK is clearly the direction that CIG is taking, for other gameplay to occur.
3. We are still waiting for a rebalance of the whole distortion damage (EMP include)
I suspect that the issue is more on the fact that Distortion weapons are doing splash damages, hitting more components than expected, and disabling them without the need to aim.
Still, this is an issue to have this kind of meta LIVE.
Eh, I think the distortion time to disable being higher than TTK is better. It encourages the use of bringing distortions, which discourages the use of monoboating. It also makes killing more tedious for sadists, while theoretically shifting the balance ever so slightly toward non-sadistic players. I also find you're being a little disingenuous with claiming to want skill-based gameplay. Skill-based players don't need to monoboat; min-maxing DPS is a crutch, not a skill.
I've actually recently taken distortions OFF of my ships. They're good against a lower tier pilot but incredibly frustrating against a good pilot.. they know how to dip and delay while everything comes back up. You just end up trying to follow someone for ages and it's boring. I don't even find distortions that useful in piracy tbh as they take too long to shut down large ships. It's easier to soft, breach, and "acquire"
You keep atlking about “the problem”. But I do not really see the problem. If distortion is better and laser just to finish someone of in case you DO want to kill them. Then what’s te prob? Everyone has acces to distortion right? I think the only problem indeed lays in size difference. Certain size guns should not be able to dm certain size armor/shields. That’s pretty much all that needs to be done.
How about fixing the power plant plus energy weapons meta properly. Idea: Distortion weapons disable energy weapons, shields and power plants only whilst not affecting ballistic weapons, nor turret/gimbals atleast not unit full shutdown is a better option to nerfing distortion. This would break the power plant + energy weapon meta. This would allow increased difficulty against other ships. That way mixed energy/ballistic or full ballistics become a defensive loadout, a choice. There absolutely needs to be a defensive meta to counter an offensive meta. The game shouldn't have ONLY an offensive meta, as has been the case since the start.
I am curious for how long this is considered a meta, as I've heard a long time ago about it, I've tried it, but went back to lethal weapons because I like the KABOOM!!!
Many have had great suggestions, such as having the dist weapons partly affect components, gradually, which will not make the one affected by these weapons unprotected. And it makes sense for the TTD to be longer than TTK, cause catching someone alive is more difficult and should be paid more.
Thus these weapons will still be viable, as they could slow shield regen rate and weapon regen rate, may be cause trouble for the aim system and coolers, make ballistics fire with a slower fire rate or smth like that, but not make a lamb for the slaughter out of your foe. Great vid and I really enjoyed some of the comments, some good ideas over there!
The problem is what about component damage by ballistics and or laser weapons? With all we know the TTK is only going up in the future, components can and will be damaged by weapons fire during a fight especially with the precision aiming... therefore I just think there is just no place for distortion weapons anymore besides an actuall EMP like the Scorpius and others bring to the field (otherwise those would also be completly redundant)
Make DC only operable if the users' shields are down. And or make DC damage the users' shields if he chooses to use them while shields are up. DC should really only be used to buy a stealth operator, IMO. This would add to the silent running aspect of gameplay again, IMO.
I'm trying to but I haven't gotten into PvP that deep yet, so I've only seen someone talk about distortions being op in chat once..
That was until I left GH in my blade once. Didn't notice the dude, he just sprayed me with distortions from behind and by the time I had turned to face him I couldn't fire my weapons anymore. He was in a Super Hornet and don't get me wrong now, I know I'm not an ace pilot but I honestly think he was a worse pilot than me as I could dodge most of his shots, but in the end he won because I just couldn't shoot back.
The cherry on top of it was when he said that "even if it was a fair fight I would've beat you"..
But of course he backed out when I told him to fight me proper then.
Now I know it's my fault as I didn't wait for my shields to charge and so on, but I was honestly not expecting a fight as it was late and people were chill.. In the end though I learned my lesson.
I don't think Distortion weapons should have ANY use outside of disabling ships. No combat advantage whatsoever. Only a choice on how that combat will end. Death or disabled.
Was that a hull c at the end? Thought only 32 SCU containers fit on it's grid?
The fix IMO would be to have components with attributes that matter. Distortion resistance, laser resistance, ballistic resistance etc. Your build should reflect what you're doing for its intended purpose, not just what the meta is.
Using distortion weapons should put you at a huge disadvantage in an even fight. Anyone bringing a distortion loadout to a difficult fight should lose. Badly.
So who would ever want to use distortions then? Bounty hunters that need to capture their target alive to get paid. Police patrols chasing fleeing suspects they aren't legally allowed to use lethal force against. Pirates that want to avoid damaging cargo or components on their target ship. The navy when they can't interrogate the enemy pilot if he's dead. There are so many cases where distortion weapons can be simultaneously bad in combat and very useful. The common thread in all these scenarios is that the people using distortion weapons have a big enough advantage over their target that they could easily destroy them, but have reasons to essentially expend their advantage in order to capture intact.
Distortion weapons that are optimal in combat creates problems that can't be resolved. Distortion weapons that are very weak in combat but have niche utility cases where they're used DESPITE this, make for more interesting and diverse combat scenarios, and allow for battles in which one combatant is much stronger than the other to actually be engaging and difficult. There is a clear right answer here. I think the belief that distortion weapons must be competitive in all combat scenarios or useless stems from an inability to imagine combat scenarios other than a symmetrical duel to the death.
I think upping the ammo on ballistics and immunity to distortion disabling would give some kinda cool counter-play. But we’d have to buff laser weapons in some way because there really wouldn’t be a reason to take them
It would be cool if distortion take down shields, and disables ships indefinitely instead of destroying ships. Repaired power supply and/or replaced batteries could get the ship started again. Minimal dps. It would create an amazing slot for boarding ships.
What if distortion, instead chipped away at all three points of the power triangle simultaneously, making it harder to manage the power triangle in general. This would be same same but different. It might make someone whos still got the use of their full ship stay in a fight longer cause their guns arent just clean off. But you'll feel the lack of a clip and or shields and or boost all at the same time. People would still end up disengaging to "reset" but the choice in when to do so might changing if your not resetting just to get your guns back.
Then maybe when the power triangle hits the center, because youll slowly be draining from all points of the triangle the shit will completely disable. In this way if people really wanted to pirate via with distortion the more they focused on full distortion guns to really take out all pointa of power. But while dogfighting its just a different way to control the opponents
Are there any plans on doing a follow-up report on the griefers you previously covered? I think it would be cool if you did another report to discuss CIG and the community’s response to your story.
The worst part is that if you are distorted you cant reengage for a full minute, if you survive long enough to get guns back all they have to do is land a single shot and youre screwed again. some of my favorite fights have been hull battles where we both could just peck at each other keeping shields down as we scraped paint. i like the no effect till full shutdown at the same ttk, a peaceable but competitive option that works for boarding's since component dist hp is far lower than hull hp but fighter v fighter its still a competition. I just really hope it gets addressed soon. i know all components will be reworked in time but until that happens dists are a cancer upon pu pvp and have generally downgraded the experience across the board. Pretty much every pilot ive talked to say they hate that its the meta but dog eat dog you have to run it to keep up
I don't think the issue is the TTD. TTD MUST be lower than TTK, otherwise there is no point in it. I think the issue lies in the mechanics of how exactly distortions work and the mechanics of our counter measures, or lack thereof.
you could make it a skill where there is no or a significantly reduced splash damage so you need to specificly aim for componets... i undstand that would have issues with larger ships, so mabe its just a dramatic damage fall off over range, or just requires larger distortion cannons to shut down larger ships
Distortion balance will become critically important soon because of the maelstrom system as well as bounty hunting v2. Hard to capture bounties when their bleeding out and surrounded by raging fire.
Time to disable being longer than time to kill wouldn't be bad. I've been around since 3.3 and I've seen disto and emp being buffed and nerfed so many times. I think the changes in 3.14 where all ship components were homogenized solidified distos, or at least helped it. CIG could change the emp/disto resistance of the components, but they haven't touched that since 3.14, iirc.
A buff to ballistic weapons could be that they aren't affected by disto weapons. Their targeting would be, and the heat management from cooler damage would, but their ability to fire wouldn't. It might bring them back slightly into the meta.
Making distortions a charge up weapon would solve the problem. This would bring it back in line with bounty hunting and disabling targets as opposed to light fighter combat usage.
Having to take down a targets shields before blasting their ship with the distortion cannon with a 1.5 sec charge to disable said ship as opposed to light fighters trying to get the first distortion shot off and chasing each other's useless ships around like chickens
This also really highlights how much direct-damage weapons are just chipping away hulls vs taking out components.
I am always mostly interested in many v many or 1 v many loadouts rather than 1v1. I hope whatever happens, the game balances so that 1v1 specialist loadouts are not the same as a cargo escort loadout for example! Maybe i am a dreamer 😅
Pull XJs and only have Suckerpunches at 700ms weapon velocity.
So why would anyone use distortion if you can softkill the ship instead and take cargo same way?
Distortion should be faster but it should eat energy more. So someone cant sustain distortion output same as with lasers.
Your ship kept repairing itself, without that, the fight would have ended much quicker maybe.
The solution is to have localized damage and distortion would affect onlycomponent it directly hit bypassing shield... not damaging the shield... so to disable the shield you would had to land direct hit on shield generator to disable the shields
I think its fair to remove the ability of distortion guns to disable at all, and leave true disabling to EMP generators, and just have distortion guns to nuke shields faster and do no hull damage.
Imo distortion should not shut down ships but impede or overload the ships function, to the point that the defendant needs to shut down or restart the effected components. Shooting the engines with distortion should make it so it cannot input any control into it. Shooting it with weapons should make it so it takes damage and is eventually destroyed.
Honestly if u see mainly distortion weapon on ships it needs to be nerfd a little.
We need ppl to a reason not to use soo mnay distortion or only distortion.
Cig has never been asked to balance anything that great.
It dosent help no ship has mass either .or armor
In master modes distortion would be even more op because disengaging is much harder so you won’t have the time to reset and let the distortion wear off
A lot could be fixed if bigger ships were tougher, if armor meant something.
couldn't you just reduce the amount of shield damage done by distortion by half?
I feel like if they had a good solution for reloading ballistic weapons it could help with some of these issues
Distortions only work if you can hit your target. Plus everyone in the game has access to them
What you need isn't to nerf distortions out of the game. What they need is a way to defend or harden your ship for their damage type.