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*** Vendetta 1.7.7
- Capital ships and the Leviathan now have shields
EDIT: Haha! I win!
- Capital ships and the Leviathan now have shields
EDIT: Haha! I win!
I know not this Dark Night of which you speak.
Update server's downloading 8kb and then stopping for me. Then I restart the update client, it downloads another 8kb, and stops. No changes in my system or firewall setup since 1.7.6, and I even disabled my firewall. Still stoppage after every 8kb.
Hey everyone. Ok, here's the skinny on the shields:
Queens, the Leviathan and Capships all have them. They have a recharge rate, a total strength, and a downtime. The recharge rate is a certain energy-per-second, the strength is the total number of hits they can absorb before being shut down, and the downtime is how long they'll stay down (without any shots landing) before they're revived.
So, for instance, the Queen has a recharge rate of 12000/s, a total shield strength of 30,000, and a downtime of 1800 seconds. You have to do more than 12,000 damage per second to make a negligable impact on the Queen (note, we probably need to reduce this for the Queen, all these values will need tweaking as time goes on). Once you are doing greater than 12k/s, you need to do 30k, and the shields will drop. Then you can begin to damage the queen normally. If you do not land any shots on the queen for 1800 seconds, the shields will be restored at original strength.
At the opposite end of the spectrum is the Leviathan, with 15k/s recharge rate, 250k total strength, and again an 1800s downtime. Clearly, you'll need a lot of people working together to punch through the shields. On the upside, I've reduced the health of the Lev otherwise from 15,000,000hp to 3,000,000.
Why we did add this? A couple of reasons. Targets like the Leviathan are supposed to be guild-assault, or at least large-group assault type targets. Nothing to be taken lightly. I have always wanted to have the high-level targets, like levs, drop interesting unique items which could them be acquired to pass epic-level missions and so on. But I couldn't do this while Levs were just sort of.. stupidly easy to beat.. and they were, people were soloing them by exploiting some particular aspect of the hull shape or whatever, and it was just kind of stupid.
PLUS, having shields therefore makes bigger weaponry more worthwhile. "Bombers" have long been without a purpose in our game.. they weren't needed to assault large targets, and essentially had no "bombs" because.. well, the previous reason. Now there's definite value to something like an Avalon torpedo. And I mean value other than annoying people by station-nuking. This opens up new gameplay and grouping opportunities, with fighters working in conjunction with bombers to assault large targets. The idea of a few heavy rags protected by a fighter wing and some repair ships, launching big torpedoes at the lev, while the battle rages about them. This is the sort of thing we're trying to work towards, both with PvE (player vs hive) and PvP (nation vs nation) type combat. This gives us both the means to make interesting (and difficult) goals, and also to allow people new ways to group up and take on those goals.
Because of the nature of how these shields work (linear recharge rate, fixed strength) there are certain tactics that will be more useful than others. Like the idea of rapidly stacking a lot of rockets to all strike at the same time.. instantaneous reductions in shield power are adventageous if you can actually take the shields out in one shot (nearly impossible with the Lev, short of big torpedoes, but possible with the smaller caps and definitely possible with Queens).
Yes, Avalons and such will return, but not just yet. I need to tweak their collision models, and ask Andy about making the turrets prioritize incoming torpedoes higher.
PROBLEMS:
I'm not sure the recharge/strength/downtime numbers are right, they'll require tweaking as I mentioned earlier.
There is a bug, currently, where NPCs can attack through the shields.. this will be fixed in a release next week. We decided to release with the problem, to get some more feedback from you guys about shield tweaking and general interest / tactics. There isn't anything fancy being dropped by the caps yet, so I'm not concerned about NPCs making things trivially easy or exploitable. But I am interested in seeing what sort of tactics and ideas you guys come up with to deal with the general shield scenario.
I will be writing a newspost (finally!), but I'm going to go home and write that. Have fun everyone. Let us know of any problems.
Queens, the Leviathan and Capships all have them. They have a recharge rate, a total strength, and a downtime. The recharge rate is a certain energy-per-second, the strength is the total number of hits they can absorb before being shut down, and the downtime is how long they'll stay down (without any shots landing) before they're revived.
So, for instance, the Queen has a recharge rate of 12000/s, a total shield strength of 30,000, and a downtime of 1800 seconds. You have to do more than 12,000 damage per second to make a negligable impact on the Queen (note, we probably need to reduce this for the Queen, all these values will need tweaking as time goes on). Once you are doing greater than 12k/s, you need to do 30k, and the shields will drop. Then you can begin to damage the queen normally. If you do not land any shots on the queen for 1800 seconds, the shields will be restored at original strength.
At the opposite end of the spectrum is the Leviathan, with 15k/s recharge rate, 250k total strength, and again an 1800s downtime. Clearly, you'll need a lot of people working together to punch through the shields. On the upside, I've reduced the health of the Lev otherwise from 15,000,000hp to 3,000,000.
Why we did add this? A couple of reasons. Targets like the Leviathan are supposed to be guild-assault, or at least large-group assault type targets. Nothing to be taken lightly. I have always wanted to have the high-level targets, like levs, drop interesting unique items which could them be acquired to pass epic-level missions and so on. But I couldn't do this while Levs were just sort of.. stupidly easy to beat.. and they were, people were soloing them by exploiting some particular aspect of the hull shape or whatever, and it was just kind of stupid.
PLUS, having shields therefore makes bigger weaponry more worthwhile. "Bombers" have long been without a purpose in our game.. they weren't needed to assault large targets, and essentially had no "bombs" because.. well, the previous reason. Now there's definite value to something like an Avalon torpedo. And I mean value other than annoying people by station-nuking. This opens up new gameplay and grouping opportunities, with fighters working in conjunction with bombers to assault large targets. The idea of a few heavy rags protected by a fighter wing and some repair ships, launching big torpedoes at the lev, while the battle rages about them. This is the sort of thing we're trying to work towards, both with PvE (player vs hive) and PvP (nation vs nation) type combat. This gives us both the means to make interesting (and difficult) goals, and also to allow people new ways to group up and take on those goals.
Because of the nature of how these shields work (linear recharge rate, fixed strength) there are certain tactics that will be more useful than others. Like the idea of rapidly stacking a lot of rockets to all strike at the same time.. instantaneous reductions in shield power are adventageous if you can actually take the shields out in one shot (nearly impossible with the Lev, short of big torpedoes, but possible with the smaller caps and definitely possible with Queens).
Yes, Avalons and such will return, but not just yet. I need to tweak their collision models, and ask Andy about making the turrets prioritize incoming torpedoes higher.
PROBLEMS:
I'm not sure the recharge/strength/downtime numbers are right, they'll require tweaking as I mentioned earlier.
There is a bug, currently, where NPCs can attack through the shields.. this will be fixed in a release next week. We decided to release with the problem, to get some more feedback from you guys about shield tweaking and general interest / tactics. There isn't anything fancy being dropped by the caps yet, so I'm not concerned about NPCs making things trivially easy or exploitable. But I am interested in seeing what sort of tactics and ideas you guys come up with to deal with the general shield scenario.
I will be writing a newspost (finally!), but I'm going to go home and write that. Have fun everyone. Let us know of any problems.
Rogue: we haven't changed anything either. I'd chalk it up to network weather.
Cogent appears to being highly evil. As in 33% packet loss evil.
Incarnate, the normal health bar seems to be going down while the new blue bar is at full. Is this intentional or a bug?
FatStrat: That's probably happening in production right now because of the NPC bug. They're attacking the Leviathan and causing it to be damaged without impacting the shields. NPC shots currently go right through the shields and damage the ship hull. That'll be fixed later next week.
The shields recharge in MUCH less than 1800s on the levi. But we just had a great time killing the levi; 8 people, and we all used heavily-loaded rags and an attack formation to take down the shields, then we hit it with megaposis and had a medic, and it was just generally awesome. It took about an hour and a half.
No, they revive in 1800s if they were knocked out and no one has attacked the ship during that time (basically the shield system being "repaired" and going back up). Otherwise, they recharge at 15k/s, which will result in a full charge much faster than 1800s, obviously :).
I'm really happy that people are having fun killing it with the new system. That's super cool, and exactly the sort of gameplay I was hoping to inspire. We'll tweak it a bit, and move ahead with more interesting drops and rewards.. we'll make the Hive a lot more interesting and useful. This'll be great. So happy to hear people are enjoying it :).
I'm really happy that people are having fun killing it with the new system. That's super cool, and exactly the sort of gameplay I was hoping to inspire. We'll tweak it a bit, and move ahead with more interesting drops and rewards.. we'll make the Hive a lot more interesting and useful. This'll be great. So happy to hear people are enjoying it :).
I was part of the Levi-hunting group for a while, and it was fun.
Too bad I had to leave because I'm sick.
VO is currently the only game that could drag me out of bed while sick :D
Too bad I had to leave because I'm sick.
VO is currently the only game that could drag me out of bed while sick :D
Suggestion regarding avalons...
Because you *just know* people will use them in station sectors, can we please have them set to some sort of safety while you're flying in a station sector so that they DON'T fire?
At least until there's actually a really good reason to fire them in station sectors, that is.
Because you *just know* people will use them in station sectors, can we please have them set to some sort of safety while you're flying in a station sector so that they DON'T fire?
At least until there's actually a really good reason to fire them in station sectors, that is.
A couple of us went after a Queen to look at the effect and see how tough it was. Dropped the drones, then grabbed rocketrags and had at it.
One shot wingbugged it, did about 30% damage to shields and aroun 15% to the hull; apart from that, nothing dented the thing. I can understand needing 8 people to take a Levi, but needing at least 5 to take a Queen? I'd probably slash the Queen's shield values by 25% at least, or clearing the Hive is going to be one long and frustrating exercise once it's everywhere.
For my next question: do you need to just hit the shielded models to accrue XP still (when it dies and you're insector), or do you need to actually damage the hull? And do the shields affect docking?
One shot wingbugged it, did about 30% damage to shields and aroun 15% to the hull; apart from that, nothing dented the thing. I can understand needing 8 people to take a Levi, but needing at least 5 to take a Queen? I'd probably slash the Queen's shield values by 25% at least, or clearing the Hive is going to be one long and frustrating exercise once it's everywhere.
For my next question: do you need to just hit the shielded models to accrue XP still (when it dies and you're insector), or do you need to actually damage the hull? And do the shields affect docking?
yeah i got killed by one of those a few days ago. it was so abrupt that i thought i had been dev-killed.
i simply poofed away. no warning shots, nothing.
what if avalons also triggered a radar warning? like a nuke detector of some sort? at least, we'd have a chance to get away (/dock in case of station kills).
quite frankly that was a stupid attack with no other purpose thank pk whoring and the perpetrator has been officially labeled 'idiot' in my book.
i simply poofed away. no warning shots, nothing.
what if avalons also triggered a radar warning? like a nuke detector of some sort? at least, we'd have a chance to get away (/dock in case of station kills).
quite frankly that was a stupid attack with no other purpose thank pk whoring and the perpetrator has been officially labeled 'idiot' in my book.
ow ow ow avalons are back in :D?
/me wonders about a setup to take revenge on some pierats... muahahahaha
let them fire them in a station sector... if they kill you they will get a drop in standing with that faction. So i don't see a problem with it.
/me wonders about a setup to take revenge on some pierats... muahahahaha
let them fire them in a station sector... if they kill you they will get a drop in standing with that faction. So i don't see a problem with it.
Yeah uc, like a radiological warning or whatever it is that powers Avalons. Compressed Heliocene? But yes, a warning when an Avalon is launched would be appropriate.
Oh, and Rene - Corvus is the problem. If the faction standing issue with Corvus is fixed, then I have no problem with allowing Avalon Torpedos to be fired in Station sectors.
Gah I'm busy this weekend, I hope to get to shoot at some shields and see what it looks like.
Oh, and Rene - Corvus is the problem. If the faction standing issue with Corvus is fixed, then I have no problem with allowing Avalon Torpedos to be fired in Station sectors.
Gah I'm busy this weekend, I hope to get to shoot at some shields and see what it looks like.
Rene:
Question 1: When have the SF been fearsome and deadly enough to stop people who actually WANT to have their standings tanked and
kill people at stations?
A) Just today!
B) Last week, I think
C) A month ago.
D) Last year. Pretty sure.
E) Alpha.
F) Never.
Answer: F, "Never".
Question 1: When have the SF been fearsome and deadly enough to stop people who actually WANT to have their standings tanked and
kill people at stations?
A) Just today!
B) Last week, I think
C) A month ago.
D) Last year. Pretty sure.
E) Alpha.
F) Never.
Answer: F, "Never".
Not true in Corvus space (station spamming/camping faction of choice for the discerning misanthrope).
Regarding Avalons, it seems like the biggest issue with them is not the damage potential, but the explosion radius. A heavy bomb/torpedo designed to cripple or destroy capital-class ships would want to concentrate as much damage as possible inward through the hull. It should maintain some explosion radius (it is still a big fscking bomb), but not large enough to strip a frigate of every turret or a Queen of its entire fleet.
Having come into VO well after they were locked back up in the high cabinet where we kiddies can't reach, I haven't seen them in action (and I've been lucky enough to not run into anyone carrying the contraband ones that showed up earlier this week).
Regarding Avalons, it seems like the biggest issue with them is not the damage potential, but the explosion radius. A heavy bomb/torpedo designed to cripple or destroy capital-class ships would want to concentrate as much damage as possible inward through the hull. It should maintain some explosion radius (it is still a big fscking bomb), but not large enough to strip a frigate of every turret or a Queen of its entire fleet.
Having come into VO well after they were locked back up in the high cabinet where we kiddies can't reach, I haven't seen them in action (and I've been lucky enough to not run into anyone carrying the contraband ones that showed up earlier this week).
I was hit by one (Serco-to-Serco FF) and I was thrown like 500 m like some huge MEGA-FLARE had gone off in my face. No damage, but everyone else in Deneb C-10 that wasn't Serco was toast.
Too powerful for equipping on small ships like the Rag & Prom. Try putting them in HAC's and Teradons stuff. Maybe tridents.
Maybe Leviathans would have them as well. To get rid of pesky players.
Too powerful for equipping on small ships like the Rag & Prom. Try putting them in HAC's and Teradons stuff. Maybe tridents.
Maybe Leviathans would have them as well. To get rid of pesky players.