WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT DISTORTION META
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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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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 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.
Im only like 2 and half minutes in, and it feels like a description of your evolution as a martial arts master, moving from directly striking, to not needing to strike so you can disable and do what you will after. Awesome :)
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...).
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.
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.
All these videos so quickly! Big week! Love it!
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 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!
They should massively up the power draw from distortion weapons so it becomes harder to use multiple with a size 1 powerplant
Was that a hull c at the end? Thought only 32 SCU containers fit on it's grid?
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
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.
a1 love you sir, uhm might sound like a dumb ontarian here but have you covered missiles lately? it's kinda a grey area and everyone avoids cross section and infared and goes straight to electromagnetic, but when I ask I never really get a straight cut answer if you have an existing video can you link it, if not.. can you cover it? or are missiles busted and it's all personal pref?
This also really highlights how much direct-damage weapons are just chipping away hulls vs taking out components.
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
On today’s episode of “What CIG put absolutely no thought into”
Do the Neutron weapons such as the NN-14 Cannon or the NDB-30 Repeaters, also do distortion damage?
No
Nope
Instead of the ttd and ttk changes, what if distortions just have less shots per recharge?
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
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'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.
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.
Which distortion weapon are you using?
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.
Would ballistic weapons counter this?
I feel like if they had a good solution for reloading ballistic weapons it could help with some of these issues
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.
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.
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."
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
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.
Whats About EMP? Whats its purpose?
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 love your videos so much man ❤️
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).
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)
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
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.
CiG actually nerfed gun distortion hp over the last few patches from like 1100 to 700 in size 2s for example really confusing
Whats the best weapon loadout for super hornet in this case, bro?
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.
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.
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.
i was watching the livestream yesterday, that build is awesome.
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 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 😅
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
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.
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
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'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"
Check it. Everything you said sounds good but it's missing one simple thing: Distortion chance to crit a component
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.
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.
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.
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!!!
It occurred to me while you were pointing this out that we have no defense against e-war. Although I have been waiting for armor mechanics and SC is by no means complete. But this does need some sort of counter and soon.
As i understand nowadays HUD of Super Hornet is bugged?? it's Super small now... is it possible to fix it somehow?)
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.
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'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.
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.)
Spot on analysis! Coming from other space shooters, I love the concept of distortion weapons but what you mentioned regarding drawing out battles is something I experience regularly in my F7C. For example, I battled a Terrapin, a tank of a ship, and thought I could never take it down. Very frustrating!
My Prospector, Hull A and Vuoture are all fitted with distortion as well.
However, the issue I have with your TTD vs TTK analysis is that TTD logically has to be shorter than TTK. The state of the enemy ship has to progress from a disabled state to a killed state. I don't understand how it can be otherwise.
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.
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
So interesting thanks
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.
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.
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.
id rather see those guns take loads more power, and have the advantage come from numbers
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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 think to fix this problem they need to only allow distortion to effect shields and not the ship at all. If you want to disable a ship with the intention to board and sieze; you should only be allowed to disable a ship by doing enough overall damage to the ship (making soft death occur before hard death) or using the new master mode to specifically target the engines or power core and disable it that way. This will still give distortion guns a place in combat while making disabling a ship still possible and even skill based.
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.
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?
Imagine if distortion did no damage to shield at all, and can only disable ships that are unshielded. I think this would be the way to go, by doing shields and also components, its always going to be a problem. Either too powerful or not strong enough and unused.. it would be nice to kit out team mates for the purpose of disabling/capturing ships with different load outs or fire groups.
Even if it did very little damage to shields but reasonably effective at component damage, either way how a hammerhead takedown would play out would be a lot more deliberate and coordinated. Or in a small fighter pop u would basically lose the hard point(and capacitor) that would deal more shield damage in exchange for a hard point that will be effective if your able to drop their shield to zero and then be used to deal component damage after.
Pull XJs and only have Suckerpunches at 700ms weapon velocity.
couldn't you just reduce the amount of shield damage done by distortion by half?
Hear hear! I too hate the disto meta, but you're handicapping yourself if you don't run it.
unfortunetly this is the truth :)
There needs to be a downside to running distortions eg generate far more heat.
Distortions only work if you can hit your target. Plus everyone in the game has access to them
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.
why are my messages displaying for you the entire time XD. Agreed on the distos btw.
A lot could be fixed if bigger ships were tougher, if armor meant something.
Distortion not beinga able to disable balistic weapons might be nice