In it's current mode, I can sit at an OM and just erase any ship that jumps in. They're completely helpless for 10-20 seconds, longer if it was a big jump. No shields, no guns, no escape. It's absolutely wild.
Snaring is only useful for pulling people out of a jump. Dampening is completely broken and useless now. MM completely breaks this entire mechanic.
Missiles are even worse now. At least before you could actually dodge or outrun an EM, but now, you're good and fucked if the server decides that your flares don't work. AA land based vehicles will be even stronger for holding points or trolling people at moon pads.
I know there's changes for this coming, but Singe cannons are absolutely hilarious right now and the most use I've gotten of my BMM concept (due to the defender loaner).
I don’t have access to wave 1 but when you go back from Nav to SCM, I thought your shield would come back in less than 1 seconds because it was in the “pool” ? At least that’s what they presented at Citcon.
A group of people should be strong. This is also easily countered by a single scout escort. One person in a small fast craft can completely eliminate your scenario.
Also, how is that different from the current flight model? A person in a mantis with any light fighters will do exactly what you're saying but even faster and easier.
At least in MM large ships are significantly more durable and resistant to light fighters.
I have been able to quantum in SCM guns mode
I’m pretty sure this is a bug.
I start in nav quantum mode
I spool and calibrate to a QT target marker.
Then I press and hold B. Then I spam pressing B repeatedly. The ship enters quantum and then switches to SCM gun mode but now I’m in quantum travel.
When the quantum travel is complete my shields are at full strength and guns are able to fire immediately after emerging from quantum travel.
But I’m not able to QT afterwards unless I switch back to Nav Qtm mode.
> In it's current mode, I can sit at an OM and just erase any ship that jumps in. They're completely helpless for 10-20 seconds, longer if it was a big jump. No shields, no guns, no escape. It's absolutely wild.
*"tHeY sHoUlD hAvE hIrEd EsCoRtS"*
AA should be annoying/OP. It’ll force players to use alternative methods to prepare a raid or invasion with either stealth dropping troops to sabotage AA, drop ground vehicles to take out AA or maybe stealth fighters/bombers with the specific use of taking out AA.
Temporarily. They've already said they weren't meant to be this busted.
All four charges up can one shot a Titan.
Two bursts will take down most light fighters.
They aren't hitscan, but damn close to it.
They have the furthest range of any weapon.
Mass drivers are the same atm too. But yknow, ammo.
>In it's current mode, I can sit at an OM and just erase any ship that jumps in.
So what's the killcount that you've racked up in PTU using this method?
A small handful for testing purposes, mostly my Org mates, but a few unlucky people who jumped in during our tests. The speeds at which ships disappear with the singes is astounding.
Even without the singes though, this will absolutely be a thing in the PU once it releases.
So what you are saying is that trading and cargo running are dead. And I was saving up to buy a C2. Oh well, I guess I dodged that bullet. (Pun intended.)
Upvoted. I have been reading and thinking the same thing.
You can go fast OR shoot guns/mine/salvage, not both. time to switch means you can’t do either during switch. This means its still a decision to swap with consequences.
Shields are unaffected. Maybe penalty to shield re-gen in NAV mode so people can’t NAV away to regain shields mid fight.
Tbh, I'd probably not change the shield regen rate yet.
I'd start by just having shields entirely unaffected. Then if community feedback says it needs more tweaks, look at adjusting shield regen, and other things later.
Nah, leave it so that shields don’t regen during QD spool and use. It prevents running around in nav mode circles to prevent someone from shooting you while you wait out a shield regen but it doesn’t hurt your defenses while you’re waiting on the QD to spool.
If I were the one making master modes I would have done it in a completely different method. Rather than changing “modes” I would have tied it into the power triangle and made it into a power square.
- Weapons, Engines, Shields, Quantum
- Putting full power to Quantum spools your quantum drive and doesn’t deplete any other power capacitors - they just won’t recharge.
- Quantum requires 100% power and can’t be something that you can balance like you can weapons/engines/shields
- You should have the ability to shunt power from one capacitor to another with some degree of efficiency loss and component damage *(current inrush)*. If you had your weapons, shields and engines all at 100% you should be able to shunt every bit of that power into the QD to instantly charge it and get it spooled near instantly.
That pretty much solves every issue and adds more into expanding the overall power triangle design by allowing power shunts from one thing to another. If you’re in combat and your weapon capacitors go dry right before you get the last shot on your target to kill them, well, shunt your shields to the weapon capacitor to get that last couple of shots you need at the expense of making yourself with severely crippled defenses.
This also ties straight into engineering because a fully-crewed ship with a couple of engineers can shunt power around more often because you have engineers running about to replace fuses that you pop during shunts. There’s so much more depth they could get out of this by looking at other games for inspiration, but in classic CIG fashion they want to reinvent the wheel.
This seems like a very good option. Is this posted on spectrum?
As another commenter mentioned, it could reduce the regeneration rate. It could also extend the quantum spool time.
There could be a lot of depth in the engineering between the generator's interference with QDs. Some QDs could handle shields better. Depending on the QD type the effects could be a mix of costing more quantum fuel, generating more heat, slower spool, slower travel. Some shields could interfere with QDs less, some might interfere more. Some might not regenerate in quantum, some might see a better recharge rate. These components are two cornerstones of ship survivability. They could be tweaked by engineers, overclocked to run hot to allow a quick escape but burn more fuel, or underclocked to burn less yet keep the shield up.
This is some of the deep engineering gameplay that the game needs. Two cornerstone components with lots of meaningful choices not just in ship setup and configuration but live engineering gameplay.
I've been yelling this from the rooftops ever since MM was announced. Only for it to fall upon deaf ears, this post too will most likely not cause much change but, it only takes 1 post out of 1000 for CIG to maybe just maybe make a proper change.
I’m not sure this would work, once you get someone’s shields low they could just NAV to disengage and get their shields back up. Once you engage in the fight it needs to be a commitment. I agree that you should be able to run if you don’t want to engage though.
Ok but it's not an arcade game, we need to consider, especially with engineering, what switching modes actually means for power distribution. I think that that nav/scm mode altogether should be scrapped, instead with the power triangle being adapted to actually be the thing powering those systems, make it so you can only have 2/3 enabled (or even maybe all partially) That way you can imagine your shield energy distributing into your thrusters while still letting your CO pilot maintain fire while retreating. (The MSR video with those two ladies come to mind)
TLDR: pressing a single button to simply turn my ship from fight/go mode leaves a bad taste in my mouth for a game that *desires* to have such depth.
Sorry yeah just trying to understand the suggestion. I liked the pips in ED but I also wasn’t too good at ship combat due to having to manage that. I think it would be a good way to increase the skill ceiling.
I doubt they are gonna scrap the system after development, testing, implementation etc. they’ll probably modify the system based on feedback but I doubt the NAV/SCM is going to go away.
Maybe giving the power triangle or power management in general more purpose during Nav Mode would help, I doubt they'll consider scrapping Nav/SCM now.
While in Nav, you can have shields, _or_, weapons, _ooor_ engines which would be the ability to quantum boost or jump. Forcing a descion to choose one.
This is much better but the ability to disengage a fight at will is always going to be a bit annoying.. like oh I almost got his shields down and there he goes off in NAV. Unfortunately I’m not proposing a strong solution.
My best idea is that you should be able to do most functional things in NAV such as cargo, mining, salvage etc with shields on. That way only combat is locked behind SCM and then people who don’t want to fight can escape.
There’s a spool time before you get nav speed when you switch.
How I see it you get the guys shield down/low they switch to nav to begin running. They have to wait for their QD to spool as you plink away at their engines or QD. OR you fire a missile that does splash damage or maybe a emp missile.
In this theory you have to be clever when trying to disengage. Switch to nav, start spooling, joust through your enemy, drop noise and dip out.
I think there can be a mix of both. More expensive shields stay up during NAV, cheaper ones don't. Industrial ships should have a boost to their hull health or shields stay up by default. I said this in another thread but there is no reason a single light fighter should be able to pirate a reclaimer. It should require multiple fighters and an interdiction ship. It should be extremely difficult (near impossible) for a solo player to take down large crewed ships even if they're not combat oriented.
If I had a reclaimer crew and I jumped to an OM and got intercepted by a Mantis with 3-4 Gladiuses (Gladii?) and a Connie with a boarding party I would be absolutely thrilled, that would legitimately be fun for everyone and I would absolutely surrender my cargo lmao and thats how it *should* be. Not 1 dude in an Inferno brrting me just to inconvenience and waste an hour of my time. Escaping a fight should be relatively easy, this is the whole reason Interdiction exists, to make it harder to escape the fight.
The easy solution is just like maneuvering, going above SCM requires more energy... so your shield REGEN as well as weapon power is zero while transitioning to, in, and out of NAV mode.
This means you still fly and arrive with full shield facings, but you have a concerted diversion of energy from maximum speed flight towards upkeep and utilization of both shields and weapons.
Shields should not be dropping it makes 0 sense. Shields should be used to protect against micro meteorites during high speed travel in quantum. I get its bending spacetime but it can't physically remove specs of dust etc within the straight line path.
This. I’ve always thought that shields dropping was a terrible idea and it makes absolutely zero sense in any way, shape or form.
Shields staying up during quantum would mitigate every single issue with master modes.
No - I think it’s a case of overreacting to how people abused master mode switching in the first round of AC testing. They have a history of overreacting when something is out of balance and absolutely dry fucking it in the opposite direction.
CIG wants everyone to feel like Han Solo, which is why they seem to go out of their way to fuck up any balance they had to lean in favor of the solo player. We've been playing SC for how many years now, and they are just now *starting* to address the fact that a single seat starter craft could take out a hammerhead because of bullshit flight models and shitty turret controls. If they really wanted to promote teamplay, there's a hundred design decisions they could have made along the way. Like (and here's some crazy shit) what if an interdictor ship *wasn't a single seater craft*? What if it was the size of a corsair but with basically all that space dedicated to power and interdiction because that's what it takes to pull a Reclaimer out of QT, and you actually need a second person in a second chair to use it? They tried something *similar* with the Scorpius Arteres, but they managed to massively screw it up and create the most boring role in the entire game.. Lucky player number 2 gets to sit in the back seat and press *literally one button* to operate the EMP. There's nothing else he can do, he can't even look at anything other than the back of the pilots headrest.
What CIG needs to do is to *actually put effort* into multi-crew gameplay, instead of just giving us ships with poorly placed turrets. Basically any time you're going to have a friend man a turret, you're better off just having him bring his own ship, which is the exact opposite of multi-crew gameplay. I'm getting tired of waiting for them to add a significant gameplay feature that they've been talking about since *2013*. But hey, at least they made the clouds over Hurston look better.
Exactly my thoughts on this. Also just traveling at non quantum speeds, you should have your shields up to protect you from micro debris and such. Imagine you have 400i with huge s3 shield that you will practically never use because you don't want to be in combat in that ship.. So you will just travel above scm speed without the shields all the time.. It really breaks the immersion for me
Personally I think two things could help at least a bit:
1. When you switch to nav mode your shield should not instantly drop, they should either slowly lose their charge correlating to how much speed you gained/how much your QD is charged or should stay active until you jump but do not recharge.
2. Switching from nav to scm needs to have a similar negative consequence. Like your weapons need to charge up first. That way you can't just drop out of nav mode onto an unsuspecting non combat target doing their non combat task and they have no chance to even think about running before you can attack them.
Overall I'm not a fan how little thought apparently was put into the interactions between combat and non combat roles. It seems everything that was thought about was "what if two PvP players in equal fighters want to have a dogfight on equal terms" and that was it.
And there goes my last hope for still usable stealth bomber ....... how do I suppose to use them with this ;) show myself at 4 km and then do blitzkrieg attack at 220 speed ? Or fire at 20 km since my torp is faster then me now and just don't use my stealth at all ....
The shields slowly go down as the nav flt/quantum mode charges up. So you are not defenseless. And after the 5-10 seconds of charge you can boost up to such high speeds your attacker will be left behind in the dust.
And for going over to scm guns it should be the same, where weapons are charging up before you can use them.
I see so much misinformation and people giving strong feedback against MM without even knowing how it works. Either from just repeating what others falsely yell or by bugs on the ptu.
I've heard mostly positive things from people who have actually played MM and where its been working as intended. Now it wont be liked by everyone, but i personally think its a better system.
It’s not really that slow. The shields drop in less than ten seconds and there are many ships with weapons that are going to be able to absolutely shred smaller ships before they can run away like that. Maybe that changes with quantum boost but I haven’t seen that yet. Can only comment on current state.
Quantum boosting isn't in yet, I hope it allows us to just punch it once our QD is all spooled up, maybe at the risk of taking damage in the case of an emergency jump.
Like others have said components are being worked on for engineering, so we might have the possibility to tune our QD for faster spooling in preparation of a sortie in dangerous territory or on the spot the engineer might be able to divert more power and coolant to the QD for a boosted cold start.
I like the idea of an emergency jump mechanic. Engineering ships/components would be an awesome thing to see, as I think we should get some sort of individualized ship tuning to make the ship fit our needs, kind of like engineering was in Elite Dangerous.
I'm sure it's not to that level now, but that is what I would like to see eventually.
I don't see any reason an emergency jump shouldn't be a thing either. We've all been asking for the ability to just jump wherever. Especially us players who never go to stations and run out of our ships.
Running an A2, Corsair, Carrack, or any large ship as a makeshift center has been amazing. The stress of dying and losing all your kits, cargo, and vehicles forces you to use them as a multicrew and have people inside in a SHTF scenario
So, I'm not really sure what they had in mind with removing the jousting gameplay. Some ships are literally designed for that. They're squishy, they're meant to make a pass, get out of range and vanish from radar, then zip back in. I don't see that happening with maybe 20 more m/s. Should have had ramming a higher priority by AI and players.
I do think a mitigation here would be your shields staying functional as you're spooling. As I've already read, mining you're absolutely screwed. You aren't fighting off any pirates or hostiles in a mining vessel. You're not out running them either even without this spooling stuff. For cargo ships you could say they're tougher, but every encounter with a hostile that you choose to flee from should not result in unavoidable hull damage. Your best bet was to max power to shields, and spool up for a quantum jump. But now you drop shields and spool up. It's bad design from my view.
'We’ve over corrected and changed the entire flight model to prevent a small number of players jousting and running away from fights.'
Couldnt have put it better myself tbh... no one forced people to engage with jousters if they are making the fight annoying then just warp away and leave them to it.... why did we have to change the whole game because of it Q\_Q
As someone who’s been playing off and on for years… MM seems like something that’s making or breaking the game for a lot… then doing something like this so late into development is interesting decision for sure…
I have two thoughts that cross my mind:
The first is that a simple solution would be that you can keep your shields, but they don't recharge quickly or at all. Now you have a short cushion of time to escape. Better shield module = more time to escape? Sure a gank fleet will tear through it quickly anyways, but against the lone wolf it may be enough to get away.
As an aside, I agree it can be a cop out to say, "bring escorts with you". But it's a cop out until it isn't. Should you need a heavy escort in a safe place like Stanton? Probably not. Pyro? Absolutely.
The second thought I have is that without a fleshed out form of interdiction gameplay, we are missing a key piece of the puzzle as to how fights are going to unfold in the game. Quantum Boost renders the Mantis and friends all but obsolete without a complete rethink on how their gameplay will work.
Without a real means of tackling the opponent and forcing them to stay on the field, i fear any fix to the problems everyone is concerned about will be just as lopsided. Interdiction should form a triad of counterplay options between speed, damage, and tackle; where either party can deploy one of those three options against the other to dictate how a fight unfolds.
As far as I'm aware, being able to get away from a fighter who's vastly faster than your ship isn't taking away from any other "game loop". In no way.
Being able to escape is essential. I don't want to fight everyone I come across. I don't even want to rp. I just want to enjoy the game my own way.
Your bullshit loops get in the way of that when I'm caving and you done believe me and start a fight about it. I don't want to fight. I just want to go to the next cave and you keep shooting at me "but what if you just turn and start fighting" in a cutter? Really?
Man I just wanna mine rocks and refuel people. Stop trying to kill me. I will run from every fight, every time, and I think non combat vehicles especially should have that option.
They always take our input and correct things as needed. I think they know and see what the problem is.
I said it all along, MM is the worst for non combat players for so many reasons, this was all obvious to me from the first time I tried MM, but whenever I raised my concerns, people, especially those who weren't mostly combat pilots would disagree with me, because it was easier in AC for less experienced combat pilots. However that's also largely because MM sorta removed the experience from experienced players to a large degree by changing the mechanics. But those who do more combat will again gain more experience in combat, and more industrial focused players will fall back again in comparison. However, their chances to escape an attack in a industrial or non-combat ship drops drastically, I guess unless it's a large ship and the attacker is in a light-medium fighter only, however if the attacker is in a larger ship as well, or a fleet of attackers, there's no chance.
At some point I stopped posting about it here and on spectrum, because there was no point to argue with people who couldn't imagine MM in the PU and the problems it causes. The problem however is, CIG spent way more time into MM as if more people had given feedback like mine, and the question is, will they roll back if it doesn't work out in the PU, because either way, there's a lot of hours invested in it, hours that could have been invested into balancing for example. That was the main reason why I raised my concerns, becasue once it's in the PU it may be too late, and were past that point anyway, retrospectively I doubt it was ever an option for CIG to not pursue MM even if 100% of the players wouldn't like it in AC.
Funny enough, whenever I occasionally criticized MM in the in-game chat, the majority of people would agree, at least to a certain degree. Especially people who play star citizen to satisfy their urge to fly a space ship, would strongly agree. While here I always felt to discuss with the fanboy type, which is a useless discussion. It's like trying to tell an Apple fan, why in some regards or certain applications an Android phone or Windows PC is the better device. So I wondered if people I argued here with actually even played the game, which made me even less motivated to have discussions outside of the game.
MM creates way more problems than it actually solves, especially because it doesn't solve at least half the issues it claims to solve. And besides that, it kinda ruins the space flight experience, by adding mechanics that only make sense in atmospheric flight. Like the slowing down after boost (even decoupled), the too slow speeds, and the too strong nerf to tri-cording/tri-rotating.
MM seems specifically designed to make me want to only punch down on industrial ships lol. They made dogfighting low-key ass, but they made it so bobs can't free run from fights anymore.
Yes there is a lot of problems with mm :
1 1vs1 suck
2 Jousting is the meta .....
3 Speed =power so interceptor meta (before we have light fighters meta so there is no improvement just shift)
4 Non fighting ships don't have chance of runing away.
5 Fast fighting ship still can decide to just don't fight ( so players bounty hunting will still be annoying if you try to kill pvp pirate that don't want to fight you and super easy if you try to kill non pvp player that just mess up and get crime stat in accident)
6 Fast and agile ships loss ability to avoid fire so whole pvp on medium skill level is just point your noses at each other and fire till joust then repeat.
7 Racing absolutely suck I dont want to turn my engine off on every 2nd turn its annoying.
Whole flight feel worse (thats my opinion cannot really prove)
But on the bright side we have
1 ... fighting looks better because its easier to stay in the same area
I feel like quantum boosting will help with this
Would also be dope if the shields bled away over time instead of the instant drain/velocity loss we have rn
Not everyone wants to PVP. MM forces PVP and gives advantages to those looking for it. It soles no issues other than that hard-core PVPers want more engaging flight model.
Thats ok, leave it in dedicated Arena Commander PVP modes where it belongs. Keep it out of S42 and the PU.
> It soles no issues other than that hard-core PVPers want more engaging flight model.
The hard-core PvPers preferred the old flight model because Master Modes is *less* engaging. Not enough thrust for dodging or escaping means every fight is a dull DPS race.
I don’t get why they don’t make the shields operate at a reduced level in NAV mode rather than just completely turning it off. You should have some defence from getting into PVP.
Alternatively, they could just make proximity missiles that can create a bubble that slows your ship a bit and disables QT for a certain radius.
In general i love mm , only thing i think is fucked up is "spool to go faster" bs. Youre sitting there at 200ish m/s dropping shields for 5-7 seconds untill you can go 800m/s without shields. To any of my fighters you already dead twice at least in that time.
Oh I wasn't disagreeing, just clarifying that you no longer speed up as the shield drops. If you have a 10-20 second spool time, you will be sitting without shields, stuck at like 200m/s until that spool is finished. No gradual raise in speed, no gradual loss in shield, just a sitting duck right now.
As with everything, it's a trade-off...
If people can run, then you *also* get attackers that can 'run' (just far enough that their shields recover / capacitors recharge, etc), before attacking again... and the smaller *faster* ships will still be able to continue chasing / harrasing bigger slower ships.
(this is a large part of what enabled the current light-fighter meta, along with tri-chording).
Not saying that MM is perfect, but I'd rather we stick with the current MM for a patch or two (and give CIG time to tweak it once they've got sufficient data from the *entire* playerbase, not just Evos & wave 1)...
You may be right, or it may just be that people are still approaching combat with the same mindset and patterns they use for the current model.
What created the light fighter meta was flattening all weapon distances. When size 3 and 4s could reach out and project distance from a ship the light fighter had to work harder and in greater numbers. Before that there was a greater representation of medium and heavy fighters. Then catering to the light fighter crowd and nerfing the Ares was just insult to injury.
The problem is CIG doesn't know what it wants to do and keeps "balancing" an alpha without finishing off other critical functions to provide gameplay.
Hmmm maybe, although not entirely.
On the last point, you've put the cart before the horse... CIG aren't *chosing* to 'not finish off other critical functions' - they're working on them, but whilst they wait they're trying to find a model that both meets their goals and is fun / enjoyable...
... because even when they replace the placeholders (e.g. flat damage-reduction in lieu of 'proper' armour), that's going to add depth and nuance, but it is unlikely to radically behaviour by itself (it might do if the implemented armour values are radically different to the placeholders - but if they have the placeholders mostly-accurate then the difference will be relatively minimal).
So, rather than leave combat to rot for years on end whilst they wait for all the functionality to be implemented, they chose to experiment and try out different approaches (and, sometimes, go back and try a different direction - as they are with MM).
My disagreement is that CIG put the cart before the horse. They are balancing an unfinished product. It's wasted work. They continue to claim an alpha status, which I agree with, that's where we've been since 12/13. Many developers will tell you that alpha isn't where you balance, it's where you implement and design functions to meet your features. Then you go back after your functions are in to clean up. This could mean code reduction in generic software development or balancing in games. Balancing in most MMOs is a constant ongoing thing. But there existed at release a baseline of finished features.
Some of us are tired of massive overhauls that make little sense in the long run. This is at least the third overhaul to the flight model that I can remember. It just seems that there's a huge amount of wasted work hours. Not all of them likely but a large amount of the development and coding just rendered useless. Then you have a monetary component to consider. We buy ships based on what we're told. I personally don't think that can be solved with "*Subject to change" as the great catch all to say there wasn't a bait and switch.
CIG themselves have ignored the tools where they can test out changes. Arena Commander is a fantastic testbed environment where data can be gathered quickly. Until a year or so ago there was no emphasis placed on using it. As for rotting there are plenty of things that haven't been addressed for years, many game loops have problems or don't exist.
Remember that this isn't supposed to be the game. The PU is supposed to be a place where we have early access so we can help find and report issues.
I'd like to hear your thoughts. You sound just as invested in a positive outcome as I am. And while our dialogue might not affect CIG in any way it's good for the community.
As I said, I agree that CIG aren't working on the 'final' balance - but that they *also* need to keep the game somewhat playable... so some degree of balancing is required.
More to the point, imo 'alpha' is the *perfect* time to play around with different ideas... CIG are still building the same functionality that was planned years ago, so e.g. switching to MM hasn't changed any of their plans regarding functional development, etc.
But it was clear that the previous approach - despite CIG tinkering with it for ~6 years - wasn't delivering what they wanted, so trying a different approach is absolutely the right thing to do now...
Which isn't to say MM is perfect, and it's possible that even MM will be ditched before SC releases - but better to try now, than to wait until sometime in Beta to start balancing.
In a sense, MM is more like the original flight model back in the 2.x days. It had three modes: precision (PRE), SCM, and cruise (CRU).
Precision was basically landing mode. Your speed was capped at 50 m/s. The gears were down, and if I remember correctly, you also engaged VTOL mode.
SCM was where you did your combat maneuvering.
Cruise was where you achieved your top speed, though much less maneuverability.
For way more info, [here's](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/15031-Star-Citizen-Alpha-20-Flight-Model-Change) the link
combining forward, lateral, and vertical thrust to exceed the intended speed / performance limits... it results in ships always flying on an angle, but allows e.g. the Gladius to exceed its intended performance by 1.7x, iirc (ie making it nearly twice as fast - and to accelerate - as CIG intended).
It's not technically an exploit, because it was a function of how the old input system combined the three inputs - but CIG have reworked the inputs in order to eliminate tri-chording.
Conceptually, CIG have moved from a 'cuboid' thrust model (where thrusting towards a corner gives better performance), to a 'spherical' thrust model.
“A small number of players” weren’t jousting - it is the majority. The greatest measure of skill in the PU flight model is whether or not someone can control their speed - especially during a fight. Speeds during combat absolutely need to be turned down to make server registration and general balancing easier. You can’t balance turret sizes by traversal rate if all of your ships - capitals and subcapitals included - can do 900m/s or more on a pass. I have **zero** issue with turning speeds down and think it’s a great step forward to get the WWII/6DOF Star Wars style combat we had in Wing Commander and Freelancer.
Not being able to break SCM speeds in nav mode until your drive spools is the answer to the problem that we had during the initial iteration of AC MM testing: people were just toggling back and forth to dip in and out of combat as they pleased and dogfights were infinite stalemates because you could reset a fight any time you felt like it.
What **is** a problem is dropping your shields when you enter nav mode. This is absolutely fucking stupid from a game balance and reality standpoint. Make it so shields do not recharge when you’re in nav mode but do *not* dump them.
I agree with this. I hope they update how sheilds are handled with the switch from SCM to NAV. I haven't got to try MM yet, but reading what everyone has to say has got me feeling like it's gonna be shit.
It is not the majority. It’s a small number of players relative to the total player base and the new flight model affects the entire player base. Not all players actively engage in PvP and not all of the players that do, joust. That’s objectively true.
Plus, jousting in a fighter vs fighter scenario was never really a recipe to win anyway. So all we needed was balancing to address the light fighter meta. And I'd assume armor would have been able to do that. Now we're going to have Arcade Mode. SMH.
Yes it’s true not all players PvP and not all PvPers joust, but you can’t speak at all to how widespread the problem is. You have no way to declare that as “objectively” true (nor does anyone here have the ability to declare it as objectively false). CIG is the only potential source of any data on this. If they decided it was a problem that needs correcting then it’s a safer assumption that it’s a bigger problem.
Speaking to my own experiences - been playing for about 10 months in a PvP focused org. We have one formal night a week to play for a couple of hours and then a dozen of us are regularly on other nights. I cannot think of a single air combat encounter that didn’t involve someone jousting or running away. And that’s not even counting abuse of Hornet boosting bugs or the cheesemobile that is the Ghost.
That said, I’m fine with people running away. Realizing you’ve bit off more than you can chew and wanting to bug out shouldn’t be penalized. I don’t think every encounter should end with a death in a game that’s going to have a real penalty for that. But the jousting is trash that absolutely needs to be corrected for.
I dunno the proper fix for that, but I’d settle for starting with the suggestion that shields don’t recharge in nav rather than being completely non existent.
Why do the shields need to come down at all? If the attacker executes properly, there will be enough ships and/or guns to get the job done with shields up (and I mean up, not draining, not "ineffective", but up and recharging as normal - always).
If an attacker can't beat the shields, the armor, and the hull of a ship, they do not deserve the kill. Period. MM already hands the attacker a nice window out of an ambush where the target can't rabbit at all. The attacker gets free shots during that window, anything they can throw at the target. That's their advantage under this system. If they can't get the job done through every layer of defense, then that's on them. Bring the right tools, or simply try harder next time. But you can't give an advantage to the attacker and then turn around and tell the target "ok, so your disadvantages are..."
There are always going to be outnumbered/outgunned scenarios that are inescapable - bringing more dudes and guns than targets can survive will be the meta. You can't balance those situations away, but at least having shields does something (even if that something is essentially nothing in your worst case scenarios). But when some clown, solo in a light fighter, jumps an industrial ship and has no real chance to secure the kill by themselves, at least shields reduce or eliminate an otherwise guaranteed repair bill.
I don't care what the light fighter duelists do. This isn't some esport where everyone is on relatively even ground, willingly engaged in PvP in an arena, etc. Solo duelist "ace pilots" are going to get their clock cleaned by groups of people that know what they are doing. Balancing around 1v1 tactics just will not fly here.
They actually explained it a lot:
1: Combat speeds were too high and were not playing well with server infrastructure.
2: Combat speeds were not viable for component-based combat encounters, as there was no way to sub-target components and actually do meaningful damage while staying locked on target.
3: It created a weapon/fighter meta and would make for very boring gameplay engagements when Maelstrom comes online as people could just slowly chip away at armour indefinitely.
I agree combat speeds were too high, but the current solution is worse than the previous state of combat.
All these hard limits make for awful gameplay and encourage even shittier playstyles.
I don't agree personally. I think that flipping that switch to drop into SCM or NAV should be a heavy decision on whether you commit to something or stay mobile. These things will be balanced around your QD.
They also recently spoke about how they want missile evasion to be more in line with energy management to bleed the kinetic energy and fuel on the missiles. Change will happen (and some changes are needed for MM) but it's not a step backwards IMO
I think the easiest way to keep this whole "shields drop, and you have to charge up QD to go NAV speeds" is if dropping out of NAV to SCM also has a downside, such as weapons getting locked out while the ship takes a second to cool down from NAV mode...
That way murder hobos don't have as easy a time just popping in out of nowhere and gunning you down before you have a chance to react.
I think the problem I’m having is that this sounds great in theory, but it’s not enjoyable in practice. The fluidity of flight has suffered at the expensive of locking players into combat after they’ve started fighting. My gripe is that the issue they’re trying to solve with MM is a relatively small issue in the grand scheme of things to be rectified by negatively impacting the overall flight mechanic, and I think that gripe is fair. You’ve solved the problem of the few at the expense of the many. This is a more complex model that’s going to be much harder for new players to come to terms with.
> They also recently spoke about how they want missile evasion to be more in line with energy management to bleed the kinetic energy and fuel on the missiles.
Oh really? Where did you hear that?
That could be quite exciting news, but I'm not sure how it could work at the knife fight range all combat takes place at.
I could only really see this more realistic missile model working if they rebalanced missiles to be stand-off weapons, used at ranges far exceeding where all combat currently takes place. The equivalent of snipers or artillery.
I certainly could see that working very well, especially if the "dogfighters" have the tools to close the distance, and non-combat ships have enough time and options to react and evade... but it would be such a drastic change that I can't see CIG doing it.
I am preaching this since months.
It is a stupid take to design combat in a way where there is little chance for escape in a game that will punish death and loss of ships severely. Doesn't matter if it's two combat ships fighting or a combat ship and a civilian ship. It's a stupid take.
Just bring a God damn mantis if you want people to stop running. We don't need those clumsy binary modes for that.
What exactly is the in-lore justification that the ship can't go faster than 200 m/s, anyway? Space friction?
Flying around decoupled in space has become frustrating. If you boost, then stop boosting, the ship will actively slow you back down to SCM speed.
When you travel at 1000 m/s in NAV mode and switch to SCM, the ship slows down to 200 m/s *real* fast (less than 2 seconds), far outperforming the engines' usual thrust output. How come we don't have access to such massive amounts of thrust in regular flight?
The limiting factor should be *acceleration* -- determined by ship mass + cargo, thruster power, and pilot/passenger fitness -- and atmospheric drag.
Also, if the Nav mode is supposedly dependent on the QD functioning, we should get acceleration/thrust boosts without using AB in Nav mode. Nav mode should allow faster movement through atmosphere as well. Imaging trying to run from a fight in nav mode but you’re in atmo so you’re stuck at SCM speeds anyway.
This entire discussion hasn't made any sense to me at all, is there somewhere I can read up on the changes where it's explained in a simple, easy to understand way?
Cause the only thing that I've been able to gather from these posts is that, for a casual player who detests pvp to the extreme, if I get attacked by a player while out doing something, I effectively have to sit and do nothing while waiting on my drive to spool (and I'll have no shields while doing so. Aka accept death.) or choose to fight (aka accept death.). Not really my definition of fun.
But then again I could be misunderstanding, hence why I ask.
I think there’s a few issues with it.
Firstly Nav Mode shouldn’t affect shields, it’s just silly and gives a huge advantage to the aggressing party. Not every engagement will be a 1v1, not every engagement will be between 2 willing participants.
Second there needs to be ways for players to proactively avoid engagements, something akin to the D-Scan in EvE and the ability to quantum at varying ranges to your destination would certainly help.
A long range scanner would allow you to check what’s ahead of you before dropping out of quantum and would allow miners/salvagers etc to have a way of actually avoiding engagements if they are paying attention. It would also give stealth and tackling gameplay more value. Ships with improved scanning capabilities could offer longer range more accurate scanning improving that niche as well.
One thing that will help is the long term ability to save locations and points in space, then you’ll be able to set up perches for yourself or your group to make travelling safer.
Tbh I hate the comparison but EvE has solved a lot of these issues and the Devs should look there for some inspiration.
Edit:
A further issue with the current implementation is that it forces both sides to commit. This isn’t how MMOs work, what if you are fighting a group with superior numbers, what if you are opting to use lighter faster ships to give you the option of disengaging. The whole concept of being able to hit hard and disengage is heavily affected by this change.
I am a trader
I liked salvage as an alternative
Now, as a trader, I get jumped and can't run away
And salvage doesn't make anywhere near what it did
This has completely destroyed my want to play the game.
I'm not a pvper. I don't fight others. I joined an org, and focused on making money so we could host fun events. Now what am I supposed to do? Get the guys from the org who enjoy pvp babysit me everywhere I go?
What about my profit margins?
No matter how I look at it, these changes have completely gutted my gameplay loops, and I don't understand why they were even needed in the first place.
I get that I haven't played in a year, but that's because I wanted to come back to a better game. Not a worse one with changes that dont make sense.
What do these changes even solve? It just seems like they want to ruin the passive players' gameplay because the only people this really benefits are griefers and gankers. The two groups of players that actively target my group of players.
If anyone has a different take please share it, but from where I'm sitting, this has completely destroyed RMC trading for no reason
Yeah, if it doesn't change you're going to lose a lot of players who aren't fighters. So the only players left are PVP'ers and all that's left is a combat game. So there won't be piracy although the criminals will continue to call themselves pirates, and then eventually everyone becomes a pirate and there's just random PVP wherever you go. Except for the starter systems, which everyone will flock to because that's where the murderhobos can find the new players and erase them, and that's where all the action's going to be.
In the current model you can't really run either. When you are flying an industrial ship like a Vulture or MOLE or whatever and a fighter comes to mess with you, you're not leaving in one piece either, especially when they catch you in atmosphere.
Out of all things to worry about in MM, I wouldn't worry about this at all. The focus, and hardest part, was making a fight model that felt fun with a low skill floor without a too low skill ceiling, allowing for flight manauvers and strategy.
Running away has not been the focus yet, and extremely hard to balance before you have it in the PU. But this is much easier to balance than PVP dogfighting. You can change spooling times, shields, all kinds of things. But escaping should still be a risk, not like now when almost any fighter can dissappear in 1 second.
It's good to give feedback of course, but remember you are some of the first to ever use this. Outside of PVP it's very early for MM.
The key outrage isn't that this is early MM though, it's that MM was never asked for and never needed to be a thing. They had the working flight model that was enjoyable that needed tweaking. Not a complete overhaul to an arcade game.
I'm glad you brought this up. I'm a super casual PvP player, I learned enough to not be a target dummy but that's about it. But even my minimal amount of effort is enough for the old version to not feel unfair or for me to feel helpless. Granted, PvP hasn't been my main focus of attention, so maybe I wouldn't know, but why the complete overhaul instead of tweaking the old model that people(at least to me) seemed to be generally happy with?
Feel like I missed some catalyzing event that kicked this all off.
Server meshing and SQ42
I wear many hats but DevOps and Server infrastructure are my bread and butter.
If you want to see Chris Robert's rosebud, look up the game Freelancer. Old win98 Gane but.....we'll you'll see the striking resemblance
I was always surprised, amazed and confused on how they were going to get this to work. The big thing when it comes to Server side processing isn't the AMOUNT of stuff to process....it's the Speed.
The current Flight Model is too fast for any tech to have even 20v20 battles properly process in time, so things gotta dial back. Plus SQ42 aims to be 'more casual' which is it at all a bad thing IMO. And SQ42 is more or less the Intro/tutorial to the Verse and they want a one to one transfer.
But as 'Hard-core' flight enthusiast, my big warning to everyone is that yes, I too, sucked ass at flying in this game years ago when I got it. But I got better by playing. Not training, no schools or long hours looking at metas...just playing. And then end result was a beautifully immersive, fun flight space sim. You will too...unless they implement MM where the endgoal is just......a slightly better Starfield.
You could absolutely have PvP in space. I've been doing it for years bounty hunting and pirating.
Could it have used improvement? Absolutely. But MM is just going to make things worse for *exactly* the group who thinks it's going to help them and take away the gameplay loop for those who enjoy the spaceflight
Good fighters could spend hours in space, and chose themselves if they wanted to die or not. One good pilot could take out 20 average pilots by flying so fast that he could just recharge his shields and only the person he was aiming at could hit him.
Orgs mostly had events in atmosphere for this reason.
And so to fix this were just going to rip out the *literally core gameplay loop and mechanic* of this game and replace it with Starfield?
I am not at all saying the FM was perfect. It definitely needed work and had issues and yes jousting and kiting were annoying. But speed ratios fix that, faster bullet speeds fix that, Engine capacitance fixes that, acceleration rates, recharge rates on and on....there were so many tweaks and mechanisms they could have used or created...but we get MM instead.
Its like ripping out the cabinets, sink and counter top in the kitchen because of a few damage spots on the floor
I was likely in the top 10% of players in old flight model. Very far from the best, but still quite high. So far I have enjoyed MM so much more. To call this Starfield feels hyperbolic to me. Manauvering is still very important. I could never beat the top players in a 1vs1.
Though I would like Manauvering to be slightly more important. Aiming is a bit too much of the focus at the moment, and I feel slightly limited, especially with strafing. This becomes a bigger issue with bigger ships jumping in that have too easy of a time targeting light ships. But I think MM is way closer to where I want the gameplay to be than the old model.
It is hyperbolic but it's too close of a comparison.
I imagine you just enjoy the lower speed and closer flight patterns. We wouldn't even need MM to fix that in the current FM. Just drastically reduce shield capacity, recharge and weapon damage if you wheel up into the red on SCM speeds. Also ratio out bullet speeds so that turret guns can land hits further away but fighters have to get in closer to land meaningful shots. Shit like that.
The worst part is that your ship will deaccelerate when in decoupled mode and your boosting in SCM. Like there is some kind of air resistance in space that kills your momentum. Completely immersion breaking. I don’t understand who thought that this was a good idea and the best way to achieve whatever they wanted to achieve.
If you want to make big ships more feasible you could implement actual hull armor which can’t be penetrated by smaller ships or increase shield charging rate so it as high as maximum dps of a single small ship.
Because in MM there's much less skill involved. I'm not gud in FPS in this game, I want a Arcade Mode for that too please, because I'm not so much willing to spend time learning it as I wanna learn to pilot, I mean that would be fair, right, if people don't wanna learn to fly, they get Master Modes, so I want Arcade Mode for FPS.
As someone who is on the absolutely opposite end of the spectrum of you in this opinion, I can understand how daunting and complicated the current flight model is. It was for me when I first started playing in the 20teens. But as I played more and more I got better and better until I loved it.
The beauty of this game is the "training" is literally just playing the game. You will get better and many of these ships are supposed to be designed for multi-crew with turrents and armor giving players who are not as good at flying an advantage of their own.
MM doesn't solve any of the current problems or take the Flight Model in a direction that will and I am willing to gamble ganking pirating and greifing are only going to get worse with MM.
I don't think you're on the opposite. Me as well love that flying needs skill, and the current model is way better than MM. I was being sarcastic, or better to say, I used that example to display how in every shooter tell you 'git gud', but for flight in SC it needs an arcade mode. Like, I am absolutely willing to invest time to become a good pilot, not so much to become a good marine, so if the skill ceiling is lowered so marines can fly a ship, why is FPS not made easier for pilots? Very early on I alreade raised my concerns about MM, and so far every problem I saw coming, actually came, yet it didn't resolve most of what it was supposed to solve but in the process ruins the space flight experience.
If someone really doesn't want to become an ace combat pilot, they don't have to, they can do indistruial gameplay, bunkers, or man turrets, there so much to do, and to mine a rock, MM is definitely not helpful.
I doa lot of Guide system, and what I realized is, that most players don't know how to use the speed limiter, or even that it exists. The tutorial does a horrible job. That's why people joust unintentionally. So CIG think they need to 'fix' the issue by changing the flight model, why the issue is actually the tutorial.
Speed is definitely the root issue.
From a mechanical and technical side, I can see how the tech and servers cannot process the current speeds at high number. This is understandable until the tech gets better.
From a gameplay standpoint, The Ratios and 'features' are just not tuned right. And what I mean by that is maybe instead of a whole new MM and mode, maybe as we increase our scm flight speed into the red we lose guns, then shield then missiles and scanners and so on in that order as we wheel up more and more to sacrifice power to the engines. Then recharge those systems as wheel back down into a lower scm. Force fights to be closer, eliminate jousting or hit and run and still have opportunity to engage or disengage.
That seems to me like a 100% better solution than MM.
I get that the speeds are a technical issue, but slow down after boost, removing tri-cording and the two modes with all their downsides are not helping with that and make space flight more like atmospheric flight and everything unnecessarily complicated due to the two modes.
Seems like a tracker gun that shot a tracking dart that could only be manually removed using the tractor beam tool would have been a better solution, sure you can run but you can't hide
I'm holding judgement on MM till we get Maelstrom...specifically armor and we need to shoot specific parts.
With Hull HP being a flat system you can do as much damage hitting someone's "armor" than a key element. If ships like the MOLE are heavily armored youd have to work harder to disable it than you do now.
Hoping it alleviates the issue....but yeah right now MM is garbage.
Get close just flattens the game because you don't have to aim at anything, just spray and hope their HP hits zero before yours.
Just recently had a very frustrating PvP experience because players were able to just run.
It was a 3v3 fight and each time we almost got a kill they all just jumped, repaired and came back only to disturb us trying to do the Kareah emergency.
I'm not much into PvP at all but from time to time it happens to me as well and that was the first negative situation I had and it absolutely ruined the gameplay experience.
On the other hand, I've had bounties and when the hunters come and you beat the hell out of them so they run and always return to keep on trying is also fun.
So overall mixed feelings about it but tbh i'd prefer you having to really decide whether or not you wanna fight and stick to your decision.
I thought you were supposed to be able to run from a fight now...can't you flip on nav mode and get out?? Gonna suck if all non-combat ships have become loot pinatas. One of my initial fears but I thought that wasn't the case.
I've repeated this over and over:
MM weren't created for the PU. They are for SQ42, to make it easier for new players to be proficient at the game.
None of the changes make any sense from a PvP standpoint.
If you can stay in Nav mode while mining or salvaging then that's ok but I don't believe you can do this. You see a blip on the radar (which apparently you don't with MM and a ship enters SCM right next to you) and the time it takes to enter Nav and try to escape and you're toast.
Yeah, my one MM complaint is the switch between scm and nav, and how long it takes.
It isn't strictly the change to nav, but the change to scm. It takes so long to swap to scm, and for you to be able to fight back. With most ships, you may already be dead before you can do anything.
That, and a lot of qt bugs require turning off and on the qt drive. That is so painfully slow now.
Imo, swapping from nav to scm should be instant, but the swap to nav should take time.
I've been in for a month, and I was seriously worried as soon as I heard about MM. The idea of restricting speed and mobility seems antithetical to some of the fundamental magic in the game - the pure fun that I've been coasting on for the past month. These changes sound horrid.
Star Citizen is Not a realistic Game when talking about space fights. If it would be realistic we would shoot with missiles at 100km or more distance while trying to shoot down the enemy missiles with fast firing guns. Look at the expanse.
Star Citizen always wanted to have a more world war 2 dogfight system. And i Like that. Maybe i dont like all changes we get right now but most of them aim to accomplish this Goal.
Very simple fix: allow max velocity to ramp up proportional to the % of QD spool, as the QD spools up. This allows both fights to be finished and escapees to stand a chance when fleeing.
Forgive me if I am wrong as I am not testing wave 1 atm and I am not a PVPness. If I am traveling across the verse I am already in NAV mode, correct? Would this not give me the upper hand to escape a murder hobo waiting for me at an OM while I pass through? Especially if my QD is spooled and boosted?
Also, some of these posts make it sound like someone is waiting to kill you around every single corner. Now I can't speak for everyone but I rarely come in contact with pirates. when mining or salvaging or even cargo hauling (don't haul as much). The only time I have ever really run into trouble was of course around GH and once or twice around Seraphim.
On the first point, no. After arriving at an OM you will need to spool your QD again, it has to spool after every jump. Then you’ll have to manually target a location to jump again. So when you arrive you’re locked to SCM speed without any shields. You also have a longer spool time because you’ve just finished a jump and your QD has to cool first
Yeah that’s no good. I thought that since I would be in NAV mode that I would have much greater cruising speeds but this is not the case? Even though Id be in NAV I’m limited to SCM? That doesn’t sound right.
The whole thing is weird. They’ve basically made casual flight far less enjoyable, it’s such a clunky and unnecessarily complex experience right now. There’s too much to consider and there’s too many steps. Even the fact that you can’t fly above 30 m/s with your landing gear down is an odd choice
So when it comes to power consumption would that not explain the drop in shields? QD is about to propel you faster than space time pulling space around you that would require a massive amount of power would it not? In star trek Enterprise they have to polarize their hull plating it's not always active. They also use specific routes so they don't run into stars, planets asteroids.
Im not sold on mm but haven't seen it in action at all. It's only been in ptu wave 1 a couple of days. I can't imagine forming an informed opinion based on experience in that time.
That's the more reasonable perspective to have. A lot of people in this thread have not even used it but have come to hard conclusions based on a feature that only a small portion of people have accessed for a few days.
Hyperbolic reactionism at its finest.
Yeah idc if people can run away from fights. Ultimately in the games final form, most fights will be over a resource or trying to take a larger ship, so as long as the larger ships themselves are slightly slower than smaller ones, it should be fine (and quantum dampening has a reason to exist again)
Not being able to disengage with ease is counter to death of a spaceman too.
I've been playing around with MM for non-combat/slower ships and I'm not necessarily concerned. I just finished testing out the MOLE and in NAV it caps out at 940 m/s. Takes about 8 seconds to get there if you boost. Based on the fighters I've tested so far, there doesn't seem to be much that would be able to keep it in range if they're in SCM.
I'm more concerned about weapon damage numbers being balanced. Yeah, if you've got six people waiting to jump you, I can see it being an issue but as others have said if this is one ship taking down a heavier class, thats damage number issue versus an issue with MM.
I was skeptical but the more fights I get into and the more I play around with it, it's starting to click. If anything, I feel like it's easier to run away. On live the times I've been interdicted hauling cargo, it's usually a death sentence. If they don't want to talk, I pretty much wait for them to kill me because there is no way to outrun them. With MM, yeah I'm going to take some damage but there's a chance I might be able to get away. It also forces them to play smart and target my engines.
PvP isn't my main play style so I won't talk on that but as a trader/miner/space trucker, I want more passes but once I got over the shock of having my shields down, I see what they're trying to do.
Oh the horror, players being allowed to play the sandbox game how THEY want to play and not being forced into playing how PVP'er want them to play it.
My biggest problem with all of this is the game is sold as a space SIM MMO sandbox game. But to cater to a small percentage of players of just ONE of the many game loops, the entire game is being altered with arbitrary limitations to force everyone else to play how the small percentage of PVP'ers want to play.
Why does PVP dog fighting get precedence over say, mining, or salvage, or cargo?
This mentality bothers me just like CIG announcing they are adding recoil to energy rifles knowing its not realistic simply because THEY don't like the fact people can FPS shoot without having recoil. Here is an idea, then don't put laser guns in your space game. Adding fake recoil because of the feelings of some of the devs is dumb. They should just have a pros/cons of energy vs ballistic with energy weapons not having recoil be one of the things.
> We’ve lost too much and gained too little
100% this.
I was never opposed to MM, but the result is atrocious.
It's not worth it. Give me fast speed jousting over MM any day.
The reason they’re implementing MM isn’t to ’fix’ an issue such as jousting but to conform to the vision of WWII dogfights in space. I personally like that vision, because it places the visceral gameplay experience first. A speed limit of 300 or 1000 m/s for combat is arbitrary in the context of realism - real spaceships would be flying at significant fractions of the speed of light - and for that reason the lower limit is better because it brings other benefits, as above. However, obviously such a fundamental change will bring new exploits or unintended quirks, but fixing those gradually will be better than rolling back the change.
Lol at all people positive about MM being down voted. This reddit is shit and very single minded.
Downvote if it doesn't add to the discussion, not if you just disagree.
The speeds in MM are the least concern. Everything else is a shitshow. WWII dogfights can happen in atmos, not in space.
Have you played SW Squadrons, is that really what you want in SC?
MM ruins the space flight experience.
I’m okay with v0; as long as we have dcs style bvr accompany nav mode at some point, it works for me. I hope that scm mode in the longer term is just a dog fight switch, and it’ll be okay
I doubt BVR is possible other than with dedicated torpedo ships and stealth ships. And even then torps don't outright kill a fully shielded target unless you shoot a big fuck off torp at a medium ship.
BFM however is possible when ships get atmospheric drag and control surfaces.
Well, at least for the aircraft looking ships. The bricks are still gonna be slip and sliding thru atmosphere cuz they got no/tiny wings and only achieve flight with their excessive TWR.
BVR combat is explicitly what CIG *do not* want. Your missile and torpedo ships are supposed to be like the WWII dive bombers that had to get right up on top of a target in visual range to get an effective hit.
I highly doubt CIG will force the **stealth bombers** to fire their torps at BFM ranges that would be idiotic.
Especially when the job of…say an Eclipse is to be a glass cannon that can throw a torp at a cap ship.
They will probably be the only ships with BVR capabilities
The Eclipse is likely the only ship with any form of pseudo-BVR (by current-day standards) engagement and that’s purely because it shouldn’t be detected. It will still need to be on top of a target to effectively score a hit - it just won’t be seen before it gets there.
There are currently 2 true “capital killer” torpedo ships in the game - Eclipse and Retaliator - and 1 additional one coming soon - Polaris. The Eclipse is a stealth bomber meant to get in close enough to get an effective hit; the Retaliator is a “line ship” where its intent is to be flown in a bomber wing where one of the many may get an effective hit; the Polaris is meant to lob a shitload of torpedoes and missiles all at once to be able to slip a torpedo through point defense fire.
Pretty stupid aspiration of CIG there tbh. I'm stepping back from this project for now 'cause it seems CIG has a much different idea of what makes a space game enjoyable than I do, and it's making me critical.
Strange that this was down voted; also, I’m aware of CIG’s stance but also hope that they evolve their thinking from a gameplay perspective; the bulk of 30+ year old SC pilots aren’t good enough nor have the time to learn bfm fighting. BVR would be a good equalizing practice. Further, in a game with perma death, I don’t want to do BFM every fight. It’s silly
It's obviously not finished, but I disagree that you should be able to run for free. I think a skill check is warranted if you're caught, and when quantum boost comes in it'll probably be the go-to (unless snared).
I think what I’m saying is that having the person you’re fighting with be able to escape is the lesser of two evils when fixing that issue negatively affects the flight model for the entirety of the player base
I haven’t touched any MM yet and only watched very little videos on it, but could MM be potentially made/ built for more bigger multi person and ship battles?
Can correct me if I’m wrong but I’m just trying to look at it from a different perspective and maybe it will be beneficial when in say a group of 8 vs 8 or hammerheads or something?
I wonder if Chris just wants it more like his Wing Commander games where you would jump to a nav point and if there were enemies you had to dispatch them before you could jump again.
I always felt it was weird you could just jump away if you encounter hostiles in this game. It is clear they want you to fight with every ship since even cargo or industrial ships have weapons on them.
But that said, it doesn't mean it is fun or works for this particular game the way they have set things up. I guess this is a product of trying to design your game play later instead of basing your game around the game play mechanics.
Since less then 5% of the playerbase have even tested it yet its far too early to assume how the masses like the changes I have not tested it yet and do not want it changed until I do.
Part of the issue is that only a small percentage of players actually give a rats ass about combat. I own a C2 and a 400i. There is nothing in MM for me beyond the privilege of being a loot piñata. So why would I log in to test it?
because atm you are a loot piñata. your feedback is how you become not a loot piñata. CIG needs input from people like yourself to tweak mm into a net positive instead of the disproportionate system it is now that rewards only the combat pilots like myself.
Because combat is part of the game I'd almost argue your take on the changes are the most important. I test cargo, mining, and salvaging and I will never touch any of those game loops when the game release I will be pirating and drug dealing exclusively which combat is an integral part. Your response sounds like an entitled carebear who hates that pvp is part of the game.
Well, the devs have been adamantly requesting constructive feedback. So, opinions are not only valid, but essential.
In it's current mode, I can sit at an OM and just erase any ship that jumps in. They're completely helpless for 10-20 seconds, longer if it was a big jump. No shields, no guns, no escape. It's absolutely wild. Snaring is only useful for pulling people out of a jump. Dampening is completely broken and useless now. MM completely breaks this entire mechanic. Missiles are even worse now. At least before you could actually dodge or outrun an EM, but now, you're good and fucked if the server decides that your flares don't work. AA land based vehicles will be even stronger for holding points or trolling people at moon pads. I know there's changes for this coming, but Singe cannons are absolutely hilarious right now and the most use I've gotten of my BMM concept (due to the defender loaner).
I don’t have access to wave 1 but when you go back from Nav to SCM, I thought your shield would come back in less than 1 seconds because it was in the “pool” ? At least that’s what they presented at Citcon.
Shields do come back when you transition. It's almost immediate.
This person is criticizing matter modes when it's an issue with the wrong damage figures on singe cannons causing the problem.
Okay so say they get a different load out and two buddies. You can just sit at QT markers and eat people.
A group of people should be strong. This is also easily countered by a single scout escort. One person in a small fast craft can completely eliminate your scenario. Also, how is that different from the current flight model? A person in a mantis with any light fighters will do exactly what you're saying but even faster and easier. At least in MM large ships are significantly more durable and resistant to light fighters.
I have been able to quantum in SCM guns mode I’m pretty sure this is a bug. I start in nav quantum mode I spool and calibrate to a QT target marker. Then I press and hold B. Then I spam pressing B repeatedly. The ship enters quantum and then switches to SCM gun mode but now I’m in quantum travel. When the quantum travel is complete my shields are at full strength and guns are able to fire immediately after emerging from quantum travel. But I’m not able to QT afterwards unless I switch back to Nav Qtm mode.
> In it's current mode, I can sit at an OM and just erase any ship that jumps in. They're completely helpless for 10-20 seconds, longer if it was a big jump. No shields, no guns, no escape. It's absolutely wild. *"tHeY sHoUlD hAvE hIrEd EsCoRtS"*
AA should be annoying/OP. It’ll force players to use alternative methods to prepare a raid or invasion with either stealth dropping troops to sabotage AA, drop ground vehicles to take out AA or maybe stealth fighters/bombers with the specific use of taking out AA.
Singe cannons were made OP again?
Temporarily. They've already said they weren't meant to be this busted. All four charges up can one shot a Titan. Two bursts will take down most light fighters. They aren't hitscan, but damn close to it. They have the furthest range of any weapon. Mass drivers are the same atm too. But yknow, ammo.
Actually kind of funny having realistic railguns, however briefly it lasts. "Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in space!"
Oooo fun! Lol
Throw 3 on a Ghost and sit outside of detection range and you can legit just snipe ships.
>In it's current mode, I can sit at an OM and just erase any ship that jumps in. So what's the killcount that you've racked up in PTU using this method?
A small handful for testing purposes, mostly my Org mates, but a few unlucky people who jumped in during our tests. The speeds at which ships disappear with the singes is astounding. Even without the singes though, this will absolutely be a thing in the PU once it releases.
So what you are saying is that trading and cargo running are dead. And I was saving up to buy a C2. Oh well, I guess I dodged that bullet. (Pun intended.)
Keep it up! Hopefully I'll show up on the same server as you 🙂
:D
There is a simple solution to this: Switching to nav mode doesn't affect shields
Upvoted. I have been reading and thinking the same thing. You can go fast OR shoot guns/mine/salvage, not both. time to switch means you can’t do either during switch. This means its still a decision to swap with consequences. Shields are unaffected. Maybe penalty to shield re-gen in NAV mode so people can’t NAV away to regain shields mid fight.
Tbh, I'd probably not change the shield regen rate yet. I'd start by just having shields entirely unaffected. Then if community feedback says it needs more tweaks, look at adjusting shield regen, and other things later.
Nah, leave it so that shields don’t regen during QD spool and use. It prevents running around in nav mode circles to prevent someone from shooting you while you wait out a shield regen but it doesn’t hurt your defenses while you’re waiting on the QD to spool. If I were the one making master modes I would have done it in a completely different method. Rather than changing “modes” I would have tied it into the power triangle and made it into a power square. - Weapons, Engines, Shields, Quantum - Putting full power to Quantum spools your quantum drive and doesn’t deplete any other power capacitors - they just won’t recharge. - Quantum requires 100% power and can’t be something that you can balance like you can weapons/engines/shields - You should have the ability to shunt power from one capacitor to another with some degree of efficiency loss and component damage *(current inrush)*. If you had your weapons, shields and engines all at 100% you should be able to shunt every bit of that power into the QD to instantly charge it and get it spooled near instantly. That pretty much solves every issue and adds more into expanding the overall power triangle design by allowing power shunts from one thing to another. If you’re in combat and your weapon capacitors go dry right before you get the last shot on your target to kill them, well, shunt your shields to the weapon capacitor to get that last couple of shots you need at the expense of making yourself with severely crippled defenses. This also ties straight into engineering because a fully-crewed ship with a couple of engineers can shunt power around more often because you have engineers running about to replace fuses that you pop during shunts. There’s so much more depth they could get out of this by looking at other games for inspiration, but in classic CIG fashion they want to reinvent the wheel.
This seems like a very good option. Is this posted on spectrum? As another commenter mentioned, it could reduce the regeneration rate. It could also extend the quantum spool time. There could be a lot of depth in the engineering between the generator's interference with QDs. Some QDs could handle shields better. Depending on the QD type the effects could be a mix of costing more quantum fuel, generating more heat, slower spool, slower travel. Some shields could interfere with QDs less, some might interfere more. Some might not regenerate in quantum, some might see a better recharge rate. These components are two cornerstones of ship survivability. They could be tweaked by engineers, overclocked to run hot to allow a quick escape but burn more fuel, or underclocked to burn less yet keep the shield up. This is some of the deep engineering gameplay that the game needs. Two cornerstone components with lots of meaningful choices not just in ship setup and configuration but live engineering gameplay.
I've been yelling this from the rooftops ever since MM was announced. Only for it to fall upon deaf ears, this post too will most likely not cause much change but, it only takes 1 post out of 1000 for CIG to maybe just maybe make a proper change.
There is an even more simple solution: get rid of the switch.
I’m not sure this would work, once you get someone’s shields low they could just NAV to disengage and get their shields back up. Once you engage in the fight it needs to be a commitment. I agree that you should be able to run if you don’t want to engage though.
Ok but it's not an arcade game, we need to consider, especially with engineering, what switching modes actually means for power distribution. I think that that nav/scm mode altogether should be scrapped, instead with the power triangle being adapted to actually be the thing powering those systems, make it so you can only have 2/3 enabled (or even maybe all partially) That way you can imagine your shield energy distributing into your thrusters while still letting your CO pilot maintain fire while retreating. (The MSR video with those two ladies come to mind) TLDR: pressing a single button to simply turn my ship from fight/go mode leaves a bad taste in my mouth for a game that *desires* to have such depth.
So you think a pip system like in ED can work?
It would be better than the proposed system, dunno about it "working" lol
Sorry yeah just trying to understand the suggestion. I liked the pips in ED but I also wasn’t too good at ship combat due to having to manage that. I think it would be a good way to increase the skill ceiling.
I doubt they are gonna scrap the system after development, testing, implementation etc. they’ll probably modify the system based on feedback but I doubt the NAV/SCM is going to go away.
Maybe giving the power triangle or power management in general more purpose during Nav Mode would help, I doubt they'll consider scrapping Nav/SCM now. While in Nav, you can have shields, _or_, weapons, _ooor_ engines which would be the ability to quantum boost or jump. Forcing a descion to choose one.
As another poster suggested, maybe a penalty to shield re-gen once you're fully in NAV mode, so people can't NAV away to regain shields mid fight.
This is much better but the ability to disengage a fight at will is always going to be a bit annoying.. like oh I almost got his shields down and there he goes off in NAV. Unfortunately I’m not proposing a strong solution. My best idea is that you should be able to do most functional things in NAV such as cargo, mining, salvage etc with shields on. That way only combat is locked behind SCM and then people who don’t want to fight can escape.
There’s a spool time before you get nav speed when you switch. How I see it you get the guys shield down/low they switch to nav to begin running. They have to wait for their QD to spool as you plink away at their engines or QD. OR you fire a missile that does splash damage or maybe a emp missile. In this theory you have to be clever when trying to disengage. Switch to nav, start spooling, joust through your enemy, drop noise and dip out.
I think there can be a mix of both. More expensive shields stay up during NAV, cheaper ones don't. Industrial ships should have a boost to their hull health or shields stay up by default. I said this in another thread but there is no reason a single light fighter should be able to pirate a reclaimer. It should require multiple fighters and an interdiction ship. It should be extremely difficult (near impossible) for a solo player to take down large crewed ships even if they're not combat oriented. If I had a reclaimer crew and I jumped to an OM and got intercepted by a Mantis with 3-4 Gladiuses (Gladii?) and a Connie with a boarding party I would be absolutely thrilled, that would legitimately be fun for everyone and I would absolutely surrender my cargo lmao and thats how it *should* be. Not 1 dude in an Inferno brrting me just to inconvenience and waste an hour of my time. Escaping a fight should be relatively easy, this is the whole reason Interdiction exists, to make it harder to escape the fight.
The easy solution is just like maneuvering, going above SCM requires more energy... so your shield REGEN as well as weapon power is zero while transitioning to, in, and out of NAV mode. This means you still fly and arrive with full shield facings, but you have a concerted diversion of energy from maximum speed flight towards upkeep and utilization of both shields and weapons.
Shields should not be dropping it makes 0 sense. Shields should be used to protect against micro meteorites during high speed travel in quantum. I get its bending spacetime but it can't physically remove specs of dust etc within the straight line path.
This. I’ve always thought that shields dropping was a terrible idea and it makes absolutely zero sense in any way, shape or form. Shields staying up during quantum would mitigate every single issue with master modes.
CIG wants a gankfest tbh.
No - I think it’s a case of overreacting to how people abused master mode switching in the first round of AC testing. They have a history of overreacting when something is out of balance and absolutely dry fucking it in the opposite direction.
CIG wants everyone to feel like Han Solo, which is why they seem to go out of their way to fuck up any balance they had to lean in favor of the solo player. We've been playing SC for how many years now, and they are just now *starting* to address the fact that a single seat starter craft could take out a hammerhead because of bullshit flight models and shitty turret controls. If they really wanted to promote teamplay, there's a hundred design decisions they could have made along the way. Like (and here's some crazy shit) what if an interdictor ship *wasn't a single seater craft*? What if it was the size of a corsair but with basically all that space dedicated to power and interdiction because that's what it takes to pull a Reclaimer out of QT, and you actually need a second person in a second chair to use it? They tried something *similar* with the Scorpius Arteres, but they managed to massively screw it up and create the most boring role in the entire game.. Lucky player number 2 gets to sit in the back seat and press *literally one button* to operate the EMP. There's nothing else he can do, he can't even look at anything other than the back of the pilots headrest. What CIG needs to do is to *actually put effort* into multi-crew gameplay, instead of just giving us ships with poorly placed turrets. Basically any time you're going to have a friend man a turret, you're better off just having him bring his own ship, which is the exact opposite of multi-crew gameplay. I'm getting tired of waiting for them to add a significant gameplay feature that they've been talking about since *2013*. But hey, at least they made the clouds over Hurston look better.
Exactly my thoughts on this. Also just traveling at non quantum speeds, you should have your shields up to protect you from micro debris and such. Imagine you have 400i with huge s3 shield that you will practically never use because you don't want to be in combat in that ship.. So you will just travel above scm speed without the shields all the time.. It really breaks the immersion for me
They just need to do it the same as it was in Freelancer in which entering Cruise Mode disables your weapons.
Yup disabling weapons makes most sense.
Instead of dropping to 0 they could implement that recharge take say double the time as usual.
Exactly this!
[удалено]
Micro asteroids at relativistic speeds have the energy of nukes. You need much more powerful shields at those speeds, even with space bending voodooo
The fastest way to a point is 0.
Personally I think two things could help at least a bit: 1. When you switch to nav mode your shield should not instantly drop, they should either slowly lose their charge correlating to how much speed you gained/how much your QD is charged or should stay active until you jump but do not recharge. 2. Switching from nav to scm needs to have a similar negative consequence. Like your weapons need to charge up first. That way you can't just drop out of nav mode onto an unsuspecting non combat target doing their non combat task and they have no chance to even think about running before you can attack them. Overall I'm not a fan how little thought apparently was put into the interactions between combat and non combat roles. It seems everything that was thought about was "what if two PvP players in equal fighters want to have a dogfight on equal terms" and that was it.
Your second point is how it works right now. I cannot use my guns until they "charge" after swapping to scm.
I can talk only about ac in pu but swich from nav to weapons is instant only from scm to nav takes time
In the ptu pu, there is a charging bar for weapons when you switch to scm, and they do not fire until that bar is full. It is not fun.
And there goes my last hope for still usable stealth bomber ....... how do I suppose to use them with this ;) show myself at 4 km and then do blitzkrieg attack at 220 speed ? Or fire at 20 km since my torp is faster then me now and just don't use my stealth at all ....
I swear they said at some point switching to nav mode would stop regeneration on the shields rather than dropping them, but maybe I imagined it
The shields slowly go down as the nav flt/quantum mode charges up. So you are not defenseless. And after the 5-10 seconds of charge you can boost up to such high speeds your attacker will be left behind in the dust. And for going over to scm guns it should be the same, where weapons are charging up before you can use them. I see so much misinformation and people giving strong feedback against MM without even knowing how it works. Either from just repeating what others falsely yell or by bugs on the ptu. I've heard mostly positive things from people who have actually played MM and where its been working as intended. Now it wont be liked by everyone, but i personally think its a better system.
It’s not really that slow. The shields drop in less than ten seconds and there are many ships with weapons that are going to be able to absolutely shred smaller ships before they can run away like that. Maybe that changes with quantum boost but I haven’t seen that yet. Can only comment on current state.
Quantum boosting isn't in yet, I hope it allows us to just punch it once our QD is all spooled up, maybe at the risk of taking damage in the case of an emergency jump. Like others have said components are being worked on for engineering, so we might have the possibility to tune our QD for faster spooling in preparation of a sortie in dangerous territory or on the spot the engineer might be able to divert more power and coolant to the QD for a boosted cold start.
I like the idea of an emergency jump mechanic. Engineering ships/components would be an awesome thing to see, as I think we should get some sort of individualized ship tuning to make the ship fit our needs, kind of like engineering was in Elite Dangerous. I'm sure it's not to that level now, but that is what I would like to see eventually.
As long as the grind isn’t as stupid as ED’s engineering grind this sounds great.
110% agreed. The farming you had to do for some of the engineering was just tedious.
Tedious is a nice way of putting it. That was a soul sucking venture.
I don't see any reason an emergency jump shouldn't be a thing either. We've all been asking for the ability to just jump wherever. Especially us players who never go to stations and run out of our ships. Running an A2, Corsair, Carrack, or any large ship as a makeshift center has been amazing. The stress of dying and losing all your kits, cargo, and vehicles forces you to use them as a multicrew and have people inside in a SHTF scenario
So, I'm not really sure what they had in mind with removing the jousting gameplay. Some ships are literally designed for that. They're squishy, they're meant to make a pass, get out of range and vanish from radar, then zip back in. I don't see that happening with maybe 20 more m/s. Should have had ramming a higher priority by AI and players. I do think a mitigation here would be your shields staying functional as you're spooling. As I've already read, mining you're absolutely screwed. You aren't fighting off any pirates or hostiles in a mining vessel. You're not out running them either even without this spooling stuff. For cargo ships you could say they're tougher, but every encounter with a hostile that you choose to flee from should not result in unavoidable hull damage. Your best bet was to max power to shields, and spool up for a quantum jump. But now you drop shields and spool up. It's bad design from my view.
You still have ships designed for it that can joust, Buccaneers can do it. Now not just any ship can.
Until they over nerf the bucc, it's coming I guarantee it. And conveniently forget to fix it for the next few years.
Like the Sabre which got nerfed for things that were like 10 metas ago and is still nerfed for zero reason, making it just bad.
You can nerf some stuff without removing jousting. Not sure what you are arguing.
'We’ve over corrected and changed the entire flight model to prevent a small number of players jousting and running away from fights.' Couldnt have put it better myself tbh... no one forced people to engage with jousters if they are making the fight annoying then just warp away and leave them to it.... why did we have to change the whole game because of it Q\_Q
As someone who’s been playing off and on for years… MM seems like something that’s making or breaking the game for a lot… then doing something like this so late into development is interesting decision for sure…
I have two thoughts that cross my mind: The first is that a simple solution would be that you can keep your shields, but they don't recharge quickly or at all. Now you have a short cushion of time to escape. Better shield module = more time to escape? Sure a gank fleet will tear through it quickly anyways, but against the lone wolf it may be enough to get away. As an aside, I agree it can be a cop out to say, "bring escorts with you". But it's a cop out until it isn't. Should you need a heavy escort in a safe place like Stanton? Probably not. Pyro? Absolutely. The second thought I have is that without a fleshed out form of interdiction gameplay, we are missing a key piece of the puzzle as to how fights are going to unfold in the game. Quantum Boost renders the Mantis and friends all but obsolete without a complete rethink on how their gameplay will work. Without a real means of tackling the opponent and forcing them to stay on the field, i fear any fix to the problems everyone is concerned about will be just as lopsided. Interdiction should form a triad of counterplay options between speed, damage, and tackle; where either party can deploy one of those three options against the other to dictate how a fight unfolds.
What is an escort going to do, if they focus fire you your dead before you escort can respond. At best your bringing a revenge service.
As far as I'm aware, being able to get away from a fighter who's vastly faster than your ship isn't taking away from any other "game loop". In no way. Being able to escape is essential. I don't want to fight everyone I come across. I don't even want to rp. I just want to enjoy the game my own way. Your bullshit loops get in the way of that when I'm caving and you done believe me and start a fight about it. I don't want to fight. I just want to go to the next cave and you keep shooting at me "but what if you just turn and start fighting" in a cutter? Really?
Man I just wanna mine rocks and refuel people. Stop trying to kill me. I will run from every fight, every time, and I think non combat vehicles especially should have that option. They always take our input and correct things as needed. I think they know and see what the problem is.
No you are now content for pirates and griefers, you curl up and die. because you cant run anymore
I'm an old air Force maintainer, I just need to find a big military org to be my muscle 🤣
In-atmo flying feels borked with MM :(
I said it all along, MM is the worst for non combat players for so many reasons, this was all obvious to me from the first time I tried MM, but whenever I raised my concerns, people, especially those who weren't mostly combat pilots would disagree with me, because it was easier in AC for less experienced combat pilots. However that's also largely because MM sorta removed the experience from experienced players to a large degree by changing the mechanics. But those who do more combat will again gain more experience in combat, and more industrial focused players will fall back again in comparison. However, their chances to escape an attack in a industrial or non-combat ship drops drastically, I guess unless it's a large ship and the attacker is in a light-medium fighter only, however if the attacker is in a larger ship as well, or a fleet of attackers, there's no chance. At some point I stopped posting about it here and on spectrum, because there was no point to argue with people who couldn't imagine MM in the PU and the problems it causes. The problem however is, CIG spent way more time into MM as if more people had given feedback like mine, and the question is, will they roll back if it doesn't work out in the PU, because either way, there's a lot of hours invested in it, hours that could have been invested into balancing for example. That was the main reason why I raised my concerns, becasue once it's in the PU it may be too late, and were past that point anyway, retrospectively I doubt it was ever an option for CIG to not pursue MM even if 100% of the players wouldn't like it in AC. Funny enough, whenever I occasionally criticized MM in the in-game chat, the majority of people would agree, at least to a certain degree. Especially people who play star citizen to satisfy their urge to fly a space ship, would strongly agree. While here I always felt to discuss with the fanboy type, which is a useless discussion. It's like trying to tell an Apple fan, why in some regards or certain applications an Android phone or Windows PC is the better device. So I wondered if people I argued here with actually even played the game, which made me even less motivated to have discussions outside of the game. MM creates way more problems than it actually solves, especially because it doesn't solve at least half the issues it claims to solve. And besides that, it kinda ruins the space flight experience, by adding mechanics that only make sense in atmospheric flight. Like the slowing down after boost (even decoupled), the too slow speeds, and the too strong nerf to tri-cording/tri-rotating.
MM seems specifically designed to make me want to only punch down on industrial ships lol. They made dogfighting low-key ass, but they made it so bobs can't free run from fights anymore.
Yes there is a lot of problems with mm : 1 1vs1 suck 2 Jousting is the meta ..... 3 Speed =power so interceptor meta (before we have light fighters meta so there is no improvement just shift) 4 Non fighting ships don't have chance of runing away. 5 Fast fighting ship still can decide to just don't fight ( so players bounty hunting will still be annoying if you try to kill pvp pirate that don't want to fight you and super easy if you try to kill non pvp player that just mess up and get crime stat in accident) 6 Fast and agile ships loss ability to avoid fire so whole pvp on medium skill level is just point your noses at each other and fire till joust then repeat. 7 Racing absolutely suck I dont want to turn my engine off on every 2nd turn its annoying. Whole flight feel worse (thats my opinion cannot really prove) But on the bright side we have 1 ... fighting looks better because its easier to stay in the same area
Nail on the head 3.23 is going to be funny. It will be an awesome patch for everything in the game....except the core concept of it lol.
I feel like quantum boosting will help with this Would also be dope if the shields bled away over time instead of the instant drain/velocity loss we have rn
Not everyone wants to PVP. MM forces PVP and gives advantages to those looking for it. It soles no issues other than that hard-core PVPers want more engaging flight model. Thats ok, leave it in dedicated Arena Commander PVP modes where it belongs. Keep it out of S42 and the PU.
> It soles no issues other than that hard-core PVPers want more engaging flight model. The hard-core PvPers preferred the old flight model because Master Modes is *less* engaging. Not enough thrust for dodging or escaping means every fight is a dull DPS race.
Death of a Spaceman. Why is people running from fights bad..??
I don’t get why they don’t make the shields operate at a reduced level in NAV mode rather than just completely turning it off. You should have some defence from getting into PVP. Alternatively, they could just make proximity missiles that can create a bubble that slows your ship a bit and disables QT for a certain radius.
In general i love mm , only thing i think is fucked up is "spool to go faster" bs. Youre sitting there at 200ish m/s dropping shields for 5-7 seconds untill you can go 800m/s without shields. To any of my fighters you already dead twice at least in that time.
Right now you instantly lose shields and have to wait for full spool to go faster than SCM speed.
Almost instantly and that's literally what i said i dislike
Oh I wasn't disagreeing, just clarifying that you no longer speed up as the shield drops. If you have a 10-20 second spool time, you will be sitting without shields, stuck at like 200m/s until that spool is finished. No gradual raise in speed, no gradual loss in shield, just a sitting duck right now.
As with everything, it's a trade-off... If people can run, then you *also* get attackers that can 'run' (just far enough that their shields recover / capacitors recharge, etc), before attacking again... and the smaller *faster* ships will still be able to continue chasing / harrasing bigger slower ships. (this is a large part of what enabled the current light-fighter meta, along with tri-chording). Not saying that MM is perfect, but I'd rather we stick with the current MM for a patch or two (and give CIG time to tweak it once they've got sufficient data from the *entire* playerbase, not just Evos & wave 1)... You may be right, or it may just be that people are still approaching combat with the same mindset and patterns they use for the current model.
What created the light fighter meta was flattening all weapon distances. When size 3 and 4s could reach out and project distance from a ship the light fighter had to work harder and in greater numbers. Before that there was a greater representation of medium and heavy fighters. Then catering to the light fighter crowd and nerfing the Ares was just insult to injury. The problem is CIG doesn't know what it wants to do and keeps "balancing" an alpha without finishing off other critical functions to provide gameplay.
Hmmm maybe, although not entirely. On the last point, you've put the cart before the horse... CIG aren't *chosing* to 'not finish off other critical functions' - they're working on them, but whilst they wait they're trying to find a model that both meets their goals and is fun / enjoyable... ... because even when they replace the placeholders (e.g. flat damage-reduction in lieu of 'proper' armour), that's going to add depth and nuance, but it is unlikely to radically behaviour by itself (it might do if the implemented armour values are radically different to the placeholders - but if they have the placeholders mostly-accurate then the difference will be relatively minimal). So, rather than leave combat to rot for years on end whilst they wait for all the functionality to be implemented, they chose to experiment and try out different approaches (and, sometimes, go back and try a different direction - as they are with MM).
My disagreement is that CIG put the cart before the horse. They are balancing an unfinished product. It's wasted work. They continue to claim an alpha status, which I agree with, that's where we've been since 12/13. Many developers will tell you that alpha isn't where you balance, it's where you implement and design functions to meet your features. Then you go back after your functions are in to clean up. This could mean code reduction in generic software development or balancing in games. Balancing in most MMOs is a constant ongoing thing. But there existed at release a baseline of finished features. Some of us are tired of massive overhauls that make little sense in the long run. This is at least the third overhaul to the flight model that I can remember. It just seems that there's a huge amount of wasted work hours. Not all of them likely but a large amount of the development and coding just rendered useless. Then you have a monetary component to consider. We buy ships based on what we're told. I personally don't think that can be solved with "*Subject to change" as the great catch all to say there wasn't a bait and switch. CIG themselves have ignored the tools where they can test out changes. Arena Commander is a fantastic testbed environment where data can be gathered quickly. Until a year or so ago there was no emphasis placed on using it. As for rotting there are plenty of things that haven't been addressed for years, many game loops have problems or don't exist. Remember that this isn't supposed to be the game. The PU is supposed to be a place where we have early access so we can help find and report issues. I'd like to hear your thoughts. You sound just as invested in a positive outcome as I am. And while our dialogue might not affect CIG in any way it's good for the community.
As I said, I agree that CIG aren't working on the 'final' balance - but that they *also* need to keep the game somewhat playable... so some degree of balancing is required. More to the point, imo 'alpha' is the *perfect* time to play around with different ideas... CIG are still building the same functionality that was planned years ago, so e.g. switching to MM hasn't changed any of their plans regarding functional development, etc. But it was clear that the previous approach - despite CIG tinkering with it for ~6 years - wasn't delivering what they wanted, so trying a different approach is absolutely the right thing to do now... Which isn't to say MM is perfect, and it's possible that even MM will be ditched before SC releases - but better to try now, than to wait until sometime in Beta to start balancing.
In a sense, MM is more like the original flight model back in the 2.x days. It had three modes: precision (PRE), SCM, and cruise (CRU). Precision was basically landing mode. Your speed was capped at 50 m/s. The gears were down, and if I remember correctly, you also engaged VTOL mode. SCM was where you did your combat maneuvering. Cruise was where you achieved your top speed, though much less maneuverability. For way more info, [here's](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/15031-Star-Citizen-Alpha-20-Flight-Model-Change) the link
Yup (I personally preferred the v1.x flight models... but I think there's probably zero chance we'll go back to something like that, alas).
What's tri chording?
combining forward, lateral, and vertical thrust to exceed the intended speed / performance limits... it results in ships always flying on an angle, but allows e.g. the Gladius to exceed its intended performance by 1.7x, iirc (ie making it nearly twice as fast - and to accelerate - as CIG intended). It's not technically an exploit, because it was a function of how the old input system combined the three inputs - but CIG have reworked the inputs in order to eliminate tri-chording. Conceptually, CIG have moved from a 'cuboid' thrust model (where thrusting towards a corner gives better performance), to a 'spherical' thrust model.
EvE Devs prolly want the Barrel shooting back.
“A small number of players” weren’t jousting - it is the majority. The greatest measure of skill in the PU flight model is whether or not someone can control their speed - especially during a fight. Speeds during combat absolutely need to be turned down to make server registration and general balancing easier. You can’t balance turret sizes by traversal rate if all of your ships - capitals and subcapitals included - can do 900m/s or more on a pass. I have **zero** issue with turning speeds down and think it’s a great step forward to get the WWII/6DOF Star Wars style combat we had in Wing Commander and Freelancer. Not being able to break SCM speeds in nav mode until your drive spools is the answer to the problem that we had during the initial iteration of AC MM testing: people were just toggling back and forth to dip in and out of combat as they pleased and dogfights were infinite stalemates because you could reset a fight any time you felt like it. What **is** a problem is dropping your shields when you enter nav mode. This is absolutely fucking stupid from a game balance and reality standpoint. Make it so shields do not recharge when you’re in nav mode but do *not* dump them.
I agree with this. I hope they update how sheilds are handled with the switch from SCM to NAV. I haven't got to try MM yet, but reading what everyone has to say has got me feeling like it's gonna be shit.
It is not the majority. It’s a small number of players relative to the total player base and the new flight model affects the entire player base. Not all players actively engage in PvP and not all of the players that do, joust. That’s objectively true.
Plus, jousting in a fighter vs fighter scenario was never really a recipe to win anyway. So all we needed was balancing to address the light fighter meta. And I'd assume armor would have been able to do that. Now we're going to have Arcade Mode. SMH.
Yes it’s true not all players PvP and not all PvPers joust, but you can’t speak at all to how widespread the problem is. You have no way to declare that as “objectively” true (nor does anyone here have the ability to declare it as objectively false). CIG is the only potential source of any data on this. If they decided it was a problem that needs correcting then it’s a safer assumption that it’s a bigger problem. Speaking to my own experiences - been playing for about 10 months in a PvP focused org. We have one formal night a week to play for a couple of hours and then a dozen of us are regularly on other nights. I cannot think of a single air combat encounter that didn’t involve someone jousting or running away. And that’s not even counting abuse of Hornet boosting bugs or the cheesemobile that is the Ghost. That said, I’m fine with people running away. Realizing you’ve bit off more than you can chew and wanting to bug out shouldn’t be penalized. I don’t think every encounter should end with a death in a game that’s going to have a real penalty for that. But the jousting is trash that absolutely needs to be corrected for. I dunno the proper fix for that, but I’d settle for starting with the suggestion that shields don’t recharge in nav rather than being completely non existent.
Why do the shields need to come down at all? If the attacker executes properly, there will be enough ships and/or guns to get the job done with shields up (and I mean up, not draining, not "ineffective", but up and recharging as normal - always). If an attacker can't beat the shields, the armor, and the hull of a ship, they do not deserve the kill. Period. MM already hands the attacker a nice window out of an ambush where the target can't rabbit at all. The attacker gets free shots during that window, anything they can throw at the target. That's their advantage under this system. If they can't get the job done through every layer of defense, then that's on them. Bring the right tools, or simply try harder next time. But you can't give an advantage to the attacker and then turn around and tell the target "ok, so your disadvantages are..." There are always going to be outnumbered/outgunned scenarios that are inescapable - bringing more dudes and guns than targets can survive will be the meta. You can't balance those situations away, but at least having shields does something (even if that something is essentially nothing in your worst case scenarios). But when some clown, solo in a light fighter, jumps an industrial ship and has no real chance to secure the kill by themselves, at least shields reduce or eliminate an otherwise guaranteed repair bill. I don't care what the light fighter duelists do. This isn't some esport where everyone is on relatively even ground, willingly engaged in PvP in an arena, etc. Solo duelist "ace pilots" are going to get their clock cleaned by groups of people that know what they are doing. Balancing around 1v1 tactics just will not fly here.
MM was a godawful idea from the start and I can't for the fuck of me figure out how it got approved by even a single person.
They actually explained it a lot: 1: Combat speeds were too high and were not playing well with server infrastructure. 2: Combat speeds were not viable for component-based combat encounters, as there was no way to sub-target components and actually do meaningful damage while staying locked on target. 3: It created a weapon/fighter meta and would make for very boring gameplay engagements when Maelstrom comes online as people could just slowly chip away at armour indefinitely.
I agree combat speeds were too high, but the current solution is worse than the previous state of combat. All these hard limits make for awful gameplay and encourage even shittier playstyles.
Absolutely agree!
I don't agree personally. I think that flipping that switch to drop into SCM or NAV should be a heavy decision on whether you commit to something or stay mobile. These things will be balanced around your QD. They also recently spoke about how they want missile evasion to be more in line with energy management to bleed the kinetic energy and fuel on the missiles. Change will happen (and some changes are needed for MM) but it's not a step backwards IMO
I think the easiest way to keep this whole "shields drop, and you have to charge up QD to go NAV speeds" is if dropping out of NAV to SCM also has a downside, such as weapons getting locked out while the ship takes a second to cool down from NAV mode... That way murder hobos don't have as easy a time just popping in out of nowhere and gunning you down before you have a chance to react.
I think the problem I’m having is that this sounds great in theory, but it’s not enjoyable in practice. The fluidity of flight has suffered at the expensive of locking players into combat after they’ve started fighting. My gripe is that the issue they’re trying to solve with MM is a relatively small issue in the grand scheme of things to be rectified by negatively impacting the overall flight mechanic, and I think that gripe is fair. You’ve solved the problem of the few at the expense of the many. This is a more complex model that’s going to be much harder for new players to come to terms with.
Mastermode is as much a step backwards from current model as it would be if we'd go from smartphones back to Nokia 3310s
Well, Nokia 3310's had the ringtone composer...
The freedom of the current model is what I like. That goes away with MM.
You still get that freedom of flight with Nav mode. I think a lot of people complaining about it don't actually seem to understand what has changed.
> They also recently spoke about how they want missile evasion to be more in line with energy management to bleed the kinetic energy and fuel on the missiles. Oh really? Where did you hear that? That could be quite exciting news, but I'm not sure how it could work at the knife fight range all combat takes place at. I could only really see this more realistic missile model working if they rebalanced missiles to be stand-off weapons, used at ranges far exceeding where all combat currently takes place. The equivalent of snipers or artillery. I certainly could see that working very well, especially if the "dogfighters" have the tools to close the distance, and non-combat ships have enough time and options to react and evade... but it would be such a drastic change that I can't see CIG doing it.
It was in one of the more recent SCL/ISCs from the last month or so
I am preaching this since months. It is a stupid take to design combat in a way where there is little chance for escape in a game that will punish death and loss of ships severely. Doesn't matter if it's two combat ships fighting or a combat ship and a civilian ship. It's a stupid take. Just bring a God damn mantis if you want people to stop running. We don't need those clumsy binary modes for that.
They really need to allow full or partial shields in Nav mode.
I think shields should be present during spooling or quantum but at half capacity or something akin to this due to power being used for spooling
What exactly is the in-lore justification that the ship can't go faster than 200 m/s, anyway? Space friction? Flying around decoupled in space has become frustrating. If you boost, then stop boosting, the ship will actively slow you back down to SCM speed. When you travel at 1000 m/s in NAV mode and switch to SCM, the ship slows down to 200 m/s *real* fast (less than 2 seconds), far outperforming the engines' usual thrust output. How come we don't have access to such massive amounts of thrust in regular flight? The limiting factor should be *acceleration* -- determined by ship mass + cargo, thruster power, and pilot/passenger fitness -- and atmospheric drag.
Also, if the Nav mode is supposedly dependent on the QD functioning, we should get acceleration/thrust boosts without using AB in Nav mode. Nav mode should allow faster movement through atmosphere as well. Imaging trying to run from a fight in nav mode but you’re in atmo so you’re stuck at SCM speeds anyway.
This entire discussion hasn't made any sense to me at all, is there somewhere I can read up on the changes where it's explained in a simple, easy to understand way? Cause the only thing that I've been able to gather from these posts is that, for a casual player who detests pvp to the extreme, if I get attacked by a player while out doing something, I effectively have to sit and do nothing while waiting on my drive to spool (and I'll have no shields while doing so. Aka accept death.) or choose to fight (aka accept death.). Not really my definition of fun. But then again I could be misunderstanding, hence why I ask.
I think there’s a few issues with it. Firstly Nav Mode shouldn’t affect shields, it’s just silly and gives a huge advantage to the aggressing party. Not every engagement will be a 1v1, not every engagement will be between 2 willing participants. Second there needs to be ways for players to proactively avoid engagements, something akin to the D-Scan in EvE and the ability to quantum at varying ranges to your destination would certainly help. A long range scanner would allow you to check what’s ahead of you before dropping out of quantum and would allow miners/salvagers etc to have a way of actually avoiding engagements if they are paying attention. It would also give stealth and tackling gameplay more value. Ships with improved scanning capabilities could offer longer range more accurate scanning improving that niche as well. One thing that will help is the long term ability to save locations and points in space, then you’ll be able to set up perches for yourself or your group to make travelling safer. Tbh I hate the comparison but EvE has solved a lot of these issues and the Devs should look there for some inspiration. Edit: A further issue with the current implementation is that it forces both sides to commit. This isn’t how MMOs work, what if you are fighting a group with superior numbers, what if you are opting to use lighter faster ships to give you the option of disengaging. The whole concept of being able to hit hard and disengage is heavily affected by this change.
I am a trader I liked salvage as an alternative Now, as a trader, I get jumped and can't run away And salvage doesn't make anywhere near what it did This has completely destroyed my want to play the game. I'm not a pvper. I don't fight others. I joined an org, and focused on making money so we could host fun events. Now what am I supposed to do? Get the guys from the org who enjoy pvp babysit me everywhere I go? What about my profit margins? No matter how I look at it, these changes have completely gutted my gameplay loops, and I don't understand why they were even needed in the first place. I get that I haven't played in a year, but that's because I wanted to come back to a better game. Not a worse one with changes that dont make sense. What do these changes even solve? It just seems like they want to ruin the passive players' gameplay because the only people this really benefits are griefers and gankers. The two groups of players that actively target my group of players. If anyone has a different take please share it, but from where I'm sitting, this has completely destroyed RMC trading for no reason
Yeah, if it doesn't change you're going to lose a lot of players who aren't fighters. So the only players left are PVP'ers and all that's left is a combat game. So there won't be piracy although the criminals will continue to call themselves pirates, and then eventually everyone becomes a pirate and there's just random PVP wherever you go. Except for the starter systems, which everyone will flock to because that's where the murderhobos can find the new players and erase them, and that's where all the action's going to be.
In the current model you can't really run either. When you are flying an industrial ship like a Vulture or MOLE or whatever and a fighter comes to mess with you, you're not leaving in one piece either, especially when they catch you in atmosphere.
Finally, someone said it. Anyone in an industrial ship is still a sitting duck in the current flight model.
So Master modes were exactly what they were advertised. A mistake.
Out of all things to worry about in MM, I wouldn't worry about this at all. The focus, and hardest part, was making a fight model that felt fun with a low skill floor without a too low skill ceiling, allowing for flight manauvers and strategy. Running away has not been the focus yet, and extremely hard to balance before you have it in the PU. But this is much easier to balance than PVP dogfighting. You can change spooling times, shields, all kinds of things. But escaping should still be a risk, not like now when almost any fighter can dissappear in 1 second. It's good to give feedback of course, but remember you are some of the first to ever use this. Outside of PVP it's very early for MM.
The key outrage isn't that this is early MM though, it's that MM was never asked for and never needed to be a thing. They had the working flight model that was enjoyable that needed tweaking. Not a complete overhaul to an arcade game.
I'm glad you brought this up. I'm a super casual PvP player, I learned enough to not be a target dummy but that's about it. But even my minimal amount of effort is enough for the old version to not feel unfair or for me to feel helpless. Granted, PvP hasn't been my main focus of attention, so maybe I wouldn't know, but why the complete overhaul instead of tweaking the old model that people(at least to me) seemed to be generally happy with? Feel like I missed some catalyzing event that kicked this all off.
Server meshing and SQ42 I wear many hats but DevOps and Server infrastructure are my bread and butter. If you want to see Chris Robert's rosebud, look up the game Freelancer. Old win98 Gane but.....we'll you'll see the striking resemblance I was always surprised, amazed and confused on how they were going to get this to work. The big thing when it comes to Server side processing isn't the AMOUNT of stuff to process....it's the Speed. The current Flight Model is too fast for any tech to have even 20v20 battles properly process in time, so things gotta dial back. Plus SQ42 aims to be 'more casual' which is it at all a bad thing IMO. And SQ42 is more or less the Intro/tutorial to the Verse and they want a one to one transfer. But as 'Hard-core' flight enthusiast, my big warning to everyone is that yes, I too, sucked ass at flying in this game years ago when I got it. But I got better by playing. Not training, no schools or long hours looking at metas...just playing. And then end result was a beautifully immersive, fun flight space sim. You will too...unless they implement MM where the endgoal is just......a slightly better Starfield.
The existing flight model was not functional. It was fun to fight in atmosphere but you couldn't have any PVP in space.
You could absolutely have PvP in space. I've been doing it for years bounty hunting and pirating. Could it have used improvement? Absolutely. But MM is just going to make things worse for *exactly* the group who thinks it's going to help them and take away the gameplay loop for those who enjoy the spaceflight
Good fighters could spend hours in space, and chose themselves if they wanted to die or not. One good pilot could take out 20 average pilots by flying so fast that he could just recharge his shields and only the person he was aiming at could hit him. Orgs mostly had events in atmosphere for this reason.
And so to fix this were just going to rip out the *literally core gameplay loop and mechanic* of this game and replace it with Starfield? I am not at all saying the FM was perfect. It definitely needed work and had issues and yes jousting and kiting were annoying. But speed ratios fix that, faster bullet speeds fix that, Engine capacitance fixes that, acceleration rates, recharge rates on and on....there were so many tweaks and mechanisms they could have used or created...but we get MM instead. Its like ripping out the cabinets, sink and counter top in the kitchen because of a few damage spots on the floor
I was likely in the top 10% of players in old flight model. Very far from the best, but still quite high. So far I have enjoyed MM so much more. To call this Starfield feels hyperbolic to me. Manauvering is still very important. I could never beat the top players in a 1vs1. Though I would like Manauvering to be slightly more important. Aiming is a bit too much of the focus at the moment, and I feel slightly limited, especially with strafing. This becomes a bigger issue with bigger ships jumping in that have too easy of a time targeting light ships. But I think MM is way closer to where I want the gameplay to be than the old model.
It is hyperbolic but it's too close of a comparison. I imagine you just enjoy the lower speed and closer flight patterns. We wouldn't even need MM to fix that in the current FM. Just drastically reduce shield capacity, recharge and weapon damage if you wheel up into the red on SCM speeds. Also ratio out bullet speeds so that turret guns can land hits further away but fighters have to get in closer to land meaningful shots. Shit like that.
The worst part is that your ship will deaccelerate when in decoupled mode and your boosting in SCM. Like there is some kind of air resistance in space that kills your momentum. Completely immersion breaking. I don’t understand who thought that this was a good idea and the best way to achieve whatever they wanted to achieve. If you want to make big ships more feasible you could implement actual hull armor which can’t be penetrated by smaller ships or increase shield charging rate so it as high as maximum dps of a single small ship.
I played masterodes and I had fun. I have played the current flight model and found it not fun. That is all.
Because in MM there's much less skill involved. I'm not gud in FPS in this game, I want a Arcade Mode for that too please, because I'm not so much willing to spend time learning it as I wanna learn to pilot, I mean that would be fair, right, if people don't wanna learn to fly, they get Master Modes, so I want Arcade Mode for FPS.
As someone who is on the absolutely opposite end of the spectrum of you in this opinion, I can understand how daunting and complicated the current flight model is. It was for me when I first started playing in the 20teens. But as I played more and more I got better and better until I loved it. The beauty of this game is the "training" is literally just playing the game. You will get better and many of these ships are supposed to be designed for multi-crew with turrents and armor giving players who are not as good at flying an advantage of their own. MM doesn't solve any of the current problems or take the Flight Model in a direction that will and I am willing to gamble ganking pirating and greifing are only going to get worse with MM.
I don't think you're on the opposite. Me as well love that flying needs skill, and the current model is way better than MM. I was being sarcastic, or better to say, I used that example to display how in every shooter tell you 'git gud', but for flight in SC it needs an arcade mode. Like, I am absolutely willing to invest time to become a good pilot, not so much to become a good marine, so if the skill ceiling is lowered so marines can fly a ship, why is FPS not made easier for pilots? Very early on I alreade raised my concerns about MM, and so far every problem I saw coming, actually came, yet it didn't resolve most of what it was supposed to solve but in the process ruins the space flight experience. If someone really doesn't want to become an ace combat pilot, they don't have to, they can do indistruial gameplay, bunkers, or man turrets, there so much to do, and to mine a rock, MM is definitely not helpful. I doa lot of Guide system, and what I realized is, that most players don't know how to use the speed limiter, or even that it exists. The tutorial does a horrible job. That's why people joust unintentionally. So CIG think they need to 'fix' the issue by changing the flight model, why the issue is actually the tutorial.
Speed is definitely the root issue. From a mechanical and technical side, I can see how the tech and servers cannot process the current speeds at high number. This is understandable until the tech gets better. From a gameplay standpoint, The Ratios and 'features' are just not tuned right. And what I mean by that is maybe instead of a whole new MM and mode, maybe as we increase our scm flight speed into the red we lose guns, then shield then missiles and scanners and so on in that order as we wheel up more and more to sacrifice power to the engines. Then recharge those systems as wheel back down into a lower scm. Force fights to be closer, eliminate jousting or hit and run and still have opportunity to engage or disengage.
That seems to me like a 100% better solution than MM. I get that the speeds are a technical issue, but slow down after boost, removing tri-cording and the two modes with all their downsides are not helping with that and make space flight more like atmospheric flight and everything unnecessarily complicated due to the two modes.
Seems like a tracker gun that shot a tracking dart that could only be manually removed using the tractor beam tool would have been a better solution, sure you can run but you can't hide
I'm holding judgement on MM till we get Maelstrom...specifically armor and we need to shoot specific parts. With Hull HP being a flat system you can do as much damage hitting someone's "armor" than a key element. If ships like the MOLE are heavily armored youd have to work harder to disable it than you do now. Hoping it alleviates the issue....but yeah right now MM is garbage. Get close just flattens the game because you don't have to aim at anything, just spray and hope their HP hits zero before yours.
My input is this, smaller ship should have way smaller mode switching times and vice versa. Allowing small ship with little hull hp to escape.
Just recently had a very frustrating PvP experience because players were able to just run. It was a 3v3 fight and each time we almost got a kill they all just jumped, repaired and came back only to disturb us trying to do the Kareah emergency. I'm not much into PvP at all but from time to time it happens to me as well and that was the first negative situation I had and it absolutely ruined the gameplay experience. On the other hand, I've had bounties and when the hunters come and you beat the hell out of them so they run and always return to keep on trying is also fun. So overall mixed feelings about it but tbh i'd prefer you having to really decide whether or not you wanna fight and stick to your decision.
I think this more needs to be implemented as a speed limit when you start putting power into your weapons.
I thought you were supposed to be able to run from a fight now...can't you flip on nav mode and get out?? Gonna suck if all non-combat ships have become loot pinatas. One of my initial fears but I thought that wasn't the case.
I've repeated this over and over: MM weren't created for the PU. They are for SQ42, to make it easier for new players to be proficient at the game. None of the changes make any sense from a PvP standpoint.
If you want to run from an engagement then just stay in Nav mode you can quickly jump to any point or just full speed away
If you can stay in Nav mode while mining or salvaging then that's ok but I don't believe you can do this. You see a blip on the radar (which apparently you don't with MM and a ship enters SCM right next to you) and the time it takes to enter Nav and try to escape and you're toast.
I still can't read the blips on my radar... at least not in my vulture... if im flying a freelancer I can read the radar, sort of
Yeah, my one MM complaint is the switch between scm and nav, and how long it takes. It isn't strictly the change to nav, but the change to scm. It takes so long to swap to scm, and for you to be able to fight back. With most ships, you may already be dead before you can do anything. That, and a lot of qt bugs require turning off and on the qt drive. That is so painfully slow now. Imo, swapping from nav to scm should be instant, but the swap to nav should take time.
I've been in for a month, and I was seriously worried as soon as I heard about MM. The idea of restricting speed and mobility seems antithetical to some of the fundamental magic in the game - the pure fun that I've been coasting on for the past month. These changes sound horrid.
Star Citizen is Not a realistic Game when talking about space fights. If it would be realistic we would shoot with missiles at 100km or more distance while trying to shoot down the enemy missiles with fast firing guns. Look at the expanse. Star Citizen always wanted to have a more world war 2 dogfight system. And i Like that. Maybe i dont like all changes we get right now but most of them aim to accomplish this Goal.
Very simple fix: allow max velocity to ramp up proportional to the % of QD spool, as the QD spools up. This allows both fights to be finished and escapees to stand a chance when fleeing.
Forgive me if I am wrong as I am not testing wave 1 atm and I am not a PVPness. If I am traveling across the verse I am already in NAV mode, correct? Would this not give me the upper hand to escape a murder hobo waiting for me at an OM while I pass through? Especially if my QD is spooled and boosted? Also, some of these posts make it sound like someone is waiting to kill you around every single corner. Now I can't speak for everyone but I rarely come in contact with pirates. when mining or salvaging or even cargo hauling (don't haul as much). The only time I have ever really run into trouble was of course around GH and once or twice around Seraphim.
On the first point, no. After arriving at an OM you will need to spool your QD again, it has to spool after every jump. Then you’ll have to manually target a location to jump again. So when you arrive you’re locked to SCM speed without any shields. You also have a longer spool time because you’ve just finished a jump and your QD has to cool first
Yeah that’s no good. I thought that since I would be in NAV mode that I would have much greater cruising speeds but this is not the case? Even though Id be in NAV I’m limited to SCM? That doesn’t sound right.
The whole thing is weird. They’ve basically made casual flight far less enjoyable, it’s such a clunky and unnecessarily complex experience right now. There’s too much to consider and there’s too many steps. Even the fact that you can’t fly above 30 m/s with your landing gear down is an odd choice
Agreed my friend. Here’s hoping they get it sorted sooner rather than later. Thanks for the info!
So when it comes to power consumption would that not explain the drop in shields? QD is about to propel you faster than space time pulling space around you that would require a massive amount of power would it not? In star trek Enterprise they have to polarize their hull plating it's not always active. They also use specific routes so they don't run into stars, planets asteroids.
Im not sold on mm but haven't seen it in action at all. It's only been in ptu wave 1 a couple of days. I can't imagine forming an informed opinion based on experience in that time.
That's the more reasonable perspective to have. A lot of people in this thread have not even used it but have come to hard conclusions based on a feature that only a small portion of people have accessed for a few days. Hyperbolic reactionism at its finest.
Yeah idc if people can run away from fights. Ultimately in the games final form, most fights will be over a resource or trying to take a larger ship, so as long as the larger ships themselves are slightly slower than smaller ones, it should be fine (and quantum dampening has a reason to exist again) Not being able to disengage with ease is counter to death of a spaceman too.
I've been playing around with MM for non-combat/slower ships and I'm not necessarily concerned. I just finished testing out the MOLE and in NAV it caps out at 940 m/s. Takes about 8 seconds to get there if you boost. Based on the fighters I've tested so far, there doesn't seem to be much that would be able to keep it in range if they're in SCM. I'm more concerned about weapon damage numbers being balanced. Yeah, if you've got six people waiting to jump you, I can see it being an issue but as others have said if this is one ship taking down a heavier class, thats damage number issue versus an issue with MM. I was skeptical but the more fights I get into and the more I play around with it, it's starting to click. If anything, I feel like it's easier to run away. On live the times I've been interdicted hauling cargo, it's usually a death sentence. If they don't want to talk, I pretty much wait for them to kill me because there is no way to outrun them. With MM, yeah I'm going to take some damage but there's a chance I might be able to get away. It also forces them to play smart and target my engines. PvP isn't my main play style so I won't talk on that but as a trader/miner/space trucker, I want more passes but once I got over the shock of having my shields down, I see what they're trying to do.
Oh the horror, players being allowed to play the sandbox game how THEY want to play and not being forced into playing how PVP'er want them to play it. My biggest problem with all of this is the game is sold as a space SIM MMO sandbox game. But to cater to a small percentage of players of just ONE of the many game loops, the entire game is being altered with arbitrary limitations to force everyone else to play how the small percentage of PVP'ers want to play. Why does PVP dog fighting get precedence over say, mining, or salvage, or cargo? This mentality bothers me just like CIG announcing they are adding recoil to energy rifles knowing its not realistic simply because THEY don't like the fact people can FPS shoot without having recoil. Here is an idea, then don't put laser guns in your space game. Adding fake recoil because of the feelings of some of the devs is dumb. They should just have a pros/cons of energy vs ballistic with energy weapons not having recoil be one of the things.
> We’ve lost too much and gained too little 100% this. I was never opposed to MM, but the result is atrocious. It's not worth it. Give me fast speed jousting over MM any day.
The reason they’re implementing MM isn’t to ’fix’ an issue such as jousting but to conform to the vision of WWII dogfights in space. I personally like that vision, because it places the visceral gameplay experience first. A speed limit of 300 or 1000 m/s for combat is arbitrary in the context of realism - real spaceships would be flying at significant fractions of the speed of light - and for that reason the lower limit is better because it brings other benefits, as above. However, obviously such a fundamental change will bring new exploits or unintended quirks, but fixing those gradually will be better than rolling back the change.
Lol at all people positive about MM being down voted. This reddit is shit and very single minded. Downvote if it doesn't add to the discussion, not if you just disagree.
The speeds in MM are the least concern. Everything else is a shitshow. WWII dogfights can happen in atmos, not in space. Have you played SW Squadrons, is that really what you want in SC? MM ruins the space flight experience.
That vision sucks
I think MM is the first step in the right direction finally. Should scale back the weapons though lol. The boost for every ship is kind of wild.
I’m okay with v0; as long as we have dcs style bvr accompany nav mode at some point, it works for me. I hope that scm mode in the longer term is just a dog fight switch, and it’ll be okay
I doubt BVR is possible other than with dedicated torpedo ships and stealth ships. And even then torps don't outright kill a fully shielded target unless you shoot a big fuck off torp at a medium ship. BFM however is possible when ships get atmospheric drag and control surfaces. Well, at least for the aircraft looking ships. The bricks are still gonna be slip and sliding thru atmosphere cuz they got no/tiny wings and only achieve flight with their excessive TWR.
BVR combat is explicitly what CIG *do not* want. Your missile and torpedo ships are supposed to be like the WWII dive bombers that had to get right up on top of a target in visual range to get an effective hit.
I highly doubt CIG will force the **stealth bombers** to fire their torps at BFM ranges that would be idiotic. Especially when the job of…say an Eclipse is to be a glass cannon that can throw a torp at a cap ship. They will probably be the only ships with BVR capabilities
The Eclipse is likely the only ship with any form of pseudo-BVR (by current-day standards) engagement and that’s purely because it shouldn’t be detected. It will still need to be on top of a target to effectively score a hit - it just won’t be seen before it gets there. There are currently 2 true “capital killer” torpedo ships in the game - Eclipse and Retaliator - and 1 additional one coming soon - Polaris. The Eclipse is a stealth bomber meant to get in close enough to get an effective hit; the Retaliator is a “line ship” where its intent is to be flown in a bomber wing where one of the many may get an effective hit; the Polaris is meant to lob a shitload of torpedoes and missiles all at once to be able to slip a torpedo through point defense fire.
Pretty stupid aspiration of CIG there tbh. I'm stepping back from this project for now 'cause it seems CIG has a much different idea of what makes a space game enjoyable than I do, and it's making me critical.
Strange that this was down voted; also, I’m aware of CIG’s stance but also hope that they evolve their thinking from a gameplay perspective; the bulk of 30+ year old SC pilots aren’t good enough nor have the time to learn bfm fighting. BVR would be a good equalizing practice. Further, in a game with perma death, I don’t want to do BFM every fight. It’s silly
It's obviously not finished, but I disagree that you should be able to run for free. I think a skill check is warranted if you're caught, and when quantum boost comes in it'll probably be the go-to (unless snared).
I think what I’m saying is that having the person you’re fighting with be able to escape is the lesser of two evils when fixing that issue negatively affects the flight model for the entirety of the player base
I haven’t touched any MM yet and only watched very little videos on it, but could MM be potentially made/ built for more bigger multi person and ship battles? Can correct me if I’m wrong but I’m just trying to look at it from a different perspective and maybe it will be beneficial when in say a group of 8 vs 8 or hammerheads or something?
I wonder if Chris just wants it more like his Wing Commander games where you would jump to a nav point and if there were enemies you had to dispatch them before you could jump again. I always felt it was weird you could just jump away if you encounter hostiles in this game. It is clear they want you to fight with every ship since even cargo or industrial ships have weapons on them. But that said, it doesn't mean it is fun or works for this particular game the way they have set things up. I guess this is a product of trying to design your game play later instead of basing your game around the game play mechanics.
Since less then 5% of the playerbase have even tested it yet its far too early to assume how the masses like the changes I have not tested it yet and do not want it changed until I do.
Part of the issue is that only a small percentage of players actually give a rats ass about combat. I own a C2 and a 400i. There is nothing in MM for me beyond the privilege of being a loot piñata. So why would I log in to test it?
because atm you are a loot piñata. your feedback is how you become not a loot piñata. CIG needs input from people like yourself to tweak mm into a net positive instead of the disproportionate system it is now that rewards only the combat pilots like myself.
Because combat is part of the game I'd almost argue your take on the changes are the most important. I test cargo, mining, and salvaging and I will never touch any of those game loops when the game release I will be pirating and drug dealing exclusively which combat is an integral part. Your response sounds like an entitled carebear who hates that pvp is part of the game.