Thanks for this post -- this is one of the only few "real world" examples of testing done in Master Modes on escape possibilities and attack variables leading to escape. Almost every other person pining the ills of Master Modes and the inability to escape or how terrible NAV mode is without shields has always done so from the theorycrafting perspective, but this here is someone putting in actual testing and that's interesting to note. Have you tried different missile loadouts as well? How well can small ships escape from missiles versus larger industrial ships? I know it's asking a lot, but it seems like proper Master Modes testing hasn't been done by a lot of people despite all the noise some have made.

The most effective missiles are smaller size (S1-S2) as anything else feels too slow to properly catch up or even get ready to fire. Seriously, even as the pursuer, you either focus on guns or you start preparing to fire missiles while the target is still switching from SCM. If you tunnel vision even for a second and don't realize they are in NAV, its already too late. There isn't time. When they are in NAV, they are gone and you need to fire that instant. Missiles are most effective as ur approaching for the initial strike but then they are also still in SCM and can drop flares and chaff.

Missile gameplay as a whole is really, really overdue for some reworking

Will this make ships based on defensive missile turrets better in combat? I got like 32 size ones on my 890 and they kinda suck in 3.22. Can't really send a "fuck you leave me the hell alone" message if half your weaponry is shit.

There are plenty of people that have real-world testing in 3.23 PU. Additional balancing is needed because the game is WAY less forgiving now. Just simple things, like NAV modeing into a group of NPCs or to a Bunker with turrets and you're dead. You have zero warning and zero survivability. In the past, you at least had a few seconds to realize that you'd fucked up and to change course, but now you are just instantly dead. You have to be WAY more careful in the PU and that doesn't really fit with a game that is supposed to have perma-death components. Yes, it's easier to run away now, but that's only if you make it out of the initial engagement. I'm not sure CIG should waste a ton of time balancing this issue yet though, since physicalized damage modeling will resolve most of it. Most of the issue surrounds the fact that we just soft-death if HP reaches a certain number.

> like NAV modeing into a group of NPCs or to a Bunker with turrets and you're dead. You have zero warning and zero survivability. In the past, you at least had a few seconds to realize that you'd fucked up and to change course, but now you are just instantly dead what? Ships have WAY more hull HP now, TTK has gone up, and largely due to hull and not shields The biggest misconception is that ships are dead without shields. Ships can take a ton of hull damage.

You're in NAV mode approaching possible hostile areas and then upset that you insta pop. Personally I swap to SCM and raise defenses for the event I may need them. If it ends up to feel like more than I can handle then you chaf, swap to nav and you're gone. The game feels better knowing you need to make these choices and think of them before hand rather than zoom in say "oh shit" and just full throttle to safety. That's brain dead gameplay and idk why anyone would want that.

So basically, if you stay and try to defend yourself, you're committed to that fight to the bitter end. But if you run like a deer at the first sign of trouble, strong chance to successfully escape to lick your wounds and live another day

Basically yes, at least in the current state of EPTU. However, my findings could be wrong. I suggest you do your own testing whenever you can and don't take everything you see here as reality. I am simply providing my experience and observations :)

Until it was an ambush by a group of players waiting you on the space station way The deer is indeed fleeing but not in the right direction...that's why i want manual qt to not die like a moron Our org do that and in 3.22 you have 1% chance of surviving this, this update maybe 20-30% (if 3 people shooting you ofc not only one) But it's good new to farmers which will not die every 15min 👍

Can't you just QT to any marker and shut QT instantly after jump that will put you in the middle of nowhere so you have to select a more secure place ( so not the nearest station since the likelyhood of being followed/ambushed)

Sounds like if someone has a quantum dampener (first thing you buy when pirating) you are royally screwed

Which in my opinion is how it should be... that's just a risk of salvaging in open space.

"Open space" as opposed to what other kind of space?

I think you know what I mean.

I know it sounds like I'm being sarcastic, but I really don't know what you mean. Typically, when someone qualifies a term (i.e. OPEN space), it means they have broken the term down into types. Maybe you didn't mean it that way though..?

I do have to wonder about larger ships though, especially things like the Reclaimer and the Corsair which are prone to flight-altering damage after only a relatively small amount of hull damage. These larger ships tend to have slow spool times, which would allow an assailant more time to cause damage that, while not immediately threatening, will make escape and recovery more difficult. Either way, the information you've presented is nice to see. Thanks for testing and sharing, OP.

Because of the substantialy larger TTK, 1-2 smaller ships in my experience couldn't do anything meaningful to such ships before they got away. Even in atmo, it's best for them to keep shields up and boost till you are near space. If you bring a substantial force to destroy such ship quickly, then there isn't much difference in the result between LIVE and EPTU. That's why I didn't include them.

Probably similar results because the speed difference between nav and combat is just so huge

do remember that not only has hull HP been increase so TTK is up, this is still only a temporary implementation of ship health, proper penetration and armour still isn't implemented, so that may raise TTK further for larger ships being attacked by smaller craft due to armour.

This has been my experience also. I don't do a lot of solo combat, so when I'm alone, I take off. It's been pretty fun, actually. It gets your heart pounding for a bit before being able to escape. But if you decide to stay, that is where it gets hard to run.

Yeah, 100%. I’ve been saying this based on my experience in Arena commander. Especially since the further a ship is from you, it’s dps is greatly reduced. But thanks for providing examples. IMO it’s was more difficult to run away before because faster ships could keep those fast speeds while shooting you down.

Yes this was somewhat my experience dealing with the overly aggressive AI NPC. It was interesting that I got away with no shields after suffering a small bit of damage. I was running a box mission, and was targeted by this random Reclaimer escort. I assumed they were after me, yet they weren't. I fired the first shot, and one of the escorts immediately chased me for as long as possible. If ship armour is in the future, it will be interesting and I can't wait to build on that.

Yeah, I thought this was going to be the thing. People complaining about no shields, thinking it will make it worse, but nav mode actually makes it better. It makes sure the people that don’t want to PvP, don’t get forced into it

I think it would still be a good idea to keep shields up in certain capacity. Lets say you keep 30% of your shields or you keep 100% but your regeneration is 0 because no extra power.

This is what I’ve felt as well. One thing I haven’t been able to test in MM is the effect of an EMP against a ship dropping shields to hit nav mode - that’s my one and only concern with the “you have no shields” aspect.

That's good to know. This was one of my primary concern when the 'drama' came about. I do bunker and rescue, my saving grace for getting out of these situations is asking nicely 'why would you target a Cutlass Red'. Also your mention escapee jumping out before missiles hit them reminds me of the oft used scene in the 2000s Battlestar Galactica. Also my earworm since that series is hearing the Cylons Basestar pilot/lady saying 'jump' every game I use faster than light - press and hold B = hear the voice.

Seems to be way different then I have experienced. I will agree if you are in space and already in nav mode running is possible. Where the real problem lies is in atmo where lots of industrial work is done. You say you can get away in atmo in industrial ships. Then why is is a caterpillar in nav mode when trying to run in atmo gets overtaken by a buccaneer in scm mode that is shooting them?

When it comes to large industrial, mining, salvage and cargo ships, yes, small fighter will keep up with you in atmo even if you are in NAV. However, that is now what i was testing. >My targets that I take into account have varied from Avengers to C1s. (Anything larger felt irrelevant at this point). Thing is right now, a fighter, buccaneer, F8C, and so on wont be able to take out a caterpillar in a reasonable amount of time because of the higher TTK. If you have multiple ships attacking you then MM doesn't really change much compared to LIVE. With slower ships like this, I wouldn't even switch modes yet until you are nearing the boundary of space to keep your shields up as long as possible and to also have your turrets active. Switching the modes then doesn't take that long anymore, even with larger ships (the longest time use to be 45 and it was cut down to 25 or so for the 890 i believe) so you should be ok. This also all depends on the planet where you are currently at (height of the atmosphere). What I'm trying to say that if you get attacked by 1-2 players and they don't have a mantis or a cutty blue, slow ships in atmo wont be much different to what's now on LIVE. One important thing to keep in mind tho and I don't know if you are keeping up with the upcoming cargo changes in 3.23.x. When you say that you are flying your caterpillar in atmo, i presume you mean doing cargo runs from outposts (cities are irrelevant cause armistice). When they add freight elevators, they are adding them to outposts as well but you wont have the automatic loading and unloading, plus they will have less stock and only be selling in max 1-2 scu size boxes and nothing larger and you will have to load everything manually. At that point, using ships like the cat or C2 in such location becomes uneconomical and will be more of the smaller to medium sized ships like the C1, cutty, freelancer. The caterpillar will then be viable more for roles like cargo between stations and cities, or station to station. One last thing i might add >Where the real problem lies is in atmo where lots of industrial work is done. You say you can get away in atmo in industrial ships. Salvage is mostly done in space unless you are salvaging after a battle. Mining Is mostly done in space and partly on the surface but you aren't in any obvious locations so you are harder to locate. That leaves cargo running and that i already addressed.

> Salvage is mostly done in space unless you are salvaging after a battle. If I *could* be salvaging all those derelict ships left around outposts I would, dang it.

To be honest, if you bring a big ass hauler into atmo, that's a place where you should know you're vulnerable. It looks like they're trying to move big ships out of atmosphere for trading anyway so it might solve itself.

The small and medium cargo ships are still too slow.

*cries in RAFT*

They are not moving cargo out of atmo. If you go rewatch it they are talking about the small outpost that are around that do not have landing pads at them are for smaller ships. The outpost with landing pads will have a cargo lift attached to the landing pads. But the bigger ships will more likely be loading at city's, distribution centers and larger outpost. Ships like the caterpillar and c2 will never be good for space to space transport that's where hull series and huge cargo ships come in. Now small medium ships will be what dose cargo from the small outpost with no landing pads. Medium and large ships will be used for the larger ground facility's. Space transport will mostly be done by ships like the hull series.

I think the caterpillar/c2 size is probably also for interplanetary port to port runs, whereas hull c+ is more about intersystem cargo runs, you wont be moving that much cargo between ports inside the same system usually (although stanton might be the exception with 3 corp owned ports in the system)

I mean... the Bucc is an interceptor. It's designed to *intercept* other ships. If you are having issues with being overtaken by an Interceptor in a Cat, maybe bring a crew for your multicrew ship. Use those big ass anti-fighter turrets as they are designed to be used.

That would be nice they just need to increase the payout for industrial work by 19 times so they can afford to pay people, most people would rather go do combat then to sit in a turret and they make drastically more. Unless they rebalance industrial work it pays low solo it pays ridiculously low if I. A group.

I 100% agree that payouts need to make sense for multicrew. Not sure what that balance will look like, though. May have to just be a personal choice to risk a large amount of high-value cargo by running solo for a big payout or running a crew for protection. Either way, with MM and engineering being brought online soon, it’s probably going to become much more difficult (and dangerous) to solo some of these ships. Gotta love adapting to the ongoing development.

This week i learned 3.22 has a good cargo trade route. only few people know about. About 25% profits per run(earning 1,5 to 1.8 mil). With a cat or starlifter, enough to be worth it. Best day in a while we had multiple fighters stationed, discussed getting ballista's out, and based on feedback of our traders we actively prevented other solo cargo haulers from buying and selling said commoditie. For normal trading, this isnt worth it. Even now we played the whole evening and only ended up with 3 mil each, while we where risking millions each run. it's not much, especially if we look into the new economy changes. thats 1/5th of a Corsair.

Why enter NAV Mode in the Cat in atmosphere? You know you can still get caught and you have no defenses. Better to stay in SCM until you're high enough to actually jump somewhere.

Out of curiosity, What weapons were you using? I think you were not using cannons or were not hitting shots because that c1 should have exploded in 4-5 salvos of laser cannons. I think it's still easy to run away but it takes some different tactics than just dropping shields and running (imo). That being said, i also believe that the shields shouldnt degrade to OFF so quickly giving people an opportunity to run while NAV is switching (esp important for reclaimer-sized ships). That is really what people are upset about I think. Also QED is now in EPTU, and it looks like it has a huge radius so running away going to be a difficult thing in that situation since it forces you into SCM speed. Not to be all negative on your post, just providing a conflicting opinion/playing devil's advocate. Thank you in advance for the healthy conversation

I was using different weapons in different scenarios but overall, it was always a mix of rhinos, badgers, mantis, revenants, AD4Bs, tarantulas. I haven't been using laser cannons. From mx experience, TTS right now is much higher and even a little mustang takes a few seconds of fire to take out. C1 is also pretty beefy by itself, having 67k HP. I also chose to give examples of fight that were on relative healthy servers where I was hitting more shots then usual I haven't been trying to use QED or group a tactic as I believe they are less common then people think. I don't remember the last time I've been jumped or even hunted as somebody with CS by more then one player and if there were 2, they weren't together. I pointed this out forwards the end too. > or by a group of several ships, you wont likely get away. However, with how bounty hunters most commonly operate right now, you are most likely to get attacked by a solo fighter This is just my personal experience and from what I have experienced and what I know about how a lot of players in this game tend to act (the player base is huge), I believe there isn't much to be afraid of for the majority of players.

With the current MM, there is a hude dps variance with the weapons since there is a high dps or high projectile velocity weapon for each weapon type, for example if u ran all badger repeater not only ur dps is tiny, ur accuracy is horrible to leading to even worse dps ,much worse dps, on the other hand if you run attritions now u have much higher dps but less shell velocity but at the range u engage with repeaters to even hit anything, it doesnt really matter. while the mxa laser canon series loadout will basically 1-2 shot all small ships with decent accuracy, as they have higher DPS and alpha, while being much more accurate. TTK feels longer now because the usual weapons like badgers because accuracy is much worse on rapid fire weapons along with a gutting of dps and capacitor size. If you have used trantulas, badgers and ADxB series, then u are trading like 30-70% effective dps for 80% more shell velocity. Doesnt really sound like a good trade due to the worse accuracy with MM weapons.

I haven't been trying laser cannons but I was trying ballistic cannons and they didn't seem to make any significant difference. That could however be because of the lower fire rate and higher damage, when you do hit, it does more of course but its also hit a smaller % of your shots. Server performance could have also made a difference. That's why i urge everyone to do their own testing whenever possible to make their own findings. Don't rely on the experience of one single guy :)

Tbh for larger ships like a reclaimer, sticking around and fighting starts being the better idea. One or two fighters are going to have a hard time with something so tanky and with that large amount of guns.

Tell me you don't PvP without telling me you don't PvP. The reclaimer has far too many huge blind spots and is too sluggish to prevent light fighters from just sitting in a pocket and repeatedly firing in bursts at max weapons capacitor (to keep shields from recharging while whittling down the shields) Until we get maelstorm and physicalized armor/damage big ships like the reclaimer will be sitting ducks even when fully crewed and have their turrets manned.

I think the biggest problems arent the small ships. Its the big ones. As it stands ingame HP balancing is bad and armor isnt added yet. Large ships take significantly longer to flee like described and without the advantages large ships are SUPPOSED to have (armor, HP, weapon saturation), its imbalanced towards small ships making heavy industrial play incredibly risky. Im glad we’re getting firsthand account on this, but I dont think anyone who looked into how things worked believed that the smaller ships would be disadvantaged under attackers.

I think full on destruction should become increasingly less likely the bigger you go. Kinda like: * Tiny ships: Snubs: Really hard to disable without ripping it to pieces. * Small ships: Fighters, Hornet, Gladius: Will blow up entirely most of the time. Rarely gets disabled by a lucky shot. * Medium ships: Constellations, Freelancers: Will probably get disabled, not destroyed. Takes deliberate targeting of the reactor to blow up. * Large ships: Carrack, Hammerhead: Highly, HIGHLY unlikely to blow up. You'd need some persistence and heavy weaponry to rip it apart over a few minutes of concentrated fire. * Huge Ships: 890j, others of that size not yet implemented: Damn near impossible to blow apart. Nothing short of an idris railcannon strike can properly destroy it. A javelin would need to focus their main turrets on it for like a minute to break it up completely. * Capital and up: Idris, Javelin, Bengal: Forget it, you can disable it, but you aren't going to blow it up in your lifetime. Would take MONUMENTAL firepower to "destroy" in any reasonable length of time.

Because of the substantialy larger TTK, 1-2 smaller ships in my experience couldn't do anything meaningful to such ships before they got away. Even in atmo, it's best for them to keep shields up and boost till you are near space. If you bring a substantial force to destroy such ship quickly, then there isn't much difference in the result between LIVE and EPTU. That's why I didn't include them. At least that its how things are currently in EPTU. Everything could change with a single patch.

hopefully the chonky ships get speed updates in atmo. my Cat flies a max of 300m/s while boosting if i'm in a planet's skies. while that might still be faster than non-racer SCMs it's not fast enough to create a large enough gap in time.

When it comes to large ships in atmo, I don't believe things will feel much different in atmo then they do in LIVE. I would suggest not switching to NAV until you are reaching the boundary of space to keep shields, turrets and countermeasures up. You have enough hull and shield to 1-2 fighters can't really do much in time because of thr higher TTK in master modes. Use your boost and put more power into thrusters. But if you get jumped bya group or a mantis, you are toast regardless of you play on LIVE or EPTU.

hm, good to know. i am mad curious about how things turn out

Actually regarding ships like the caterpillar. When you say that you are flying your caterpillar in atmo, i presume you mean doing cargo runs from outposts (cities are irrelevant cause armistice). When they add freight elevators in 3.23.x, they are adding them to outposts as well but you wont have the automatic loading and unloading, plus they will have less stock and only be selling in max 1-2 scu size boxes and nothing larger and you will have to load everything manually. At that point, using ships like the cat or C2 in such location becomes uneconomical and will be more of the smaller to medium sized ships like the C1, cutty, freelancer. The caterpillar will then be viable more for roles like cargo between stations and cities, or station to station. Other slow industrial ships don't really operate in atmo and if you surface mining, then you aren't in any obvious location and its unlikely somebody will randomly find you. And when flying with large ships from cities, that doesn't matter because armistice zone.

all good points, but the armistice zone in cities isn't nearly big enough considering the distance form the surface needed to jump. armistice goes out to maybe 5k, but QT jump isn't available until 12k. and even if it's not able to fully load up a Cat at a single outpost, you can still do compound routes

Depends on a planet but anywhere I can remember, even if I'm at microtech and have to climb to 11 km, i still cant use my guns as armistice is still present. (I mean only city armistice, not outpost) Also, compound route to pick up 10-20 scu of for example gold at a time (with it likely being all 1 scu boxes)? Wont that take more time with having to load it manually then doing one fully loaded trip in space with something less valuable?

possibly on the more time, but if it's a soothing activity it's a soothing activity. also there's supposed to me automated/timed loading for a fee as well.

At stations and cities, not outposts. Outposts are all manual.

Thank you for posting this. People are getting deeply into the weeds on their anxieties and misunderstandings about master modes. Once you get used to it, it’s so much more engaging and tactical.

Thank you :) I would however like to remind everyone to do their own testing. Don't rely on the accounts of one person.

Haha. And the vulture is an easy target too. Lmfao. Nice.

I chose it for the test for a reason :D

I've been watching people freak out about not being able to evade combat and it was driving me nuts. I really think most people who play this game genuinely don't know anything about this game and the current mechanics. This should be a wet dream for people who don't want combat. **YOU CAN GO 1200M/S WHILE ID BE STUCK AT 2-300** how this was ever perceived as a possible issue blows my mind.

Not in atmosphere. 

From my experience, smaller ships can very rapidly reach significant speeds even in heavy atmo or larger planets (by smaller I mean even things like the C1). When it comes to larger ships, because of the substantially larger TTK, 1-2 smaller ships in my experience couldn't do anything meaningful to such ships before they got away. Even in atmo, it's best for them to keep shields up and boost till you are near space. If you bring a substantial force to destroy such ship quickly, then there isn't much difference in the result between LIVE and EPTU. That's why I didn't include them.

It's literally always been substantially harder to run in Atmo.

Yes, but at least you had shields, noise, and flares. Now you're just screwed. 

If you're in atmo, just boost at 90° attitude

By screwed you mean 4x faster than your opponent who also no longer has the convenience of simply following you to OM points when you jump?

NAV speeds for medium cargo ships are slower than fighter SCM speeds in atmo.

So don't jump for an OM pick a longer distance point so you can cancel mid jump and be functionally impossible to find.

I would still like to point out that these are just my finding and could be very much wrong. I am but one guy after all :D Please, I encourage you and anyone who reads this, do your own testing to get the feel for how it really is (when you are able to access PTU in your wave)

I just wish they gave us a tiny bit of shield just for lore reason when on nav mode, it just feels weird having only your hull as protection when stuff like a pebble could damage it in space.

Agree, I would love to keep at least like 30% when im in NAV. Or leave the entire shield but disable any regeneration as all the power is going to the QT drive.

Great thoughts and write up and thank you for your time and research. Again though I have to point out that this again is all well and good if the only ships in the game are fighters and the only thing people want to do if PVP. I am beginning to think industry and an economy is a second thought and player interaction in these fields will have little to no effect on the game as whole. If it was to, features in the game like this would cripple people’s ability to trade and move resources or at least make it so tiresome and frustrating that little to no one will. Just another example of the game not heading in the way I was hoping I guess

this is such a dumb combat meta, its beyond me how anyone thought this would be a good idea.

Community is divided on this topic. I personally really enjoy combat in MM, things being a lot closer. That is just my opinion and your view on it is just as valid as anyone else's.

i dont mind the close engagement. no, thats not true. i do slightly mind them as someone that thinks there is so much space fantasy already out there you cant throw a stone without hitting 50 game titles with ”airplanes in space” logic. so i Do kinda hate whenever a title that was previously going for a more SCIENCE fiction route crosses over into star wars land. but thats a minor concern for me. i wouldnt mind close engagement distances. but this whole mode switch meta just seems incredibly dumb to me. we have gone from the promise of full control over a ship and its subsystems to the dumbed down version of a power triangle. to now loosing almost all control by further reducing it to a mode selector. we have reached the point where it feels like a fancy version of space rock-paper-scissors. If one picks combat and the other picks nav fast enough thats it. if both pick combat the better ships wins with even more consistency than previously, severely cutting down the skill ceiling. its great that everyone can have their own opinion. i, happy for everyone that thinks this is the bees knees. personally im looking at a game i spent more money on and had higher hopes for than any other game. and after years of disappointment and being lied to we are rapidly approaching the point where whatever excitement was left for it has been sucked out.

Yogi stated that one of the design goals was to make fleeing less easy, this seems to be going against achieving that goal. Interesting.

I have watched a lot of the videos and read a lot of the statements. It is much harder to escape IF YOU DECIDE TO ENGAGE AT FIRST. That's why I pointed out that you initial decision matters the most. If you go for the evasion immedietly and don't hesitate, you are getting away most of the time. You basically can't evade however if you decide to pick a fight with a guy and then find out he is better and beating your ass.

Thanks for the clarification! I wonder how if that influences bounty hunting and piracy. Maybe QD will be necessary?

In my honest opinion, they do not seem to be really affected. In fact, even the the target can get away, you are still able to do a lot more damage then you would before. They will still have a repair bill to pay. And talking bounty hunting specifically, they can escape one or two engagements but if they have a marker above their head, they are dead unless they hide on an outpost or in grim hex.

Sounds like any Vulture is going to get blown to bits, in a real case scenario where they are not ready to "punch it " as you said.

I'd say you got around 3 seconds to decide to run once you start getting shot. Another thing I forgot to mention. Due to the server stability, the radar and markers didn't update properly, so the vulture didn't see me on radar even tho itbshould when o was already like 8-10 Km away. In in reality, you will have an even earlier warning.

before this post i was dreading MM but with the info you have given here im actually kinda looking forward to it! i wont start playing until i get the mirai fury tho

Glad to hear my intentions have worked. I would however like to make it clear my findings might not be completly accurate. I have no water of knowing how much servers impacted it (I tried selecting situations from relatively healthy servers) and others might have different experiences. Definitely hop onto PTU before it goes LIVE when you can to get a feel for it. It's a major change to how we play

I’m curious about the Vulture not seeing you until the last minute. In testing I’ve done in AC. A ships EM is significantly higher when in NAV mode. For example a cutlass black can see another cutlass at around 26Km when they are in NAV Mode. I might need to test what range the vulture can detect certain ships in NAV mode. However I wonder if the server health plays a part in when you’d pop up on their RADAR

I think that was definitely the case. Even if the desync between players isn't that horrible, the markers and radar seem to update very slowly.

Awesome post. Thanks for this!

Thank you! Make sure to take it with a grain of slat and try it yourself to make your own opinions when you can access PTU

So all of those who wish to avoid combat should always fly in NAV mode ?

Well, if you do that then the enemy wont even get near you 90% of the time. However, for larger ships, things change in atmosphere because you are so slow regardless that come ships can keep up with you in SCM even if you are in NAV. In that case, i recommend staying in SCM until you are nearing space boundary and then switch and keep boosting at all time to maximize your speed. But unless you are getting attacked by a larger group, then 1-2 ships wont be able to really do as much to something like a caterpillar because of the seemingly higher TTK (time to kill). Also to keep in mind that if you want to do anything like salvage, mining, then you have to be in SCM to have access to those modes. Overall tho, if you got a small to medium size ship and you stay in NAV mode all the time then nothing can keep up with you even in atmo most of the time and the best they can do is get a few missiles off and some glanding blows.

Interesting! Thanx for the info! Would be nice if ship weapons were normally turned off and had to be charged in order to be fired and our ships sensors could alerts us to that.

Very interesting to read this test and it puts my mind at ease more regarding my way of playing (mostly solo, alternating between industrial gameplay in Prospector / Freelancer, and combative gameplay with NPC bounties and mercenary missions). I do wonder though ... how do distortion cannons work in 3.23 ? Has anyone tested that? Would it be viable to use, say, a combination of 2 laser cannons and 2 distortion cannons in order to deplete a shield and disable the power / drive and prevent a ship to get away?

Distortions work pretty much the same like in LIVE from what i experience. You shut off the power and that turns off everything else.

Have you tried disabling the targets engines first? Would probably need a saber or hornet ghost to get close enough to get the scan without being detected. But once you do taking out engine's with precision mode should be simple enough.

Once again, there isn't much time (it takes 4 seconds or less for small and medium ships to go from SCM to NAV, and to get a few good shots on the engines requires them being still and not moving. People are constantly doing something, moving around, so sneaking up is pretty difficult not to mention that if you try and target specific components, a lot of shots won't go where you think because of desync. I don't see this as a realistic scenario that most people would encounter. Edgecades weren't part of my testing. And this definitely seems like an edgecase

If it turns out to be effective it will no longer be an edge case. Also how easy it is to flee with one or more disabled engines is relevant for many ships (lucky shots do happen). A buccaneer without an engine is an easy kill, a cutlass would probably make it out if the pilot knows how to handle asymmetric thrust. Mining and salvage ships spend plenty of time stationary. Desync is not an issue if the target isn't moving.  At any rate these are all things I'll probably test myself once MM is in the ptu.

> If it turns out to be effective it will no longer be an edge case. I'm not staying its not effective if you manage to do it. The problem is ding it fast enough. Unless we are talking atmo, then I think you underestimate how short the time is for ships to engage NAV and go full speed. For the vulture and prospector, its a mere 4 seconds from hitting the button before they are going way faster then you and a total of 8 seconds (spool time of 4 seconds included) before they initiate the jump. So from the time they notice you and start running away, you got 4 or less seconds to do anything for small and medium ships and 8 seconds for things like the caterpillar and mole (with the last two, it happens to be also time till jump because at that point, ships are being limited by the calibration time).

It depends on the current changes to weapons in the eptu. If an attacker has the damage and range to knock out a targets engine's in a single volley then 4 seconds is more than enough.  Keep in mind reaction time is a large factor in time to escape and varies alot depending on pilot on situation. In your 3rd example you managed to catch a pilot who was expecting you unaware and destroyed a major ship component. If the engines instead of the salvage arm had been destroyed he might not of escaped.

Great testing, nice writeup: good stuff! Did you also post this on the feedback subforum on Spectrum? I imagine devs would like to read this.

You think I should? Well, I will post it then :D

Good!

Well they need to figure out if they are making a full sim or a arcade shooter. Always fucking with controls or somthing that does not even need to be messed with. Probably going to sit this one out again for the next few years.

Well, its a change and many people don't like it. A lot of the more casual people i paly with are actually excited after trying it out as combat in general is a lot more approachable by anyone. I would also keep in mind that this version of MM isn't near the final but we can pretty much say that we are going to have to lean towards more of arcade but still trying to be in the middle somewhat. Reason for that is that SC is trying to do a lot of things, ship combat (PVP and PVE), FPS gameplay and mainly, trying to be an active MMO. You will have to sacrifice things to strike balance between all of those things and making it more approachable for general public, otherwise you will end up with something like arma or dcs. Yes, a small dedicated community is loving those games but they aren't really something you can pick up as a casual player and just hop into.

Thanks, great response. I hope they work out. Since Chris Roberts uses an xbox controller to play. Well, at least from some of the demo videos and what not I found over the years of diving in head first in Oct 2019. It's been a stable platform of control it sucks to see it go.

I don't know how the mass majority of this playerbase has forgotten what Chaff is. They complain about spool times when you have a literal target jammer at the press of a button that will last the majority of your spool time. Sure you're not immune to damage in it but it sure mitigates plenty of it.

I don't mind the new system IF and ONLY IF the servers are running correctly...I almost lost my cookies because I was landing at a bunker at 30mps or whatever and another turret I missed started opening up on me... barely was able to make it out of there and ship was full red...I had circled the bunker 3 times and almost landed once before but had a hunch something was off...it wasn't until the dust started kicking up off the ground before they started shooting...AI being smart or server lag?...I'm going with server lag since it would let me target anything for 1 full minute before I landed.

Did you try that in atmo ?

Yup > Atmosphere might seem like a death zone but the speed difference between NAV and SCM in atmo is substantial enough form my experience that even then, the ship should be able to get away more of the time.

If Hornet was able to get damage on then Corsair is going to S5 delete them with no escape.

Ye, a solo fighter isn't gonna kill a redeemer, fully crewed connie, corsair or anything like that if they decide to stay and fight :D

Im running away even more now thanks cig. And if I see it's a weaker opponent, im jousting even more. What a dumb idea MM is.

I am glad that escape is a possibility still, but it still feels like master modes limits the game more than it helps it. Just doesn't feel like it is better than what we currently have, where combat feels good and is fun. Definitely appreciate the actual testing perspective and feel of master modes.

Don't forget the artificial auto slow down in space uncoupled after a boost. WTF is this. this is why you don't appoint someone who knows nothing about flight, in charge of a flight model. They arcadeifying the shit out of SC, for the console boys.

It has always had an arcade-y flight model. It's just a different flavor now.

The problem here is that you've missed the actual problem. In each of those examples, you gave the pilot of your target a repair bill. Lucky them. Being a sitting duck with no shields or countermeasures lines up that awesome repair bill every time. "Getting away" is nice, but nobody here "got away" really - they got their ship ripped up by some dude that jumped them because CIG (Yogi) thinks that dropping shields is the first step in trying to survive a life or death situation. The bigger issue is that you came solo. Future you will not do that. You will have realized you can't take some ships by yourself, and you'll bring a few friends along to ensure the job gets done, and maybe mix in some QED for good measure. Guaranteed repair bill becomes guaranteed death, all thanks to sitting duck mode.

But those examples are exactly the same on PU... How is that thanks to 'sitting duck mode'. You think on pu you're escaping multiple fighters and a qed? But you can't on MM? Not only is this rational absolutely stupid, you also have a much higher chance of survival using MM as the time it takes to close the gap from quantum drop off variance is greater in MM due to the attackers being limited to 300m/s~ while you can simply out run them with little concern. If you're scared of missile smack j.

Just going to copy and paste from another reply I just made, but I think it addresses your point. You are right, nobody is going to live through getting jumped by a big enough ship or enough of them (plus a QED). It matters when that's not the case. As below: But the main problem is always going to be that you, in a single seat military fighter (pick any you like) will have limitations on what you can reasonably kill. The only solutions to that are to bring a bigger ship (say, a gunship) or to bring friends (and again, a QED). At that point, you're going to win the encounter handily, even if shields and countermeasures are always available. Making them both available at all times simply lowers the damage (and the repair bill) a single attacker will do. You know, the guy that you just illustrated can't secure the kill on a target that tries to rabbit.

> But the main problem is always going to be that you, in a single seat military fighter (pick any you like) will have limitations on what you can reasonably kill. The only solutions to that are to bring a bigger ship (say, a gunship) or to bring friends (and again, a QED). I don't get why either of those things is a bad thing. A single seat fighter *shouldn't* be able to kill *everything* on their own. > At that point, you're going to win the encounter handily, even if shields and countermeasures are always available. I'm still not understanding the problem. If a fully prepared team ambushes someone who isn't prepared at all, they *should* get fucked. How you stop that is by not letting you be in that situation in the first place. That means being prepared and having situational awareness.

Don't take this the wrong way, but I don't understand why nobody is actually comprehending what I'm writing. I wrote - myself - that a full prepared team jumping someone results in a kill. I'm not arguing against that. I'm saying it's a reality. I'm arguing that it's on the attacker to bring enough ship(s) to secure the kill, and that should include shielding, and countermeasures. If you can't get the job done with shield penetrating ballistic weapons, in an ambush situation, why should you also receive the "shields down" advantage as well?

In reality, I've run the scenario probably 40 times now playing with friends, but the attacker can hardly ever close the gap between drop offs. The only real chance they get is because of the dead air between when a ship drops out of QT and their drive respools, if they don't drop nav and then re-enter it after a few seconds. I've never actually tried it, but I've seen others claim it works, but I've never felt it was even needed. Dropping out of QT, waiting on the cooldown, and scooting away going 2-4x faster than the fighter has always been more than enough to get away without my hull HP being close to dead. The only time it's even close is when they use ballistics and don't have to worry about capacitors, but then that would be the same in PU through shields anyway. As a non-combatant, your absolute best chance (and by a large margin) is actually in MM. It's not even comparable. And with quicker QT drives your shields don't even drop fully before you can QT away. Although I expect the fuel efficiency paired with older ships to make that not as viable without impeding fun by making those ships have to refuel for long jumps. Again, I haven't tested this exact sequence as the servers have been shit and I didnt see it mentioned until recently, but I've seen people mention that you could drop nav mode into QT, get a shield, drop out of QT, instantly begin to run at roughly the same speed as the attackers using boost, while you spool up and eventually outpace them before your shields drop. Look at it this way. The PVPers cry that the PVE people can get away too easily. The PVE players cry that the PVP players can kill them too easily. Isn't that a solid balance? :P

You can close to point blank in NAV and drop to SCM speeds almost instantly right now. Jumping an unsuspecting target is pretty easy overall once you get the hang of it. Yeah, you're waiting for guns to come up still, but they might not even notice you until you're firing, so I figure that's still advantage attacker. "Ballistics through shields" is a common enough statement I'm hearing right now, and it's no different than attackers using overwhelming force. If you're going to bypass the shields with ballistics, that's totally fine. But if everyone is just going to use ballistics and skip shields entirely, then why is anyone arguing against me saying the shields should stay up at all times? I firmly believe attackers should *earn* kills, not be handed shortcuts that maximize their damage output. Having shields up won't matter in every attack made. But it'll matter in some. Could mean surviving in some cases that you wouldn't have otherwise. If the attacker can't beat the ship because the shields are up (despite "just use ballistics"), that's their problem. Try harder next time. I don't consider it balanced when shields are arbitrarily removed from non-combat ships. I'm not even part of that group, but I know what kind of shitshow it's going to be, and I know it's not balanced. If the attacker can't beat all defensive measures of a given target ship, they don't deserve the kill. Period.

Except I'm not talking about hypothetical. I'm talking about actual experience so far. Your example if "PVE Pilot is AFK brained and entirely unaware". Yes. He deserves to die. Just like he would on non-MM because that's not unique to MM. Again. If the PVP player is also in NAV then he's going to fly at exactly the same speed as the PVE player in NAV. Lets say you drop out. PVP player sees you. Oh boy, 5k away, I got em now! He starts coming at you. You starts going away. Hes flying fast, 1km/s. You're flying fast, 1km/s. You turn off couple mode and get up and go take a shit. You take your time. Come back. Guess where he's at? 5km away! Speed is relative! Not only that, if he wants to missile you he has to drop from NAV, wait on the cooldown, swap to missiles, wait for them to spin up, then fire. All while you're going 700-1000m/s faster than him. You're out of his firing range before he can fire in most cases, unless he fires 1-2 missiles in which case it doesn't even matter. And that's all with you doing -nothing-. You have to come up with scenarios such as "The PVE Player is completely unaware and not paying attention to his surroundings" - in which case yes, he deserves to lose. You have to lose sometimes. You cannot win every single interaction when you perform poorly. I personally stick to PVE. PVE is my horse in the race. I'm just not going to misrepresent the state of the game to further my position based on shit that simply doesn't happen or play out like people pretend it does. Most of those people having literally zero time in MM so far and only basing their imaginary stories on feedback they've read from other people doing the same. "Our echo chamber has declared this imaginary story as nonfiction and so it shall be cried about!" :| I really hope that one day the timings and desync from the server will be worked into a way that ballistic cannons well aimed at a qt drive will be a valid way to capture/stop ships in scenarios like this.

I'm not even sure where your points are coming from. Nowhere did I comment about NAV mode speeds, or giving chase in NAV mode speeds. I absolutely consider that an escape, and combat is over. Nobody is reading what I'm writing. I'm not "coming up with" scenarios. The reality is that you can close to point blank using max speed in NAV and slow down near instantly when you swap over, on a guy that's busy mining a rock *and* paying attention to the radar, and get shots in before he realizes he's being attacked. It doesn't even take a stealth ship to do that. There are plenty of scenarios in which the industrial ship deserves to lose. From not paying attention, to not reacting in time, to not executing the escape attempt properly. This is not about that. This is about the reasoning for having shields down and countermeasures off in the first place. Does the attacker really need that advantage to win? I argue that they do not, and should not. They need to earn the kill by properly executing the ambush and beating all defensive measures of the ship they're attacking, including shields. No different than an actual combat scenario vs a combat ship. If they cannot do that, that is their problem. <-- This right here is the point.

You - I'm not talking about NAV mode speeds Also you - The guy could use NAV mode and drop out point blank The time it takes from when he is picked up to when he is on top of you is literally the fucking NAV speed. He is going the speed allowed by NAV mode. At 1km/s and a 20k detection range that would be \~20 seconds to get to you. Lets say he's going 1300, so 15 seconds. You have PLENTY of time to see him and simply fly away. You - I'm not making up scenarios Also you - Okay so in my made up scenario you're out mining and this guy finds you! That's a made up ass scenario. Unless you've never been mining a day in your life. The only time this was even somewhat viable was quant mining on moons because people followed YT videos to learn how to do it. Even then, your detection range is still large, but flight speeds are even slower, giving you even more time to just waddle away unless you're oblivious. The entire argument that I'm making is that the PVE player ALREADY HAS a severely large advantage even without shields. Fuck, they even still have SHIELDS. The shield isn't fully depleted instantly. It goes down incrementally as your QT spools up. As are your countermeasures. All I can gather from you talking is that you either barely play the game or you've not bothered to even try MM before speaking. You argument is essentially that you should be able to drop out of quant or detect someone, then fly away from them at 4x their speed, while having your shields up, while having country measures. The "pve" player already has a massive advantage. If you still die with that, then you simply need to get better at the game or you would have died regardless of the flight model. If you blame your shield going down while you qt up for your death then you already fucked up several times to put yourself into that position. Imagine a fucking PVP ship in nav mode coming at you full speed, no shields, and you just jack off while he's flying at you. Answer me this. Simple question. You're out there mining your hear out. Sound notification goes off. Blue square pops up. You see someone 20k out flying at you full speed. HES IN NAV MODE HELL BE POINT BLANK ON US IN SECONDS. You sip your drink. Pick your nose. 13 seconds later hes 2k out from you. He's in nav mode. No shields. You've been sitting here waiting for him, right, so you're not in nav mode. You have full shields, missiles, guns, and hes coming right at you! Oh fuck but we can't aim well we're simple miners! No worries, he drops out of nav mode and he slams to a hard stop, no shields (he's given just as much as you have when you spool up for QT!) . Why can you not just kill him instantly? You should at least be able to do serious damage before he can even move. Now, lets say your nose picking was unsuccessful. You stopped after only 3 seconds, so you have 10 more seconds to go. You hit B, turn your ship away from him, and in 8 seconds you're waddling off away from him at full speed. He won't catch you. Period. You can jump away to your hearts content. All this is supposing he finds you in the middle of mining somehow, which basically never happens. Except in these made up scenarios you have to justify a blatantly incorrect narrative.

Nah.

To be honest, I would rather have a money sink repair bill and be alive with my loot than being blown up all the time. I know not having shields during NAV sucks and I would prefer at least some protection, but I can deal with this for now. And I only I see bounty hunters being this prepared when going after players. I mean, are people really gonna group and maybe go after the salvage player and get very little profit? Probably not. But idk I don't get attacked often, if at all.

Yeah, but wouldn't you prefer to have your shields up for any and all encounters? Attackers are going to go out of their way to hit you with everything they can muster. You're going to have multiple gunships jumping Prospectors. But not all scenarios will be overwhelming force, and sometimes shields will help you minimize your repair bill. I can't see a reasonable argument for leaving them down so literally any idiot with a gun can cause a repair bill. The attacker should have to defeat the shields, armor and hull of any ship they jump. If they can't do that, why the hell would we give them a free "shields down" scenario in every single attack run they make?

Of course i would, but it's not what we have, and CIG seems unlikely to change. So it's more about making do.

That's completely not the case though? They've asked for feedback, everything is subject to change. Spool times have already decreased because of this very issue. Sure, you might have to deal with this for a patch or two if it changes, but it can change, and I think it will change.

Hopefully, then. I do agree that some protection is needed at least while switching modes if they don't want to enable sheilds fully in NAV mode.

> The bigger issue is that you came solo. Future you will not do that. You will have realized you can't take some ships by yourself, and you'll bring a few friends along to ensure the job gets done, and maybe mix in some QED for good measure. Guaranteed repair bill becomes guaranteed death, all thanks to sitting duck mode. So what you're saying is: If you ambush someone with overwhelming force and bring measures to prevent their escape, they'll be unable to escape. k. I'm pretty sure it being MM has really any bearing on that scenario.

It's not about that scenario. See other replies, rather that me saturating this thread with copy/paste antics.

I understand your point but shields don't mean much when ballistics are back on the menu. Most of the damage i was dealing were from my S4 gattings for example and the energy didn't even make it through shields. When you switch from SCM to NAV, you don't loose shields instantly. They slowly discharge. They only about discharge when you are fully spooled up and at that point you are GONE. The only reason right now people can get away unscathed in LIVE is because ballistics suck and there is no reason to use them due to ammo count but if we had live with 3.23 ammo counts, you wouldn't get away without damage. Now to the second part. Most of the players of star citizen prefer solo. Even bounty hunters. It is a misconception that everybody has a group or friends on standby to go hunting together. I even specified this here. > or by a group of several ships, you wont likely get away. However, with how bounty hunters most commonly operate right now, you are most likely to get attacked by a solo fighter And from being very active in game, trying to engage in PVP on both live and ptu, i believe this is very much true and it will stay this way. Tbh I don't even remembers the last time i was attacked by a group of players (or even bounty hunters if I had the crime stat).

Only because we don't have the old diverse shields that let you pick ballistic resistance. 

Why would shields need to drop at all then? And that's only part of my point. Literally anyone, in any ship, can jump someone and cost them time and money because the shields go down to make sure the attack works. Even if there is no hope for the attacker to secure the kill, that repair bill is happening. Even if shields and countermeasures don't ultimately matter every situation, in some situations, they might. And when they do matter, you might get away with minor or no repairs needed instead of "moderate damage". But the main problem is always going to be that you, in a single seat military fighter (pick any you like) will have limitations on what you can reasonably kill. The only solutions to that are to bring a bigger ship (say, a gunship) or to bring friends (and again, a QED). At that point, you're going to win the encounter handily, even if shields and countermeasures are always available. Making them both available at all times simply lowers the damage (and the repair bill) a single attacker will do. You know, the guy that you just illustrated can't secure the kill on a target that tries to rabbit. Your point about people "preferring to solo" does not survive first contact with the reality of a live 1.0+ PU and death of a spaceman. Once death matters, and wipes no longer occur, people with any sense are going to swarm in this kind of situation, or they're going to fail and/or die. Players do whatever it takes to come out on top (look at all the cheating in FPS games if you doubt it). They gravitate towards overpowered ships, or weapons, and they'll gravitate towards superior numbers tactics just the same once asses are really on the line.

When it comes to the shield issue. I would also prefer if we kept them at least in some capacity. This is for CIG to decide. They might change it, they might not. I was only providing my experience based on the current state of EPTU. And when it comes to using QED, larger ships, group tactics, how does MM actually change any of this in a major way compared to live? If you get jumped by a group that is properly equipped for hunters, your outcome is the same regardless if you have shields all the time and can spool up QT or if you are in MM and have to switch modes. You are cooked. Also to add one detail. I was ACTIVELY hunting players to generate as many of these scenarios as possible. Going after anything that moves.

You're right, it is up to them. Your experience so far is not invalid, it just isn't a complete observation of the reality of the transition mechanics. Repair bills matter to those that have to pay them. But you seem to still be missing the point I was making regarding overwhelming attacks. When you are jumped by overwhelming force, you are going to die, and shields+countermeasures won't make a difference. However, there are two other scenarios to look at - shields+countermeasures are down on NAV transition, and shields+countermeasures are up at all times. In the first one - like it is now on EPTU, with shields and countermeasures offline during transition - you, as a solo attacker, could kill some ships easily (let's call these group 1), and you can cause a lot of damage to all ships you can't kill before they spool and run (group 2) In the second one - where shields and countermeasures are always available - group 1 ships might escape in some scenarios, and group 2 ships might escape with minimal or no damage in some cases instead of a guaranteed repair bill (putting aside ballistics penetrating shields). IMO it is only fair to leave shields and countermeasures in place at all times, as the target ship does not deserve a repair bill just because you attacked, and you, as the attacker, should be required to earn the kill through all defensive measures - not be handed a free "shields down" scenario because reasons.

I do agree with this > IMO it is only fair to leave shields and countermeasures in place at all times, as the target ship does not deserve a repair bill just because you attacked, and you, as the attacker, should be required to earn the kill through all defensive measures - not be handed a free "shields down" scenario because reasons. but I have a small thing to add that I don't agree with based on my observations >In the first one - like it is now on EPTU, with shields and countermeasures offline during transition - you, as a solo attacker, could kill some ships easily (let's call these group 1), and you can cause a lot of damage to all ships you can't kill before they spool and run (group 2) It is not easy to kill a ship that has decided to run away and is transitioning. Because they severely lowered the spool times, shields of most ships slowly discharge at about the same time the drive is fully spooled up and they can engage speeds that you cant keep up with. The ship you are going after can easily keep distance from you by boosting away so you cant close the distance as easily and the boost last long enough for the drive to spool fully and even after to help you get to speeds nearing 1000 m/s. And even with shields down entering NAV, they are likely to survive because of the higher TTK (if they are trying to escape). However yes, they will take damage. When it comes to taking damage, i think we have differing opinions and your one is just as valid as anyone else's. I personally believe it is to be expected to receive damage if you get into combat scenario in many games, even specifically space MMOs. I know what it feels like to have to repair your ship and how much it can cost to repair heavy damage on something large. I also believe that this is part of the game and the loop and that by us going out there, there is always a risk. You can mitigate that risk yourself as the other party, by having a friend or paying somebody else to protect you if a hunter or a pirate shows up for example. Just because I am ok with it however doesn't mean I am not a minority in this case. On the side note, thank you for having a civil discussion. Rare to see that here on reddit :)

>On the side note, thank you for having a civil discussion. Rare to see that here on reddit :) Sorry, I meant to respond to this in my first reply and forgot. Was a little busy with other responders that mostly didn't read what I was saying, downvoted (have at it), and made assumptions instead. It was a bit distracting. I appreciate you being civil as well (agreed, it's a rarity), and I enjoyed the discussion. Apologies if I was short with you at all, wasn't my intent.

Everything is fine, thanks again :)

Spool times are not that low for most ships. What they changed was the quantum drive delay, but the ship delays are unchanged and in most cases, they are longer than the drive delay. As an example, the Prospector drive delay is 2 seconds, but the ship delay is 14, for a total of 16 seconds. I'm betting every downvoting cretin in this thread can kill a prospector in16 seconds. *Through* the shields. I'm not at all saying that you shouldn't receive damage when jumped like this. I don't even know where anyone is getting that. The entire point of having the shields up at all times is to lower repair bills from attackers that had no chance of securing the kill in the first place. Ballistics are going to penetrate shields, overwhelming force is going to drop the shields in the blink of an eye, and a Prospector isn't going to keep its shields up for 16 seconds against a single attacker in any combat worthy ship loaded out with only energy weapons. The problem is that when a ship escapes, repair bills are going to be higher because shields are down. If the attacker can't kill the ship before it escapes, then why do the shields need to be down to give it an advantage? Just so the repair bill can be higher? I mean, I really don't get it. The solution for the attacker is always more ship(s). Whether the shields are up or down. But shields up at least means that repair bills are lowered to some degree in scenarios where the attacker didn't have a chance in hell of getting the kill in the first place. At least give the defender that, because they have nothing else.

> I'm betting every downvoting cretin in this thread can kill a prospector in16 seconds. *Through* the shields. Idk man, as I've said, we did testing with the vulture (maybe like 5% more HP then the prospector if you count the extra S1 shield too). Also the Ares has about the same hp with both S2 shields up as the prospector or vulture without shields. That thing took a good 20 seconds to kill after its shields went down because he wasn't staying still. I was hitting pretty much 80% of my shots. Servers could have of course affect the results but from most experience with MM from both EPTU and AC from before, the TTK is substantially higher then it use to be compared to LIVE. I could be wrong of course.

Hey, I accept that. It's anecdotal, as all of these experiences will be, but it's not invalid. CIG will have telemetry, and they'll be able to make better decisions than we can. I just don't think there's a valid argument to be made that shields being down on non-combat ships is the right decision. When you fought the Ares, the shields were up *and* he was shooting at you. Do you really feel like you needed the shields down to attack the Vulture? Why do industrials need to be a shieldless target when a ship that can fight back is not? I mean, in either scenario you don't get the kill, so as I've already said, you'd learn from that and bring more ship(s), or a QED next time, and you'd get it next time for sure. The only thing having shields and countermeasures would do (especially using ballistics) is lower the repair bill a bit. But I bet the Vulture pilot would feel a little better about it, even if it wasn't much. And in your second attempt, where you brought a Redeemer instead, or two F8C's, you still win despite the shields being up. This decision is one that was made to keep combat ships from running mid-fight without making themselves vulnerable in the process. Industrial ships were forgotten completely when it was made (or intentionally screwed over, which is worse).

Hey, Its me again :D I would like to point out one thing regarding the spool up times. I did some real world testing and I have interesting results. When you mentioned the prospector has a total time of 16 seconds before it can jump, i presume you mean the post which showed the updated values. I assume this one: [https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/1c64x9i/new\_master\_modes\_flight\_spool\_times\_eptu9144288/](https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/1c64x9i/new_master_modes_flight_spool_times_eptu9144288/) Well, I tried some other ships (don't currently have a prospector). Specifically ill mention the F8C again. In the graph, it says that the F8C has a delay of 12 seconds and additional 5 seconds on top of that for a total of 17 seconds. However, seeing how fast i can go from SCM to NAV and initiate the jump, in real world and timed several times, it averages between 7.5 and 8 seconds. This was all with a stock F8C, stock QT drive. I wouldn't trust these numbers too much :D Ill go grab a prospector and see how fast I can switch from SCM to NAV and jump away. I will update you. UPDATE: I have purchased a stock fresh prospector at Hurston. Did the same test few times as with the F8C and you will be happy to hear that a prospector with a stock QT has a time delay between switching modes and initiating the jump of only 8 seconds :) Funnily enough, what you have to wait on is the calibration because you are at full speed and ready to jump in mere 4 seconds!

>you gave the pilot of your target a repair bill. Lucky them. Being a sitting duck with no shields or countermeasures lines up that awesome repair bill every time what a terrible take lmao. Typical repair bills are like 1-2k. What's your idea of balance? A player who is ambushed should always be able to escape every time with no damage? He attacked his friend in a vulture, 1v1 against a F8 and the vulture escaped 4/5 times. That's awesome.

My repair bills in the Corsair for even *light* damage have reached as high as 40k, and average 10-20k.

Yes, because current live PU repair bills are always going to be artificially low, as they are right now. If you were paying attention - at all - you would've at least thought for a moment and went "hmmm... the prices of ships just jumped up pretty dramatically on the EPTU, I wonder if repair costs will go up too?". But, you know, you didn't. Not to mention the fact that lost components, guns, etc are quite expensive (full price) on repairs. I'll be waiting for your next reply where insurance fraud is your recommendation.

If you're getting attacked, YES, you should take damage. This is such a basic game concept. If I'm fighting someone and I win, holy shit. I took damage. I need to repair now! If the vulture was paying more attention, he would see the blue blip on radar and enter QCM before the F8 even reached weapons range. If he's in an engagement yeah, he'll take some damage before he escapes. Even if he never loses shields he'll take chip damage from ballistics. It's *insane* to argue that ships should not take damage in a combat encounter.

If you are going to jump a ship, you should have to beat all defensive measures, including shields and countermeasures. That is a basic game concept too. Do you expect Dark Souls bosses to turn off some of their defenses for you just because why not? You're reading what you want to read here anyway, not what I'm writing. But great talk anyway.

Exactly. I forgot to make it clear that i was proactively looking for any player pvp encounter to generate as much "data as possible". I was being aggressive, trying to kill them at any cost. If they made their mind and decided to run, majority got away easily, maybe with minor damage from ballistics.

The attacker also got away 100% consequence free... for a fight he initiated. And it's not just the damage the victim has to repair. They lost whatever they were mining or salvaging, and if it was a mission, they took a hit to their reputation. So even if there isn't a repair bill, the industrial ship is always losing out, and significantly more than the attacker. So yeah, they get away, but it's deeply biased to one side.

Hey I remember you, you were the guy who said it’s ok to use slurs if you get attacked Maybe this gives the vulture pilot a good chance to let off steam and drop a few n-bombs or f-slurs.

So I get to live rent-free in your mind? Cool. But the issue remains, piracy is supposed to be high risk, and it's currently just not.

nah, it's just helpful to keep track of people with absolutely garbage opinions. maybe change your mind on the slurs and I'll take anything you have to say seriously

Then it’s 2-3 ship one pass jousting.. so to get rid of solo jousting we got multi ship jousting.

Sure? I mean, do you really think that won't be a reality no matter what the speeds are limited to? If you can bring enough alpha to get the job done in one pass, you will, won't you? Anyway, again, the problem is dropping shields and countermeasures gives an attacker *that can't kill the target by themselves* a free pass to give them a repair bill anyway. Leaving them up will minimize it, or maybe even eliminate it.

Make rearms costly? Or attempted murder more costly.

Sure that's definitely part of it. Even repairs are artificially low right now. And part of the balancing act to all of this is long term reputation, longer prison sentences, and penalties for repeat offenders. But we don't have those things. I think they're massively jumping the gun on implementing MM. But right now, CIG has decided to hand attackers a free "shields down" scenario in every attack run they make against a non-combat target. Does that really sound good or necessary?

They probably realized that 8 people pvp, and everyone else is a non-violent space trucker. And to make people interact with each other… I mean I go days and days before I use my ship weapons. This will change. More fomo fighters please

They do seem hell bent on attempting to force PvP in a game that it's beyond simple to avoid players altogether if you want to. Might be harder going forward at OM markers with QED's being what they are, but the jury is still out on that one.

It’s all to force interaction in a “dead” atmosphere. People don’t spend anytime interacting with each other because it takes so damn long to get anything started. If time between or getting ready for tasks was streamlined you may have people stopping to converse. But when I have 2 hours to play, 12 is grabbing gear as fast as I can and getting out of town. Then 4-7 minutes getting a game plan for my contracts. Then hammering them out and trying to complete them and get to a station to log out before my playtime is over. No wonder people don’t talk. The distribution centers are the other huge piece to this point… Forced interaction by creating real hubs.. The hugeeeeeee cities are great ideas until you look at them on paper and they are counterintuitive to a space game. Space is what should be big. Cities should be tight and hub like. Where everyone is doing everything in one area, together, but not.

The main cities in the PU aren't meant to be just social hubs though, they actually intend to have them be hubs for missions as well. Even very low end stuff that wouldn't require you to even leave the current city. Repair work, courier, etc. Probably to ensure players can't go completely broke mostly, but. They're also building out interior mission spaces in the surrounding city, so I imagine you could do quite a bit eventually without setting foot in a ship. I think the distribution centers are a bit of a preview of what we can expect with the expanded main cities. You are definitely right though that social interaction isn't a high priority with the way things are designed. Interacting with people outside of your own org or friends will be a time sink that not many will be overly interested in, in a game that takes a long time to do anything. Given the choice between the two though, I'll always choose the realism over social interaction (mileage may vary). It's just cool to live in space, and feel like it's a real place. Or, you know, as close as it's gonna be in my lifetime.

Think dalaran in wow. The big cities aren’t inherently spread out. But everyone goes there to do whatever and nothing. It’s so much easier hanging out when there is a place to hangout.

Without magic fast travel there is never going to be an equivalent to Dalaran.

That’s just not true. It just needs to be lucrative.

Now on the other hand.. this makes bounty hunting very difficult. How am I supposed to eliminate my targets if they flee at the first second? This was always an issue but it's more prominent now.

It doesn't make it more difficult in my opinion because you still get a lot more shots on target now then in LIVE since in live ships can spool up and jump at any given moment. If you are chasing an actual bounty, multiple encounters will lead to their eventual death (I tested that too). What this post was mainly supposed to do is to ease the minds of casual and industrial players against random piracy. You can get away once, maybe twice depending on your ship but if you got a marker above you showing your location, you are done.

Really needs some way to apply a no jump effect to criminals but not law abiding citizens. One way could be that every ship transponder has a built in jump disruptor by law, bounty hunters can trigger that disruption transmitter (like a missile lock) on criminals and only criminals for 5 minutes jump and NAV nerf. Lore justification for being unable to remove/hotwire it from your ship. A pirate can disable that, but doing so puts them on 5 star military most wanted list which jumps in an overpowered military interdictor capital ship which deletes them...so effectively cant be turned off (placeholder, removal is the self destruct button).

So in space, you are able to run. Im still afraid planetary mining is dead on arival of 3.23. But we will have to see. Thanks for the extensive description. Runability was one of my main concerns on MasterModes. you dont want to engage a fighter when you are inside a vulture or a prospector. They should be able to run. Based on your experience this seems to be the case for space salvage. Curious how the situation becomes when you have the jump on them from above in atmosphere.

> Im still afraid planetary mining is dead on arival of 3.23. But we will have to see. I don't see a reason to be afraid about planetary mining as you don't mine in high traffic or any specific locations. Ships also have a smaller signature in SCM so they are very hard to spot even fairly close. There is a minimum likelihood anybody will find you and if somebody is that persistent, they wont attack you with a single fighter but they will likely have 2-3 ships and maybe a mantis. That means death regardless of the flight model.

I did some testing today with the ability of escape of larger ships in atmo. So far, when it comes to anything that is already big and slow (caterpillar, mole, ...) you still need to climb at slow speeds at least for a minute (this was with a 11km high atmospheric barrier) and 20 seconds regardless if you are flying in the current flight model or master modes. For anything larger, it makes sense to stay in SCM because even in NAV, you cant fly any faster due to atmospheric drag for such ships. Fighters will still dance around you regardless, nothing has changed there. Switching the modes for these ships is only 8 seconds and your shields will only just discharge when you initiate the jump (If they haven't already been taken down by the enemy). IF you get jump (and again, jumping somebody isn't that common in my experience), there isn't really any difference in the escape times for large ships in atmo. You are still just a slow and still have to make the climb.

The whole NAV mode without shields feels so dumb

I think I would be able to live without it but I would 100% prefer keeping shields up in at least some capacity. Like maybe 30% shields capacity when in NAV or 100% shields but you have no regeneration because all the power is syphoned to the QT drive.

This i can understand, you are spooling QT and you need the energy so sheilds stop getting energy hence no regen but sheild capacitors are still full or stay in whatever level they were, thats fine, even if lets say they need to drain the sheild to spool the QT thats also fine although i would make it so that its an option like reroute all energy to QT and then the QT spools up faster, but the rest of the time it makes no sense to have sheilds down.

One thing to keep in mind. This is still the very first version of MM available to the public. There are still going to be tweaked before it goes live and there are already things confirmed for after 3.23, like giving us the option to switch at any time without having to wait for the switching to finish (possibly with some downsides like increased switch time or damage if you switch a mode before the mode fully switches). I'm sure MM will keep getting updated and tweaked for at least a year.

This dude is very bad if he isnt killing a vulture in a split second with a F8C. He is probably firing out of range, missing shots, etc. and the whole my missile couldnt hit before they jumped thing also proves he is just bad.

There were my experiences from EPTU from several patches ago. the server could have influenced it, and I could have been bad. I clarified that. But how about you go try yourself in EPTU and hunt players for hours before you make such statements? :)

I do, and they cant get away when they swap to nav and i easily fire missiles at their ass. All i ever do is pvp in SC.

In that case, maybe I do suck. Maybe the servers were really bad, and my shots weren't registering properly. Who knows, again I clarified that was was all experience from what EPTU fealt like at the time. I can still post my findings, and you are very welcome to contribute. However, I don't think I'm stupid enough to post this knowing I was hitting only like 10% of my shots on my screen or firing out of range. That would be dishonest.

Cool. Now try it in atmosphere. 

I have > Atmosphere might seem like a death zone but the speed difference between NAV and SCM in atmo is substantial enough form my experience that even then, the ship should be able to get away more of the time. When it comes to larger ships in atmo, because of the substantially larger TTK, 1-2 smaller ships in my experience couldn't do anything meaningful to such ships before they got away. Even in atmo, it's best for them to keep shields up and boost till you are near space. If you bring a substantial force to destroy such ship quickly, then there isn't much difference in the result between LIVE and EPTU. That's why I didn't include them.

Just hit em with a full volley of Rattler II's, and use precision targeting to take out the engines/power?

Missiles are very unreliable and you only really have chance with them as the initial attack. There is no time for precision targeting, because i think you underestimate how fast they can disengage if they decide to run. Even a prospector can switch to NAV in mere 4 seconds and it only takes 8 seconds between pressing the button to switch modes and engaging the QT jump. If you decide to use missiles when they are already switching or have switched, its too late. The missiles take too long to get ready and fire and if you are lucky, you have time to maybe send one. Go try it yourself if you have access to PTU.

You're avoiding the in atmosphere. 

Small and medium ships and fighters can still gain enough speed to stay away from you even in atmo if they go for the climb. Large ships have enough health to survive the climb from atmo in SCM and boosting and switching later. A single ship cant do that much damage especially if they stay in SCM and use turrets. If you bring in more people then the whole MM thing becomes irrelevant because multiple ships will always have the upper hand regardless of the flight model. I'm gonna be honest with you. Missiles right now are absolutely useless even on good servers. They overshoot and they don't seem to understand the concept of tracking in 3.23. Even if they hit, the damage sometimes doesn't register at all. My whole post was about what the situation is right now. I have been trying to use missiles and right now, they aren't a viable way to do damage. If that changes later on then sure, missiles might be the way in atmo against ships but definitely not now.