Charged Plating

[sentawan]

I liked charged plating on my strike, but its third tier abilities suck. The other two options have excellent third tier defensive abilities. This shield needs to be changed.

 

Does anyone use this shield and see a reason to have the third tier abilities (5pts regen to either weapon or engine power per hit). I thought that if I had to, I would choose engine because if you are getting shot you may need the extra engine power to boost. It still sucks compared to quick charge's 60% regen while taking damage and directional shield's 3 sec regen delay reduction (which with the other reduction can go to zero) and have full regen as soon as you stop taking damage.

 

I hope the devs fix this ability; cause if I'm willing to risk bleedthrough, I want it to capstone in something at least as good as the other shields.

[tunewalker]

I liked charged plating on my strike, but its third tier abilities suck. The other two options have excellent third tier defensive abilities. This shield needs to be changed.

 

Does anyone use this shield and see a reason to have the third tier abilities (5pts regen to either weapon or engine power per hit). I thought that if I had to, I would choose engine because if you are getting shot you may need the extra engine power to boost. It still sucks compared to quick charge's 60% regen while taking damage and directional shield's 3 sec regen delay reduction (which with the other reduction can go to zero) and have full regen as soon as you stop taking damage.

 

I hope the devs fix this ability; cause if I'm willing to risk bleedthrough, I want it to capstone in something at least as good as the other shields.

 

 

If they were to make it balance I would say give it some kind of Passive hull resistance or Passive hull heal (like 1% of your hull repaired every second after you don't take damage for 10 seconds.

[Luckyluzi]

or 30-50% protection against armor pen^^

[tunewalker]

or 30-50% protection against armor pen^^

 

That would be amazing and go a really long way to solving the shield types problem.

[Luckyluzi]

chargeplating will be great with bomber hull heal support

[Luneward]

or 30-50% protection against armor pen^^

 

Ok, now that would make charged plating actually worth consideration for me. The unavoidable damage is just what makes it a deal killer for me, and this coupled with the damage reduction cooldown would make it very useful.

[Kuciwalker]

Adding "resistance to armor penetration" on top of the already existing armor/penetration mechanic would be kind of nuts. What actually needs reworking is the entire balance of turrets, armor, armor penetration, and evasion. I've been doing some napkin math and it really looks to me like evasion builds are going to be optimal for nearly everyone, with some preferring pure HP boosts and no one ever taking armor.

[Itkovian]

or 30-50% protection against armor pen^^

 

That's a bloody durn good suggestion, and WOULD make charged plating far more useful. Though quite frankly I'd go one step further: I'd make the extra 60% from the cooldown ability immune to armour penetration.

 

As it stands, Charged Plating looks like an awesome ability when properly specced that gives Strike Fighters a truly unique ability, but the overabundance (VERY OVERABUNDANT) of armour penetration makes it utterly useless.

 

A few select weapons with sharp balancing elements I'd accept, like Heavy Lasers, but the fact that Slug Railguns, Concussion Missiles, and Burst Lasers (which all number amongst the most popular weapons for the roles) have full armour penetration makes using Charged Plating suicide.

 

And this is ignoring the fact that Charged Plating ALREADY comes with some massive disadvantages that already makes it very risky to use in the first place. With 100% armour penetration so rampant nobody should ever be using it (the slug railgun alone is enough to make it useless).

 

Thank you.

[Luckyluzi]

no full protection against armorpen would be to much , it would be impossible to kill a pike with the buff up for 19 sec out of 30

 

math: assume a hit for 1000 damage , only 400 pass your shield and only 24 damage reaches your hull with the 94% damage reduction up, add to this the upcoming heal possibilies from bombers and the use of barrel roll everytime your buff runs out

 

the best way to balance this would be to switch all the 100% amorpen upgrades to t4 or t5 so players are forced to choose between armorpen and other good stuff , armorpen is only good against the pike with charged plating atm so not many plilots will choose armorpen over crit or range bonuses (this will change too with the addition of bombers)

Edited December 12, 2013 by Luckyluzi

[Itkovian]

no full protection against armorpen would be to much , it would be impossible to kill a pike with the buff up for 19 sec out of 30

 

math: assume a hit for 1000 damage , only 400 pass your shield and only 24 damage reaches your hull with the 94% damage reduction up, add to this the upcoming heal possibilies from bombers and the use of barrel roll everytime your buff runs out

 

the best way to balance this would be to switch all the 100% amorpen upgrades to t4 or t5 so players are forced to choose between armorpen and other good stuff , armorpen is only good against the pike with charged plating atm so not many plilots will choose armorpen over crit or range bonuses (this will change too with the addition of bombers)

 

I was suggesting full armour pen protection to the bonus 60%, not to the already-existing damage reduction.

 

So if you DO have armour penetration, you will still do 40% damage to hull even with the charged plating ability active. This would be pretty well balanced, IMO.

[Luckyluzi]

hm with this 1000 damage hits would deal 160 damage

a full slug crit would only deal 384 damage and a nonkrit 256, not sure if this to much, a gunship would have no chance to beat you at full hull, the uptime of charge plating is to high for this

Edited December 12, 2013 by Luckyluzi

[Itkovian]

hm with this 1000 damage hits would deal 160 damage

a full slug crit would only deal 384 damage and a nonkrit 256, not sure if this to much, a gunship would have no chance to beat you at full hull, the uptime of charge plating is to high for this

 

I don't see a problem with this, _at all_.

 

This is completely balanced by the fact any attack will go through shields whenever the ability is not active. This is a MASSIVE vulnerability, and HAS to be offset by an equally massive benefit. Without such a massive benefit, it is utterly useless, as is the case right now.

 

Sure, only 40% of damage will go through, but hull damage can only be repaired very slowly, unlike shields which go back up in seconds. Heck, even with the ability active, hull damage is STILL taken. This is not a minor thing that can be ignored. Never mind that the shields can still be stipped (say, by an ion railgun), and suddenly only the 60% protection remains.

 

Furthermore, keep in mind that it's not like Strikes are always using Charged Plating the moment the CD is up. We tend to save it for when we are under attack, meaning that the first shot is a freebie, something gunships are VERY good at.

 

So, yes, having the 60% bonus being impervious to armour penetration would be quite balanced, given the many balancing elements at work.

[tunewalker]

Will say as is I don't think its entirely useless because I know it will be great against the extremely powerful Scout pilots on my server I just have to really be weary of being one shot by GS pilots, but don't scouts have to worry about that a lot as well.

 

 

 

40% of 1760 is 714 meaning 1056 hits the shields of that 30% bleeds through or around 300 damage so you take 1350 to the hull, so you live... unless they use bypass then you take a nice 1700 to the hull, if you maxed out hull health you will still live.... barely, but you lose around 20% damage reduction against other things so its another risk, but again with the ability survival against Blaster overcharge Rapid-fire laser/ Light-laser/ or Quad-laser wielding scouts would go way up. So I think it still has its niche and wont say any one using it shouldn't especially if its working well for them.

[sentawan]

To me, its not a matter of usefulness. Since the shield power is so large, you can use non-shield boosting defense companions and focus on damage reduction and evade, which is a benefit. The first two upgrades are useful, and I found it to be rather tanky in certain situations with a healing copilot. It is the top tier upgrade that is the problem. Something like... another upgrade reducing bleed by 10% or a 10% boost to evade... would make it more useful.