Ask me anything / Training

[Greezt]

How does damage spread exactly? I mean, if I had 100 shields left and was hit by HLC at max range, would the rest of the shot damage go to waste, or would it transfer to the hull? And if it does, is it "DPS vs. hull" damage, or "DPS vs. shields" damage?

[Drakkolich]

How does damage spread exactly? I mean, if I had 100 shields left and was hit by HLC at max range, would the rest of the shot damage go to waste, or would it transfer to the hull? And if it does, is it "DPS vs. hull" damage, or "DPS vs. shields" damage?

 

We know the damage definitely doesn't go to waste if your doing 400 damage and they have 100 shields left you do 100 to shields and 300 to hull.

 

However with the upgrades on blasters that add damage to either shield damage or hull damage we aren't sure how that translates on shots that start as shield damage but end as hull damage. It would take an enormous amount of effort to test it so we haven't tried. It's just one of those things I'd love for the developers to comment on.

[Bolo_Yeung]

Hmm... just get someone cooperating (standing still) with known shield/hull values, drop his shield, wait until it regenerates to 10%, shoot once again, watch amount of damage and his shield/hull drop... that should do the trick.

[tunewalker]

Hmm... just get someone cooperating (standing still) with known shield/hull values, drop his shield, wait until it regenerates to 10%, shoot once again, watch amount of damage and his shield/hull drop... that should do the trick.

 

It doesnt, you have to take into account range as damage is different at different ranges... down to the 10th meter, 10% shields is an estimate not an exact value of shields, so you would have to have a stop watch for the exact amount of shields regened. And then from their of course you would then have to do a bunch of math to figure out what the expected damage is with out bonuses and then see the number that you actually got then figure out which portion of which bonuses was used on what damage. All while the rest of your team and the enemy team who is not in on this cooperation may just shoot you any way.

 

There usually is not enough of a controlled enviroment to figure this out.

[Greezt]

Hmm... just get someone cooperating (standing still) with known shield/hull values, drop his shield, wait until it regenerates to 10%, shoot once again, watch amount of damage and his shield/hull drop... that should do the trick.

 

I assume you're joking, but don't forget to position yourself at min range, to counter all evasion and accuracy and get a known damage per shot... Also, no armor/shield pen lasers.

 

Edit: armor pen wouldn't matter, I guess...

Edited October 27, 2015 by Greezt

[Ryuku-sama]

I assume you're joking, but don't forget to position yourself at min range, to counter all evasion and accuracy and get a known damage per shot... Also, no armor/shield pen lasers.

 

Edit: armor pen wouldn't matter, I guess...

 

In fact armor pen would be better... The best would be bomber for sheer hull strength to repeat the test and no evasion to make you miss with a BLC without the crit option and the shield pen option. Do this at 500m and you should have reliable data. Do it once with Shield damage increase and onc ewith hull damage increase. Then try it with HLC in the same condition to test with both shield and hull damage increase.

[Drakkolich]

Guys I never said I didn't know how to test it, I just said it would take an enormous amount of effort.

 

Have you guys ever tried to test stuff by putting two people on opposing factions before? It's very very difficult, no one gives you very long to do anything because they just come over and interrupt you. When I made the video for testing Ion Railgun's slow effect, it took us almost an hour just to setup the game. Once we were in the game all we had to do was get one person to shoot me with an Ion Railgun while I was under the effect of Interdiction drone and even with just that we struggled to make it happen.

 

I wanted to test what happened when you place a Dot on someone and then die but we couldn't even manage that in the same game as the Ion slow test because there was too much disruption.

 

 

Testing the shield thing by sitting there for that long to setup ranges and get the perfect setup would be very very difficult. You would almost just need to setup an 8v8 premade just to test stuff like that.

 

There is all sorts of stuff I'd love to test and get answers for you guys but I also don't want to spend an entire day just doing that. A custom lobby would fix this entirely, we could just test whatever we wanted.

 

 

If anyone does decide to test this and records it please come post it here for us though.

[Greezt]

Aww, I was just figuring out how many shots it would take to kill a bomber in one case vs. the other case

 

A total waste of my time, it seems no matter which component I choose it takes the same amount of shots to kill a bomber no matter how the borderline shot's damage divides... which means it doesn't really matter anyway.

[Greezt]

Why is improved healing better than 10% shield on clarion repair probes?

[Drakkolich]

Why is improved healing better than 10% shield on clarion repair probes?

 

Because the healing is permanent while the 10% shields aren't. The Clarion/Imperium is already really tanky you shouldn't need another counter to burst damage.

 

Also for healing teammates, healing their hull is much more important then giving them preemptive extra shields. It's already hard enough to figure out who needs healing, trying to figure out who needs extra shields would be even harder.

 

 

In the end it's just that healing hull is so much more important then shields because of all the shield penetration in the game.

[Greezt]

Thanks. What are your thoughts on an EMP/sabotage probe novadive? is it possible to kill bombers with it?

 

I notice I'm going through subjects here, but I wanna try all those things out.

[Ryuku-sama]

Thanks. What are your thoughts on an EMP/sabotage probe novadive? is it possible to kill bombers with it?

 

I notice I'm going through subjects here, but I wanna try all those things out.

 

It,s a nice troll build. But no. You lose too much with both Sabo and EMP.

 

There are four kind of builds for a Novadive.

• Max burst (Pods + TT)
  
• Medium burst with Pods (allow you to use EMP or Booster)
  
• Medium burst with TT (allow you to use Sabo)
  
• Min burst
  

 

I don't advise anyone to run a min burst build. They lack the burst to kill anything quickly enough to compensate your squishiness. Running a medium burst build is doable tho.

I don't advise running EMP Field due to the bugged radius. And anyway the best use for EMP isn't the first thing you'd think. Neutering a system isn't the strongest EMP's ability. No. It's the accuracy debuff. Between, Disto, EMP and Suppression, you can make sure nothing will it you.. Even Wingman will only grant 40% chance to hit. So you could use EMP to joust scouts and gunships. Not to win versus bombers.

Running Sabo and TT on the other hand is supreme against non-CP bombers... CP bombers won't care tho cause they can actually ram themselves into something to turn. But Sabo gives you a good way to piss people off.

But for all holy and unholy things.. Don't double up.. or you will end up with LC as your only burst.. And it's not burst.

[Greezt]

I don't advise running EMP Field due to the bugged radius.

 

What's the radius bug?

 

Neutering a system isn't the strongest EMP's ability. No. It's the accuracy debuff. Between, Disto, EMP and Suppression, you can make sure nothing will it you..

 

I was thinking of disabling shield abilities with the EMP and then engine abilities with the probe. That would work even against CP bombers (in theory, admittedly...). Finish off with LLC. Not much burst, but you get quite a while to shoot at the bomber (again, theory only). Maybe that would be usable in domination matches?

 

So you could use EMP to joust scouts and gunships. Not to win versus bombers.

 

I never actually thought of that... can't work with probes, I guess, but I might try that with rocket pods.

 

Why wouldn't probes + EMP work against gunships or scouts (actually, anything but a head on dogfight)? With disabled engine and shield abilities, of course.

[Danalon]

EMP's radius is smaller than mentioned in the description. (edited)

 

If you want to disable shield abilities with EMP, you'll have a hard time, because EMP doesn't remove the shield buff when it's up it just disables the ability to use the shield component.

 

From my experience the sabotage probe has the same problem as almost all utility lock-on weapons. By the time it's locked, the fight usually is over or my target would be dead if I had used another weapon.

 

 

EMP+probe against CP bombers doesn't work well because there's a good chance you can't do damage to the bomber when he manages to pop CP before you use EMP and it's very likely you won't hit him with the probe because of the long lock-on time. I'm assuming a bomber defending a satellite in this scenario.

 

EMP+probe against Scouts doesn't work most of the time because a good scout pilot will use his CDs before the pulse hit him and again, the probe needs too long to lock. Also you can't disable both - shields and engines - so the other Scout can always interrupt your lock and run away.

 

Against Gunships it's pretty much the same. You lack burst and can't disable all of the Gunships defensive mechanisms fast enough.

Edited October 30, 2015 by Danalon

[Drakkolich]

Lots of really good answers already on EMP + Sabotage probe but I'll just add a few things.

 

Right from the beginning using both abilities just sacrifices too much of your offensive potential. The only possible time I could see a use for this build is your team has a bunch of decent pilots and you are fighting one Super Amazing player that has a bunch of new pilots on his team. You could then dedicate yourself to just following the really good pilot around and making his life a nightmare so the rest of your team could win the game for you.

 

We've tested this a few times vs really high priority targets when we had numbers advantage and it actually works pretty well. You will however probably incur the wrath of one really pissed off Super Amazing player in the future, so you know that might be fun.

 

 

Now that is one really gimmicky strategy and that's exactly what this build is, it's super gimmicky. (AND OH SO FUN) If you're looking for something fun I suggest you build one and mess around with it because I've had some good times playing it.

 

My alltime favorite "for fun" build is a Rapid fire lasers, Sabotage Probe, Blasters Overcharge, Frequency capacitor Sting/Flashfire. That ship is just so much fun, you make your enemies sit there while you fire a gatling gun of laser shots at them. (The sound Rapids make with Blaster Overcharge active and frequency capacitor is amazing)

 

 

As for EMP's radius the tooltip advertises it is 4500 it is however only 3000. When the EMP component first came out it was 3000 radius and we complained it was too small and later on they buffed EMP to 4500. However at one point in a later patch some components were reverted back to before they were changed but the tooltips stayed the same. Ion Railgun also had this happen to it, the tooltips on it's Tier 5 upgrades are incorrect.

 

 

I don't mind that your questions are all over the place Greezt, it gives me questions to answer.

[Donlan_Yllvei]

It's already hard enough to figure out who needs healing, trying to figure out who needs extra shields would be even harder.

 

 

How exactly is this done? My main toon has a clarion close to mastery just from accumulated req grants, but I've seldom flown her. The few times I have, I've found myself asking - how the hell do I know when to use my healing ability? I find the idea of a GSF healer ship pretty fascinating, and would like to try it. But since you can't see allies' health bars, what do you do? Just wait until you see an ally get missile'd and go pop a heal on em? Look for smoke trails maybe?

Edited October 30, 2015 by Donlan_Yllvei

[Drakkolich]

How exactly is this done? My main toon has a clarion close to mastery just from accumulated req grants, but I've seldom flown her. The few times I have, I've found myself asking - how the hell do I know when to use my healing ability? I find the idea of a GSF healer ship pretty fascinating, and would like to try it. But since you can't see allies' health bars, what do you do? Just wait until you see an ally get missile'd and go pop a heal on em? Look for smoke trails maybe?

 

So there's a few things you can do too help yourself out.

 

The easiest is ofcourse to get on voice with whoever you might be playing with and just have them ask for heals, this is how my team does it most of time.

 

At the start of a match I'll put "Let me know if you need heals or ammo" in Ops chat. I actually get a surprising amount of people actually asking after I post that. (You just have to keep an eye on Ops chat all game)

 

During the match whenever you need to heal yourself try to hold off for a few seconds (If you can) and position yourself to hit as many players as possible, this improves your chances of hitting someone else that might also need heals.

 

 

The rest is really just intuitive play, if you see a Gunship targeting someone it's a good bet they ate atleast one Slug railgun which has shield penetration and could use the healing. Just blasting your heal on a Satellite is generally a good way to hit many friendlies aswell.

 

 

Without ally health bars it's really just up to your team to communicate they need healing to you or for you to tag as many players as possible during the match to maximize it's effect.

[Ryuku-sama]

Just to answer at what hasn't been.

 

I was thinking of disabling shield abilities with the EMP and then engine abilities with the probe. That would work even against CP bombers (in theory, admittedly...). Finish off with LLC. Not much burst, but you get quite a while to shoot at the bomber (again, theory only). Maybe that would be usable in domination matches?

 

Admitting you can actually neuter CP with EMP which is more luck then anything, you have to stay under 2000m of a bomber for 5 to 10 secs depending of EtS. If you haven't gotten every mines, you're toast. And even with that, if someone else than the bomber is around, you're dead and/or the bomber is still living and mining stuff. And that's assuming you peg him with a Sabo too. You lack every single bit of offensive power you could have with something else.

 

Why wouldn't probes + EMP work against gunships or scouts (actually, anything but a head on dogfight)? With disabled engine and shield abilities, of course.

 

Because you don't have the mobility to set up on a scout. Less or equal speed and boost endurance while you need to stay in range, keep the target in your arc and then peg it with both your EMP and Sabo. To kill a scout you can do two things : outlast it and win through attrition or kill it faster than it can kill you. Nova is the ship with the lowest defenses. It does get the highest mobility if built for it tho. So you gonna have as much or more burst to be viable against scouts.. And gunships are even harder to kill without burst.

[Greezt]

Well, I tried out the EMP/probes novadive, without maxed emp (or probes)... And it was really fun! with supression, there's not a single enemy that wants to take you head on.

 

That being said, I can see why it would be too weak... A TT/pods novadive beats it for the kills any time. I still think that it has its use in a coordinated team. I played with a tensor spearpoint, and I could reach the sats fast enough to destroy bombers and scouts before they arrived. Probably not worth it, but it sure is much more fun hitting a scout with EMP, suppression and sabotage... makes the game much more exciting. It works even against better pilots than me...

[Greezt]

Ok, another question: does remote slicing have a range?

[Ryuku-sama]

Ok, another question: does remote slicing have a range?

 

4000m if I remember correctly.

[Drakkolich]

Ok, another question: does remote slicing have a range?

 

Yep it's about 4000-5000m. I haven't really taken the time to narrow it down perfectly.

[Greezt]

Seems hardly worth the trouble...

[DakhathKilrathi]

Seems hardly worth the trouble...

 

That's because it isn't. The only option worth taking in that slot is Repair Probes. Neither of the others are particularly useful.

Edited November 1, 2015 by DakhathKilrathi

[Greezt]

That's because it isn't. The only option worth taking in that slot is Repair Probes. Neither of the others are particularly useful.

 

I guess this is the wrong place to say this, but shouldn't utility components give you an incentive to choose them? Seems like tensor and repair probes are the only useable ones.