Turbo should always be chosen with directional.

I've done the math in multiple threads. Every ship with a reactor should choose Large Reactor, unless that ship is using Directional Shields in which case it should choose Turbo Reactor.

No doubt that Turbo will give the best regen out of Directional through sporadic damage. But there is no universally better combination.

Going for Large, your shields can go up from 1560 to 1820 (still wondering how ~1800 on a scout can be allowed though), there are obvious situations where it will save your day. Maybe that regenerating twice with Turbo roughly makes up for this difference, but you can't disregard the fact that it may avoid hull damage, which is mostly definitive, and that nothing hinders Directional with Large to resplenish to full... in which case the regeneration advantage of Turbo becomes moot.

If the point is really to quick regen under the 3s cap, you can just take Quick-charge which will be superior.

if (0.6 * t) < (t - 1.2) then 1.2 < (0.4 * t) then 3 < t

Turbo/Directional has the best passive regen only if the time between hits is 3s < t < 8s. Above 8s, Quick-charge alone beat this combination again.

if (0.6*6) + 1.6*(t-6) < (t-1.2) then (3.6 - 1.6*6 + 1.2) < -0.6t then -4.8 < -0.6t then 8 > t

And I did not paired a Reactor to Quick-charge.

The regenerating strength of this combination for Directional, is mostly a niche...

So the real interest of Directional doesn't stand only in its ability to recharge quickly, but also the bulk it gives too.

(It's one of the shield with best passive properties for average uses, as it only gives, but takes nothing)

In the real world the system only works once the missile is IN FLIGHT. That's a very important difference- you'll find that it's exactly what tune suggests, and a big part of why I claim it is more realistic.

False? Real world systems detect radar pings, which you need to use to lock on to the target in the first place.

If my ship is able to "acquire a lock" through some set of detectable emissions, why can't I do that while the missile is reloading? We don't even have that.

No, radar-guided missiles are locked on through active telemetry, not passive telemetry. Additionally, my hypothesis was that the entire guidance package (including initial lock-on) was located on the missile, which makes a decent amount of sense since the missile needs the package anyway to be fire-and-forget.

Everything is using radar then- you don't get a missile tone just because a bandit miles away COULD fire a missile. You get the tone when he does, because it isn't a missile lock until then. Same with heat seeking missiles.

...... it is impossible to detect heat-seeking missile locks (except via actively scanning with your own radar for things that look like missiles flying in your general direction). Passive telemetry is undetectable.

This would be pretty ludicrous- clearly the missile should get the signal from the fighter- but it seems to be the only way to interpret things. Hence my critique.

Have you ever heard of "fire and forget"? Lots of missiles contain internal guidance systems.

In the real world, the infrared signature is more than enough, and rockets would have plenty of this.

In the real world fire-and-forget radar-guided missiles are very much a thing. The actual unrealism is that your ship should be illuminating all of the other ships with radar constantly anyway, diminishing the usefulness of radar warning as a way of detecting missile locks specifically.

This isn't about nerfing railguns, or pods, or whatever- it is more that the lockon information provided by the missile UI is wildly generous compared to any other form of displayed information in this game. The rest of the game is like "you are sort of taking damage from this direction", an amount of damage that can easily exceed 1,000. There's no proximity warning for being within 3000 meters of a scout. I mean, thinking logically, you'd want your ship to warn you if a scout is closing right? That isn't in the game for gameplay reasons. A ton of things that WOULD help you and dramatically change the meta have no UI equivalents at all, and that's fine. It's just strange that:

 

> Guy within optical range at 12km glows like the sun

> Enemy scout, easily detectable by sensors, is closing distance rapidly

 

Have no such UI warnings but:

 

> Enemy strike fighter is thinking about shooting a missile

 

Creates a disturbance in the force detectable at 11km.

Make other ships' engine noises louder. And, honestly, the glowy cloud is pretty good warning too. That alerts not just the target but also everyone within 15-20km.

It's OK that different weapons have different warning profiles.

And, it really does make a certain amount of sense that the enemy ship actively pinging you with radar has a more informative warning than those other things, because those other things basically imply mounting cameras with image recognition all over the ship.

No doubt that Turbo will give the best regen out of Directional through sporadic damage. But there is no universally better combination.

blah blah blah tradeoffs blah blah the fact is that there is a single correct build. It is obviously not dominant in the Nash sense but it is dominant in the "you should not ever bother running other builds" sense. Turbo goes with Directional and comparisons that combine Large and Directional are irrelevant. The entire reason to run Directional Shield is to pair it with Turbo. If you aren't going to run Turbo then you should pick a different shield from the start.

If the point is really to quick regen under the 3s cap, you can just take Quick-charge which will be superior.

if (0.6 * t) < (t - 1.2) then 1.2 < (0.4 * t) then 3 < t

No **** quick-charge is superior, it is in most ways just a straight-up better shield anyway. The tradeoff between quick-charge and directional is the tradeoff between 20% base shield strength and mobility / 1.2s of regen. The mobility alone is almost certainly worth the 20% base shield strength. (I maintain that the active ability of directional is of marginal value, and the delta between it and quick-charge's active isn't worth factoring in.)

No **** quick-charge is superior, it is in most ways just a straight-up better shield anyway. The tradeoff between quick-charge and directional is the tradeoff between 20% base shield strength and mobility / 1.2s of regen. The mobility alone is almost certainly worth the 20% base shield strength. (I maintain that the active ability of directional is of marginal value, and the delta between it and quick-charge's active isn't worth factoring in.)

I disagree, Strike Fighters have very narrow arc for their main source of damage: Heavy Lasers.

What does that mean? It means that 90% of the time you'll be making your kills on someone flying straight forward at you, since most other ships can out maneuver or outrun you.

in these joust scenarios the 40% extra shields (+10% at tier II) does make a difference so does having double shields. 5040 total shields with Directionals, 3600 with Quick Charge.

The active of Directional is invaluable to a Strike, be it in the above scenario of a head-on or when fleeing a scene or after a fight. T2 Scout drops it's target and goes after me and is quickly on my 6 I click Directional once and I now have enough shields to fly back into my squadron for a peel. After a fight I just cycle through directional until I have shields on all sides with F2 on, one of the things I hate with Quick Charge is finding myself with no shields on one side after a skirmish forcing me to find a safe spot and leave the fight.

Finally with Quick Charge you have much harder time with GSs, any amount of damage taken before hand can lead to a one shot and approaching one with inferior shields will be the death of you if he spots you. With Directionals I often kills GS too confident that their Slugs can punch through the double shields.

Back on topic, I believe that the kill time in an arcade space fight game, with no model damage, shields, no friendly fire or collision between ships is pretty much spot on. With T2 Scout killing a bit too quick, but that's about it.

I disagree, Strike Fighters have very narrow arc for their main source of damage: Heavy Lasers.

 

What does that mean? It means that 90% of the time you'll be making your kills on someone flying straight forward at you, since most other ships can out maneuver or outrun you.

 

in these joust scenarios the 40% extra shields (+10% at tier II) does make a difference so does having double shields. 5040 total shields with Directionals, 3600 with Quick Charge.

No. The implications of a long range / high tracking penalty weapon are that it does not want to joust. Jousting means that the enemy is getting closer, which means the enemy's angular velocity is rapidly increasing, which is the worst case for a high tracking penalty weapon. The goal is to engage at range and stay at range to make it easiest to minimize the tracking penalty.

Finally with Quick Charge you have much harder time with GSs, any amount of damage taken before hand can lead to a one shot and approaching one with inferior shields will be the death of you if he spots you. With Directionals I often kills GS too confident that their Slugs can punch through the double shields.

Quick-charge is not that much weaker than directional and the rapid recharge is actually really really good versus railguns. Plus the added mobility makes it much easier to evade the gunships entirely.

 

I've done the math in multiple threads. Every ship with a reactor should choose Large Reactor, unless that ship is using Directional Shields in which case it should choose Turbo Reactor.

No, actually you haven't. You made a strong well backed general case for large reactor. For turbo reactor you conceded that a regen delay of 1.2 seconds might make it worth taking turbo when paired with directional shields. In one thread.

You have covered a wide range of closely related topics in a lot of posts, a handful of which had math which you typically do quite well.

Yeah, I know, using advanced search to check posts is a dirty trick. I'm partly teasing a bit here. I don't expect any regular poster to remember the full content of every post they've ever made. Mostly I was looking through your math to see if there were important points I had forgotten about.

I'm assuming you don't take the 10% regen on directionals because it takes about 24 seconds for it to be as useful as the delay reduction is in 6 seconds.

This is significant, because in any rational build with directional shields the difference in regen delay between the reactors is only 1.8 seconds.

In a perfect situation where you're taking hits exactly every 3 seconds turbo pulls even in about 6 seconds and continues to pull ahead at the rate of about 119 shield value per second.

Reduce the hit interval and turbo's advantage declines linearly to 0 when you reach 1.2 seconds between shots. Increase the interval and it gets more complicated but (356 divided by (time since last hit -3)) extra shield regen per second is a decent approximation if you assume regular hit intervals for simplicity's sake.

All of the above numbers also assume that it's safe to use directional to shuffle the regen around for maximum effect, otherwise cut the value in half. It's also important to note that the more regular the interval at which damage occurs is the better turbo is and the more clustered into discrete widely separated events damage is the worse turbo does.

So in a situation where there's someone you can't shake from your tail, but they have terrible aim, or you have excellent evasion (which is unlikely on a ship with directional shields) then there's a case for turbo reactors. In a furball style dogfight where you don't or can't break away from multiple opponents it also has an advantage. Or even sat humping if you can find a bomber free sat these days.

That advantage depends on those very specific conditions though. Turbo is better in close range dogfights against multiple opponents, where you can't (or choose not to) go defensive for intervals of greater than, well it gets a bit subjective depending on where you draw the line for, "worthwhile," shield regen rate but call it roughly 6-12 seconds at a time. Otherwise even paired with directional shields it's not as good as a large reactor when it comes to practical survivability.

Flying style also plays a big role here. Are you slippery and good at evasive flying? If the answer is yes the value of turbo declines sharply. Are you very aggressive and hate to disengage (or have serious lack of boost problems with your ship build)? If so then turbo may offer significant benefits if you're surviving most encounters with light to moderate damage.

There's not a universal right answer right now though. For me at the moment all of my builds are better off with large reactor because I'm using the heavier medium range weapons and the flying style I'm using to take advantage of them gives me far more regen time than I need. Equipping turbo reactor would be a noticeable downgrade, though certainly not a crippling one. If at some point I switch back to my max turn rate starguard dogfighting build then it'll depend on what I'm doing and who I'm flying against, but there's a good chance that turbo reactor would be favorable more often than not. On a flashfire I'd definitely want turbo if I chose to take directional shields.

Depending on how much burst damage gets nerfed then turbo may pull ahead of large for all or almost all situations when paired with directional shields. The key strength of large reactors is burst resistance. Reduce the danger of burst damage kills and the, "bloody hard to quantify," advantage of burst resistance loses value as well.

No. The implications of a long range / high tracking penalty weapon are that it does not want to joust. Jousting means that the enemy is getting closer, which means the enemy's angular velocity is rapidly increasing, which is the worst case for a high tracking penalty weapon. The goal is to engage at range and stay at range to make it easiest to minimize the tracking penalty.

 

 

 

Quick-charge is not that much weaker than directional and the rapid recharge is actually really really good versus railguns. Plus the added mobility makes it much easier to evade the gunships entirely.

Kuci is very right about everything quoted above *except* angular velocity. The angular velocity in a head on pass is going to be close to zero until you are very close to each other.

The joust or not to joust choice comes down to range difference between the two ships' weapons and time to kill.

If the range difference is great enough that you can kill the opponent before they can close distance and do significant damage to you then jousting is ideal for the long range weapons. If they can close quickly and shred you with their short range weapons then jousting is not a good choice.

Tracking is a non-issue, closure rate, which I think maybe Kuciwalker confused with angular velocity, is a big issue especially for strikes where a target boosting toward them is going to be in the ideal kill zone for 0.8 to1.5 seconds, maybe 3 seconds with retro thrusters use. That's not enough time to kill unless the target is already damaged.

Gunships are a bit better off, but suffer from low dps. With snares applied to the target they can joust quite nicely.

Evasion on the target also mucks up the ability to joust at long ranges.

It winds up being very situational with a steep penalty if you screw it up.

Staying at range is safer and more reliable.

... nerds

I would say, "hear our calculators roar," but I can't find mine at the moment.

No. The implications of a long range / high tracking penalty weapon are that it does not want to joust. Jousting means that the enemy is getting closer, which means the enemy's angular velocity is rapidly increasing, which is the worst case for a high tracking penalty weapon. The goal is to engage at range and stay at range to make it easiest to minimize the tracking penalty.

That may be the implication, but in reality? Head-on and peeling for a team mates are the best occasions for minimizing accuracy penalty. You can keep a bead on an enemy trying to pass you after their "burst" with Retros long enough to make him regret the head-on.

Quick-charge is not that much weaker than directional and the rapid recharge is actually really really good versus railguns. Plus the added mobility makes it much easier to evade the gunships entirely.

It is much weaker then Direction in that scenario, the 40% less capacity and the double forward shields make boosting in a zig zag fairly safe until you get within Heavies range, with Quick Charge it a coin toss. The added mobility I have found is much more of an issue in Dominion matches, in TDM switching between the "Fs" will keep you flying well enough.

I'm not saying Directionals are always superior to Quick Charge, there are 2 schools when it comes to Strikes: build to their strength and palliate their weaknesses.

I much prefer the 1st while you favor the second, saying that Quick Charge is superior is stating an opinion as fact.

You claim the active is of marginal value, I claim that if used right it's a huge asset.

Saying that the active ability of Directional Shield is of marginal value is the most blatantly incorrect thing I've ever heard you say, Kuci. And that's unusual for you.

How often do you actually take significant damage to both arcs at the same time? I'd say almost never. The ability to distribute damage done to one arc across both arcs (by readjusting energy) is far more useful than Quick-Charge's active. It effectively doubles your effective shield-based hit points. Let's say you hit my 2160 aft shields with an Ion Railgun blast of 1850, leaving me with 310 shields on my butt. You start charging up your slug to finish me off (or at least cripple my hull).

I press "2". Now my aft shields are 2470. Is my front naked? Who cares. I'm not being attacked from there.

And as for Large Reactor on Directional Shields, there is indeed a synergy there, since Directional's active can transfer the whole capacity of an arc from one side to the other (not just the base). So the bigger your shield capacity per arc, the bigger the swing caused by Directional's active ability. In the above example, instead of suddenly "recharging" 2160 shields (if I took a Turbo Reactor), I could recharge an arc by 2520 with the touch of a button.

Quick-Charge's active, regardless of Reactor choice, can only ever help me recover 648 shield to an arc. 648 vs. 2160 or 2520.

And that's to say nothing of the many and frequent tactical situations where you know it is safe to stack shields on one side in order to win a joust or linger on a target long enough to get the killing blow, even while under fire. And in some of those situations, higher capacity is indeed more valuable than 2.6 second earlier regen. As Ramalina said, it depends heavily on fighting style, environment, and the types of enemies you face.

When I'm holding a satellite in my Rycer against half a team of enemies, I'll choose Directional/Turbo, because I can't reliably get 3 seconds of safety. I keep my shields balanced, changing angling as required to bolster a weak arc that suffers damage.

When I'm skirting the edge of a TDM furball in my Decimus, lobbing in HLC shots and Concussion Missiles, I want to make sure I can joust safely with any Strikes, Scouts or other Bombers who peel and attempt to close on me. For this purpose, Directional + Large, angled forward, serves me better.

I'm honestly shocked that you get so focused on the various regen curves that you neglect to consider varying tactical situations, and how those situations favor one shield/reactor combo over another.

I would expect someone who frequently flies a Gunship, especially, to value the ability of focusing shields to front or aft. In a Gunship duel, having a full arc of shields on your backside does nothing for you. But if you're able to switch that entire arc to your front in order to absorb an extra slug, then I'd think that's pretty useful. Or how about when you get flanked and need to run? Isn't it nice to have double-shields on your backside then, to buy your allies more time to come to your aid?

Though I suspect you've never even considered any of that due to the "mandatory" choice of Distortion Field on T1 and T3 Gunships.

I remain bemused about how many people think Directionals are "too hard" or that S2E is weak. Do they offer base Evasion and an extra missile break? No. But they are still hugely powerful when used correctly. And honestly missiles just aren't that big a deal. Especially on ships with Power Dive, I find I rarely ever find myself wanting a second break.

I remain bemused about how many people think Directionals are "too hard" or that S2E is weak.

Come on, who did not have at least once a "Directional silly death" ?

You know, like the one where you're attacking a Gunship, try to put shields fore, but the Gunship released the shot while you they were aft for a reason... BOOM, one-shot.

There are people whose those death happen more than others, and often due to the player's error. Hence, the "hard to use" comments.

Come on, who did not have at least once a "Directional silly death" ?

 

You know, like the one where you're attacking a Gunship, try to put shields fore, but the Gunship released the shot while you they were aft for a reason... BOOM, one-shot.

 

There are people whose those death happen more than others, and often due to the player's error. Hence, the "hard to use" comments.

Oh I certainly have them on occasion, though not nearly as often as I am saved by suddenly having full shields on the arc which is being attacked.

And saying that Directionals are "harder" is different from saying they're "too hard". Though there are some people around here (just two, actually) who deal only in absolutes. Components are either objectively judged as "optimal" in a mathematical vacuum, or else they are declared as not even warranting consideration or discourse.

And saying that Directionals are "harder" is different from saying they're "too hard". Though there are some people around here (just two, actually) who deal only in absolutes. Components are either objectively judged as "optimal" in a mathematical vacuum, or else they are declared as not even warranting consideration or discourse.

Ah, yeah sure. "Harder" doesn't mean "too hard", but I'm sure there are some people who tried, failed to the higher difficulty (the silly deaths), and concluded "too hard" without trying harder. That's what I failed to imply.

Personally, I'll admit Directional aren't my favorites. Quick-charge are, and I'm using a very atypical Reactor with them on my Starguard.

False? Real world systems detect radar pings, which you need to use to lock on to the target in the first place.

That's not at all how it works. The missile is detected. I had more typed up, but it's not really suitable for here.

I was able to find this for you:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_Approach_Warning

In general, the missile is detected via one or more methods. You can't rely on radar because many missiles don't use it, and it would be trivial to fake or mask.

No **** quick-charge is superior, it is in most ways just a straight-up better shield anyway.

I don't really believe this. I do like quick charge, but I really feel a lot stronger with directional. The engine trick is the big argument IMO, and it is a good one. The ability to double arc is super amazing, and that's on top of the natively stronger shields.

No, actually you haven't. You made a strong well backed general case for large reactor. For turbo reactor you conceded that a regen delay of 1.2 seconds might make it worth taking turbo when paired with directional shields. In one thread.

It takes a LOT for it to be better. I've done the math several times too. You have to take damage, then stop taking damage, then take more damage before the three second window is up. And this has to happen a few times. And if you go awhile without taking damage, or too little without taking damage, or the damage you take is too much, then large wins anyway. Most of the math I've seen compares waiting six seconds with directional (large) versus waiting 1.2 seconds with directional (turbo). But why did the first guy not wait three? He should have that talent too, not have an unmastered shield component or whatever.

Quite honestly, it's not good to advise anyone to ever use anything but large. A pilot will need to be very experienced to realize that they are in the very niche situation that the others can offer anything of value. It is better in almost every situation.

Why don't you do the math here, if you dispute it?