If you find a planet with really nice potential that somehow doesn't have any passive cloak on it, you can fit 8 +800s and a 25% meta-tuned jammer...and if you're in a legion with 60 active members, you'll get 17,600 cloak... that's still not quite invisible, is it?

DO people really do this? You didn't really answer the question. 1600 levels in one of the high level legions, I've NEVER heard anyone talk about doing this.

I think the way it is now is fine, SSBs have their draw backs, one of them being having to rearrange their ship for every task, having low cloak and scan, meaning they can be hacked very easily. There are other drawbacks as well like the time to get into a position where a ssb is strong enough to do other things apart from being strong defensively. Taking out the benefit of ssbs or whatever will just mean everyone will end up being the same ie LSBs with carbon copy ships and whoever has the most ap wins.

Oh yeah, sorry...

Yes, they do. I learned it from a legionmate, and have done it myself on top-tier project planets until passive cloak is up to ~2.5k or so. Maybe cloak is so broke it doesn't make any difference, but whatever -- it helps me sleep at night!

Does anyone have a proposed solution to this? Unless there's a complete reworking of the damage system, you need a damage cap. How else, then, could this be determined? And how could that be done such that people wouldn't find a problem with taking advantage of that, as well?

It's not a problem, it's a strategy - My thoughts on this.

+1

The only thing I would change in regards to damage cap is not how damage cap itself works, but how many times debuffing artis stack, since a rank 90 capping a rank 900 with 4500 decks produces just kinda... ridiculous results. But even then, it's more a matter of personal taste -- it's not like seeing somebody do that breaks the gameor anything.

Not sure if this idea is even possible, but I'm applying my knowledge of sport fighting (boxing, MMA, etc.) to ships so bear with me. It would require a total overhaul of the damage system which is probably more intensive than what Dan is willing to do.

Ali was a heavyweight fighter, but he was far from being a "heavyweight" His skill was being quicker on his feet than his opponents who often times were much bigger than him. Likewise, back in the UFC's beginning Royce Gracie was fighting guys twice his bodyweight and winning because he knew tactics and defenses that none of the other fighters at that time knew. That being said, they weren't invincible, and the lucky ones that were able to land a blow caused some major damage. What if the same concept applied to ships?

Small ships would be difficult to hit because of their ability to maneuver around the galaxy but most likely wouldn't cause a large amount of damage (hitting damage caps) of the large ships. Large ships would be easily hit but would also pack a heafty punch when they did connect with their own attack. Therefore instead of a guaranteed hit of their damage cap, both ships have a % chance of hitting. Not exactly sure what % would be appropriate, but obviously, the bigger your ship is the higher the % of the attack landing. The damage cap could still exist, but make it no more than 5% of your total health possible (i.e ship with 6k hull and 2k shield = 8k no matter what their actual hull and shield are). Yes with that setup theoretically every ship would be able to be disabled in 20 hits, but that's if you are able to hit them and hit their damage cap EVERY time. With the % chance that is not likely. Just some thoughts I'm tossing out there.

I keep picturing the Star Wars scene where Luke and the other pilots are fighting the DeathStar. The DeathStar fires its lasers but misses a good bit of time. When it does hit a ship though....bye bye ship. On the flip side, the ships are pretty much hitting the DeathStar at will but not doing much in terms of knocking it out of the sky, that is of course until Luke does the crit-hit and blows the reactor.

The easiest solution i have came up with for the ssb "problem" is simply fixing the critical hit system.

If crits hits ignore damage cap, then suddenly the ssb with no scanners and cloak modules takes massive damage with significant more regularity.

Basically, as stated, most of the time the small ship is too hard to hit, and thus takes reduced damage. However, when the big ship with the superior scanners manages to lock on, dodging simply doesn't help.

But again, I do not feel the problem is so much with small ships, but ships with 100k+ hull in general. SSB's simply become impossible to kill online earlier... LSB's do the exact same thing once they have enough hull.

There have been a myriad of threads with a million different ways to try to fix this. Your mileage may very on each idea of course.

I apologize that i was so abrupt on my previous post. Its just that this comes up so so often...

what if you do attack minus defense. you would probably have high attack and they would have low defense. the cap would be 10 times their level.

If auto-rankers are allowed to keep their benefit, why should SSBs not be allowed to??

A.R's always say it is a tough slog to get their, they face difficulties etc... SSBs can say all the exact same things.

Leave it as it is Dan.

If crew added to damage cap at all it should only count Tactical Officers and Helmsmen. Even if the "entire" crew is involved in raids, only T.O.s and Helmsmen would effect ship to ship combat. I'm not good at programing so I'll leave it to someone more qualified to come up with a formula that work make sense. It would be easier to cap the amount of crew per deck, 10 T.O.s, 10 helmsmen, 15 Engineers and 15 scientists per deck. Once the max is reached you have to add more decks or add a different type of crew. It's an unpopular idea but there's very few ways to "fix" the SSB "problem". I don't think anything will really ever be done, since the problem fixes itself when people are forced to add decks around 300+ to keep up with the rest of us whom never went SSB. Very few people would ever hit the cap.

I also think that raids should be changed slightly. Currently we raid Mineral Units or Artifact Points and critical raids just steal more of the same. What if regular raids stole mineral units or artifacts points and Critical Raids stole "fuel". It would be cool to steal between 20 to 120 energy (whatever the enemy ships recharge rate was) if you we're lucky enough to get a critical raid.

Removing damage caps altogether would be my preference. They don't make a bit of sense. If you shoot a toy hot wheels car with a rocket launcher it will not survive due to its small size.
A scaled defense % boost based upon the difference in size class would be more realistic. It would make small ships more defensible without crippling the damage of big ships.

I like how ppl review SSB as a problem and I tried to find if some one actually called it a glitch but imo this is silly. Most of the comments on this are basically moanin for having a hard time killing a SSB ship so following that logic we should get rid of planetary defense and whilst we are at it cloak as well it will make the game soooo much easier So is it easy to build? does it have only perks? also there ware a lot of comments implaying that SSB users should drop that strategy because is not beneficial. Really ? Many ppl complaining here there for it is beneficial by not being beneficial to the ppl who are not using a SSB. Yes the SSBs are a bit lower than other ship on firepower, true but that doesnt mean it = to 0. And when I say this fact that I as a SSB allways locked correctly and not only on the squishy Reynards or Vortul but on hypergrids and DCMs when I was only rank ~300 and the occasions that I have been allowed soft locks, npc taps etc. is before a rank when I need a few hundred xp. What about the PVP part ? Oh well SSB is even easier for PVP-ing than NPC-ing or al of you maybe forget or dont know that a SSB user spend all his rank points 60/40 TacOfficers/Engineers where the Big ships that are only rank 150 and have 1200 decks with tons of useless modules spend all their points on ?DECKS? well excuse me for using all my rank points on tacs and engi but it seems only logical, If I can get Ship-bots/Scientiest/Helmsman/MSP than I will use the rank pnts(and prisoners) for the only 2 things that I cant get from APH which will eventually increase as well as my decks they will increase also and NO SSB doesnt become weaker as it ranks it just steady increases its decks just like the slow rank tactic should that be banned as well? It is verry hard for me to kill a ship that has been playing for 2 years and it has been staying a rank 480 I do 5 ranks a day what chance do I have? So basically jsut this whole discusion NEEDS to go.

I am sorry I dont need to offend anyone but I just think it is very selfish to DEMAND a certain MAJOR aspect of the game to be removed just because some not so well build ships have tough time with ppl who construct their strategy wisely.
A good analogy to that is removing the Knight figure from the chess at all just because some ppl got check mate by Knights

How is it "strategy" to manipulate a flaw in the game mechanics? That is glitching in every other game I play. Why should someone with 7k attack be limited to 100 damage against someone with only 1k defense? The same thing the other way around, why is a ship with 1k attack doing 300+ damage to me when i have 7k defense? I think damage caps should be based on how your ship is set up, not how someone else's ship is set up. Honestly why should I pay the upkeep on massive cannons if they make direct hits on a frigate and can't scratch the paint?

I don't have a hard time killing ssb, I will actually take time out of my day to see that they get disabled and raided and removed from my bt. I just believe a change should be made to reflect ship size being a factor in combat, and by that I mean 7k attack should destroy 1k defense every single time.

Dont attack ships with a small ship size then, there you solved!

I haven't read through this thread so it might have been already suggested but how about crits scaling to total hp, say 5%? That wouldn't affect low rank SSBs that much and would help address the ever-increasing damage required with static cap issue. Of course, the current crit rate would need to be adjusted...

I think that solution would be to up damage cap by reworking it's formula.
Right now it is deck size divided by 2 and new formula could be deck size+number of TO divided by 2. It would raise damage cap on all ship but would have more effect on SSB while not completely destroying such ship build.

How's about we just leave it as it is (totally fine) and let this thread die.

There is nothing wrong with damage caps and SSBs. We don't have it all sunshine and roses, there are a lot of drawbacks to it

I also find it highly hypocritical that a number of people speaking out against SSBs will be those who have greatly defended autoranking in the past. If you say goodbye to SSB then it is only right for autoranking to go out of the window.

A smaller ship will be faster, more maneuverable and also there's less of a target to hit. Imagine shooting 100 bullets at a barn door all at the same time. Not difficult? You would probably hit every single shot. Now imagine trying to shoot a tin can with 100 bullets at the same time. It's not exactly an easy shot for all 100. You might hit a dozen; even two dozen. But all 100? They can't even fit.