While idea of having a rare block which perfoms better than normal ones has potential, currently it’s just a game breaking block which has 10x the survivability of the second best block. It makes fights too long and tedious to be enjoable.
Very true. Just making unnecessary problems and unbalances. Why make another block? i don’t know. Theres plenty to choose from already…
While i love the carbon blocks, I have to admit they do need some tweaking. The idea is like carbon fiber. Strong and light material but does not replace our other alloys. Currently they are pretty much rendering steel blocks useless. The checkerboard design, although very rough to build, works well on a CV with xeno but not for an SV with hardened steel. I don’t feel the blocks should be switch back to their original “plastic” design but should be tweaked with the combat/hardened steel blocks. I do however think that there should be an inexpensive “plastic type” blocked for building non-combat ships like CSW hoppers. I would love to have a very light block that has EVERY available texture (standard, xeno, & container ext.) Ships to show off that bling 
Previously, during construction, it was possible to find use way for all blocks. Plastic is lightweight and immune to splash damage, combat steel is strong and heavy, xeno blocks - strong, relatively light, and you need to work hard to get enough of them.
Now there are no options - only carbon blocks.
5 Likes
Agreeed. I used plastic way before to make HVs and SVs more maneuverable. This block allowed to make much more appealing ship shapes without wasting resources.
3 Likes
I was missing since 2/3 seasons. In the meanwhile a lot of stuff has changed for pvp on hws.
Armored cockpits, Shields, carbon blocks, number of weapons and how weapons shoots.
The fights now are 10X slower and ships takes a lot of time before taking critical damage. I think that before fights were fun because ships were literally destroyed in 5/10 minutes fights.
How to improve it? Increase shield hp a bit more (keep recharging rate like now) but once shield is depleted the ship should take serious damage. Should be literally butter. I see all the test that are done to see the damage that a ship takes worth zero since in a fight with 2 experienced pilots is really hard to hit the same point twice (or just hit something also without lag with a moving target). The tests that are made to adjust weapon damage takes in consideration a static target that never happens in a real combat situation.
5 Likes
That’s how it happens with Hardened Seel, ships made out of it can be killed pretty fast. Shield HP is fine as it is, in my opinion. In previous season they had much better resistances, and when shield went down, people just hop in atmosphere and wait for recharge. It wasn’t too fun. It still happens, but not so often. Even though fights need to be faster, I think main ship’s hp should be from blocks, not the shield. Shields behave the same for every ship of one type, but overall builds have drastically different survivability. It motivates people to improve their designs. What’s the point of building ships made of thousands blocks, when 1 block defines most of your ship’s survivability?
1 Like
A quick update regarding CV fights.
CV situation seems to be even worse, since pretty much all of the damage in CV fights is dealt by splash damage. Ships lose their guns, they warp out. Or stay and tank shots for hours. The only way to die in CV pvp now is to get a disconnect. The first picture is carbon ship of my teammate tanking shots from 3 CVs for half an hour. The second picture is combat steel ship tanking 1-2 CVs for the same amount of time (~10 000 blocks lost)
1 Like
It does not end there with carbon either. Xeno steel on CV is also proving problematic.
Yeah man its sad. Rexx did good with reducing combat steal cv blocks from 2000 to 1000. But the problem is that then he added another problem; the carbon blocks. No need to make problems by adding another unnecessary block. If Rexx played pvp i think he would understand that much more.
2 Likes
With as long as battles take now I really have no ambition to build or even spawn in an old class 5 bp, its more a battle of numbers and stamina at this point. If carbon blocks can’t be damaged as easily then these fights will last hours depending on the number of players on each side. Might as well revert to ALL PvP areas to class 1 restrictions.
Here are some videos that prove the point that shields and carbon blocks should be removed from pvp. A ships shield in pvp are the layers upon layers of blocks protecting it. Shields are made strictly for pve. Pve ships have exposed cockpits which tells you right there in no uncertain terms that shields are made for pve only. Pvp cockpits are covered by layers upon layers of strong blocks and these are their shields!
On my checkered knight hv i was tanking like 5 plus enemies without shields. This tank was made with combat steal hv blocks not hv carbons and still weren’t able to kill me and i was pretty decently mobile too. My movement made it hard for them to hit me too. 
Also, i would have lasted much longer in that fight if i had my auto-reposition key set working which i hadn’t, and got alot of my few hovers that i had on shoot off. So thats why i had to pull back.Anyways, that checkered knight has been updated with more hover and its less likely it will flip as much anymore. https://youtu.be/YsEhx5q37CY
Also, heres another one with plain hv combat steal blocks, and lasted a long time and with no shields against like 6 enemies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8motUSQIhdY
Also, here is another video from about a day ago this season of a hv with plain combat steal for hv’s tanking like 7 plus enemies. I’m not sure if this was a carbon hv though. But anyways, thats further proof that we already have decent blocks to last a long time in pvp without an overpowered block like carbon and then plus shields.
i don’t think shields should be removed but definitely tweaked. sv micro fighter battles are still pretty brutal. especially 1v1. perhaps have pvp zones slowly drain shields if possible. call it a radiation nebula if u will. carbon blocks are definitely OP currently. all in all i do like shields and carbon blocks but they really need work to make fighting against another player more tolerable.
I have no expertise on the PVP advantages of the blocks beyond their HP and weight but:
- As a new player I wasted diamonds from the first day because my builds do actually use carbon substrate blocks for decoration, contra to the belief I have seen on HWS. Indeed many workshop ships do this. The special nature of Carbon on HWS is not apparent and actually quite difficult to find information on. It also means that new players will find it strange when they build ships. My current CV for example has incredibly tough decoration (carbon) and weak actual armour (combat steel). Not the end of the world, but it seems most people in this thread are HWS veterans from established alliances who may not realise how weird these things are when you first start.
- Carbon blocks are easy to get. It also means that you don’t really need to worry about thrust for SVs as the best block is so light i.e. it makes designing a ship very straightforward. Ideally, when thruster damage is implemented there will be important trade-offs to be made between armouring and thruster placement, but I suspect this will not really be an issue on HWS for SVs as the best armour also weighs a fraction of what SVs on other servers would be built of so you only need a fraction of the thrust.
- Xeno steel is massively underpowered in the original game as it is difficult to get, but of little actual value. I can easily have a 30K Sathium ship within 24 hours, but a Xeno one would be much harder to get the resources for. On HWS it is still the hardest block to get, but is actually worthwhile-fine work on the Xeno blocks IMO in comparison to the carbon ones… I hope Xeno is at least better than carbon for CVs atm.
3 Likes
Fion you may want to read the EWS, Xeno and Carbon don’t compete so much as fill different roles.
A new meta started so I’m looking forward to your feedback soon.
Thanks so far for your valuable insights!
carbon blocks are better now and while raising the cv steel hp is good, i think they went a little too high. haven’t rebuilt my ships yet but i think this may be an issue. also on shields, i love how they drop faster with manual fire as opposed to turrets. i do feel the volume is a bit ridiculous though. not sure if it can be differentiated from the rest but can we try 2-5k max? would make it more like a fuel tank with refills.
already conducted testing steel is fine
all blocks are even, with xeno being strongest but rarest, carbon being lightest but weakest (within 15% of combat steel) and combat steel being heavy but inbetween.
1 Like
Not sure about balanced,
IF carbon was just a normal block you could make without a 200 000 credit extra reagent per 500, then yes, all things would be balanced, as it stands to build a typical class 1 SV costs an extra 2.25million credits worth of diamonds, and then to repair them you must use these reagents also, Carbon has been nerfed a bit too hard. OR it needs the diamonds removing from the repair and construction process.
Its a joke now. can’t see why anyone would ever use it.
On CV its now making it so you have to pay the price of a good garage ship to build your craft in diamonds, for what? a paper hull that is a bit lighter? could just make it from plain steel if you wanted that, without putting 8million credits of a commodity into that ship.
warning: salty that wasted a hundred million credits on diamonds, and processed them all into carbon blocks for them to change value mid season so radically ¬¬
what’s the logic in making carbon fibre weaker than steel now?
it was a bit op fair enough, i remember watching 5 CV pound on a sv for 5 mins and it didn’t go down,
but as an end game material to have less hp than hardened steel doesn’t make any sense.
Would have been a better move to make it the same hp as highest grade steel but diff resistances. so it still had a use. no one cares about weight reduction if it costs hit points, and loads of money!
Changes like that are always so radical here :’) no testing the water, gradual boil, incremental changes, instead just straight up gut punches.
To make it balanced vs the cost, carbon hulls need to have some major advantage to offset the involvement in diamonds in construction and repair, or remove the use of a trade good that cannot be carried in the ocd for repairing them from that at the least, construction of the blocks and blueprints probably too, or its just nonsensical for them to exist as they are now, buff them in some way or just revert them to normal plastic blocks with the little hp bonus vs vanilla that they are now but without the diamonds involved.
4 Likes
Carbon is still used on pvp since its repair time is 1/1000 than xeno or combatsteel. Thats already a huge advantage. Have you ever tried to repair a xeno cv?
With carbon 1.000 blocks costs 250.000.
Xeno 1.000 blocks costs 1.500.000 of credits. (paying only 300 each xeno substrate…if avaible…at that price)