(Bigger stuff = better) => how this can actually NERF big ships.

[NeonSturm]

If an array has diminishing returns, you just build another array.
If a ship has diminishing returns, you just build another ship and spam them - or build more turrets and create LAG.

=> Diminishing returns are NOT working!
Thus why don't we try the opposite? We buff big arrays (weapons, shields)!


Q: Yes, but will they not become even more OP?

We give these big guns an area of effect - - - - don't confuse it with volume of effect like missiles have!

equal to their minimum possible border-length with that many blocks
independent of the actual shape.

Area = array.mass ^ (2/3)
The damage over that area remains the same.
​

Ships can now receive a maximum damage of their minimum possible border-length

because some part of the area above would miss them
also dependent on mass, not shape.

Max damage per hit = damage from own mass in weapon blocks.

Now imagine a line between

hit-point - - - ship centre
hit-point - - - impact angle​

This line also reduces the maximum damage the ship can take from a single weapon.

=> 0° angle = max damage
=> 90° angle = 1/2 damage (assume 1/2 of the projectile-area has missed the ship).

Imagine blue = damage projection => red = ship.
​

Missiles?

They will be bigger and easier to shot down with flak.
​

Hit-scan weapons?

Could have more of a cone of fire rather than a constant rectangle hit box.
Twice the size at 1/3 range?
​

Pulse?

You need to cover more hull space around your ship.
2x distance = 1/4 damage!
​

Thrusters?

A heavier ship needs A LOT more to turn equally fast. No chance to compensate for that else you got no speed..
A little bit more efficiency cannot hurt that much.
​

Shields (EDIT after first post):

Yes, they will be better (weapons too), but you either:

A: do less damage against smaller entities than they would against bigger.

(both together means less interaction in fleet battles until there is nothing else left)​

B: Small guns have more focused damage (see divert shield suggestions).


​

Q: How would this actually help?

You can't focus your big guns at small ships - They will always partially miss.

But peoples which build large ships for combat DO like these big guns.

Big guns which now deal way less damage to smaller entities.
Big ships which have to be prepared to resist the increased DPS of destroyers (single big gun ships)
​

Because you have to scale your weapons dependent on target size, you will have less big ones.

Meaning you are likely missing the sweet spot of this scale.
While shields remain optimal for that scale.
​

This provides a chance for counter-build (=feels more natural) to some popular ship (= giving scouts value).

Perfect scale of weapons (smaller = more accurate, bigger = more efficient)
or ship size (smaller = more evasive, bigger = more efficient shields).​

 

[Asvarduil]

I won't say I'd fully agree with this assessment (I'm a small-ship kind of guy), but I like the idea of the mechanics subverting a large ship's size to make large ships compete equally with other large ships, and be less effective against small ships.

 

[Ithirahad]

This probably won't help... People will just build big enough guns that cones don't matter - as soon as a ship hits the edge it gets fried. However, large weaponry's damage should definitely be spread out one way or another...

 

[NeonSturm]

This probably won't help... People will just build big enough guns that cones don't matter - as soon as a ship hits the edge it gets fried. However, large weaponry's damage should definitely be spread out one way or another...

• You didn't read the whole.

A ship can receive not more than it's own mass as weapon blocks in damage.

• You can only build MORE guns to deal more damage to ships equal or smaller your array size (inclusive slaves + effects ?).

Of-course a large ship can have more those guns

• But these would be smaller in size and you could kill a few.
• If not the ones mean to fight your weight class, you could take out turrets which are supposed to kill smaller stuff before you launch your drone spam.
• people may use rail-doors to cover these smaller turrets then.

=> tactics, intelligent designs.


Also you would need a few guns of each size to be equally prepared vs 1 large of many small ships.

• And a fleet of ships with many different sizes could sent their best evasive ships to the front, distracting damage.
• => Epic drone fleets between carriers?

 

[bluelightningwizard]

c'est bon, le support

 

[Corporal Tunnel]

I think this is the best system for balancing ships/weapons I have ever read.

 

[NeonSturm]

Ty for your support:

Corporal Tunnel
bluelightningwizard
Asvarduil​

Sadly this post didn't get much responses or likes - or posts telling me why not.


NOTE: You may think the large "beam" (which represents a travelling plane of damage over time) may hit other ships too.

But wouldn't swarms cooperating with the same logic not stay

1. directly behind each other to stay in the shadow of the others
   
2. stay spaced enough to not being able to get hit as a group

Maybe in reality, but we should not require this for a game.

Just assume it is like this dependent "easy variables" like group size, number of aimed weapons, ...​

​

Another idea : Perhaps aimed weapons could receive a buff too, because they are more likely to hit critical systems.

• +25% damage for full aiming.
  • Every time the target changes the direction, (angular speed change / size) would subtract from aim.
    • features smaller ships.
  • Aiming builds up over time.
    • features smaller turrets.
  • High-alpha weapons may receive a buff on their first shot based on charge-up time? To help them to aim.
• -25% damage for blind fire.

(( Disclaimer : % Numbers are examples ))

 

[AtraUnam]

Wait why do big ships need to be nerfed? If I have a tank I d**n well expect to steamroll a guy with a pistol. Especially now that its fairly difficult to acquire the resources to build said tank.

Edit: I did read the post, it was more of a comment on the topic of big ship vs little ship in general. Like many others I feel we should wait for the HP system before talking about re-balancing.

 

[NeonSturm]

Wait why do big ships need to be nerfed? If I have a tank I d**n well expect to steamroll a guy with a pistol. Especially now that its fairly difficult to acquire the resources to build said tank.

You neither did read the whole - just like Ithirahad.

You BUFF big ships by increasing block-efficiency in big arrays.
You NERF big ships by nerfing big arrays of guns (and maybe shields) vs small ships. This is an indirect nerf !!!)

Indirect, because ships have to be prepared for both - A big-array destroyer and swarm of evasive ships and there will always be a perfect counter if you don't build differently sized arrays on big ships.

• By building a direct counter to another ship's gun size, you could buff the survival rate of your own ships by maybe 30..50%.
• Both - to big and too small - would not hit this sweet spot.

Just saw a not-thought-through implication of all this. (48 min after this post)

This means that small ships will receive less damage from a single gun heavier than their mass.

This means that offensive ships could use defensive ships as a cover.

Is this good or bad?
I think it adds to strategy. Perhaps this could balance small turrets and "small shield plates" (docked as rail-systems) to be viable in large ship combat as protection against big guns.

But it needs a bit more math to not be abused:

• Projectiles have to travel through entities until they lost all their damage (or at least half of it).
• Projectiles have to increase the minimum mass.
  • ships below can't be hit again (protects hangar ships)
  • ships above are hit, but receive less damage dependent on current minimum mass == dealt damage.

 

[jayman38]

...Sadly this post didn't get much responses or likes - or posts telling me why not....

Still processing. There's lots of data in a small space. Wondering about the processor load of angled hits. (Might have to use invisible virtual bullets across the width of the weapon area to accurately model damage.)

 

[Megacrafter127]

I can tell you this much of the bat, neonsturm:
The council noticed the idea and the intial reaction was not negative, as far as I could interpret it. At the current point in time, I cannot tell more though.

 

[NeonSturm]

(Might have to use invisible virtual bullets across the width of the weapon area to accurately model damage.)

That's why you calculate it statistically (angle between vector of projectile and vector from hit block toward centre of boundary/mass or toward the /core)
Calculate every atom, and ofc your PC starts lagging - that's why SM has blocks in the first place.

Perhaps you could use more projectiles to get a more accurate statistic. But even distributing hit damage to single blocks IS more a statistic representation of real-world damage.

The council noticed the idea and the intial reaction was not negative, as far as I could interpret it. At the current point in time, I cannot tell more though.

Ty for telling.

 

[jayman38]

equal to their minimum possible border-length with that many blocks independent of the actual shape.

Area = array.mass ^ (2/3)
The damage over that area remains the same.
​

Can you provide further detail on "minimum possible border-length"? I am having difficulty visualizing this concept.

I'm very interested in using statistics to make weapons more fun. (The weapon maximum damage seems to be effected by the target's mass in this suggestion, so it's harder to one-shot them?)

I love the idea of a statistically adjusted "bullet" (or beam or missile) being bigger for interception.

However, I'm still wondering how, once the shields are down, will the remaining (or full damage if hit with a fresh bullet while the shields are down completely) damage effect individual blocks.

I'm thinking that maybe we could get an average armor rating and total HP count for an entire 16^3 chunk and average the bullet's damage across all blocks and see if the entire chunk can simply be erased, or if all blocks in the chunk needs to be damaged until it's dead. Unfortunately, if we use the average armor rating to attack an entire chunk at once, that might punish thick-armor designs. On the other hand, it should also punish the standard-concept doom-cube.

Basically, I'm wondering how this

Will still feel "right" to players
and result in damage to the blocks that were supposed to be hit that will seem right according to how they were hit. There's not only an offset from the center of the target, but also an angle. Both of which would need to be taken into consideration when calculating damage.


The individual grey blocks in the image could represent individual blocks, or maybe 16^3 chunks, and still feel "right" to the player.

 

[SeCor]

View attachment 11325
The individual grey blocks in the image could represent individual blocks, or maybe 16^3 chunks, and still feel "right" to the player.

What about Bresenham-style line tracing? It's quite fast (fastest line-tracing algorithm out there) if done in its integer version, and the only modification required is to convert it to 3d space. Amount of integer math operations is linear in biggest axis change, plus ~5-10 floating-point operations to initialize the algorithm. Oh, and there may be rounding errors resulting in not-so-straight lines after several billions of blocks pierced.

Also, it is possible to accumulate all the incoming "damage done" events and to resolve them en masse once in a while (each 1/10 - 1/5 of a second). This will reduce the amount of "block destroyed" events that get passed through to the ship, so the server won't have to recalculate capacity of the damaged shield blocks or power of damaged reactor after each hit from autocannon.

Spoiler: %shameless self-advertisement% :Also, how i proposed to fix the BigGuns

• Greater-than-linear power consumption growth rate (I recently found out that this was already proposed by several people including Comr4de several months ago)
• In addition to power consumtion growth rate, I proposed to base it on the total amount of blocks across active* systems, not in any separate group, so checkerboards are not a loopholes as they have the same consumption. They are still useful though, as they sacrifice damage of individual block for the increased turning rate and more surface covered (easier targeting).
• Weapon properties based on dimensions, so some designs benefit from long weapons (faster missiles or less scatter for AMC) or from wide weapons (harder-to-dodge missiles or greater turning rate for AMC)
• Doomcubes are required to 'waste' some space inside of them due to intersystem interference. You can leave this space be or decorate it: the point is that creative players are not penalized for walkways inside of their ships as cubical guys waste space too.

*systems being active or passive is another point of my post (which is in my signature), but for the sake of this discussion just assume everything is active

Regarding overall suggestion: I believe that's not exactly "buffing" but rather "repurposing" big guns. And it's great, when i was writing my own post, I had similar concerns in mind. My proposition results in similar purpose-based separation of ships and weapons.

 

[jayman38]

My First Millennial post.

What about Bresenham-style line tracing? It's quite fast (fastest line-tracing algorithm out there) if done in its integer version, and the only modification required is to convert it to 3d space. Amount integer math operations is linear in biggest axis change, plus ~5-10 floating-point operations to initialize the algorithm. Oh, and there may be rounding errors resulting in not-so-straight lines after several billions of blocks pierced.

Thanks, SeCor! I found that someone figured out a 3D Bresenham algorithm, so here's the link.

http://cobrabytes.squeakyduck.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=1150.0

Can be easily applied to a normal Bresenham class.

http://www.sanfoundry.com/java-program-bresenham-line-algorithm/

Or is it already ready to use in some Java library?

http://javadoc.imagej.net/Fiji/util/Bresenham3D.IntegerPoint.html

 

[SeCor]

Yep. Seems nice.
Except maybe some day most computationally-heavy things should be moved to native library; but that's hardly a priority right now.

Also, congrats on your millenia post!

 

[Valiant70]

If an array has diminishing returns, you just build another array.
If a ship has diminishing returns, you just build another ship and spam them - or build more turrets and create LAG.

=> Diminishing returns are NOT working!
Thus why don't we try the opposite? We buff big arrays (weapons, shields)!


Q: Yes, but will they not become even more OP?

We give these big guns an area of effect - - - - don't confuse it with volume of effect like missiles have!

equal to their minimum possible border-length with that many blocks
independent of the actual shape.

Area = array.mass ^ (2/3)
The damage over that area remains the same.
​

Ships can now receive a maximum damage of their minimum possible border-length

because some part of the area above would miss them
also dependent on mass, not shape.

Max damage per hit = damage from own mass in weapon blocks.

Now imagine a line between

hit-point - - - ship centre
hit-point - - - impact angle​

This line also reduces the maximum damage the ship can take from a single weapon.

=> 0° angle = max damage
=> 90° angle = 1/2 damage (assume 1/2 of the projectile-area has missed the ship).
View attachment 11266
Imagine blue = damage projection => red = ship.
​

Missiles?

They will be bigger and easier to shot down with flak.
​

Hit-scan weapons?

Could have more of a cone of fire rather than a constant rectangle hit box.
Twice the size at 1/3 range?
​

Pulse?

You need to cover more hull space around your ship.
2x distance = 1/4 damage!
​

Thrusters?

A heavier ship needs A LOT more to turn equally fast. No chance to compensate for that else you got no speed..
A little bit more efficiency cannot hurt that much.
​

Shields (EDIT after first post):

Yes, they will be better (weapons too), but you either:

A: do less damage against smaller entities than they would against bigger.

(both together means less interaction in fleet battles until there is nothing else left)​

B: Small guns have more focused damage (see divert shield suggestions).

​

Q: How would this actually help?

You can't focus your big guns at small ships - They will always partially miss.

But peoples which build large ships for combat DO like these big guns.

Big guns which now deal way less damage to smaller entities.
Big ships which have to be prepared to resist the increased DPS of destroyers (single big gun ships)
​

Because you have to scale your weapons dependent on target size, you will have less big ones.

Meaning you are likely missing the sweet spot of this scale.
While shields remain optimal for that scale.
​

This provides a chance for counter-build (=feels more natural) to some popular ship (= giving scouts value).

Perfect scale of weapons (smaller = more accurate, bigger = more efficient)
or ship size (smaller = more evasive, bigger = more efficient shields).​

This sounds a little bit like EVE's approach where big guns tend to miss little ships. Honestly, accuracy is the most reasonable and common way of balancing big and small ships. This is a creative extension of that. The only problem is, I'm not sure if you could make big weapons spread enough to make the system work well. On the other hand, this will help ships with small frontal cross-sections which people tend to favor stylistically anyway.

Turrets come to mind as well. They'd be quite a bit harder for large ships to trash, which would be nice. Small pinpoint weapons would be needed to take them out and these could be practically mounted on an assault corvette or bomber.

Wait why do big ships need to be nerfed? If I have a tank I d**n well expect to steamroll a guy with a pistol. Especially now that its fairly difficult to acquire the resources to build said tank.

Edit: I did read the post, it was more of a comment on the topic of big ship vs little ship in general. Like many others I feel we should wait for the HP system before talking about re-balancing.

A direct hit from a capital weapon may still be devastating to a frigate, so this doesn't eliminate the power of large ships - it just makes them a boss fight instead of something that one-shots you. It would still be impossible to kill something that has enough shield regen to soak up your DPS, so there's still no need to worry about Luke Skywalker killing your Death Star.

 

[NeonSturm]

Can you provide further detail on "minimum possible border-length"? I am having difficulty visualizing this concept.

18x30x50 weapon = 27'000 mass = 30*30*30 minimum border length (with that mass)

I'm very interested in using statistics to make weapons more fun. (The weapon maximum damage seems to be effected by the target's mass in this suggestion, so it's harder to one-shot them?)

//Weapon
projectile.massDamaged = 0
projectile.massRemaining = weapon.mass
projectile.damagePerMass = weapon.damage / weapon.mass

//Target
calculation.interactivity = target.mass - projectile.massDamaged
calculation.interactivity *= 1- [0 .. 0.5]( angleDiff{ target.centre --> target.hitPoint, projectile.origin --> target.hitPoint } max [45° equals 0.5] )
calculation.interactivity = max [projectile.massRemaining] calculation.interactivity
projectile.massDamaged += calculation.interactivity
projectile.massRemaining -= calculation.interactivity
target.applyDamage = calculation.interactivity * projectile.damagePerMass

Example:

//Weapon (1000 mass)
projectile.massDamaged = 0
projectile.massRemaining = 1000
projectile.damagePerMass = 0.5 // 5 damage per block * 0.1 mass per block

//Target 1 (100 mass, almost missed - hit top)
calculation.interactivity = 100 - 0 // mass: target - already damaged
calculation.interactivity *= 1- [0 .. 0.5]( angleDiff{ vec3(90°pitch, 0°yaw, 0°roll), vec3(0°pitch, 0°yaw, 0°roll) } max [45° equals 0.5] ) // mult = 0.5
calculation.interactivity = max 1000 calculation.interactivity // 1000 mass remaining
// interactivity = (100 -0) * (1- 0.5) <= 1000 // this time 50
projectile.massDamaged += 50 // now 50
projectile.massRemaining -= 50 // now 950
target.applyDamage = 50 * projectile.damagePerMass

//Target 2 (125 mass, full hit)
calculation.interactivity = 125 - 50 // mass: target - already damaged
calculation.interactivity *= 1- [0 .. 0.5]( angleDiff{ vec3(0°pitch, 0°yaw, 0°roll), vec3(0°pitch, 0°yaw, 0°roll) } max [45° equals 0.5] ) // mult = 0.0
calculation.interactivity = max 950 calculation.interactivity // 1000 mass remaining
// interactivity = (125 -50) * (1- 0.0) <= 950 // this time 75
projectile.massDamaged += 75 // now 125
projectile.massRemaining -= 75 // now 875
target.applyDamage = 75 * projectile.damagePerMass

I love the idea of a statistically adjusted "bullet" (or beam or missile) being bigger for interception.

However, I'm still wondering how, once the shields are down, will the remaining (or full damage if hit with a fresh bullet while the shields are down completely) damage effect individual blocks.

I don't think that this is important with the new damage system - and not necessarily easy to calculate.

But if it gets into the game, sun damage would be more realistically too.​

Perhaps it should only target chunks 1/32 of the ship size.

Perhaps the game could implement killed chunks with no real, just visual blocks which have a sooty/grimy look.
These might yield scrap materials or just have to be replaced/deleted in build mode before they are usable again.
Just apply a 256 bit filter (=existing blocks) over a copied filled default junk chunk.​

Unfortunately, if we use the average armour rating to attack an entire chunk at once, that might punish thick-armor designs. On the other hand, it should also punish the standard-concept doom-cube

Is it bad if big guns can attack entire chunks?
They are big guns after all.

Think about a big ship built out of big blocks -- just like a small ship is built out of small blocks.

 

[Andir]

So... just make a big ship with a bunch of small guns... Still benefit from massive shields, have hundreds of lag inducing turrets. This doesn't "penalize" big ships, it repurposed them away from big guns.

 

[AtraUnam]

wafflegun..

Is there any way I can resize this? it feels kind of spamy.