Weapon discussion thread

[Sven_The_Slayer]

So

take them out BEFORE you attack someone lol

Oh sure, "Hey I'm about to attack you, do you mind if I edit your ship and remove your shields because otherwise you are too tanky"

I am 100% sure you failed to understand what I was saying.

 

[Comr4de]

Oh sure, "Hey I'm about to attack you, do you mind if I edit your ship and remove your shields because otherwise you are too tanky"

I am 100% sure you failed to understand what I was saying.

No, you're being dense. Of course you're not going to edit ships on the fucking spot in combat. You build them smarter to start with so that you're not reliant upon the easy-win button that is shield spam. I'm talking about a theoretical situation where shields drew power even while up. I have no idea what you're going on about.

 

[Lord Daro]

Altough it would feel more realistic, i think shields already draw enough power as it is. In games you should always choose gameplay over realism, if you have to.
Concerning the general tank problem: Yeah, i too think the shields are overpowered, but not by that much, as some seem to think.
The new system and values (imagine, gameplay changes in an alpha!) force more thought uppon ship construction. Other than in pre 0.15, where you had to fight for every single shield point, one now have to think of how many shield points can be afforded with out having the ship suffer in other areas.
Sure, you can put lots and lots of shields on your ship to make it almost indestructible, but you will not have any recources to operate weapons or even engines, witch maybe isn't that bad if you are sitting in a transport ship and hope the attacker gets bored at some time. But if you want to actually fight you will have to give up on massive shielding.
Besides if you go too overboard you will put an atificial regen nerf on you, for it is still relying on your reactor output, witch in turn makes you more vulnerable for equally sized, attack based ships again.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

No, you're being dense. Of course you're not going to edit ships on the fucking spot in combat. You build them smarter to start with so that you're not reliant upon the easy-win button that is shield spam. I'm talking about a theoretical situation where shields drew power even while up. I have no idea what you're going on about.

You do not need to degrade to insulting me, I am not being dense, you missed my entire point, I said...

"You cannot strip the shields out of a ship you are fighting, everybody will pack their ships with as many shields as they can."

I was not talking about editing my ship in combat. I was never even talking about editing ships at all. I only ever mentioned the shields on the target ship, and you just kept telling me to edit my ship... That is also a moot point as editing ships was never my point to begin with. The point I was making was that such a huge change would require rebalancing the entire power system as adding a new large power consumption would have an impact on every other system that uses power, including those new defensive systems (which require a TON of power) so your "Strip some out and replace with a defensive system." solution will not even work.

I am just going to quote exactly what I said, read it again, maybe slower this time and please don't respond telling me, yet again, to edit my ships.

You cannot strip the shields out of a ship you are fighting, everybody will pack their ships with as many shields as they can. Will adding a constant power requirement to shields help this issue? Yes. Will this one change also affect the balance of every other aspect of the game that uses power? Yes. If shields required power all the other defensive options are now thrown out the window because power management becomes a nightmare as well as thrust and weapons. Adding power requirement to shields means a complete rebalance of the power system.

Spoiler: Do I need to break it down further?

Problem: Packing ships full of shields creates hard to kill tank ships
Solution: Add power requirement to stop players from just spamming shields
Problem: Added Power consumption throws off balance of entire current system

 

[Hanspeter Schnitzel]

I think the devs should add back the cooldown time before regen again. It should be based on the damage dealt so that small low-damage miniguns can't hold shields down because the cooldown time would be near zero, but hard hitting weapons should cause a "long" (relative) cooldown time. So that when two big ships fight, their main-turrets are the damage dealers, not their anti-fighter turrets.

 

[Comr4de]

Whooops, that one's on me. I blame sleep deprivation.

Problem: Packing ships full of shields creates hard to kill tank ships
Solution: Add power requirement to stop players from just spamming shields
Problem: Added Power consumption throws off balance of entire current system

The current system is shit tho. That's why I'm saying it needs an entire revamp

 

[NuclearFun]

I don't have any ship right now that could kill the same ship in a reasonable amount of time (or at all)...

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

I don't have any ship right now that could kill the same ship in a reasonable amount of time (or at all)...

Even worse is my big ships cannot kill small ships with their turrets, the AI just circles me forever.

 

[NuclearFun]

To quote Calbiri:

They were set to handle a bit over 1 minute 30 seconds of weapon fire from equivilantly sized weapon systems,
this was meant to prevent the exploit of starting a battle off by simple nuking the target with missile/pulse combos (since these are set on a 1.5 minute cooldown and do 450 damage, 110% of that is 495)

I just think this is wrong, a single missile + pulse block does now 900 damage, add a ion effect and you would have 1800 shield damage all 1.5 minutes, but this does not take in account that the weapon system consists of more than one block (vs the one shield block this seems to be balanced against) and ships usually have many more shield blocks (because they are a perfect filler) than weapon blocks.
You would need a very specialized shield buster torpedo boat to actually use this "exploit" (i would also not think of this as an exploit, that would be a viable high risk high reward tactic).

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

To quote Calbiri:


I just think this is wrong, a single missile + pulse block does now 900 damage, add a ion effect and you would have 1800 shield damage all 1.5 minutes, but this does not take in account that the weapon system consists of more than one block (vs the one shield block this seems to be balanced against) and ships usually have many more shield blocks (because they are a perfect filler) than weapon blocks.
You would need a very specialized shield buster torpedo boat to actually use this "exploit" (i would also not think of this as an exploit, that would be a viable high risk high reward tactic).

Not to mention it is easy to fit shields into every nook and crany of a ship, while weapons need some kind of smart design. While slaves and effects can be anywhere the master has to be built with all blocks touching and this will limit it's size. I doubt very many ships will have a 1:1 weapon to shield ratio so balancing with this in mind is not the best approach. I'll have to do a quarry and see what the weapon to shield ratios are on some of my ships.

 

[Keptick]

People, PEOPLEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

Shield regen is F****** BUGGED AT THE MOMENT. That's why ships are indestructible, because they can simply tank and regenerate ALL THE DAMAGE that is being inflicted to them.

An other reason this is happening is because everyone is using OLD ships, which usually had a much higher shield to weapon ratio than the inverse. Now you'd ideally want to have close to 1/1 weapon/shield ratios on your ships.

To sum it up, make new ships or refit the old ones instead of saying that your old configuration is imbalanced. Which isn't really the case to be honest since that tanky ship won't be able to kill me either.

Edit: Instead of cramming shields in every hole stick slave systems there instead. Slave systems don't need to be grouped up or be touching to work (like shields).

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

People, PEOPLEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

Shield regen is F****** BUGGED AT THE MOMENT. That's why ships are indestructible, because they can simply tank and regenerate ALL THE DAMAGE that is being inflicted to them.

An other reason this is happening is because everyone is using OLD ships, which usually had a much higher shield to weapon ratio than the inverse. Now you'd ideally want to have close to 1/1 weapon/shield ratios on your ships.

To sum it up, make new ships or refit the old ones instead of saying that your old configuration is imbalanced. Which isn't really the case to be honest since that tanky ship won't be able to kill me either.

I know the regen is what is currently causing ship invincibility but do you think people are just going to stop putting shields in once they hit a 1:1 ratio? No, everybody will still spam those little buggers like there is no tomorrow up until the point where they choke their regen while charging, then they may delete some and add more power. This still leads to a situation where balancing the shields with a 1:1 ratio in mind is a bad idea.

I build ships with full interiors, this means I have to designate zones for systems such as weapons, shields get mashed in everywhere else. So far my ships have been very well balanced but this new idea of having a 1:1 shield to weapon ratio means my ships probably don't have enough guns to be effective against themselves.

 

[Keptick]

I know the regen is what is currently causing ship invincibility but do you think people are just going to stop putting shields in once they hit a 1:1 ratio? No, everybody will still spam those little buggers like there is no tomorrow up until the point where they choke their regen while charging, then they may delete some and add more power. This still leads to a situation where balancing the shields with a 1:1 ratio in mind is a bad idea.

I build ships with full interiors, this means I have to designate zones for systems such as weapons, shields get mashed in everywhere else. So far my ships have been very well balanced but this new idea of having a 1:1 shield to weapon ratio means my ships probably don't have enough guns to be effective against themselves.

Ok, they can do that if they want. I'd like for them to keep in mind that they won't even be able to move once I scratch them and their power drops to zero. As I said, just cram your slave/effect systems there instead.

Is your argument that the game should be balanced on people's bad building habits? I'd just wait for the bugs to be sorted out and then start looking at balance, but not before.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Ok, they can do that if they want. I'd like for them to keep in mind that they won't even be able to move once I scratch them and their power drops to zero. As I said, just cram your slave/effect systems there instead.

Is your argument that the game should be balanced on people's bad building habits?

How is wanting the most defence possible a bad habit? It's a sandbox game and should balance itself to the widest array of possibilities. Being balanced for everybody is impossible but balancing for an idealized group that may not even exist is "a bad idea"

Spamming effects and slaves is also not an idealized system either. With shields you spam and forget but with weapons you may want to adjust a weapon in the future, if you spammed it into every nook and cranny you now have a hunt and peck job of going into your ship with the effect computer selected trying to remove them all. Now what if you accidentally deleted the computer, finding all the system blocks is now impossible. Shift + V is taken out of the equation when connecting blocks. IMHO spamming slave and effects will never be a viable option, and would be a "bad habit"

 

[NuclearFun]

People, PEOPLEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!
....Now you'd ideally want to have close to 1/1 weapon/shield ratios on your ships.
....

Honestly? No, i don't want that.
What i want is a ship with hangars, interior, multiple weapon systems, turrets that do damage... i would be stupid not to put shield blocks everywhere they can fit.

 

[Keptick]

Well, players can make super tanky ships but they will lack firepower. Or they can make super powerful ships which will lack defense. OR (this gets interesting) they can try to balance it out.

Seriously, no one is forcing you to fill up your ship with shields! If you're not satisfied just fill it up with hull, idk. Or start planning out your ships? Wait no, that's way too hard (sarcasm aside I agree that it can get pretty damn complicated).

NuclearFun Well, having turrets compensates for less internal firepower. So shield cramming shouldn't be much of an issue in your case. Turret AI loderpiness is a different issue by the way.

Seriously, all I'm trying to say is to give the new system some time. Humans hate changes, I really didn't like it either when it came out but it's starting to grow on me.

 

[Hanspeter Schnitzel]

Even if the shield regen is at 30% when under fire.. I would still prefer a cool-down time when they are fired at, since the shield storage is now so high, even for ships build after the patches.

 

[Malacodor]

I think that would really screw over some ship designs though, I'd basically have to scrap all my interiors to add power or my ships will be really under shielded compared to others.

Now is the best time to make the big changes - exactly because most ships have to be refitted anyway.

 

[Lecic]

I've been making copies of my old ships and ripping out all the old internals, then adjusting them to the new systems.

 

[NuclearFun]

Seriously, no one is forcing you to fill up your ship with shields! If you're not satisfied just fill it up with hull, idk. Or start planning out your ships? Wait no, that's way too hard (sarcasm aside I agree that it can get pretty damn complicated).

Filling up with hulls... like that will happen.