weapon scaling

[arci]

Hi everyone,

I thougth about a scaling weapon system with some base variables (depending on the weapon type) and want to share this idea.

Some of the needed attributes already exist in the game but need to be linked to the amount of blocks your weapon consist of.
The reason behind this system is to make weapons fit there purpose and introduce a rock paper scissor mechanic. So if you have for example a destroyer class ship with huge weapons they will be good against big immobile ships like corvettes or other destroyer but bad against small fast figther or bomber.
Onshoots by a big weapons will be uncommon and at the same time smaller anti fighter weapons are still an viable on bigger ships. That means te the biggest weapon isn't always the best one. It depends on what it is supposed to hit.


decreasing attributes by larger amount of blocks:

projectile speed: maximum travel speed
projectile acceleration: time until reaching the maximum travel speed (for rockets, missiles)
reload: time between two fire commands
charge: time between fire command and actual projectile release (for laser or magnetic charge for gauss cannons)

increasing attributes by larger amount of blocks:

damage output per hit: more blocks increase damage

Update:

I was wrinting a comment and had another Idea how this mechanic could work. Weapon blocks increase an energypool instead of direct attribute bonuses. This energypool can be shared between attributes inside a window like the thruster menu. The effect would be similar, but it's much easier to explain how it actually works (don't take the number to serious though):

Antimatter cannon total energyfrom 100 blocks = 1000
Damage : _______100(100)______2000(400) ____1000(250)
Projectile speed:__100m/s (300)___100m/s(400)___75m/s(250)
Charge up time: __0,1s (300)______3s(100) ______0,75s (250)
Reload time: ____0,5s (300)______10s(100) _____1,5s(250)
_____________gattling cannon__gauss cannon__ regular cannon

The numbers don't need to be liniar and some values max at at a certain point (for ex: max 40% total energy for each attribute). It needs to be tested what works best.

 

[Jaaskinal]

We had this a long time ago. It sucked.

 

[Nickizzy]

Hi everyone,

I thougth about a scaling weapon system with some base variables (depending on the weapon type) and want to share this idea.

Some of the needed attributes already exist in the game but need to be linked to the amount of blocks your weapon consist of.
The reason behind this system is to make weapons fit there purpose and introduce a rock paper scissor mechanic. So if you have for example a destroyer class ship with huge weapons they will be good against big immobile ships like corvettes or other destroyer but bad against small fast figther or bomber.
Onshoots by a big weapons will be uncommon and at the same time smaller anti fighter weapons are still an viable on bigger ships. That means te the biggest weapon isn't always the best one. It depends on what it is supposed to hit.


decreasing attributes by larger amount of blocks:

projectile speed: maximum travel speed
projectile acceleration: time until reaching the maximum travel speed (for rockets, missiles)
reload: time between two fire commands
charge: time between fire command and actual projectile release (for laser or magnetic charge for gauss cannons)

increasing attributes by larger amount of blocks:

damage output per hit: more blocks increase damage

Not quite sure what you mean right now. Is this new quaternary computer systems, that changes how the shot moves instead of what it does? Is this a new weapon suggestion? Gauss cannons? Is this an idea for a slider system to change a shot's path?

Is this an idea to make big guns more beefy? If so(I think this is the likely option) then it would need to be balanced. There must be some way to preserve projectile velocity, for sniper cannons and to prevent "floating" shots, where it's so powerful that it's acceleration and max speed are nonexistent.

 

[NeonSturm]

New We had this a long time ago. It sucked.

Yes, because of wrong math
We had speed,range, reload,damage

The problem with that was that the percentages of reload/damage added up (sum) instead of dps being divided into damage and reload.
Furthermore reload was more desireable after setting damage to the hp of exactly one block.

Similar with range,speed - with high range you also need high speed. This was not very much of a choice either.

So you effectively could switch between reload and the total of (speed,range).

​

Now, lasers are not instant-hit when player-controlled. They have a 250ms to 330ms delay because of the human reaction time.

To make them instant-hit, you have to lock the centre of your view to the position of a block on the enemy ship, fire at a station or fire at something that is too big too move fast enough.

What does this mean?
That your speed does not scale from 0..100% like shown, but from 5..100%.
Neither is it just linear. Yes, it is required to be linear to weapon-range, but it is also logarithmic to target size and offsetted by reaction time.

​

Now, the initial velocity gain is something interesting (even if it makes the formula even more complex).

It adds a delay independent from things like projectile speed at medium and long distances.

​

I would like when we finally get to choose weapons based on style per faction, rather than having to choose primarily what is effective.
Ofcourse you have to select per role (alpha striker), but even there, I would like more options available than now.

 

[arci]

Not quite sure what you mean right now. Is this new quaternary computer systems, that changes how the shot moves instead of what it does? Is this a new weapon suggestion? Gauss cannons? Is this an idea for a slider system to change a shot's path?

Is this an idea to make big guns more beefy? If so(I think this is the likely option) then it would need to be balanced. There must be some way to preserve projectile velocity, for sniper cannons and to prevent "floating" shots, where it's so powerful that it's acceleration and max speed are nonexistent.

Not a new weapon system just new attributes for existing one. Maybe this can example the idea:

A normal antimatter cannon can fire quite fast. In this new system the rate of fire damage etc for 1 block remains the same. Connecting more blocks together will increase the damage, nothing new there. However with each block the rate of fire slows down and charge up time will increase. The overall dps will increase and the weapon becomes more viable against big slow ships but at the same time you will have a hard time to hit small mobile ships.
A few blocks will act more like a gattling while more blocks are more like a gauss cannon.

Example 2: 10 missile modules have good chaising potential they are faster but deal less damage. Good against small mobile ships. 100 missile modules are good against medium sized frigates or corvettes but ineffective against figther (to slow) and destroyer ( not enougth damage). 1000 missiles turn the projectile into a slow moving high damage torpedos which are good against capital ships but bad agaisnt smaller classes. However the transitions are fluent and the classes I choose just examples to explain the concept.

ps: manoeuvrability for missiles could be another attribute

 

[Lecic]

This was a bad mechanic. It's much easier to balance with just the master/slave/effect mechanic as well.

 

[MeRobo]

decreasing attributes by larger amount of blocks:

projectile speed: maximum travel speed
projectile acceleration: time until reaching the maximum travel speed (for rockets, missiles)
reload: time between two fire commands
charge: time between fire command and actual projectile release (for laser or magnetic charge for gauss cannons)

increasing attributes by larger amount of blocks:

damage output per hit: more blocks increase damage

A few things:

The whole charge (btw, I assume you ment reload time and charge time increase with additional size, because otherwise this would seem illogical to me and make small ships kinda pointless) and projectile speed thing seems bad to me, here is why:

• Cannons above a certain size would be useless against non-stationary targets which don't actively fly into the projectiles because you would have to give ridiculous ammount of lead due to the massive shot delay and very low speed.
• Missiles above a certain size would be so slow that even the worst AMS would have no problems shooting them down
• The charge stat would remove beams advantage of being nearly instantly hitting.

This is creatively limitting since this requires a big ship to get a slow firing weapon and makes fast firing big guns go away.

Two of the suggested stats only affect 50% of the weapons (unless you want to count the expansion speed of pulse as projectile speed), therefor Pulse and Beam are less effected by the negative effects of bigger weapons suggested here.

The interaction of this with secondaries (unless you want to remove them) would be very weird (B/p/ion to get rid of shields quickly, I'm looking at you and your potential 24 hour reload)

Lastly I want to say something that has been said befor: We had something like this befor and it was bad, we got rid of it for a good reason (btw, I played this game back then, don't be fooled by my account age) but I wanted to show different reasons why I'm not a fan of this suggestion.

 

[arci]

A few things:

The whole charge (btw, I assume you ment reload time and charge time increase with additional size, because otherwise this would seem illogical to me and make small ships kinda pointless) and projectile speed thing seems bad to me, here is why:

• Cannons above a certain size would be useless against non-stationary targets which don't actively fly into the projectiles because you would have to give ridiculous ammount of lead due to the massive shot delay and very low speed.
• Missiles above a certain size would be so slow that even the worst AMS would have no problems shooting them down
• The charge stat would remove beams advantage of being nearly instantly hitting.

This is creatively limitting since this requires a big ship to get a slow firing weapon and makes fast firing big guns go away.

Two of the suggested stats only affect 50% of the weapons (unless you want to count the expansion speed of pulse as projectile speed), therefor Pulse and Beam are less effected by the negative effects of bigger weapons suggested here.

The interaction of this with secondaries (unless you want to remove them) would be very weird (B/p/ion to get rid of shields quickly, I'm looking at you and your potential 24 hour reload)

Lastly I want to say something that has been said befor: We had something like this befor and it was bad, we got rid of it for a good reason (btw, I played this game back then, don't be fooled by my account age) but I wanted to show different reasons why I'm not a fan of this suggestion.

As mentioned some attributes are only for specific weapons where it makes sense. For ex: charge up for laser, reload for cannons, acceleration for missiles etc. I admit that this system is limiting. However in my opinion balance is a synonym for limit.

It wouldn't necessarily remove big fast-firing weapons completely, but limiting there effectivenessagainst smaller ships. I mentioned a big gauss gun which could work as this way: large damage and large projectile speed but charge up (delay) and reaload time are increased.

However the general goal should be to introduce a clever balance that offers as much freedom as possible. The current way to do this is to limit the power generation. In the end super slow moving projectiles are not an additional rather then an alternative limit. A welcome side-effect is a better power management between all systems. At the moment the primary concern is "do I have eneougth energy for my weapons and shields?".

If I understand the comment correct a similar mechanic has been tested a while ago but wasn't that successful. I don't understand everything what NeonSturm discribes, but I geuss it had some flaws.

 

[kookster]

Honestly, I like where this idea is going. It is realistic. If you think of a weapon loading shells, it gets slower the bigger they are. Or for energy weapons, the more power going through them the more often they need to cool. I also like the balancing aspect this would bring for small vs big ships. Now do I think this is perfect as is, no. But I think this merits more discussion and thought.

 

[NeonSturm]

If I understand the comment correct a similar mechanic has been tested a while ago but wasn't that successful. I don't understand everything what NeonSturm discribes, but I geuss it had some flaws.

Assume you only have cannons with 10 damage per block for 100 power each 10 seconds.
0+1. Your only variable is "block count".

Then add target characteristics like "overkill", both on blocks and if a shot would waste damage to space behind the hit ship.
1+1. Now this limits your block count to an efficient maximum.

Let's add reload.
2+1. This may reduce overkill but also possible penetration depth.
2+2. It may increase the optimal block count.

Let's add projectile speed.
This makes the weapon more accurate => increase damage, but it's not easy to calculate.

4+1 Target evasion
4+2 No benefit above the speed which grants 100% hit rate and diminishing returns before reaching that hit-rate.

4+3 max% hit rate limit based on a player's reaction time.​

4+4 No penalty below 0% hit rate against moving targets when fighting stations (which can't evade).

4+5 min% speed caps based on projectile_lifetime or player-patience and anti-missile-systems when you use missiles …
​

1 variable
2 variables
4 variables
9 variables (16 variables)
With every variable added, the edge-case combinations increase exponentially (or even logarithmic).

The flaw of the original system was not the value-sliders, but that this hyper-dimensional graph where each dimension had it's own measurement-type, it's own upper/lower limits and it's own graph-type(log, lin, exp) and that it wasn't accounted for.

Imagine you had the old system, but the sliders were: "100% block count, distribute % to: primary, secondary, effect".
We even have more variables now with computer-to-module ratio and resource-costs, but the understanding of the math behind it is better/easier.​