Help Designing Potent Turret system for Huge 3km ship

[Panpiper]

Not to be rude, but you are going way off topic and your not being of any help.

The topic I am on is one of dissuading you from the utter nonsense of even thinking about a 3000 block long ship. Even if you could get the astronomical quantity of blocks that would take, even if you could find a server insane enough to let you build it, even if you were actually willing and able to put in the enormous investment of time to build it, even if the developers perfected the coding sufficient for the server to not promptly crash the instant you tried to do anything with the bloody thing, it is absolutely guaranteed to be a lemon that will simply be destroyed by some player or faction that does not appreciate the gargantuan burden your monstrosity is placing on 'their' server.

I can guarantee you 100% that by the time you are half way finished with your ship, you will discover any number of things about it you regret or that are seriously substandard. Going back and redoing things however at that point will take WAY too much work, and you'll be faced with the decision to just quit or finish your lemon.

Assuming you do finish the thing, you will discover that it is nowhere near as invulnerable as you think. A player will easily be able to identify a direction from which they may approach your monster that will permit them to engage a part of your ship without it's main turrets being able to fire. It is simply 'too' big. You will have neither the maneuverability nor the speed with which to control the range or direction of the engagement and so they will be able to engage on their own terms. They will fire hundreds if not thousands of missiles from maximum range that can strike the hull of your ship while what partial turrets that part of the ship is able to bring to bear will be woefully insufficient to penetrate the literally hundreds of point defense turrets the enemy fleet will bring on screening ships. Your own point defense will be absolutely swamped. (Swamping point defense is a trivial exercise for people who know what they are doing.)

Absolutely regardless of how many shield rechargers you have on your ship, one or a few much smaller, much better designed 'titans' will be able to overwhelm it. (Smaller ships 'can' be redesigned and rebuilt if they are found to be substandard, while yours will be much too big for such iteration.) They will simply whittle down your shields, then pour damage into your hull until half your ship has been hollowed out, likely without your main guns 'ever' being able to fire. And even if they did, they won't get through the point defense fleet fire.

All that work will ultimately be for naught.

 

[Madman198237]

Or just use cannons for turrets. And beams for anti-shield.

 

[Calhoun]

That size is a bit silly. jontyfreack is building a WH40K Titan on NFD, and the server crapped itself when someone accidentally bumped it.

 

[Tamren Shade]

Well, I'm not as confident as you are that your comp and server can handle that, but that is solidly between you and the server admins. Maybe with the chunk update, that's not as impossible as it might sound. I would recommend taking a look at Criss the Nightbringers channel on youtube, he imported a 1-1 scale Imperial Star Destroyer into SM and then jumped sectors to show off the one he was starting to build. That will give you some ideas on what SM can pull off at the edge of crashing.

My observations have been that what really messes Starmade up seems to be the number of visible blocks, so you may want to reconsider making a 3km long ship and do some math and go for a Spherical/Dodecahedron/SM planet shaped craft that will hit the block count you're aiming for by maxing internal volume and minimizing exterior. You could also mirror your configuration of turrets across all the different faces to simplify engineering and set up your ship in such a way that you don't have a particularly weak side.

If I was going to build a monster like that, I'd do everything I could to have max range cannon and beam turrets. If you're going to PVP in such a thing, you are going to be dramatically less maneuverable than most anything you're going to fight, so your opponents will be able to control the range they'll be engaging you at. I'd also have some swarmer batteries firing in all 6 directions linked together via logic, so you can completely fill the space around you with missiles.

Just keep in mind that what you're trying to do may not be possible with the game, and even if you can build it and move it, actually fighting in it may bring the game, the server, and your comp to their knees. Best of luck to you.

 

[Edymnion]

The topic I am on is one of dissuading you from the utter nonsense of even thinking about a 3000 block long ship. Even if you could get the astronomical quantity of blocks that would take, even if you could find a server insane enough to let you build it, even if you were actually willing and able to put in the enormous investment of time to build it, even if the developers perfected the coding sufficient for the server to not promptly crash the instant you tried to do anything with the bloody thing, it is absolutely guaranteed to be a lemon that will simply be destroyed by some player or faction that does not appreciate the gargantuan burden your monstrosity is placing on 'their' server.

I can guarantee you 100% that by the time you are half way finished with your ship, you will discover any number of things about it you regret or that are seriously substandard. Going back and redoing things however at that point will take WAY too much work, and you'll be faced with the decision to just quit or finish your lemon.

Assuming you do finish the thing, you will discover that it is nowhere near as invulnerable as you think. A player will easily be able to identify a direction from which they may approach your monster that will permit them to engage a part of your ship without it's main turrets being able to fire. It is simply 'too' big. You will have neither the maneuverability nor the speed with which to control the range or direction of the engagement and so they will be able to engage on their own terms. They will fire hundreds if not thousands of missiles from maximum range that can strike the hull of your ship while what partial turrets that part of the ship is able to bring to bear will be woefully insufficient to penetrate the literally hundreds of point defense turrets the enemy fleet will bring on screening ships. Your own point defense will be absolutely swamped. (Swamping point defense is a trivial exercise for people who know what they are doing.)

Absolutely regardless of how many shield rechargers you have on your ship, one or a few much smaller, much better designed 'titans' will be able to overwhelm it. (Smaller ships 'can' be redesigned and rebuilt if they are found to be substandard, while yours will be much too big for such iteration.) They will simply whittle down your shields, then pour damage into your hull until half your ship has been hollowed out, likely without your main guns 'ever' being able to fire. And even if they did, they won't get through the point defense fleet fire.

All that work will ultimately be for naught.

OP may not want to hear it, but Piper is completely right.

Any ship that size is going to be an absolute nightmare logistically. The server is going to buckle any time you undock it, you're going to create a lag storm for everyone when you move it, and your investment in it is going to be so high you will be too scared to actually field it because you can't afford to lose it.

Rule #1 for any ship, don't make it bigger than you can afford to lose, because you *WILL* lose it, even if its just because you got lazy and didn't plot a proper course and dropped it inside of a star after a jump.

Especially if you don't protect it properly. Which means you're not just building a titan, you're building an entire fleet. As in you are going to need at LEAST as much mass again in dreadnoughts, cruisers, fighters, etc.

 

[Nickizzy]

some player or faction

Try: every player and faction. You would literally bring every last player who gave their Fps a dime down on you. that sort of fight would crash the game. It. Would. That many entities couldn't all be flying everywhere at the same time and not kill it. The admins would be forced to delete the ship, if just to save the server. It couldn't handle it.

Furthermore, what would you use that ship for? At this point it's a station really. You'd be way better off making a bunch of smaller(and by smaller I mean still Titian class, just not galactic class) ships about half a km each. Still tons of space to play with, and a lot more RP potential, than some behemoth like you're suggesting. Try 2 drone carriers, 3 heavy turret battleships, and a specialty(inhibitor, salvage beams, EMP and Ion) ship. That sort of force could beat just about anything.

 

[kingreol]

Try: every player and faction. You would literally bring every last player who gave their Fps a dime down on you. that sort of fight would crash the game. It. Would. That many entities couldn't all be flying everywhere at the same time and not kill it. The admins would be forced to delete the ship, if just to save the server. It couldn't handle it.

Furthermore, what would you use that ship for? At this point it's a station really. You'd be way better off making a bunch of smaller(and by smaller I mean still Titian class, just not galactic class) ships about half a km each. Still tons of space to play with, and a lot more RP potential, than some behemoth like you're suggesting. Try 2 drone carriers, 3 heavy turret battleships, and a specialty(inhibitor, salvage beams, EMP and Ion) ship. That sort of force could beat just about anything.

I agree conpletely with going for realistic safe size of mass/length/entity count thats proven to work in starmade. but im weary of suggesting fleet stuff with the AI not even able to use Aux.. it may be good as a builder to make the frigates and battleships, and drone carriers. but to field them currently at once is not likely...

Anyways people WILL try to field these Supertitan ships. even as there first major pvp ships because how gigantism currently is accepted bye most servers. and the community. even if at some point size breaks down. people are itching to be "bigger" then the current big ships pirate players use

 

[Nickizzy]

Who says you can't find 5 friends to play with? If you're investing that much time into something, it would go a whole lot faster if you had some buddies to do it with.

 

[StormWing0]

Try: every player and faction.

This right here made me stop taking you for an ambitious player and start taking you for a fool. For my faction it'd only take one player that is sick of your existence. We specialize in fighting using the AI fleets as poor as they are right now. All we'd do is send attack ordered fleets in your general direction until we were sure you were dead.

I'm working out a turret that can take down the average titan and shred fleets. The one thing you should never do in this game is underestimate a player that's determined enough. Also there's this wonderful but normally not particularly useful block known as the Warhead. Yes that thing that can bypass shields, needless to say a couple of well placed hits and you have a hull breach and a flood of players with torches evicting you from your core.

 

[Nickizzy]

flood of players

Yep. They don't all have to be gods to make a difference. The sheer number of players makes a difference, but also the ones that, while you're slowly building your galaxy-class megaship, are making much more efficient mining fleets and using new mechanics(and ones they simply know better) to beat you.

 

[Edymnion]

Yup, and given how much power a titan that size would suck down just trying to move and keep it's shields up, a dedicated EMP weapon would likely cripple it.

I don't care how much shields you've got or how big your guns are, once your power tanks you've lost. Then its just a matter of time before somebody with a torch cuts you out of the core and takes your titan for themselves and dismantles it for parts.

 

[Deserea]

Yup, and given how much power a titan that size would suck down just trying to move and keep it's shields up, a dedicated EMP weapon would likely cripple it.

I don't care how much shields you've got or how big your guns are, once your power tanks you've lost. Then its just a matter of time before somebody with a torch cuts you out of the core and takes your titan for themselves and dismantles it for parts.

I just dont understand why you need something that big, unless you are doing a recreation piece to scale...but those arent used for combat because they are just to massive..

a 400 meter ship can destroy plenty if built right O_O

 

[Edymnion]

I just dont understand why you need something that big, unless you are doing a recreation piece to scale...but those arent used for combat because they are just to massive..

a 400 meter ship can destroy plenty if built right O_O

I'm designing a titan now in my head thats going to be in the 1km range, but its a carrier. Think Battlestar Galactica. It needs to be that big to carry a full fleet of fighters and drones.

But the discussion has come up before, and a lot of time it boils down to two things:

1) Power = size. If you want lots of shields and powerful weapons, you need lots and lots of those blocks. If you have lots of those blocks, you need lots of hull to encase them in, which requires lots of thrusters to move, which eats up a lot of power, etc. So you get titans pretty fast.

2) Looks. The blocks are a set size (1 cubic meter), and it takes a lot of blocks to get relatively simple things made (like sliding doors). If you want lots of cool moving parts, and surface details, and interesting shapes, you have to build big to get the resolution required for that.

 

[Deserea]

I'm designing a titan now in my head thats going to be in the 1km range, but its a carrier. Think Battlestar Galactica. It needs to be that big to carry a full fleet of fighters and drones.

But the discussion has come up before, and a lot of time it boils down to two things:

1) Power = size. If you want lots of shields and powerful weapons, you need lots and lots of those blocks. If you have lots of those blocks, you need lots of hull to encase them in, which requires lots of thrusters to move, which eats up a lot of power, etc. So you get titans pretty fast.

2) Looks. The blocks are a set size (1 cubic meter), and it takes a lot of blocks to get relatively simple things made (like sliding doors). If you want lots of cool moving parts, and surface details, and interesting shapes, you have to build big to get the resolution required for that.

Okay but 1km is actually not that bad, itll be 400 meters longer than the longest ship ive built, but still, not to terrible(also a lot of work, cant wait to see it, whatever it is) and like i said, i can understand bigger in the case of recreation vessels(good god id hate to see a to scale model of some of the w40k ships. 27km+ vessel anyone?)


3km though? thats overkill for a ship that someone wants to use in combat. THe amount of turrets on it alone....(beating a dead horse at this point xD)

 

[Pacific_Jim]

If you want to make a giant ship just to say you've made it, and want it to be as effective as it can be, I can respect that. Bare in though that the more negative comments are right, you won't realistically be able to use it in PVP due to it's size, and vulnerability to smaller ships.

To answer your question though, what you want for turrets is a smaller group of bigger turrets spaced out throughout the ship as opposed to large groups of smaller turrets. keptic's Charon is a good example here. Either firing several missile/beam/pierce (with a few dummy missiles thrown in, also keep the ratio to about 100% pierce and maybe 30% beam) or cannon/cannon/punch (or maybe explosive, experiment here). Likewise for AMS turrets concentrate on spreading them out and placement instead of just dumping down hundreds, and try adding to each turret a cannon/beam output and a few cannon/missile outputs.

 

[Nickizzy]

If you want to make a giant ship just to say you've made it, and want it to be as effective as it can be, I can respect that. Bare in though that the more negative comments are right, you won't realistically be able to use it in PVP due to it's size, and vulnerability to smaller ships.

To answer your question though, what you want for turrets is a smaller group of bigger turrets spaced out throughout the ship as opposed to large groups of smaller turrets. keptic's Charon is a good example here. Either firing several missile/beam/pierce (with a few dummy missiles thrown in, also keep the ratio to about 100% pierce and maybe 30% beam) or cannon/cannon/punch (or maybe explosive, experiment here). Likewise for AMS turrets concentrate on spreading them out and placement instead of just dumping down hundreds, and try adding to each turret a cannon/beam output and a few cannon/missile outputs.

Or you can make smaller ships(500-1000 meters) with a single massive turret on the front.

 

[Gasboy]

I'm currently in the process of building a 3km (100m block) ship and im theorizing the turrets before I start on them but im relatively new to Starmade and pvp so I need some help here.

The goals this system needs to achieve are as follow;
-Must be able to hit targets from the other side of the sector (in case they are trying to out range me)
-Has capability to completely lower shields/armor/structure without self firing (rotational will be non existent)
-Able to shoot all angles around the ship (need designs for this, maybe have them floating beside the ship?
-Also need a wepon system to self fire in case turrets bug out or something goes wrong. Only option here is missile/missile/X without having to aim.

To make the guidelines of what I need, the format in order from start of the fight to finish is;
1. Opening shield drain Turrets, both long and short range.
2. Turrets to keep shields from recharging quick
3. Turrets to destroy armor as fast as possible
4. Turrets to deal as much structural dmg as possible
5. Turrets that finally hit vital systems and core as efficiently as possible.

In theory:

1) Beams work well as shield draining weapons.

2) Mass cannon spam. Keep a constant stream of cannon fire on the target. Think of these as secondaries, built similarly to AMS turrets, just larger.

3) Cannons with punch or pierce.

4) Eh. Once you have a hole in their armor, and that you're pretty sure you're into their systems (as in smashed open bulkheads) you basically skip to 5.

5) Systems damage, I suggest explosive as it is essentially punch/pierce but 90° to the point of impact. It will "pulse" several times per shot, with an area effect.

Missiles will do well in making small holes much larger, but missiles are easily dealt with using AMS turrets, spaced armor and advanced armor. However, if you have a clear shot, missiles can make anyone's bad day a whole lot worse.

Gmodism has a small demonstration of punch, pierce and explosive.

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Or you can make smaller ships(500-1000 meters) with a single massive turret on the front.

Sure, if you want to get smoked by just about everyone. A giant turret will turn too slowly, which means you'll be circled to death by anyone your size or smaller. And having one turret also means you have a massive blind spot which your turret will never reach.

 

[Scypio]

and try adding to each turret a cannon/beam output and a few cannon/missile outputs.

No, simply, no. Lock-on missiles and cannons aren't fired on the same way and the AI will use efficiently only one type of weapon. Several outputs and computers, yes, differents weapons, no.

 

[StormWing0]

I'd try avoiding even bothering to turn to shoot at something, trying a multi-directional weapons system would be a good way to avoid being in a cloud of death.

 

[Madman198237]

Also, never combine missiles and cannons with closely-spaced outputs----the cannot shots invariably shoot down the missiles.