Yea, a turret design video(one that isn't just the bare bones-I've only seen a few tutorial videos[and they've been great] but I honk the turret one doesn't talk about asthetics) would be awesome, showing new players(and old ones) common styles like the double barrel, big body and hidden turret designs.
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Ball turrets, being the best design of course. ;-)
All I use are ball turrets. I love being able to put more than half their mass under the hull. Gives you a very powerful turret with a relatively small profile, provided you have the room under your ship skin to accommodate the housing. When building a ship, I actually build and place the turrets first, and then build the ship around the turret placements, because of how much they intrude (quite literally) into the ship design.
Starmade combat outside meta is ok, inside meta is fairly horrid. but thats more on the playerbase who knows the game so well to write its code. or gigantism to the point anybody not running top of the line gaming rigs cant even pvp.
Calhoun
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My thoughts about the combat:
When I first played Starmade an image of fights that are possible with the engine of this sandboxgame was formed in my head. This image doesn't resemble about how Starmade acutally is. But I try to form now this image a bit about how (awesome) I think space combat could be, and after that I compare it with how it currently is in Starmade and where it might go with propossed roadmap signals.
What I take into account is first of the speed of fighters and their agilitiy. Turning speed and moving sideways. This dogfight thing. I want that. Dogfights. Comparing it later into the actual situation in Starmade.
CQB vs Long Range combat and Torpedoes. I expected there would be some sort of range factor in the combat, that actually matters. My own position in relation to the enemy matters. I imagined, if I move close it should be possible to do a horrendous amount of damage by dropping some really big nukes. Keyword: High damage in close combat regardless of the ship size.
Boarding Crews. Armored small boxes that fly to the enemy vessel, breach the hull and seek out the machine room of the ship.
Rotation of ships. Think of the Battlestar Galactica battles. 20 fighters in front of the carrier, and the carrier being broadside to the enemy to use all of its flac turrets against the enemy fighter fleet. The carrier turns its side and shoots from the front only, if it wants to do single target damage. But the important flacs are side mounted and so the ship has to be turned side ways. Keyword: Broadside vs Frontside advantages of ship positining.
Positioning of ships relative to each other. So personally I think having some agile fighters in the front might be very usefull to shoot down incoming enemy torpedoes. Also they keep the enemy fighter swarms at distance so these guys can not do high damage to the carrier ship in close combat.
Carriers and capital ships. We are in space. Ofcourse there might exist a fleet of ships that each alone without needing another can supply themself with ressources. But realistically you sometimes take huge journeys and have a long time to travel. Wouldn't it be logical if there also exist combat situations where a ships houses figthers that can't sustain themself and make the mothership more important to protect?
###
Now lets compare each of the individual aspects my image of combat with the real combat in Starmade:
Dogfights: Can be done. But there are not many weapons suitable. AMC goes well. Maaaaybe Lock on Missiles... But it is not this deeply develeped jet: I can't make a perfect lethal shoot or position myself very smart against the other fast fighter by making a nice maneuver. Outmanouvering like in other sky-fight games does not work so well imho. But it can be done and it can be fun for some time! 7/10
High damage in close combat regardless of size: Doesn't exist. 0/10 imho. Ofcourse if you move your big ship next to the other equally sized ship it make higher damage, but thats not what I mean. If a fighter 1/20 the size of the bombarded ship can do some huge damage in close combat - now thats what I call high damage regardless of size. And: The actual Starmade game mechanics are able to do it, the devs just think the game needs to be balanced. And I think the game can be balanced with this feature as well.
Boarding Crews: There exists a torch weapon, and the warheads also exist. But boarding crews don't care for faction modules not letting them place explosives (warheads) in front of locked doors. Also can boarding crews beamed onto the enemy ship. And if I put a hole in the hull, there are only system blocks. Where do the humans walk that opperate this ship? Some roleplay designed ships could ve 1m thick walls, and public permitted doors. But all the other stuff that needs to be there in a sandbox to make it possible is not jet planned or added: sticking to hull, using explosives, disabling systems like shields if you stand in front of them inside the ship. Nice try with the warheads and torch weapon, but there could be done so much more: Normally zero points because it is just not working to be fun, but there are the 3 things allready in the game: torch, warheads and the possibilty to build rp-style boardable ships. 1/10
Rotation of ships: Giving the front nose to your enemy is actually the only position you want to mantain with the current combat mechanics. Having many flac turrets on your ship is more a disadvantage, because many fighters never attack you anyway (the server owner don't encourage such battles). But it could be done so its not impossible: 4/10 (make fights with more participants happen 10 times a day instead of once in a week and I might have to give more points because it might get practised in reality)
Positioning of ships relative to each other: Every combat situation that happens sooner or later happens in a distance smaller than 1 sector. I never heard of a sniper utilising its long range lock on missiles. But its possible. And only lock on missiles are usefull. Beam-Beam actually has a big disadvantage because it only destroy maximum of 1 block per tick. (or did it get fixed?!). So the weapons are not there for this kind of stuff. 4/10
Carriers: Well we have capitals. But carriers need crews to flight the fighters that the carrier drops into the battle. And there are no people playing this game to get a 5v5 regularly (like 10 times a day and not only once a week). But it's possible to build such thing. With the current set up of combat carriers just don't make real sense. You can make up some rp-rules to implement a carrier sense. But we are talking about how combat is with the weapons right now, and not how we can force it to be by bend the gameplay with 100 rp-rules. 0/10
###
Don't get me wrong: I like Starmade non the less. But I needed to rant about the combat so badly. Thx if you readed up to here.
Last words about capitals:
When I first played Starmade an image of fights that are possible with the engine of this sandboxgame was formed in my head. This image doesn't resemble about how Starmade acutally is. But I try to form now this image a bit about how (awesome) I think space combat could be, and after that I compare it with how it currently is in Starmade and where it might go with propossed roadmap signals.
What I take into account is first of the speed of fighters and their agilitiy. Turning speed and moving sideways. This dogfight thing. I want that. Dogfights. Comparing it later into the actual situation in Starmade.
CQB vs Long Range combat and Torpedoes. I expected there would be some sort of range factor in the combat, that actually matters. My own position in relation to the enemy matters. I imagined, if I move close it should be possible to do a horrendous amount of damage by dropping some really big nukes. Keyword: High damage in close combat regardless of the ship size.
Boarding Crews. Armored small boxes that fly to the enemy vessel, breach the hull and seek out the machine room of the ship.
Rotation of ships. Think of the Battlestar Galactica battles. 20 fighters in front of the carrier, and the carrier being broadside to the enemy to use all of its flac turrets against the enemy fighter fleet. The carrier turns its side and shoots from the front only, if it wants to do single target damage. But the important flacs are side mounted and so the ship has to be turned side ways. Keyword: Broadside vs Frontside advantages of ship positining.
Positioning of ships relative to each other. So personally I think having some agile fighters in the front might be very usefull to shoot down incoming enemy torpedoes. Also they keep the enemy fighter swarms at distance so these guys can not do high damage to the carrier ship in close combat.
Carriers and capital ships. We are in space. Ofcourse there might exist a fleet of ships that each alone without needing another can supply themself with ressources. But realistically you sometimes take huge journeys and have a long time to travel. Wouldn't it be logical if there also exist combat situations where a ships houses figthers that can't sustain themself and make the mothership more important to protect?
###
Now lets compare each of the individual aspects my image of combat with the real combat in Starmade:
Dogfights: Can be done. But there are not many weapons suitable. AMC goes well. Maaaaybe Lock on Missiles... But it is not this deeply develeped jet: I can't make a perfect lethal shoot or position myself very smart against the other fast fighter by making a nice maneuver. Outmanouvering like in other sky-fight games does not work so well imho. But it can be done and it can be fun for some time! 7/10
High damage in close combat regardless of size: Doesn't exist. 0/10 imho. Ofcourse if you move your big ship next to the other equally sized ship it make higher damage, but thats not what I mean. If a fighter 1/20 the size of the bombarded ship can do some huge damage in close combat - now thats what I call high damage regardless of size. And: The actual Starmade game mechanics are able to do it, the devs just think the game needs to be balanced. And I think the game can be balanced with this feature as well.
Boarding Crews: There exists a torch weapon, and the warheads also exist. But boarding crews don't care for faction modules not letting them place explosives (warheads) in front of locked doors. Also can boarding crews beamed onto the enemy ship. And if I put a hole in the hull, there are only system blocks. Where do the humans walk that opperate this ship? Some roleplay designed ships could ve 1m thick walls, and public permitted doors. But all the other stuff that needs to be there in a sandbox to make it possible is not jet planned or added: sticking to hull, using explosives, disabling systems like shields if you stand in front of them inside the ship. Nice try with the warheads and torch weapon, but there could be done so much more: Normally zero points because it is just not working to be fun, but there are the 3 things allready in the game: torch, warheads and the possibilty to build rp-style boardable ships. 1/10
Rotation of ships: Giving the front nose to your enemy is actually the only position you want to mantain with the current combat mechanics. Having many flac turrets on your ship is more a disadvantage, because many fighters never attack you anyway (the server owner don't encourage such battles). But it could be done so its not impossible: 4/10 (make fights with more participants happen 10 times a day instead of once in a week and I might have to give more points because it might get practised in reality)
Positioning of ships relative to each other: Every combat situation that happens sooner or later happens in a distance smaller than 1 sector. I never heard of a sniper utilising its long range lock on missiles. But its possible. And only lock on missiles are usefull. Beam-Beam actually has a big disadvantage because it only destroy maximum of 1 block per tick. (or did it get fixed?!). So the weapons are not there for this kind of stuff. 4/10
Carriers: Well we have capitals. But carriers need crews to flight the fighters that the carrier drops into the battle. And there are no people playing this game to get a 5v5 regularly (like 10 times a day and not only once a week). But it's possible to build such thing. With the current set up of combat carriers just don't make real sense. You can make up some rp-rules to implement a carrier sense. But we are talking about how combat is with the weapons right now, and not how we can force it to be by bend the gameplay with 100 rp-rules. 0/10
###
Don't get me wrong: I like Starmade non the less. But I needed to rant about the combat so badly. Thx if you readed up to here.
Last words about capitals:
I did never take into accout that there might be a war over ressources. Territorial stuff and everything that goes into political direction is nothing I wrap my head around when I imagine combat. So if a 1km long ship in Starmade costs 40 days to mine - it is not important for actual combat, the real time combat and the fun that comes out of it. I only think of the action in the first place, the political ressource aspect has a place in my politics image, but not in combat as OP wants to discuss it. I just mention this, because some guys around here build capitals so big and precious, they never us it. Ofcourse you get no action if you don't make mass producable ships. Have fun building and being creative, I respect that. But try to be flexible in your thinking when you want more fights and don't expect much fights with some capitals when they are a ressource (and perfomance) hog.
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Since large ship combat for all purposes is derpy-ish dog fighting (being that hull mounted weapons are better then turrets). Why not just implement a scaling system on energy usage per block in the primary weapon computer. For example (just random numbers not real figures).
Primary Weapons system only introduce a scale since the secondary and tertiary are just modifiers of the primary.
If a single block on the primary cost 10 energy/second (e/s).
Scale it up so that the first 1000 blocks of the Primary Weapon (over all count not per group) cost the base 10 e/s
The next 500 (1000-1500) cost 20% more per block 12 e/s but damage still scales has is normal.
Next 500 (1500-2000) increases again another 20% to 14.4 e/s per block with damage still scaling as normal.
Then keep at the plus 20% base for each 500 more after that.
This would still allow for rather high end alpha striking Capital ships, but the incredible energy drain should keep this to specialized (doom weapons only) and since 1000 or less is most efficient allow for turrets and smaller ships to give better bang for the size.
Primary Weapons system only introduce a scale since the secondary and tertiary are just modifiers of the primary.
If a single block on the primary cost 10 energy/second (e/s).
Scale it up so that the first 1000 blocks of the Primary Weapon (over all count not per group) cost the base 10 e/s
The next 500 (1000-1500) cost 20% more per block 12 e/s but damage still scales has is normal.
Next 500 (1500-2000) increases again another 20% to 14.4 e/s per block with damage still scaling as normal.
Then keep at the plus 20% base for each 500 more after that.
This would still allow for rather high end alpha striking Capital ships, but the incredible energy drain should keep this to specialized (doom weapons only) and since 1000 or less is most efficient allow for turrets and smaller ships to give better bang for the size.
Lukwan
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To improve combat...
This would be a good place to start.
https://starmadedock.net/threads/ai-improvements-and-priority-list.27360/unread
-I would like to have some form of control over power-priorities within a ship.
-Proper AI target-selection options (see above).
-A Wing-commander role for fighter squadrons.
-Better fleet-commands and better fleet AI, piloting, reliability etc.
-Zoom function for weapons and cameras. Follow camera option for pilots.
-Meaningful crew roles, work-stations, duties.
-Improved Electronic Counter Measures (and ECCM). As in: an integrated system for sensors, scanners, jamming, cloaking to define another 'layer' of combat. (Maybe a heat-mechanic)
-Useful NPCs who can function as crew.
This would be a good place to start.
https://starmadedock.net/threads/ai-improvements-and-priority-list.27360/unread
-I would like to have some form of control over power-priorities within a ship.
-Proper AI target-selection options (see above).
-A Wing-commander role for fighter squadrons.
-Better fleet-commands and better fleet AI, piloting, reliability etc.
-Zoom function for weapons and cameras. Follow camera option for pilots.
-Meaningful crew roles, work-stations, duties.
-Improved Electronic Counter Measures (and ECCM). As in: an integrated system for sensors, scanners, jamming, cloaking to define another 'layer' of combat. (Maybe a heat-mechanic)
-Useful NPCs who can function as crew.
Spoolooni
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I don't find either better than the other. In fact, a good ship would implement both kinds of weapons, having guns dedicated to shoot whatever is front of you does warrant many advantages.
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I wrote out an answer to your question, but in the end it was such a massive post that I felt it really should be it's own thread, not buried off topic in another thread. Check out "How to build ball turrets".
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StarMade is a space game, not a sky-fight game. You seem to expect space ships to behave like air planes. Outmaneuvering mechanics are largely based on limitations due to aerodynamics and air resistance. In most space combat games I played, ships indeed acted more like planes, which probably explains your expectations. Should Schine add artificial limitations to meet unrealistic expectations?
How?
What to do about that?
How is it the game's fault, if players don't use existing and working mechanics?
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Do you mean what to do about the seeking of a certain type battles or of the rotational position of ships?
To the sky fight refference: it was an example, so you get what I am talking about. Shiphandling and outmanouvering an enemy can improved imo. You agree?
Bascially you disagree with me, did I understand that right? Thats fine, just wondering if you disagree to my entire thoughts or the particular questioned things.
I just wanted to say what I imagined could be done in space fight games, and compared it to the way Starmade does it. I mean the combat system is not in a state where we could say: hey lets improve the existing system. It is so light in its tactical depth that I can make up totally new stuff as well, and look what could be done to have that image in Starmade. So we can think in different approaches (that are implementable ofc) as well and wish for stuff as long as the existing stuff (only talking about combat system) is not really well glued together.
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Both.
Ship handling yes, but outmaneuvering not without adding artificial limitations.
That depends on whether you can come up with good solutions.
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Ah. Okay. Is that even possible? Because for bigger combat mechanic changes it is needed to know what the devs are willed to code in.
I can say what type of gameplay I like to see, like saying boarding crews via:
- new close combat tools and
- a different door handling if I use a certain type of weapon also
- the ability to shut down the shield systems if I stand directly in front of a block with a certain type of weapon (that has a big cooldown and fills out a big portion of the player cargo space)
- the ability to dock on an enemy ship
- the need for walkways on a ship so boarding does not lead into facing a huge wall of system blocks (is not neccessary: people can just build with some rp style most of big ship builder allready do)
- the ability to teleport onto the walkways of an enemy ship (walkways could be indicated by using some walkway block, or by using the npc walking algorithm - for the upcoming npc update it might be helpfull to have such block)
- and maybe only be able to teleport if you are docked to the enemy ship, or its shields are down (so breaking the hull can be simulated by docking to the ship and then have to charge the teleport into the ship depending on hull to system ratio of the boarded ship)
But I know that the devs might not even lightly consider it because they are too busy coding other stuff for the game. And even if they might want to take my suggestion into account, I am pretty sure it is 500 miles away from their vision of combat. So if I don't know how they want combat to look like, why should I try to think out a new combat system in detail? I need to know what tools and mechanics is within the development scope to make suggestions that are usefull and are more precise.
But the devs don't give any new clues what mechanics for the combat (not politics or npc factions or fleet stuff) are planned or even possible to implement.
So you understand why I only suggest stuff that has not that many thought to the end solutions? I fear getting ignored, or to spam the forum with too much text. I mean I like my suggestions, but all the suggestions that propose entirely new stuff instead of working with the small set of mechanics the devs have coded in now, get ignored anyway in the suggestions forum.
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I haven't done much combat yet and most of what I have done has been PvE against pirates. Right now the biggest problem to me is performance. Ships tend to teleport and jump around which makes it easy to lose track of them and hard to hit or keep a missile lock. It's difficult for me to brainstorm how to improve combat until the performance aspects are improved.
I guess I would like to see more small-arms stuff in the game. More hand weapons, stealth suits, personal shields, etc. Storming an enemy ship with a squad of Marines would be a blast as long as we can get performance improvements to make it run better as a first-person shooter game.
I guess I would like to see more small-arms stuff in the game. More hand weapons, stealth suits, personal shields, etc. Storming an enemy ship with a squad of Marines would be a blast as long as we can get performance improvements to make it run better as a first-person shooter game.
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The suggestion forum is full of people, who have no clue what the devs are willed to do, including me. This doesn't keep us from spamming walls of text, if we think it makes sense. Use formatting, give it a catchy and non-misleading title and hope for the best. If it gets ignored, well, shit happens. Many things I suggested are ignored, some other things aren't, just keep trying. Even if schema liked every single suggestion, he could only use a small fraction of them.
Regarding boarding, I'm not interested in it, and I don't want to build my ships in an easily boardable way. But what you write sounds interesting, and I'm sure there are people who might like it.