Pretty but effective turrets. Discussion of a solution.

[TheGeek007]

In most PVP builds, turrets are massive objects that often dwarf the ships they are attached to. I've encountered this problem on almost all of the capital ships I have tried to build. To do meaningful damage, and to use a significant amount of available power, weapons systems often are a large percentage of the mass of a warship. This means that effective turrets are very large and unwieldy, and honestly look horrible. So I set out to consider a solution, and get feedback from the community.

This problem is especially apparent with the new AI Faction ships, which are designed around a more RP approach. They have lots of room for yet to be implemented crew, and wouldn't stand much of a chance vs a PVP build. But they sure do look nice.

Yes, I am aware that there is the "Overdrive" effect, that does 6x the damage for 10x the power. I have done some designs and have found that even with overdriven turrets, the designs end up being large and unwieldy.

First solution: adjust how much power and damage weapons blocks do, to scale them by a factor of 10x or more. This solves the problem, and allows RP ships to do more damage with fewer weapons blocks, and turrets can be smaller and keep the same effectiveness.
Drawbacks: This breaks all existing ship designs. Not ideal.

Second Solution: Make new set of weapons blocks that do 10x the damage at 10x the power. A "Capital Ship" class weapon set.
Drawbacks: Lots of work to create 8+ new blocks. These blocks would be redundant. Not ideal.

Third Solution: Make a new effect block: The Capital-Overdrive block. Same concept as the Overdrive, only scaled up for capital ship use. Would increase damage and power usage by 10x-25x. Testing would be needed to find the best balance of turret size. As the system is designed for capital ships, projectiles would be slower, and missile tracking would be negatively affected. This is to give a tradeoff for the damage added. Should require a significant amount of resources to produce, or use "unobtanium" to make. IE something hard to find, or using a new mechanic such as gas planet mining, or only available as a trade good from NPC factions.
Capital Overdrive used as a passive effect could either increase thrust and turn rate in exchange for increased power thrust cost, or increase thrust and turn speed in exchange for top speed.
Drawbacks: Allows for very powerful weapons at greatly reduced masses. Would change game balance greatly.

Fourth Solution: Introduce a new weapon, Capital Cannon(name WIP), that when fired, shoots a large, slow projectile. This weapon would do 10x-20x the damage as a cannon block, and take 10x-20x the power, travel 1/2 the speed of cannon, and have 1/2 the range of cannons, and have innate explosion effect. The blocks would use either a large amount of materials to create, or use a hard-to-get material.
Capital - Cannon: Increased rate of fire, less damage per second
Capital - Missile: umm shotgun? or perhaps limited tracking ability in exchange for less damage
Capital - Beam: Increased range, decreased fire rate, increased projectile speed (should still be slower than regular cannon shots)
Capitol - Pulse: High Damage, Long reload speed, even slower projectile
Note: anything with Capital as a secondary increases damage 10x-20x and increases power 10x-20x
Cannon - Capital: Reduced range, Reduced Projectile speed, Increased damage
Missile - Capital: High Damage, Less tracking ability, Less range, Less Projectile speed (basically torp/nuke)
Beam - Capital: High Damage, Reduced range.
Pulse - Capital: High Damage, Reduced range, slow expanding pulse
Capital - Capital: Very High Damage, 1/4 Range, 1/4 Projectile speed
Drawbacks: Adds complexity. Adds somewhat redundant weapon. Changes weapons balance, but less than Capital Overdrive block.

I'm hoping to spur some discussion on how this problem might be solved, if its worth solving at all. I do realize most of these solutions greatly affect the game balance. Thanks for reading my wall-o-text!

 

[Panpiper]

You are proposing a MASSIVE change in some of the fundamental mechanics that have been playtested to death. This to address a problem that frankly, I do not believe exists.

Introducing new weapons now, or changing the stats of old ones so as to break all previous builds, is simply impractical. The development is moving into the 4X side of the game (Finally!!!) and we have neither the time nor the patience to retest and redesign absolutely everything from the ground up for the next year while we put such new developments on hold, for we cannot build the game that defines why we fight until we have the mechanics down pat as to how we build and fight.

If you are looking at the Blood&Steel tournaments for your examples of PvP builds, you are making an error. Those ships are frankly relatively small ships, and yes, for their scale, a weapon designed to bust the advanced armor protection of similar PvP designs is going to be relatively large compared to their hull size. Their hull size was decided upon by the organizers to be sufficiently small as to not present an overwhelming cost to entry in terms of time to build. Those ships are NOT representative of what people would build in game for their 'RP' ships or for that matter, their PvP ships.

A 12K mass ship (the Blood&Steel size), is very likely in game to be an AI controlled ship. As such it is itself for all intents a flying turret. It does not need to have an independently aimed turret gun to fire while it's human pilot maneuvers. Such a ship will have it's main armor busting weapon inside the hull without creating a disproportionately massive turret external to it. Player flown cruisers are much more likely to be closer to 50K mass, and they might very well have such large turrets, but on such ships, their size is 'not' disproportionate.

 

[madman Captain]

You are proposing a MASSIVE change in some of the fundamental mechanics that have been playtested to death. This to address a problem that frankly, I do not believe exists.

If this "playtested to death", why than Pulses and Shotguns are completly useless and Beams curretly broken?

Why the most effective Weaponsysten ingame is this this stupid Cannon+Cannon system?
Just build a Titan sized MG and you win.

Introducing new weapons now, or changing the stats of old ones so as to break all previous builds, is simply impractical. The development is moving into the 4X side of the game (Finally!!!) and we have neither the time nor the patience to retest and redesign absolutely everything from the ground up for the next year while we put such new developments on hold, for we cannot build the game that defines why we fight until we have the mechanics down pat as to how we build and fight.

I dont think so.

Greetings citizens, ~

due to the scale of the update, its impact, and amount of parts, we unfortunately weren't able to release the NPC update this week. However, we created a video for you watch, outlining how the NPC factions will work.

Watch it here:


As mentioned in the video, an after and with the NPC faction update, AI will be revamped and upgraded on all fronts. It was always the plan to wait with that for NPC factions so all parts can come together. We also will adress and overhaul weapon/ship-structure/resource balances in these coming update circles.

Thanks for playing StarMade,

- the Schine team

Must I say more?

If you are looking at the Blood&Steel tournaments for your examples of PvP builds, you are making an error. Those ships are frankly relatively small ships, and yes, for their scale, a weapon designed to bust the advanced armor protection of similar PvP designs is going to be relatively large compared to their hull size. Their hull size was decided upon by the organizers to be sufficiently small as to not present an overwhelming cost to entry in terms of time to build. Those ships are NOT representative of what people would build in game for their 'RP' ships or for that matter, their PvP ships.

Indeed, they are NOT representative. So where is the error?

A 12K mass ship (the Blood&Steel size), is very likely in game to be an AI controlled ship. As such it is itself for all intents a flying turret. It does not need to have an independently aimed turret gun to fire while it's human pilot maneuvers. Such a ship will have it's main armor busting weapon inside the hull without creating a disproportionately massive turret external to it. Player flown cruisers are much more likely to be closer to 50K mass, and they might very well have such large turrets, but on such ships, their size is 'not' disproportionate.

But normaly we compare ships in the same size(mass) class. So please build me a turret based ship with NOT disproportionate sized turrets
that can keep up with an NOT turret based ship in the same size.

Also I hope that the future brings the possibility to ajust the AI that they show the Broadsides of ships to the enemy so that my AI fleets finally can fire Broadsides.

In most PVP builds, turrets are massive objects that often dwarf the ships they are attached to. I've encountered this problem on almost all of the capital ships I have tried to build. To do meaningful damage, and to use a significant amount of available power, weapons systems often are a large percentage of the mass of a warship. This means that effective turrets are very large and unwieldy, and honestly look horrible. So I set out to consider a solution, and get feedback from the community.

This problem is especially apparent with the new AI Faction ships, which are designed around a more RP approach. They have lots of room for yet to be implemented crew, and wouldn't stand much of a chance vs a PVP build. But they sure do look nice.

Yes, I am aware that there is the "Overdrive" effect, that does 6x the damage for 10x the power. I have done some designs and have found that even with overdriven turrets, the designs end up being large and unwieldy.

First solution: adjust how much power and damage weapons blocks do, to scale them by a factor of 10x or more. This solves the problem, and allows RP ships to do more damage with fewer weapons blocks, and turrets can be smaller and keep the same effectiveness.
Drawbacks: This breaks all existing ship designs. Not ideal.

Second Solution: Make new set of weapons blocks that do 10x the damage at 10x the power. A "Capital Ship" class weapon set.
Drawbacks: Lots of work to create 8+ new blocks. These blocks would be redundant. Not ideal.

Third Solution: Make a new effect block: The Capital-Overdrive block. Same concept as the Overdrive, only scaled up for capital ship use. Would increase damage and power usage by 10x-25x. Testing would be needed to find the best balance of turret size. As the system is designed for capital ships, projectiles would be slower, and missile tracking would be negatively affected. This is to give a tradeoff for the damage added. Should require a significant amount of resources to produce, or use "unobtanium" to make. IE something hard to find, or using a new mechanic such as gas planet mining, or only available as a trade good from NPC factions.
Capital Overdrive used as a passive effect could either increase thrust and turn rate in exchange for increased power thrust cost, or increase thrust and turn speed in exchange for top speed.
Drawbacks: Allows for very powerful weapons at greatly reduced masses. Would change game balance greatly.

Fourth Solution: Introduce a new weapon, Capital Cannon(name WIP), that when fired, shoots a large, slow projectile. This weapon would do 10x-20x the damage as a cannon block, and take 10x-20x the power, travel 1/2 the speed of cannon, and have 1/2 the range of cannons, and have innate explosion effect. The blocks would use either a large amount of materials to create, or use a hard-to-get material.
Capital - Cannon: Increased rate of fire, less damage per second
Capital - Missile: umm shotgun? or perhaps limited tracking ability in exchange for less damage
Capital - Beam: Increased range, decreased fire rate, increased projectile speed (should still be slower than regular cannon shots)
Capitol - Pulse: High Damage, Long reload speed, even slower projectile
Note: anything with Capital as a secondary increases damage 10x-20x and increases power 10x-20x
Cannon - Capital: Reduced range, Reduced Projectile speed, Increased damage
Missile - Capital: High Damage, Less tracking ability, Less range, Less Projectile speed (basically torp/nuke)
Beam - Capital: High Damage, Reduced range.
Pulse - Capital: High Damage, Reduced range, slow expanding pulse
Capital - Capital: Very High Damage, 1/4 Range, 1/4 Projectile speed
Drawbacks: Adds complexity. Adds somewhat redundant weapon. Changes weapons balance, but less than Capital Overdrive block.

I'm hoping to spur some discussion on how this problem might be solved, if its worth solving at all. I do realize most of these solutions greatly affect the game balance. Thanks for reading my wall-o-text!

I really like the third and fourth idea, but instead of increasing thrust/turn it should reduce thrust/turn and Turret tracking speed for increased power output and shields.(Because they are LARGE ships they are should not react like Fighters, and the reduced turret tracking make smaller ships and fighters not complety unnecessary/chanceless.)

 

[ToddoftheYear]

Also I hope that the future brings the possibility to ajust the AI that they show the Broadsides of ships to the enemy so that my AI fleets finally can fire Broadsides.

You can already do this. It's called building sideways.

 

[philthy mcnasty]

I have some issues with the current weapon systems. I think one solution would be a higher tier of advanced weapons made in the advanced factory.

These would have a more expensive cost, but have different effects.

for example: phaser banks. you can make a connected ring around your ship, and target seen via any camera can be hit by the phasers. They would be like a short to mid range continuous beam weapon.

another example would be a plasma cannon. It would be like an anti matter cannon, but it would shoot a damage pulse sized projectile. it would have a slow cool down, use a lot of power, but have a lot of damage.

then there is the stellar converter: it generates and stores it's own power very slowly, and it only fires from it's stored power. However, a large bank can destroy a planet. If it is damaged while over half charge, it will blow up, dealing damage based on the charge.

The reason why i want to see this, is because of all the room in the factory blocks. I would like to see more multi block recipes. I also would not mind advanced compact weaponry as well. these would be weapons made with 1 built in effect, but pay for the compact nature with an increased power consumption.

 

[Batavium]

I agree weaponblocks do not do enough damage per block. But i am spoiled in that regard as back in the old days you could make a 10 block nuke and it would make a 50 block hole. Good times good times but those day are over.

Beware that what you ask for is already in the game. Everything is data driven as server admin and yes even in single player. You can change all aspects of this game. You can change energy, damage and even totaly new blocks with their own look.

There are some servers out there that make use of this. Some do it remarkably well.

Here is an Example of server that has been running with a fully custom config for years.

Sun World

 

[DrTarDIS]

Go into your block config, alter the numbers, find something that works better, show the results.
Everything in this thread passes the buck((kicks the can, etc), when YOU HAVE THE TOOLS to playtest and come up with better balance yourself. Get off your ass and find that better setting, THEN complain about defaults.
Less QQ, moar pew-pew.

 

[Cluwne]

Fifth Solution: Introduce new block pair - Emitter+Emitter Enhancer, a middle ground between single-block death ray turrets and AA that dwarfs the ship it's mounted on.
In essence, it is a weapon-like system that channels a weapon/salvage/%what_have_you% array.
Multiple emitters can channel one array, but if one emitter fires, others will have to wait for the channeled array to reload.

Efficiency (aka damage and power draw) of the channeling depends on size of the channeled array.
To improve the efficiency you put down enhancers. Not a whole lot, but you can't get away with dozen enhancers to get 100% efficiency for an array the size of a planetoid either. Still, the resulting turret will be much smaller.

As a final touch: besides letting server admins have their way with ratios, emitters could have separate ratios for different weapon types alltogether. Tiny Star Trek-esque phaser laser turrets anyone?

 

[Goblin]

To do meaningful damage, and to use a significant amount of available power, weapons systems often are a large percentage of the mass of a warship.

Look at reallife battleships - they use a massive amount of space for there turrets too (also inside the hull).
The hull mounted weapon does that as well.

Thats also why i think your turret doesn't make so much damage than a front mounted weapon. It takes space to rotate but you get the benefit of a weapon not only fireing at targets right infront of you.

If you don't want to have ugly towers, try to hide parts of the tower under your hull. It will limit the firing angle but gets a big tower into something with only a few blocks outside the hull. There were even some got examples at the shipyard, but i must admit i couldn't find them any more.

And as DrTarDIS said, lots can be done via configuration
Most of the problems you descripe are rather a problem of balancing then a need for new mechanics. Fiddel around with it and post your enhancement ideas (i think this was the thread made up for such stuff: Game Balance Suggestions)

 

[TheGeek007]

Look at reallife battleships - they use a massive amount of space for there turrets too (also inside the hull).
The hull mounted weapon does that as well.

Actually, modern battleships large guns are a mere 5%-10% of their total size and mass. For something the size of a naval battleship in Starmade to have firepower to be effective and use up the power output, you would need turrets the size of a trident submarine. Sure, you could make it work in Starmade, but it look hella ugly.

In most sci-fi, even their most powerful weapons are relatively small for their damage output.

 

[Panpiper]

Actually, modern battleships large guns are a mere 5%-10% of their total size and mass. For something the size of a naval battleship in Starmade to have firepower to be effective and use up the power output, you would need turrets the size of a trident submarine. Sure, you could make it work in Starmade, but it look hella ugly.

In most sci-fi, even their most powerful weapons are relatively small for their damage output.

The turrets on this ship are exceedingly effective. Larger turrets would not make them 'more' effective. They already can break armor like it isn't there.

 

[Cluwne]

Look at reallife battleships - they use a massive amount of space for there turrets too (also inside the hull).

Except you can't tuck away most of the weapon modules beneath the hull because of how turrets are made nowadays. In other words you have to place all the dakka at the elevation part which is exactly what makes turrets unwieldy and ungodly large. Unless you make a spherical turret, which, ironically, would be better off with the old docking/turret system.

 

[TheGeek007]

The turrets on this ship are exceedingly effective. Larger turrets would not make them 'more' effective. They already can break armor like it isn't there.

Granted, your turrets likely do break armor fairly well, but thats only if the shields on the target ship have failed. And do these turrets use up a significant amount of your power output? If not, then if you built bigger turrets, they could do more damage, penetrate armor more deeply, and still have power to spare.

In fact I'd argue that your turrets there are a good example of what turrets ought to look like. However, I can assure you they wouldn't be very effective in a PVP scenario vs a ship with larger turrets.

Curious though, are you using overdrive effect on those turrets?

 

[Panpiper]

Except you can't tuck away most of the weapon modules beneath the hull because of how turrets are made nowadays. In other words you have to place all the dakka at the elevation part which is exactly what makes turrets unwieldy and ungodly large. Unless you make a spherical turret, which, ironically, would be better off with the old docking/turret system.

The above pictured ship does in fact use spherical turrets (normally called ball turrets). A good 60% of their weapon mass is under the hull. Check out my thread; "How to build ball turrets."
[doublepost=1479655805,1479654886][/doublepost]

Granted, your turrets likely do break armor fairly well, but thats only if the shields on the target ship have failed. And do these turrets use up a significant amount of your power output? If not, then if you built bigger turrets, they could do more damage, penetrate armor more deeply, and still have power to spare.

In fact I'd argue that your turrets there are a good example of what turrets ought to look like. However, I can assure you they wouldn't be very effective in a PVP scenario vs a ship with larger turrets.

Curious though, are you using overdrive effect on those turrets?

That ship believe it or not, is not actually a warship, but a planet busting super miner with it's salvage array buried behind the first two gun sections. To do the job of being an effective miner, it needs both high thrust/maneuverability and a really good jump system simply so it isn't a pain to fly. Despite the mass devoted to extra thrust, a 10% jump drive and a truly massive salvage array, the combined large turrets on this thing will alpha strike for 120 million damage. The warship variant of this that I have mentally constructed would be somewhat larger, pushing it truly into the Titan class, but would alpha for a full one billion damage. The turrets would not be all that much more noticeably bigger compared to the scale of the ship. Ball turrets really do help a lot in that regard.

I 'am' using overdrive in the small turrets, using what is frankly a bit of an exploit to power them. I use a short series of chain docked entities ending in a docked hull, each of which has it's own power generation. That power is inherited up the chain till it reaches the small turrets which do 20K dps as cannon/cannon and a smaller amount of stop effect on a smaller cannon/cannon (they are there for anti-drone, anti-torpedo defense and don't need to crack pierce hardened advanced armor). That trick is only useful for certain types of turrets, mainly those that do not require power storage in order to fire. For turrets that require storage to fire, you either want all power generated and stored on the turret (a really good idea for cannon/beam turrets), or you want it generated and stored inside the ship proper, where you can get the size bonuses of capacitor grouping. This last is best for missile/beam.

 

[BlokeWithHat]

Definitely agree that turrets are too often unwieldy and lumpy. Sure, for capital ships it's easy enough to shape decent designs with the scale we can work with. But anything small-ish, what I'd call frigates and the like, suffers from lump syndrome.

I think if weapon systems were the sum of the global constituents of the docked entity we'd be better off already. You can sink the structure into the ship hull, but there's only so much room in an actual barrel for cannon blocks.

If that fails to engine limitations, perhaps only buff detected turret blocks if it's on a swivel.

 

[philthy mcnasty]

I started playing around with docked entities and logic. Today's experiment are heat seeking missiles, with an overdrive effect module. They are docked to the ship, but produce their own power.

If i am satisfied with this, i may start playing around with other dumb fire, logic weapons. the big problem will be aiming.

If all works well, i can have a really nasty dreadnought that can survive prolonged combat with full support effects active.

 

[jayman38]

8 more weapon blocks are not too much to ask for. I think this would be a good opportunity to bring up ammo-fed weapons that do not require significant barrel size, but do require large cargo storage to hold the ammo. Then ammo can be passed up the chain to the barrel and fired out of a relatively tiny barrel, with the ammo itself defining the power of the turret. The catch? When the ammo runs out, those barrels are silent.

 

[TheGeek007]

8 more weapon blocks are not too much to ask for. I think this would be a good opportunity to bring up ammo-fed weapons that do not require significant barrel size, but do require large cargo storage to hold the ammo. Then ammo can be passed up the chain to the barrel and fired out of a relatively tiny barrel, with the ammo itself defining the power of the turret. The catch? When the ammo runs out, those barrels are silent.

I kinda like this idea! Every sci-fi universe i've ever seen or read has sciency high explosive thingies that are made out of unobtanium that are small, but do large amounts of damage. Some sort of torpedo/space bomb would be great for small bombers that could attack capitals. Even old fashioned kinetic bullet weapons could do some damage once shields were down.

Also, if you were allowed to slave turret rails to containers as you can with basic rails and rail dockers, you could have an ammunition feeding system so you don't need giant capacities on turrets. The controlling computers could be linked to storages that are then linked to cargo spaces.

This ammunition should come in various sizes, fighter, small, medium, large and do increasing damage and take up more space.

 

[Sachys]

This ammunition should come in various sizes, fighter, small, medium, large and do increasing damage and take up more space.

Why not warheads as a form of ammunition (as an example)?

 

[jayman38]

Why not warheads as a form of ammunition (as an example)?

I imagine warheads would be a critical component of ammo, but if warheads are ammo, then you are back to relying on the size of the weapon output to determine ammo power, which defeats the purpose of making small barrel weapons.