Buff warhead damage/radius poll [Remastered]

[MacThule]

I agree that they are a bit too weak for their intended purpose - warfare (through probably more commando, guerilla, and breach ops than toe-to-toe ship combat). Probably only a little though; if they could be spawned individually as separate entities (the way a core is) but with a timed lifespan (to avoid tons of warheads eating up the database) they'd make fantastic shaped charges for breach ops and the like; currently they can be used for that, but are extremely clumsy.

I think that calling them troll tools might even be giving them too much credit. The worst a troll could do to someone's ship without investing at least as much work as it took to build that ship in the first place (which is then a pretty committed strategy and not something I, personally, think I would consider "trolling"), is key their paint job. Anyone with an expensive ship has very little to fear from them if they have a working shipyard.

At worst they can be used as a very minor nuisance or irritant that shouldn't even bother anyone since the level of block damage they can inflict represents a single click of the mouse to repair in terms of mining resource value. The only potential I can imagine for trolling is keying the paint on someone who thinks they are invincible because "30m shields!!1" and honestly I think if that upsets someone by undermining their uberness and desire to unassailably dominate a server then maybe that's more about their sense of "perspective" than about someone weaker futilely lashing out at them somehow being an exploitative use of warheads. Breach with torch and warhead are sort of the natural balance to the other side of trolling - the one man faction with his titan.

In terms of ACTUAL troll tools I think that logic is far superior; I've seen players literally create logic bombs and use them to down entire servers. In terms of trolling bang for your buck, if we are going to treat any block as a troll block it should be logic. Or ship cores - forget using warheads to breach an enemy ship or structure, you can just core-rape your way in in seconds and torch them out of the core and shoot them in the face if you want to exploit the features of a block to upset someone, which makes cores far more conducive to 'trolling' than warheads in their current state.

Personally I don't think any block in the game particularly enables or lends itself to trolling more than it does its intended purpose at this point. Unless warheads get some kind of totally OP buff in the future, I think it might be time to stop thinking of them as "dirty" weapons.

At the moment, the one way I can think of to leverage warheads to get any sort of even marginal combat use out of them outside of breach ops would be in a suicidally dangerous surgical strike against a rail block of some kind to blast off or disable a turret or other DE (fighter, armor, etc).

 

[Az14el]

They can still totally be used in an arguably dirty manner (bombing someones stuff with neutral entities so they don't get any notification)
But in regular use if you take a full warhead swarm to the face in your titan it's probably your fault, I've seen proper swarm defence take out over 200 of my torps before they were able to hit from 4-5km range, under really heavy lag conditions as it was during a titan fight, couple of seconds of beam fire from a dozen-ish already distracted turrets was enough in that case.

However now on pre-build it seems we can fleet them and order them to cloak & jam, sure that will up the cost but looking forward to seeing just how small, cheap & stackable I could make those

 

[EricBlank]

At the moment theyre not super useful in combat. Some buffs would do to help on that front. We need other changes to them as well to combat misuse in destroying others property without provoking war or defense turrets to shoot at them. On that front we'll need several different mechanics to ensure someone that used a warhead to damage someone elses ship is properly identified as the culprit and reported to the owner of the ship, and defensive guns to fire at warheads specifically.

Perhaps if only warheads on entities owned by a faction and logic activated for at least ten seconds could be detonated? Such armed warheads can be targeted by entities set to fire at warheads and missiles. Theres not much that can be done about someone getting inside your ship and detonating a warhead there, but would require bomber craft to prepare their payloads at least 10 seconds in advance, making their payload a target if it can be detected in time, and a faction signature for the responsible party.

 

[AtraUnam]

They can still totally be used in an arguably dirty manner (bombing someones stuff with neutral entities so they don't get any notification)

I am so fucking sick of people using this example, You can do the exact same thing with regular weapons by putting them on a neutral entity and logic firing, its more effective too because unlike warheads, actual weapons can do more than scratch the paint.

 

[Mortiferum]

Ramming stations

Undo/ Redo command to literally glitch blocks of warheads into ships.

No

 

[Calhoun]

Asnippity

 

[AtraUnam]

And that is an blatant exploit, which needs to be fixed, it has no place in the game in any form. Just like the exploits you can do with warheads.

Atra, as one of the key players in discovering exploits and abusing them as much as possible "until they get fixed" you of all people should not very well how blatantly overpowered warheads are when combined with one of the many exploits involving them.

Actualy in recent updates warheads can no longer bug in those ways, docked warheads simply don't explode at all and regular warheads explode as normal no matter how hard you smash them into the target. As it is they are working exactly as intended. Even with things like using the undo button to make them appear in the target they still don't do the thing where they explode 50 times. You can actually find these fixes in some of the recent changelogs.

As for removing feautres simply because they don't work perfectly yet that would involve removing:

• Warheads
• Pulses
• Power
• Rails
• AI in every shape and form
• Collisions
• Motion effects
• Warpgates
• Jumpdrives.

 

[AtraUnam]

Ok fuck it I guess, lets just remove every mechanic that isn't prefect immediately or you guys don't happen to like, no point discussing it anymore we'll just balance the game around exploits rather than actually fixing things.
[doublepost=1492350797,1492350327][/doublepost]

You CAN NOT do the same thing with regular unfactioned weapons,

I directly tested this less than 5 minutes ago you very much can.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

See, the problem is people only want see their own side of the story.

- Capital players who shield tank with 50m shielded titans want to stay invincible when in actuality, the probability of a titan being critically damaged by warheads, in combat, regardless of damage is abysmally low; provided you can even hit with the damn thing.

- Players who don't care to design onboard station/titan security want to remain immune to boarding and theft without using home base protection. My question; why would you leave something undocked or on a non-home-base structure that you can't afford to lose? Do you leave the doors to your car or apartment unlocked at night too?

- Stealth warheads and other exploits. Seriously? If you have to resort to using these lame tactics, you're nothing but a griefer. Server admins are dropping the ball by letting jack asses like you continue to play on their systems. Meanwhile, honest players need to vote with their feet; and boycott those servers.

Regarding...

- Warheads: A buff IS needed; as is a counter to exploits and griefing. Plenty of ideas were thrown around in other threads but people couldn't stop arguing long enough to work on one.

- Pulses: Both types SUCK... Their range is too short. The push system throws the target into a wild spin (if it even moves it at all) and the damage system is to weak to be useful for anything but fireworks.

- Power: works but encourages gaint-ism due to the constant focus on regen. "I can't beat you so I'll build a bigger ship..."

- Rails: Most rails are fine. Pickup points are janky as fuck.

- AI: Don't get me started on good ol' "Bob"...

- Collisions: One word... LAG.

- Motion effects: Stop does NOT negate black hole gravity. Offensive push throws the target into a wild spin and knocks it sideways. Defensive push and pull are listed as partially bugged.

- Warpgates: P.I.T.A. to set up. They give no indication of their connection status or destination.

- Jumpdrives: Meh, I'll give it a pass.

Spoiler

 

[kulbolen]

- Capital players who shield tank with 50m shielded titans want to stay invincible

couldnt resist laughing at this one
[doublepost=1492355834,1492355640][/doublepost]i was under the impression this was a config option that any server owner can already tailor to their liking. i was also under the impression a few servers already experimented with it.

 

[AtraUnam]

Seriously enlight me please:

How you CAN use a "neutral weapon" to get down an entity whitout both entities stay on a similar mass? [Remember bobby AI is ON, and that is vs player as apparently you are saying, vs npc factions neutral weapons are NOT equal usefull as warheads]

Me barely being able to understand the grammar asside. Button on entity A, via wireless triggers weapon on entity B. Entity B will do damage without provoking any kind of response.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

Snippity Snip

Since in your whole 4 posts, you weren't part of any of our previous discussion on warheads, you really have no idea why I made that statement. A knee jerk reaction is just what I'd expect from the uninformed.

Also in sci-fi, there are plenty of shield piercing/shield ignoring weapons;
- The ion pulse cannon from Master of Orion II
- Transphasic torpedoes from Star Trek Voyager.
- ALL Dominion weaponry pierced Federation shields in the begining of Star Trek Deep Space 9.

Since you asked, i'll pick your statements apart now.

Warheads have the capability completely disable a ship or station of any size with little to no risk to the warhead user with ease and if given enough time, can completely destroy said ship or station.

IF you can hit the ship and IF your station isn't home base protected. But you didn't read that part of my post did you?

Combined with cloaking mechanics, warheads are the weapon of choice for disabling faction claims or reverse fp servers, why risk a fleet to disable a heavily defended battlestation when you can simply destroy it with a warhead cloaker with zero risk to yourself throughout the entire course of the attack. Worst of all, they dont even need to completely destroy it, they can simply detonate the docking ports of the battlestation faction claims turrents and make said stations unable to fight back against any attacking force that can come and finish the job. Keep in mind that warheads completedly ignore all shields on the entity it hits and does direct armor and structure damage. You need 1 or 2 warheads per turrent and a cloaker to completely disable any and all offensive capabilities a station has which can allow for a defencless station to be destroyed by a fleet with no risk to the fleet.

- Warheads can be put on small drone fleets and sent to attack a large ship/station to make a cheap server crashing device.
On servers where collision damage is enabled, warheads can be used to damage homebases without needing to drain a factions FP using some easily exploited bugs.

These issues have a lot more to do with player behavior and known exploits than the warheads themselves. I guess you missed that part where we were discussing counters to this behavior; with your 4 posts and all.

Now, do you want to discuss this rationally and work to a solution or do you want to continue to drown in the Koolaid without knowing the flavor?
[doublepost=1492373064,1492371728][/doublepost]This game isn't ready for the kind of building people are trying to do in multi-player. That was the basis of the past discussions on this topic. With the insane mining bonuses that virtually all servers allow, players build or download the biggest ships they can until lag sets in. The game is now one of size and attrition rather than skill or design quality.


I'll have to partially agree with Arkudo in that shields (as an extension from the power system) do in fact, encourage giantism. The game has basically become "how much shielding can I pack on?" and "how do I boost my power so I can fit a bunch of big guns?" No more dog fights. No evasive manuvers or targeting vital systems. Just pack on power weapons and shields, kill whatever's smaller than you and run from whatever's bigger. BORING!

And the instant we talk about a way to balance the game so that anyone who is reasonably equipped to fight CAN fight, people want to bitch about exploits. How about you post a suggestion on how to fix the exploits then?

Some players seem to think that I press for warheads because I can't build large. The truth is; I'm simply not interested in a size-based arms race. I've already seen where such things lead. ...and that is; to a server filled with giant ships that stay docked at home-base; so as not to scratch the paint. Meanwhile, every new player who doesn't join a capital flying faction has to run to the edge of the galaxy or get curb stomped.

 

[kulbolen]

ion and overdrive actively counter high shield builds. if people would try actually putting some real offense on their ships theyd know that "lololinvincibleshieldtank" isnt a thing, and you dont need a huge ship to counter it. if you cant kill something, its because you have poor offense, not because its too big or too tanky.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

Or... You weren't properly matched to begin with.

 

[kulbolen]

i agree, but even in that scenario, the small ship if properly armed could take down the big ships shields, albeit itd probably be destroyed before it had that chance

 

[Dr. Whammy]

i agree, but even in that scenario, the small ship if properly armed could take down the big ships shields, albeit itd probably be destroyed before it had that chance

No...

There is no ship in the 100 meter range that can generate enough power to drop the shields of a properly outfitted capital. You get about 170,000-200,000 DPS out of a 2 million softcap frigate using ion weapons. If you can't beat 200k+ shield regen, you're fucked. Turn the ship around, then tuck your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye as the capital launches 50 million damage in swarmers at you...

 

[kulbolen]

There is no ship in the 100 meter range that can generate enough power to drop the shields of a properly outfitted capital. You get about 170,000-200,000 DPS out of a 2 million softcap frigate using ion weapons.

youre wrong

 

[Dr. Whammy]

youre wrong

I think not but now would be a good time for you to explain why you think so.
[doublepost=1492374855,1492374766][/doublepost]Unless you want to prove your point with a 100 x 100 x 100 death brick... then sure; go ahead and build sloppy.

 

[kulbolen]

I think not but now would be a good time for you to explain why you think so.

youre objectively wrong. i dont think so, its simply a fact. but i suppose i can explain it since

for starters, 2 mil e/s will drive 400k ion dps, not 170-200k. 2nd, 100m is a length, not a size, i can pack plenty of mass into 100m for strong guns. (nice edit on your post to try to compensate for that fact btw) 3rd, if a large ship fires swarmers at a small ship, and the small ship pilot isnt incompetent, theyll never hit him. lastly, you specified 2 mil as a condition as if thats somehow a limit people cant just..go past, but you can get way more than 400k dps in a "frigate." (or at least what i consider one, whatever that is, since its a subjective term)

theres more going on, but fact is, youre wrong. the big ship, if built properly, should probably still win due to time to kill and sheer firepower, but the small ship if left alone and built well could potentially be a threat.

anyway this started as me agreeing w you in a post about warheads, if you feel like arguing about facts with me, we can do it in another post or privately eh?

 

[Dr. Whammy]

youre objectively wrong. i dont think so, its simply a fact. but i suppose i can explain it since

for starters, 2 mil e/s will drive 400k ion dps, not 170-200k. 2nd, 100m is a length, not a size, i can pack plenty of mass into 100m for strong guns. (nice edit on your post to try to compensate for that fact btw) 3rd, if a large ship fires swarmers at a small ship, and the small ship pilot isnt incompetent, theyll never hit him. lastly, you specified 2 mil as a condition as if thats somehow a limit people cant just..go past, but you can get way more than 400k dps in a "frigate." (or at least what i consider one, whatever that is, since its a subjective term)

theres more going on, but fact is, youre wrong. the big ship, if built properly, should probably still win due to time to kill and sheer firepower, but the small ship if left alone and built well could potentially be a threat.

anyway this started as me agreeing w you in a post about warheads, if you feel like arguing about facts with me, we can do it in another post or privately eh?

No thanks. This debate started with you claiming that the smaller ship "if properly equipped" can take that capital's shields down; something I can assure you is impossible.

You can argue semantics and technicalities all you want but the truth is you won't be able to achieve what you're saying without...
1) additional power to drive the guns. 2 million was mentioned since that's the point of diminishing returns for a ship the size of the one in the picture.
2) giving up any semblance of shields, armor or maneuverability to fit all that extra power and weaponry
3) going the death brick route; thus increasing volume and mass in other directions. Hence; a bigger ship.

Do you want to talk warheads now? Because I'm not interested in another straw man's argument trap.