Suggestion for missile slave on beams and cannons

[GDPR 302420]

You can bring the exact same aguments against every missile or pulse layout (cause AoE), rapid fire layout (cause in combat you spread countless bullets over your enemy) or the concept of weapon waffeling (wich is a shotgun without spread)

Thing is, waffling cannons does not spread, thus your ability for area saturation is limited by how tall and wide you build your waffle.

As for missiles, unless your ships is tiny, the only weapon with enough AOE for this argument to apply to would be missile + pulse, but missile pulse drawbacks make them basicly useless.

And pulse.... if you honestly think that pulse is useful in any ship to ship scenario, I have bad news for you bud.

Spread weapons like what the OP is proposing are not limited by waffle size, and for the reasons I explained above would be overpowered, especialy in Systems 2.0

And thats without getting into preformance issues.

So while you are correct in that my argument can be applied to already existing weapons, the implications are much worse is the proposed spread weapons as opposed to existing weapons.

 

[madman Captain]

Thing is, waffling cannons does not spread, thus your ability for area saturation is limited by how tall and wide you build your waffle.

As for missiles, unless your ships is tiny, the only weapon with enough AOE for this argument to apply to would be missile + pulse, but missile pulse drawbacks make them basicly useless.

And pulse.... if you honestly think that pulse is useful in any ship to ship scenario, I have bad news for you bud.

Spread weapons like what the OP is proposing are not limited by waffle size, and for the reasons I explained above would be overpowered, especialy in Systems 2.0

And thats without getting into preformance issues.

So while you are correct in that my argument can be applied to already existing weapons, the implications are much worse is the proposed spread weapons as opposed to existing weapons.

And when you just limit the penetration depth of this weapons this shouldent be a problem.
Exsample: Give rapidfire and shotgun layout a limited block penetration and increase it on sniper and pulse(Artillery) layouts make the weapon layouts more interesting in what they can and let them feel a lot more authentic.

 

[Lucidess]

The changes that can already be made to beam and cannon slaves are quite interesting, like simply adding more bullets for cannon/missile, faster tick rate for beam/cannon, and so on. I will say it again, they can be changed today and the devs will likely try to keep the values the exact same as it was because making the weapons "unbalanced" is such an anal issue. Good luck on changing it though because it NEEDS IT. NEEDS it. NEEDS. NEE-

 

[GDPR 302420]

And when you just limit the penetration depth of this weapons this shouldent be a problem.
Exsample: Give rapidfire and shotgun layout a limited block penetration and increase it on sniper and pulse(Artillery) layouts make the weapon layouts more interesting in what they can and let them feel a lot more authentic.

So place a hardcap on the amount of internal damage it can do? You have turned an overpowered weapon into a useless one.

 

[Zekester81]

Out of all this, I like the idea of a randomized spread on shots with missile as slave. I have used CanxMsl as a secondary weapon for my AMS. Get a rapid fire CanxCan with a CanxMsl next to it to hit any missiles that are near the missile that is the focus of the AMS.

 

[madman Captain]

So place a hardcap on the amount of internal damage it can do? You have turned an overpowered weapon into a useless one.

I dont would go that far, I would call it a change of purpose fields. You know you not go on tankhunt with a maschinegun and a shootgun, or? And you not try to take down fighterjets with a shipartillery. Make weapons usefull by giving them a purpose field to do their job in that purpose field, and not make a few weapons omnipresent in every purpose field. And most important: Make sure that the weapons feel autentic.

 

[GDPR 302420]

I dont would go that far, I would call it a change of purpose fields. You know you not go on tankhunt with a maschinegun and a shootgun, or? And you not try to take down fighterjets with a shipartillery. Make weapons usefull by giving them a purpose field to do their job in that purpose field, and not make a few weapons omnipresent in every purpose field. And most important: Make sure that the weapons feel autentic.

You can call it whatever you want.

Your suggestion of "limiting penetration" is a hardcap to damage which makes the weapon useless, you can call it something that doesnt sound as bad but that doesnt change how much of a terrible idea that is for ANY WEAPON

 

[Dire Venom]

Just my 2c, but I feel that if trying to force the weapon into a shotgun style weapon isnt working there no reason why we can't be open to other viable and realistic interpretations. E.g Fragmentation rounds or other suggestions here.
I find the current shotgun interpretation to be flawed as it is simply worse than it's counterparts.
Its effective distance is also limited due to spread, most pellets are liable to miss. Where as a cannon shot is less likely to waste damage due to spread or effective ranges or ship silhouette.
When testing I was very disappointing with the results. I often found the spread and bullets bugged, in-effective and worse in every way to a cannon.

Hopefully a new implementation can be agreed on and integrated in an effective manner.

Tbh I've always been keen on some type of burst/explosive/flak weapon, however balance is always a difficulty.

Obviously the performance issues arising from such weapons is another issue in it's self.

 

[Cluwne]

Whenever you suggest flak, aka "frag" or fragmentation, rounds I want you to think hard about when and why would it explode.
Unless it's set to something simple like exploding after t seconds or l meters, it's going to need plenty of processor time to continuously scan the area for targets and whatnot.
And remember, we're dealing with dozens of such rounds.

 

[Coyote27]

Just my 2c, but I feel that if trying to force the weapon into a shotgun style weapon isnt working there no reason why we can't be open to other viable and realistic interpretations. E.g Fragmentation rounds or other suggestions here.

Tbh I've always been keen on some type of burst/explosive/flak weapon, however balance is always a difficulty.

Obviously the performance issues arising from such weapons is another issue in it's self.

If it could come out working like the bursters in SotS 1, I'd be thrilled. They were a perennial favorite of mine.

Whenever you suggest flak, aka "frag" or fragmentation, rounds I want you to think hard about when and why would it explode.
Unless it's set to something simple like exploding after t seconds or l meters, it's going to need plenty of processor time to continuously scan the area for targets and whatnot.
And remember, we're dealing with dozens of such rounds.

I don't think a 3D volume check would need to be done every single frame, if that's what you're asking - 5 or 10 checks a second with rough bounding should make it burst in a near enough vicinity depending on the frag radius, and the calculation could possibly be further optimized in a couple of ways too, for example if it uses a lock-on mechanic versus a specific target then only the linear distance along the flight path toward that target would matter and no other entities would need to be checked.

 

[NaStral]

If the rate of fire, penetration depth of each "pellet" and number of pellets were properly adjusted than it wouldnt be op at all. Many of the issues with weapons right now could be ajusted by schine along with the randomization to the shotgun effect. TLDR: If the needed fundamental changes were made to weapons as a whole than it's viable.
[doublepost=1506184333,1506183979][/doublepost]As far as the issuse with performance a shotgun type weapon wouldnt negatively inpact performance any more than current systems. The performance issues are seperate and of greater inportance regardless. Schine still needs to improve performance more to establish a proper baseline. After that the weapon balance and necessary associated performance limits can be implimented.

 

[Dire Venom]

Just another quick tibbit, all weapons types have the same dps per block. Thus weapons are somewhat limited in what can be done with them (e.g to increase damage you have to add cooldown etc)

 

[Dr. Whammy]

Just another quick tibbit, all weapons types have the same dps per block. Thus weapons are somewhat limited in what can be done with them (e.g to increase damage you have to add cooldown etc)

Not quite. The explosion mechanic wastes a decent amount of "on paper" damage; making missiles and pulses less efficient than other weapons for DPS. Meanwhile, the penetration/scaling mechanic of beams and cannons still affects weapons based on their size.

Hopefully, all weapons will become equally useful when Schine updates everything.

 

[Cluwne]

There's the damage potential though.
Take beams - in most scenarios they are likely to hit their target, even the long-range beam/beam combo, even against a moving target.
On the other hand, cannon/beam is likely to miss against the same remote moving target. And even if they do hit anything, they could overpenetrate and waste the remaining damage.
Missiles either track their target, explode and vent half of the damage into space, or perform even worse than cannons.
Pulse primary ain't hitting shit at all.

On paper each and every combination should be equal-ish, real combat is another story altogether.
[doublepost=1506238102,1506237967][/doublepost]

Hopefully, all weapons will become equally useful when Schine updates everything.

 

[Calhoun]

Not quite. The explosion mechanic wastes a decent amount of "on paper" damage; making missiles and pulses less efficient than other weapons for DPS. Meanwhile, the penetration/scaling mechanic of beams and cannons still affects weapons based on their size.

Hopefully, all weapons will become equally useful when Schine updates everything.

Missiles have twice the DPS per block compared to cannons and beams to account for the loss (20 per block vs 10). Don't know about pulse but no one really cares anyway.

As for all weapons being useful, that will never happen. Some weapons have designed advantages that simply cannot be overcome, like the hitscan and range of Beam/Beam or the speed and tracking of Missile/Beam.

 

[GDPR 302420]

Not quite. The explosion mechanic wastes a decent amount of "on paper" damage; making missiles and pulses less efficient than other weapons for DPS. Meanwhile, the penetration/scaling mechanic of beams and cannons still affects weapons based on their size.

Hopefully, all weapons will become equally useful when Schine updates everything.

Once again you show your lack of knoweldge, Missiles have double the damage per block of normal weapons specificly to account for half of that damage in the AOE damaging empty space.

Please go learn about weapon mechanics and how they work before you start discussing weapon balance, if you are struggling I am more then happy to assist you.

 

[DrTarDIS]

Not quite. The explosion mechanic wastes a decent amount of "on paper" damage; making missiles and pulses less efficient than other weapons for DPS. Meanwhile, the penetration/scaling mechanic of beams and cannons still affects weapons based on their size.

Hopefully, all weapons will become equally useful when Schine updates everything.

yeah, i'm late to the party on this. Build a test rig, make 2 identical missile launchers. build a "target" with 2 cubes of basic hull.

first cube, flat face, second cube have a "tunnel" 1 block wide and say 5 deep so the missile impacts and explodes "inside". Do the math on blocks destroyed. Note the "waste" is not what you expected, or quite what the previous 2 talk about.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

yeah, i'm late to the party on this. Build a test rig, make 2 identical missile launchers. build a "target" with 2 cubes of basic hull.

first cube, flat face, second cube have a "tunnel" 1 block wide and say 5 deep so the missile impacts and explodes "inside". Do the math on blocks destroyed. Note the "waste" is not what you expected, or quite what the previous 2 talk about.

Yeah; I know about the tunnel effect and the double DPS. This is the best way to get good efficiency from explosions, vs other ranged weapons. Unfortunately, you cannot guarantee an internal systems hit with guided missiles since they arbitrarily target random system blocks, unlike the old days when you could "missile-drill" through the center of a target with M/B or M/P weapons. Meanwhile; you still lose damage on the back face of explosions. This is most noticeable when the target's shields are up but it has the same effect with hull/armor.

Regarding shields; the explosion mechanic caused significantly lower DPS vs shields in all my tests when using equal block counts for cannons and missiles. In a quick test I made, I used 20 missile blocks (400 DPS) and 20 cannon blocks (200 DPS) with no secondaries or effects to shoot a 1,400 shield fighter. The cannon dropped the shields in 9 seconds while the missile failed to drop the shields in its first shot (15 seconds worth of DPS used at once), despite having more than 300% of the "on-paper" DPS of the cannon. My past tests with larger shield capacities (my 20m shield test block for example) have always yielded similar results.

Regarding hull vs armor; In every test I've done since they reworked the explosion mechanic, missiles did very well against soft targets where cannons passed right through; wasting damage. In contrast, armored targets kept damage from spreading radially and I ended up with much better results with a C/C and in many cases, a C/B, as a target's armor got thicker. Using the same 20 cannon/ 20 missile rig from above, I fired at a standard armor target. One minute of continuous fire from the cannon destroyed 16 blocks. One minute with missiles destroyed only 12. I repeated the test; attempting to "drill" with missiles through the same hole and again got 12 blocks, using the cannons got me 19.

One other thing to consider; with larger missile arrays, you can destroy a ton of blocks (especially system) in a single hit but eventually, limitations from blast radius throw away all extra damage that wasn't already lost in the back face of the explosion or absorbed by weakened (but still online) shields.

 

[GDPR 302420]

Regarding shields; the explosion mechanic caused significantly lower DPS vs shields in all my tests when using equal block counts for cannons and missiles. In a quick test I made, I used 20 missile blocks (400 DPS) and 20 cannon blocks (200 DPS) with no secondaries or effects to shoot a 1,400 shield fighter. The cannon dropped the shields in 9 seconds while the missile failed to drop the shields in its first shot (15 seconds worth of DPS used at once), despite having more than 300% of the "on-paper" DPS of the cannon. My past tests with larger shield capacities (my 20m shield test block for example) have always yielded similar results.

Your point would be valid if missiles were a DPS weapon, but they are not a DPS weapon, they are an alpha strike weapon.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

Your point would be valid if missiles were a DPS weapon, but they are not a DPS weapon, they are an alpha strike weapon.

I suppose you missed the part where I was responding to the person who originally said "All weapons have the same DPS"? Perhaps you also missed the part where multiple people responded back with the "double DPS compensation" deal, which by the numbers, apparently isn't as clear cut as everyone thought.

Now that you mention it, a numeric comparison of missile efficiency and other weapon types is valid and highly relevant to this thread.

Then again, you oppose ANY kind of rebalance so the concept of comparing numeric data for that expressed purpose was obviously lost on you.