Remove firing arcs. Add targeting enhancements.

[Lecic]

Aim lead and aim assist should be chambers in the scanner tree, not something automatic to every ship. These are powerful bonuses and should not be given free.

 

[Valiant70]

I don't really see the point of this. In general, I only hull-mount weapons because I WANT a manually aimed weapon that can not be fooled by various Counter-AI mechanisms or because I want a weapon designed to be shot off into space like distractor missiles or waffles guns. If distractor missiles and waffles auto aimed at the enemy, this would cause them to malfunction when an enemy is near my crosshair rather than help them do as they are supposed to. You'd also have the issue of this messing with Salvager beams which the game engine would also have to address.

Anything you want to use aiming assistance on can already be put on a turret with an AI block set to fire on target. This is more useful than aiming assistance because it means that I don't have to manage that weapon system while I handle more important things like scanning, jamming, commanding drones, etc.

Aim assist should only kick in when the target is too far away to hit manually.

Firing arcs help with pixel-perfect aiming when you need to do something like hit a tall-skinny ship from >5 km. If you had to manually aim your ship, I'd suspect actually hitting things would become impossible with larger ships.

Aim-assist compensates for the few degrees of lost precision. This is a tried-and-true model I've seen used in at least two different games, and it's more enjoyable to use than Starmade's strange control scheme.
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Aim lead and aim assist should be chambers in the scanner tree, not something automatic to every ship. These are powerful bonuses and should not be given free.

Because they are so powerful, placing them on the chamber tree will only serve to make that part of the chamber tree a requirement rather than an option for combat-capable ships. Systems that are virtually required should not be a part of the chamber system, but should be built-in or separate systems. Lead aim is a simple calculation that I think should be included in a basic sensor package.

Now, I could see aim assist being a chamber or something because it's possible to fight without it. However, one can also make the equally-strong argument that once you've paid the tradeoffs to construct a long-range weapon, you shouldn't have to pay an additional price to be able to use it effectively.

The part I personally would include in a chamber effect is the ability to target a reactor with aim assist. It's a powerful bonus, but not required to use a *specific* kind of weapon. Rather, it's an offensive sensory perk just like being able to see the reactor in the first place.

 

[lupoCani]

Engineering a large turret shouldn't be easy

Shouldn't it?

I've specifically avoided debating this issue thus far. Seeing as it's rather besides the point, I'd like to keep it that way.

See, the problem with starmade dock is that you can't say anything in a remotely informal manner without everyone twisting your words til they scream and then jumping down your throat. Kindly remove yourself from my larynx.

I do concede it seems pedantic. Seeing as I noticed that as I wrote it, failed to find any better wording, and forgot to make any sort of disclaimer, I suppose I shall apologize for that.

I'll attempt to make it more concrete. God knows if I'll succeed.

Essentially, the issue isn't really if large turrets are expensive/hard or not. I'd argue they aren't in a number of cases. They're altogether different, for better or worse, promoting widely different design of the entire ship from the ground up.

What added difficulty or cost is balanced for an aim-able main gun is debatable. My objection is to having that specific feature of a ship be the most influential factor in ship design. These are two different things, and I would appreciate it if the latter weren't interpreted as "Of course there's a cost to getting a swivel".

If there's disagreement on that point too, and this is considered an acceptable consequence of powerful aimable weapons, then I stand by my original, pedantic-looking point.

 

[Valiant70]

Essentially, the issue isn't really if large turrets are expensive/hard or not. I'd argue they aren't in a number of cases. They're altogether different, for better or worse, promoting widely different design of the entire ship from the ground up.

I think it might actually be possible to put the gun on a swivel and still have it look like a normal cannon. It'll just be limited in how far it can swivel. Whether this is feasible or not depends on how much you want your gun to swivel. Unfortunately you're probably still going to be stuck with a large gun port or a rather long protruding barrel.

 

[Zoolimar]

Unfortunately you're probably still going to be stuck with a large gun port or a rather long protruding barrel.

Which is fine. It's better than normal guns that could be buried 50 meters under armor and other systems with no firing ports.

 

[Valiant70]

Which is fine. It's better than normal guns that could be buried 50 meters under armor and other systems with no firing ports.

Hey, at least it's still covered by shields, right?

 

[Nosajimiki]

Aim assist should only kick in when the target is too far away to hit manually.


Aim-assist compensates for the few degrees of lost precision. This is a tried-and-true model I've seen used in at least two different games, and it's more enjoyable to use than Starmade's strange control scheme.
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Because they are so powerful, placing them on the chamber tree will only serve to make that part of the chamber tree a requirement rather than an option for combat-capable ships. Systems that are virtually required should not be a part of the chamber system, but should be built-in or separate systems. Lead aim is a simple calculation that I think should be included in a basic sensor package.

Now, I could see aim assist being a chamber or something because it's possible to fight without it. However, one can also make the equally-strong argument that once you've paid the tradeoffs to construct a long-range weapon, you shouldn't have to pay an additional price to be able to use it effectively.

The part I personally would include in a chamber effect is the ability to target a reactor with aim assist. It's a powerful bonus, but not required to use a *specific* kind of weapon. Rather, it's an offensive sensory perk just like being able to see the reactor in the first place.

Other games that use it well tend to have hit-box ships, starmade ships are much more complex and could be easily made into shapes designed to make your targeting reticule aim at empty space if this were a feature you 100% know your enemy would be relying on, we'd see another forced meta shape (halo ships).

As a chamber effect, I could see this being a viable option though. Also, this is actually not a combat requirement since ships that rely on homing missiles, or AI turrets would have no use for this.

 

[Lecic]

Other games that use it well tend to have hit-box ships, starmade ships are much more complex and could be easily made into shapes designed to make your targeting reticule aim at empty space if this were a feature you 100% know your enemy would be relying on, we'd see another forced meta shape (halo ships).

Oh no, not donut ships... we already had 2 weeks where donuts were the meta back when missiles and AI targeted center of mass rather than systems.

 

[Non]

Aim lead and aim assist should be chambers in the scanner tree, not something automatic to every ship. These are powerful bonuses and should not be given free.

I disagree with this, cannons are at such a disadvantage to beams and missiles, and m/c is unusable, some lead assists is needed for them to be what I would call good weapons (when used manually by players).

 

[Lecic]

I disagree with this, cannons are at such a disadvantage to beams and missiles, and m/c is unusable, some lead assists is needed for them to be what I would call good weapons (when used manually by players).

Yeah, I agree at this point after Valiant's response. I think just lead indicator should be inherent, though. The lock on functions should really be chamber only. They aren't really necessary to land hits at 3, 5, 10, etc kilometers, they just make it easier.

 

[Dire Venom]

Personaly I've never really been able to fight manualy. I simply don't have the time to spend 20 hours to try and figure out how to lead my cannons on targets strafing in circles around me XD
The lag I get from my location makes manual aiming at mid-long distances impossible as well.
I simply just rely on the AI to do it for me, for better or for worse.

If lock on is a Chamber only trait, I will stick with turrets or docked AI Weapon blocks which lock on automaticaly thank you very much.
No way I'm going to pay reactor points if I can get it some other way.

 

[Edymnion]

Aim lead and aim assist should be chambers in the scanner tree, not something automatic to every ship. These are powerful bonuses and should not be given free.

Eh, a basic level should be inherent, I think. Then follow up with chambers to allow specific targeting abilities (like having the auto-assist snap you onto specific systems) or increase the assist area. Given how accurate a turret is, and how inaccurate humans are, manual fire really does need some assistance to keep it relevant.

 

[jayman38]

You could always suggest chambers that decrease the minimum-auto-target-distance, which I should probably shorten to frustrum, and extends the maximum auto-target-distance, out toward the weapon's maximum range.

By having the default distances somewhere closer to the middle, you get a lot of good help for average gamers and those who lack fine aiming control, without providing a crutch at all weapon distances (unless you pay for it with chambers). In short, the auto-targeting by default should only work in a very limited arc from maybe 25% of the weapon's range out to maybe 75% of the weapon's maximum range. This makes point-blank and sniper shots entirely manual.

Just replace that camera with a gun first....

These values should be configurable in the config, and should change with chamber effects. (E.g. Maybe the auto-extension chamber changes these numbers to 15% and 85%, respectively, with maybe different levels of chamber changing those percentages by 5 with each level.)

Additionally, to avoid problems with targeting pieces of the ship that aren't there (the donut-hole problem), the auto-targeting should target the first block nearest the aiming reticle, similar to how swarm misssiles pick targets. This will also allow the player to manually hit specific parts of the target, by simply pointing at them. (Actually, it would be more science-fiction to pick the target block/area manually, then the gun auto-aims, if the target falls within that limited arc of the weapon direction, instead of the pseudo-dogfight aiming currently in play.)

 

[boomchacle]

With the weapon update coming up and manual turret aim already in, I thought it would be a good time to revisit some old ideas about weapon arcs and soforth.

Part I: Remove firing arcs.

Now that we have manually controllable turrets, let's go ahead and take off the default wide firing arc. If you want your main beam on gimbals, by all means have your way! Just put it on a big turret.

Part II: Lead aim reticle.
Calculate and display a point of aim according to the velocity vector of the target and the muzzle velocity of the currently selected weapon. Simple as that. This has been a glaring omission since the beginning.

Part III: Assisted aim.

I've seen this in at least two games and it works amazingly well. The arc would be very narrow, about 3 degrees off the crosshair, and may be reduced by the user if desired. If the target is far enough away that it fits entirely within said circle, assisted targeting kicks in and fires at the center of the target. The system also takes lead aim into account - you would still point the crosshair at the lead aim reticle.

Once the target is "big" enough in your screen to fill the assist circle, it is assumed that you're firing at whatever part of the ship you want to hit, and assist is disabled. If you're a really good shot, you might want to reduce the assist arc a little, to 1 or 2 degrees.

If you have enough recon strength to detect the ship's active reactor, assisted aim targets the reactor instead of the center of the ship, and remains active until you're close enough for the reactor itself to fill the target assist circle.

There are multiple reasons for this.

1. As it is now, you can't reasonably hit stuff beyond a certain distance even with a beam. This would allow you to hit some part of the target provided it is in range of your weapon and fails to take evasive action.
2. This completely separates flight control from aiming mounted weapons. You should "fly" the gun sight onto the target instead. That's how mounted guns work.
3. This allows joystick and "glide" style mouse input (where you don't have to pick the mouse up to continue turning) to be viable alternative to "warp" style mouse input (what we have now, where you have to keep moving the mouse to keep turning). Without assisted aim, neither of these control styles will ever be accurate enough to fight with. Lack of viable joystick play in a space game makes me very sad.

the only problem with assisted aim is that you might not be able to target weak spots, such as holes in the arm caused by your other shots.

 

[Valiant70]

the only problem with assisted aim is that you might not be able to target weak spots, such as holes in the arm caused by your other shots.

As detailed in the OP, if you're close enough for the ship to fill a small area around your crosshair (in other words close enough to aim for a specific part of the ship) the auto-aim shuts off.

 

[boomchacle]

As detailed in the OP, if you're close enough for the ship to fill a small area around your crosshair (in other words close enough to aim for a specific part of the ship) the auto-aim shuts off.

ah I see I didnt notice that