StarMade Dev Blog - The Weapons Update

[schema]

Hello players,

a new dev build has been released. Read the full news here: StarMade News - StarMade Dev Blog - The weapons update

Thanks for playing StarMade,
the Schine Team

 

[therimmer96]

The CBS dev build server is running the update. You can apply here - Cake Build Server - The Most Delicious Build Server [Whitelist]

 

[Non]

20k block beam/beam vs 50m of armor

Cut clean through, little resistance, cannon beam does roughly similar.

I have made quite a few ships with 20k block beam arrays (4 or 5 arrays that size on a single ship), but I've never seen a ship flying around with 50m of armor on all sides. Ship standards will change from what they were pre power update, but 20k beam/beam will be a lot more realistic than 50m of armor.

Your damage model is insane. Tone it down, a lot.
With beams and cannons doing this much damage, missiles are pretty useless.

Recoil doesnt seem to affect certain weapon combos, but on basic cannons with no secondary it is impossible use the weapon properly, recoil was a weird idea in the first place.

Lastly, were weapon ranges cut? Cause the details menu says so, and not having face-to-face knife-fight battles was one of the best things about starmade's conbat.

 

[dwwojcik]

I'm very glad to see individual missiles becoming more impactful, I think this is a great change. But, can we fire missiles from beyond visual range and watch them fly on a map like in the Donnager battle from The Expanse yet?

 

[akimzav]

So much yes for new armor mechanic.

 

[Jeffenuva]

Yes! I know what I'll be doing this weekend! Thanks!

 

[Durendal5150]

Aww yiss, excited to try this out.

Throwing out the first thing that comes to mind: Have you considered using the minelayer system for a more general purpose 'ordinance module' that can be used in different configurations to deploy mines, torpedoes, drones, bombs, etc? It seems like a *really* versatile mechanic with a lot of potentially interesting uses beyond the current ones.

 

[arkahys]

Can't launch a game with this version.
SteamOS + linux64 , intel HD4000.
drivers updated 2018Q1 (13april).
Glxinfo :
OpenGL vendor string: Intel Open Source Technology Center
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Intel(R) Haswell
OpenGL core profile version string: 3.3 (Core Profile) Mesa 18.1.0-devel
OpenGL core profile shading language version string: 3.30
OpenGL core profile context flags: (none)
OpenGL core profile profile mask: core profile
OpenGL core profile extensions:
OpenGL version string: 3.0 Mesa 18.1.0-devel
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.30
OpenGL context flags: (none)
OpenGL extensions:
OpenGL ES profile version string: OpenGL ES 3.0 Mesa 18.1.0-devel
OpenGL ES profile shading language version string: OpenGL ES GLSL ES 3.00
OpenGL ES profile extensions:

Seems a recurrent problem with a fake "no updated driver". Have similar issue with some games under wine,(who start 1 time on 10 with error "no supported craphic card" ) altought card support.
Some GlSl detection error can be corrected under linux by adding this in display.c :
glfwWindowHint(GLFW_CONTEXT_VERSION_MAJOR, 4);
glfwWindowHint(GLFW_CONTEXT_VERSION_MINOR, 0);
glfwWindowHint(GLFW_OPENGL_PROFILE, GLFW_OPENGL_CORE_PROFILE);

starting game with ENVvariable : LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1 disable graphic driver warning, but bugs is still crashing game.

 

[Macharius]

OH YEASH YESH ! Minefield here we goo !

Thanks for the Devbuild btw !

 

[Dire Venom]

View attachment 48727
20k block beam/beam vs 50m of armor

Cut clean through, little resistance, cannon beam does roughly similar.

I have made quite a few ships with 20k block beam arrays (4 or 5 arrays that size on a single ship), but I've never seen a ship flying around with 50m of armor on all sides. Ship standards will change from what they were pre power update, but 20k beam/beam will be a lot more realistic than 50m of armor.

Your damage model is insane. Tone it down, a lot.
With beams and cannons doing this much damage, missiles are pretty useless.

Recoil doesnt seem to affect certain weapon combos, but on basic cannons with no secondary it is impossible use the weapon properly, recoil was a weird idea in the first place.

Lastly, were weapon ranges cut? Cause the details menu says so, and not having face-to-face knife-fight battles was one of the best things about starmade's conbat.

Thank you for the testing! What results have you had with the other weapon combinations:?
From the patch notes:

Beam + Beam: A doom beam that penetrates the complete length of the beam, and adds acid damage. This would represent an actual death star weapon. Very overpowered right now and can easily be used for performance tests! The acid damage will be adjusted later on, and this beam will get other penalties to account for its high penetration and damage values. This could be the inability to aim with your cursor, having to drop your shield, require additional charging time, having to stop to fire, can not be used on turrets, etc. Stations are especially vulnerable to this type of weapon so we’ll make sure there are mechanics in place to balance it properly..

Good to know it will be undergoing further testing!

 

[JinM]

Reads about recoil...(...)

Wait what!

I like it.

edit: Now I have read about missile capacity and bombs. Omg this is awesome.

Great work Schema.

With armor thickness and these effects, we will be able to provide you in-game information to help with building and analyzing your structure’s armor. By just looking at your armor from any angle, you will see information to show the statistics of that particular spot and what is behind it, showing you potential weak spots, and how much damage your toughest armor can withstand without having to take apart your ship layer by layer.

I think this is another very nice idea.

 

[madman Captain]

Sounds so exiting. Have to test that stuff after work. Can the cannon recoil be compensated by the ships mass?

 

[Dire Venom]

Hello players,

a new dev build has been released. Read the full news here: StarMade News - StarMade Dev Blog - The weapons update

Thanks for playing StarMade,
the Schine Team

Thank you for the update :D
Really top notch work by you guys!

In the dev build mine-layers don't currently work, I presume they havn't been fully implemented yet

 

[Ithirahad]

Thank you for the update :D
Really top notch work by you guys!

In the dev build mine-layers don't currently work, I presume they havn't been fully implemented yet

I have no idea if they work yet, because nowhere in the game does it say what materials I have to put in the linked storage. >.>

 

[aceface]

wish i could build but just cant ive built too much and cant anymore

 

[Non]

What results have you had with the other weapon combinations:?

Cannon/beam is just as op as beam/beam, however its spread seems to either entirely or preferentially prefer to spread to armor blocks, so theoretically you could dehull an enemy's entire ship and do no damage to their internals if you had a high enough damage shot. On my test of it against the 50m armor plate, it shot all the way through to the back and then the extra damage it had reversed direction and went back into the plate. Its reload time is also now in line with that of beam/beam.

Cannon/cannon is probably as op as everything else, but I'd say its the only weapon that feels right now, testing a 20k block gun against a 50m armor plate it had reasonable penetration depth (10-15 blocks) and some spread (maybe 3 radius). A nice experience compared to everything else, but was still too strong.

Beam/cannon is 100% shit, as in it is probably the only weapon that does less damage to that 50m armor plate than it did pre weapons 2.0

Missiles are awful and they can lock up damage calcs/crash servers easier than ever before.

Basic beams and cannons are roughly what you would expect, but recoil is not working reliably, way too strong, and entirely unnecessary in the first place.

This could be the inability to aim with your cursor, having to drop your shield, require additional charging time, having to stop to fire, can not be used on turrets, etc.

Beams are op, but these listed ways of fixing them are bad ideas, it makes balancing overly complex, whereas they could just tinker with coefficients, they instead suggest trying weird stuff like this that only makes all the other op options preferable, rather than balancing it with the options to make everything equally viable.

 

[Valiant70]

I like where this is going. I'm a little skeptical about some of the specifics until we get feedback from the PVP department, but overall it looks very promising.

Looks like we're getting some quality-of-life and quality-of-game engine improvements along the way.

schema I saw that you listed LoD features in your Raw Feature List section but you didn't mention it elsewhere. Is this the full-fledged level of detail system that you've talked about before or just more improvements for non-cube blocks?

 

[Captain Fortius]

They say that the wheel was invented multiple times, independently of each other, but a lot of these changes to cannons and armor behaviour - such as penetration, barrel width, or dynamic armor thickness- is very similar to what a handful of good people and I suggested over four years ago.

My take on a new AMC system
https://starmadedock.net/threads/my-take-on-a-new-amc-system.10969/
Post #1 concerns offense, while #23 describes defense.


IF those words were heard, it's good to know something positive came out of them.

 

[Scypio]

Adds "acid" damage to reduce the load on the server when a lot of blocks are involved and then add recoil and impact physics for ships when firing/being shot at... You really don't want your game to run smoothly don't you ?

Also, what about waffles ?

 

[Nosajimiki]

So, this is more of a comment on what is planed than what I found in this build so far:

Please keep secondaries on support systems. The notes say you will try to pick the most common mode on support systems, but that shows a lack of experience with what players actually do.

Salvage beams for example see a VERY even split between plain, and each of the secondary slaves. There are different design and technique philosophies behind each. Some people prefer basic because it is cheap, and the short recharge gap makes server lag matching easier. Some prefer cannon (especially on lighter miners) because it creates a more natural feeling continuous effect, some prefer missiles because it lets you "focus" your spread to the asteroid you are targeting, and some prefer pulse for the high alpha making quick work of smaller targets (this timing could be used to replace beam timing and you probably would make everyone happy). Current setup adds depth of design to what is already a pretty simple system.

Also, Combining Stop/push/pull into tractor beams is a really cool idea, but again, people used these effects in a lot of different ways. With a beam secondary you could stop people from kiting you, but made continuous range control very hard. Cannon secondary mean you could "hold" someone with strong enough of a system, but it was range limited. If you make it so there are no options to range control ships at less than maximum visual range, then there is no way for slower ships to counter fast sniper boats, but if you make that range default with no balancing factors, then tractor beams would become very OP.