Missile Theory

[Sven_The_Slayer]

So a debate was sparked which peaked my interest. How exactly do missiles behave? I've done quite a few tests and it seems that missiles are able to deal their damage in two distinct radius's. The radius seems to be determined by the average HP in the target zone, if this HP is below a certain unknown threshold the missile will then do the larger radius of damage. I've tested this with various block types as well as mixed materials.

Missiles shot near a seam of hardened hull and power gen/tanks pretty much needed to pass the smaller radius before the larger radius would apply. Power gen + basic hull hit the larger radius threshold sooner

All hull types, plus High HP blocks cause a low radius. Mixture of High HP blocks and Low HP blocks caused large radius while the same ratio of power tanks to hardened hull had a small radius. The 50:50 blend of standard hull to 10HP Tanks and 50HP Hull also caused a small radius.

The interesting take away here is that you can utterly save your ship by reinforcing large sections of systems with hardened hull. (And they said hardened hull was useless)

More tests will have to be done to figure out the butter zone but this mechanic may even change in the future as it is a little counter intuitive. I would personally like to see less perfect spheres and for missiles to act in a more logical sense when interacting with varied material.

All these tests were done in about an hours time, feel free to come up with your own tests and post the results. These were all done with 20:20 pulse missiles and it would be interesting to see the results from other missile types.

 

[MineCatFTW]

Huh. This is really interesting. Thanks for the info!

 

[Will2brown]

The only reason people use hardened hull is because it looks way better then regular hull, I guess now that's changed

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

From what I've gathered in chat is missiles actually use a stage system

*missile damage is calculated in stages i believe
*each stage's radius is I believe the missile max radius / 8

Explosive effect on smaller missiles work because it increases the size of the max radius and therefore increases the size of each stage.

 

[Thalanor]

Only 2 distinct radii, interesting. +1 for science.

Know these 1-block wide chasms that appear when you have different weapon groups utilizing some of the same blocks but want them to be shift+v connectable in bulk without screwing over each other? Put hardened hull there, not shields (the galactic standard space filler). Might pay off.
Also, a large branching interior (e.g. not single large halls), due to the many hull blocks they spread through the ship, also act as sort of "missile sponges". And of course, you are better off once the HP update hits - I strongly suspect some 1-layer armor plates scattered around the vital systems of the ship in conjunction with a multi-layer outer armor will do rather well.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

I wanted to see what the transition between damage stages looked like. The amount of damage you need to go from one stage to another is extremely high, at least on a pulse missile.

It took a pulse missile of 230:230 in order to cross over into the next threshold hitting a flat target. If I shot into the crater of another impact I would not get the larger radius because there would be more HP to overcome. The damage on the lower right corner is from a 229:229 pulse missile, only 2 blocks smaller (10DPS) and the over all effect is significantly less. A pulse missile of 20:20 easily destroys mostly all blocks in stage one so beyond that you are more or less wasting damage potential. when you finally do cross the threshold the jump in damage is staggering. I'm not sure any constants can be found to figure out how big any given missile needs to be to fall into any of the damage stages as mixed materials and shape of the ship is a huge factor.

 

[Chances_Ghost]

I wanted to see what the transition between damage stages looked like. The amount of damage you need to go from one stage to another is extremely high, at least on a pulse missile.

It took a pulse missile of 230:230 in order to cross over into the next threshold hitting a flat target. If I shot into the crater of another impact I would not get the larger radius because there would be more HP to overcome. The damage on the lower right corner is from a 229:229 pulse missile, only 2 blocks smaller (10DPS) and the over all effect is significantly less. A pulse missile of 20:20 easily destroys mostly all blocks in stage one so beyond that you are more or less wasting damage potential. when you finally do cross the threshold the jump in damage is staggering. I'm not sure any constants can be found to figure out how big any given missile needs to be to fall into any of the damage stages as mixed materials and shape of the ship is a huge factor.

this work of yours is amazing! i would of never guessed that they grouped larger then a single layer at a time! just look at the damage in the top left! is that what jumping up a stage causes? if you go up a damage stage but dont have enough damage to eliminate it it just radiates damage like i originally though but confined to a single state?

 

[Thalanor]

So basically there is two levels of "hulk" missiles only, discount and awesome (20:20 and 230:230)? If not used against shields (ion buffed), a 20:20 would be ten times cheaper but just as strong as a 200:200... feels wrong)
(I suspect the third stage is unreachable in terms of power cost for any ship that couldn't just as well throw 200 missiles at you instead)

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

So basically there is two levels of "hulk" missiles only, discount and awesome (20:20 and 230:230)? If not used against shields (ion buffed), a 20:20 would be ten times cheaper but just as strong as a 200:200... feels wrong)
(I suspect the third stage is unreachable in terms of power cost for any ship that couldn't just as well throw 200 missiles at you instead)

As far as I know there are 8 stages to every missile. The first two of Hulk missile stages being shown. Now imagine what a 40radius blast looks like. I built a hulk missile (8842:8842) that got to stage 4 or 5. It nearly destroyed my standard target in a single strike. I'm not sure how big it would be but you could theoretically build a missile that would vaporize an 80+ meter ship. It would probably be easier to do than reaching stage 8 on an 80x80x80 solid block though.

I should also add that these tests are against a solid block of hardened hull, reaching higher stages against ships packed with systems could be achieved with smaller missiles, and even RP style ships may have more hull blocks to account for but the empty voids will also make the jump to higher stages easier.

 

[AtraUnam]

I just tested my standard 'Tonitrua' artillery ship against one of your hardened hull targets, at just over 5 million damage any idea what stage this is? Interestingly firing at the 97m^3 target behind it does absolutely nothing.

 

[FlyingDebris]

The NFD Osiris class has dual hulk missiles dealing 7.2mil damage each. It can vaporize most ships under 150m.

The NFD Harbinger heavy artillery platform has a single hulk missile that does 128mil damage per shot.

They both blow up the same amount of hull.

Something about that seems odd... now I kinda want the *older* missile damage system back.

You know, the one where a ship could clear every block of a planet? It'd need to have some serious nerfs from what it used to be, but that would be nice to have radius scale with damage.

 

[Tacotown99]

I remember that, that was when i just joined SM. You would see a lot of Behold my missile ship videos on youtube. about 25 missile blocks would give you enough punch to knock out a instanth, or 100 would be able to disable a good sized frigate. with the new system you need millions of Missile blocks to get the same radius, i think missile bought the farm when Schema "dubbed" dumb fire missile damage

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

I remember that, that was when i just joined SM. You would see a lot of Behold my missile ship videos on youtube. about 25 missile blocks would give you enough punch to knock out a instanth, or 100 would be able to disable a good sized frigate. with the new system you need millions of Missile blocks to get the same radius, i think missile bought the farm when Schema "dubbed" dumb fire missile damage

I only remember them being kind of useless, they wouldn't damage shields so you would have to whittle the targets shields down with your AMCs before switching over to the missile, lock on, fire, and go back to shooting at the shields and hope you have them down again before the missile hits, (if it hits). Of course I only specialize with Starmade in small scale so I have no experience with planet eating missiles. I can say missiles in small scale feel very well balanced. They deal good amounts of damage without every having the ability to vaporize anything.

I have also heard, in passing, that missile mechanics will get looked into again in the future as they don't even take a targets armor into account.

 

[Keptick]

Amazing analysis, you really do deserve that "tester" badge :P.

However, there's one thing that's bugging me. I have a small ball drone made of hardened hull with the eye being made of mattise crystals. Now, when I shot this drone with a relatively small missile the shell wasn't destroyed (damaged but not gone). However, most of the internal systems got decimated in a certain radius of the eye (which was destroyed). I have a couple theories as to what happened:

1. The missile hit the eye directly and damage was dealt equally in all directions.
2. the missiles split their damage equally between all the blocks in its radius. However, this can be eliminated since a one block normal missile still destroys a couple of blocks (if my theory was correct it would only damage everything in the radius without destroying any blocks.
3. The most interesting alternative: The missile hit the hull and the blast passed through the eye and propagated inside (weak spot), like it would in real life.

 

[Tacotown99]

I only remember them being kind of useless, they wouldn't damage shields so you would have to whittle the targets shields down with your AMCs before switching over to the missile, lock on, fire, and go back to shooting at the shields and hope you have them down again before the missile hits, (if it hits). Of course I only specialize with Starmade in small scale so I have no experience with planet eating missiles. I can say missiles in small scale feel very well balanced. They deal good amounts of damage without every having the ability to vaporize anything.

I have also heard, in passing, that missile mechanics will get looked into again in the future as they don't even take a targets armor into account.

I was more talking about the blast radius vs the pure power of a missile.

 

[DivineEvil]

It is definitely necessary to update how the armor actually works. As far as it seems at the moment, armor parameter is identical to equal amount of additional HP.

What I presume it should be is a percentage of total damage block consumes before taking damage to itself. So if a massive 50k damage missile hits advanced armor block, this block first neutralizes a percentage of that damage, before taking it, after which adjacent blocks divide damage remaining and also consume a % of that damage.

In that case armor gonna need a nerf in order to keep missiles and AoE-enchanced weapons viable, but it will make armor a significant part of combat ship's vitality. It also opens up a place for reactive armor (which has few HP, but consumes the majority of AoE damage) and composite armor (which has much higher HP, but little to no armor rating).