Bizarre catastrophic failure?

[KiloZulu]

I died and my ship exploded very suddenly. The only threat in the area were a few Isanth pirates that had been called by a pirate station. I had just removed the turrets from that station, and was turning to finish off the Isanths. They did not have the firepower to harm me, and I fully expected to kill them all with a single volley from my ship. My shields were at full power.

Suddenly I was dead. I returned to the station in a different ship. The pirates were gone by the time I arrived, and I confirmed that the pirate base was not armed. Well over half, an 80m long section of the 136m long ship, was just gone. I don't know of any weapon in the game that can do that, particularly as the only AI enemy on our server are the default list of Isanths and stations.

 

[Lecic]

Did you accidentally replace your hull with disintegrators?

In all seriousness, though, that sounds like a very high powered nuke. Was this in singleplayer, or on public multiplayer where someone with a strong nuke-ship could have snuck up on you with a radar jammer and blown you up?

 

[PizzaPress]

Did it have a missile-radius look to it?

 

[KiloZulu]

I'm on a multiplayer server, but it was at a time of the day when I was the only player online. Not only that, but we don't have any PvP players. It had a damaged look to it - in that the hull blocks around the edge showed the damaged state. Still, we're talking about an 80 block diameter blast, through 60k of shields (a couple layers of advanced hull, but that hardly counts.) An Isanth doesn't do that, I don't know all of the turret weapons for the new pirate stations, but I can't imagine any of them having something like that, either (not counting the fact that I had already destroyed the turrets.)

 

[Mariux]

Does the server have custom pirate blueprints?

 

[ASilverblade]

I have had this before myself, and I found the answer.

One of the pirate stations has a couple of rocket turrets with a VERY long reload, the trail was red and it blasted a massive hole in my capital ship.

Next time this may happen, just keep an eye out for the red trails.

 

[Mered4]

Lol.

Yeah I noticed one of the pirate stations has a nuke turret.

I guess you got an early Christmas present :D

 

[Majorfatboy]

It's this guy:

So last week I decided to start a new universe and play legit. I start off at 2,2,2 in the middle of no where. I spend most of My dosh and build a little starter salvager. I equip it with a radar jammer for safety, but not a cloaker, as I'm not about to go looking for trouble this early. I'm going to need to set down some factory blocks to refine stuff, so I check the map for the nearest static celestial body, since I can't put factories on a ship. The nearest static body is a station. Cool, I set course.

At about 20 kilometers, the station starts to rez in.
"cool, that means I can bring this thing up on sensors".
I tap [F] and see it's a pirate station.
"Well, I'm obviously not setting up shop here, I'll just turn around".
I brake, which takes a kilometer or two, turn 180 degrees, and gun the engines. Several second later I get: "YOU HAVE DIED! RESPAWN/EXIT?"

Naturally, I handle the situation with the level of maturity expected of a grown man.

So there I am, back at spawn, with a whole 600 credits to My name. The only thing that saves Me from cheating or resetting is that I've still got My cannon computer to sell.
But I'm curious as to how this thing insta-ganked Me that far out, while running a jammer, so I fire up god mode and TP over.
Some sick little code monkey, who obviously doesn't actually play video games, thought it would be a good idea to let a default pirate station have a homing missile system with an over sixteen kilometer range.
But wait! Realistically, this translates to an over 32 kilometer sphere of area denial.

And it get's better!

There's one default pirate station with cannons that can reach out to at least fifteen kilometers. That's thirty kilometers spherical.

But that's cool. All these nice stations that players obviously put a lot of effort into are going to go bye bye from My catalog. Well, Maybe I'll just modify them with five Km range weapons instead. Which is what they should of had in the first place.

 

[Mered4]

It's this guy:

So last week I decided to start a new universe and play legit. I start off at 2,2,2 in the middle of no where. I spend most of My dosh and build a little starter salvager. I equip it with a radar jammer for safety, but not a cloaker, as I'm not about to go looking for trouble this early. I'm going to need to set down some factory blocks to refine stuff, so I check the map for the nearest static celestial body, since I can't put factories on a ship. The nearest static body is a station. Cool, I set course.

At about 20 kilometers, the station starts to rez in.
"cool, that means I can bring this thing up on sensors".
I tap [F] and see it's a pirate station.
"Well, I'm obviously not setting up shop here, I'll just turn around".
I brake, which takes a kilometer or two, turn 180 degrees, and gun the engines. Several second later I get: "YOU HAVE DIED! RESPAWN/EXIT?"

Naturally, I handle the situation with the level of maturity expected of a grown man.

So there I am, back at spawn, with a whole 600 credits to My name. The only thing that saves Me from cheating or resetting is that I've still got My cannon computer to sell.
But I'm curious as to how this thing insta-ganked Me that far out, while running a jammer, so I fire up god mode and TP over.
Some sick little code monkey, who obviously doesn't actually play video games, thought it would be a good idea to let a default pirate station have a homing missile system with an over sixteen kilometer range.
But wait! Realistically, this translates to an over 32 kilometer sphere of area denial.

And it get's better!

There's one default pirate station with cannons that can reach out to at least fifteen kilometers. That's thirty kilometers spherical.

But that's cool. All these nice stations that players obviously put a lot of effort into are going to go bye bye from My catalog. Well, Maybe I'll just modify them with five Km range weapons instead. Which is what they should of had in the first place.

Pirate stations are meant to be dangerous at the start.


That said, weapon ranges are completely out of whack right now. The multipliers imply a max of x2 sector size, but it's really much further.

 

[ASilverblade]

It's this guy:

Yup, that's the one.

 

[KiloZulu]

That is "the one." It kind of explains what happened, too. I was blown up after I had dismantled the turrets, but it must have launched the missile earlier and it had snuck up on me when I thought I was safe. Still, an 40m radius explosion that can tear through 40k of shields with one hit? That is crazy.

 

[Majorfatboy]

Oh, I'm perfectly cool with the stations being dangerous. Hell, let'm be armed to the teeth. My problem is with the range alone.

At 32 Km, these stations can insta-kill a player who was simply kinda-sorta in the area. With homing missiles.
These stations should only be a threat if the player actively, intentionally, engages them, not by just passing through the neighboring sector.
This can be accomplished by simply arming them for a max range of five kilometers. Because if You end up within 5Km of a pirate station, it wasn't by accident. You intentionally went there, and as such acknowledged the risks.

As it is currently, it's like getting hit by a car, while walking on the sidewalk...

 

[nihlanth]

....
As it is currently, it's like getting hit by a car, while walking on the sidewalk...

Sums it up perfectly.

The same thing just happened to me tonight. I've played this game for about a week only. I was attacking that same station, and didn't know that one-shot kill missiles existed. I didn't even see the missile. Their lasers were doing little damage to me, I shot at a few turrets, then suddenly I died with no explanation or explosion. I almost thought it was a bug.

Although the game is great and fun, getting suddenly one-shotted with no explanation is frustrating and ruins the mood and grove I've had up to that point. I would have rather have had a large chunk blown off my ship; that would have been more exciting than going instantly to the game menu with no sound or explosion or any spectacular death fx.

It was extremely frustrating given I had just spent a couple hours sprucing up my ship. It looked nice too, the only saving grace was that I had saved a copy of my ship. I would rather cheat and use admin load than to buy it all back again. Thank goodness this option exists in this game, which is why I enjoy it.

There needs to be a death message that says how you died and some stats. Does the combat log persist after re-spawning? I failed to check and exited the game before doing so.

 

[aceface]

Pirate stations are meant to be dangerous at the start.


That said, weapon ranges are completely out of whack right now. The multipliers imply a max of x2 sector size, but it's really much further.

I'm fine with the weapon range to be honest, would be good though if an alert came if someone locked onto you to alert you of your coming death xD

 

[JonasWalker]

This might be a stupid question but I thought the max range you could get on missiles was a little over 4 Km by using a slaved beam system?

 

[KiloZulu]

This might be a stupid question but I thought the max range you could get on missiles was a little over 4 Km by using a slaved beam system?

Ranges were adjusted with the new galaxy, as the default system size was upped to 5km from 1km.

The pirate station claimed another one of my ships last night. I really think there is a bug and the missile isn't always visible. As lethal as its payload is, it has a max range of 8km, only flies at about 1/2 max server speed, and is bright red. It is hard to miss, which is why I can't figure out how it could sneak up on anyone looking for it.

 

[JonasWalker]

Ranges were adjusted with the new galaxy, as the default system size was upped to 5km from 1km.
-Partial Snip-

Huh, that may explain some of the oddities I've been noticing during my weapon tests as I was still working under the old 1km sector dimensions.