Comro's Combat Suggestarinos (not a manifesto)

[CyberTao]

I feel like Ion's big schtick is damage reduction, I'm hesitant to stack other damage reduction effects on top of it, as 60% is already a pretty major damage reduction.

I more or less forgot Effects had a unbound effect, I rarely play with them nor play serverside. That said, if you play around with the values enough, or change the concept of unbound Ion slightly, it could still work. Say ion increasing the maximum amount of shields you could divert, along with a small positive boost to all sides? I don't know, but if you want to add anything big, existing features that were designed without that might need to be adjusted. If you want to change shields, I can see things having to change (think the original punch and pierce, designed for the HP system, and the various changes they had). But eh, any kind of directional shield would be nice, so I'm not all that picky.

 

[Lancake]

Thanks, this puts it in perspective. I'll figure out a way to bring it into balance with what I have.

The only thing you can do is to bring down the missile radius.
If a missile has 6 as radius, each stage is 1 in radius, meaning that the damage dealt against hull will be accurate.
a radius of 18 is still decent enough too.

Although...there's a different unused variable out there, solely aimed towards missiles.
If you check the blockConfig.xml, you can see that every block has a <ExplosionAbsorbtion>0.0</ExplosionAbsorbtion> variable. Apparently this is very similar to the armor rating on a block. putting this on 50 would decrease damage with 50% I believe.
I have not messed around with this value but it should already work, it's just not used yet.

Try experimenting with it and you might find a nice value to level out the hull damage large radius missiles deal.

 

[Lecic]

The only thing you can do is to bring down the missile radius.
If a missile has 6 as radius, each stage is 1 in radius, meaning that the damage dealt against hull will be accurate.
a radius of 18 is still decent enough too.

Although...there's a different unused variable out there, solely aimed towards missiles.
If you check the blockConfig.xml, you can see that every block has a <ExplosionAbsorbtion>0.0</ExplosionAbsorbtion> variable. Apparently this is very similar to the armor rating on a block. putting this on 50 would decrease damage with 50% I believe.
I have not messed around with this value but it should already work, it's just not used yet.

Try experimenting with it and you might find a nice value to level out the hull damage large radius missiles deal.

Who else remembers when there was a very short period of time when hardened hull was nearly invincible to missiles? It probably had something to do with this.

 

[HerrColonel]

Who else remembers when there was a very short period of time when hardened hull was nearly invincible to missiles? It probably had something to do with this.

I don't remember
But I feel this could be a great thing for hull

 

[Valiant70]

While a spacebike should not be capable of taking down a titan, or battleship, a cruiser or group of destroyers should stand a /decent/ chance against one.

They do, if their combined mass is anywhere near HALF of the target's. At least, that's what more knowledgeable people have told me.
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Two solutions to this one.

• Increase missile turn radius to be proportional with the speed. If beam slave missiles are meant to be long-range weapons, there should be a chance to evade them at close range. That is not the case right now.
• Reduce missile speed at launch. Speed builds as it travels. So a close range launch of a lockon is pretty easily dodged, whereas a long-range shot is hauling serious ass.

I don't think this will have the effect you intend. Missiles will remain potent and accurate at close range if they start out slow and their turn radius is proportional to speed. However, I still like this idea as it will reduce their accuracy at range.

 

[Lecic]

They do, if their combined mass is anywhere near HALF of the target's. At least, that's what more knowledgeable people have told me.

Drones will destroy something even if they're only something like 10-20% of the opponent's total mass. This is mainly because they're so maneuverable and in such a large swarm that they're hard to get rid of.

A group of larger ships taking on an even bigger ship would probably need about 50% mass, though, due to it being easier for the ship they're fighting to target them.

 

[Lancake]

Who else remembers when there was a very short period of time when hardened hull was nearly invincible to missiles? It probably had something to do with this.

Unrelated, possibly you think of this bug http://bugs.star-made.org/issues/490

 

[Valiant70]

4. is partially addressed with 1. Weaker shield facings would give smaller craft a chance to be useful against the less protected flanks/rear facings of spacecraft.

Additionally, re-introducing diminishing returns with weapons along with increasing power costs would also be useful to limit "doom weapon arrays" on ships. Sure you can make a 50,000 block beam cannon. But it's gonna cost you a good chunk of power to fire and won't be as effective as multiple other blasts.

"Oh but com people will just make checkerboards again"
refer to jontron image above

This is already addressed with multiple arrays on a single computer costing more power.
Plus, people still use checkerboards. People are always going to do this shit. There is nothing you can do about it other than make it power prohibitive.

*starts rolling up a newspaper to swat this section of the post*

5. Like with shields, armor should have a chance to deflect damage at angles. If I have a shot come in at a 5 degree angle it would only make sense for it to have a chance to bounce.

I can't really address this with missairu until someone more knowledgeable about explosive damage behavior gets in here and clears up the confusion. Once that's done I have a pretty decent idea in mind to finetune the damage type and make armor worth a damn.

I like that, especially for missiles. There's your fix for missiles right there. On the other hand if missiles don't bounce it would just make them more overpowered.

 

[Comr4de]

http://bugs.star-made.org/issues/139

Lookie what I found

>update 3 months ago

THE DREAM IS DEAD

 

[Calbiri]

Generally speaking Comr4de, these are things I plan to get changed, within reason (there are some & maybe more, minor technical issues to work around, but nothing worth really noting.)

Ship HP/Armor stats should help bring the non-shield survival of ships up (and make direction of attack matter), as well as a system to control the shields direction similar to the thrust settings I have planned (I actually thought of the solution for shields before i applied it to the thrust, using the ships XYZ axis.) These should serve to make maneuvering tactically alot more important.

Missiles do need their behavior improved, as well as ship/turret ai, these are changes we may have to be patient for though (as you might guess from my missile post being 9 months old.)
"Missiles still need to incorporate a directional acceleration curve, launching from the weapon group at a velocity matching the launching ship, then accelerating at V+[X%server-speed] per second/per second (im not good at Delta V's, but I believe that's the correct acceleration formula) If we need a mass/thrust ratio for the missile, we can set them to 2Thrust/1Mass
Also the Time that a missile can thrust for (settable via the blockbehaviorconfig) would be limited instead of its range, once the Delta V of the missile has been spent, it can only cruise in a straight line at its current speed until it hits a target or leaves the sector and despawns"
My math there might be off, but you get the general idea, these changes would make missiles behave in a manner similar to IRL.

Lastly, the cloaking/jamming/scanning system will be getting an overhaul, currently they work in absolutes and I particularly dislike that. I'd like their strengths to be based on system length (what the scanning currently uses) and then checking their ability against the strengths of the target ships cloak/jam/scan. I can't say that is how it will work, but until schema is at the point of coding it, its the best format i can really suggest (until he gives me specifics to work within that the code can or cant handle.)

 

[Comr4de]

scanning currently uses

Scanning operates like FTL currently. All that matters is cluster size as far as I can tell.

Ship HP/Armor stats should help bring the non-shield survival of ships up (and make direction of attack matter), as well as a system to control the shields direction similar to the thrust settings I have planned (I actually thought of the solution for shields before i applied it to the thrust, using the ships XYZ axis.) These should serve to make maneuvering tactically alot more important.

whooooooo

I figured turret AI was a ways off so I didn't really center the post on it. But hearing that shield facings is gonna be a thing is good to hear

 

[RebelliousHive]

7. Cloak/Jam really do need a cooldown timer at the very least. 6 seconds at most, it's just more than the time required to achieve a missile lock.

Love the ideas for directional shielding though, but I've got to say, regarding this.
I'd LIKE to see Scanners worked on a bit more, so that they're a bit more intuitive to use. Have scans transmit the data they get to everyone in the area/fleet. Cloaks & Jammer cooldowns to around 6/7 seconds would be great.
I'd also like to see a lower power requirement for cloaking though, so that you can make ships that aren't just a bunch of power blocks viable for cloaking.