Here is why we must change current meta

[chetyre]

First of all I love starmade, I spend much time on it, and having fun, I even bought a sm teeshirt
I m just posting this to make the game better

Here is my list of today's problem with the meta:
- lack of ship variety (salvage ship and heatseeking warships, nothing more and its not fun AT ALL)
- you don't need fighting skills other than shotting heatseeking missile to one shot people, (anti missiles turrets are useless when you get shot by more than 10 missiles)
- fighters are useless, with new shield regen system even with 20 fighters (5-15) you can't take down a ship with 10K shield regen
- there is no advantage using skilled weapons (ex: low reload anti matter cannon):
* 10 blocks connected to a cannon computer deals as much damage/sec as 5 cannons linked with 5 other cannons (to get fast fire)
- lets be clear: at least 50% of your time you spend on starmade is not fun (traveling, salvaging) this is why I usually do something else when I play this game.
- why use scanners on big ships when its using more blocks and you get no advantage from it

 

[MacThule]

First of all I love starmade, I spend much time on it, and having fun, I even bought a sm teeshirt
I m just posting this to make the game better

Here is my list of today's problem with the meta:
- lack of ship variety (salvage ship and heatseeking warships, nothing more and its not fun AT ALL)
- you don't need fighting skills other than shotting heatseeking missile to one shot people, (anti missiles turrets are useless when you get shot by more than 10 missiles)
- fighters are useless, with new shield regen system even with 20 fighters (5-15) you can't take down a ship with 10K shield regen
- there is no advantage using skilled weapons (ex: low reload anti matter cannon):
* 10 blocks connected to a cannon computer deals as much damage/sec as 5 cannons linked with 5 other cannons (to get fast fire)
- lets be clear: at least 50% of your time you spend on starmade is not fun (traveling, salvaging) this is why I usually do something else when I play this game.
- why use scanners on big ships when its using more blocks and you get no advantage from it

I agree with your ship variety point as far as large vessels go, but I see a great variety of ships under 10K. I also agree that anti-missile turrets need serious help. It'd be nice if they were more efficient - you need like a dozen of them to get even 80-90% coverage from fast missiles on some servers.

As far as fighters go, have you tried using a 50% ion mix? Or shield drain? I'm not sure if AI employs shield drain as weapon, but if so that'll solve your problem right there - I can slap 50-100 SD mods on a tiny torpedo ship and suck up 1M shields in 1-2 minutes then pop the core in a shot or two max of Mpe. As long as it doesn't have a mega-turret you're using the target's own shields to tank any damage. I love that build.

There *IS* reward to using skilled weapons. But first reward is to skilled building (hence the bonuses from linking). Have you tried AMC+pulse? This is a slow-firing, very powerful weapon that is fantastic at wrecking ships with a punch-through or AP effect. I don't think un-linked AMC is considered a "skill weapon," it's more of a primitive weapon. AMC-pulse requires care and skill and is rewarded with excellent effect. Same with beam+pulse and beam+beam. That's 3.

I don't spend nearly 50% of time salvaging, and well, isn't flying through space what makes it more than just a space-themed arena FPS? While I salvage and fly I'm usually watching a movie and planning, in my head, the next tweaks to a ship model or something.

Scanners on big ships are very important to expose cloakers to your turrets. Once your turrets see them, even if they recloak, you'll get a shot off at them and that shot won't be fooled by their cloak. Plus scanners also let you see detect ships outside standard radar range and detect system ownership location. Still plenty useful even if it didn't help directly in combat. Which it does.

Those are my thoughts anyway

 

[chetyre]

I just made calculations
cannon + pulse = 5 dmg/sec/block
(which is 1/2 of cannon+cannon...)
I don't any advantage here

 

[CyberTao]

I just made calculations
cannon + pulse = 5 dmg/sec/block
(which is 1/2 of cannon+cannon...)
I don't any advantage here

If any cannon weapon is doing more or less than 5 damage per second per block, it's probably a bug or a custom config. Faster weapons do less damage and slower weapons do more, it should all balance out to the same dps though.

Spoiler: Pics

Notice how the damage and reload have matching but inverted (one 'buffs', the other 'nerfs') Values.

 

[Valiant70]

There *IS* reward to using skilled weapons. But first reward is to skilled building (hence the bonuses from linking). Have you tried AMC+pulse? This is a slow-firing, very powerful weapon that is fantastic at wrecking ships with a punch-through or AP effect.

These weapons are mainly effective against shields now due to the crippling nerf to punchthrough.

 

[BDLS]

As has been said multiple times, preventing AI to not be able to lock-on jammed targets would go a long way to fixing the missile meta. Allow them to fire, but revert the missile to dumbfire or something. Hopefully this isn't a [feature], or has to wait until AI gets revamped.

Further reducing cloak/jam energy requirements on lower mass entities would be nice, to buff fighters. I forget, isn't the power cost on a linear curve right now? Perhaps it should be fairly low & flat at low mass.

 

[chetyre]

its default config

 

[aceface]

First of all I love starmade, I spend much time on it, and having fun, I even bought a sm teeshirt
I m just posting this to make the game better

Here is my list of today's problem with the meta:
- lack of ship variety (salvage ship and heatseeking warships, nothing more and its not fun AT ALL)
- you don't need fighting skills other than shotting heatseeking missile to one shot people, (anti missiles turrets are useless when you get shot by more than 10 missiles)
- fighters are useless, with new shield regen system even with 20 fighters (5-15) you can't take down a ship with 10K shield regen
- there is no advantage using skilled weapons (ex: low reload anti matter cannon):
* 10 blocks connected to a cannon computer deals as much damage/sec as 5 cannons linked with 5 other cannons (to get fast fire)
- lets be clear: at least 50% of your time you spend on starmade is not fun (traveling, salvaging) this is why I usually do something else when I play this game.
- why use scanners on big ships when its using more blocks and you get no advantage from it

everything you mentioned really needs to happen.

 

[Dragleones]

If any cannon weapon is doing more or less than 5 damage per second per block, it's probably a bug or a custom config. Faster weapons do less damage and slower weapons do more, it should all balance out to the same dps though.

Exactly. Correct me if i'm wrong, but as far as i recall every weapon block should add 5 dps (except for secondary beam (it adds no extra dps)). And like cybertao posted above and you are able to check in your default-blockbehaviorconfig.

But what actually bothers me about this, is that even though its much easier to hit consecutively with a weapon with a high rate of fire (->cannon-cannon) the average dps is as high as with weapons with a low rate of fire (->cannon-beam/cannon-pulse). Therefore there is imo very little point in using these type of weapon-combos.

 

[CyberTao]

Exactly. Correct me if i'm wrong, but as far as i recall every weapon block should add 5 dps (except for secondary beam (it adds no extra dps)). And like cybertao posted above and you are able to check in your default-blockbehaviorconfig.

Not quite, last I heard, Cannon/Beam gets it's full damage again, but uses more power, which is a bit more usable, and I believe missile/pulse has a reduced DPS, due to issues with it's high alpha. Other than those 2 exceptions, it should be 5 dps/block and 10 power per damage on all weapons but damage Pulse. Damage pulse is something like 0.5 per block and 100 per damage or something I think?

 

[Lecic]

- lack of ship variety (salvage ship and heatseeking warships, nothing more and its not fun AT ALL)

Sure, for solo ships, maybe. No one who plays with a faction uses heakseekers due to friendly fire, and they are frequently unreliable. If there's anything else in the sector, you're pretty much guaranteed significantly less DPS because half your missiles will try and take out that rouge asteroid or shop (and you're fucked if the server has higher level ai faction ships, because the trade guild is going to rip you a new one with their fleet)

I mainly see ships that mount lock on missiles and rapid cannon waffles once shields are down. There's definitely a lack of variety in weapon choices, but heatseekers are definitely not king.

- you don't need fighting skills other than shotting heatseeking missile to one shot people, (anti missiles turrets are useless when you get shot by more than 10 missiles)

How many anti-missile turrets do you have onboard? If you can't even deal with 10+ missiles, I would guess not many. Also, tip- have both Cannon/Cannon and Cannon/Missile on your PD turrets. The shotgun's wide cone of fire helps to hit missiles that AI's inaccuracies usually cause a miss on.

- fighters are useless, with new shield regen system even with 20 fighters (5-15) you can't take down a ship with 10K shield regen

I don't know what config you're playing on, but drones are the kings of mass to murder ratio. Anything more than 20% of the mass of the enemy in drones is usually overkill.

- there is no advantage using skilled weapons (ex: low reload anti matter cannon):

This is a serious issue with the game, and it ties into the lack of weapon variety you talked about earlier. The massive nerf to punch really didn't help the matter.

I think an innate punch and explosive effect to higher damage cannons might help make up the difference.

- why use scanners on big ships when its using more blocks and you get no advantage from it

Because it's an over-all mass based system (plus some stuff about bonuses for long dimensions). Personally, I think reload time should be based on % of mass, but the scan range should be increased as you have more blocks.

 

[Valiant70]

I don't know what config you're playing on, but drones are the kings of mass to murder ratio. Anything more than 20% of the mass of the enemy in drones is usually overkill.

I've been wanting to unleash swarms of drones for a while but haven't had time to construct them or a ship to carry them yet due to college taking all of my time.