Emp and a possible change

[Loadout]

So as I'm attempting to make a viable EMP weapon I notice that it's quite difficult to get a proper damage/size ratio going. After running some math I've found it's not actually possible to get an EMP weapon of similar mass, to disable a ship.

Example: Wisp drone has an engine that recovers 3699.4 energy per second. In order to beat that you would need 3700 damage per second.

42.6 mass drone -> 3699.4 e/sec
42.6 mass cannon -> 4260 damage/second

So you see the first example at low mass actually works. Which is fine and dandy, but take into account all the extra mass you need to power that cannon, as well as any defenses needed to protect it from being one shot by virtually anything. Suddenly that 42.6 mass cannon has become a 200 mass ship.

If you scale this up, the values become even more insane. Many many large scale ships will have reactors that regen 10 million+ /second. That kind of dps becomes vastly more useful as raw damage than a weapon that will only work for a few seconds, if at all.

You see the problem isn't damage directly, it's how reactors operate. Reactors work quickly and constantly, there's nothing that stops a reactor except for an outage, as it stands EMP's rarely cause outages, except in the ships trying to use them.

SO, here I see a problem, and here I have a solution;

Disruption/Outage effect - for X seconds target cannot recover any power, after which there is a cooldown for Y seconds before this may activate again.

Simple enough, once hit by an EMP you can't recover power for a few seconds, we'll say 3. Once this effect has passed, a timer begins where you won't be affected by it again for say, 20 seconds. That's 20 seconds of invulnerability against Emp weapons effect, vs 3 seconds where they can actually drain your power.

Before anyone says, woah! no power regen!? Taboooooo... consider the ease in which this can be implemented as well it's pros and cons;

• There's already an outage effect
• There's already an icon that can be used for this
• Emps of all sizes would now pose a threat, while larger ones will drain more power than smaller ones during the length of the effect
• The effect cannot be spammed because of the inherent cooldown
• It does not replace damage, it merely adds a way for EMPs of all sizes to deal with reactors of all sizes, less than 100% effect weapons will still do damage.

Thoughts? Comments? Concerns?

 

[CyberTao]

42.6 mass drone -> 3699.4 e/sec
42.6 mass cannon -> 4260 damage/second

42.6 mass is 426 blocks iirc, which should be 2130 Damage per Second, since almost all weapons do 5 dps/block (Missile/pulse is the only exception, and it does less).

From there, 100% EMP support should be 11*DPS, so 23420 points of damage (The configs say '10', but there is an implied +1 for almost all values after a certain point). The reason it would be *11 is because the power required to fire is DPS*10 (It makes sense since smaller ships should be able to disable larger ones via it more effectively, which is how it would ever be a viable option) in most cases.

You should only need a ~68 block weapon to disable 3699 power regen, course this could all be wrong, but this is what I read from the configs.


As for the actual idea, it makes EMP favour /punch weapons too much I think, and would throw off the balance of things. No one would ever have to put EMP on their main ship at all, they could just stick it on a couple drones, since it would have the same effect (3 seconds disabled), and the 20 second immunity on top, it just feels like a downgrade. Like a skill with a cooldown in any other MMO.

 

[ltmauve]

Yeah. this favors tiny drones too much. Instead the EMP should build up on the target and then cause the outage. Or perhaps the EMP should reduce power regeneration for say 6 seconds based on the damage instead.

 

[Loadout]

42.6 mass is 426 blocks iirc, which should be 2130 Damage per Second, since almost all weapons do 5 dps/block (Missile/pulse is the only exception, and it does less).

From there, 100% EMP support should be 11*DPS, so 23420 points of damage (The configs say '10', but there is an implied +1 for almost all values after a certain point). The reason it would be *11 is because the power required to fire is DPS*10 (It makes sense since smaller ships should be able to disable larger ones via it more effectively, which is how it would ever be a viable option) in most cases.

You should only need a ~68 block weapon to disable 3699 power regen, course this could all be wrong, but this is what I read from the configs.


As for the actual idea, it makes EMP favour /punch weapons too much I think, and would throw off the balance of things. No one would ever have to put EMP on their main ship at all, they could just stick it on a couple drones, since it would have the same effect (3 seconds disabled), and the 20 second immunity on top, it just feels like a downgrade. Like a skill with a cooldown in any other MMO.

From what I can tell it's only a 2x multiplier on most weapons. Pulse does get something along the lines of x20.... but it's pulse.

Also multiples vs exponents. Mathematically speaking Exponents win.

Not sure how you see the immunity as a downgrade, it's not preventing the emp damage only the regen pause. So you'll still do the emp damage all the time, you just only get the regen pause every so often. It's a buff in every respect.

As for small vs big, if your ship relies entirely on regen to fill it's tanks this could cripple you, for a brief period. But even if all the drones did was pop the effect every so often, it'd be your own fault for designing a purely regen vessel. The same arguments can be made for pure armor vs pure shields and so on. It's a design issue more than anything else.

Yeah. this favors tiny drones too much. Instead the EMP should build up on the target and then cause the outage. Or perhaps the EMP should reduce power regeneration for say 6 seconds based on the damage instead.

I like the build up idea, but the problem really comes with exponents of reactors vs multiples on damage blocks. It's just not plausible to make this work on a large scale. Small scale, sure, damn near anything will work there, but large scale it shows it's faults.

Example:

Warning Math!
This is ~how damage blocks work...
2 x 20 = 40
20 x 20 = 400
2.000.000 x 20 = 40.000.000

Compared to reactors...
2 ^ 2 = 4
20^ 2 = 400
2.000.000 ^ = 4.000.000.000.000

So if the 2.000.000's are the same block count, tell me how in the world we're supposed to compare that? I realize it won't be the same block count but the idea is that exponents scale more rapidly than pure multiples. Something everyone should remember from algebra. So multiples vs exponents isn't a solution, it's just complicating the problem.

My goal is to try and make this a simple thing, not more complicated by adding in huge formulas and trying to over-complicate things. The whole idea of disruption is to take the outage effect and apply it without forcibly draining a monster of a power supply. Currently EMP's are worthless unless you can break the regen of the target ship, otherwise why use them at all?

Reasonably if you could compare the damage of the EMP to the capacity/regen of the target and then scale down the recharge based on some formula that could work, but it really complicates things.

Occam's Razor: the simplest solution is often the best.

Post script: if one could build up a counter, such as 10% of the capacity to cause an outage, that could work, it'd be faster with larger weapons and slower with smaller ones, but the idea of causing an outage is still the same.

 

[CyberTao]

From what I can tell it's only a 2x multiplier on most weapons. Pulse does get something along the lines of x20.... but it's pulse.

That is Ion, not EMP. Ion doubles the DPS against shields, and increased Pulse by 20 because it originally had 1/10th of the DPS compared to the other weapons (0.5 DPS/block). EMP is definitely 11.

Spoiler: screenshot of configs

if your ship relies entirely on regen to fill it's tanks this could cripple you

The Idea of EMP is to attack energy storage. Power is hard to maintain for larger ships, as thruster will use a chunk of your regen easily, and ships require larger stores of power to fire larger weapons, especially those with high alpha and long reloads. In a small ship fight, EMP as it is is useless unless you can sustain a rapid fire hit, but becomes more potent with larger ships, which rely on those stores.

The idea of EMP disabling regen entirely is crippling for fighters, and if all it takes is 1 shot to trigger it, large ships would just need to load Cannon/Cannon/EMP turrets next to their PD, effectively negating small ships without storage against larger ones entirely. I'm not gonna say that fighters should be able to down titans, but if small ships battles start to revolve around who-hit-who-first, with a sudden demand that all ships must have power storage to last them 3 seconds (which is hard on fighters), else they fall prey to Cannon/cannon or Missile/Missile EMP spam, I don't think anything has been solved in the end.

TL-DR; The idea would work for larger ships, but it's crippling for small ones, and potentially makes it easier to grief server noobs, whom probably wont stock up on tanks first.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

I had that idea once, I have no idea how it would be balanced though. Instead of making EMP a glorified power drain beam EMP shots would put the ship into "power failure". You know when you attempt to use more power than you have your ship basically stops generating power for a few seconds. It would be amazing if EMP weapons gave ships that effect, it would force a ships own power consumption to be used against it. I really have no idea how to balance it though. How much "damage" would you have to deal before the effect occurs. If it was all the time any rapid fire weapon could permanently disable a ship, there would have to be some kind of mass based diffusion.

 

[Loadout]

The Idea of EMP is to attack energy storage. Power is hard to maintain for larger ships, as thruster will use a chunk of your regen easily, and ships require larger stores of power to fire larger weapons, especially those with high alpha and long reloads. In a small ship fight, EMP as it is is useless unless you can sustain a rapid fire hit, but becomes more potent with larger ships, which rely on those stores.

The idea of EMP disabling regen entirely is crippling for fighters, and if all it takes is 1 shot to trigger it, large ships would just need to load Cannon/Cannon/EMP turrets next to their PD, effectively negating small ships without storage against larger ones entirely. I'm not gonna say that fighters should be able to down titans, but if small ships battles start to revolve around who-hit-who-first, with a sudden demand that all ships must have power storage to last them 3 seconds (which is hard on fighters), else they fall prey to Cannon/cannon or Missile/Missile EMP spam, I don't think anything has been solved in the end.

TL-DR; The idea would work for larger ships, but it's crippling for small ones, and potentially makes it easier to grief server noobs, whom probably wont stock up on tanks first.

Who-hit-who-first is already the way it works. Unless you have the shield capacity to withstand a size-able hit (unlikely on most fighters) you will be reduced to one-hit wonders. Even with the capacity update, most small ships are all guns and engines.

About as crippling on fighters as it would be on larger ships. Presuming of course your design plan on a fighter is similar to a larger ship. Most fighters I see though rely entirely on regen to perform all their functions. This is a design flaw and not a weapon flaw. People will just change their designs to be more effective like they always do.

If the goal is to reduce the capacity of ships, you have to get around regen somehow. Most ships will simply recharge it all in 10 seconds or less. If you reduce capacity and it comes right back immediately, how is that effectively doing anything? If you negate the regen somehow(or at least reduce it), either with an effect, a build up, or even a % reduction based on mass, then you can damage capacity. As it stands currently it's all or nothing, break it in one go or forget even trying.

Server noobs will always be griefed cause they don't know any better.:p

I had that idea once, I have no idea how it would be balanced though. Instead of making EMP a glorified power drain beam EMP shots would put the ship into "power failure". You know when you attempt to use more power than you have your ship basically stops generating power for a few seconds. It would be amazing if EMP weapons gave ships that effect, it would force a ships own power consumption to be used against it. I really have no idea how to balance it though. How much "damage" would you have to deal before the effect occurs. If it was all the time any rapid fire weapon could permanently disable a ship, there would have to be some kind of mass based diffusion.

Perhaps lower mass would diffuse more of the effect? allowing present style fighters to persist? If that really is the problem with small ships getting the poor end of the stick, then mitigating the reduction for smaller vessels may prove beneficial. I don't know all the answers or claim too, but I think the idea has some merit here.

 

[CyberTao]

This is a design flaw and not a weapon flaw. People will just change their designs to be more effective like they always do.

Power tanks are not effective at all on fighters. You are at least doubling the size of the ship if you try to have it save power to last it 3 seconds, then in returns needs more power regen and tanks to account for the larger mass (thrust and effects). Fighters burn a lot of power for their mass honestly, you can see the power fluctuate greatly if you don't design properly. Saying that a lack of power tanks is a design flaw is a falsity to the extreme, Power tanks on a fighter have always been next to useless, due to pitiful storage space (they scale exponentially afterall), and the lack of ever even needing them.

This isn't "bad design", this is "all small ships must be redesigned".

And on the note of bad design, is there even a battleship out there that isn't able to survive without regen for a few seconds? People often overkill with power storage on large ships, so I have to wonder how effective that would even be unless you were using EMP drones to maximize it in a drawn out battle.

 

[Loadout]

Power tanks are not effective at all on fighters. You are at least doubling the size of the ship if you try to have it save power to last it 3 seconds, then in returns needs more power regen and tanks to account for the larger mass (thrust and effects). Fighters burn a lot of power for their mass honestly, you can see the power fluctuate greatly if you don't design properly. Saying that a lack of power tanks is a design flaw is a falsity to the extreme, Power tanks on a fighter have always been next to useless, due to pitiful storage space (they scale exponentially afterall), and the lack of ever even needing them.

This isn't "bad design", this is "all small ships must be redesigned".

And on the note of bad design, is there even a battleship out there that isn't able to survive without regen for a few seconds? People often overkill with power storage on large ships, so I have to wonder how effective that would even be unless you were using EMP drones to maximize it in a drawn out battle.

I disagree almost entirely, if you choose to design something that is not power stable, then it's a design flaw. We'll just have to agree to disagree on this point. Tanks do increase exponentially, but that doesn't mean you have to suck all your power down in .05 seconds just to shoot a single missile. You can achieve balance with fighters without tanks, many of my drones do this as is, and many other ships do too.

Quite the point, most battleships can survive, most fighters should too (without the tanks). Although to be honest so much space has been utilized in weaponry it's not likely with some common designs. What I'm suggesting here is not everyone redesign everything, it's cut the regen so you can actually damage power.

If that is a percent decrease in regen, that's fine, if it's a total loss of regen (as it is with power outages) that's great too. Either way, something has to change because EMPs cannot function as is.

 

[CyberTao]

I disagree almost entirely, if you choose to design something that is not power stable, then it's a design flaw

I'm gonna have to ask you where I said that. I said fighters are designed to be sustainable, which means very little excess power, but always enough for it's purposes, not that it's our place to tell people how they can build anyways. If you build a ship that has many times more power than it needs, then you are probably wasting space.

The difference here is you seem to be on a server where people are desperate for alpha strike, and I socialize with those that actually give enough of a damn to balance the design. I've derped around with enough ships to know that 3 seconds on a small ship is lethal, and 3 seconds on a large ship is laughable, it's even entirely possible to add that into your design, you just have to regen an extra 3 seconds worth in 20.

If an effect can be so easily rendered null on most ships, and cripple the few others to almost useless-ness, then I feel like the idea itself needs a review. And remember, we have that EMP passive which is suppose to reduce the effects of EMP against your ship (up to 60%). How does that work with this? If disabling regen is suppose to be the main feature of EMP with your suggestion, what is the counter? "Build Better" just ends up with all ships being built immune to it if it's easy enough to, which would make EMP an abandoned effect, or used exactly the same as it is now. It would work in the current game, but how will the game adapt to it over time?