New weapons... need to balance armor and shields...

[NeonSturm]

I believe that basic mechanical differences between weapon types in the new system are great enough to warrant them having their own roles, strengths, and weaknesses without having to rely on giving them specific numerical differences in effectiveness versus shields, armor, or structure.

Making certain weapons ineffective against certain defenses isn't bad in and of itself. In fact, in many games it's required in order to balance multiple offensive and defensive systems together. What I'm trying to point out is that we can modify a weapon's effectiveness against blocks and shields without a specific damage multiplier, instead working with damage delivery methods, rate of fire, and area of effect damage types.

Seeing a weapon in action should automatically clue you in to it's intended purpose and usefulness. Adding in hidden numbers that do magic behind the scenes would throw a slight chink in the system by causing damage representations to not be completely true. "Huh, my giant doom cannon says it does 10,000 damage, but I'm only seeing 3,000 pop up..."

Though I agree on the third paragraph, we should remember that we can't directly see shield regeneration or capacity or even hull thickness either!


I don't agree with the first two paragraphs.

• In Star-Gate, once the Asgard (a very-high-tech race) encountered Goa'Uld ships with shields resistant to their weapons. These weapons did 'almost zero' damage instead of 'insta-kill Goa'Uld' damage.

It should not that be such an extreme "Luke-Skywalker-Syndrome" in StarMade, but what else stops peoples from just building bigger and bigger al-round ships?


OFC, it could be done via base-stats, but for that thrust needs to be redone.
Small ships need to inherit the bigger ships velocities as offset for their max speed and mass needs to increase with speed to disallow bigger ships to dodge as easily as a fighter.

 

[Vyor]

Though I agree on the third paragraph, we should remember that we can't directly see shield regeneration or capacity or even hull thickness either!

They wouldn't be hidden numbers...

 

[MrFURB]

OFC, it could be done via base-stats, but for that thrust needs to be redone.
Small ships need to inherit the bigger ships velocities as offset for their max speed and mass needs to increase with speed to disallow bigger ships to dodge as easily as a fighter.

I believe it was said earlier in one of the Q&A's that the thrust system is getting a rather complete overhaul which limits capital ship movement unless they want to specialize in mobility, which comes with some rather hefty limitations on the capital ship's other tools. I'm kinda waiting for that to release to see all the feedback.

As for the big vs. small issue you brought up... Well, I have my own feelings and solutions to that. Other people don't always agree, and I feel that much will be left open for server hosts to configure for their own enjoyment.

 

[NeonSturm]

As for the big vs. small issue you brought up... Well, I have my own feelings and solutions to that. Other people don't always agree, and I feel that much will be left open for server hosts to configure for their own enjoyment.

Just disallow very big and very small ships to interact with each other. Small ships should do insufficient damage and big have insufficient accuracy to hit player-ships. (but they should hit drones which behave less intelligent).

 

[Vyor]

Just disallow very big and very small ships to interact with each other. Small ships should do insufficient damage and big have insufficient accuracy to hit player-ships. (but they should hit drones which behave less intelligent).

So... you don't want bombers to be useful? Guess no one will build fighters then!

 

[NeonSturm]

So... you don't want bombers to be useful? Guess no one will build fighters then!

I want them to be useful. I thought about < 10m as very small (escape pods) and big.length/small.length > 100 as very big.

Also think about turrets! Fighters should kill the very small ones, bombers some medium-big ones.

 

[Vyor]

I want them to be useful. I thought about < 10m as very small (escape pods) and big.length/small.length > 100 as very big.

Also think about turrets! Fighters should kill the very small ones, bombers some medium-big ones.

That means up to a point your average "fighter" will be the size of a frigate and a bomber would be the size of a cruiser. They are used(bombers) because they are hard to hit, even flack isn't reliable. Fighters are used to take out bombers, generally not touching the cap ships, then you have fighter-bombers that are what you described and have a secondary role as interceptors.