(A) simple solution to the "problem" of docked hull...

[Jojomo]

I don't know what Schine thinks about docked hull, but I know there are quite a few players who hate it. (I personally am fine with it, I'm using it in my current build).

One suggestion often made to "fix" it is to just pool all shields together, and have no physical damage done to any entity until the full shield pool is down.
But this is problematic, because some people then feel that turrets are too well protected - they want to be able to pick them off an enemy ship before that ship's shields are completely gone.

-----

I suggest going the other way: don't share shields at all between entities.

This way every entity would have the "correct" amount of shielding, according to the builder: turrets can be well protected if the builder is willing to pay the cost for that, but more likely turrets would typically be easier to damage than the main ship entity.

This would add an extra tactical element to combat. Concentrating on one area of the enemy would be advantageous.

-----

Even better take this one step further: shields have values for both capacity and recharge. Leave one as it is (or pool it between all entities), and make the other non-sharable between docked entities.

So for example two entities docked together would pool their recharge, but keep their individual capacities (or vice-versa, I haven't though enough about which would be better).

I feel that this would give the best aspects of all common solutions.

 

[kurosawa]

what is the advantage to docked armor ?

and no shields on turret is bad since they will get insta killed and/or need repair every 5 seconds

 

[jayman38]

what is the advantage to docked armor ?

and no shields on turret is bad since they will get insta killed and/or need repair every 5 seconds

Docked armor takes damage when shields drop to 25%. That way, until shots penetrate through docked armor, the shield never has a "cooling down" period where it reaches zero from weapon fire and stays there a while. That is, shields don't suffer a cooling-down period until the armor is shredded first.
As soon as the shields rise above 25% again, they protect the docked armor. So if you are attacking, every second shot might get wasted in dropping the shielding back down below 25%.

I agree that there should be some shield sharing.

 

[Raisinbat]

I don't know what Schine thinks about docked hull, but I know there are quite a few players who hate it. (I personally am fine with it, I'm using it in my current build).

One suggestion often made to "fix" it is to just pool all shields together, and have no physical damage done to any entity until the full shield pool is down.
But this is problematic, because some people then feel that turrets are too well protected - they want to be able to pick them off an enemy ship before that ship's shields are completely gone.

Problem is turrets, regardless of size, can be very effectively disabled without shield protection. This kind of ties into armor being trash and how easily a turret joint can be destroyed. All it takes is one lucky shot and the turret is no longer able to function. Regardless of what people want, a tiny drone should not be able to pop off a battleship turret with a single lucky shot, and plastering your turret in crazy amounts of protection makes the turret highly ineffective.

I suggest going the other way: don't share shields at all between entities.

This way every entity would have the "correct" amount of shielding, according to the builder: turrets can be well protected if the builder is willing to pay the cost for that, but more likely turrets would typically be easier to damage than the main ship entity.

This would add an extra tactical element to combat. Concentrating on one area of the enemy would be advantageous.

You simply cannot fit a meaningful amount of shielding on a turret without bloating it to ridiculous size, plus you'd need ion effect on every shielded turret. Wouldn't be an issue if we could just activate that shit with a button or the ai wasn't too retarded to activate it on its own, but again, this is just more turret bloating.

WHY should you be able to shoot turrets of ships while shields are up? It's a stupid idea in the first place; you're already paying extra mass for mass enhancers and space to allow movement. Why would you use turrets instead of just having more ships like this?

What about AMS turrets; they're not large enough to survive any kind of weapon impact, and missiles can take out multiple turrets at once.

Not to mention that you just can't focus on a part of your opponents ship unless its a huge brick; leading targets at high speed from several km away isn't that easy.

Even better take this one step further: shields have values for both capacity and recharge. Leave one as it is (or pool it between all entities), and make the other non-sharable between docked entities.

So for example two entities docked together would pool their recharge, but keep their individual capacities (or vice-versa, I haven't though enough about which would be better).

I feel that this would give the best aspects of all common solutions.

Sharing recharge would be great! It's something you can stick in turret bases which are usually hard to fill to a decent size, but how would sharing capacity but not recharge work? What are we recharging then :p

Doesn't seem like it fixes the issue though...

I build almost exclusively docked hull ships because they're sooo much better than monohull ships, and you completely missed the biggest reasons it's superior:

• Circumvents limits on power generation
• reduces passsive system mass requirement by 75% or more

You want to get rid of docked entities? I'm completely with you on that, but you have to address the reasons WHY they're used. I can circumvent the sugestions you made and still use them, so they wont work; you just stop using turrets and have fixed docked guns inside the ship, then cover it up in a nice snug blanket of shield entity, then have a single massive turret on the ship with a million or two shield hp along with as much regen as you can fit to deal with all the little ships. Your sugestions just encourages single turret ships like Chronos FTL 180K because many small turrets end up being too fragile.

This approach of trying to nerf every exploitative ship that comes up with penalty after penalty is what's led starmade into this ridiculous mechanical state it's in where most people don't have a clue how the damage mechanics work. I'm not saying this to insult anyone (other than schine) they're just completely crazy and encourage nonsensical weapon design, because large weapons deal <1% of their actual damage. Address the problem instead of the symptoms.

Want to fix docked entities? Here's how:

• Remove the power bonus and reballance power systems
• change passive effects to linear scale that's not dependant on the mass of their entity.

 

[Winterhome]

Docked hulls that don't share shields 100% are the single best way of completely mitigating any and all beam damage and ion weapon (particularly cannon) damage.
Your suggestion would make the problem of ships with docked hulls being almost immortal even worse.

If shields were shared completely instead of only down to 25%, then that would mitigate the problem of docked hulls protecting against some of the biggest sources of damage in the game for little to no extra cost.

As it stands, Docked Hulls:

1. Reduce passive module number requirements for full effect (Exploit.)
2. Provide 100% protection against momentum effects (Exploit.)
   
3. Protect against Ion weapons 100% at 25% shields (Exploit.)
   
4. Mitigate EMP effects significantly (Exploit.)
5. Allow for layering Ion effects (E X P L O I T)
   
6. Cause extreme lag when undocked during combat by a lucky non-ion cannon round (Server crash pls)
7. Can be combined with Shield Drain beams to provide what's effectively total immunity to everything that isn't a high alpha cannon

 

[Jojomo]

Hmm, that's a big post to answer Raisinbat, here goes...

Problem is turrets, regardless of size, can be very effectively disabled without shield protection. This kind of ties into armor being trash and how easily a turret joint can be destroyed. All it takes is one lucky shot and the turret is no longer able to function. Regardless of what people want, a tiny drone should not be able to pop off a battleship turret with a single lucky shot, and plastering your turret in crazy amounts of protection makes the turret highly ineffective.

I don't think turrets should go without shields. I'm suggesting their maximum shield capacity could be the combined capacity of all capacitors in a group of entities, but their recharge rate back up to that maximum should be determined by shield recharge blocks on the turret entity.

You simply cannot fit a meaningful amount of shielding on a turret without bloating it to ridiculous size, plus you'd need ion effect on every shielded turret. Wouldn't be an issue if we could just activate that shit with a button or the ai wasn't too retarded to activate it on its own, but again, this is just more turret bloating.

Yes, turrets would eat up some internal space if they wanted to improve their recharge rates. I don't see a problem with that.
Either yes, ion effects would be needed per entity, or it could be combined for all entities.

WHY should you be able to shoot turrets of ships while shields are up? It's a stupid idea in the first place; you're already paying extra mass for mass enhancers and space to allow movement. Why would you use turrets instead of just having more ships like this?

I don't think you should be able to. I think you should be able to shoot a turret if the turret's shields have been reduced to zero.

Sharing recharge would be great! It's something you can stick in turret bases which are usually hard to fill to a decent size, but how would sharing capacity but not recharge work? What are we recharging then :p

Each entity would record it's own current shield value. It's just that the maximum would be determined by pooling the capacity of all entities.

I build almost exclusively docked hull ships because they're sooo much better than monohull ships, and you completely missed the biggest reasons it's superior:

• Circumvents limits on power generation
• reduces passsive system mass requirement by 75% or more

• 
  
  
  

Well, I don't think I listed any reasons docked hull is good... I've already said I use it.

You want to get rid of docked entities? I'm completely with you on that, but you have to address the reasons WHY they're used. I can circumvent the sugestions you made and still use them, so they wont work; you just stop using turrets and have fixed docked guns inside the ship, then cover it up in a nice snug blanket of shield entity, then have a single massive turret on the ship with a million or two shield hp along with as much regen as you can fit to deal with all the little ships. Your sugestions just encourages single turret ships like Chronos FTL 180K because many small turrets end up being too fragile.

No, I don't want to get rid of docked entities.
[doublepost=1481163594,1481163102][/doublepost]

Docked hulls that don't share shields 100% are the single best way of completely mitigating any and all beam damage and ion weapon (particularly cannon) damage.
Your suggestion would make the problem of ships with docked hulls being almost immortal even worse.

No, my suggestion would mean that if you targeted a piece of docked hull, there's be no hand-off at 25%, you'd keep knocking down the shields (of the entity) until it reached zero, then you've have the usual 10 seconds of shield inactivity before recharge to be hitting the entity physical structure.
You'd never reach the damage/hit sharing between armour and shields that the 25% hand-off gives docked hull now, and also the docked hull wouldn't recharge at a rate using recharge ability from other entities.

If shields were shared completely instead of only down to 25%, then that would mitigate the problem of docked hulls protecting against some of the biggest sources of damage in the game for little to no extra cost.

I'd be fine with that, but I here there are plenty of players who wouldn't: they feel a turret (for example) should be easier to strip the shields from than a whole ship.

 

[Raisinbat]

Each entity would record it's own current shield value. It's just that the maximum would be determined by pooling the capacity of all entities.

Then why would you split the shields in the first place? One entity with all shield + regen would be the better option.

 

[Jojomo]

Then why would you split the shields in the first place? One entity with all shield + regen would be the better option.

Tada! The "problem " of docked hull disappears....

Actually, there'd still be an advantage: hits to one entity wouldn't drop the shields of any other entity, so there's still be a reason to use docked hull. But because only max capacity would be shared between entities, and recharge would be up to individual entities and not shared, docked hull would be less powerful than it is now.

Still can't decide whether it'd be better to pool max capacity and individualise recharge, or pool recharge and individualise max capacity.

 

[Raisinbat]

Tada! The "problem " of docked hull disappears....

Actually, there'd still be an advantage: hits to one entity wouldn't drop the shields of any other entity, so there's still be a reason to use docked hull. But because only max capacity would be shared between entities, and recharge would be up to individual entities and not shared, docked hull would be less powerful than it is now.

Still can't decide whether it'd be better to pool max capacity and individualise recharge, or pool recharge and individualise max capacity.

I'd still use it just for better mass efficiency, but i guess that DOES remove the shield benefit.

How is this different from just setting the shield coverage to 100% though? Seems like it would do the same.

 

[Jojomo]

I'd still use it just for better mass efficiency, but i guess that DOES remove the shield benefit.

How is this different from just setting the shield coverage to 100% though? Seems like it would do the same.

With this suggestion turrets wouldn't be as difficult to damage as they would with that: they would have their own recharge rate (which would typically be slower than the main ship, unless builders gave turrets large numbers of recharge blocks).

Or using the alternative that I can't decide between, they'd have lower shields (typically) than larger parts of the ship (but pooled recharge).

Either way, turrets would get some of the shield benefits from other entities, but be more vulnerable than the straight "pool all capacity and recharge" method.

Basically it's an alternative that sits between fully pooled/shared shields, and no shield sharing at all.
(Which is also what the current 25% hand-off mechanism is, but that has some apparently unintended consequences that some people dislike).

 

[Raisinbat]

With this suggestion turrets wouldn't be as difficult to damage as they would with that: they would have their own recharge rate (which would typically be slower than the main ship, unless builders gave turrets large numbers of recharge blocks).

No, no they wouldn't. Why would you put shielding on the turret when it's covered by the shield entity's shield? You're just splitting your defense up for no reason.

I still completely fail to see why turrets should not be protected by shields the way the ship is. What's the point?

 

[Jojomo]

No, no they wouldn't. Why would you put shielding on the turret when it's covered by the shield entity's shield? You're just splitting your defense up for no reason.

I still completely fail to see why turrets should not be protected by shields the way the ship is. What's the point?

The point is to remove the 25% hand-off mechanic that some people really dislike (again though, I'm not one of them).

The most obvious replacement mechanic is to simply pool all capacity and recharge, and have all entities covered by this single shield.

However that causes complaints by a different (the same?) group of people, who say this would make turrets harder to pick off than they should be.

So, my suggestion is to take the fully pooled replacement mechanic, and tone it down a step: only pool/share *one* of either recharge or capacity, and force every entity to have it's own unshared/unpooled recharge or capacity (which ever isn't the pooled value).

It's a middle ground mechanic between fully pooled/shared shields, and completely individual shields.

 

[Panpiper]

I like having mechanics in the game that reward people for learning the game well and being willing to spend time on the intricacies of ship design. I want a well built ship to destroy a hastily slapped together newb cube, every time. Docked hulls are just one of the many ways to achieve this.

I do not see docked hulls as being a problem at all. They are a very interesting way to squeeze some extra performance into a ship. They are not OP, in that anyone willing to spend the time building a well built ship can use them. Moreover they do not in any way make a ship invulnerable. They just extend the life time of shield regeneration for a short while. In the face of really big weapons built to punch through armor, it can extend the life time of shield regeneration for only a very short while.

 

[kulbolen]

from a gameplay mechanic standpoint, i like docked entities and modular designs, and the improvements and complexity curve they offer. from a game performance aspect. i think the game developers need to either come up with a way to minimize their stability impact or remove them.

 

[Edymnion]

As it stands, Docked Hulls:

1. Reduce passive module number requirements for full effect (Exploit.)
2. Provide 100% protection against momentum effects (Exploit.)
   
3. Protect against Ion weapons 100% at 25% shields (Exploit.)
   
4. Mitigate EMP effects significantly (Exploit.)
5. Allow for layering Ion effects (E X P L O I T)
   
6. Cause extreme lag when undocked during combat by a lucky non-ion cannon round (Server crash pls)
7. Can be combined with Shield Drain beams to provide what's effectively total immunity to everything that isn't a high alpha cannon

You forgot that they also stop penetrating damage cold. As a separate entity, a high powered cannon with lots of punch through or penetration will stop penetrating once it gets to the other side of the docked hull. Creates a skin giving temporary immunity to that type of weapon fire. Very handy for placing around your aux reactors these days.

 

[Raisinbat]

You forgot that they also stop penetrating damage cold. As a separate entity, a high powered cannon with lots of punch through or penetration will stop penetrating once it gets to the other side of the docked hull. Creates a skin giving temporary immunity to that type of weapon fire. Very handy for placing around your aux reactors these days.

That damage just goes in the shields, it's not "gone".

I do not see docked hulls as being a problem at all. They are a very interesting way to squeeze some extra performance into a ship. They are not OP, in that anyone willing to spend the time building a well built ship can use them. Moreover they do not in any way make a ship invulnerable. They just extend the life time of shield regeneration for a short while. In the face of really big weapons built to punch through armor, it can extend the life time of shield regeneration for only a very short while.

Want to second this with a bit of an example: RAI Arbalest

This ship uses a logic gun that shoots a screen of weaker punch-through projectiles in front of a much stronger ion projectile in order to knock-out the shield regen on a docked armor ship. I Like having defenses that can be countered by purpose built weapons instead of the current flat dps nonsense.

The point is to remove the 25% hand-off mechanic that some people really dislike (again though, I'm not one of them).

The most obvious replacement mechanic is to simply pool all capacity and recharge, and have all entities covered by this single shield.

However that causes complaints by a different (the same?) group of people, who say this would make turrets harder to pick off than they should be.

So, my suggestion is to take the fully pooled replacement mechanic, and tone it down a step: only pool/share *one* of either recharge or capacity, and force every entity to have it's own unshared/unpooled recharge or capacity (which ever isn't the pooled value).

It's a middle ground mechanic between fully pooled/shared shields, and completely individual shields.

Just because people want something doesn't mean it should be in the game. Some people want to fart on balloons, that doesn't mean balloon farting needs to be in the game. WHY should this be changed?

Had some time to think on this and what really bothers me is docked hull is pretty much the only way to make armor really GOOD. Once a ship starts taking armor damage it's pretty much fucked, because ships are full of weak spots that massively cripple the ship if even a single block is lost (weapon and effect computers, logic for logic weapons, dockers and power system) and armor is only really effective at protecting your system HP bar; it doesn't prevent weapons from drilling a massive hole in your ship that removes these blocks, and since there's no recovery mechanic when it comes to armor you either escape to recover shields, which armor makes it harder to do because your ship is slower and requires more time to charge it's jump drive, or die a slow death.

I think a better solution would be to have shields switch into an "off" state once they drop to 0%, where they don't block damage at all, then recharge at 100% speed until they reach 75% capacity, then switch back "on". This doesn't affect docked hulls, but it makes ships without docked hull able to recover and stabilize after losing shields. Makes armor a lot better without needing to be a docked hull.

 

[Edymnion]

That damage just goes in the shields, it's not "gone".

No, what I'm talking about is just gone.

You can't shoot through a ship and hit the ship on the other side in a single shot. No matter how much punch through you've got, the damage ends when it reaches the opposite side of the entity you hit. Doesn't matter if you have a million points of punch through damage that should go a thousand blocks deep, a single layer of docked hull will stop it cold. It will take out that one block it hits, and the punch through will stop, even though there's plenty of ship behind it.

 

[Winterhome]

No, what I'm talking about is just gone.

You can't shoot through a ship and hit the ship on the other side in a single shot. No matter how much punch through you've got, the damage ends when it reaches the opposite side of the entity you hit. Doesn't matter if you have a million points of punch through damage that should go a thousand blocks deep, a single layer of docked hull will stop it cold. It will take out that one block it hits, and the punch through will stop, even though there's plenty of ship behind it.

Uh... Not the case. Except, maybe, when dealing with beams.

Cannon projectiles continue flying and simply do some mathy shenanigans to the projectile itself when it impacts a block. I regularly shoot through peoples' turrets to hit the main ship, blow through docked hulls with high alpha punch cannons, etc. - and I see cannon projectiles fly out the back end of ships I overpenetrate. I have personally killed two test targets in one shot with one of my old metaprojectile guns.

Cannon projectiles keep going through happily.

 

[Jojomo]

I do not see docked hulls as being a problem at all. They are a very interesting way to squeeze some extra performance into a ship.

As I've said here a few times, I agree. But whether or not docked hull needs to be "fixed" is beyond the scope of this suggestion. This suggestion is just something that could be applied if and only if a decision is made to "fix" it.
[doublepost=1481354170,1481353070][/doublepost]

Just because people want something doesn't mean it should be in the game. Some people want to fart on balloons, that doesn't mean balloon farting needs to be in the game. WHY should this be changed?

This is just a suggestion for a mechanic, not an argument for it. I'm just putting it out there for people to make up their minds once I've explained it sufficiently - not trying to make up their minds for them.

I don't prefer what I'm suggesting above what's currently in place, but I do prefer it to simply pooling and sharing all shields across all entities - because that's pretty bloody boring IMHO, and this is tactically much more interesting.
And one day the people who don't like docked hull might complain loud enough for something to be done about it.

I think a better solution would be to have shields switch into an "off" state once they drop to 0%, where they don't block damage at all, then recharge at 100% speed until they reach 75% capacity, then switch back "on". This doesn't affect docked hulls, but it makes ships without docked hull able to recover and stabilize after losing shields. Makes armor a lot better without needing to be a docked hull.

I like that better than a plain pool/sharing solution too. Still more boring than my suggestion though, from my perspective.

As for my dilemma over whether entities should have individual capacity and pooled recharge, or pooled capacity and individual recharge, I've realised which one it would have to be: recharge would have to be the pooled value, and capacity an individual value per entity, because the other way round would be open to extreme abuse (make each block of armour an entity, and get full capacity shield on each block - not a reasonable option to allow)

So to summarise my suggestion again: the maximum capacity for any entity is determined only by the shield capacity block it has itself. So yes, small turrets (for example) would typically have far less shield capacity than a large turret, or the main hull. (To clarify, each entity tracks its own individual shield level)
But recharge would be the same value for all entities: the total recharge from all entities pooled. This means those small entities with low capacity shields would typically recharge extremely quickly if attached to a large entity, because they'd benefit from all the larger entites' reharge capability.