A small set of suggestions regarding ammunition and swarm missiles

[canadianbacon]

Ammunition is something a lot of people want.

Problem is, nobody can agree on how to do it.

So I propose no new ammunition system at all.

Rather, simply rebalance warheads. Warheads are made WAAAY more powerful, and their explosion radius scales with the number of warheads in a group. Warheads explode on activation or impact with a target at at least 50 m/s, and only activation through logic.

With warheads being really, really strong, players now have a weapon that uses ammunition. In addition, these new warheads add an entirely new facet to the game. Fast bombers may be able to throw a small warhead bomb at a large ship and do significant damage. Larger ships may be able to carry around clips of these warhead bombs to attack planets or stations, as well as having an onboard mechanism to propel them towards the enemy. If you somehow manage to land one of these things on anything other than a capital ship without basically meleeing them, kudos to you. Since carrying around warhead bombs is a a cumbersome task (and should remain so), hopefully warheads will be buffed to reflect this.

Next, swarm missiles should be nerfed. The way to go about this is to scale the number of missiles launched from each tube. Those tiny two block missile launchers no longer shoot 10 missiles, but rather only 1.

Visual example:

Now swarm missiles still do their job, without being fucking broken as hell and completely overpowering PD.

One last thing. Please make passive buffs to your ship such as ion apply to turrets.

 

[Deserea]

Do alot of people want ammo? i see alot of people saying no, and the same few people saying yes...but...


I do like the warhead ideas, so take my agree!

 

[Winterhome]

Doesn't really cover the problem of ammunition, but I like the general concept. Let's make warheads not awful, and get some way to fix swarmers in here.

I don't think that scaling the number of missiles to the missile output size is the right way forwards so much as being able to assign point defense gun priorities, though.

 

[NeonSturm]

Maybe add ammo and fuel together as one unique system. Thrusters just using ammo or weapons fuel - both perspectives are the same.

Then each server can enable or disable it how the admins like. Make it a bit bad first and let the community figure out a balance (youtube videos), then decide on official defaults on it.

1. Production Stage (requires time, maybe power, maybe resources)
2. Storage (Different storages, different ammo clips)
3. Delay Blocks (storage → [weapon +], delay → delay → [weapon +], delay → delay → [weapon] ).
4. Weapon block. The more delays between it and the storage (longest path) the higher the reload. Diminishing return curve to deny 100-minute alpha-damage weapons.

 

[canadianbacon]

Doesn't really cover the problem of ammunition, but I like the general concept. Let's make warheads not awful, and get some way to fix swarmers in here.

I don't think that scaling the number of missiles to the missile output size is the right way forwards so much as being able to assign point defense gun priorities, though.

The issue is that the 50000 missiles from 0 damage swarmer shooters hit the render cap instantly, making missiles invisible. Preventing people from spamming swarmers all over the place for zero cost would fix that issue too.

I want automatic PD prioritizing.

 

[Lecic]

I think the best way to buff warheads would be to turn them into a weapon system with a limit of one computer and output per entity, no logic/ai firing, a very long reload, and give them severe diminishing returns. This would make them most effective on player-controlled bombers, as the single gun a capital ship could use wouldn't do much.

Additionally, on missiles- it'd be nice if there was a vanilla missile cap in the configs. The option exists, but I don't think it's enabled in vanilla.

 

[NeonSturm]

I think the best way to buff warheads would be to turn them into a weapon system with a limit of one computer and output per entity, no logic/ai firing, a very long reload, and give them severe diminishing returns. This would make them most effective on player-controlled bombers, as the single gun a capital ship could use wouldn't do much.

Additionally, on missiles- it'd be nice if there was a vanilla missile cap in the configs. The option exists, but I don't think it's enabled in vanilla.

Not one computer - penalizes modular designs with weapon modules.
Make all computers of that type fire at once instead.

If spam is too op, limit to 1 launch per second and add a counter to show how many launches are available for that weapon-type.

The secondary mouse button could enable auto-launching until disabled or depleted, so you can aim other weapons instead.
This however, would encourage any ship sizes to use launchers.

 

[Lecic]

Not one computer - penalizes modular designs with weapon modules.
Make all computers of that type fire at once instead.

Rapid-fire and shotgunning are equally huge issues for a shield ignoring weapon. The point of having one computer and one output and not allowing logic or AI to fire it was to prevent a titan from docking an absurd amount of warhead launchers and easily passing into "overpowered as fuck" territory.

I realize this is a blow to modular ship construction, and while I think it's a cool concept, we shouldn't allow for a massive break of balance for the sake of modular design.

Remember the days of waffleboard cannons? Imagine if those could pierce shields. That's why the limitations I've proposed need to be in place.

 

[canadianbacon]

There are already limitations for warheads being that they are extremely cumbersome to use and move around. Making them insanely powerful versions of missiles (no they shouldn't penetrate shields are you crazy) will balance them enough as is without having to fucking rework the whole system. That entire idea has derailed the point of this thread. A million people have suggested "really strong missiles with diminishing returns" and it has been turned down because shit like that is just bad game design.

The issue with the whole diminishing returns nonsense is that it keeps people from scaling up these weapons. Warheads are not intended to be weapons systems. They are intended to be extremely powerful explosive blocks. If people want to make massive siege ships with clips of these things in storage for bombing big targets more power to them, but for ship vs ship combat they will be most effective as limited use bomber weapons.

Plus the allahu akbar potential.

 

[NeonSturm]

Rapid-fire and shotgunning are equally huge issues for a shield ignoring weapon. The point of having one computer and one output and not allowing logic or AI to fire it was to prevent a titan from docking an absurd amount of warhead launchers and easily passing into "overpowered as fuck" territory.

Shared cooldown? :p

 

[Lecic]

Shared cooldown? :p

Yeah, that won't solve the problem.