stuff
I'm linking to google docs because of it's ease of use and the fact that SMD's pentium is still on fire.\
here's a transcript:
A Total Revamp of Combat
Global changes:
All weapons now gradually consume their energy while reloading as opposed to instantly consuming it when you fire. Because sensors now take a respectable amount of energy to run this should shuffle around energy dynamics.
Additive velocity. If for example the slowest missile travels at just twice the max ship speed without overdrive, then moving at the max ship speed and firing will cause that missile to fly at three times the max ship speed.
Fix shift while flying to decelerate at the same rate as you accelerate.
Map changes:
Because of the reality of the long range combat this system would provide, it is important that the map is revamped before the system is implemented. The new map optionally shows your sensor range as a translucent sphere. Piloted and ai controlled ships alike show up on the map as well and can even be targeted. This potentially means that a brawler ship could jump in, unload its high-alpha close range weapons, and then jump away while taking minimal damage. Because of the potential for strategies like this the infinidrive will unfortunately have to be patched. The solution I recommend is to nerf the shit out of the jump range when the drive isn’t up to snuff for the ship it is mounted on.
Sensor changes:
Sensors now have a resolution scale. For every block in your sensor array, it gains 10 resolution. The actual resolution number is the measure of the max range your ship can detect a one mass entity (less than one mass entities are undetectable). So a ten resolution sensor could detect a 1 mass ship 10 blocks away. After that, bigger ships can be detected outside that threshold of a logarithmic scale as follows: A 1mil mass ship could be detected 60 blocks away because log(mass[1,000,000])*resolution[10]=detection threshold[60]. The smaller a ship is the harder it is to detect. For example a 1000 resolution array could detect a 20 million mass ship from 7000 blocks away, a 100 mass ship would have to close to 500 meters before being detected. The formula for this is log(mass[100])/resolution number[1000]=detection threshold[500]. This makes smaller sensors better at detecting small ships, and larger sensors better at detecting big stuff from far away. Please note that the formulas only apply when the ship mass is bigger or smaller than the resolution number, respectively. When the ship is the same mass as the resolution number it is detected at a range equal to the resolution number. The exact numbers can be tweaked but the formulas should stay the same as I feel it provides the best balance.
Turrets cannot lock onto a target that hasn't been detected by sensors, and they will only fire at ships that close within their range. All missiles are now lock-on if mounted on a piloted ship, but you have to target the opponent you want to hit specifically. Lockon is instantaneous.
Scanners now act as two different systems at once: passive sensors and active sensors. Passive sensors are active at all times, have 1% of the resolution rating of active sensors, and give off no scanner-noise. When you are locked by active sensors you are informed of this assuming you have any sensors at all on your ship because of the scanner-noise. Active sensors consume energy and pulse every half second, consuming energy proportional to their resolution. Please note that scanners can be automated.
There is a hard limit on sensor detection range of 25 KM.
In a fleet, if any ship in the fleet gets a lock on an opponent every ship in the fleet will be able to fire upon them. This means building dedicated sensor ships for your fleet is viable.
Missile changes:
Missiles now do 50% less damage vs shields.
Missile/Missile:
The current missile/missile is a poorly designed and laggy mess. Fireworks are fun, but missile/missile makes PD useless just by using hundreds of twoblock groups. Thousands of 0-damage missiles lag your game. They automatically lock onto your allies because you enemies are so far away. No more! Missile/missile has been changed to behave like pure missile but with two differences. First, missile/missile is EXTREMELY fast. It is the fastest missile by a huge margin. It suffers with range because of this, however, having merely a kilometer of effective range, but good luck shooting a salvo of these down.
Missile/Beam:
Now has 20KM of range. All the other weapons are getting buffed and respecialized so I don't really think any other changes are needed. You can lock onto enemy ships outside your sight range using the navigation menu.
Missile/Cannon:
Has 2KM of range and travels faster than the other missiles except for missile/missile. DPS is increased to compensate for being seriously outranged by the other missile types.
Missile/Pulse:
Now does completely absurd DPS. These missiles are the slowest ones and have only 5KM of range. They are probably going to get instantly shot down by anybody with a PD system. Highest alpha damage in the game.
Missile:
In the middle of everything, having 10km of range, having midrange DPS, and having midrange speed.
Cannon Changes:
Cannon/Cannon:
Has the shortest range (1KM), slowest projectile speed, but second-highest dps. Useful for PD and pointblank weapons systems.
Cannon/Beam:
Now has 10KM of range. Missiles are king at range, but railguns don't have to deal with being nerfed vs shields. The downside is that at 10KM you can probably dodge it pretty easily.
Cannon/Missile:
Does incredibly high alpha damage. High reload time, 1KM range, slightly more dps than a comparable cannon/cannon. Due to the bullet spread it is only effective at close range.
Cannon/Pulse:
Ridiculously powerful. The shot hits its targets almost instantaneously. While other guns have to deal with their built-in penetration factor being scaled down, the cannon/pulse either puts all of its damage into the hole or penetrates the enemy ship all the way through. 4KM range. Does the third highest alpha damage damage in the game. Takes a full minute to reload a pure one, but it does over three times the damage of a comparable railgun per shot.
Cannon:
Also in the middle of everything, with 5k range and average stats.
Beam Changes:
Beam/Missile:
Instead of being a shotgun beam this gun increases in size over its range, hitting up to a 6x6 area. 1KM range. Respectable dps.
Beam/Beam:
5KM range, this beam doesn't have much dps, but its hits it's targets instantly and has a slight penetration effect to spread its damage out more.
Beam/Cannon:
This beam does intense DPS but its damage rapidly falls off to nothing at 1KM.
Beam/Pulse:
After being charged for up to 1 minute (does this automatically), this weapon unleashes a 3KM range lance of energy that does completely insane damage and both penetrates and propagates damage to nearby blocks like an explosion, slicing ships to bits. Does all of its damage over 5 seconds of firing and hits every quarter second while doing so. Second-highest DPS, second highest alpha damage in the game.
Beam:
3km range, average stats.
Pulse Changes:
I honestly have no clue what to do with pulse. It’s a pretty poorly designed weapon. It has to stay around to be slaved to other guns though.
Other:
Thrusters, shields, effects, and armor are fine. Power could use a rework and while I have my own ideas I hold that the game should lean very heavily towards midsize ships
(IE 500 meter ship is a largish flagship) and kill off giant ships that lag the game. The current power system with it’s hardcap does it fine and when fleet command is finished using a lot of smaller ships will be the preferred method of combat.
I'm linking to google docs because of it's ease of use and the fact that SMD's pentium is still on fire.\
here's a transcript:
A Total Revamp of Combat
Global changes:
All weapons now gradually consume their energy while reloading as opposed to instantly consuming it when you fire. Because sensors now take a respectable amount of energy to run this should shuffle around energy dynamics.
Additive velocity. If for example the slowest missile travels at just twice the max ship speed without overdrive, then moving at the max ship speed and firing will cause that missile to fly at three times the max ship speed.
Fix shift while flying to decelerate at the same rate as you accelerate.
Map changes:
Because of the reality of the long range combat this system would provide, it is important that the map is revamped before the system is implemented. The new map optionally shows your sensor range as a translucent sphere. Piloted and ai controlled ships alike show up on the map as well and can even be targeted. This potentially means that a brawler ship could jump in, unload its high-alpha close range weapons, and then jump away while taking minimal damage. Because of the potential for strategies like this the infinidrive will unfortunately have to be patched. The solution I recommend is to nerf the shit out of the jump range when the drive isn’t up to snuff for the ship it is mounted on.
Sensor changes:
Sensors now have a resolution scale. For every block in your sensor array, it gains 10 resolution. The actual resolution number is the measure of the max range your ship can detect a one mass entity (less than one mass entities are undetectable). So a ten resolution sensor could detect a 1 mass ship 10 blocks away. After that, bigger ships can be detected outside that threshold of a logarithmic scale as follows: A 1mil mass ship could be detected 60 blocks away because log(mass[1,000,000])*resolution[10]=detection threshold[60]. The smaller a ship is the harder it is to detect. For example a 1000 resolution array could detect a 20 million mass ship from 7000 blocks away, a 100 mass ship would have to close to 500 meters before being detected. The formula for this is log(mass[100])/resolution number[1000]=detection threshold[500]. This makes smaller sensors better at detecting small ships, and larger sensors better at detecting big stuff from far away. Please note that the formulas only apply when the ship mass is bigger or smaller than the resolution number, respectively. When the ship is the same mass as the resolution number it is detected at a range equal to the resolution number. The exact numbers can be tweaked but the formulas should stay the same as I feel it provides the best balance.
Turrets cannot lock onto a target that hasn't been detected by sensors, and they will only fire at ships that close within their range. All missiles are now lock-on if mounted on a piloted ship, but you have to target the opponent you want to hit specifically. Lockon is instantaneous.
Scanners now act as two different systems at once: passive sensors and active sensors. Passive sensors are active at all times, have 1% of the resolution rating of active sensors, and give off no scanner-noise. When you are locked by active sensors you are informed of this assuming you have any sensors at all on your ship because of the scanner-noise. Active sensors consume energy and pulse every half second, consuming energy proportional to their resolution. Please note that scanners can be automated.
There is a hard limit on sensor detection range of 25 KM.
In a fleet, if any ship in the fleet gets a lock on an opponent every ship in the fleet will be able to fire upon them. This means building dedicated sensor ships for your fleet is viable.
Missile changes:
Missiles now do 50% less damage vs shields.
Missile/Missile:
The current missile/missile is a poorly designed and laggy mess. Fireworks are fun, but missile/missile makes PD useless just by using hundreds of twoblock groups. Thousands of 0-damage missiles lag your game. They automatically lock onto your allies because you enemies are so far away. No more! Missile/missile has been changed to behave like pure missile but with two differences. First, missile/missile is EXTREMELY fast. It is the fastest missile by a huge margin. It suffers with range because of this, however, having merely a kilometer of effective range, but good luck shooting a salvo of these down.
Missile/Beam:
Now has 20KM of range. All the other weapons are getting buffed and respecialized so I don't really think any other changes are needed. You can lock onto enemy ships outside your sight range using the navigation menu.
Missile/Cannon:
Has 2KM of range and travels faster than the other missiles except for missile/missile. DPS is increased to compensate for being seriously outranged by the other missile types.
Missile/Pulse:
Now does completely absurd DPS. These missiles are the slowest ones and have only 5KM of range. They are probably going to get instantly shot down by anybody with a PD system. Highest alpha damage in the game.
Missile:
In the middle of everything, having 10km of range, having midrange DPS, and having midrange speed.
Cannon Changes:
Cannon/Cannon:
Has the shortest range (1KM), slowest projectile speed, but second-highest dps. Useful for PD and pointblank weapons systems.
Cannon/Beam:
Now has 10KM of range. Missiles are king at range, but railguns don't have to deal with being nerfed vs shields. The downside is that at 10KM you can probably dodge it pretty easily.
Cannon/Missile:
Does incredibly high alpha damage. High reload time, 1KM range, slightly more dps than a comparable cannon/cannon. Due to the bullet spread it is only effective at close range.
Cannon/Pulse:
Ridiculously powerful. The shot hits its targets almost instantaneously. While other guns have to deal with their built-in penetration factor being scaled down, the cannon/pulse either puts all of its damage into the hole or penetrates the enemy ship all the way through. 4KM range. Does the third highest alpha damage damage in the game. Takes a full minute to reload a pure one, but it does over three times the damage of a comparable railgun per shot.
Cannon:
Also in the middle of everything, with 5k range and average stats.
Beam Changes:
Beam/Missile:
Instead of being a shotgun beam this gun increases in size over its range, hitting up to a 6x6 area. 1KM range. Respectable dps.
Beam/Beam:
5KM range, this beam doesn't have much dps, but its hits it's targets instantly and has a slight penetration effect to spread its damage out more.
Beam/Cannon:
This beam does intense DPS but its damage rapidly falls off to nothing at 1KM.
Beam/Pulse:
After being charged for up to 1 minute (does this automatically), this weapon unleashes a 3KM range lance of energy that does completely insane damage and both penetrates and propagates damage to nearby blocks like an explosion, slicing ships to bits. Does all of its damage over 5 seconds of firing and hits every quarter second while doing so. Second-highest DPS, second highest alpha damage in the game.
Beam:
3km range, average stats.
Pulse Changes:
I honestly have no clue what to do with pulse. It’s a pretty poorly designed weapon. It has to stay around to be slaved to other guns though.
Other:
Thrusters, shields, effects, and armor are fine. Power could use a rework and while I have my own ideas I hold that the game should lean very heavily towards midsize ships
(IE 500 meter ship is a largish flagship) and kill off giant ships that lag the game. The current power system with it’s hardcap does it fine and when fleet command is finished using a lot of smaller ships will be the preferred method of combat.
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