Read by Schine Ammunition as an Alternative

[sayerulz]

I feel that, by default, missiles should just need ammo, obviously with increased damage and some nerfs to PD in exchange. However, I do not think that the point of missile ammo should be made as more of a limit on how may missiles you can fire before needing to restock. The ammo itself would be very cheap- perhaps just a thruster, a warhead, and a circuit for a bunch of them. But missiles would use ammo based on damage, so a ship needs to have storage for them. High-alpha missiles would be very useful for small ships, as a way to damage a capital ship. But because a small ship can't carry all that many missiles, it will need to go back and restock, which it can do because it is fast and manuverable enough to escape to a supply ship.

Whats stopping people from putting a million of these on a capital ship? Nothing really. But if you have ten quadrillion damage worth of missile launchers, your big ship will either:

A: need to devote a ton of space to storage, which could otherwise be used for shields, thrusters, and power, making a ship with a ton of missiles a slow, glass cannon kind of ship.

or

B: not put in enough storage for a drawn-out battle, making the ship a one-hit-wonder that is screwed if it's opening volley doesn't kill it's target, or if it is fighting more than one enemy.

This also adds to potential for supply ships and stations, to replenish ships missiles.

 

[Nickizzy]

That would still allow a ship that is out of ammo to break off, swap and return to combat rather than having to return to base or hook up with a supply ship and transfer ammo before returning to combat.

Isn't that practically a total ship reset? In that time, on a decent ship, all shields and power will regenerate. Most weapons will be fully recharge in that time. Should it be a 2 minute wait or something? They need a change time, but it shouldn't be easier just to rebuild the whole system.

 

[jayman38]

For missile ammo, the texture of the missile module itself gives me an idea:
The side of each missile module shows stored missile ammo.



This tells me that the number of missile modules should define the storage capacity of the missile system, not the power of each missile.
Linked secondary weapon systems (and tertiary effects) will actually determine the power (and relatedly, the ammo usage) per shot.

Examples:
> 0 missile modules, but no slaved weapon systems: 1 dmg single missile per second, lots of ammo per module. (E.g. based on texture, let's say that a single module holds ~36 dmg (36 individual small missiles), spread across 1-dmg missiles yields 36 shots per module.)

200 missile modules (1 dmg, 7,200 dmg capacity), 200 slaved beams (+1000 dmg + 1000 dmg capacity (enough for at least one shot) + lock-on capability), 200 slaved explosive modules (+1000 dmg + 1000 dmg capacity (enough for at least one shot) + add explosive effect) results in 4 missiles, each doing 2001 double-explosive damage.

1000 missile modules (1 dmg, 36,000 dmg capacity), 1000 slaved cannons (+5,000 dmg + 5,000 dmg capacity + rapid-fire capability), 1000 slaved punch-through modules (+5,000 dmg + 5,000 dmg capacity + punch-through) results in 4 missiles, each doing 10,001 damage, punch through.

4000 missile modules (1 dmg, 144,000 dmg capacity), 4000 slaved beams (+20,000 dmg + 20,000 dmg capacity + lock-on capability) results in 8 missiles, each doing 20,001 damage per shot. No added effect other than the missile's inherent explosive effect, due to no tertiary slave.

With this, missiles should be able to intercept missiles (missile pd turrets), and missiles should probably have HP. Maybe 1/1000 damage + 1. (E.g. a 20,001 damage missile would have 21 hp.)

Maybe leftover damage could result in one extra missile with less damage (the remainder) than the regular missiles.

Examples:
The 200+200+200 example could result in 4 regular missiles with 2001 damage each, plus one 1196-damage missile.
The 1000+1000+1000 example could result in 4 regular missiles with 10,001 damage each, plus one 5,996-damage missile.
The 4000+4000 example could result in 8 regular missiles with 20,001 damage each, plus one 3,992-damage missile.

 

[Nickizzy]

For missile ammo, the texture of the missile module itself gives me an idea:
The side of each missile module shows stored missile ammo.

View attachment 26528

This tells me that the number of missile modules should define the storage capacity of the missile system, not the power of each missile.
Linked secondary weapon systems (and tertiary effects) will actually determine the power (and relatedly, the ammo usage) per shot.

Examples:
> 0 missile modules, but no slaved weapon systems: 1 dmg single missile per second, lots of ammo per module. (E.g. based on texture, let's say that a single module holds ~36 dmg (36 individual small missiles), spread across 1-dmg missiles yields 36 shots per module.)

200 missile modules (1 dmg, 7,200 dmg capacity), 200 slaved beams (+1000 dmg + 1000 dmg capacity (enough for at least one shot) + lock-on capability), 200 slaved explosive modules (+1000 dmg + 1000 dmg capacity (enough for at least one shot) + add explosive effect) results in 4 missiles, each doing 2001 double-explosive damage.

1000 missile modules (1 dmg, 36,000 dmg capacity), 1000 slaved cannons (+5,000 dmg + 5,000 dmg capacity + rapid-fire capability), 1000 slaved punch-through modules (+5,000 dmg + 5,000 dmg capacity + punch-through) results in 4 missiles, each doing 10,001 damage, punch through.

4000 missile modules (1 dmg, 144,000 dmg capacity), 4000 slaved beams (+20,000 dmg + 20,000 dmg capacity + lock-on capability) results in 8 missiles, each doing 20,001 damage per shot. No added effect other than the missile's inherent explosive effect, due to no tertiary slave.

With this, missiles should be able to intercept missiles (missile pd turrets), and missiles should probably have HP. Maybe 1/1000 damage + 1. (E.g. a 20,001 damage missile would have 21 hp.)

Maybe leftover damage could result in one extra missile with less damage (the remainder) than the regular missiles.

Examples:
The 200+200+200 example could result in 4 regular missiles with 2001 damage each, plus one 1196-damage missile.
The 1000+1000+1000 example could result in 4 regular missiles with 10,001 damage each, plus one 5,996-damage missile.
The 4000+4000 example could result in 8 regular missiles with 20,001 damage each, plus one 3,992-damage missile.

Cool idea. It would be pretty nice if/when they revamp the weapons systems. Just gona say ^^^the title^^^ says "as an alternative".

I honestly recomend someone just redos this thread as "ammo-effect or system?" With a poll with
A a tertiary effect like

Spoiler: My idea

I would suggest using storages to hold the ammo(if it was a craftable meta-item). Ammo would weigh a large amount and would cost composite and mesh(or scrap? Lots of talk about that).

Ammo effect would:
A. Reduce energy usage
By a good amount, it should be(in energy) the opposite of overdrive, the ammo will be the main problem
B. Either:
1. Add shield penitration
A. small amount that scales down with increased damage(100 damage has 50% penetration, 1000 has 20% penetration), with damage reductions overall as well, but ammo is not a proton-shield weapon, it's a particle-shield weapon. It's the fighters pew-pewing across the deathstar attempting to destroy important things or stuff that will blow up, while cruisers and larger craft can hammer the shields from above, fighters can do slight damage to the larger ship from the start.
B. Flat out overdrive with ammo.
Just a (boring, in my opinion) 2-3 times increase in weapon damage.

Storages would have a toggle between being used or not used by ammo computers, and a variable input number. When the toggel was on, and ammo computer requesting ammo would take it from that storage, if it was off, the storgae holding ammo would not be viable to give ammo. Ammo computers look through docking links, and storgaes would autofill back up to a specified amount through docking chains. Becoause of this turrwts could be smaller.
Balancing(and equasions)
Power/ammo cost:
Ammo is 1 mesh and 1 composite for 10, cheap enough for starting and mass production, but weighs (undecided, based on how much it costs to make and how much is used) 0.1 per ammo(expained latter).

Power would be cut down by 10 to 100x, because most of the cost would come in ammo production and the weight and size the system it would take up.

Ammo is consumed in the formula of 10/cooldown second/module, until 30 modules, when it goes to 20, at 60 it goes to 40, 80 at 90, ect. Because of the decrease in effency with size, larger ships could not(not counting the extremes) hold infident ammo, and small ships with only a storage and cargo block, could shoot for longer comparitive periods.

Shield penitration would be 90% up to 30, 70% to 60, 55% to 90, 40% to 120, 30% to 150, 20% to 180, then 15% to 210, 12.5% to 240, 11.25% to 270, ect.

An example of a fighter would be:
A fighter is made with one 1:1 cannon/cannon system with 10 blocks in one grouping. It has the ammo effect, and one storage with one cargo for ammo.
It requires practically no power. Every shoot costs 1 ammo, and on a full storage it can hold the equivilent of 4000 shots.

(Shield penitration)
The ship has a full 90% penitration, so it does 9 damage per shot, no matter the shields. It can destroy an advanced armor block in 29 shoots(rounding up the decimals), or 2.9 seconds. It can destroy system blocks in 3 shots, or 0.3 seconds. However, it has to deal with PD turrets, and only can shoot for 400 seconds, which is 137 ad armor blocks, or 1379 system blocks. That is not near accurate, because the would be bond to miss most of the time(being cannons:D), or hit more than one block. Also, it would be hard not to be engaged by a turret or defensive fighter, or face the same point for more than 5 minutes over time.

All number are subgect to change(although I did spend quite a bit of time on balancing the mass and damage and cost).

B: Ammo for new systems like flack and new weapons
C:Ammo as something needed fir already existing weapons systems

Spoiler: Your idea, bc it is the most detailed

For missile ammo, the texture of the missile module itself gives me an idea:
The side of each missile module shows stored missile ammo.

View attachment 26528

This tells me that the number of missile modules should define the storage capacity of the missile system, not the power of each missile.
Linked secondary weapon systems (and tertiary effects) will actually determine the power (and relatedly, the ammo usage) per shot.

Examples:
> 0 missile modules, but no slaved weapon systems: 1 dmg single missile per second, lots of ammo per module. (E.g. based on texture, let's say that a single module holds ~36 dmg (36 individual small missiles), spread across 1-dmg missiles yields 36 shots per module.)

200 missile modules (1 dmg, 7,200 dmg capacity), 200 slaved beams (+1000 dmg + 1000 dmg capacity (enough for at least one shot) + lock-on capability), 200 slaved explosive modules (+1000 dmg + 1000 dmg capacity (enough for at least one shot) + add explosive effect) results in 4 missiles, each doing 2001 double-explosive damage.

1000 missile modules (1 dmg, 36,000 dmg capacity), 1000 slaved cannons (+5,000 dmg + 5,000 dmg capacity + rapid-fire capability), 1000 slaved punch-through modules (+5,000 dmg + 5,000 dmg capacity + punch-through) results in 4 missiles, each doing 10,001 damage, punch through.

4000 missile modules (1 dmg, 144,000 dmg capacity), 4000 slaved beams (+20,000 dmg + 20,000 dmg capacity + lock-on capability) results in 8 missiles, each doing 20,001 damage per shot. No added effect other than the missile's inherent explosive effect, due to no tertiary slave.

With this, missiles should be able to intercept missiles (missile pd turrets), and missiles should probably have HP. Maybe 1/1000 damage + 1. (E.g. a 20,001 damage missile would have 21 hp.)

Maybe leftover damage could result in one extra missile with less damage (the remainder) than the regular missiles.

Examples:
The 200+200+200 example could result in 4 regular missiles with 2001 damage each, plus one 1196-damage missile.
The 1000+1000+1000 example could result in 4 regular missiles with 10,001 damage each, plus one 5,996-damage missile.
The 4000+4000 example could result in 8 regular missiles with 20,001 damage each, plus one 3,992-damage missile.

Also, how do you reload ammo?

Any thread much longer than 3-4 pages, especially after a long break in postings, usually falls apart bc of all the different points that different people are talking about.

 

[ZeroRa]

Ammunition???

 

[KuramaFox]

Since there is already a thread, I'll post my thoughts on the matter here. Some of this may be a bit similar to things already posted.


This is basically how I would implement it, if I were one of the devs. The approach is basically one of adding an ammo mechanic, but not taking out the old way of doing things.

In other words, ALL weapons would continue to be able to be fired using nothing but energy. The upside of using ammo is that you are trading the ability to fire more powerful weapons on a smaller vessel for the fact that you can only fire them a limited number of times before going back to a station. It also allows you to have powerful weapons on an especially large vessel, without the need to dock a bunch of power generators (and will allow titans with powerful guns to still be useful if power generators get nerfed at some point).


Ammo: As indicated by the title, an ALTERNATIVE to current systems.

How it works in some simple steps, presented as if it were actually in-game:

1. Similar to storage and cargo boxes, there would be two parts for ammo storage, which are basically set up the same (you place one of one type, then connect a whole bunch of the other type to it.

2. You connect this box to the primary weapon computer of your choice. It has no effect if connected to a secondary/slave weapon/effect computer. This can be ANY weapon type (you can argue that for beams, it is effectively some specialized disposable energy storage/production thing that is used as "ammo" in place of the reactor output).

3. You either reboot the ship, or you go into the weapons menu and re-initialize the weapon (which would take some time to perform, similar to adjusting thruster settings). This is to prevent you from easily switching back and forth from energy to ammo use or something.

4. Congratulations, the weapon is set up! The weapon will no longer use energy, and will now instead use ammo from the connected ammo storage. It will be unable to fire if there is not enough ammo present, even if there would normally be enough energy.

To return a weapon to using energy: Either disconnect the ammo storage from the weapon, or destroy the ammo storage "primary" block. Then, reboot the ship or goto the weapons menu re-initialize the weapon. The weapon will now think its an energy-using weapon, and will behave the weapons did before ammo was added.

Naturally, if you don't ever connect an ammo storage to a weapon, it will of course default to using energy like it currently does.



Ammo Production:

A factory block would be added which produces ammo. Naturally, this can only be placed on stations, and perhaps the faction capital ship if that idea comes to pass. You can also refill ammo at Trading Guild stations for a charge.

 

[Dire Venom]

Shots as Ammunition, and as Energy - it can be additional, effective and work

 

[Broomsage]

The idea was that you would be able to store ammunition like potential energy. You would manufacture it using the weapons you have. By linking weapons to storage you could store charges for that weapon. Ammunition would be manufactured at the rate it would be fired if it were fired normally only it will fill whatever storage it was linked to until the storage is full. Those charges would function like any item and be able to be moved between different storages and used by any sized weapon of the same type. Because it is an item it would be balanced by mass.

The problem was the use of meta items and of course pretty much all of the current weapons system being turned on its head.

 

[hinkhenk]

I wish to add my thoughts into this, or rather, inform you of some things you have yet not thought of.

E = mc²

Rappidly shoot from a small fighter, you would fly the other direction.
Have a big ass cannon shoot a heavy bullet from a large ship, you still would fly the other direction you shot.

"I would have thrusters that would stabilise my ship."
Yea, do that.Keep in mind, E = mc²

Also, if your ship were hit by this bullet, it would get your ship moving aswell.
Becaus? Yep you guessed right.. E = mc²

I would like to see ammo in some way perhaps, if there is a good basis for this, but, this game is built upon as much real physics as possible, and taking away E = mc² would ruin this game..

Be very careful about how to implement ammo, i do not mind it, but not in terms of ballistic ammo.

 

[Spartan-228]

I wish to add my thoughts into this, or rather, inform you of some things you have yet not thought of.

E = mc²

Rappidly shoot from a small fighter, you would fly the other direction.
Have a big ass cannon shoot a heavy bullet from a large ship, you still would fly the other direction you shot.

"I would have thrusters that would stabilise my ship."
Yea, do that.Keep in mind, E = mc²

Also, if your ship were hit by this bullet, it would get your ship moving aswell.
Becaus? Yep you guessed right.. E = mc²

I would like to see ammo in some way perhaps, if there is a good basis for this, but, this game is built upon as much real physics as possible, and taking away E = mc² would ruin this game..

Be very careful about how to implement ammo, i do not mind it, but not in terms of ballistic ammo.

Really you are going to pull that out? We have people building ships from franchises that brake that rule all the time. Also wile this would apply to magnetic accelerator weapons and very very large conventional guns, missiles will still work.

 

[hinkhenk]

Really you are going to pull that out? We have people building ships from franchises that brake that rule all the time. Also wile this would apply to magnetic accelerator weapons and very very large conventional guns, missiles will still work.

Yes i am going to pull that, simply becaus, now we got newtonian physics for our ships, i would say its not more than right to take this into calculation.

Having missiles as ammo can work, and we could use warheads in the process of making the missiles. but as for ballistic cannons, i do not like that idea.
Also, this is my opinion, and i do not speak for the masses, but please take everything into concideration, even as farfetch'ed the problems and solutions might be.

In the end, as i read through the whole thread, i did not see anything pointing out the fact that the depth of the game would increase by creating this, only another element, that is not realy needed and is complicated and most people would skip out on anyway, since there is easier and better way to do it.

 

[Eosian]

I wish to add my thoughts into this, or rather, inform you of some things you have yet not thought of.

E = mc²

Rappidly shoot from a small fighter, you would fly the other direction.
Have a big ass cannon shoot a heavy bullet from a large ship, you still would fly the other direction you shot.

"I would have thrusters that would stabilise my ship."
Yea, do that.Keep in mind, E = mc²

Also, if your ship were hit by this bullet, it would get your ship moving aswell.
Becaus? Yep you guessed right.. E = mc²

I would like to see ammo in some way perhaps, if there is a good basis for this, but, this game is built upon as much real physics as possible, and taking away E = mc² would ruin this game..

Be very careful about how to implement ammo, i do not mind it, but not in terms of ballistic ammo.

The problem is that, when you get down to it, most ships will be far, far heavier than the projectiles they fire. So, yes, there will be recoil from your physical ammunition. However, when you are firing a 126 pound, six inch shell from a 56,000 ton ship, the recoil, while it will be there, won't be as much as an issue. In addition, through the use of recoilless rifles or two-stage ammunition, you can negate a majority of that recoil anyway.

 

[wanzer]

seems nice

what about being able to design ammo

and store its blueprint in the cargo holders that are connected to the weapons

so for materials it will grab raw numbers of the materials needed
that are based on a blueprint you keep inside the cargo hold and that was manually selected when conecting the weapon computer to the cargo hold

if you can design ammo (in advance ofc) you can make it a kenetic rod or place explosives at the top
in short being able to set the ratios of materials that make up the munition

just a wacky idea

 

[Broomsage]

There are many many ways to dampen recoil from such weapons.

Keep in mind that an anti-matter based weapon would not be firing big heavy bullets you dont need much to get what you want. Im now going to debate over how SM projectiles function, even though as far as I know thats entirely speculation.

Commence useless speculation;
With anti-matter, a fist sized lump can flatten cities so judging by the damage done by even large cannons, it cant be that much anti-matter being fired. So even with ridiculously powerful charges being fired, the recoil would never be enough to overpower a fighter's thrust. How dense do you think antimatter is?
Then there is the actual speed at which an antimatter projectile is launched, which given the conditions in which battles are fought, need not be that high a speed. so whether you use a slingshot or a rail gun, unless something interacts with it, that projectile will go in a straight line.

Point is, we dont know how it works so we cant really apply physics to it.

There is no recoil system yet implemented and I dont know of plans to implement them in the first place. Why think of reasons why it wouldnt work that dont even currently exist within the game? oh yeah, and heres somthing from me from a while ago, plenty of reasons why you shouldnt like it are discussed. Ammunition as an Addition
[doublepost=1470332792,1470332676][/doublepost]I was also going to compare the kinetic energy of a bullet fired from a gun to that of a ping pong ball fired from a rail-gun but I didnt really want to do the math.

 

[jayman38]

Exactly the same as the classic matter/energy conversion formula, E=mc^2, the damage potential (A.k.a. "Energy" a.k.a. "E") is equal to the mass of the projectile times the square of the speed of the projectile. That's why a particle beam that accelerates a million atoms, weighing less than a gram to nearly (80%? 90%?) the speed of light (a.k.a. "c") can do (much, much) more damage than a 125mm tank cannon that accelerates its 20,000+ gram explosive shell to a few times the speed of sound (generally less than 1% of 1% of the speed of light).

Since there is such a wide discrepancy between an "energy" cannon and a "shell" cannon, I find any game-wide speculation regarding Starmade's cannons, and what kind of ammunition, impact, and recoil (the various physics variables) they involve to be laughable.

A given weapon system is up to the lore of the builder, along with whether the weapon system has any kind of recoil and requires any kind of dampening.

In various Sci Fi media, there is various examples of "cannon" style weapons at either end of the spectrum. Star Control 2 has some of the best quick examples: laser shots (zero recoil) versus the gun ship (the ship kicks backward noticeably with every shot)