Any news on the weapons update?

[OmegaGame]

I was under the impression that "The first prototype is about 1-2 weeks away" as was proclaimed on march 15th...

Yet, here we are nearly a month after that initial assessment. I suppose i am seeing if anyone may have heard something on a livestream or on discord as to when it might be expected now.

 

[JinM]

 

[Byamarro]

I'm not at Discord. Could anyone bring it here?

 

[JinM]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/420769758187749396/431829161359704066/beam.gif

schema - 26.03.2018
the combinations as you see them now will change
we want each combi to be a unique and viable variation
of the weapon
Valiant70 - 26.03.2018
ok
Coyote27 - 26.03.2018
Yeah, you're going to have a tough time hitting clay pigeons with SM's shotguns
Tunk - 26.03.2018
shotgun weapons need true random
Valiant70 - 26.03.2018
cool
Ithirahad - 26.03.2018
Will you be taking community feedback as to what is or is not 'viable' during the dev cycle?(bearbeitet)
No offense, but a lot of things presumed 'viable' by you guys in the past have not panned out practically :\
schema - 26.03.2018
we will definitely take feedback, but a lot is also from experience on looking what people are going for
there are some things that are plain useless
atm
Captain Skwidz - 26.03.2018
moar

s
Ithirahad - 26.03.2018
yey, boom eggs
schema - 26.03.2018
i think something viable is the fire frequency for example
difference of a machine gun to a heavy gun
that will definitely still be there in a combination
Coyote27 - 26.03.2018
-nod-
Yeah, that's a choice that matters yet both have reasons to choose
Tunk - 26.03.2018
everything migrated to firing rate due to block removal properties, other than anti-shield weapons because its monolithic.
Ithirahad - 26.03.2018
yeah
schema - 26.03.2018
i think beams will be the weapon of choice against shields mostly
Ithirahad - 26.03.2018
I'm pretty sure they will, but I might as well ask: shields will generally be more powerful relative to weapons than they are now, right?
schema - 26.03.2018
since they are so easy to hit with now
beam is more "damage over time" and cannons will be more bursty
SchnellBier - 26.03.2018
so this won´t change

Valiant70 - 26.03.2018
Beams will be extremely powerful against small targets then. Perhaps too powerful.
schema - 26.03.2018
the latch on will break if you can get out of sight
Ithirahad - 26.03.2018
I don't mind not having massive regen on shields any more, so that builds that use more power for defense/movement instead of guns aren't excluded, but if there will be no regen the capacity relative to usual weapon damage seems like it will have to be a lot higher
Valiant70 - 26.03.2018
If you get anywhere in front of a big ship you're dead almost instantly. It sounds like the beams will make that worse.
That's the problem. You have to get clear out of sight to avoid being hit. You can't maneuver to avoid fire.
schema - 26.03.2018
there are also 2 versions of latch-on
Tunk - 26.03.2018
so this Latching behavior, does it break on block break or is it a set coord on the target while firing?
schema - 26.03.2018
one will adapt (which will be used for tractir beam)
it will just latch onto the next block if the sight to the current block breaks
the other version which is probably the damage beam
will break if you lose sight to the block you latched on
this means you can break the beam
Tunk - 26.03.2018
and how does the latching behave with multiple outputs?
schema - 26.03.2018
if you turn
small ships can
big ships cannot turn fast enough
each beam would latch individually
Valiant70 - 26.03.2018
That's going to be weird...
Really weird
I don't like that part.
Tunk - 26.03.2018
ouch, so a beam waffle is going to chunk a ship easier :/
schema - 26.03.2018
beam will likely increase damage over latch time
so if you can break it it wont do that much damage
giving small manuverable ships an advantage if they realize it fast enough
Ithirahad - 26.03.2018
If you manually guide the beams, they can still cut in a line, right? Or are they locked onto a block for a whole firing cycle?
Valiant70 - 26.03.2018
That's so weird...
schema - 26.03.2018
you will lock on to the block you hit
Ithirahad - 26.03.2018
Also, I feel like giant spinning docked entities will become meta if this mechanic works the way I imagine

schema - 26.03.2018
and then to the next one if you kill it
Valiant70 - 26.03.2018
Oh yeah, Ith has a point.
SchnellBier - 26.03.2018
it´s hard to judge that without using it...
Tunk - 26.03.2018
yeah counter rotating entities will drop a beam lock in seconds
Valiant70 - 26.03.2018
Everyone will start putting spinning shields on everything.
Ithirahad - 26.03.2018
Kind of like FURB's spectra armour, but even nastier
schema - 26.03.2018
yeah im still working out the details
SchnellBier - 26.03.2018
it might be strange for turrets
schema - 26.03.2018
i could just go with adaptable latch
which would just latch on to the next block it grabs if the line breaks

[doublepost=1523296137,1523295861][/doublepost]this ridiculous smileys lol

 

[Kelpaz]

I found an astromech test There is more to be found, it's easier to find if you do a user search on discord.

 

[Nosajimiki]

hmmm... cool demos. I hopes someone told schema that rotating shields won't matter since your lock would be on the main entity and not on the docka. Now there are other turning exploits that I expect to get retarded, but that one should be fine.

Also, Valent, you need to stop complaining so much about small ships. It's okay if a ship 25x your size can one-shot you. If you send 25 of them at the bigger ship, it's still dead long before it can retarget and fire on 25 separate targets. If you do too much to encourage one size ship over another, you take away any incentive to do both. That discourages fleet diversity which is a primary goal of the rebuild. If you are upset that small ships are traditionally too weak, it's because you are not building/utilizing them right. I'd suggest you hunt down Comr4de if you want some pointers. He frequently used swarms of 2-10k drones to take out much larger enemies.

 

[EricBlank]

Thats true, yeah. Numbers is a great force multiplier, especially if the opponent is ill suited to deal with more than one or two targets.

It looks like this update will at least make cannons and beams more useful in single output groups.. Kinda makes waffles redundant, which is something ive been looking forward to for a long, long time. Just designing huge waffle arrays is a pain in the ass sometimes.

 

[Nosajimiki]

Big questions though in my mind is if new damage patterns will further harm the effectiveness of cannons and missiles vs beams and if they will completely nullify the new armor update since multi-million damage cannons/beams are about to become so commonplace.

 

[JinM]

Big questions though in my mind is if new damage patterns will further harm the effectiveness of cannons and missiles vs beams and if they will completely nullify the new armor update since multi-million damage cannons/beams are about to become so commonplace.

I think if sector ranges and weapon ranges stay as they are, then beams will stay as the dominant weapon choice.

 

[EricBlank]

That should also bring into question the damage types vs defense types we're supposed to be getting. They should offer a degree of balance between the weapon types and defensive strategies. Maybe we can get trajectory prediction for player pilots on cannons so we can fire them somewhat accurately at range too.

 

[Nosajimiki]

Cannons are supposed to be able to handle much higher muzzle velocities now which should offset some of that concern, but I was more specifically referencing penetrating damage vs explosive damage. An explosion is more easily mitigated by armor spacing; whereas, beams can now overcome the "overpen" problem by creating a reasonably wide hole, but still have narrow enough of a damage profile to cut really deep.

 

[EricBlank]

Oh, you mean from what we can see in the gifs? I would suspect that they only display the default damage profile or profile for one particular type, the weapons slave combos would provide the variations on those.

Im wondering now what theyre going to do with the effects systems, like ion and explosive. I suspect theyd be recycled back into this

Hold on one of those gifs is using a laser pistol. Now im confused. Do we have a demo of the cannon at all?

 

[Nosajimiki]

Big questions though in my mind is if new damage patterns will further harm the effectiveness of cannons and missiles vs beams and if they will completely nullify the new armor update since multi-million damage cannons/beams are about to become so commonplace.

Yup, new alpha weapons not only overwhelm the new armor system but do so by such a massive margin that armor is in fact worse than it was before.