Buff warhead damage/radius poll

[PriZm]

Exactly. Imo the game needs some ways to perform sneaky operations and stuff. Would be kinda boring without it, and not realistic at all. Warheads have been (at the moment not anymore...) a very good way for smaller factions to be a pain in the *** for larger factions, without having to fight them face to face. It's what ANY guerilla army in history did and there is reasons for such tactics to exist - DEAL WITH IT! As Az14el said, the game already has enough mechanisms (besides just hiding sth in a void system) to protect stuff. I dont care if it is warheads in particular (although they are very funny), but i do definitly want some sort of weapon to use for hidden operations in the final game. Also, i consider it very premature to call that kind of stuff "griefing". It's just smart. Well, maybe not even smart, maybe it is just not stupid.

 

[Aynslei]

Its perfectly reasonable for people to lose their shit if they leave it out un-protected.

It is not reasonable to expect a good pvp environment with players waiting until people are offline and hiding the fact that they have and want hostile intentions on a multiplayer server. Kinda silly to justify hiding when you joined a server in the first place.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Its perfectly reasonable for people to lose their shit if they leave it out un-protected.

It is not reasonable to expect a good pvp environment with players waiting until people are offline and hiding the fact that they have and want hostile intentions on a multiplayer server. Kinda silly to justify hiding when you joined a server in the first place.

With the direction this game is going it seems unreasonable to me to assume everything has to be docked. What's the point of having fleets if the only way to ensure their safety is to dock them? Fleets need to be able to deal with threats, the AI needs to know how to use scanners so cloaked AI isn't OP. They need to know to shoot down torpedoes or at the very least respond with force when hit. I support buffing warheads, I just think the game isn't at a point where that's viable.

 

[Az14el]

Unless Schine patch that, some times all docking entities on a sector appear undocked, at these moment are vulnerable from anonymous torpeo atacks, there is a low chance but the more blocks are on a sector, the big chance to appear undocked on a saturate server moment.

Brings up a good point in that there's currently much worse/faster methods to killing an undefended asset than warhead bombing, the exploit I think you're referring to is in the way they load the sector, not in any specific system set up, any weapon would do the trick including much faster travelling ones like beams, cannons & lock ons, which are what's used to pull it off. Warheads just don't implicitly have to take advantage of server lag to do so.

There are many methods of "griefing" in this game that are legitimately griefing, because they're either just obnoxious like camping out 2,2,2 in a swarmer spewing missile brick, or malicious like taking advantage of loading times to damage docked entities through shields or protection. These are pretty much as objective as you can get. That there's even differing opinions in this thread proves the opposite in the case of warheads, this isn't griefing this is one party making another party upset because they're not playing the same mass arms race game as others. "Warheads OP" or "Can't be countered" is just recycled heresay because people don't want to keep up to date (it's kinda hard in this game to be fair)

Sig very much related, that's what I see when people say warheads being pillow puffs is fair because of "griefers".
An actual griefer would make them actual quit i suspect.

 

[AtraUnam]

How about we just make warheads cause a war declaration against the nearest ship that isn't owned by the faction that got hit? Now I admit that I only thought this idea out for all of 20 seconds but it would generally solve the problem without demanding faction blocks on warheads; while its true that you could use this to 'frame' someone else I'm not sure thats necesarily a bad thing.

 

[PriZm]

using warhead to grief is likely the most inefficient way to do it... using wireless logic to trigger docked unfactioned weapons from an unfactioned ship or an auto-swarm-missile-launcher thingy would be much better. Or using exploits like the undocked ships bug etc. Warheads have one single reason to be used atm: They can be used without being detected as the attacker by some auto-war declaration. Players would actually have to investigate to get to know who attacked them. They might even never know. And they maybe have to interact with other players O.O now, that would be wierd. Not every one likes to play like a "knight in shiny armor". There should always be different ways to deal with a situation depending on personal decisions / roleplay.

Edit @ Topic: At this stage of the game i agree with Sven. The game isnt ready for (buffed) warheads yet. Of course there should be ways to counter them. Just making PD turrets target them would feel kinda cheap compared to the effort it takes to mount, fire and make a warhead actually hit.

 

[Nickizzy]

using warhead to grief is likely the most inefficient way to do it... using wireless logic to trigger docked unfactioned weapons from an unfactioned ship or an auto-swarm-missile-launcher thingy would be much better. Or using exploits like the undocked ships bug etc. Warheads have one single reason to be used atm: They can be used without being detected as the attacker by some auto-war declaration. Players would actually have to investigate to get to know who attacked them. They might even never know. And they maybe have to interact with other players O.O now, that would be wierd. Not every one likes to play like a "knight in shiny armor". There should always be different ways to deal with a situation depending on personal decisions / roleplay.

Edit @ Topic: At this stage of the game i agree with Sven. The game isnt ready for (buffed) warheads yet. Of course there should be ways to counter them. Just making PD turrets target them would feel kinda cheap compared to the effort it takes to mount, fire and make a warhead actually hit.

Total savior here^. This is what warheads are for. What would those defenses be then? Warheads do have hp mind you, and could be logic detonated and protected by Adv armor. They are dumbfire, so you could try to make ai run away, but I think that would end up messing with priorities and looking really derpy.

 

[Sgtwisky]

OH I also want to point out. I did say that AMS turrets should be able to target warheads, but wouldn't target ally faction, or same faction warheads. ALL my other arguing was predicated on that. Oh and that when a faction torpedo hits something it causes a war deceleration.

What I said:

Spoiler: Warhead Changes

I chose 20K damage and no range buff. I did testing a while back, and it will still take multiple direct hits from torpedo's (Even advanced versions like my "Lance" or the "MIRV" versions ive seen) to breach a 2 thick advanced armor hull. BUT... Assuming you can Get multiple direct hits with a dumb fire weapon on the same spot, you can start doing some real damage to the squishy insides. But your also still limited to the small raidous of the charge, so your not going to blow a huge hole into the middle of the ship. But if you cut a few power lines you likely have had a large effect on that ships combat effectiveness.

The following is technically "Off Topic" but I wanted to address Sven's concerns.



I do agree that a few changes need to be made to allow them to be buffed. But I don't think the changes need to be that huge.

Change 1:
I think AMS turrets should aim at any warhead they have a clean line of sight to, which is NOT factioned or is not an ally or one of your faction. If you don't have AMS, and your offline, then yes, someone can mess up your shit (Assuming no homebase protection).

Change 2:
A factioned warhead/torpedo should Cause a ware deceleration, while unfactioned should not.

This would cause the following:
1. You could defend from them while offline, even from a neutral player.
2. It still allows for covert ops using warheads. Including backstabbing and such. I know some people don't like this but (IMO) its part of politics, and PvP and seems natural to me. Keep your friends close and your enemy's closer and such. Yes, an ally could screw you over... you shouldn't have had them as an ally.
3. IF you have AMS turrets that are ON and you don't want them to shoot your warhead out of the sky, you need to faction it. If you faction it , your no longer running (Covert Ops) but you don't have to worry about turning your AMS off.

Now... You are worried someone will come while your offline, and murder your things with warheads that A. Ignore Shields AND B. Don't give you notice of who did it. Well.... Why the hell wouldn't you put AMS on your ship? Why would you leave something valuable just floating around without any means of protection? Not to mention that if you have an AI block and turn that on, you can always just have "Attack Neutral" on and BAM, your good. With what I suggested basicly everything your concerned about, is ether a non issue, or something that is YOUR responsibility to defend against.

You can't complain for example that someone used a single nuke to take down your ship and say its unbalanced, just because you didn't use AMS. Like wise you can't complain if someone Torpedo's your ship (has to be multiple times in the EXACT same location not easy...) and you have failed to put AMS turrets on it...

I said all that because ether you didn't understand/read that I don't just want a damage buff, without anything else done. OR you didn't think what I suggested originally would continue to inform the rest of my posts. I hope we are on the same page now...

TL;DR:
Torpedo's need both a buff and to be targetable by AMS, and the option to make "Ally" torpedo's non targetable so you don't shoot your own (which would happen if you've got any defense against them).

 

[Nickizzy]

OH I also want to point out. I did say that AMS turrets should be able to target warheads, but wouldn't target ally faction, or same faction warheads. ALL my other arguing was predicated on that. Oh and that when a faction torpedo hits something it causes a war deceleration.

What I said:

Now... You are worried someone will come while your offline, and murder your things with warheads that A. Ignore Shields AND B. Don't give you notice of who did it. Well.... Why the hell wouldn't you put AMS on your ship? Why would you leave something valuable just floating around without any means of protection? Not to mention that if you have an AI block and turn that on, you can always just have "Attack Neutral" on and BAM, your good. With what I suggested basicly everything your concerned about, is ether a non issue, or something that is YOUR responsibility to defend against.

You can't complain for example that someone used a single nuke to take down your ship and say its unbalanced, just because you didn't use AMS. Like wise you can't complain if someone Torpedo's your ship (has to be multiple times in the EXACT same location not easy...) and you have failed to put AMS turrets on it...

I said all that because ether you didn't understand/read that I don't just want a damage buff, without anything else done. OR you didn't think what I suggested originally would continue to inform the rest of my posts. I hope we are on the same page now...

TL;DR:
Torpedo's need both a buff and to be targetable by AMS, and the option to make "Ally" torpedo's non targetable so you don't shoot your own (which would happen if you've got any defense against them).

Mmm.. Kinda feel bad now. Must not have noticed that post. +1 to that idea. Just add if the torpedo's faction is their mothership's faction. I really don't like putting something like a faction block on a tiny torpedo.

 

[Aynslei]

"Oh my god! Warheads are ONLY for attacking without letting people know who attacked them! No don't take this away from me!" *More incessant whinning*

Holy shit you are the types of players that should go back to single player, home-base hiding and only wanting to fight something that wont fight back. Keep ruining multiplayer servers and go whine about how the meta and pvp is dead more.

Warheads have a stated use, a weapon that ignores shields, the same exploits that let them attack without war-dec can be used with every other weapon. Get over having a "I want to act like I am fighting but not actually fight anyone" card.

 

[Reilly Reese]

"Oh my god! Warheads are ONLY for attacking without letting people know who attacked them! No don't take this away from me!" *More incessant whinning*

Holy shit you are the types of players that should go back to single player, home-base hiding and only wanting to fight something that wont fight back. Keep ruining multiplayer servers and go whine about how the meta and pvp is dead more.

Warheads have a stated use, a weapon that ignores shields, the same exploits that let them attack without war-dec can be used with every other weapon. Get over having a "I want to act like I am fighting but not actually fight anyone" card.

Yeah you forgot boarding though.

 

[Sgtwisky]

"Oh my god! Warheads are ONLY for attacking without letting people know who attacked them! No don't take this away from me!" *More incessant whinning*

Holy shit you are the types of players that should go back to single player, home-base hiding and only wanting to fight something that wont fight back. Keep ruining multiplayer servers and go whine about how the meta and pvp is dead more.

Warheads have a stated use, a weapon that ignores shields, the same exploits that let them attack without war-dec can be used with every other weapon. Get over having a "I want to act like I am fighting but not actually fight anyone" card.

Um... where in my post, other then an instance where you left something without AMS unguarded in space somewhere, would that be able to happen Based off of what I have said? Or is that statement directed to someone else? If its to someone else (and it very well could be) you can ignore the rest of my post.

The reason you might not want a war declaration btw, might not be that a player is offline, but that your attacking some important and poorly defended infrastructure (Not home base) in prep for an all out war while said player IS online and in another location. This would allow factions to attempt to "Soften up" targets before a full scale attack or war. Said attacking faction could also keep the "Element of Surprise" as the defender may not be aware their defenses have been weekend, or aware as to where the attack is coming from.

It would be useless to fire torpedo's just to avoid a war deceleration, as AMS would blow em out of the sky. Again unless the player poorly built their ship... in which case its their own fault.

 

[Az14el]

yes, neutral entities can use more and more dangerous stuff than just warheads, and can be spawned in with all clocks running from a cloaker.

This shouldn't be such a strong argument against buffing them, this whole discussion shouldn't have turned into a catalog of tech hints just to stop people from shitting themselves over something that's almost benign in comparison. What i find most astounding is people talking like warhead torpedos are already a common problem, they're not. The best torpedo designers i know will still readily admit everything they do could be done vastly better with a more conventional weapon. Cloakers themselves are small & low-to-no armor or shielding as well as very small JD's. Large battleships already have all the tools to deal with them. In the miraculous and unrealistic situation the cloaker manages to alpha strike them hard enough to cripple the ship, well good for the cloaker, he gets to watch them casually leave on JD because he can't fit a big enough inhibitor anyway.

Just turning into a whole thread of "but i might lose my blocks!!" in my eyes. Gee that'd be a fresh new complaint for this community. Gonna make this post my last one in here because its just getting frustrating.

Basically, Warheads are just trash until heavily buffed, at current stats it takes 5-6 of them to break ONE BLOCK of advanced armor, im not talking enough to break through and damage the insides i mean ONE GODDAM BLOCK, as in not enough for follow up warheads to actually penetrate anyway because they are also ONE BLOCK and cannot fit through that space. Yes if they're buffed to the point where they can break an advanced block per warhead they can become the preferred method for LESS EQUIPPED factions to fight with. This is ideal because of how faction power snowballs, there is almost no chance in hell for a small/low tech faction to fight back against a larger organised & knowledgable one in a straight up firefight, so why the hell would they try? Why should they be "griefing" if they use a stealth tactic? Which is currently a garbage option as well so buff pls

 

[StormWing0]

How about we just make warheads cause a war declaration against the nearest ship that isn't owned by the faction that got hit? Now I admit that I only thought this idea out for all of 20 seconds but it would generally solve the problem without demanding faction blocks on warheads; while its true that you could use this to 'frame' someone else I'm not sure thats necesarily a bad thing.

Better idea save the last faction a neutral entity was docked to somehow and use that to tell who fired the warhead torpedo. This way the game can tell what faction owned the launched warhead before the thing defactioned on undock.

 

[Az14el]

or just who spawned it lol
That warhead isn't going to be fired in this case (or most cases in which it actually does damage) it's going to be spawned and usually at least maneuvered by an astronaut to get a little momentum

Edit: asghfghduorgifhef god dammit i posted again, k for realsies this time

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Since even before the introduction of fleets I have had ships guarding my station on the server I play on. One of the other players on the server who is "hostile" to me has a cloaking capable torpedo ship so I've thought about this a lot. It's trusted community so I don't have to worry about griefing or unprovoked attacks so I am not worried about him striking me but it's brought up the questions in my head as to how to balance the system for offense and defense

I think the balance of warheads really comes down to how smart the AI is, at least in my book. I've never liked the idea of "dock it or loose it" I have the ships guarding my station floating in space. Primarily they are there to repel non existent pirate attacks. Since fleets were introduced and I no longer have to manually wrangle ships the number of them guarding my sector has only increased. It seems to me unreasonable with the development of fleets to assume that every ship will have home-base protection. The problem with the current system is my ships just sit there, perfect targets for torpedoes or kamikaze ships. Even without auto war declaration on, AI needs to be able to react, the need to be moving. If I could order my ships to patrol they would be a much harder target to hit, if once hit they knew to start scanning to reveal cloaked ships then they could react accordingly.

1. AI needs to be able to identify and react to torpedoes.
2. AI needs to be able to react to impacts from cloaked entities.
3. AI needs to be able to move around so they are not sitting ducks from alpha strikes.

I really think improvements to the AI will solve torpedo issues. If a populated sector lights up like a beehive hunting you down because you poked it with a unfactioned "guerilla strike" then I can support this kind of thing. If AI just sits there and lets you poke them repeatedly from a cloaked ship then these need to stay useless.

 

[PriZm]

Yes, the core problem is the AI in this case. All those ideas of factioning warheads would make them completely obsolete, unless you buff their base damage in an extreme way. Atm it is a tedious and dangerous 1 use weapon, which is kinda weak compared to regular weapons. But: You can use it to break through a weak spot of some undocked/unguarded ship and torch the core/faction mod for example. It is a pirate weapon basically. In a real face-to-face battle, even damage pulse would be more effective... if you make warheads carry a facvtion or players id, it will be completely useless...
Already, i have better tools to conquer ships tbh. Warheads are just the most fun and immersive way. As sayd before, a neutral ship with 2-3 logic controlled weapons (power drain, beam/ion and a rapid fire missile for example) are MUCH more efficient and you can use them as often as you want. THAT should get fixed, since it doesnt feel too legit. Warheads in comparison, do indeed feel legit and immersive.

Edit: Imo all those whiners about neutral warheads being OP should go back to single player... Sad you cant use your block limit brick to get revenge, because you dont know the attacker. Deal with it :p it's part of the game and actually a very fun part for many players that dont roleplay a "knight in shiny armor" character.

 

[Sgtwisky]

About the issues with AI not reacting, couldn't you have a small Inhibitor system on a logic clock to just decloak anything that comes into the system?

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

About the issues with AI not reacting, couldn't you have a small Inhibitor system on a logic clock to just decloak anything that comes into the system?

Inhibitors don't work on cloak and scanners don't work on logic.

 

[Nickizzy]

Um... where in my post, other then an instance where you left something without AMS unguarded in space somewhere, would that be able to happen Based off of what I have said? Or is that statement directed to someone else? If its to someone else (and it very well could be) you can ignore the rest of my post.

The reason you might not want a war declaration btw, might not be that a player is offline, but that your attacking some important and poorly defended infrastructure (Not home base) in prep for an all out war while said player IS online and in another location. This would allow factions to attempt to "Soften up" targets before a full scale attack or war. Said attacking faction could also keep the "Element of Surprise" as the defender may not be aware their defenses have been weekend, or aware as to where the attack is coming from.

It would be useless to fire torpedo's just to avoid a war deceleration, as AMS would blow em out of the sky. Again unless the player poorly built their ship... in which case its their own fault.

+Political shinanigans. Don't you dare forget polititcs.

Since even before the introduction of fleets I have had ships guarding my station on the server I play on. One of the other players on the server who is "hostile" to me has a cloaking capable torpedo ship so I've thought about this a lot. It's trusted community so I don't have to worry about griefing or unprovoked attacks so I am not worried about him striking me but it's brought up the questions in my head as to how to balance the system for offense and defense

I think the balance of warheads really comes down to how smart the AI is, at least in my book. I've never liked the idea of "dock it or loose it" I have the ships guarding my station floating in space. Primarily they are there to repel non existent pirate attacks. Since fleets were introduced and I no longer have to manually wrangle ships the number of them guarding my sector has only increased. It seems to me unreasonable with the development of fleets to assume that every ship will have home-base protection. The problem with the current system is my ships just sit there, perfect targets for torpedoes or kamikaze ships. Even without auto war declaration on, AI needs to be able to react, the need to be moving. If I could order my ships to patrol they would be a much harder target to hit, if once hit they knew to start scanning to reveal cloaked ships then they could react accordingly.

1. AI needs to be able to identify and react to torpedoes.
2. AI needs to be able to react to impacts from cloaked entities.
3. AI needs to be able to move around so they are not sitting ducks from alpha strikes.

I really think improvements to the AI will solve torpedo issues. If a populated sector lights up like a beehive hunting you down because you poked it with a unfactioned "guerilla strike" then I can support this kind of thing. If AI just sits there and lets you poke them repeatedly from a cloaked ship then these need to stay useless.

Point two(on my count) on this thread. The current AI is insufficient to defend against contact rammers and/or cloaking ships.

Point one was warheads being used as a greifing tool because of the autowar function. Several solutions to this are:
(Needed) Factioned ships hitting a different faction's ships with a warhead has the same affect as shooting them.
1. Make ships with warheads require faction blocks.
2. Make undocked warhead ships less than 30 blocks inherent the parent ship's faction.
3. Make PD missile turrets prioritize warhead entities. This would need better AI because it would have to only be exposed warheads(armor cubes surrounding a single warhead) (The identifying fo warhead carrying vessels would be easy. Make having a warhead an effect like cloaking or jamming.)
Each solution(tell me if I missed one) could be paired up and matched with eachother. I made it all nice and summerized for you devs. Was this a good idea?

How do we improve the AI?
[EDIT]
Added "don't you dare" to political shinanigans.
[P.S]
22 people have voted in the poll. This thread has been successful. Now give me thirty.