Changing swarm missiles

[Nickizzy]

What are the uses for swarm missiles? You could say they are lock-ons, but they have a shorter range than b/m weapons, and taking longer to lock on doesn't matter when you can out range them. You can't target individual ships with swarms.

The only real use of swarms is overwhelming PD, and that simply makes ships add more PD. All it takes is a flat section of hull. This makes ships needlessly more entity heavy, and contributes to lag.

Why can't we change missile-missile so it is used differently and doesn't simply slow down the game.

 

[Master_chief_150]

I reckon we shouldn't change them. They make an effective weapon in clearing sectors of enemy ships, so if you're in a single ship versing an entire fleet, using swarm missiles would be a great advantage for you. They have a downside however which is that they can also target your own ships, making them not worth it in fleets. But for ships on themselves, they make an effective weapon. I don't believe we should change them. They're usable in certain situations, and unusable in others.

 

[Az14el]

doesnt take much thrust to outrun them entirely, 1.2+overdrive passive or somewhere around that

short range, slow speed and highly susceptible to player fired cannon waffles too, best use right now is to kill intruders by firing swarmers that clip through your own ship killing them wherever they are inside

they're great for killing slower weaker ships en masse too sure, but even then a bunch of lock on turrets would work even better due to missile speed & higher damage radius as well as the ability to focus specific targets with select fire mode. swarners are pretty abysmal in general for pvp, usually pretty lag inducing too

 

[Kelpaz]

I generally consider any ship with swarmers unfit for fleet combat.
Static and rotating missiles turrets are much better from single to multi ship combat.

 

[Nickizzy]

single ship versing an entire fleet

not worth it in fleets.

How can we make a weapon that has these two characteristics and yet doesn't hurt performance?

Larger missiles don't work, maybe a Dr. Device type weapon like in Ender's Game. But that works with large ships too.

A massive AOE that only effects surface blocks? The calculations for that could be annoying.

Spoiler: Coding rant

Every time a block is placed or destroyed, the chunks where the change happened are mapped. Every block that has a side rendered gets 1x damage, 2 sides 2x damage, and so on. Then every empty block is mapped and linked, and the ones that don't extend past the widest length, width, or height are eliminated, and any sides touching that air zone are eliminated.

 

[Cluwne]

if you're in a single ship versing an entire fleet, using swarm missiles would be a great advantage for you

Right... They're good in one(1) single scenario, where there are still weapons that handle it better and more efficiently, energy and block count-wise. And absolutely useless in every other scenario, if not downright detrimental.

It's the Pulse of missiles. Neat, but utterly useless as a weapon on itself, as well as a secondary effect.
And just like Pulse, it needs a thorough rework so people would at least consider using it.
Yes, I know about "Muh nuke missile moving like a paralyzed snail; Muh pulse cannon penetrating thousand layers of advanced armor; Muh Death Star beam"
It's not worth it, especially when there are better alternatives.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

+1 for heavy missile turrets instead of swarmers; especially now that AI can be activated by logic.

Spoiler: I love missiles

I remember I was so excited when they first came out (Yay! a cluster bomb!). ...Then I found out they were heat seekers (facepalms). To be honest, I would have preferred dumb fire shotgun missiles over these.

In any case, Missle/Damage-Beam turrets have a similar effect to swarmers without shooting your allies. They're even better when they can rotate in all directions. Considering that I tend to build smaller ships designed for use in fleets, I now use missile/beam turrets and avoid swarmers entirely.

 

[Nickizzy]

+1 for heavy missile turrets instead of swarmers; especially now that AI can be activated by logic.

Spoiler: I love missiles

View attachment 44529

I remember I was so excited when they first came out (Yay! a cluster bomb!). ...Then I found out they were heat seekers (facepalms). To be honest, I would have preferred dumb fire shotgun missiles over these.

In any case, Missle/Damage-Beam turrets have a similar effect to swarmers without shooting your allies. They're even better when they can rotate in all directions. Considering that I tend to build smaller ships designed for use in fleets, I now use missile/beam turrets and avoid swarmers entirely.

But I heard you say in the other thread that you still cover ships as small as "Small frigates" with 6(?) PD turrets. They're intended for fleet combat, why do have defenses against a weapon that's made for non-fleet engagements?

 

[Dr. Whammy]

But I heard you say in the other thread that you still cover ships as small as "Small frigates" with 6(?) PD turrets. They're intended for fleet combat, why do have defenses against a weapon that's made for non-fleet engagements?

The turrets are to protect each fleet member from opponents who use swarmers; making it substantially harder for the enemy to simply pick them off one at a time with a logic swarm array. This concept was heavily inspired by Panpiper 's marauder and I've used it on nearly every ship I've designed for the past 2 years.

Also, it's 8-20 turrets; not 6. Come on man! I have standards.

 

[Lord_Greyscale]

Equally important, the same "waffle-board" technology used in most Mining ships is just as easily abused in a missile-boat. (power needed is higher, but so what)

thus, one properly built might have 20 or so middling-damage "outputs" for one missile, and 2 (or just the one) ultra high-damage outputs for the "true" ship-killer missile.
(and thus, overwhelm pd with missiles that won't kill on their own, to allow the real killer to get through)

 

[Dr. Whammy]

Equally important, the same "waffle-board" technology used in most Mining ships is just as easily abused in a missile-boat. (power needed is higher, but so what)

thus, one properly built might have 20 or so middling-damage "outputs" for one missile, and 2 (or just the one) ultra high-damage outputs for the "true" ship-killer missile.
(and thus, overwhelm pd with missiles that won't kill on their own, to allow the real killer to get through)

Hence why one of the final versions of the Pathfinder class came standard with 20 PD turrets.

 

[Nickizzy]

protect each fleet member from opponents who use swarmers

8-20 turrets

This is the problem. The threat of a single weapon system makes you tripple your entity count. Why can't we have a different weapon that has a similar use but doesn't promote lag creating designs.

 

[Lord_Greyscale]

More accurately, "why can't we have defenses worth a damn?".

If PD were anything approaching "accurate" then you'd only really need 8. (two each on top, bottom, left and right faces)
Possibly 12 or 16 on those "mid sized" ships , the 200M to 300M length/width/height bracket.

The reason so many pd turrets are needed for defending against "one" weapon system, (and nice jorb ignoring waffle-board MIS-BEAM arrays, which replicate the swarmer "swarm" without the uncontrolled targeting) is because they can't aim worth a shit.

A literal astronaut on the hull with his laser pistol is "usually" more accurate than the fucking blind Bobby AI.
(I should know, I did that a few times. Allways died, but that's why I was on my station)

Note that the laser pistol has shit for range, and travels remarkably slowly across it's shitty range.
The most basic CAN-CAN "pd" turret has a (by comparison) fuck-off massive range, and travels like greased lightning across said range.

The AI literally "aims-to-miss". Fix that ass-hattery, and the PD-turret counts will plummet.
(we cannot currently fix that, without allso making every NPC into a ludicrously accurate sniper, which is very detrimental to the game)

 

[Nickizzy]

But then we have to balance PD aim because it could get OP, 10 shots a second 5 missiles a second> 2 guns per side> 4 guns in a given direction> 20 missiles per second of in-range time. That requires serious missile spam to get through. Or just never use that quarter of the weapon tree.

 

[Zerefette]

cannon waffles too

Cannon waffles won't be here forever.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

This is the problem. The threat of a single weapon system makes you tripple your entity count. Why can't we have a different weapon that has a similar use but doesn't promote lag creating designs.

Precisely.

I like turrets just as much as I like missiles but ironically, my original designs had only 4 PD turrets. Why? Because that's all I needed in single player and ideally, I'd have liked to limit them to just two.

Unfortunately, when I joined multi-player, missile spam seemed to be standard practice so to counter this; I used turret spam. ...It was super effective. Can you imagine the kind of lag my fleet of 45 light frigates was generating as they flew across the galaxy?

There are a number of active threads discussing this self-propagating giantism and entity-count issue. We need to find a happy medium so that the game is actually playable above 10fps in multi-player and without leaving us looking like Swiss cheese from a missile attack.

More accurately, "why can't we have defenses worth a damn?".

If PD were anything approaching "accurate" then you'd only really need 8. (two each on top, bottom, left and right faces)
Possibly 12 or 16 on those "mid sized" ships , the 200M to 300M length/width/height bracket.

The reason so many pd turrets are needed for defending against "one" weapon system, (and nice jorb ignoring waffle-board MIS-BEAM arrays, which replicate the swarmer "swarm" without the uncontrolled targeting) is because they can't aim worth a shit.

A literal astronaut on the hull with his laser pistol is "usually" more accurate than the fucking blind Bobby AI.
(I should know, I did that a few times. Allways died, but that's why I was on my station)

Note that the laser pistol has shit for range, and travels remarkably slowly across it's shitty range.
The most basic CAN-CAN "pd" turret has a (by comparison) fuck-off massive range, and travels like greased lightning across said range.

The AI literally "aims-to-miss". Fix that ass-hattery, and the PD-turret counts will plummet.
(we cannot currently fix that, without allso making every NPC into a ludicrously accurate sniper, which is very detrimental to the game)

To be honest, I wouldn't mind sniper-accurate AI. That would be a true PVE challenge. Also, all of your turrets and fleet members would get the same spot on accuracy as the pirates.

On the other hand, we do need to buff PD accuracy. And, it would be cool if other weapons were able to destroy missiles; like Patriot Missiles or the Tactical High Energy Laser. Another idea would be to give us an option to set turrets to fire in unfocused mode to increase their efficiency via "waffling".

 

[Nickizzy]

Would changing missiles help? Ninja'd!

 

[DrTarDIS]

Nah, change the power, change the armor, change the weapons, CHANGE ALL THE SYSTEMS!

Seriously, I'd think it would be better if ratios mattered more, and if above 100% secondaries had their uses.
EG: a 5:15 main:sub Swarmer that had better spread/speed/evaisionOfPD than a 1:1, a 5:15 missile:beam that was faster but less damage, etc. The "no more than 100%" slave metric kinda screws with creativity and nice use more than the actual systems function. This can most def be expanded to the tertiary systems too.

The utility of swarmers as anti-pd EVEN IN FLEET is there, they are mostly fine IMHO. Even having thm as "only the computer" 0% secondary modules weapons systems has it's uses.

I think it might be a better idea to look at overall "archetypes" of ships and bet ALL the current(and future) balance decisions on encouraging those ideals, while still allowing people to make half-breed designs that have trade-offs to them.
Still a minor buff, like swarmers being able to target cloaked/jammed ships would most def be useful.

 

[Az14el]

Cannon waffles won't be here forever.

So smart folks will just avoid them as usual and/or gun them down with fewer outputs, slowpoke m/m is ridiculously easy to intercept even with my 250+ aus ping and like 2 outputs, the big waffles aren't absolutely needed they're just a no brainer currently when it's just a tiny weapon specialized for missile killing that can be added to pretty much any ship

doesn't change a thing about m/m being too slow, being worse the higher % slaved (slower, lower dmg), and not providing a radius boost nor any mechanical bonus that proper use of m/b can't give you, and more.

 

[kulbolen]

The reason so many pd turrets are needed for defending against "one" weapon system, (and nice jorb ignoring waffle-board MIS-BEAM arrays, which replicate the swarmer "swarm" without the uncontrolled targeting) is because they can't aim worth a shit.

server ai accuracy settings. raise them to 25-50% sector size.

Cannon waffles won't be here forever.

they might. not that it matters... a moderately fast ship can just outrun m/m.