Damage drop off, close range skirmishes and other changes

[Dire Venom]

So, (most) ship encounters happen at long range.
Why is that?
-Sector size
-You can see them far away on nav
-There is no/any benefit to getting close other than to be able to manually fire the ships weapons, however by the time you get close the turrets would've decided the battle anyway.

SO,what I suggest is that damage drop off is implemented to (all, or most) weapon systems.
This makes sense since most weapon systems are energy based and thus the charge could dissipate over distance.
Why damage fall off???
It means at long range your weapons/turrets will still fire and do damage, however as they approach their max range there damage will decrease by x% based on x% distance between the ships (Like 5-10% damage at max range:?)
Damage could even escalate when the weapons target is within 10% of the weapons max range e.g a cannon with a base damage of 100 does 10 damage at 10k range and 120 damage at 1k range?
This would be to encourage ships to get into close quarters but still allow to spar long range (But need to get in close to nuke each other).

I feel this would greatly enhance ship combat, make close-quarter brawlers worthwhile and make battles more strategic.

Of course the exact numbers could be changed, these are just placeholders.
What do you guys think? Would this enhance and improve combat?
This would also increase the use of large-on ship weapon systems rather than just using lots of turrets (not as fun).

Also, some other quick suggestions:
Charging your jumpdrive during battle to jump out and escape should come with a penalty (currently its really easy to escape most encounters)
Possible solutions:
-Some way for players to temporarily jam/block jumps?
-Make the ship take increased damage during charging? (2x, 4x, 6x damage?)

Cheers and fly safe, Dire_Venom

 

[aceface]

Good idea

 

[Galladinator]

RIP the 2 sniper ships.

 

[Dire Venom]

RIP the 2 sniper ships.

It doesn't have to effect all weapon types, and certain weapons could have a greater drop off than others.
Missiles could have constant damage at all ranges (they're easy to defend against anyway)

 

[killerdude8]

Seeing how its space and there isnt anything to cause resistance on our shots, It wouldn't make very much sense.

 

[CyberTao]

I would say 'fine', but I actually dont like closed-ranged capitalships. I'm sure pulse could be reworked into some form of close-ranged brawler dream, but I dont want to have to be forced into close range or use X weapon.

Could maybe shoe-horn it into the Master/slave system somehow though? I derno.

 

[Dire Venom]

I would say 'fine', but I actually dont like closed-ranged capitalships. I'm sure pulse could be reworked into some form of close-ranged brawler dream, but I dont want to have to be forced into close range or use X weapon.

Could maybe shoe-horn it into the Master/slave system somehow though? I derno.

The values are just placeholders. The damage drop off could be olny 10% at max range for example, and could be changed int the server settings.
What I dislike about current combat is that 9.9 times out of 10 you cant see what your firing at.

 

[CyberTao]

The values are just placeholders. The damage drop off could be olny 10% at max range for example, and could be changed int the server settings.
What I dislike about current combat is that 9.9 times out of 10 you cant see what your firing at.

Thats because the ranges of some combos are retarded and are beyond visible range, I think Missile/Beam gets about 4.5 sectors by default for example, you can see ~2.

But to a degree, it makes radar jamming more useful, if it wasnt as broken as it is currently. The whole point there is not to be seen.

 

[Planr]

So, (most) ship encounters happen at long range.
Why is that?
-Sector size
-You can see them far away on nav
-There is no/any benefit to getting close other than to be able to manually fire the ships weapons, however by the time you get close the turrets would've decided the battle anyway.

I don't know what kind of whacked up combat experience you've had, but most fights i've been in (on large 10-12km sectored servers with high speed limits) were all at very close range, like 1-5km distance. From my experience, most ship encounters actually happen at manual aiming distance range. Long-range fights are EXTREMELY rare, because it's so hard to hit each other.
The reason this occurs is because:
- most big weapon setups people's ships utilize are shipboard (not on a turret)
- you can't aim manual-fired weapons effectively unless you're at a close range
- using missiles of any kind, from either turrets or your actual ship, is ineffective at long ranges. the farther away you go, the easier of a time the enemy's PD has to shoot down your missiles. so most people who rely on missiles will do a combo of dumbfire missile spam AND get close so as to overwhelm PD while not giving it any chance to react to the real threat in time.

What killerdude8 brought up makes a lot of sense too. There is essentially nothing in space to stop your weapons fire from losing strength as it travels. It makes no sense for beams or cannon bullets to lose strength the farther away they travel.

But let's talk about the impact on the game that damage dropoff would have. Firstmost I can see it would mean players would want to get as close as they can to the enemy (point-blank range) because they know their weapons won't work very well at a distance. This has the negative potential side effect of causing tons of boxdim and collision FPS lag, as if battles don't need another reason to lag like crap.

Long distance battles are much easier on game and server performance because you don't have to worry about collisions, but we usually have neither long-distance or point-blank battles on StarMade. It's often in-between. So I'd prefer the game staying as it is.

 

[Dire Venom]

Referring to the above post ^ 10-12km sectors, THATS huge! Servers I play on all have 5 or 6km sectors
Also, when building a ship putting most of the firepower into the turrets is far more efficient than using on-board weapons (only ones I find useful are missiles, lasers and cannons are cool.... but only really effective at stationary targets.
Then again the large ship battles ive been in have involved ships between 100,00 blocks to 10 million blocks.
Most of their firepower is in turrets and by the time you get anywhere near them (or they get anywhere near you) the turrents have already decided the battle.
Thanks for your comment!

Also, when EMP gets fixed Id love to build a ship that uses long range emp effects to keep a ship dead in space (drained of all power) long enought to get close to it and capture it.

 

[FullMetalFox]

Seeing how its space and there isnt anything to cause resistance on our shots, It wouldn't make very much sense.

What killerdude8 brought up makes a lot of sense too. There is essentially nothing in space to stop your weapons fire from losing strength as it travels. It makes no sense for beams or cannon bullets to lose strength the farther away they travel.

Sorry, i had to say something about this.
If youre only talking about solid projectiles, then yes.

But on particle weapons, which is what most classic scifi weapons are, even Lasers, and especially the all famous "plasma", this is a very different case.

On Lasers alone you are talking about the accuracy of the beams focus, collisions between photons inside the beam, as well as interference from low density gas and dust in space, all which will make your beam lose conherence over distance, aka your deadly armor melting laser could turn into nothing more than a flashlight.
Same goes for short bursts of particles, similar to the classic energy projectile, here we even have the various behaviours of different particles. And Plasma, well its gas, go figure.

So in short, damage dropoff for energy weapons makes more sense then you think.

And something funny only a few authors/games ever thought about: even for missiles there is a potentional dropoff, depending on how violent the missiles remaining fuel reacts on the warheads detonation.

 

[killerdude8]

Alright you scienced me, But in a game thats based around large ship-ship combat, Damage dropoff is not a very good gameplay addition.

I mean do you really want 2 titans within collision distance? Because thats what WILL happen, no doubt.

 

[Dire Venom]

Alright you scienced me, But in a game thats based around large ship-ship combat, Damage dropoff is not a very good gameplay addition.

I mean do you really want 2 titans within collision distance? Because thats what WILL happen, no doubt.

OH COME ON......
Im talking about values like 10-20% drop off Max etc...... it by no means removes long range combat... Just makes close up combat more deadly..... stop overacting please.... *sigh*
This just means a slightly higher ttk at long range and a slightly greater ttk at short range.... No big changes
Thanks for your comment but dont blow things out of proportion and stick to the facts

 

[killerdude8]

OH COME ON......
Im talking about values like 10-20% drop off Max etc...... it by no means removes long range combat... Just makes close up combat more deadly..... stop overacting please.... *sigh*
This just means a slightly higher ttk at long range and a slightly greater ttk at short range.... No big changes
Thanks for your comment but dont blow things out of proportion and stick to the facts

But we both know it will happen, Why try fighting from afar, when you're not gonna deal all the damage you can, when you could get closer and deal it all.

The current system is fine for now.

 

[Dire Venom]

But we both know it will happen, Why try fighting from afar, when you're not gonna deal all the damage you can, when you could get closer and deal it all.

The current system is fine for now.

So you can deal 10% more damage by getting closer?? Hmmmm i wouldnt say its always worth it.....
And encouraging closer ranged fighting is kinda the point. You know, like 2-6km away, instead of 20km (you could still do it though, itd just take 10-20% longer to kill them)

 

[killerdude8]

So you can deal 10% more damage by getting closer?? Hmmmm i wouldnt say its always worth it.....
And encouraging closer ranged fighting is kinda the point. You know, like 2-6km away, instead of 20km (you could still do it though, itd just take 10-20% longer to kill them)

But why punish people for going the long ranged route? People will abandon it altogether if they will deal more damage closer. Especially at range, its already hard enough to land a hit, why bother trying if it will be at reduced damage.

We already have accuracy to encourage close range fights, we really dont need to add dropoff to that.

 

[max stripe]

But why punish people for going the long ranged route? People will abandon it altogether if they will deal more damage closer. Especially at range, its already hard enough to land a hit, why bother trying if it will be at reduced damage.

We already have accuracy to encourage close range fights, we really dont need to add dropoff to that.

im donald trump and i aprove this message

 

[Lecic]

You already land more hits at close range. There is zero reason to add damage drop-off.

Charging your jumpdrive during battle to jump out and escape should come with a penalty (currently its really easy to escape most encounters)
Possible solutions:
-Some way for players to temporarily jam/block jumps?

Jump Drive Inhibitors are in the dev build.

I don't know what kind of whacked up combat experience you've had, but most fights i've been in (on large 10-12km sectored servers with high speed limits) were all at very close range, like 1-5km distance. From my experience, most ship encounters actually happen at manual aiming distance range. Long-range fights are EXTREMELY rare, because it's so hard to hit each other.

This. Unless your ship is specifically using only long range weapons, you're likely going to be up close and personal, because you can take fewer hits if you maneuver well. In the times I've fought, I've often been within 500m of my enemy.

Im talking about values like 10-20% drop off Max etc...... it by no means removes long range combat... Just makes close up combat more deadly..... stop overacting please.... *sigh*

You already miss shots or have your missiles neutralized more often at long range. Why do we need even more of a nerf?

 

[jayman38]

I would definitely like the option in the server configs to help make different universes behave differently. It would be a fun addition. Maybe different settings for all the different combos. (16 vs. 4)

 

[Winterhome]

Almost every battle I've been in between two ships over 200,000 blocks has averaged at under 1km of distance. Rarely have I run into "jousting" scenarios in which the two ships run at eachother, pass, and turn around, but long range capital ship fights are even rarer.

As it stands, to get maximum DPS out of your cannons, you need to be at short range to avoid missing. Beams simply don't hit targets at all beyond 1.5km, and that's if you're lucky, so under 1km is preferable there too. Missiles fired at long range are fucked to hell eternally by point defense, and don't even think of trying to dumbfire a missile at a radar jammed target at over 1km - you won't hit it even if it is a 300 meter wide target.

You're proposing reducing the reliable DPS of weapons at longer ranges, where they're already effectively cut down to near uselessness. No thanks. If anything, long range combat needs to be buffed a bit to encourage players not ramming eachother.


edit: Almost forgot.

Fights between *small* ships tend to be at longer ranges, because neither party wants to get hit, and reducing DPS at all on long range shots will make fighter battles even longer and worse.