Disable Ion/overdrive effect for lock ons

[Lecic]

I have thought about this. Here's what I came up with.

At a certain point ships become all-powerful. That's really the problem. Weapons and power scale up, albeit limited in some ways, with ship size. Basically, Titans are top of the food chain, and have the most power and biggest weapons. At a certain point, weapons become WMDs of unstoppable power, no matter what you defend with. The biggest most powerful Titans would annihilate each other instantly. I believe that is the crux of your problem.

One solution is to add a config option into the server settings to set a maximum amount of weapon modules that can be slaved to a weapon computer. This limits weapon size, configurable for any server, so that weapons cannot exceed a certain power level. This adds the longevity back into Titan battles, and doesn't affect ships of smaller size in any way.

I think a setting like that already exists.

 

[Zekester81]

Right on, I didn't go through the config to look. It's probably the only solution without imposing huge limits to everyone. Some people may want to not have those limits.

The hard part is getting people or admins to agree on a level of weaponry then.

Edit: I went through settings, server config, block behavior xml, and block config xml and saw no setting pertaining to this. Or at least not that I could find.

 

[Snowfox1337]

This game has a heavy pvp element. That means people get shot. There is always a race to get the better ship "not bigger" The games weapons are fine with a lot of crafty combinations on offer.

But in any fight there are winners and losers. And the ultimate cheat to pull is to come here and ask the games creator to punish the guy that shot you. Because he used weapon X or tactic Y or Ship Z.

I'm a real bloodhound style player i live for the hunt. The game offers a counter for every type of weapon or tactic. And i will counter anything used against me in a fight. Either step up or step down.

The previous missile nerf was terrible and cattered totaly to the people that could not step up. No more nice big holes in ships and everything has to be supersize now to get close to any previous damage level. Putting a lot of strain on servers.

A player called Komatodik used a small ship with a powerdrain and shielddrain beam to cripple my battle cruiser. He even had a jump inhibitor. I could just manage to jump and reach safety. Offcourse i applauded his efforts what a guy! And now he has a 300K monster powered by 20+ docked reactors and 100 milion shield. He sits right next to my home base getting shot by some really crafty turrets and laughs about it. And everyone of my braincells hurts on how am i going to counter that. But counter it i will or at least try it's the effort that counts.

View attachment 19500

I agree. Finally someone who understands the real strategy in starmade. This isnt a game of shooting the other players down...its a game of making the best ship TO DO IT IN. The strategy starts with the way you build the ship. How long does it take to build a titan class ship? Days? Weeks? If you ask me thats plenty of time for strategy. Its about building...not battle.

Besides if you are having trouble with the enemy missiles not being stopped by AMS then heres a idea...drones. Give the target something else to shoot at and it has a chance of missing. Get enough of them between your enemy and you and even "lock on" missiles wont know where to aim. Thats one reason why fleets can take ships of equal mass down consistantly.

 

[Lukwan]

This game has a heavy pvp element. That means people get shot. There is always a race to get the better ship "not bigger" The games weapons are fine with a lot of crafty combinations on offer.

But in any fight there are winners and losers. And the ultimate cheat to pull is to come here and ask the games creator to punish the guy that shot you. Because he used weapon X or tactic Y or Ship Z.

I'm a real bloodhound style player i live for the hunt. The game offers a counter for every type of weapon or tactic. And i will counter anything used against me in a fight. Either step up or step down.

The previous missile nerf was terrible and cattered totaly to the people that could not step up. No more nice big holes in ships and everything has to be supersize now to get close to any previous damage level. Putting a lot of strain on servers.

A player called Komatodik used a small ship with a powerdrain and shielddrain beam to cripple my battle cruiser. He even had a jump inhibitor. I could just manage to jump and reach safety. Offcourse i applauded his efforts what a guy! And now he has a 300K monster powered by 20+ docked reactors and 100 milion shield. He sits right next to my home base getting shot by some really crafty turrets and laughs about it. And everyone of my braincells hurts on how am i going to counter that. But counter it i will or at least try it's the effort that counts.

View attachment 19500

That may be fine for you. and the other 'Bloodhounds' but not everyone who plays this game is interested in making leviathans w 100 mil shields. This Gigantism has to have a limit because servers and hardware have limits. Why be fearful of constraint. Artists have been using constraint to challenge themselves for a long time. Haiku is an example: five lines, seven lines, whatever the limiter is...there is still freedom within the constraints. This helps to focus creativity, avoid writers block etc and is done in the spirit of the Artist not the Editor.

 

[Lecic]

That may be fine for you. and the other 'Bloodhounds' but not everyone who plays this game is interested in making leviathans w 100 mil shields. This Gigantism has to have a limit because servers and hardware have limits. Why be fearful of constraint. Artists have been using constraint to challenge themselves for a long time. Haiku is an example: five lines, seven lines, whatever the limiter is...there is still freedom within the constraints. This helps to focus creativity, avoid writers block etc and is done in the spirit of the Artist not the Editor.

How is removing ion/overdrive from lock on missiles the solution to gigantism? Heavy alpha weapons encourage you to build SMALLER, because you can take down larger ships with a smaller vessel.

 

[Batavium]

That may be fine for you. and the other 'Bloodhounds' but not everyone who plays this game is interested in making leviathans w 100 mil shields. This Gigantism has to have a limit because servers and hardware have limits. Why be fearful of constraint. Artists have been using constraint to challenge themselves for a long time. Haiku is an example: five lines, seven lines, whatever the limiter is...there is still freedom within the constraints. This helps to focus creativity, avoid writers block etc and is done in the spirit of the Artist not the Editor.

I wrote this in my post you quoted:

There is always a race to get the better ship "not bigger"

It must be an artistic take on it then.

 

[Lukwan]

I agree. Finally someone who understands the real strategy in starmade. This isnt a game of shooting the other players down...its a game of making the best ship TO DO IT IN. The strategy starts with the way you build the ship. How long does it take to build a titan class ship? Days? Weeks? If you ask me thats plenty of time for strategy. Its about building...not battle.

I agree with your point about SM being about building over battle and I enjoy the build phase. Responsive tactics should have their place too. I would make the point that building a titan for a week only to have the battle end in 90 seconds is not ideal for a learning curve. I would like the battle to last long enough to apply tactics and countermeasures so that even if I lose the fight it was worth the effort I put in building. So I am in favor of game-balance elements that allow for longer , more interesting battles.
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Limiting creativity to get greater game balance is better then doing nothing at all and allowing such an imbalance to occur

This is a valid point. If a combo unbalances the combat (leading to mono tactics in the Meta game) then the limits on creativity exist on an even larger scale. Oh sure you can do anything you want want but if you want to win a combat you must do 'this'. I believe that it is the lesser of evils to accept some limitation on individual tactics/combos in order to preserve the freedom to pursue varied tactics in the Meta game.

 

[Lecic]

I agree with your point about SM being about building over battle and I enjoy the build phase. Responsive tactics should have their place too. I would make the point that building a titan for a week only to have the battle end in 90 seconds is not ideal for a learning curve. I would like the battle to last long enough to apply tactics and countermeasures so that even if I lose the fight it was worth the effort I put in building. So I am in favor of game-balance elements that allow for longer , more interesting battles.

No battle ends this quickly. Even if your ship only uses a single layer of basic hull, the hull damage portion of battle can last for a very long time. The only time a battle ends this quickly is when there is an absolutely massive imbalance in ship size.

This is a valid point. If a combo unbalances the combat (leading to mono tactics in the Meta game) then the limits on creativity exist on an even larger scale. Oh sure you can do anything you want want but if you want to win a combat you must do 'this'. I believe that it is the lesser of evils to accept some limitation on individual tactics/combos in order to preserve the freedom to pursue varied tactics in the Meta game.

If a weapon combo is unbalanced, the reasons why it is unbalanced should be looked at and fixed, rather than simply removing it.

 

[Lukwan]

If a weapon combo is unbalanced, the reasons why it is unbalanced should be looked at and fixed, rather than simply removing it.

I agree removal should be a last resort if nothing else resolves the imbalance.

 

[Groovrider]

So if I don't hit you with a 1 million damage ion missile but hit you with a 2 million explosive one does that make it any better? The only difference I can see is that with the ion I still have a chance as my ship still works. If ion is no longer viable for missile, I'll just obliterate the whole ship instead.

 

[Jaaskinal]

So if I don't hit you with a 1 million damage ion missile but hit you with a 2 million explosive one does that make it any better? The only difference I can see is that with the ion I still have a chance as my ship still works. If ion is no longer viable for missile, I'll just obliterate the whole ship instead.

The only difference being that you can use multiple different weapons of different types, and that having 100% ion would mean that it would take half the size (and power requirements) to equal the same alpha.
The question kind of comes down to whether having one really big explosive missile would be better than having half the missile in ion and another half in explosive.
I personally think the balance for these is fine, for the most part. Ion effect passive is better than Ion effect is for weapons.