Game-breaking ships

[Stakhanov]

One of the bigger problems starmade players can address is the stagnant metagame - players will often berate each other for not knowing anything about the game , but there's actually very little combat testing done to establish the patterns for optimal ship design. While some aspects are self-evident (doomcubes with lots of turrets tend to beat smaller ships) few people bother to design optimal combat ships for a given weight class. Furthermore , there's not enough testing done to know wether an original use of mechanics is a cute gimmick or completely breaks the game.

So here's my challenge : let's try our worst to break the game. Design the best server-emptying ship you can.

Note that there's a large number of overweight ships that would crash servers by opening fire or bumping into each other ; this thread is not for those. Rather , the goal is to make ships that would kill anything of the same mass or below , preferably without any risk of taking hull damage.

To start things off , the Loophole : http://star-made.org/node/15110

How it happened : I was annoyed to see my favorite class of ship [short range stealth attack corvette] nerfed , so I rebuilt them to resume their role with the same damage output and better aim. This makes the AMC balance update moot.

 

[lazarus78]

This would be easy. Power cubes and shields, everywhere. You dont even need hull blocks. Then strap turrets all over it as they dont add to the ships mass.

This game has little balancing as far as combat goes. Unlimitedly powerful weapon systems and no worth while defence aside from a ton of shield.

 

[Stakhanov]

Due to cloaking now using energy from docked ships to hide them , the viable mass of stealth ships has increased considerably. While the main ship remains limited by the 1 million energy per second cap (and it needs to feature strong thrusters , reasonable shielding and docking ports at least) anything can be docked to it as long as it can cloak itself.

Currently trying to optimize a modular design (rather a pile of cubes) reaching 2500-3000 total mass with stable cloak. Since chain-docked elements do not cloak , fractal stealth ships are not possible , but there\'s still plenty of room for turrets or armed shieldplates.

 

[Lt_Duckweed]

Step one: Install 10 wepon computers on you main ship. (This will only be useful if you have a free scroll mouse)

Step two: Install 9 weapon computers on all you amc turrets.

Step three: Divide your amcs up evenly to each computer.

Step four: When you see an enemy, flick the scroll wheel, constant barage of lasers anyone?

Note: This only works of you don\'t mind having only amcs on your ship, and nothing else, you also need to have a mouse that free scrolls. This has the side effect of vastly cutting down on your energy usage and allows for solid blocks of amc that fire multiple shots.

 

[Stakhanov]

This means that merely restricting AIs to firing one weapon at a time would not work , so the root cause must be addressed.

People have been asking for better looking efficient ships , and after a few tweaks I got my favorite design to work again. Better than ever , in fact :



8 multi-computer turrets add autotracking damage even while completely cloaked , while half of the original array remains for manual fire. But now it can use powerdrains while shooting !

 

[HaViC is Chaos]

But it is of the aformentioned server breaking variety. In theory it would not have to be though. Have a turret with a ridiculous range. The turret would fire on unknown enemies, then you fire in that general direction. I have not yet finished the turrets on my ship, but I will likely never beable to bring it on a server. Besides the fact that it costs more that the credit cap the mass of the main ship is over 800k and the mass of each of the 2 turrets will be an estimated 1.3 mil. The game breaking part of this is the extended nav. You would be able to kill enemies that have no idea where you are.

 

[NeonSturm]

A pyramid.

The bottom is for thruster and energy lines, put the core on top. Then use af and qe to fly circles and 8-shapes.

Because your ship is only 40-50 high, 80-100 wide, but has a 1:4 thrust ratio + perma-jam (even if you completely put it in armor plates), the enemy will not hit you. I have 2 decks (2 blocks high) almost free and it is still OP for it\'s weight class.



The trick is, to use the stairs (inside of your pyramide) first all for power, then thrusters, then power again, then thrusters again - 4 rows, 4* each type.

Everytime, after you placed 4 rings of one type, take one block from opposide corners of each ring (each power/thruster grid is then 2*30 to 2*48 m long)



Use AMCs and shields to form decks if you like, but don\'t build too much around the core (in x/y, you can build in z) to evade almost 90% of all shots.

 

[Lt_Duckweed]

This is a little perma-jam, perma-cloak cruiser that I came up with. It has 8 ai ships docked to it with eight 400 damage arays and 4 tracking missiles each. 165,497.6 dps while cloaked/jamed. I\'d call this game breaking.

http://i1267.photobucket.com/albums/jj552/Lt_Duckweed/starmade-screenshot-0000_zpsb3b52035.png

http://i1267.photobucket.com/albums/jj552/Lt_Duckweed/starmade-screenshot-0001_zps211bd02b.png

 

[FlyingDebris]

Almost all of the ships listed here can jam or cloak to some extent, making turrets, drones, and base defences useless.

 

[Crashmaster]

I made this ship to experiment with maximizing DPS while maintaining above-average maneuverability for it\'s weight class;











The main ship is small but well-armed; 36 7x7x7block AMCs routed to a central 3x3 ring, 7 quad-7x7x7block missile launchers also routed to the central firing point, 10 million power, 4 million regen and 2 million shields. It\'s shape gives it turning speeds of 1.2, 1.0, 1.2, despite it\'s mass (35k effective, approximately 225k actual), 2:1 thrust.

It carries 16 AMC turrets fixed-docked in over-laping pairs to take only 1/2 the normal space. Each has 1 mil shields, 8 of which are each about 1 mil DPS waffles and the other half output 500k DPS each to a greater range from 3x3 elements.

The hanger and decorative thrusters are docked entities so that they have no impact on the core ship\'s turning speed or acceleration.

Seems functional but yes, very little combat testing as mentioned in OP. Mostly just lag when target AI is set to enemy then it\'s all over.