How do you build good anti-titan weapons with last month's changes to weapon effects?

[Vakna]

So I've been spending a few days here and there working on a massive ship I got some inspiration for, and this morning started working on it's main gun. The concept I wanted to follow was for it to be an anti-titan coilgun, using a cannon master, linked to a beam slave and an explosive effect, this fits with the theme of super long range magnetic accelerator weapons that deliver massive kinetic energy to the impact area without actually using explosive chemicals.

I built the main gun with this set up, a 600 meter long quad-barrel cannon with an alpha damage of 1.4 million on each of the 4 projectiles. But I discovered that even with 100% explosive effect it still only damaged the blocks directly touching the impact blocks, and with the changes to peirce and punch there is a 7 block limit on penetration depth. It took me almost 15 minutes to completely destroy a small asteroid about 1% the mass of the actual weapon itself, and when I tested it on one of my smaller ships the damage to the superstructure was laughable at best. I must note as well that my current build's hull is designed to throw off explosive and punch effects in that the blocks are never touching more than 2-3 others, in some cases only 1, with voids in between hull layers that render punch and peirce completey inneffective. I would be surprised if with the current weapon balance that any conceivable weapon could penetrate fully through my hull before shields recharge or I escape.

So I ask, how do you create a weapon that can do respectable damage to the hulls of titan-class ships? Missiles are obsolete against titans since they will have enough point defense countermeasures over such a large hull area that impacts are rare if not impossible.

Titan-class weapons seem to be in a very bad place right now, doesn't matter how big you make them, the damage will only hurt shields, my 300k block AMC does about the same damage to a hull as a 1k block AMC of the same configuration. That can't be okay from a developer standpoint surely?

I feel like in a Titan vs Titan fight, the winner will be the last one left awake at the end of a very long day.

Sorry for the long rant, I'm just very unhappy that days of excited planning for my ship have been for naught.

 

[Thalanor]

Anything but missiles are useless against titan hulls. Battleship class can get away with rapidfire explosive, but who wants rapidfire on a capital?

Many people have suggested giving the explosive effect on cannons an actual radius. The response has always been "no can do".
As with the new limits to piercing/punch; these just hurt siege type weapons even more than previously, to a point of rendering them useless on frigates even. As such, the weapon situation is even worse than a few months ago: for cannons, ONLY rapidfire at 100% support is an option; for real hull damage vs titans, you need to get these missiles to reach their target.

All in all, the extreme rapidfire bias of this game needs adjustment.

 

[Vakna]

I feel like a ship the size of a titan-class equipped with good point defense systems could never be impacted by the kind of missiles required to do significant damage, heat seaker swarms perhaps 1 or 2 might get through (assuming they don't decide to go for your own turrets instead), but their damage to a titan hull would be nothing, and with the correct hull configuration, a lot of the destructive power in explosive effects can be mitigated anyway, making the rare impact of a missile all the more underwhelming.

There is a couple of massive issues with weapons right now that I'm actually astounded have made it through testing and into a release build. Weapon effects are not scaling with array size, an explosive AMC round fired from a small fighter carries the exact same destructive power as an explosive AMC round fired from a gun the size of a planet. Is this good design? I think not. Secondly, and leading on from this, when creating a weapon designed to damage a hull, there is a hardcap on the number of blocks the weapon actually benefits from. This is when the punch through, peirce or explosive effect fully destroys all the 7 or 9 blocks it can damage. Any further mass added to the weapon after this cap is reached do literally nothing other than add mass to your overall ship and sit there looking pretty. Again, how is this okay from a developer standpoint?

I realise the game is still in alpha and many core systems are still being designed, but releasing a build that completely destroys titan v titan combat and calling it a weapons 'fix' really grinds my gears.

 

[Crusade]

That '7 block limit' is a softcap, with insane amounts of damage, you can still brute force your way through more.

 

[Vakna]

That '7 block limit' is a softcap, with insane amounts of damage, you can still brute force your way through more.

You're correct of course, but the math only goes so far and does not alleviate the implications for Titan vs Titan combat. My 1.4 million alpha damage cannon equipped with a punch through at maximum effectiveness can punch through 14 blocks of Normal Hull before the damage disspates to sub-lethal levels. Note that Normal hull has zero armor and less than 1/3rd the HP of an advanced armour block, so the lethal damage barrier would be far less than 14 blocks deep on an advanced Titan hull.

However the weapon mass requirements to destroy more hull get exponentially bigger to a point where they exceed the total mass of any conceivable ship to do respectable damage. For example, I calculated that if I made my main gun 50x bigger it would only punch through an extra 4 blocks of Normal Hull, take into consideration that my main gun is already 300k blocks in size.

So my insanely big gun firing at something like 1 round per 3-4 seconds will destroy 14 blocks of a Titans hull in the absolute best case scenario and assuming that the Titan hull is using the weakest armour blocks possible. To make it do just 30% better I would need to remove every other system from my ship and turn it into a giant block of weapon modules.

Then take into account what 14 blocks of damage means to a multi-million block titan ship (in some cases 10's of millions). I'm still not okay with this system, are you?

 

[Crusade]

if you're that worried about doing alpha damage, use huge damage cannons/beams to knock out shields, then missiles all the way. That'll wipe out nearly any ship, if you 'distract' the point defense by firing off a few hundred swarmers first.

 

[Vakna]

if you're that worried about doing alpha damage, use huge damage cannons/beams to knock out shields, then missiles all the way. That'll wipe out nearly any ship, if you 'distract' the point defense by firing off a few hundred swarmers first.

That's probably the best idea for anti-Titan weapons I can think of but still comes with a couple of issues, firing off a few hundred swarmers is likely just as dangerous to yourself since they target indscriminantly.. might even decide to go for a friendly target and cause their untimely demise instead of your actual intent.

Then there's the fact that it seems to be the only viable choice. I'm still not okay with that. Why do we have this awesome interconnected system of of weapon effects if only 1 very precise setup is viable in combat?

What I'm trying to ask is, why did the devs release a 'fix' that only made combat worse in practice (I'm not even going to touch how bad an idea it was to buff Hull block HP at the same time as destroy weapon's damaging potential), but didn't compensate Titan vs Titan warfare with some actual substance.. like making explosive effects actually do something for anything outside missiles, or creating what is clearly the best approach - making effects scale with weapon size. That way small ships will have appropriately small weapons, and giant Titans will have appropriately big weapons.

 

[Crusade]

Another method is to use a large beam+cannon+explosive setup. In a checkerboard array. It turns into an eraser of hull. It's spectacular, try it out.

 

[Lecic]

The only respectable anti-titan weapons are missiles and large numbers of drones. I wish non-rapid versions of cannons and beams would get an innate explosive and punch effect that increased beyond the caps as it dealt more damage, though.

If your problem with using missiles is PD shooting them down, fire off a shotgun of 1 block dumbfires at an angle to the ship. The PD will all go after the dumbfires, and then you can fire off the real damage dealers.

 

[Vakna]

The only respectable anti-titan weapons are missiles and large numbers of drones. I wish non-rapid versions of cannons and beams would get an innate explosive and punch effect that increased beyond the caps as it dealt more damage, though.

If your problem with using missiles is PD shooting them down, fire off a shotgun of 1 block dumbfires at an angle to the ship. The PD will all go after the dumbfires, and then you can fire off the real damage dealers.

The problem I have is not PD systems or missiles, it's that creativity is being crapped on by unintuitive weapon "fixes" and obsolete combinations. We have an amazing potential with the m/s/e system that is going to waste with these attempts at balancing (no offense devs but honestly i can't wrap my head around how that last change passed game testing and was still considered a good idea).

I want to build a coilgun on my ship using the cannon as a master and the beam as a slave. Right now if I want to do any damage at all this is impossible.

This is why I am unhappy, creativity is being limited by bad balance choices.

 

[CyberTao]

like making explosive effects actually do something for anything outside missiles, or creating what is clearly the best approach - making effects scale with weapon size.

Did you know explosive effect is set to 10 in the configs? There is something in the engine that is hardcapping it to 1 right now. The reason punch and pierce were nerfed was to bring them in line with explosive, since apparently explosive was vastly underused due to it's issues.

The thing is, that punch/peirce softcap is easy to remove in the configs, and with all the complaints about it, I assume the major servers have increased or removed it. Poke around some people and see if you can find out which servers have so you know where to play, they did give us the option and encouraged us to change stuff around.


Also, I had hoped people gave us that silly idea of bigger holes for bigger guns, as if Capital ship sized Cannon/Cannon wasn't OP enough without aping and outclassing missiles entirely.

 

[Malacodor]

We have an amazing potential with the m/s/e system that is going to waste with these attempts at balancing (no offense devs but honestly i can't wrap my head around how that last change passed game testing and was still considered a good idea).

The game isn't designed around titans, the changes were meant to make fights between smaller ships last longer than a few seconds.

If the damage from a single projectile is so limited, why don't you simply increase the number of projectiles? With a bit of creativity you can even shape a big projectile out of several small ones.

 

[Vakna]

Did you know explosive effect is set to 10 in the configs? There is something in the engine that is hardcapping it to 1 right now. The reason punch and pierce were nerfed was to bring them in line with explosive, since apparently explosive was vastly underused due to it's issues.

The thing is, that punch/peirce softcap is easy to remove in the configs, and with all the complaints about it, I assume the major servers have increased or removed it. Poke around some people and see if you can find out which servers have so you know where to play, they did give us the option and encouraged us to change stuff around.


Also, I had hoped people gave us that silly idea of bigger holes for bigger guns, as if Capital ship sized Cannon/Cannon wasn't OP enough without aping and outclassing missiles entirely.

I didn't know that explosive effect was broken no, but nerfing the other two weapon effects to bring them in line with a broken effect seems odd, why not just make the broken one better? I rarely play multiplayer, I play sandbox singleplayer and build stuff I get random ideas for.

The game isn't designed around titans, the changes were meant to make fights between smaller ships last longer than a few seconds.

If the damage from a single projectile is so limited, why don't you simply increase the number of projectiles? With a bit of creativity you can even shape a big projectile out of several small ones.

The game shouldn't be designed around small ships either, you cater to everything or you limit how big ships can get with a mass hardcap. Like I said earlier, the easiest and best way to approach it would be to make effects like explosive and punch scale with weapon mass. A capital sized cannon round should be more destructive than a fighter cannon round, but they do (almost) the exact same thing.

Bypassing the issue by shoehorning multiple projectiles is not the answer and it's definitely not creative in any sense of the word. It's unintuitive and boring. I want to make a weapon that actually looks and feels like a weapon, not stick on a big flashy chessboard just for the sake of getting past ridiculous weapon limitations, is that really too much to ask?

 

[CyberTao]

I didn't know that explosive effect was broken no, but nerfing the other two weapon effects to bring them in line with a broken effect seems odd, why not just make the broken one better? I rarely play multiplayer, I play sandbox singleplayer and build stuff I get random ideas for.

I don't know how hard it would be to fix explosive, but I hope they do someday. It wasn't even all that bad with rapid fire weapons or beams I hear, just useless with heavy hitting weapons. A few balance changes have felt odd before, but at least we have the ability to correct them ourselves now (for the most part).

Also, a thought to always keep in mind; Starmade does not comprehend "Big" or "small". It's all just ship, station, asteroid, or planet. The only form of limitation we have is with power really, and we were given docked reactors to overcome that.

You build borg styled ships iirc, so perhaps you could try modular type weapons after the docking changes in the next major update. Docked ships embedded into the ship and almost entirely covered by the mothership, I use 'em for automatic firing of weapons when a ship is in range.

 

[Keptick]

(Skip the first paragraph for the actual guide)
Punch-through was nerfed because it allowed weapons (specifically cannon-cannon) to become monstrous against blocks with absolutely no penalty or counter. The only other weapon that's good against blocks and shields is missiles, but they're balanced out by the fact they can get shot down. I had the same "what the actual fuck schema?" reaction at first but then realized that a weapon good at everything with absolutely no flaws/counter was pretty freaking bad for the game (think hulk missiles before PD was a thing). I agree that the stupid explosive bug should get fixed though (it's supposed to give 10 radius). Apart from that, the weapons are pretty well balanced. I think that the problem here is that you're trying to make a single weapon absolutely beast against everything (aka; OP), not succeeding and blaming the game for it. Anyways, with that balance stuff out of the way let's get on the actual topic of how to kill the enemy;

There's multiple different techniques to use. The first would be a two stage weapon. The first stage takes up most of the space; it's designed to bring down shields. Any combo with ion does here, although alpha weapons are much much much better. It's better to use a single weapon group here since you won't benefit from more than one and it won't suffer from the multiple output power nerf. The second stage is meant to be pure block removal. The advantage of this is that block removal weapons generally have a max size, after that they just don't add any block removal. Just like your cannon setup Vakna , a smaller one would do just fine. So, for this stage you can use beam arrays like crusade suggested (I have two on my titan), missiles, cannons woth punch-through or pierce, etc. I suggest finding the optimal weapon size for good block removal and not making them any bigger (cause it wastes space). The advantages of system like this, especially with anti-shield alpha weapons, is that you can take down the enemy shields fast and chain up with specialized anti block weapons. Multi-stage weapons also allow a much higher degree of specialization. The disadvantage is that it's not that great against multiple enemies (unless you have more than one weapon or are using non-alpha anti-shield weapons) and that you're not using the potential damage of the blocks composing the anti-block system against shields. Also, if you miss with the shield alpha weapon you're fucked, as the block-removal weapons won't help here. The opposite is also true, although constant damage weapons are generally much better for block removal. If the enemy shields star recharging before you can inflict good enough damage you're also screwed, which is why I suggest immediate follow-up with block weapons after a shield strike (or getting enemy shields down).

There's really tons of combinations you could use here, just try stuff out and figure out your favorite weapons/tactics. A specialized anti-titan two-stage system is what I'm going to use on the Charon. There's already multiple small (but very powerful) block removal weapons in place. As for the super weapon it'll be mostly shield-removal with some block damaging abilities, just not nearly as good as the dedicated block buster systems. Do note that I'm sacrificing some power and shield damage for that block damage. With this two-stage method I'd say that it's better to use alpha weapons, but that's probably just my personal preference. One last thing; don't forget that you can delegate some of the block removal duty to turrets. Block-removal weapons don't have to be very big, so it's really easy to turret mount them. Of course there's advantages and disadvantages to doing that.

The second way of doing it is more akin to the old pre-nerf weapons; a single jack of all trades weapon. So either cannon-cannon-punch, beam-cannon-explosive arrays, multiple missile tubes, etc (you get the point). The advantage is that all the weapon blocks are used during both shield and coring stages, it's a lot simpler to use; no cooldown micro-managing and weapon switching mid combat, and it's simpler to build. It's also a lot easier to engage multiple opponents since there's no need to deal with either anti-shield or anti-block weapon reloads. The disadvantage, "Jack of all trades but master of none". You might not get as much destructive potential as a two stage ship but there's a lot more room for error.

Honestly, there's just so many things you can do. Test stuff out and pick your flavor! With good combos and strategies you'll murder opponents just well as before the nerf ^_^.

In my opinion you should only go with multi-stage weapons if you know what you're doing. They offer better possible results but also have a higher risk.

Spoiler: Example

These beams rip two 150x3x3 holes into enemies every beam tick. On the flip-side, they abysmal at shield damage. Boosting their block count for shield damage would be a waste due to the multiple output power nerf. You really couldn't get this good block damage in a single stage omni-weapon.

Ps; Combat that lasts longer than 2 seconds is tons of fun, it really gets the heart pumping and the adrenaline flowing (I'm speaking from experience here).

Edit; I forgot to add that sniper cannons are really nice with big turrets for long-range shield removal. There's tons of other combos that work well with turrets, I suggest that you try them.

Edit 2; For your coil gun weapon; make it two stage. First stage is anti-shield cannon/beam/ion. Second stage is a smaller cannon/beam/pierce. Just call it an ammo change :p. If you have good aim it'll absolutely demolish anything, pierce is like old punch-through with double block damage.

I hope this wall of text helps :p. I should probably add a better structured version to the Wiki.

 

[Valiant70]

(Skip the first paragraph for the actual guide)
Punch-through was nerfed because it allowed weapons (specifically cannon-cannon) to become monstrous against blocks with absolutely no penalty or counter. The only other weapon that's good against blocks and shields is missiles, but they're balanced out by the fact they can get shot down. I had the same "what the actual fuck schema?" reaction at first but then realized that a weapon good at everything with absolutely no flaws/counter was pretty freaking bad for the game (think hulk missiles before PD was a thing). I agree that the stupid explosive bug should get fixed though (it's supposed to give 10 radius). Apart from that, the weapons are pretty well balanced. I think that the problem here is that you're trying to make a single weapon absolutely beast against everything (aka; OP), not succeeding and blaming the game for it. Anyways, with that balance stuff out of the way let's get on the actual topic of how to kill the enemy;

There's multiple different techniques to use. The first would be a two stage weapon. The first stage takes up most of the space; it's designed to bring down shields. Any combo with ion does here, although alpha weapons are much much much better. It's better to use a single weapon group here since you won't benefit from more than one and it won't suffer from the multiple output power nerf. The second stage is meant to be pure block removal. The advantage of this is that block removal weapons generally have a max size, after that they just don't add any block removal. Just like your cannon setup Vakna , a smaller one would do just fine. So, for this stage you can use beam arrays like crusade suggested (I have two on my titan), missiles, cannons woth punch-through or pierce, etc. I suggest finding the optimal weapon size for good block removal and not making them any bigger (cause it wastes space). The advantages of system like this, especially with anti-shield alpha weapons, is that you can take down the enemy shields fast and chain up with specialized anti block weapons. Multi-stage weapons also allow a much higher degree of specialization. The disadvantage is that it's not that great against multiple enemies (unless you have more than one weapon or are using non-alpha anti-shield weapons) and that you're not using the potential damage of the blocks composing the anti-block system against shields. Also, if you miss with the shield alpha weapon you're fucked, as the block-removal weapons won't help here. The opposite is also true, although constant damage weapons are generally much better for block removal. If the enemy shields star recharging before you can inflict good enough damage you're also screwed, which is why I suggest immediate follow-up with block weapons after a shield strike (or getting enemy shields down).

There's really tons of combinations you could use here, just try stuff out and figure out your favorite weapons/tactics. A specialized anti-titan two-stage system is what I'm going to use on the Charon. There's already multiple small (but very powerful) block removal weapons in place. As for the super weapon it'll be mostly shield-removal with some block damaging abilities, just not nearly as good as the dedicated block buster systems. Do note that I'm sacrificing some power and shield damage for that block damage. With this two-stage method I'd say that it's better to use alpha weapons, but that's probably just my personal preference. One last thing; don't forget that you can delegate some of the block removal duty to turrets. Block-removal weapons don't have to be very big, so it's really easy to turret mount them. Of course there's advantages and disadvantages to doing that.

The second way of doing it is more akin to the old pre-nerf weapons; a single jack of all trades weapon. So either cannon-cannon-punch, beam-cannon-explosive arrays, multiple missile tubes, etc (you get the point). The advantage is that all the weapon blocks are used during both shield and coring stages, it's a lot simpler to use; no cooldown micro-managing and weapon switching mid combat, and it's simpler to build. It's also a lot easier to engage multiple opponents since there's no need to deal with either anti-shield or anti-block weapon reloads. The disadvantage, "Jack of all trades but master of none". You might not get as much destructive potential as a two stage ship but there's a lot more room for error.

Honestly, there's just so many things you can do. Test stuff out and pick your flavor! With good combos and strategies you'll murder opponents just well as before the nerf ^_^.

In my opinion you should only go with multi-stage weapons if you know what you're doing. They offer better possible results but also have a higher risk.

Spoiler: Example

These beams rip two 150x3x3 holes into enemies every beam tick. On the flip-side, they abysmal at shield damage. Boosting their block count for shield damage would be a waste due to the multiple output power nerf. You really couldn't get this good block damage in a single stage omni-weapon.

Ps; Combat that lasts longer than 2 seconds is tons of fun, it really gets the heart pumping and the adrenaline flowing (I'm speaking from experience here).

Edit; I forgot to add that sniper cannons are really nice with big turrets for long-range shield removal. There's tons of other combos that work well with turrets, I suggest that you try them.

Edit 2; For your coil gun weapon; make it two stage. First stage is anti-shield cannon/beam/ion. Second stage is a smaller cannon/beam/pierce. Just call it an ammo change :p. If you have good aim it'll absolutely demolish anything, pierce is like old punch-through with double block damage.

I hope this wall of text helps :p. I should probably add a better structured version to the Wiki.

How many weapons did you stack together to get such solid, huge beams??

Also, I heard piercing currently doesn't work on beams (i.e. doesn't puncture). Is that true?

 

[jorgekorke]

Have someone tried using classic punch cannons setup with punch effect yet ? I wonder if this retro way is any useful.

 

[Keptick]

How many weapons did you stack together to get such solid, huge beams??

Also, I heard piercing currently doesn't work on beams (i.e. doesn't puncture). Is that true?

I'm just using a normal checkerboard with bearishmushroom's pewier pews shader mod. And last I heard punch-through works with beams, it'd be even more effective than explosive for penetration damage. I forgot to mention that I fire with left click to concentrate all the beams on the same spot.