How to make smaller ships usefull in battle

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    So I have been playing around in private sandbox and occasionally on servers and it just seems that small ships cannot do much against big ships while big ships can insta kill small ships thus fighters and bombers are useless. I tried making a small carrier with 10 fighters and use it against a copy but it seems they cant even scratch the paint other than slightly damaging a turret.

    My thoughts about this is that

    -AMCs have too high velocities for big guns

    -Small ships should not be able to kill big ships but should be able to damage the big ships turrets/ secondary systems in large numbers.

    -Big ships should not be lethal against small ships until very close range



    So does any one have thoughts about this?
     
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    Yes. A simple solution would be to make the rotational speed of the turret inversely proportional to the mass of the turret - as it is for ships. Big ships should not turn fast and thus large turrets, with lots of dpi, should perform the same. A high dps turret would not be able to track a properly flown dodging and weaving fighter. In otherwords, make them like they are in real life. This would also necessitate smaller turrets (AA guns), with a correspondingly lower dps but higher rotational speed to defend against fighters. This would allow the fairly small shield capacity contained in a small fighter to deflect more of the hits.



    Obviously, a single fighter would be unable to penetrate the defensive umberella of a properly defended capital ship, but a swarm of fighters would be able to get in and do some damage.

    We just need a game mechanic that calculates the mass of the turret and effects the rotational speed of said turret.

    Make it so...
     
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    I think it would help if turrets had their turn speed based on their dimensions. At the moment, I believe all turrets turn at the same speed.

    Another problem is that turrets can go inside of their motherships. This makes it impossible for them to have a blind spot, which small ships would rely on, to help take them out. This was discussed in another forum thread, but sadly I was not able to find it.
     
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    Those seem like pretty good ideas. Also what about weapons that do not scale up very well, say a weapon that at 5 blocks is lethal against small fighters but 400 blocks is only slight better than before with just more range
     
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    Dunno, the whole weapon and shield system needs some balancing and changes imo. Personally I\'m fine with that all staying the same til the game hits Beta though.

    Really the whole small, medium, large, huge ship size thing needs to be taken a look at and have each set in stone what it is good and bad at and the power/mass/weapon/shield/movement requirements adjusted accordingly. Not equations and individual system balancing trying for perfection, but a straight up ingame listing of what class your ship falls under, what bonuses that ship class gets for what systems, and the mass cutoff for that class.

    Example:

    Small Mass: Bonus to thrust and maneuverability, requires 1/2 power but no space for much shielding/armor. Cloaking. Wrecks Medium, skilled pilots can take out Large. Rogue.

    Medium Mass: Bonus to firepower and range, but requires 2x power. Glass cannon, primary attack ship, wrecks all. Mage.

    Large Mass: Bonus to armor and shields, able to build lots of weapons and turrets and dock small fighters. Tank/Support.

    Huge: Only bonus is crazy weapon power. Otherwise it\'s size is all the bonus it needs, space for ungodly number of turrets, full squadrons or ships, ect. Crazy bad maneuvering. A mothership or death star, Endgame Boss.