Idiotic updates, and logical fixes to common problems

[Kaelum]

Antimatter cannon fixes:

Schema nerfed AMC in general by trying to nerf spam cannons. Due to the equation that nerfs massive guns, the new nerf affects groups of larger guns a lot more than a groups of smaller guns with the same amount of total guns, and capital ship weapon arrays even more.

The problem is that even if bigger guns had the same efficiency, they only HIT ONE BLOCK AT ONCE. Eventually, the larger a ship gets, the MORE guns it needs to destroy blocks on similarly sized ships, which makes the energy costs stack up ridiculously.

Here is an example: After the first gun, each gun takes an extra 10% more than the last one. For 10 guns, that means 9 guns have extra. The extras for each gun (in order) are 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%, and 90%. If all of these guns are the same size, it means it takes 4.5 extra guns worth of power.

But with the nerf on bigger guns it screws over larger ships EVEN MORE. I am not talking about a cruisers, but but massive dreadnaughts that are billions of blocks large. The thing is, however powerful your massive doom gun is, once the shields go, it destroys only one block at a time. Against massive dreadnaughts, one block at a time means hours of shooting. So capital ships need lots of guns to combat other capital class ships. With capital class weaponry this means thousands of weapon arrays.

The new update would really mess this up, as it would take several hundred times the power that it should, making it almost impossible to kill anything but smaller ships with capital ships. And even with small ships, you have at least 6 gun which add an extra 1.5 antimatter cannons worth of energy.

The way to REALLY fix this is to REMOVE the nerf on larger guns, making them just as efficient as the same amount of antimatter cannons in a lot of small groups.

The new 'larger reload time' addition is stuipid as well. If you really think about it, why would ot reload slower? Assuming the antimatter cannon itself generates that antimatter, more antimatter cannons should mean more antimatter generated. Even with the largest antimatter projectile sizes, it would at least fire AS fast as one antimatter cannon block.

 

[Trafalgar]

I agree that all AMCs in general did get nerfed in that they cost much more energy to fire, and that larger guns are affected more than smaller ones, and that you cannot fit the same strength guns as before in the same size location due to the higher power demands (even though the DPS has increased with 1-AMCs, shockingly enough). However, when you move to trying to make higher-DPS guns, the higher block count guns become more efficient than more of the lower block count guns (and 1-AMCs become inefficient).

This may be of interest: http://puu.sh/59GiK.png

Each row represents a collection of guns composed of AMCs with a specific number of AMC blocks per gun. I specified a specific DPS (20k in that case), and the spreadsheet determines how many guns to use for each block-amount-per-gun to get as close to that DPS as possible. Then it extrapolates from that to build a basic plan in block counts (and how much power to put in lines, etc) for a ship based on the other specifications it is given, essentially. The power generation is set to 85% because the equation I used to solve for amount of power rows or blocks needed overestimates.

So you can see there how the e/sec differs between the different gun sizes when they\'re trying to achieve a fairly reasonable 20k DPS - and how the 1-AMC has superior performance for that DPS.

This next screenshot shows the result of changing it to 100k DPS, and changing the power generation setting from 85% to 10% (to make capacitors instead of lots of power at 25 e/sec), and also shows the total block counts (without hull) calculated for 1-AMCs and 520-AMCs: http://puu.sh/59GYC.png

I included the others around 520 so that you could see how they compare in power cost, etc.

You can see there that using 23 520-AMCs consumes quite a bit less power than 934 1-AMCs, despite having essentially the same DPS. The 520-AMCs also have higher damage per gun, distance, and speed, but not a higher radius or anything like that. If you just looked at the number of AMCs you needed, you would think that the 1-AMCs would be much cheaper (needing many less AMC blocks), but in actuality (a) at high DPS values, 1-AMCs cost more power than larger guns doing the same DPS per second, and this partially or completely offsets the extra blocks - partially at 100k DPS, (c) being able to survive its own DPS for 60 seconds makes any ship have to be composed largely of shields. You can see below that these are about 80% shield blocks despite including the hull, and that this isn\'t even a quarter of the shield regen that would be necessary to be immune to its own DPS.

Block amounts used for each system for both gun sizes with 100k DPS, for comparison: http://puu.sh/59HQQ.png

 

[DivineEvil]

I am pretty sure schema nerfed AMC in general by trying to nerf spam cannons. You see, due to the equation that nerfs massive guns, it affects groups of larger guns a lot more than a groups of smaller guns with the same amount of total guns, and capital ship weapon arrays even more.


Right on, Sherlock.


The problem is that even if bigger guns had the same efficiency, they only HIT ONE BLOCK AT ONCE. Eventually, the larger a ship gets, the MORE guns it needs to destroy blocks on similarly sized ships, which makes the energy costs stack up ridiculously.


You want to shoot 100 guns to blow 100 blocks with one shot. That\'s exactly what Schema dont want. Hundreds of projectiles fired by tens each second are bad enough, when they hit hundreds of blocks it gets even worse. I support the change in regard of fighting langs, and if you want to do massive damage to hull, use missiles


Here is an example: After the first gun, each gun takes an extra 10% more than the last one. For 10 guns, that means 9 guns have extra. The extras for each gun (in order) are 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%, and 90%. If all of these guns are the same size, it means it takes 4.5 extra guns worth of power.


Works for me.


But with the nerf on bigger guns it screws over larger ships EVEN MORE. And even with small ships, you have at least 6 gun which add an extra 1.5 antimatter cannons worth of energy. The way to REALLY fix this is to REMOVE the nerf on larger guns, making them just as effiecient as the same amount of antimatter cannons in a lot of small groups. And the new larger reload time is stuipid as well. If you really think about it, why would ot reload slower? It isn\'t like it fires a larger bullet, it just uses more force. It should fire FASTER, because if each antimatter cannon had a reload mechanism, and it fires the same size projectile, it has enough reload mechanisms to fire many times faster than the original gun.


It\'s a way to make it work for YOU. There\'s nothing to fix, maybe tone shields down a bit.

Speaking of theories, adding more force to anti-matter projectile does nothing, but makes it fly faster. If its visually the same projectile does not mean it has the same size. If speaking that way bigger anti-matter cannon has larger volume of magnetic chambers to contain larger anti-matter slugs and to accelerate it better, nothing else. There\'s a hard limit of reload for anything using projectiles and only beam weapon has no such term associated with it, aside from an \'output value\'.

 

[Kaelum]

Please do not be a smart ass. Constructive critisism is welcomed, but snarky comments are not, as they do not help improve the thread, or explain why you disapprove of something.

First, this makes a ship with 20 medium guns that used to be able to fire, accelerate to 100 km/h (assuming that\'s the limit) and maintain speed while radar jamming with crippled systems not able to fire 2 volleys while completely repaired, stationary, and not using any other system. Did I mention it had several million power storage?

Also, 20 guns is fine with me, but it would take many more times the power than it should.

The problem with schemas update is that he made nerfs to balance a previous nerf that he could have just removed.
I am not trying to make it work for me, mostly because I could just make another ship with the maximum efficiency possible. I am trying to balance the game in a way that is fair. If they removed the reload nerf, the multi gun nerf, and larger gun nerf, and possibly added a radius for larger guns for block destruction, then the game would be almost perfectly balanced in terms of AMCs.

Finally, why the hell are you trying to talk about REALISM? Seriously, power comes infinitely from blocks, you can instantly mine anything with a single right click (or left if you switched it), you generate enough antimatter to destroy a galaxy breaking a single block, a visible antimatter projectile only cracks a block, and does half damage to an object of equal mass. Did I mention it give no recoil and somehow comes from a box in equal size to it\'s power source, and while you can generate antimatter on the fly without having power problems, you cannot use it for thrust though it could probably generate you enough force to go 100 km, and you fit into a single block, and somehow float around with no jetpack and never run out of oxygen. Oh, by the way, even if it was realistic, there is a thing called basic physics which proves that the more energy (in the form of speed with the antimatter cannons) you put into the projectile, the more energy it releases. If you knew basic physics, you would know that would make it do more damage. Also, another cannon of the same type would take them same amount of power.

And because you know SO much about realism, you say there is a hard limit of reload for projectile weapons, yet fail to realise weapon\'s in real life reload at different speeds, whether it is bullets going into the chamber or another clip in the gun. Please do not pretend to know what you are talking about, and possibly go to school where you will learn things like physics, and maybe somehwere you will learn that when antimatter comes into contact with matter IT RESULTS IN A MASSIVE ENERGY RELEASE.

By the way, that is the first treasure planet profile pic I have ever seen.

 

[Kaelum]

First, please specify where I moved to making higher DPS guns.

Second, what sort of power systems are you using? I use dimension based power lines, which are long lines of power modules that go from the very rear of the ship to the very front, never touch eachother, and all at some point touch the outermost points along the sides of the ship. They are much more versatile an effecient than frames, as there can be very many of them, all with maximum efficiency as well as fitting in oddly shaped ships. (They can take more blocks at some times, but usually to avoid touching another one and breaking the system)

Power rows sound like straight lines of power, which are less effiecient than a plain block of power modules. Oh, and I know a properly armed and shielded ship cannot regerate more than it\'s own DPS, but even after the shields go down, there is still the hull, and large guns just do not match smaller guns at about 100-200 damage, as at 200 damage, you have maximum armor killing efficiency and at 100 damage, you have maximum block killing efficiency. The new nerf for big guns makes this even more efficient.

While they may be nerfed, groups of guns still have the most potential, like modular ships. They still give you the best DPS, and if you have a great energy system, you can still support them. The best thing they could do apart from removing the nerfs is nerfing all the other systems and buffing the power systems so that it is more like certain systems take LESS power.

By the way, I appreciate the constructive critisism. Discussion usually leads to a better result in the end, therefore making discussion vital to the improvement of this thread.

 

[Zyrr]

Debates are welcome, but let\'s keep the temper in check and the possibly insulting comments elsewhere. Let\'s try to promote a positive environment around here.



Before I\'m off, I\'d like to emphasize this particular point; this is an arcade game. Everything is cubic, everyone is purple. It\'s unlikely that, for example, we\'re going to see the mass(hehe)ive energy release of antimatter colliding with matter. Keep that in mind, please.

 

[Kaelum]

Exactly. Sorry I got a bit mad there, but I hate when people use incorrect information to try and prove me wrong. Anyway, I wish there were more intelligent people here to discuss with.

 

[fstratzero]

Anyways I\'m ok with the nerf, but missiles need buffing bad.

If I can take the enemies sheilds down, then the sd missiles need to lock on faster, or lock on while you are firing your amcs, and stay locked on when you switch to missiles and fire them.

They also need to have the flight speed increased exponetially.

 

[MineCatFTW]

All of those points are good. That\'s all it would need to make missiles useful for killing anything but stations.

 

[Trafalgar]

When DivineEvil said \"There\'s a hard limit of reload for anything using projectiles and only beam weapon has no such term associated with it, aside from an \'output value\',\" I\'m pretty sure he was referring to the actual hard limit on reload in the game for the different kinds of projectiles, not anything to do with anything in the real world or real physics vOv. For AMCs, it is 70, as you can see if you calculate the reload for a 1 billion or 1 trillion AMC gun. Even when you have only 100,000 AMCs in a gun reload is already down to 77, and at 10,000 it is around 88.

Currently, anyways.


Power rows sound like straight lines of power, which are less effiecient than a plain block of power modules


They are straight lines of power, not touching each other, obviously. So they\'re less efficient than what you described (\'dimension based power lines\'), but I certainly wouldn\'t describe them as less efficient than a plain block of power modules...

Let\'s assume you want to fill a 8x8x20 area with straight lines. 8*8 = 64, but you can only put lines in half of them, so 32 lines of 20 length. That\'s 125,219.18 e/sec from 640 power blocks.

Now let\'s assume you instead fill the entire 8x8x20 area with power blocks. Despite using twice as many blocks, you only get 39,915.37 e/sec.

(The math is left as an exercise to the reader. I assume by now you all know the equation(s).)

In any case, it is feasible to build a 100k DPS AMC gun array, but not much above that unless you want to spend large amounts of blocks on generators or power tanks.

And my last suggestion would be that you can significantly reduce the energy consumption (and get auto-aiming, etc) by using a bunch of AI-controlled turrets, instead of one CPU with a lot of large guns.

 

[Kaelum]

I agree about the first, maybe instead of a different cursor just have the same one, you know, with a red ring that starts forming inside the circle and once it completes a red box appears around the enemy ship, and you promptly fire your missiles.

Now the second thing, the speed is fine, but you need a way to travel really long distances, as well as schema changing the units of distance. (not the ACTUAL distances or scale, but changing the unit names we see, so even thoughits the same distance, instead of m it would be km, or hm.)

You can change the max speed in the config.

 

[Kaelum]

For power systems it is just the dimensions MULTIPLIED by eachother times 250, but lets just forget the 250. So you have 8x8x20 which is 1280. You have 1x1x20 lines of power, but 20 of them, which makes 400. I am pretty sure the block makes more power though you might be confused with another system. For some systems it ADDS dimensions as well as sometimes adding number of blocks.

I guess turrets do help, but they have the tendency to shoot friendlys.

Oh, and a realization: The only person who wins here is the guy with no guns, but a ton of shields. Also, I really still think buffs are the way to go, as buffing a ship will never mess up its power systems or make it obsolete while debuffing will, unless it has a reallly weird purpose.

 

[MrFURB]

The power regen blocks work like this: 25 regen per block plus a decreasing bonus based on your power grouping\'s total dimensions(X+Y+Z). This box dimension bonus scales down to 0 once it gives you 1 million bonus regen, which is usually somewhere around 1.2-1.3 million regen depending on your ship\'s boxdim efficiency.

A long line of 64 power blocks is much more efficient than a cube of 4x4x4.

Also, the scaling of shielding is very harsh, even compared to the new scaling on AMCs. This is due to two primary reasons and a lot of other details that are too small to bother with.

First, AMCs scale on a per-group basis compared to the entity-based scaling of shielding. Adding a single block of shielding to something that has ~1 million (~25K regen) shielding doesn\'t even add 20 shield points and adds less than 1 to regen. (For some odd reason people are saying that shields are abusable on large ships) Compare that to ten arrays of 500 AMCs (Each array has 4234 DPS and takes 10,000 energy per shot)(Total energy consumption is ~700,000e/s, total DPS is 42,342) for example, where adding a single AMC block increases a single group\'s stats by 8 DPS (The equivalent of ~13 shield blocks) and increases it\'s energy consumption by 20 per volley or ~140 e/sec.

There you see that, even though weapons are power-gated and shields are mass-gated, they still scale much more efficiently than shielding and continue to do so even at the extremes of gigantism, where adding a single AMC equals adding 200 shield blocks worth of regen/DPS and power gates are removed by a multi-billion storage pool.

If anything, what people should be complaining about is how this affects combat on a smaller scale before the harsh shield scaling hits hard. A single shield array has more regen than a single AMC block has DPS, and in a combat scenario where the shield recovery times are only 0.5 seconds and most of the shots are being dodged, fights can last forever until some third party decides to hop in.

My second point is that the current system has some rather wily mechanics that aren\'t immediately recognizeable. First, did you know that the \'debuff\' to the attack rate of larger AMC arrays actually makes them more energy efficient? By strengthening their advantage as a trade off of pure damage potential for all-around usefulness and an easier time reaching full damage potential they create more variance in strategy instead of a bull-headed rush for the highest possible DPS. Matching your AMC system\'s quantity and quality to your power system\'s output is an essential step in outfitting your warship.



I hope this has cleared some of the recent misconceptions and helped everyone learn some new tricks for designing their weapons systems for maximum carnage!

 

[Kaelum]

Wow. I know they worked, but now it is addition. Well, thanks for the input. Shields do need buffing, but per block, as I would make an invincible ships if they worked like power.

 

[Ultraviolet Dugong]

I think AMCs should be the go-to weapon for breaking shields, but missiles should be better at dealing with the hulls. Also, hulls should be buffed a little, and I wouldn\'t mind if shields grew logrithmically...

 

[Trollerbobman]

Or a new type of weapon that is like the old AMC\'s but a bit weaker in the damage department.

 

[Kaelum]

That would be nice, like a Plasma Cannon or Pulse cannon. The AMC would be your big weapon and the other gun would be like a machine gun.

 

[mistertime]

A single gram of antimatter has the destructive power to completely raze the surface of the earth.

How are hulls and shields supposed to stand up to them anyway?

~mistertime

 

[Trollerbobman]

Exactly!

It would be like a rapid-fire shotgun but has not very good damage.

 

[Imperial_Gold]

http://star-made.org/content/my-take-new-amc-system