Increase Weapon Ranges

[Spartan-228]

I don't know if any one has brought this up before or not, but there needs to be something done about weapon ranges. Currently the farthest any one can shoot is 2k now this might sound like a lot and it might be fine for fighters and corvettes. However that is knife fighting range for 600 meter long battleship.

Being in the military I feel that space ships that are larger than a modern supper carrier should have a better weapons range than a 50. cal anti-material rifle. Granted just increasing weapons range isn't quite enough, after all you have to be able to see you target. So maybe we could get an optical zoom block or something.

 

[takethispie]

and yet imagine with 1Km long spaceship x)
the zoom block has already been suggested before , but I think the game also need to have a relation between the spaceship's size and the range if his weapons ^^

 

[Criss]

Pretty sure you can change it in your config..

 

[FunnyBunny14]

There is normally no use for a range of more than 2000. If you play with bigger sectors, you can always easily multiply the range by the amount of times you made your sector larger. Just keep in mind that the diagonal increases more with bigger sectors, so you might want to think about an extra range increase by dectors of 3000+

 

[Asmael]

I planned on doing a 6km long ship, with frontal beams. Well, I abandonned the project (for now), but the range between the 4 frontal beams would be such that even a target right in the middle couldn't be hit (unless I have a slave beam). I don't see the point of beams, I mean, you have instant travel time, but you don't need it that much with AMC at 500 meters, so...

By the way, I recentely changed the sector size, speed and range of weapons.
In Starmade > Data > Config > BlochBehaviorConfig, you can modify the range of weapons. Make sure you're increasing the range of the main weapons, and not modifying a slave.
In Starmade > Server, you can modify:
THRUST_SPEED_LIMIT to the max speed you want. Be aware that speed higher than 150 might cause severe bugs (like being able to go through a wall).
SECTOR_SIZE to increase the size of sectors, and as a direct consequence, the distance between planets and such. I tried 15000 but that's probably a bit much *cough*

Makes the game much more realistic in my opinion, tho I do agree something has to be done about the ranges.

 

[ToyotaSupra]

I still think we should be able to modify the integers, like before the weapons update.

 

[NeonSturm]

The current lasers are just as powerful as required to burn a hole in a fast boat's (not ship's) tank in about 10 seconds continuous fire.

With issues of targeting at >10 light seconds, I think it makes sense that the really damage/mass effective weapons have a short range.

But the complete lack of >1 sector weapons is only good to avoid game-play bugs.

 

[Calbiri]

Sector sizes by default have been kept constricted for now in order to force out bugs relating to sectors that would otherwise go unnoticed in larger default sectors. I have kept the weapons ranges at a small scale matching that, once we open the default sectors up to a larger size, I will of course increase weapon ranges. As many players have noted here and in other threads, it is possible to increase your servers sector sizes, and also increase your weapon ranges, I just have to keep various aspects of game development in mind with the current setting. I can sympathize with the annoyance this causes you, but it's for the betterment of the games performance in the long run so I hope you can understand my stance here.

 

[Planr]

Personally I like the weapon ranges having fixed values. We used to always have huge problems in the old days where people with giant titans had huge guns that sniped any ship in the adjacent sectors. It made combat very messy and unfair, as well as being another thing that encouraged giganticism. It gave titans such a massively unfair advantage it's not even funny.

Yes, those 1000m ranges are indeed a deathzone when you have small caps or frigates vs battleships and titans, but think of the bright side: You can get away from them a lot easier than they can reach and kill you. It seems perfectly fair to me. Now I can more easily avoid having to fight with this titan that's slowly chasing me from behind.

Also @Asmael if I were you I would not be too concerned about that 6km titan having problems, as there is no way for you to get such a ridiculously large and expensive ship in-game without cheating w/ admin commands. The only place you will prob be using such a ship is on your own server.

 

[takethispie]

Sector sizes by default have been kept constricted for now in order to force out bugs relating to sectors that would otherwise go unnoticed in larger default sectors. I have kept the weapons ranges at a small scale matching that, once we open the default sectors up to a larger size, I will of course increase weapon ranges. As many players have noted here and in other threads, it is possible to increase your servers sector sizes, and also increase your weapon ranges, I just have to keep various aspects of game development in mind with the current setting. I can sympathize with the annoyance this causes you, but it's for the betterment of the games performance in the long run so I hope you can understand my stance here.

yes I totally agree, it's the best for every type of player or/and gameplay I guess

 

[Byamarro]

The current lasers are just as powerful as required to burn a hole in a fast boat's (not ship's) tank in about 10 seconds continuous fire.

With issues of targeting at >10 light seconds, I think it makes sense that the really damage/mass effective weapons have a short range.

But the complete lack of >1 sector weapons is only good to avoid game-play bugs.

ABL plane in novadays (plane armed with laser weapon) is able to shoot at much greater ranges (600km light armored missile at medium weather etc.) and it's able to burn enemy missiles.

 

[Aridhol]

100% disagree.

We had long range before, it was not fun. My ship had turrets that shot from 10km away... Super unfair and unfun.

 

[FunnyBunny14]

Not everything should be long range of course, but missiles and cannons should have a longer range when the sector is bigger. Either that or an extremely long range weapon gets added.

 

[NeonSturm]

I would like:

1. 50m 4x damage, 8x energy consumption
   
2. 500m 2x damage, 3x energy consumption
   
3. 1000m 1x damage, 1x energy consumption
4. 2000m 0.5x damage, 1x energy consumption
5. 5000m 0.2x damage, 1x energy consumption

for slow cannons, but Super-accurate missile+beam weapons should rather do 2x, 1.4x, 1x, 0.2x, 0.04x damage at above distances

If you are not careful, your 5000m weapons should miss and drain all your energy. They should only be used if no other weapons use the excess power.

 

[FunnyBunny14]

I'm assuming that that is based on the 2000 - 3000 sector sizes? For the 10 000 sector size I personally would add a few more values after that. I would make missiles have a larger range with the same damage, but with a lower speed at longer ranges, and I would make them a physical object that you could shoot down.

 

[NeonSturm]

You know only 1 sector around your current is loaded? (and maybe 1 in advance)

5000 on 2000 sectors could fire at you from not-loaded positions which is stupid. I think the maximum (sane) weapon range should be 80% of a sector.

If you build a 6km titan, that is your problem. You would need realistic 144'000 km sectors --1 hour with escape velocity (40km/s * 3600s/1h = 144'000 km/h) to cross it-- with the weapons ranges you want

 

[FunnyBunny14]

Oh, sorry! I was thinking in beam effect terms. No, 5000 meter is indeed more than enough for even the largest of sectors. Please, don't mind me, carry on!

 

[ltmauve]

I certainly would like to see default ranges increase, but at least changing the range on your own server doesn't mean ships built in it won't work anywhere else.

Spoiler: P.S. Calbiri

Do you have an idea of when larger default sectors are coming?

 

[Asmael]

Well, the frontal beams of said juggernaut are supposed to have a range of 7.400 meters. For a 6km long ship, that's reasonable. I think.

Since I'm experiencing very large sectors, I noticed you can spot enemy ships from very far away (40km). Thus, there's no complete insta-kill without knowing what you are shooting.

If something had to be done concerning the range, I'd increase the range based on the length of the weapon array. If a beam array has a length (parallel to firing output) of, say 100 blocks, its range could be 500 + (100/2) meters, or 550 meters. This is of course nothing but an example. Now, for this to work, there should be drawbacks. I think decreasing the accuracy of AIs with bigger turrets is fine.

I'll keep testing weapons with very large sectors, high speed and weapon range.

PS: I wasn't there before the weapon range nerf, so if someone was kind enough to give the ancient formula... cookies for ya :3

 

[ltmauve]

The real problem with this is turret AI being too accurate and insta-killing everything before people can see each other. {sidenote: can we have the ability to adjust the range at which HUD diamonds start appearing?}