Making Ground Combat Suck Less

[Admiral.Piett]

I think that shouldn't be allowed in this game :/.

I don't know, sounds good to me. I mean, after all, the death star DID kill a planet. :P

 

[whiterhino16]

I said this before, but I can't find that post again or anything referring to it:
I'm OK with the natural shield thing, expect the destroying ships thing. I want to be able to take my mining ship (which is kind of big) and I don't want the game to suddenly destroy half of it. Also, that along with most other suggestions on the forum make large ships useless. There should be some upside to them, like increased life support or something. Large ships might as well automatically have dis-integrators for hulls for how much the community wants to overnerf them.

 

[Lecic]

I don't know, sounds good to me. I mean, after all, the death star DID kill a planet. :p

So? We aren't Star Wars.

I feel like people forget a lot that we aren't <insert any major science fiction franchise with space ships>.

I said this before, but I can't find that post again or anything referring to it:
I'm OK with the natural shield thing, expect the destroying ships thing. I want to be able to take my mining ship (which is kind of big) and I don't want the game to suddenly destroy half of it. Also, that along with most other suggestions on the forum make large ships useless. There should be some upside to them, like increased life support or something. Large ships might as well automatically have dis-integrators for hulls for how much the community wants to overnerf them.

What if salvage beams still worked through the atmosphere?

 

[Admiral.Piett]

The comment was aimed to for him since he is in the Rebel Alliance, lad. Kinda keep the comment context. I still think kill-able planet should be a thing, that was the actual idea of the post. Your comment is terribly out of context. Why should planet be unkillable? Better yet, make it optional, so we have both. As for the ground combat, that is a different thing. Should space ships interfere? Sure thing. Should it be limited? I agree. How? Well, here everyone may convene with any proposals they can think of. I believe that missiles should go thru the atmosphere, and that is a great way to limit space ships interaction with ground combat, with limiting how much they can get into the planet determined by mass. Fighters can get into the atmosphere and big ships do as well, but one can move faster and with less repercussions than the other... that makes sense too. And yes salvage beams should work from "across" planet atmosphere shielding.

 

[1adog1]

The comment was aimed to for him since he is in the Rebel Alliance, lad. Kinda keep the comment context. I still think kill-able planet should be a thing, that was the actual idea of the post. Your comment is terribly out of context. Why should planet be unkillable? Better yet, make it optional, so we have both. As for the ground combat, that is a different thing. Should space ships interfere? Sure thing. Should it be limited? I agree. How? Well, here everyone may convene with any proposals they can think of. I believe that missiles should go thru the atmosphere, and that is a great way to limit space ships interaction with ground combat, with limiting how much they can get into the planet determined by mass. Fighters can get into the atmosphere and big ships do as well, but one can move faster and with less repercussions than the other... that makes sense too. And yes salvage beams should work from "across" planet atmosphere shielding.

Now there's an idea. Just being in the atmosphere in a planet won't actually damage a ship or it's shields. BUT, it'll start taking 0.05% per km/h per second shield damage it it's, say, 2500 mass or more when maneuvering? If the shields run out, then all exposed parts of the ship facing forward to the vector that the ship is moving will start being destroyed at a rate of 5 damage per km/h per second (applies to all exposed blocks simultaneously to simulate re-entry break up). The chain reaction will continue until the ship stops moving. The damage WILL NOT stop if the ship's mass goes below 2500 while the reaction is occurring.

Example: Your ship of 2623 mass with 175,000 shields is moving through the atmosphere at 27 km/h, and the belly of the ship is facing the direction in which the ship is moving. The shields will take 2362.5 damage a second until depleted. Then, each exposed block of the belly will take 135 damage a second until the next layer of blocks is exposed. After a few layers have been torn away, the core is exposed and receives 135 damage a second until it overheats, the occupant(s) die, and the reaction continues until there is nothing left of the ship.

When you see all this and say "I HATE MATH" remember, programming is nothing but a crap ton of variables put into equations.

Feedback?

 

[Admiral.Piett]

I love the idea.

 

[Lecic]

Now there's an idea. Just being in the atmosphere in a planet won't actually damage a ship or it's shields. BUT, it'll start taking 0.05% per km/h per second shield damage it it's, say, 2500 mass or more when maneuvering? If the shields run out, then all exposed parts of the ship facing forward to the vector that the ship is moving will start being destroyed at a rate of 5 damage per km/h per second (applies to all exposed blocks simultaneously to simulate re-entry break up). The chain reaction will continue until the ship stops moving. The damage WILL NOT stop if the ship's mass goes below 2500 while the reaction is occurring.

Example: Your ship of 2623 mass with 175,000 shields is moving through the atmosphere at 27 km/h, and the belly of the ship is facing the direction in which the ship is moving. The shields will take 2362.5 damage a second until depleted. Then, each exposed block of the belly will take 135 damage a second until the next layer of blocks is exposed. After a few layers have been torn away, the core is exposed and receives 135 damage a second until it overheats, the occupant(s) die, and the reaction continues until there is nothing left of the ship.

When you see all this and say "I HATE MATH" remember, programming is nothing but a crap ton of variables put into equations.

Feedback?

That's barely any damage at all, though. With shields at 495/block, 2362 is only a tiny bit of damage. I do like the idea, it just needs some work.

 

[1adog1]

That's barely any damage at all, though. With shields at 495/block, 2362 is only a tiny bit of damage. I do like the idea, it just needs some work.

Ah but that was an example. My calculation was .05% total shield damage per km/h per second. That means that if you're going 50 km/h (default max speed), then you'd be doing 2.25% shield damage per second. Which means at max speed, any ship's shields would fail after only 44.4 seconds. Even doing 10 km/h (0.5% damage per second) it would still only take 200 seconds to destroy your shields. Couple that with an attack from another vessel, or long term use of the atmosphere, and it becomes a very dangerous situation.

I set the equation up with a percent so that it would easily scale up to any class of ship, and that percentage should be tweakable to between 0% and 1% total shield damage per km/h per second in the config file depending on how dangerous you want to be.

 

[MatthewOfJadethSpeareth]

I think I have a solution to one of the main issues that makes ground vehicles and soldiers useless.

The atmosphere of planets should work as a natural shield, preventing bullet, beams, pulses, and missiles from passing through and hitting the surface. This would make ground combat viable without worrying about being destroyed in .3 seconds by an orbital swarm missile strike. Disintegrators would not be stopped, however, so they could still be used to soften up targets beforehand.

Next, to prevent people from just sticking the front nose gun of the their dreadnaught into the atmosphere and blasting away anyway, the atmosphere would deal damage to ships based on mass as they entered. The heavier a ship, the more damage it would take as it entered. A capital ship skimming into the atmosphere would come away with huge chunks ripped out where it impacted. However, smaller ships would be able to enter and leave atmosphere without any issues.

I agree with you on the natural shield thing, because at the moment planets can be destroyed before the destroyers even get in range of the weapons on the planet. If beams, lasers, etc. were to not be able to go through the atmosphere, then ships would have to get inside of the atmosphere, and therefore be in range of ground vehicles, weapons, and so on.

However this, in my opinion, is where the balancing should stop. Not being able to land on a planet without huge pieces of your ship being ripped apart is ridiculous. Now, don't get me wrong: I can almost see it working in a pvp aspect, but it's still too ridiculous and in every other aspect it's way, way, way too ridiculous lol. Landing on a planet shouldn't rip your ship apart xD

Like I mentioned, I do like your idea on the natural shield thing. However I think at the same time there is an even better solution. Rather than making planets have a natural shield to lasers and beams, perhaps they should add shields (or "Planetary Shields") to the game, as a way of protecting your planet. That way, you couldn't just rush off to a planet and colonize it without consequence, as big ships could come and destroy you. You would have to take time first, get a "Planetary Shield", and this (in my opinion), would benefit the game greatly;
it would satisfy people who want more planet protection, it would be more risky to just go and colonize a planet (rather than planets already having natural shields), because you could be attacked, and it would take more time and effort to colonize a planet like it should be, because it adds to the game in my opinion.

Also, a side note, you seemed rather biased in this. To me at least, it seemed that you only thought of people defending planets, rather than attacking planets, and it was obvious you had been in the first position more often than not. However, try to put yourself in the other position as well, where you're attacking a planet. Would you want it where you can only attack if you enter an atmosphere, but if you did enter, you would be instantly destroyed? Like I said, that idea is very ridiculous, and while the barrier for lasers and such would work and not be too op, the latter idea would barely work in a pvp setting, let alone the rest of the game.

 

[Equilibrium21]

I agree with you on the natural shield thing, because at the moment planets can be destroyed before the destroyers even get in range of the weapons on the planet. If beams, lasers, etc. were to not be able to go through the atmosphere, then ships would have to get inside of the atmosphere, and therefore be in range of ground vehicles, weapons, and so on.

However this, in my opinion, is where the balancing should stop. Not being able to land on a planet without huge pieces of your ship being ripped apart is ridiculous. Now, don't get me wrong: I can almost see it working in a pvp aspect, but it's still too ridiculous and in every other aspect it's way, way, way too ridiculous lol. Landing on a planet shouldn't rip your ship apart xD

Like I mentioned, I do like your idea on the natural shield thing. However I think at the same time there is an even better solution. Rather than making planets have a natural shield to lasers and beams, perhaps they should add shields (or "Planetary Shields") to the game, as a way of protecting your planet. That way, you couldn't just rush off to a planet and colonize it without consequence, as big ships could come and destroy you. You would have to take time first, get a "Planetary Shield", and this (in my opinion), would benefit the game greatly;
it would satisfy people who want more planet protection, it would be more risky to just go and colonize a planet (rather than planets already having natural shields), because you could be attacked, and it would take more time and effort to colonize a planet like it should be, because it adds to the game in my opinion.

Well small ships (shuttles, fighters, bombers, gunships should be able to enter the atmosphere.

 

[MatthewOfJadethSpeareth]

Well small ships (shuttles, fighters, bombers, gunships should be able to enter the atmosphere.

Yes but what if you wanted to land a ship that wasn't small on a planet? Or what if you're flying through the universe and you accidentally enter an atmosphere and 'poof' you're ship is destroyed lol. Not to mention that it's not very realistic xD, I mean why would a ship made out of hardened metal hull disintegrate when entering an atmosphere? And when you think about it, a ship that's twice the size of a planet should probably do more damage to the planet than the planet does to it when entering it's atmosphere...

 

[Lecic]

Yes but what if you wanted to land a ship that wasn't small on a planet? Or what if you're flying through the universe and you accidentally enter an atmosphere and 'poof' you're ship is destroyed lol. Not to mention that it's not very realistic xD, I mean why would a ship made out of hardened metal hull disintegrate when entering an atmosphere? And when you think about it, a ship that's twice the size of a planet should probably do more damage to the planet than the planet does to it when entering it's atmosphere...

You shouldn't be landing on planets in massive ships, though.

Paying attention should fix that issue. I mean, if you weren't paying attention while flying something IRL you'd probably die horribly too. Also, that's much less of an issue with larger sectors, which many servers seem to be migrating to.

Well, unless a ship was designed to enter atmospheres, yes, your hull would probably burn away. Large flat objects entering an atmosphere would cause a lot of friction and heat and light the air on fire around your hull, and then melt it.

Two large objects colliding with each other would end horribly for both objects. Even if your ship was able to destroy a planet by crashing into it, your ship would be utterly destroyed in that impact.

 

[PizzaPress]

What if planet-based weapons had some kind of buff to make them more useful? Anti-orbital defense cannons are just a bunch of big ships docked to a turret dock now. Geothermal generators, and replacing many thrusters with less hover blocks could help buff ground-based ships and defenses.

 

[MatthewOfJadethSpeareth]

You shouldn't be landing on planets in massive ships, though.

Paying attention should fix that issue. I mean, if you weren't paying attention while flying something IRL you'd probably die horribly too. Also, that's much less of an issue with larger sectors, which many servers seem to be migrating to.

Well, unless a ship was designed to enter atmospheres, yes, your hull would probably burn away. Large flat objects entering an atmosphere would cause a lot of friction and heat and light the air on fire around your hull, and then melt it.

Two large objects colliding with each other would end horribly for both objects. Even if your ship was able to destroy a planet by crashing into it, your ship would be utterly destroyed in that impact.

Yes, you shouldn't be landing HUMONGOUS ships twice the size of a planet, on a planet. However, the process of atmospheric burning (or whatever you wanna call it) would have to start at some size, and from what it sounds like, he wants it to happen with any ships that are bigger than "small". If you have a medium sized ship, that still fits on a planet even if it's kind of big, you should be able to land it there without it ripping apart lol. Also, like I said: if a ship twice the size of a planet decides to attack the planet, it shouldn't be torn apart by it's atmosphere... I mean it's twice the size of the puny atmosphere! lol

What if planet-based weapons had some kind of buff to make them more useful? Anti-orbital defense cannons are just a bunch of big ships docked to a turret dock now. Geothermal generators, and replacing many thrusters with less hover blocks could help buff ground-based ships and defenses.

Something about your message just gave me an amazing idea. What if you could have things orbit around your planet? Such as "mini-space stations" with turrets attached?! That would be an amazing defense (mostly because it just looks cool even if it doesn't do much, but still!!!). Omg, I need a somewhere where I can write all my ideas down in one place. My head is hurting. xD

 

[PizzaPress]

What if you could have things orbit around your planet?

There's a suggestion about a second gravity system, which could allow you to establish an orbit.
EDIT:
You could have geothermal generators linked to a power-supply beam, which supplies effecient power to a small defense turret which packs a punch.

 

[MatthewOfJadethSpeareth]

There's a suggestion about a second gravity system, which could allow you to establish an orbit.
EDIT:
You could have geothermal generators linked to a power-supply beam, which supplies effecient power to a small defense turret which packs a punch.

I'm sure that they will add this, to the point where if they don't add this, StarMade will have lost all my trust whatsoever lol.

seriously that would be soooo cooool....

 

[1adog1]

Yes, you shouldn't be landing HUMONGOUS ships twice the size of a planet, on a planet. However, the process of atmospheric burning (or whatever you wanna call it) would have to start at some size, and from what it sounds like, he wants it to happen with any ships that are bigger than "small". If you have a medium sized ship, that still fits on a planet even if it's kind of big, you should be able to land it there without it ripping apart lol. Also, like I said: if a ship twice the size of a planet decides to attack the planet, it shouldn't be torn apart by it's atmosphere... I mean it's twice the size of the puny atmosphere! lol

Everything is a variable in this situation, if you read my reply, you'll know that we don't want ships to be completely obliterated on skimming an atmosphere. We want ships that are relatively large to receive damage while maneuvering in the atmosphere. Here's my post:

Now there's an idea. Just being in the atmosphere in a planet won't actually damage a ship or it's shields. BUT, it'll start taking 0.05% per km/h per second shield damage it it's, say, 2500 mass or more when maneuvering? If the shields run out, then all exposed parts of the ship facing forward to the vector that the ship is moving will start being destroyed at a rate of 5 damage per km/h per second (applies to all exposed blocks simultaneously to simulate re-entry break up). The chain reaction will continue until the ship stops moving. The damage WILL NOT stop if the ship's mass goes below 2500 while the reaction is occurring.

Example: Your ship of 2623 mass with 175,000 shields is moving through the atmosphere at 27 km/h, and the belly of the ship is facing the direction in which the ship is moving. The shields will take 2362.5 damage a second until depleted. Then, each exposed block of the belly will take 135 damage a second until the next layer of blocks is exposed. After a few layers have been torn away, the core is exposed and receives 135 damage a second until it overheats, the occupant(s) die, and the reaction continues until there is nothing left of the ship.

When you see all this and say "I HATE MATH" remember, programming is nothing but a crap ton of variables put into equations.

Feedback?

That mass can be whatever we here think is a good starting mass. In my opinion a ship of 2500 mass is pretty big, and that should therefor start taking small amounts of damage when maneuvering in the atmosphere. If we wanted to, we could even take the mass of the ship into account when figuring out the damage. Whatever you want, I could make an equation to match it.

 

[Snk]

What we really need for ground combat:
Make pistols penetrate shields. Honestly, pistols are so damn useless except for cutting through rock.
Hiding your nav marker: So some jerk can't find you and blow you out of this dimension
Transporter beams: Making it so it's easier to transport troops and whatnot, so people could board things.
And mechs are pretty easy to make. I've made some radar jamming exo skeletons and whatnot, but I havent had the chance to use them.

 

[1adog1]

What we really need for ground combat:
Make pistols penetrate shields. Honestly, pistols are so damn useless except for cutting through rock.
Hiding your nav marker: So some jerk can't find you and blow you out of this dimension
Transporter beams: Making it so it's easier to transport troops and whatnot, so people could board things.
And mechs are pretty easy to make. I've made some radar jamming exo skeletons and whatnot, but I havent had the chance to use them.

If ground combat is ever going to be a thing, we NEED transporters.

 

[PizzaPress]

Transporter beams: Making it so it's easier to transport troops and whatnot, so people could board things.
And mechs are pretty easy to make. I've made some radar jamming exo skeletons and whatnot, but I havent had the chance to use them.

What you could do is have a smaller ship set up as a transport-reciever, that can get through the defenses easier. Send this to the planet/station/ship/etc, then transport ground forces into it.