Minimum weapon damage

[Daniel L.]

Small fighters so far as i've seen have such a weak weapons capacity that they are not even being worth the resources. I think that weapons should have a minimum damage amount, Which would be pretty good but not enough to kill a capital ship or any large vessel alone. this wouldnt be OP because the minimum damage would be basically a barrier in that the original blocks would still technically do the same damage as before and you would need to have enough blocks to overcome the damage values of the minimum.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

This seems like it would just lead to waffleguns. The original cannons had higher DPS if you used many small guns instead of joining them. I do agree small ship combat feels a little weak at this point but just buffing the guns on only small ships probably won't be a good solution.

 

[Tunk]

Not worth the resources?
Small ships can easily output 50~75dps per mass.

That scales horribly however, and runs into power supply issues once you hit the 75~100k dps mark that requires additional work/mass to resolve.

 

[Mork2]

Some ways around that is warhead block push propelled torpedoes but it depends on the settings.

 

[hzzzln]

I have yet to see such a scenario, but if I try to imagine a fight between a capital ship and a swarm of fighters of a combined mass equal to the capital ship, I'm very certain the fighters have a very realistic chance of winning this battle. I'm against buffing weapons for smaller ships.

 

[godmars]

I'm not 100% sure i get what you are arguing for, so correct me if im goin down the wrong path on this, but...why not just use overdrive on your fighter weapons? In most cases they should have the surplus energy needed to use them

 

[Daniel L.]

I'm not 100% sure i get what you are arguing for, so correct me if im goin down the wrong path on this, but...why not just use overdrive on your fighter weapons? In most cases they should have the surplus energy needed to use them

What i mean is that weapons would have an absolute minimum that they can go no lower. A fighter would become relatively powerful with guns that could easily slice through the hulls of other fighters and missiles that could 1shot other ships of the same size, This maximum would have to be overcome by reaching and exceeding with weapons blocks the minimum dps amount. This would result in fighters being powerful enough to destroy other fighters and smaller turrets finally having some firepower.

 

[Lecic]

The ONLY kind of "minimum damage" I support would be a minimum of 1 damage to targets, regardless of armor levels. Currently, some weaker weapons do zero damage to standard/advanced armor.

I have yet to see such a scenario, but if I try to imagine a fight between a capital ship and a swarm of fighters of a combined mass equal to the capital ship, I'm very certain the fighters have a very realistic chance of winning this battle. I'm against buffing weapons for smaller ships.

Have you see the Drone R&D thread? 1:1 mass between the fighters and capital isn't even close to what you need, because disposable drones don't need to worry about things like "shields" or "power capacity." Depending on drone design, you might only need 20% drone:capital mass for the drones to win.

 

[Tunk]

I'll echo what Lecic said, go view the R&D thread.
It is full of crazy little nasty problems that want to eat your face off.

 

[FatCobra]

I do think fighters need to play a bigger roll. I'm not sure how this would work though. Probably some sort of releasable ordinance like torpedoes mentioned above. In WWII fighters and dive bombers were capable of taking out capital ships, look at "Pearl Harbor" the US fleet was decimated from the air. Granted the Japanese used a huge quantity of fighters but tat was more for making sure enough got through. Battleships were brought down the Arizona was taken out by 4 armor piercing bombs the battle ships that were lost were made unusable with anything from 2 to 9 its of bombs or torpedoes.

I;m torn on weather it should be minimum damage or having some sort of "dumb" bombs or torpedoes that can be released. But I would really like to make fighters and small craft a more viable option.

 

[Winterhome]

I do think fighters need to play a bigger roll. I'm not sure how this would work though. Probably some sort of releasable ordinance like torpedoes mentioned above. In WWII fighters and dive bombers were capable of taking out capital ships, look at "Pearl Harbor" the US fleet was decimated from the air. Granted the Japanese used a huge quantity of fighters but tat was more for making sure enough got through. Battleships were brought down the Arizona was taken out by 4 armor piercing bombs the battle ships that were lost were made unusable with anything from 2 to 9 its of bombs or torpedoes.

I;m torn on weather it should be minimum damage or having some sort of "dumb" bombs or torpedoes that can be released. But I would really like to make fighters and small craft a more viable option.

Fighters in space battles and fighters in naval battles are totally separate things.

A fighter in a WWII naval battle has an extra axis of movement and a ridiculous top speed. The equivalent to a WWII fighter plane against capital ships in a space game would be something silly like a time machine with antimatter torpedoes.

A fighter in a space battle would be the equivalent of, in a water based naval battle, a guy with a hunting rifle riding a dinghy.

 

[Creeper__God]

A fighter in a space battle would be the equivalent of, in a water based naval battle, a guy with a hunting rifle riding a dinghy.

I really want to see this now.

 

[Parameter]

Fighters in space battles and fighters in naval battles are totally separate things.

A fighter in a WWII naval battle has an extra axis of movement and a ridiculous top speed. The equivalent to a WWII fighter plane against capital ships in a space game would be something silly like a time machine with antimatter torpedoes.

A fighter in a space battle would be the equivalent of, in a water based naval battle, a guy with a hunting rifle riding a dinghy.

Your description is correct for Starmade as it stands. I see no reason, however, why a fighter in space couldn't be the equivalent of a guy with a nuclear weapon riding a dinghy. Not saying fighters should be that powerful, but there's not a good setting/real-life explanation for why they shouldn't.

 

[Creeper__God]

Your description is correct for Starmade as it stands. I see no reason, however, why a fighter in space couldn't be the equivalent of a guy with a nuclear weapon riding a dinghy. Not saying fighters should be that powerful, but there's not a good setting/real-life explanation for why they shouldn't.

Because if you had a nuke in a dinghy with you, it would be suicide. Same applies to fighters, if you cover your fighter in warheads, you will do a lot more damage to capital ships but you will die in the process.

 

[godmars]

Because if you had a nuke in a dinghy with you, it would be suicide. Same applies to fighters, if you cover your fighter in warheads, you will do a lot more damage to capital ships but you will die in the process.

Well you are probably going to die attacking a cap ship in a fighter without a nuke strapped to it anyway, so...

 

[Parameter]

Because if you had a nuke in a dinghy with you, it would be suicide. Same applies to fighters, if you cover your fighter in warheads, you will do a lot more damage to capital ships but you will die in the process.

Not all nukes are unpropelled bombs:
Check out the Davy Crockett

Also, covering your ship in warheads would be a decidedly sub-optimal way to replicate a nuke in starmade. Warheads don't do nearly enough damage.

 

[Creeper__God]

Not all nukes are unpropelled bombs:
Check out the Davy Crockett

Also, covering your ship in warheads would be a decidedly sub-optimal way to replicate a nuke in starmade. Warheads don't do nearly enough damage.

You have a way to mount that to a rubber dinghy?

 

[Winterhome]

Not all nukes are unpropelled bombs:
Check out the Davy Crockett

Also, covering your ship in warheads would be a decidedly sub-optimal way to replicate a nuke in starmade. Warheads don't do nearly enough damage.

But they do do enough damage to sometimes deter and piss off capital ship pilots.

If you make it so that fighters are even remotely close to being able to kill a ship five hundred times their size, you're doing it wrong. As it stands, ships naturally can have an advantage against ships that are twice their mass due to maneuverability issues and power management. Taking that any further would be outright disastrous.

The only cases in which a ship is unable to take on a ship twice its mass and win are when swarm missiles are involved, or when the ships in question are extraordinarily small (ie: a 500 block ship can't hold a candle to a 1000 block ship, which can't hold a candle to a 1500 block ship - though this effect rapidly diminishes as you approach the point of 5000 blocks and up)

 

[FatCobra]

I think it really depends on what kind of feel we're going for. If you go with Star Trek it was pretty much nothing but capital ships. How ever most other SciFi universe go with fighters. BSG (2004) the Colonial Raptors which I would consider a multi role fighter was capable of deploying nukes for very heavy damage.

 

[Winterhome]

I think it really depends on what kind of feel we're going for. If you go with Star Trek it was pretty much nothing but capital ships. How ever most other SciFi universe go with fighters. BSG (2004) the Colonial Raptors which I would consider a multi role fighter was capable of deploying nukes for very heavy damage.

Almost all of the series in which fighters are shown to be even remotely capable of killing capital ships either have no energy shields, or energy shields projected past a certain point which fighters can pass through - on the assumption that torpedoes in the future are all nukes and even a small scratch will cause an explosive decompression in a given part of the ship.

In Starmade, though, energy shields are a skin-tight wrapping around and inside the ship.