Brainstorm This Missile ammo brainstorming

[Matt_Bradock]

Missiles are, in most space games, considered a strong but costly weapon, and they are usually not costly by power consumption, but by being an exhaustible resource, just like grenades in FPS games. Sure they hit hard, and can sometimes destroy their target in a single hit, but in games like EVE, Elite, Star Citizen, the X series and so on, they were consumables, and even the biggest ship could not carry an infinite amount of them.

So, why not balance them by adding that consumable factor in?

This is how:
- Missile computers would have the option to link a storage instead of effect computer to them.
- There would be a set of new non-stackable missile metaitems (not placeable) manufactured in a standard or an advanced factory (depending on missile type, see later).
- The basic missile would be the dumbfire missile made of 1 warhead, 1 power capacitor and 1 thruster.
This missile would always be dumbfired regardless of the launcher system setup.
- The basic guided missile would be made of 1 warhead, 1 power capacitor, 1 Nocx circuit, and 1
thruster module

This is self-explanatory. The warhead does the exploding. The power capacitor is the "fuel tank" for the missile. The launcher consumes energy because it needs to charge (prime) the warhead and fill up the "fuel cell" (capacitor) of the missile before launching it. The thruster would be the propulsion (obviously) and the Nocx circuit would serve as the guidance system... why Nocx? Because it's the most underused material in the game currently, only used for black crystal armor and warp gate modules as far as I know.
Why would the items be non-stackable? So you would have to rely on the limited inventory slots your standard storage provides, and to make refilling it a bit more tedious. I know, I'm evil.
To add insult to injury, every single group linked to your computer would consume 1 missile when fired. So, if you have 10 groups linked to your missile computer, 10 missiles go with a single volley. And since metaitems cannot be added to auto-pull... you can't chain storages. You can, however, switch to another storage mid-battle by connecting it to your missile computer, if you have enough time to go to build mode and find them mid-flight...

Now, where it gets more interesting: Effects on the missiles would not be added by linking an effect system to the computer, but by manufacturing different warheads adding the effect modules in the recipes. The circuit, capacitor and thruster triad would be the same, but the rest changes. The catch is, effects would only increase the power consumption by 50% (the cost of making them, and having a limited amount of them, would compensate for that) Examples:

• High explosive missile: (circuit+capacitor+thruster)+damage pulse module+explosive effect module
  Double damage and +50% explosive radius
• Ion missile: (circuit+capacitor+thruster)+damage pulse module+ion effect module
  4x damage vs shields, no damage vs blocks
  
• Graviton missile: (circuit+capacitor+thruster)+push pulse module+stop effect module
  No shield or block damage, but huge stop effect and 3 second thruster failure
• EMP missile: (circuit+capacitor+thruster)+push pulse module+EMP effect module
  damages ship's power (4x bonus to power damage if target is unshielded), 3 second weapon systems failure
  
• Armor-piercing missile: (circuit+capacitor+thruster)+warhead+piercing effect module
  Ignores armor resistance, no damage against shields
  
• High-speed missile: (circuit+capacitor+thruster)+warhead+overdrive effect module
  Normal missile damage, 2x missile speed

As you can see, some of these are quite costly, some less. They all have their advantages. However, the computer would load a random missile every time it is fired, so the only way to utilize multiple types would be installing multiple launchers on the ship - and either way, sooner or later you'd run out, and then you'd either have to rely on your more conventional beam or cannon weaponry, or go back to your base for the tedious process of re-arming your ship...

Any opinions on this, devs or anyone else?

 

[sayerulz]

Missiles would of course need a considerable buff to balance this, but I very much support fuel and ammunition requirements, and I like the missile crafting. How would the properties of different missiles interact with the current slave system?

 

[Matt_Bradock]

Weapon system slaves would effect them the same way they do right now.

• Cannon slave would count as an advanced fast reloading mechanism since it doesn't need the time to connect and arm the guidance system - but it doesn't charge the warhead and propulsion capacitor too long either, resulting in less damage per missile.
• Beam slave would be considered an advanced power transfer to supercharge both the warhead and the capacitor on the missile, thus achieving higher speed and range as well as increased damage
  
• Damage pulse slave would only supercharge the warhead, at the expense of capacitor charge, thus resulting in a slower, shorter range missile with a vastly bigger blast radius (so, the same thing as it currently is)
  
• Missile slave would turn the loaded missile into a MIRV (multiple independent re-entry vehicles) warhead but the smaller missiles would have less individual charge and the guidance system would be dumbed down due to miniaturization, thus turning them into the lots of small heatseekers we know.

 

[Keptick]

Honestly this is really interesting. As sayerulz said they'd need a major buff. And tbh I think that having storage transfer enabled wouldn't be so bad since you still need to produce them (and I honestly doubt that you could pass through 81 missiles in a single fight unless you have a lot of outputs or are using rapid fire). To balance this out It could be made so that storage blocks containing missiles detonate (with force varying on the amount of missiles in it), so if someone is carrying a fuckton of missiles they're also exposed to the risk of literally having a bomb in their ship.

My reason for this is turrets equipped with missiles, having to manually load turrets on a futuristic space ship would be counter intuitive. (Hence storage transfer).

Realistically speaking I could see this as an alternative mode to our current missiles, I seriously doubt Schema would ever implement this as a complete replacement.

 

[Wolverines527]

I think missiles are fine as they are.

 

[aceface]

I think this is a very good suggestion. The thing that has always been a trouble with missiles is that you do not have limited ammo. Otherwise in real life, fighter jets would just use missiles and ditch machine guns, since they are a lot stronger by nature.

 

[Matt_Bradock]

I think this is a very good suggestion. The thing that has always been a trouble with missiles is that you do not have limited ammo. Otherwise in real life, fighter jets would just use missiles and ditch machine guns, since they are a lot stronger by nature.

IRL machine guns on planes are already situational only. Most of the time, missiles are used first and cannons only get utilised in close-range maneuvering air combat, when a missile lock is hard to get and/or the target is so close you'd risk getting caught in the shrapnel cloud the missile explosion leaves. In Starmade however, missiles are the jack of all trades. They are good against shields, they are good against systems, and they don't even require a good aim (unless you use dumbfires, I'll always tip my hat to you if you ever hit dumbfire missiles in ship-to-ship combat) just to stick your mouse in the near vicinity of your chosen target. Sure there's jamming, and there's point defense, but let's face the grim reality, even with those (and they can be bypassed) missiles will be the answer to most long to mid-range combat situations.

And yes, maybe being non-stackable is a bit too evil, but then again, talking about realism, keptick, how realistic would be being able to store several thousand anti-cap missiles on a single frigate?

To balance this out It could be made so that storage blocks containing missiles detonate (with force varying on the amount of missiles in it), so if someone is carrying a fuckton of missiles they're also exposed to the risk of literally having a bomb in their ship.

I don't think so. I justify the whole energy consumption with having to charge the missile's warhead and drive capacitor before launch. Therefore, without any charge, these guys would be inert, so no boom if a missile container is hit.

 

[Knack]

I would love a torpedo system similar to the OPs suggestion.
But not as replacement for the actual missile weapon.
I also would suggest that they aren't fired by a missiletube or something, instead the should have special docking ports from where they get launched.
Ones launched you have to redock a missile manual or automated at a shipyard.
Therefore the could do much more damage and we could create real bombers this way.

Otherwise I would prefer simple warheads as ammunition for all missile kinds.

 

[Psychochicken]

To add insult to injury, every single group linked to your computer would consume 1 missile when fired. So, if you have 10 groups linked to your missile computer, 10 missiles go with a single volley. And since metaitems cannot be added to auto-pull... you can't chain storages. You can, however, switch to another storage mid-battle by connecting it to your missile computer, if you have enough time to go to build mode and find them mid-flight...

I have allways wanted, that NPC's have more use, than they do now. I like building ships with interior and make them look kinda realistic, and alive. I would like to see NPC's walking around and do work on the ship to make it function, so by the challange of refilling a missile cannon, I think it would be cool to have NPC's going from a storage, taking some ammunition and back to the missile cannon and reload the cannon. To make it more realistic maybe put some kind of wagon or vehicle into the game, that those NPC's could use for transporting the ammunition. How it further more will function I'm not sure. This is just an idea.

 

[SilverAgeFan]

I voted

Yes, but a single stackable missile type ammo would do the trick. No need to overcomplicate.

But I did so assuming that stack limits and storage are getting an overhaul. Stack limit could be anywhere from 2/stack to 100/stack to find a balance.

 

[Dragleones]

I would love a torpedo system similar to the OPs suggestion.
But not as replacement for the actual missile weapon.
I also would suggest that they aren't fired by a missiletube or something, instead the should have special docking ports from where they get launched.

Just wanted to write something similar.
I like the way the current missiles are. Replacing the current missiles with consumables would feel weird within the slave/effect weapon system.
The better way to balance the current missiles is imo by tweaking the numbers themselves.
(Pretty much any weapon-combination right now has the same scaling and dps/energyconsume-values. Harder to hit weapons should always have more average dps though [like dumbfire or cannon-pulse])


But I feel like there is still a gap within the weapon system exspecially when looking at smaller ships.
I often feel like my small ships are seriously lacking punch since i often come into the situation that even when i pass on shields to maintain a high thrust/mass ratio i can't dedicate much space/mass/energy for weapons and while being super fast and maneuverable due to the low damage the ship still ends up being completly irrelevant.

With that in mind; throwing in random thoughts:

1. Storage
   The basic requirement would be a storage system (proposed in various ways a number of times) which prevents the player from storing an infinite amount of ammo-missiles. However these restrictions shouldn't be to harsh (e.g. 1 storage module (1 blockspace) per ammo-missile. Anything between 10 and 1000 is imo much more reasonable).
   Another additional or alternate restriction would be that stored blocks add weight.
   These points would be determined by the eventually upcoming storage system though...
   
   
2. Crafting
   I feel like crafting recipes where you need to craft an item out of a number of already crafted items (something like:[thrusters]+[power capacitors]+[circuit]+[weapon module]+[...]+[...]+...) wouldn't fit the game and would feel weird and over complicated in various ways.
   Simple crafting recipes using few resources that feel "natural" would be overall more fitting. Exspecially if the products aren't just for one very specific use.
   Possible execution: standard warheads are the go-to consumables. To create special warheads you would combine [warhead]+[effect module]. These could also be placed and triggered like the standard warheads but have special effects: additional/only shield damage ([warhead]+[ion effect module]), higher radius and lower damage ([warhead]+[explosion effect module]), etc. .
   Uniqueness/specilisation is imo much healthier than one type of missile simply being superior to another (even if its justified by higher costs).
   To make up for the differing costs of the warheads (when comparing standard warheads with specialised ones) the numbers in the recipes could be tweaked to even out the costs of each warhead (e.g. 25x[warhead]+[ion effect module]->25x[ion-warhead]).
   To make up for the cheap price of the individual warheads the number of consumed warheads per shot could be tweaked accordingly.
   
   
3. Setup
   To make up for the fact that it consumes ammo and needs storage the energy consumption should be kept low (or nonexistant). With the initial thoughts in mind of creating a weapon that can be effective even when used with small ships the damage shouldn't be too much dependant on the size of the array.
   A possible approach would be that by adding more and more modules to a group you increase the damage and effect radius while increasing the amount of warheads consumed per shot. However this should also come with somekind of multi-group penalty.
   I'd like to see something like reduced reload speed depending on the amount of linked ammo-missile modules in that regard. That way multiple ships with small modules firing ammo-missile are just as effective as a big ship at converting ammunition into dps.
   A few blocks should already be sufficient to use a number of missiles.
   
   
4. Position in the weapon system
   Apart from the premise being completly different as a ammo based weapon-system I'd rather would want this to stay seperate from the standard weapon system for various reasons. One being that the [ammo-missile]+[effect-module] is made obsolete by specialised warheads. And another one being that the scaling would differ to much from the usual linear scaling with other weapons (atleast in the way i proposed it above).
   If you really want to squeeze it in you could make it work by replacing specialised ammuntion with module+effect combinations and give it a linear scaling like the other weapons. A fitting slave function of this could be indirect aoe effects (something that minelayer initially was meant to cover) with [cannon]+[ammo-missile]->[flag cannon], [missile]+[ammo-missile]->[cluster missiles],
   [beam]+[ammo-missile]->[weird-ass-beam-bending-thingy], [pulse]+[ammo-missile]->[doesn't matter its still useless]...
   But all that would contradict the initial thoughts on creating a weapon that can be useful even when using small setups.
   
   
5. Gameplay
   According to the initial thoughts of creating a weapon mainly for provididing high dps mostly for smaller crafts the whole thing would need to be balanced in a way that makes it hard for a ship to abuse it against smaller ships.
   To do that the projectile would need to be slow (really slow), preferably no homing and maybe even short ranged.
   Big ships using giant arrays of ammo-missiles consuming ridiculously amounts of warheads per shot could only use it effectively against big/slow/unmoving targets.
   Small ships however could try to close the gap to an enemy ship to guarentee their hit, while obviously putting themselves in danger. In dogfights it'll be nearly irrelevant but devestating when scoring a locky hit.
   I would even suggest that point-defense wouldn't work against this weapon. Dodging would be more than sufficient as a counter-measure if the projectiles move slow enough.
   All this would make it a high-risk/high-reward weapon exspecially for smaller craft.
   
   Drones would be awkward to use in combination with consumables and a hard to hit weapons anyways so it wouldn't be broken in that context i believe.
   

Groups of small ships would have a tool to effectivly fight bigger ships (would still require aprropriate numbers and a appropriate amount of resources/ammunition) and we might see less crys about titans being overpowered/drones being overpowered/small ships being underpowered.
And it might become possible to change/smooth out the awkward bend at 1,000,000 e/s in the energy/group-length formula without hearing more crys.-

On another note i think that this kind of high-risk/high-reward weapon along with on-ship respawn would bring us possibly one step closer to this.

 

[Edymnion]

Well, if we want to talk about storage realism, lets talk first about how I mined the entire crust and mantel off of a planet, and then put the entire planet IN MY POCKETS to manually walk it inside my station to put in a number of storage crates that in real life would fit in the same space as my office desk.

 

[Knack]

Off Topic

Spoiler

Well, if we want to talk about storage realism, lets talk first about how I mined the entire crust and mantel off of a planet, and then put the entire planet IN MY POCKETS to manually walk it inside my station to put in a number of storage crates that in real life would fit in the same space as my office desk.

And that's how black holes are made XD

 

[Edymnion]

Though if we started keeping track of ammunition, I would want to see cannons have ammo as well. I mean, make it dirt cheap to craft bullets for it, but still require it. Then the schtick of beams being able to run indefinitely off of nothing but power becomes a bigger selling point.

 

[Matt_Bradock]

Though if we started keeping track of ammunition, I would want to see cannons have ammo as well. I mean, make it dirt cheap to craft bullets for it, but still require it. Then the schtick of beams being able to run indefinitely off of nothing but power becomes a bigger selling point.

Cannons could use plasma projectiles, the original concept was about antimatter projectiles. Both substances can be collected from space.

Crafting
I feel like crafting recipes where you need to craft an item out of a number of already crafted items (something like:[thrusters]+[power capacitors]+[circuit]+[weapon module]+[...]+[...]+...) wouldn't fit the game and would feel weird and over complicated in various ways.
Simple crafting recipes using few resources that feel "natural" would be overall more fitting. Exspecially if the products aren't just for one very specific use.

The whole point of this entire idea was making missiles a vaulable resource that should not be mindlessly wasted. Now, there's 3 kinds of cost involved in those specific resources being needed to craft them.
1. The amount of material resources consumed
2. The amount of time consumed
3. The production capacity taken by manufacturing the product.

(Need I remind you, that originally when the new factory system and fixed recipes were implemented, items could easily have these complex recipes. I remember I needed to set up 5 stages and 10 factory blocks in a single production line just to start making faction modules.
It was only later simplified, probably because players complained about the complexity. I for one, didn't mind, because it made setting up production lines and crafting stuff more challenging and interesting.)

Since materials are practically infinite in Starmade (respawning asteroids, pirates and such), I attempted to increase the cost using the other 2 factors, so either the complex, multi-stage production line OR more time would be required to manufacture the parts AND the final missile.
I do agree that consumable missiles would require a slight buff (although the fact that without an effect system included, the system could be smaller would also compensate somewhat) to make them worth the price.

 

[Edymnion]

Cannons could use plasma projectiles, the original concept was about antimatter projectiles. Both substances can be collected from space.

Well, my big thing here is that if it requires a massive overhaul and it only benefits one specific thing, its probably not going to happen. If it spreads out and can see a lot of different uses, then its more likely to be something that can be justified in terms of design and implementation.

 

[Matt_Bradock]

Well, my big thing here is that if it requires a massive overhaul and it only benefits one specific thing, its probably not going to happen. If it spreads out and can see a lot of different uses, then its more likely to be something that can be justified in terms of design and implementation.

Yea that was meant to explain why cannons currently do not require any ammunition to fire. Because the ammunition can literally be collected on the run, as you fly through space.

 

[Edymnion]

Yea that was meant to explain why cannons currently do not require any ammunition to fire. Because the ammunition can literally be collected on the run, as you fly through space.

Oh I know its how they explain it now. But my point was if they change missiles to use ammo, then they really should change cannons as well. They should change everything that isn't a beam or an energy pulse to requiring ammo.

 

[Dragleones]

Well, if we want to talk about storage realism, lets talk first about how I mined the entire crust and mantel off of a planet, and then put the entire planet IN MY POCKETS to manually walk it inside my station to put in a number of storage crates that in real life would fit in the same space as my office desk.

Generally speaking (or at least in my opinion): gameplay>>realism
Since its kinda offtopic i don't want to rewrite the things being discussed in the storage-system-threads but i think that a limited player inventory and a storage system for ships at some point is mandatory for a working economy.
Apart from that it would enable piracy (players can't keep all their items in their inventory), would encourage specialised ship design for trading and such tasks (which is imo a good thing). If planet miners ever become a thing it would add the need for supply routes which would add more depth to faction wars etc .
I couldn't care less about the realism it might add. I just see it becoming an interesting gameplay element.

Though if we started keeping track of ammunition, I would want to see cannons have ammo as well. I mean, make it dirt cheap to craft bullets for it, but still require it. Then the schtick of beams being able to run indefinitely off of nothing but power becomes a bigger selling point.

While maybe adding a tiny bit of realism it would mostly be annoying and would even discourage fighting in some ways. If bullets were even cheaper it might neither lead to one of those things but end up as a meaningless feature.
It can't see what it does add gameplay-wise.

Several people including me proposed the consumissiles (love the word, I'll be referring to it this way from now on ^.^) shouldn't replace the current missiles but be an addition.
On that note does it add anything beneficial to the gameplay?

yeah i think so.
The power of current weapons is restricted by the module size and the energy consumption. Since consumissiles have crafting costs and can only be carried in limited numbers (only if there is a storage system ofcourse) they don't need to have a high module size or any energy consumption for a relativly high damage output without being imbalanced.
Using this my suggestion was to add consumissiles as strong hard to hit (-> slow projectile speed) weapon to give small ships which neither have the place to use for weapon modules or the energy to spare for inflicting any relevant damage.
But this is actually a pretty specific example.

Consumables in general might add another kind of depth to combat. Leaving the resource-costs aside. The number of consumables would be limited in every battle (You obviously can't mine/craft/buy these mid battle). Adds another layer of decision-making when it comes to making the best use out of your limited amount of consumables.
And supply ships/carrier might become a thing for a mid-battle refill.

The whole point of this entire idea was making missiles a vaulable resource that should not be mindlessly wasted. Now, there's 3 kinds of cost involved in those specific resources being needed to craft them.
1. The amount of material resources consumed
2. The amount of time consumed
3. The production capacity taken by manufacturing the product.
(Need I remind you, that originally when the new factory system and fixed recipes were implemented, items could easily have these complex recipes. I remember I needed to set up 5 stages and 10 factory blocks in a single production line just to start making faction modules.
It was only later simplified, probably because players complained about the complexity. I for one, didn't mind, because it made setting up production lines and crafting stuff more challenging and interesting.)
[...]

I think the game should stay consistent when it comes to something like that. If the factorys would still have recipes like that it would be something else but looking at the current crafting system i think the crafting recipes should be as simple as posssible to fit into this.
As stated in that paragraph i think it'd be better to adjust the value of that weapon by the amount of warheads used per shot.

Following my proposal: If a single module would consume lets say 25 warheads, two modules would consume 50 warheads to fire 2 seperate consumissiles per salvo (2 groups) or one stronger consumissile (1 group).
Warheads (and the specialised warheads) could be still used with logic like usual. That way warheads wouldn't have one overspecified use. Why? Again consistency and simplicity. Like how effect modules can be used on weapons and as a defensive effect. Weapons all have a linear scaling so also that would be intuitiv.

 

[Edymnion]

On that note does it add anything beneficial to the gameplay?

Well, just to explain where I'm coming from, I actually am a computer programmer by profession. I make a living creating business software.

Its almost never a question of "Would this make the product better?", its a question of "Is the benefit we would get from this worth the cost in time and energy needed to make it happen?" There's always a million and one great ideas to put into things, but with limited time, budget, and manpower, only the biggest, most important ones get done, or the ones that are so fast and easy to make that they don't cost anything.

"Can we change the ratio of X from 10 to 11 percent?" Sure, thats probably just changing one stored value from a 10 to an 11. "Can we redo the calculation from the ground up? It would be 3% more efficient if we did" when it would take 6 months to do that? Yeah, not gonna happen. Doesn't matter if it makes the program better, its too much time and effort for too little of a return on investment.

Which is why I was saying to spread ammo out.

If we end up getting a complete rebuild and a whole new mechanic, we need to make that mechanic as valuable as possible. Make it work for missiles and cannons. Make it work for power generation. Make it work for everything you can think of that might have "Requires X mats to make Y run for Z uses". Because then it moves from a whole lot of work for one little niche application to a whole lot of work that gets a whole lot of return.