Missile Blast-Radius Observation

[EtherEel]

This thought has been slowly creeping to the front of my brain, so I thought I'd throw it out there for some feedback. (And see if it's a known factor already.)

I was testing a missile (without the Explosive adjunct) the other day on an innocently bystanding but sizable asteroid and noticed that the "crater" of damage just wasn't located properly. It looked like the radius of damage started at the point of impact (or nearly so), rather than the point of impact being the center of the radius of damage. Am I the only one who has noticed this/is puzzled by this?? (I should have made a picture to demonstrate, sorry.)

This essentially means that a missile has an inherent "penetrative/piercing" aspect. (Not a good thing!)

To state it another way: If a missile is listed as having a radius of 12, the center of that blast radius is 12 (or some significant fraction of 12) forward of the initial block of the thing it just hit -- rather than the radius of blast extending 12 in a sphere around the block it just hit.

I'm not familiar with ballistics, but if Starmades' Missiles are applying bullet-like penetrative qualities based on missile speed (and compounded by ship speed), they should NOT do so. Missiles are overpowered innately and need no further help.

(I also understand that even non-penetrative missile blast-radii could produce "backup" damage if they hit a block that's in a the right location.)

So, is it just me? I'm I not "getting it"? What say yall?

~ee

 

[Panpiper]

Missiles are overpowered innately and need no further help.

I do not know if missiles are starting their blast effect 'below' the surface. If they are, I agree they should likely not.

That said, I do not agree that "missiles are overpowered innately". What gives rise to that perception is that just about every server out there increases the maximum speed of ships, thinking that they are somehow making the game better by doing so. However what they are really doing is making missiles VASTLY more powerful, VASTLY harder to shoot down.

In the vanilla game with the speed missiles are expected to have by developers, point defense systems (cannon/cannon with AI set to anti-missile) have a very good chance of shooting down missiles. For missiles to do damage, an attacker has to launch enough of them to overwhelm any such point defense. This is balanced by the fact that those that do hit, can do large craters of damage if they penetrate the shields.

Missiles are not 'innately' overpowered. They are made to be overpowered by server admins changing the parameters of the game so as to make them overpowered.

 

[EtherEel]

Well, opinion noted. I "play" on my own little sandbox server without all those adjustments (and other players) and I still think missiles are OP. Maybe a better perspective is that Beams (and Cannons?) are underpowered. Regardless, if it is true that Missiles have this penetrative aspect then it should be eliminated (another opinion, but a reasonable one.)

I have other opinions regarding Missiles (favorable ones included), but I want to focus on this one specific issue.

 

[philthy mcnasty]

I do not know if missiles are starting their blast effect 'below' the surface. If they are, I agree they should likely not.

That said, I do not agree that "missiles are overpowered innately". What gives rise to that perception is that just about every server out there increases the maximum speed of ships, thinking that they are somehow making the game better by doing so. However what they are really doing is making missiles VASTLY more powerful, VASTLY harder to shoot down.

In the vanilla game with the speed missiles are expected to have by developers, point defense systems (cannon/cannon with AI set to anti-missile) have a very good chance of shooting down missiles. For missiles to do damage, an attacker has to launch enough of them to overwhelm any such point defense. This is balanced by the fact that those that do hit, can do large craters of damage if they penetrate the shields.

Missiles are not 'innately' overpowered. They are made to be overpowered by server admins changing the parameters of the game so as to make them overpowered.

Yeah, i have been playing around with the idea of "flack turrets": canons+canons+explosive, so that way when one of the cannon shots hits a missile, it should have a big enough blast radius to take out any of the missiles friends. so far this seems to be working for me.

 

[Winterhome]

Maybe a better perspective is that Beams (and Cannons?) are underpowered.

Since the most recent couple patches, this is the case, as the punch and pierce effects are no longer capable of producing anywhere near the destruction they used to be able to. For every subsequent layer you go through, you need to do twice as much damage to get through (ie: you'll end up needing tens of thousands of blocks to go through eight layers - it's literally more damage effective to use multiple non-punch guns instead of a punch gun).

As for the "innate penetration" effect - that appears to be lag related. On a very, very fast server, a missile explosion will be centered at the impact spot. On a slightly slower server with, perhaps, the speed limit and sector size increased, the missile may have a processing related delay when detonating and explode some ten to fifty meters in the direction it was traveling prior to striking the target. Not as common of an issue as it used to be, but I get this weird feeling that it's still there in some singleplayer scenarios.