What exactly is wrong with this sort of suggestion? With a system rework in the oven and a weapon rework around the corner, this is the time to discuss what we want.
There's nothing wrong with this suggestion. Missiles have been fundamentally broken ever since the explosion mechanic rework. As was requested earlier, constructive feed back is what's needed here; not disagreement for the sake of disagreement.
Well, a sparrow missile is about about 3-4 meters long. If AI guidance were improved we could theoretically build a block missile with a core, reactor, thruster warhead and Bobby AI for a total of 5 meters. This may change when they redo the power system. One thing to take into account is increased server load due to docked entities.
Both large and small ships can utilize this bonus. Yes, large ships can carry more missiles of the same size or a similar number of much larger torpedoes. There are tradeoffs.
Why put missiles on smaller craft in the first place? A small stealth bomber can close in with an enemy capital ship to release ordinance with minimal thrust and defense, but a large warhead. If the bomber's close enough, AMS won't have time to take down the bomb.
Agreed. That's kind of how it works in real world militaries as far back as the WWII days. They fly in, line up with the target, dump ordnance then turn and burn.
This points to the need for some sort of anti-AI countermeasure, which could also serve to balance AI vs. NPC crew. AI can be hacked or whatever, but crew cannot. If you want to spend the resources on crewed AMS, you get an unhackable anti-missile screen. Otherwise it can (and possibly will) be disrupted by cyber-warfare support ships.
Interesting idea but let's not put the cart before the horse.
The answer may be as simple as giving missiles more hit points (perhaps scaling with damage output) so they'll have a better chance of hitting their target. Better hit points and limited missile capacity can lower the likelihood of missile spam. Lower missile spam will allow for less AMS turrets and lower overall entity count. Both factors will reduce server load and lag.
The key is to discourage the (mis)use of features that encourage players to contribute to lag and degraded multi-player experience (missile spam, docked reactors, docked armor, turret spam, etc) by creating advantages or incentives for not (mis)using them.
A problem that has been the case since I bought the game a couple of years back, that persists to this day is not 'OMG Missiles OP!' Rather, it's 'All the other weapons suck.'
A 'recent' (about a year ago) update that buffed Cannons with an inherent explosive effect was welcome, but it didn't empower them enough to make them 'worth it'. Cannons have good range, but they just don't do enough damage. Enhancing them with secondaries...just isn't that good. Cannons seem best used in Cannon+Cannon anti-missile turrets.
Beams hit hard enough, but have very limited range; if Cannons are a really bad rifle, then Beams are really awesome pistols, but therein lies the problem. The lack of range and large power consumption kind of hurts their utility, especialy with missiles, a long range weapon, being the best weapon in the game. I will say that Beams being a hit-scan weapon is nice, though - not needing to lead shots is incredibly helpful. Unfortunately, the long recharge time seriously mitigates that benefit.
Beam + Beam is likely on par, or even better then missiles for meta weapon builds.
Same range as missiles, impossible to dodge (unless it misses you will be hit, projectile has zero travel time) and really high alpha damage with a long cooldown.
But, heres the best part. You can play around with the ratios of Beam + Beam turrets and play around with stagger firing to remove all diminishing returns on Beam + Beam. Currently you can make a Beam + Beam turret system with the range of a missile, the alpha damage of a beam + beam and the sustained DPS of a cannon + cannon, which I think is overpowered.
And lets not even get into Veilith's Beam + Beam turrets that abuse the broken state of missile penetration and beam focus fire to allow 800 mass turrets to overheat a 600k battleship once its shields are down in under 5 seconds.
Pulse weapons are interesting; if Beams are pistols, then Pulse is punching the other ship in the face, though pulse seems intended to be more of an anti-personnel, defensive weapon. I'd be happy if Pulse weapons were removed from the game, but maybe I just don't know how to use them properly, even years into this game. I've seen plans for 'Skoomer' drones that find an opponent, fly up to them, then spam pulses with tertiary effects intended to debilitate the other ship to death.
This is the only weapon in my opinion that is underpowered. But its a lot more underpowered, Pulse systems as a primary weapon have been shafted to interior defence from astronaut boarding parties because they are 100% useless as a primary weapon in any other scenario.
While missiles have a large block destruction area, they have the weakest DPS of all weapons due to half of their numeric damage value being vented off into open space.
Also, they're not very effective against advanced armor and any damage that exceeds 400,000-600.000 damage seems to be wasted due to blast radius limits. It's pretty obvious that missiles need to be looked at when a 500,000 damage missile can't even one-shot an 11 meter long fighter; advanced armor or not.
As I said above, this sounds like a personal lack of understanding on ship building and game mechanics rather then a problem with missiles.
I am not sure if you have played Diablo 3 before, but one of the most common phrases that comes up when discussing builds and shit is "Sheet DPS is useless" for those non-diablo 3 players out there, sheet DPS is a term used for the "DPS number" displayed on your character sheet. One of the first thing you learn when making builds in Diablo 3 when using builds is that the "DPS" stat is 100% useless and should be ignored because it fails to consider all the variables that will affect your DPS during combat.
Well the same can be applied to StarMade, if you are using the "weapon stats readouts" in your ship menus to judge damage, Stop, you are doing it wrong.
It's pretty obvious that missiles need to be looked at when a 500,000 damage missile can't even one-shot an 11 meter long fighter; advanced armor or not.
Is your missile really 500k damage or is that just StarMade telling you that? Remember, sheet DPS is useless.
If the missile you are using is actually 500k then your ship either has a metric fucktonne of ghost blocks that are pushing up its structure HP or your missile is 99% ion effect and thus you are expecting too much from it.
When I place realistically sized SAM turrets on a planet it takes forever to kill a fighter of this size. The following image describes what it takes for missiles in the 75,000-150,000 damage range to kill one of these small craft.
Been done several times be myself and basicly every other competant PvPer, in fact its even be done to ships 8 times the size of the fighter
Also, you are one of the PvE4Lyfe guys that does not even play multiplayer, why are you still trying to pretent you have a clue on what you are talking about?
In real life, missiles aren't like machine gun bullets. You don't just throw a bunch of them at your target until the mags run dry, reload then start over. They are supposed to be high damage one-shot kill weapons meant to heavily damage, destroy or disable enemy craft. I used to be opposed to an ammunition mechanic but as time went by, I realized that energy consumption for missiles makes no sense and neither does unlimited ammo.
Regarding the argument about a fighter running out of missiles before it can damage a larger craft; The truth is, you are probably already unable to kill that larger craft with missiles anyway since all the enemy guns are aimed at you and your missiles. You'll either get shot down or the enemy AMS will block all your missiles. On the other hand, a group of fighters trying to break through a wall of flak to simultaneously drop their high damage/limited capacity payload is a more realistic scenario.
Regarding warheads; Taking into consideration all previous opinions on warheads, the fair way to do this is to give them a massive damage buff; to say 500,000-1,000,000 (maybe even beyond) and a bigger radius ...BUT change the shield pass-through mechanic so that only 5-10% of the damage makes it through the shields. At 10% of 1,000,000 damage there would be roughly 50,000 shield pass-through damage after a 50% damage reduction due to the explosion mechanic. 2 layers of advanced armor should be able to stop that.
There should be safeguards to prevent griefing, which we can discuss and we also need AMS turrets to prioritize warheads over missiles.
There's nothing wrong with this suggestion. Missiles have been fundamentally broken ever since the explosion mechanic rework. As was requested earlier, constructive feed back is what's needed here; not disagreement for the sake of disagreement.
Also, the fact that you believe missiles are broken is all the proof any competant player needs to say without reasonable doubt that you, Dr. Whammy are 100% clueless in all manners of ship design and weapon balance.
Thats before we even factor in your lack of knoweldge as demonstrated by the posts I quoted above.
Interesting idea but let's not put the cart before the horse.
The answer may be as simple as giving missiles more hit points (perhaps scaling with damage output) so they'll have a better chance of hitting their target. Better hit points and limited missile capacity can lower the likelihood of missile spam. Lower missile spam will allow for less AMS turrets and lower overall entity count. Both factors will reduce server load and lag.
Missile hitpoints for block-based missiles would have to be handled by the missiles' designers by using shields or armor. If we could set a turret to target a specific missile after it is launched, think about the possibility of a torpedo that receives shield supply from the ship that launched it. It would take a lot more to bring down that way.
Countermeasures are another idea that would seem to fit the overall direction of the "information warfare" plans, but aren't the only way to approach the issue of missile delivery.
Maybe the current PvP balance is the only thing that sets Starmade apart from No Man's Sky but with blocks, balance changes with input from PvP veterans would probably be the best tbh.
Maybe the current PvP balance is the only thing that sets Starmade apart from No Man's Sky but with blocks, balance changes with input from PvP veterans would probably be the best tbh.
There is a precedent that people who only use SP/Build servers to test have very little bearing on reality; so yes I think PvP players' arguments hold significantly more weight than those who don't partake. This is coming from the guy who founded NFDB/CBS, so I know a little bit about creative-only types.
I just don't see any point in adding needless things like limited ammo, fuel etc.
It does nothing to make the game more interesting, all it does is to make it more tedious to play.
Games that has ammo for vehicles can get away with it because they also have simpler ways of regaining ammo from unlimited supply boxes bases etc, that has a radius that can auto repair/rearm.
In Starmade with limited ammo the ships would most likely have to transfer cargo from a dock which would mean that all ships from a carrier would have to return, even if not all ships have used their missiles.
Then when the carrier runs dry on ammo it would have to leave the combat zone and return to a base, which would make carriers even worse somehow.
That would be a waste of time, especially for people that can't stay all the time.
For pirates it would be even worse they would run out of missiles and without bases, they would never be able to reload.
What about lone wolves that like to fight alone without infrastructure.
We can discuss weapon balance all we want but making missiles require ammo doesn't really improve them just because they could be buffed to compensate.
Going further, the gigantism problem is also a serious point of bias. From what I've seen, this game's veterans focus on big ships for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to 'cool factor'. Heck, one of the things quoted against my analysis of the state of weapons in this game is a case of an 800 mass beam turret defeating a 600k battleship. The discussion - if we only let veteran PvPers have it - is all about big numbers, massive ships with a huge cost in credits, resources, and build time. If you have any other point of view, you can go orbitally befriend yourself.
The discussion I do not see occuring, is one of game design. What is the essential experience for the player - whether they're veteran, a total newbie, or someone who's grasped the basics and is trying to improve? What is the player actually doing? What can the game do to help and/or hinder the player? What will create the best experience for all players?
To be fair, I often see people - sometimes even some of this game's veterans - try to start that conversation, but it inevitably gets derailed by stock arguments from players who just don't want to give up their supertitans. If 'just don't play on a big-ship server' were the best answer, that'd be valid, except we're trying to discuss what a good vanilla experience is, one that works regardless of what server you play on - which, I need to point out, you can also play single-player.
This game has a number of problems, and balance is one of them - and, it's mostly because the developers don't really know what they want. I have to express some serious concern that any problems are ever going to be fixed, until the developers make some decisions that start with, "This is our game, and the way we think it has to work is..."
Letting the players 'run' the development process, however good their intentions are, simply is not working - either in terms of what product we get, or even if we get products at all. I used to think that the devs were just screwing around, but recently my analysis of the situation has changed - if you change something only to get half of your (remaining) players yelling at you and/or quitting, why would the developers of this game try to change anything, like weapon balance, or mass limits, or anything?
Frankly, I feel a bit of pity for Schine at the moment. StarMade is game design's Kobayashi Maru scenario.
I just don't see any point in adding needless things like limited ammo, fuel etc.
It does nothing to make the game more interesting, all it does is to make it more tedious to play.
First of all, the limited ammo would allow smaller ships with tiny reactors to use much heavier weaponry, limited ammunition balances possible abuse of that.
In Starmade with limited ammo the ships would most likely have to transfer cargo from a dock which would mean that all ships from a carrier would have to return, even if not all ships have used their missiles.
Then when the carrier runs dry on ammo it would have to leave the combat zone and return to a base, which would make carriers even worse somehow.
Second, it would very well be tedious indeed to keep ships supplied in current state of the game, whether they're fighters or planetbusters.
This is a good excuse to take another look at cargo transfer in general. I mean, we have transporters. Why not make put them to use beaming cargo to and from other ships?
Add automation and ammo factory that could be placed on ships and you just added more depth to fleet combat with supply ships that produce stuff like ammo for the fleet.
Carriers could have an ammo factory of their own. Unless you're talking about "carriers" the size of Magnetar in X series, most of them certainly have the space for it.
Not everything has to be tied to a station y'know. Maybe the ammo could even regenerate slowly on it's own. Keyword is slowly.
For pirates it would be even worse they would run out of missiles and without bases, they would never be able to reload.
What about lone wolves that like to fight alone without infrastructure.
Regarding "lone wolves", they are royally fucked already without our help. The lack of infrastructure means they can't repair their ships, can't build new ships, can't even make blocks... It's but a matter of time until one of those idiots either realizes his folly or ragequits the server like the infantile moron he is.
We can discuss weapon balance all we want but making missiles require ammo doesn't really improve them just because they could be buffed to compensate.
Making weapons in general, or projectile versions of said weapons require ammunition adds variety:
You could build a huge reactor to power your cannons and missile array.
Or you could build have the same armament without the dwarf star powering them, at the cost of limited shots.
No one forces you to go all-ammo or all-energy, you can always have a "sidearm" weapon when the main caliber runs out of ammo.
First of all, the limited ammo would allow smaller ships with tiny reactors to use much heavier weaponry, limited ammunition balances possible abuse of that.
This is true balance. We live in a world where a fighter can carry a nuclear payload that can flatten a city. Granted; their weapon capacity is far more limited than say an Arleigh Burke class destroyer but both craft pose a significant threat to one another depending on the types of armament equipped.
Second, it would very well be tedious indeed to keep ships supplied in current state of the game, whether they're fighters or planetbusters.
This is a good excuse to take another look at cargo transfer in general. I mean, we have transporters. Why not make put them to use beaming cargo to and from other ships?
Add automation and ammo factory that could be placed on ships and you just added more depth to fleet combat with supply ships that produce stuff like ammo for the fleet.
Carriers could have an ammo factory of their own. Unless you're talking about "carriers" the size of Magnetar in X series, most of them certainly have the space for it.
Not everything has to be tied to a station y'know. Maybe the ammo could even regenerate slowly on it's own. Keyword is slowly.
Tedious or not, the player can determine how much ammo they carry. Games like Elite Dangerous and Eve Online (normally) don't let you rearm in the field so limited ammo is nothing new or traumatizing. Just as in point #1, this too is balance, as you have to choose between an empty cargo space for looting, extra shields for tanking, extra ammo for combat, etc. If all else fails, it's not the end of the world to have to return to base to rearm or have supply ships nearby (like in the real Navy), tending the to fleet's needs.
Regarding "lone wolves", they are royally fucked already without our help. The lack of infrastructure means they can't repair their ships, can't build new ships, can't even make blocks... It's but a matter of time until one of those idiots either realizes his folly or ragequits the server like the infantile moron he is.
Making weapons in general, or projectile versions of said weapons require ammunition adds variety:
You could build a huge reactor to power your cannons and missile array.
Or you could build have the same armament without the dwarf star powering them, at the cost of limited shots.
No one forces you to go all-ammo or all-energy, you can always have a "sidearm" weapon when the main caliber runs out of ammo.
Also, we should consider that there's no reason why we can't have the original conventional weapons and the high-damage-limited-capacity ones as well. Eve Online did this as well (rail guns and heavy missiles for PVE or blasters, torpedoes and heavy assault missiles for PVP). Anyone who doesn't like the change can still use the old stuff so their builds don't break. Meanwhile, a newer, less established player has the option of flying the equivalent of an A-10 Warthog that is enough of a threat to larger craft that they have the option of actually fightingback (possibly even winning the fight) rather than running away or cowering in their home base. Obviously, PVPers can benefit from this system as well.
ok, so if we do happen to have ammo for ships, what are we going to use to create it? a basic factory? our inventory? or will we get a block that can be placed on any entity even a ship and be able to put in metal mesh/a capsule of any type? and get out ammo
The only input that should be ignored is input from clueless players who lack the understanding of the subject to formulate logical input on the subject.
We should listen to new players when they talk about how easy/hard it is to learn weapons building but not when they talk about balance.
We should listen to veteran PvPers about balance but not so much about how easy/hard it is to learn weapons building.
We should be ignoring input from players who have been around for long enough to not be a newb but don't have a clue about the subject they are talking about.
The answer may be as simple as giving missiles more hit points (perhaps scaling with damage output) so they'll have a better chance of hitting their target. Better hit points and limited missile capacity can lower the likelihood of missile spam. Lower missile spam will allow for less AMS turrets and lower overall entity count. Both factors will reduce server load and lag.
But if you increase the difficulty of me PDing missiles, I will add more PD. It's not like having few PD makes the ship better. They don't drain from it much at all.
I just don't see any point in adding needless things like limited ammo, fuel etc.
It does nothing to make the game more interesting, all it does is to make it more tedious to play.
Games that has ammo for vehicles can get away with it because they also have simpler ways of regaining ammo from unlimited supply boxes bases etc, that has a radius that can auto repair/rearm.
In Starmade with limited ammo the ships would most likely have to transfer cargo from a dock which would mean that all ships from a carrier would have to return, even if not all ships have used their missiles.
Then when the carrier runs dry on ammo it would have to leave the combat zone and return to a base, which would make carriers even worse somehow.
That would be a waste of time, especially for people that can't stay all the time.
For pirates it would be even worse they would run out of missiles and without bases, they would never be able to reload.
What about lone wolves that like to fight alone without infrastructure.
We can discuss weapon balance all we want but making missiles require ammo doesn't really improve them just because they could be buffed to compensate.
It's called economy, buying ammo from shops, and actually needing supply points to defend. Is that really a bad thing, to force players to have something to fall back on?
Sheet DPS is an inflated stat that fails to consider any variables, in addition StarMade's weapon stat readouts are often widly inacurate (not sure if thats a bug or just bad calculations)
Some of the variables it fails to consider include:
If you have an 88k DPS cannon + cannon and you miss every shot, your DPS is 0
If you have several missile outputs in a single weapon and some of them get shot down by AMS, your DPS is reduced
It assumes you land "optimal" hits on your target all the time
AI turrets loose accuracy when firing on a radarjammed target, which reduces their DPS
The only way to know your DPS is to test it, not calculate it.
Yes. Only player designed and flown ships are a true representation of combat. Starmade has virtually no PvE at all, you can roflstomp any pirate station with a well designed fighter.
Yes. Only player designed and flown ships are a true representation of combat. Starmade has virtually no PvE at all, you can roflstomp any pirate station with a well designed fighter.
You can believe that if you like but you have no way of knowing exactly what other people test their designs on in single player or for what purpose. For example; I don't fight stock pirates and stations when I test my weapons. As such; the question of whether the opinions of PVPers carry more weight than everyone else is not relevant to this discussion, so I'm going to politely ask you to save that opinion for a more appropriate discussion and not derail this thread.
ok, so if we do happen to have ammo for ships, what are we going to use to create it? a basic factory? our inventory? or will we get a block that can be placed on any entity even a ship and be able to put in metal mesh/a capsule of any type? and get out ammo
My recommendation would be to use the same factory that is used to create the weapon itself. The resources could be smaller quantities of the same materials as what the weapons require. How we determine the size of the round is something I'd like to discuss further. Please see my response to Nickizzy below.
But if you increase the difficulty of me PDing missiles, I will add more PD. It's not like having few PD makes the ship better. They don't drain from it much at all.
Please explain how sheet DPS is different from actual DPS. What's your strategy of determining damage potential?
If the Missiles have more hit points, a good counter would be to make more powerful PD turrets; like the ones we used to quickly kill fighters/Isanths before the HP update. So far, it only takes 1 point of damage to kill a missile. It's not hard to make a small C/C turret that does (for example) 50 damage per shot at 10 shots/second. As missiles get ridiculously huge due to their launcher and ammo size, they will require more damage to destroy but there will more likely be less of them due to limited cargo space.
While some people may try this, it might not always be the best idea to throw all your heavy missiles at someone in an attempt to "alpha-kill" them; leaving yourself substantially weaker against any reinforcements that show up.
As far as DPS, any numbers we come up with would be unreliable since your ammo capacity will vary widely. Before we even get to numbers to compare the potential for ammo-based and conventional weapons, we'd need to first decide on how the strength of the rounds is determined. So far, my ideas for this are...
- round size is customizable at the factory only and limited by cargo space. Example; put 100 units of missile ammo in a factory to make a missile that does 100x of the base damage and takes 100x of the base cargo space for that ammo type. A numeric entry pad or slider bar might make this process simpler. At your factory, you can manufacture, store and carry ordnance as large as your cargo will allow and when you run out, you can disconnect your storage to revert to your conventional weaponry. Your ammo cargo is volatile like aux generators with explosion damage scaling with the total ammonut of ammo in that cargo space..
- round size is determined by weapon array size and limited by cargo space. So you can build a giant nuke launcher as powerful as you want it but will need adequate cargo space to store the ammo for it. When you run out, you can disconnect your storage to revert to your conventional weaponry.
As always, the goal here is to enhance the game and be fair about it. Constructive input on how to ensure that both of these goals are met would be appreciated.
You can believe that if you like but you have no way of knowing exactly what other people test their designs on in single player or for what purpose. For example; I don't fight stock pirates and stations when I test my weapons. As such; the question of whether the opinions of PVPers carry more weight than everyone else is not relevant to this discussion, so I'm going to politely ask you to save that opinion for a more appropriate discussion and not derail this thread.
"I can derail the thread but no one else is allowed"
It doesn't matter what you fight, the point still stands. Starmade's AI is quite frankly shit. It cannot use jamming or passive effects. It cannot perform manoeuvres and it does not use weapons tactically. Only a player does that, so people who have more experience fighting players have far more weight when they comment.
Sure, a total noob is allowed to have an opinion on the subject of weapon balance but their opinions are 100% meaningless because they do not have enough knoweldge on the subject to form a valid, logical and accurate opinion on things.
The developers can still listen to what they have to say, but the words of a single experience builder who has a clue of what he is talking about is more meaningfull and usefull then 10000 clueless noob dreamers.
It may sound elitist, but its something we need to understand and accept.
Now I am not try and bash newer players or noobs here, in fact I enjoy helping them become better at understanding how to build good ships because its more fun to fight alongside and against people who are skilled however its essential to understand that just like we only allow people who have knoweldge of law to make the laws of a country, we should only be paying attention to the voices of the players who have knoweldge of shipbuilding during discussion of ship balance.
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