(Multiple Ideas) Hotspur's Musings

[Hotspur]

Hullo Starmade, Hotspur here. I've been playing a little on some different servers and watching some of the updates, but I'm no expert on everything Starmade. I just have some interesting ideas that I thought would be interesting to share with the community here. I'll spread them out between concepts and elaborate on them. I would love to hear opinions on this, and if you think I should change something I will do so. EDIT: oh god this is so long be warned

First Concept: Ammunition

In my opinion, instead of having an infinite amount of AMC/missiles you can fire, I think it should be finite. This would allow for more customization in weaponry and make PVP engagements far more tactical. The ammunition used would modify the weapon's overall base traits like damage, rate of fire, speed, etc. The ammunition would be producible from certain ores in factories and could be purchased in greater bulk at shops. However, only basic types of ammunition would be purchasable in shops. Special types and more advanced ones would have to be found in pirate loot or be produced by yourself. Ammunition would be stored in plex storage blocks connected to weapons computers. The amount of special ammunition should probably be limited to something like 3-6 different types. There should also be different caliber/payload sizes to accommodate larger ship weapons.

Ammunition: Weight

Now, here's my little twist on finite ammunition. Honestly, it doesn't matter if you have finite ammunition if people can pack atrocious amounts of that ammunition into their ship with no penalty. So I suggest something scandalous. What if the stored ammunition contributed to your overall ship mass? The heavier the payload, the more mass added. This will make preparation a necessity and will force players to make important decisions regarding what they want to carry into battle. This makes accuracy much more essential, and will stop people from just randomly spraying everywhere with those gigantic spread/shotgun cannons.

Ammunition: Varying Types

Now, regarding ammunition, there should be a few different types to spice things up a bit. (Bear with me, I might steal some EVE:Online ideas, but I have no intention to make StarMade more like EVE/Minecraft/any other game. If I borrow any concepts, it's because they worked well in previous games)

1. Standard: Just like your normal AMC round, does not have any base weapon trait modifiers, and would be the most commonly found in the universe. Missile variant included.
2. EMP: Would lower the base weapon damage, speed and distance by just a tad, but would have increased effectivity against shields. If you know you're going to be facing an enemy with heavy shielding, EMP rounds are the ammunition for you. The missile variant can actually do damage to shields.
3. (Name needed, unsure of what to call it): It's very similar to EMP in the effect that it lowers base weapon damage/speed/distance, but instead of being effective against shields, it is more effective against hull. If there's some thick skinned bastard you've go to pop out there, this one would do the trick. There is a missile variant of this type.
4. AP (armor piercing): Would raise base weapon speed and distance by a lot, and lower the rate of fire by a lot as well. It cannot damage shields. When fired, it will fly very fast at the target, and when it hits it will have a chance of ignoring the first block it hits, dealing half of its damage to that block, then half of that damage to the next block and so on and so forth until it reaches less than 10% of its original damage. When it reaches that point it will stop going further. The faster the round shoots the farther it will pass through the target. It passes through unarmed blocks better than normal ones. There is no Mk IV/V caliber variant of this ammunition type, and no missile variant.
5. Flak Round: Significantly lowers the base weapon rate of fire and increases distance. If it comes within a certain radius of a target, it will explode and break into several smaller rounds that spread from the point of its explosion. Imagine fireworks. The smaller rounds will be fractions of the original base weapon's damage. There is no Mk IV/V caliber variant of this ammunition type, and no missile variant.

Ammunition: Caliber/Payload Size

Ammunition would also have different payload sizes. The bigger the payload, the heavier the round, the more damage it will do, and the slower the weapon fires it. Eventually if the round is big enough it will start to do splash damage to several blocks around the center of the hit. In order to use the higher caliber rounds with splash damage the barrel has to be the same width as the crater it makes. The missile payload variants are the same as the normal cannon ones, except regarding splash damage and mass. All of the missile variants are 2x heavier than their cannon counterparts. IE, Mk I = 16/1 whereas Mk I as a missile is 8/1. Higher level payloads will simply increase the amount of splash damage but will not fix the value of them to the one given. Note: The mass of the payloads is subject to change and I need your opinions on whether or not they should be modified to be less OP/underpowered.

1. Mk I: Mark One rounds have the highest rate of fire and lowest damage modifiers. Sixteen rounds has a mass of one.
2. Mk II: Mark Two has a slower RoF than Mk 1, but does more damage. It's also heavier. Ten rounds have a mass of one. Appears slightly larger than Mk 1, and is more expensive.
3. Mk III: Mark Three has a slower RoF than 1 & 2, but does more damage. Makes a 2x2 crater in splash damage. Heavier than 1 & 2. Three rounds have a mass of one. Bigger than Mk 2, looks about one block thick. Mk III is the first round where it starts to get slightly expensive.
4. Mk IV: Mark Four has a very slow RoF, but does immense damage. Makes a 3x3 splash damage crater. Every round of Mk IV has a mass of 8, and its appearance is two blocks thick. Mk IV rounds are expensive and should be used sparingly. Rarely found in shops.
5. Mk V: Mark Five is the largest, heaviest round. Imagine the kind of stuff that rips space stations and planets to shreds. It has an extremely slow rate of fire and deals an appalling amount of damage. Every round of Mk V has a mass of 50, and its cost rivals that of a fancy frigate with about the same mass. Mark V rounds cannot be found in stores. It makes a 4x4 splash damage crater and is capable of destroying small craft in one lethal killing blow.

Second Concept: Weapon Variants (oh god, this is such a text wall)

Now, with these brilliant new ammunition ideas, why not spice up weapons too? I don't know about you guys, but after a while normal AMCs get a little boring. With these new weapons, I'm also introducing a few new traits unaffected by ammunition: accuracy and overheating. (The missile launcher weapon types are actually just fine in my opinion, but I might make one new missile launcher)

1. Standard Cannon (Name needed): The traits of this cannon are all balanced and are distributed evenly. It's basically the old AMC cannon. It does not overheat but does not shoot extremely fast. It cannot shoot Mk IV and above.
2. Autocannon: This cannon leans less towards accuracy and range and instead focuses on its rate of fire. It shoots extremely fast in quite the spread, but overheats after a little while. It takes a small amount of time to cool down and start firing back up again. It cannot shoot Mk III and above. The largest the cannon gets the slower its stats increase. I'm not entirely sure how to explain that but basically you want this to a smaller size. Cannot fire AP or Flak rounds.
3. Hellfire: Significantly increaseed missile RoF and speed, but also a significantly lowered damage, splash radius and distance. Imagine a swarm of missiles suddenly coming out of nowhere and bombing your ship. It can only use Mk I missiles. It's basically the missile equivalent of the autocannon. Should generally be small.
4. Railgun: Stats lean more towards damage, range, speed and accuracy. It has an extremely low RoF, taking as more time than a missile would to recharge and can only be fired when the ship firing it is stationary. It has to be charged for five seconds in order to fire. Recieves benefits when the dimensions are longer. Can only fire Mk IV and above. The railgun also can function as a blunderbuss, firing blocks as ammunition, but it results in a chance of the railgun blocks being damaged.
5. Stun Field (credit to redstar fighter): Slows down a ship by emitting a field around it, like an fly slowly encased in amber. If multiple ships have strong emitters for this weapon they can entirely stop a ship dead in its tracks.

Third Concept: Overdrive

What overdrive would do is if you've got a weapon selected, you could press the overdrive key to improve RoF and other stats, but at the price of damaging the blocks you were overdriving. Perhaps you could use this to give yourself a temporary speed boost with thrusters too, which could make the difference in a heated battle.

Fourth Concept: Ship Death, Self Destruct

I think that a ship's destruction is very anticlimactic. You get all these explosions all around the core then poof the ship disappears. It should go out with a BANG. There should be an explosion that is the same size as the dimensions of what's left of the ships that does a bunch of damage relative to how much mass it was. There should be a self destruct option so that if you know you're already gone then you can activate the self destruct while your mass is still mainly intact and let off a greater explosion in an attempt to take your enemies with you. This makes salvaging far more hazardous and risky, and a little conflict and risk is always fun.

Fifth Concept: Planet Core

It's widely known that soon planets are going to be basically two-sided. I suggest that along with this addition that a planet core is added to put a little risk and a cool way to destroy a planet. The core of the planet would be encased in a very strong rock that would take a long time to break, and as soon as you broke past that layer the core would be exposed. If a player were to shoot a missile at the core, it would cause the planet to start burning up in an effect similar to a ship death and leave a timer for how long you had left until the planet exploded. And when a planet explodes... you'd better get the hell out of there, because it's going to damage a decent portion of the sector heavily.

Sixth Concept: End Game Weapon To End All End Game

Now, I came up with a fun idea that probably would never happen because it would be OP as hell. But, whatever, I'll share it anyways. What if there was a bomb like the disintegrator that when activated you had thirty seconds to escape the sector it was used in? If you did not make it out in this time period, you would find yourself not moving away from the device, but back towards it. Anything with physics would slowly be pulled back to a fledgling singularity and sucked in. I'm not sure how this would work with planets. Maybe when everyone was dead and the sector was unloaded the planet would disappear. The sector would become completely empty, and anything that had gone into the singularity had a 15% chance of reappearing in a random sector close to spawn, although heavily damaged. As for the other 85%... you've been erased from existence. Obviously this weapon would not be purchasable or even be available in random loot. No, I'm not sure how you'd get it. Preferably it would be impossible.

Alright, I think I'm done for tonight, but I'll leave you with one last funny idea. You've all seen the massive things people call "ships" these days that are larger than the average planet. If they have more mass than a planet with gravity does, shouldn't these ships had a gravity field of their own? Just imagine the terror of the fighter squadron that was trying to attack you as they are slowly dragged into your gravity field, helpless to try and escape because the gravitational pull is stronger than four times the average planet, rendering their thrusters useless.

Shhhhhh.

Just let the behemoth consume you.

 

[redstar fighter]

weapons, number 5 name it stun field, or paralyzing stun if I said that correctly

 

[Hotspur]

Changing it now.

 

[YX33A]

3: (Name needed, unsure of what to call it): It\'s very similar to EMP in the effect that it lowers base weapon damage/speed/distance, but instead of being effective against shields, it is more effective against hull. If there\'s some thick skinned bastard you\'ve go to pop out there, this one would do the trick. There is a missile variant of this type.

This is typically(by modern comvention, anyway) called a HP Round, standing for Hollow Point. Mind you, we don\'t build HP rounds for fighting ships or planes, they only work against soft targets, but a rough equal is HE Rounds, IE High Energy rounds. There are plenty of videoes on youtube about such a missile but it more or less boils down to it being a way to damage soft targets within a vehicle without outright destroying it.



The closest thing I could think of for a round that does more damage to a ship itself instead of it\'s armor is actually AP, or perhaps, a favorite of mine, APDSEHC(or some variation of these groups of letters), a Armor Piercing Explosive Hard Core Discarding Sabot round, which is basically the end game muntion for any weapon that uses chemical recactions to propel it\'s rounds. If one uses a type of weapon that doesn\'t use chemcial propellents to bury said round in a target, and uses, say, electromagnetic propulsion(a Railgun or Coil Gun) then you drop the AP and DS because it is ALWAYS AP because of the speed it is fired at and DS isn\'t possible for such a weapon like it is for a normal gun.



APDSEHC rounds are smaller then the gun you fire it from(so a 30\" cannon might only shoot a 10\" DS round) using the Discarding Sabot to increase the speed of the fired munition(and thus penetration value). Explosive Hard Core is a variant of Hard Core muntions(such as a munition with Depleted Uranium as its core to increase penetration value) which works more or less the same as a HC round but also has the useful effect of being a small bomb as well, so there is a explosive inside your target which naturally will do more damage then if it was outside it.(don\'t know how this works? Read World War Z, not watch the movie, they use such a round to take down Zeds. And yes, that\'s the kind of damage it does to soft targets with even 9\" rounds)





That being said, AMC\'s don\'t need ammo(nor could they ever support it!) due to it being a ANTIMATTER CANNON. It fires antimatter particles in a magnetic field towards your target. One can\'t make antimatter into a AP round without making a actual bullet out of the antimatter, which makes it all but impossible to fire safely as it would react to your ship as well as your target\'s ship, unless you built your ship out of stone and made the bullet out of Iron, but this just means it would react with your barrel you fire it out of instead.



If one adds ammo to the game, one has to add weapons such as Cannons for them to be useful. Missiles are one thing, but so far this game has 3 weapon types: Antimatter Cannons; Missiles; and Pulse Weapons(I forget what the actual name for it is). Two of those are pure energy weapons(techically, anyway), one is a solid munition. Who is to say that Replicators don\'t exist? One could use such a tech to make ammo for your missile launchers in the field.



I thus suggest we don\'t focus at ALL on building unique muntions for weapons to use. I suggest the approach from Star Ruler. Add a resource called \"Matter\" which is used to make any and all solid ammo. Add Waste Heat to energy weapons that limits how fast you can shoot your weapons. And to take a leaf from a good star ruler mod, add Antimatter itself as a resource which can be used for the obvious energy generation or weapon systems, but is also prone to destroying your ship if you can\'t safely contain it, which in fact takes vast amounts of energy.(not more then a small matter-antimatter reaction generation can\'t produce, or even dedicated backup energy generation systems solely powering the antimatter storage system). And as one has to safely store Antimatter lest your ship explode and nearby ships take damage, a valid tactic thus becomes trying to damage the storage for the antimatter, or even worse, a weapon that drains energy from a ship(I believe Star Ruler has this called a Reverse Induction System, and has the side effect of damaging your foe\'s ship). But this is all a m00t point if Schema doesn\'t add ammo for guns. And obviously guns that need ammo. Which they might at some point, after all, Starmade is still in Alpha(though I have a feeling that might change soon).