My take on a new AMC system

[4plains]

If you have a 1000 damage projectile and no hull components it can drill 10 deep. As of now you\'d need 1563 blocks in a single barrel to get 1000 damage per shot. And this only works on stationnary targets (like station or planet mounted turrets planets and stations) and you not moving.

 

[Tomino_sama]

http://star-made.org/node/10635

using 6,860 groups of 27 block AMC\'s I made a scaled up Waffle. I built as many layers as the game can currently support. If this was a true waffle the game woud just crash with so many blocks. At this point if you add anymore AMC\'s to the wepons computer you will hit 0 FPS and Freeze. I was only able to build it by disabling and turning off pretty much all the options. It is MUCH better in the recent update :D Now we can actually do Capital fights.



Hailstorm (Siege) Super Capital:

The Damage output?

The Core AMC Arrary
*Each group of AMC blocks (3x3x3+1) = 28 Blocks
*Total AMC Blocks 28x10x10x11 = 30,800 Blocks
*10x10 Groups per 11 Layers = 1,100 Groups
*Damage output per Group = 133 Damage
*Core Array Volley Damage = 146,300 Damage

The Outer AMC Array
*Each group of AMC blocks (3x3x3+1) = 28 Blocks
*Total AMC Blocks 28x30x32x6 = 161,280 Blocks
*30x32 Groups per 6 Layers = 5,760 Groups
*Damage output per Group = 133 Damage
*Outer Array Volley Damage = 766,080 Damage

Combined AMC Array (Single Weapons Computer used)
*Total Array Volley Damage = 912,380 Damage
*Estimated rate of Fire = 3 shots per second (! ESTIMATED !)
*Estimated DPS = 2,737,140 Damage



So with under 70k mass, you can have high mobility 2M+ shields and nearly 3 Million DPS and this is actually nowhere near max DPS. Single block AMC waffles do way too much damage IMHO



Contruction Gallery: http://bit.ly/1etGsZo

 

[Tomino_sama]

1. Shields go down

2. AMC\'s focus fire

3. Focal point on the Hull\'s exterior is the Apex point.

4. AMC projectiles explode outward at the same angle they approached the target. Clearly if you mount your guns apart, this creates an outward explosion moving through the inside of the ship.

If the angles are extreme enough, you can scoop out the enemy ships inside, only leaving a 1 block hole on the extrior. So you can do this already, without any changing anything, just design an array that is spread apart.

 

[R_Artis]

its actually sad that there is suggestions sub forum as there is no use for it. and as for me i stopped playing normal after my last last great fighting ship... now I\'m just building not even looking if i added weapons or not cause all i hear is nerf the amc. and as there is no texture maker we wount have new weapon types or anything else in long time. its acctually tham I\'m almost abandoning the game as it is no more that fun because of so much nerfing. but if schema would look in this one and actually implemend it should bring some fun back... and if no then I\'m selling my acc for half of price as game is dying. oh and for all those who say nerf that and nerf that.... f**k you! you are responsible of shitty weapon system

 

[Captain Fortius]

Today the launcher mentioned a new pre-build where amc damage and rate of fire seems to depend on each other, but that\'s just a bad idea by itself. I understand my proposal is a lot more work, but changing something little won\'t fix this, and certainly won\'t make the game any more fun.

As long as the amc mechanics don\'t get drastically changed, your goal for a single line cannon is still; to reach 400 damage to break hardened hull by 1 hit, and to have a decent rate of fire to guarantee more hits against distand and/or moving targets. We\'ll just build bigger cannons to compensate.

What worries me however, is that low-damage-per-line scattercannons would become yet again more effective than their single-line counterparts. By using the same amount of AMC blocks, you can already achieve greater DPS, and more blocks broken by dividing them to several separate lines.

With the new changes, several small amc lines = less damage per line = less reload penalty= the more and smaller lines you have, the more effective your cannon is. Meaning, more DPS for less power consumption, mass, and price.

 

[Morrigi]

...We talk about ways to make deathcubes less OP, and Schema makes them more OP. What.

 

[TheSavage0ne]

This looks great to me, allthough the update was suposed to balance out AMC\'s, it seemed to make it worse. when i can now be destroyed by a ship a quarter my size just because it is a giant shotgun, while mine has few large cannons. I find that my fps drops too much and I lag out if I use a shotgun, so i never have. I had thought that they would end up getting hit hard by a update to AMCs that balances it out, but it turns out I am the one who gets hit hard.

 

[ZaPhobos]

I\'ve always been bothered by the fact that my lasers can dish out exess of 1k damage to hardened hull and it still makes a tiny hole... As if the one block aborbs ALL incoming damage before it dies.



EG:

Damaged hull block with 1 durability ->

It has 1 hull block at full durability behind it ->

Incoming AMC to deal 3k damage ->

It absorbs the 3k damage and the other hull block behind is entirely unharmed ->



The system doesn\'t work as it is right now. But for some odd reason I get this feeling that antimatter cannons aren\'t exactly meant to destroy ships anyway.

I keep thinking that Schema designed them in such a way that they remove sheilds and keep damage sustained until you can fire with missiles to deal the brunt of your damage, but people keep wanting to see giant lasers punch holes in ships.

~~~ On the topic of AMC radius.

As you said before, you wanted missiles to also have a penetration and detonation, thus giving them some use and actually giving you a good reason to use them (Devastating to parts inside and out)

This would actually make them of use, and the current AMC\'s would work fine if used in my method.

However, with AMCs bunching holes in ships the missiles would become more or less useless, unless made to be at least x3 as devastating in terms of radius compared to each AMC radius, if implemented permanently, then missiles would be the main way of dishing out hull and system damage while AMCs are used to keep sheilds down.

~~~ On the topic of AMC penetrating power.

This system would actually make sense, and I don\'t feel like making the diagram again because of the calculations and math, but you\'ve already got the math for penetration figured out.



Hurr durr, the ravings of a madman,

Cheers.

 

[R_Artis]

if you feel like amc shouldnt destroy hull or blocks then you should really think again as then first thing we need is new weapons like rail gun, heavy lasers, heat guns, and other....

and don\'t fuk my brain that you can do it with amc as you wount be possible to do that if they almost wount destroy blocks....

 

[Ninjanoto]

game creaters please take note of this guy

 

[ZaPhobos]

Wait, what, could you explain what you\'re saying.

 

[Trafalgar]

I like what I see here, but let\'s do a thought experiment. Let\'s say I\'m trying to make the most efficient and effective weapon setup possible, and approaching it from the perspective of a designer who uses checkerboarded guns.

I\'ll be using the information in your first post, primarily (I read the rest of the thread, but the first post has the most actual details and numbers).

So I see that if I were to use the standard checkerboarded 1-AMCs, the accuracy would be, well, zero. So that\'s right out. I want some decent accuracy, so I\'ll try 10-long AMC arrays, whose base accuracy would be 90%. The splash damage would be 0, but since they\'re going to be checkerboarded, that should be fine. Plus, having 1x1 barrels gives me the maximum refire rate, which means it keeps the DPS high (assuming I can hit with them). Normally refiring repeatedly would quickly drop the accuracy to half the base accuracy (45%) and leave it there, which I imagine would make it pretty inaccurate, but I\'ve spotted your weapon stabilizers, so I\'m going to want to hook a ton of those up to the weapons computer to negate the penalty, as much as is feasible anyways. You didn\'t specifically include a formula for it, but since you said that they worked based on the difference between the number of AMCs hooked to the weapons computer and the number of stabilizers, how does this sound to you?

accuracyPercentReductionReduction = stabilizers/(AMCs+stabilizers)

minReducedAccuracy = accuracy *(1-(0.5 * (1 - accuracyPercentReductionReduction)))

(minReducedAccuracy when stabilizers = 0 is accuracy * 0.5)


(minReducedAccuracy when stabilizers = AMCs is accuracy * 0.75)


With that, if I use an equal number of stabilizers as AMCs I would reduce the accuracy penalty by 50% (e.g. instead of cutting accuracy by 50% max it would cut it by 25% max), and if I used twice as many, I\'d reduce it by 2/3, and if I used three times as many, I\'d reduce it by 75%.

The question then is, which is more effective: Doubling or tripling the number of AMCs with 45% accuracy (after the first few shots), or adding stabilizers to bump accuracy back up? If 0% accuracy is a 90 degree section and 100% is perfect aim, then 50% would be a 45 degree cone, in which case unless the ship is practically sitting on top of the enemy core, it would be extremely ineffective to try to core a ship with a 45% accuracy array.

Even 75% accuracy (using three times as many stabilizers as AMCs) would be a 22.5 degree cone, so this could quite possibly make this kind of weapon inferior to slower guns, which could only be a good thing.

(I would suggest that the accuracy penalty operate such that the accuracy degrades when the gun is fired and then begins to recover, or that it has the appearance of doing so. A slower firing gun would have more time to recover than a rapid-fire gun.)

Of course these may not be how you were envisioning the stabilizers or the accuracy working - they weren\'t specified precisely in the thread, so I extrapolated from the first post. It appears that how well your suggestion prevents numerous small guns from continuing to be overpowered may depend on how the accuracy and stabilizers are implemented.

That said, you probably don\'t want to make it impossible for fighters to exist, and the way this came out, it doesn\'t look favorable to them. I understand you hope missiles to be made worthwhile against capital ships at some point, which could make bombers be a thing, but as it stands fighters have issues trying to fly up to large capital ships (server issues with collision boxes or something).

Overall: Looks good. A little concerned about fighters.

 

[R_Artis]

if amc is going to be usable to only disarm shields, then we we need more weapon tipes as the current missles for small ships are pain in ass with shitty reload speed and i don\'t taht it will be so fun when you need to wait 1minute to reload your missles as in that time can come reinforcement and shoot your small scout ship to hell as it has bigger misssle cannos= faster reload n greater damage. as for that we will need new weapon types. if schema says no moar weapons and amc is for shield fukkking. lets see what will happen in next updates before beta comes. i could bet that amc will get even worse.

 

[Captain Fortius]

While a single-block AMC would technically have 0% accuracy, it wouldn\'t be anywhere near so bad.

Accuracy is already counted by distance, not as an absolute value (as it\'d be strange to have the same chance to hit your target up close or far away).

If I remember correctly, it\'s expressed as x % at 100 blocks away from the cannon\'s output (although I didn\'t mention that in my post). You\'ve probably noticed I also wrote about barrel length influencing the weapon\'s range. I didn\'t give it specific numbers yet, so let\'s fix that now.

For the experiment\'s sake, let\'s say weapon range is 20 times barrel length. Of course it should be capped somewhere and perhaps diminishing returns should also be applied to start the range growth quickly, but slow it down at greater sizes to avoid making smaller ships useless. (Again, it\'d be best if this variable would also be adjustable in the .cfg file) -but ignore all that for now and keep it simple. 20.;

A 100 block long cannon would have a range of 2000, a 10 block long would have 200, and a single block cannon would have 20 (a lot less than the current 330). As you can see, your checkerboard composed of single-block cannons wouldn\'t have to worry about it\'s accuracy at 100, because it\'d never shoot that far. Granted, that still makes checkerboards like that useless -As they should be. You can still build a decent scattercannon from longer lines.

With all the restraints, it still might sound like favouring big ships only, but think about it; baby ships would fight their own battles at baby ranges, and titans would fight each other from a sector away. And no, titans wouldn\'t pick off smaller fighters from that far, their defense turrets would probably be a lot smaller, thus shorter ranged.

 

[Angbor]

I\'ve long held the belief that the bigger you build your gun, the bigger the calibur. You\'re building up that 320 mm cannon not building a minigun. Whenever I think of epic space battles, they aren\'t minigunning at each other, they\'re blasting gigantic cannons. So when it was announced that AMCs would have reload speed reduced while damage increases as you build them up, I was excited. But with how the projectile currently interacts with blocks, once you pass that magic number that oneshots a hardened, it\'s a complete waste to add more. I only hope that Schema will take your suggestions instead of rolling back to how they where. Specifically with the shot penetration. All the other things while being awesome and should be looked at eventually, will be a lot of work to code. But shot penetration should be fairly easy to incorporate. Without looking at the code for it, it just seems that it would be another if statement that checks if the shot has more damage than the block can take and subtracts the blocks current health (modded by armor) from the total damage of the shot and keeps the shot alive to hit another block.

By at least adding in shot penetration, AMCs will be a lot closer to being balanced. It\'s not to say it\'s the end all be all of balance; shields and definatly hull will still need to be looked at, as well as damage growth of AMCs as you build them up and also turret turn rates (I still need to test if giant turrets turn really quick after recent patches, cause they should slow with size). But what it will do is make big cannon builds be similarly viable to shotgun builds, or at least more so to it.

 

[Yarp]

The components to a game like this are about feel and balance:

1. What type of weapon is appropriate for a Fighter-style? For a Capital Ship-style? What makes these disparate styles equally fun?

2. Balance. How can we still get a variety using one block type with limited block arrangements for both fighters and their monstrous cousins and everything else in between where many different strategies are all viable and all have a weakness if taken to any extreme?

Attacking a Capital Ship notes: In every space movie where the good guys are in small fighters or bomber types, though there may be innumerable villians manning innumerable turrets in the superfortress monstrosity (that\'s no moon!), invariably the turrets will prove to be incorrigibly atrocious shots. We\'re talking on the level of the accuracy of villains in a movie where the hero is a martial arts expert. While one shot from the main array should be lights out, one shot from any given turret to even hit (AI controlled or otherwise) should be incredibly unlikely at both extreme far and extreme close range. There should be an optimum hit window distance. If a fighter is far enough out, either the precision of the weapon or the range should be sufficient to make shooting unadvisable, like trying to use a pistol to shoot at something small 200 yards away. No matter how you practice at the range, it\'s just not gonna happen. At the other extreme, if a fighter is close enough, a tracking turret should react too slow to keep up. The angle of attack should not be able to correct for the flight path of a super-close buzzing bomber. It\'s the middle ground that is the kill zone. So should it be when any small ship approaches any large ship. A bit of turret adjustment may help keep fighters and bombers alive once they get proximal, whatever changes happen or don\'t happen to AMCs.

Being fast and small should be a great advantage: from a great distance. Being fast and small should be a great advantage: from right up in your grill. Being fast and small in the middle, squish like grape.

How AMCs work can help this happen. An AMC arrangement should afford comparisons to various real firearms so we can get a sense of what a slightly different arrangements/#s of blocks can/should do using only one block type:

Derringer (Sacrifices other attributes to minimize Weapon Size)

Revolver

Modern Pistol

Shotgun - Birdshot

Shotgun - Slug

Automatic Machine Gun (Sacrifices to gain Rate of Fire)

Sniper Rifle (Sacrifices to gain Precision and Range)

Howitzer (Sacrifices to gain Range and Damage)

BB Gun (Will put your eye out)

Airsoft Pistol (Sacrifices coolness for age-appropriateness)

Cap Gun (Sacrifices all stats for safety)

Weapon Size, Round Size, Rate of Fire, # of Rounds before Overheat, Reload Cooldown, Spread, Range, Velocity, Stopping Power (AKA Damage), Penetration, Precision. To focus on any one of these attributes to its greatest concievable extreme should eventually sacrifice most if not ALL of the rest of the attrributes until the weapon is so situationally overspecialized to border on worthless. It is the case with real weapons, after all.

To simplify for the sake of gameplay, setting a few of these attributes to be standard for ALL AMCs in order to more easily balance is OK, but not maximizing the creative potential this game could afford players. Intuitive, meaningful complexity is always the better way in game design. Let every stat be inversely proportional to every other stat within reasonable acceptability and all balance can then be easily achieved through manipulating mere coefficients in a few formulas. A dynamic system will actually be easier to balance than a simpler one up to a point. This is because if there is any \"and\" that doesn\'t have to give up half of an \"or\" then the system will be inherently broken when taken to some extreme.

It could easily be designed intuitively, for example a longer weapon has greater range. A fatter weapon has a greater payload. A weapon with a small muzzle but proportionally massive breach will have the greater velocity. A weapon with a long z-axis ratio to other axis will be more precise. You might tie rate of fire to number of weapons linked (highly suggestible for lag-countering!) or reload cooldown to power supply. Spread can still be a function of having many parallel cannons, of course. Damage can still be raw contiguous block number. Tons of other ways to do this, I just hope this gets the cog wheels turning... Limited block arrangements give a natural opportunity cost.

Inversely relating Reload Speed and Damage, that is, making each an opportunity-cost to the other is a step toward addressing this, and having them inversely proportional to speed(i.e. velocity) and distance (range) is great, too. Just a few more customizable options... Holy penetrating laser-cannon blasts, we\'re nearly there!

Thanks again for bringing this topic up! May StarMade live long ...and prosper.

 

[Vicentezx3]

Whats the name of the red ship, its looks pretty badass.

You should upload it.

 

[Dembo]

I fully agree with all of OP\'s suggestions and imho they should be implemented ASAP!

 

[Raiben]

Personally I see the AMC as filling the role of a machine gun type weapon, perhaps this awesome idea (and I really do like it) should be implemented on a third weapon type? Something like a laser or plasma cannon, I dont know, i\'ts just a thought, but I think it is a very well thought out and fleshed out idea, but then you take away the shotgun type and machine gun type effect, which IMHO is a great weapon type, but if schema were to say make a laser or alternate beam weapon, I really think this might be the way to go.

 

[WaffulMann]

This is a really good idea