Next generation: The solution to core drilling

[jzimmerman4]

Glad you think so! Adds a bit of FTL style combat to Starmade.

Now that I have thought about it a bit more, your suggestion is the equivalent to a current core indicator with the current core mechanism but then with my suggestion. Meaning that our suggestions together are essentially the current system on a tons of steroids.

 

[NeonSturm]

1. We want capitals fighting each other to kill 20-50% of blocks before a ship is gone.

2. We want fighters being able to cripple a large ship.
3. We want large ships being able to be immune to little gnats if they are solo.

I think that the statements 2. and 3. exclude each other and that the community is split into Luke-Skywalkers lovers and haters.

But the first thing should be fixed.

• Maybe use hulls to increase your shield strength and shields only increase regeneration?
• Give hulls in the middle of a ship more armour than the outer hulls?
• Make armour not be a damage-divisor but a damage-offest+divisor both?

We should be more creative here!

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

1. We want capitals fighting each other to kill 20-50% of blocks before a ship is gone.

2. We want fighters being able to cripple a large ship.
3. We want large ships being able to be immune to little gnats if they are solo.

I think that the statements 2. and 3. exclude each other and that the community is split into Luke-Skywalkers lovers and haters.

But the first thing should be fixed.

• Maybe use hulls to increase your shield strength and shields only increase regeneration?
• Give hulls in the middle of a ship more armour than the outer hulls?
• Make armour not be a damage-divisor but a damage-offest+divisor both?

We should be more creative here!

50% of a capital to destroy it?! do you know how many blocks that is? If there is a system that destroys a ship based on how many blocks we destroy it will have to scale with size some how. Like 50% of a fighter has to go but you don't need to whittle down a titan that much to kill it.

 

[ltmauve]

Honestly, I think that fighters should take less proportional damage than a capital before overheating.

 

[NeonSturm]

I think that would make fighters even less usable with linear scaling of shields (which is the only key to success if we don't do non-linear scaling on weapons too).

If you can kill the pilot, didn't you effectively kill the ship?
You could destroy all AI modules to disable turrets and push it into a sun to kill it - especially if we enable sun-sector-gravity :D

 

[Astrocat]

50% of a capital to destroy it?! do you know how many blocks that is? If there is a system that destroys a ship based on how many blocks we destroy it will have to scale with size some how. Like 50% of a fighter has to go but you don't need to whittle down a titan that much to kill it.

I'll have to disagree with you Sven. Although 50% of a titan is a massive amount of blocks, it seems like a reasonable threshold. In a titan, I'm supposed to feel resilient, tough, even invincible. I think that a smaller percentage, say 30% is cheating the pilot and crew. I still have 70% percent of a titan undamaged/destroyed. This shouldn't be true for smaller ships however. The smaller the ship, the less you have to destroy. This will give players a feeling of scale.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

I'll have to disagree with you Sven. Although 50% of a titan is a massive amount of blocks, it seems like a reasonable threshold. In a titan, I'm supposed to feel resilient, tough, even invincible. I think that a smaller percentage, say 30% is cheating the pilot and crew. I still have 70% percent of a titan undamaged/destroyed. This shouldn't be true for smaller ships however. The smaller the ship, the less you have to destroy. This will give players a feeling of scale.

I imagine a hybrid system could end up being the best, destroying a block subtracts that blocks HP from the ships total and every impact to the core subtracts certain amount of HP as well or a percentage of the damage based on cores armor. This way there is no set number of blocks that have to be destroyed and we can still have amazing wrecks, where more than 50% of a ship remains. I personally think saving and admiring destroyed ships is one of the greatest aspects of the game. I just love to survey the damage and reimagine the battle by looking at the scars. With nothing but scraps left there would be no point...

Anyway the added resilience to the core would make every fight last longer once the core was exposed, while still making destroying other parts of the ship worthwhile, and it removes the potential issue where you may not be able to target a ship if the core becomes obsolete.

Spoiler

Drifting wrecks would be a thing of the past if you had to remove too much of a ship to destroy it.

 

[Nebulon-B_Frigate_FTW]

I really don't like the idea of abstract health in a game in which we play as the pilot of these ships and they would get killed while being nearly fully functional (even 50% of a titan is probably still able to utterly wreck most ships if someone just reenters the core after it dies...).

 

[jzimmerman4]

I really don't like the idea of abstract health in a game in which we play as the pilot of these ships and they would get killed while being nearly fully functional (even 50% of a titan is probably still able to utterly wreck most ships if someone just reenters the core after it dies...).

If you look at anything in real life, or in sci-fi movies, once a vehicle is partially destroyed it no longer works since every part is essential. Take for example a car, if you remove even one piece of the engine block (or shoot a hole in it) it will not work. This is also seen in movies, where the ship functions on very low power if an essential part, such as the reactor, is destroyed.

 

[Nebulon-B_Frigate_FTW]

If you look at anything in real life, or in sci-fi movies, once a vehicle is partially destroyed it no longer works since every part is essential. Take for example a car, if you remove even one piece of the engine block (or shoot a hole in it) it will not work. This is also seen in movies, where the ship functions on very low power if an essential part, such as the reactor, is destroyed.

As far as I understand it, the hitpoint system would just be based on total number of blocks destroyed. Effectively, you could strip off just the layer of outer hull and not touch a single actual ship system. Equally, you could utterly destroy a large arboretum that's part of the ship but not attached by blocks and kill the ship that way. People aren't going to target particular systems when it doesn't matter. It just means they need to shoot longer at a ship's center of mass to kill it.

 

[jzimmerman4]

As far as I understand it, the hitpoint system would just be based on total number of blocks destroyed. Effectively, you could strip off just the layer of outer hull and not touch a single actual ship system. Equally, you could utterly destroy a large arboretum that's part of the ship but not attached by blocks and kill the ship that way. People aren't going to target particular systems when it doesn't matter. It just means they need to shoot longer at a ship's center of mass to kill it.

Read the OP please and then you will understand. It answers your concerns!

 

[Nebulon-B_Frigate_FTW]

Read the OP please and then you will understand. It answers your concerns!

Oh, right, we're talking about a system in which you need to at least destroy a few ship components. I got completely confused with the upcoming possible hitpoint system and forgot which thread I was in.
It certainly does prevent the problem of just stripping outer hull. However, it also means you can just drill a few cores instead of one core, but this time without even aiming for the controlling player. It also makes disabling systems far too easy in my opinion; I'd rather see systems require multiple controlling blocks that must all be taken out to completely disable the system.

 

[jzimmerman4]

Oh, right, we're talking about a system in which you need to at least destroy a few ship components. I got completely confused with the upcoming possible hitpoint system and forgot which thread I was in.
It certainly does prevent the problem of just stripping outer hull. However, it also means you can just drill a few cores instead of one core, but this time without even aiming for the controlling player. It also makes disabling systems far too easy in my opinion; I'd rather see systems require multiple controlling blocks that must all be taken out to completely disable the system.

But the thing is the cores are only theoretical, meaning they don't actually exist to be destroyed. The idea of having to take out multiple control blocks per system would just be core drilling but with tons of hidden, hard-to-find cores, and most players want to get rid of the whole core drilling tactic all together.

 

[Nebulon-B_Frigate_FTW]

But the thing is the cores are only theoretical, meaning they don't actually exist to be destroyed. The idea of having to take out multiple control blocks per system would just be core drilling but with tons of hidden, hard-to-find cores, and most players want to get rid of the whole core drilling tactic all together.

I think the thing that confused me a few times (in combination with a bit of a lack of sleep) is that the post refers to them as cores multiple times, but the behavior is in fact like a distributed version of the possible upcoming hitpoint system and has nothing to do with the concept of cores.

I don't really like either a core system or an abstracted hitpoint system. Abstracted hitpoints replace depth-drilling to a core with just plain trying to take out as many blocks as possible, letting you kill a ship even when it is still completely functional. Yes, in real life things need most of their pieces, but the game doesn't simulate that and instead shows ship systems as distributed systems (it's super space future universe, after all) where each part can do what the whole can, but adds its own power to the group. I think more specialized blocks in each system would allow for it to make sense by making things less like a distributed system and avoid making it just a game of shooting as many blocks as possible.

 

[Yarp]

Agreed. It would definitely be far more fun to drill to other targets than the ship core.

Still drilling, mind you, because that is roughly what any weapon ultimately does: Break a way in, break things up inside. In this way, a missile, a beam, a pulsar or a mine shoots for the same goal as any AMC array. We'll never leave drilling completely behind.

My only concern, we have to give AI something to aim for, or there will be no criteria for turrets firing at all. Broadening our choice of diamonds seems the most immediately plausible, unless somehow we make it so the AI target something besides navigation targets (and how to control/advise that?). I love the idea of systems and subsystems each having individual percentages until functionality breaks. My only concern is what the AI then aims at? It might be tough on resources to have AI turrets constantly calculating nearest X type block on a moving enemy ship.

Just being able to change navigation to filter all but the weapons computer/s would be awesome. Initial drill complete. Enemy guns are silenced.

If Hyperthrust Coils and Shields get a core block as well (or force players to designate one per system, similar to how outputs can now be designated on weapon groups) then those might be set as targets on nav as well.

The HUD needs another upgrade. Nav needs to be built in with better filtering options. Tabbing ("Y"ing) through targets in bigger battles is somewhat annoying as the current filters either filter way too much or not enough. The current HUD with power and HPs/Shields are a bit oversized for the amount of info they provide, IMO. Two smaller (even vertical) bars in one corner would suffice, giving room for a more informative control panel. The current style HUD is great for a fighter, unwieldy for a giant titan. Perhaps some options?

I would love to see these be some of my options:

See only:
Ship Cores
PowerGen Cores
PowerStore Cores
Shield Cores
Thruster Cores
Weapons Computers
Jamming Cores (Which are intermittently removing all core types from view)
Cloaking Cores

Filters:
3 Check Marks to Toggle Enemy/Ally/Self
Check Mark to Toggle - Show Only Core to Largest Contiguous System (above designated) Per Ship (Ties Allowed)

Then pressing Y to jump between targets fitting my more filtered criteria.

Nav should be how I pick my strategy to win long before the battle even starts. Highlight for me only X bits of enemy ships. Attacking only where I think a weakness lies.

i.e. OK. I'm going for his engines. He has that one little blind spot where I can drill him from all day long if I can once make him immobile. Drill first for the thruster core!

Drilling is much better than a net health bar for a whole ship. Ick. I really want the strategy of hyper-specialized, situational tactics.

We almost need a battle nav completely separate from regular nav. RED ALERT! BATTLE STATIONS!

Making Weapons Computers uniform might help this work. Do we need one computer type for each weapon type? Could the linking process leave unnecessary the current variety somehow?

 

[rece ktore leczo]

Agreed. It would definitely be far more fun to drill to other targets than the ship core.

Still drilling, mind you, because that is roughly what any weapon ultimately does: Break a way in, break things up inside. In this way, a missile, a beam, a pulsar or a mine shoots for the same goal as any AMC array. We'll never leave drilling completely behind.

No, no, You either must have misunderstood. Idea here is to not have physical cores for systems (thus leading to core drilling), but theoretical ones. This means to damage/destroy thruster core players need to destroy 50% of thruster blocks. After it's done theoretical core is destroyed and the ship can't move anymore.


jzimmerman4

Forgot to show support and like Your post

I like the ideas besides ghost blocks, because i think it'd need the servers/clients to store additional unnecessary data as repairing ships via repair blocks/atrotechnician beams/repair docks/nanites could be done using blueprint. Of course i may be wrong, i'm not Schema to be a god of programming.
And to the repair block - i prefer other suggestions like nanites/repair docks. Yours just make atrotechnician beam pretty useless.

 

[jzimmerman4]

No, no, You either must have misunderstood. Idea here is to not have physical cores for systems (thus leading to core drilling), but theoretical ones. This means to damage/destroy thruster core players need to destroy 50% of thruster blocks. After it's done theoretical core is destroyed and the ship can't move anymore.


jzimmerman4

Forgot to show support and like Your post

I like the ideas besides ghost blocks, because i think it'd need the servers/clients to store additional unnecessary data as repairing ships via repair blocks/atrotechnician beams/repair docks/nanites could be done using blueprint. Of course i may be wrong, i'm not Schema to be a god of programming.
And to the repair block - i prefer other suggestions like nanites/repair docks. Yours just make atrotechnician beam pretty useless.

Thank you for clarifying. I tried to make it as obvious as I can in the OP that the cores don't actually exist as a block but apparently I haven't done a well enough job.