Ongoing Dev Build Changes

[MacThule]

So... any thoughts on the new target lead reticle, by the way? Super handy, IMO. Works pretty well for landing cannon shots on moving targets at range.

Also, I like that stars now get a hot red GUI marker showing their distance and a warning now when you get close. That's a long-overdue improvement; I'm not even sure how long that's been there because I typically give stars a fairly wide berth.

Anyone else notice a weird effect near planets where sometimes everything (everything) turns red?

What else is new?

 

[CockADoodleDoo]

Missile ammo changes are very appreciated.

• Missile reload has a countdown after the last missile fired
• Countdown time increases with missile capacity
• Countdown resets every time a missile is fired
• Once countdown is complete, all missiles are reloaded.

B/B is now a charge type weapon.
C/M charges faster but has less maximum strength
Cannon impact push strength needs to be decreased significantly
AI will now close to their SHORTEST RANGED WEAPON - this is a very big change. Previously you would need to only mount one weapon type or weapon types with similar ranges to drone ships.
Missile HP is in and works well enough.
PD turrets are far more accurate at incoming targets, still struggle against missiles locked on other targets
Is it me or is energy cost to charge jump increased? Might just be me.
Finally UI changes look really smooth. Well done kupu

 

[MacThule]

I was feeling like the UI was particularly sharp. Good note.

 

[Nebulon-B_Frigate_FTW]

Missile ammo changes are very appreciated.

• Missile reload has a countdown after the last missile fired
• Countdown time increases with missile capacity
• Countdown resets every time a missile is fired
• Once countdown is complete, all missiles are reloaded.

B/B is now a charge type weapon.
C/M charges faster but has less maximum strength
Cannon impact push strength needs to be decreased significantly
AI will now close to their SHORTEST RANGED WEAPON - this is a very big change. Previously you would need to only mount one weapon type or weapon types with similar ranges to drone ships.
Missile HP is in and works well enough.
PD turrets are far more accurate at incoming targets, still struggle against missiles locked on other targets
Is it me or is energy cost to charge jump increased? Might just be me.
Finally UI changes look really smooth. Well done kupu

Now if the capacity blocks just count for more on smaller missile groups, we can have SotS dumbfire racks.

 

[Jeryia]

AI will now close to their SHORTEST RANGED WEAPON - this is a very big change. Previously you would need to only mount one weapon type or weapon types with similar ranges to drone ships.

This I am more excited about than any other change for the weapon update. The most obvious being the viability of different weapon types on a ai controlled ship. This also allows me to fine tune engagement ranges for ai controlled craft. Do I want them to fire their cannons at point blank range (because they can't seem to hit the thing at max cannon range)? Just add a beam module (even if not enough to do any damage), and see the ships fire at half max cannon range.

 

[jstenholt]

These changes sound dope as hell. I haven't played Dev for about two weeks because it was not playing nicely with my PC, but any other noteworthy changes?

 

[Tamren Shade]

How many weapon blocks to point defense turrets seem to need now? I started a new build, and knowing how big PDC are going to need to be in the future will be handy.

I'm assuming with missile now having hps my standard 2 cannon- 2 cannon twin barreled little point defense turret is going to be underpowered.

 

[Zoolimar]

Missile HP seems to be something like = 10*Blocks^1/2

So around 500 - 1000 HP for a missile with 1 million damage depending on what combination is used.

 

[CockADoodleDoo]

And they were doing so well.

Weapons ranges:
b/b, b/c - 10km
b/m - 2km
everything else - 20km

I sincerely hope these are not the final values for weapon ranges.

Additionally, b/b has a 2.5 second charge up time and loses shields while charging. Unlike C/M will not fire when charge is complete.

 

[Nebulon-B_Frigate_FTW]

Target lead reticule is very, very good. However, sector boundaries still screw things up, a ship rotating on the edge of sectors will end up occasionally taking hull damage through shields from a tiny attacker etc.
Relatedly, shields I feel are a bit too regen focused now. My test targets went from 495k shields to 125k, but now my small attack vessels can't whittle the shields down at all.
Oh, and beams are crazy, equal-size ships can just take each other out with them in a few shots, the same can't be said of other weapons.

Also, cannon turrets seem to be bugged for the last many dev versions. Their projectiles are slow as molasses.

 

[MacThule]

Shields are definitely drifting back to regen focus. This may be inevitable - I don't have a firm position on it, but I think about space strategy games like Distant Worlds where shield regeneration is also far more important than shield capacity. It's very possible that any form of hitpoints that can regenerate very quickly, as shields do compared to armor for example, that mathematically regeneration is simply mathematically always going to be the central issue of a shield.

Because you if you have a shield capacity of 10m and functional regen of 100k (for a clean example, ignoring under fire mods), within a minute facing a powerful foe your shields can protect you from 16m damage total. That's it. So it's only common sense to up the regen even at the cost of capacity, because even with a lower cap of 2m, if you have a 500k regen your shields will protect you from 32m damage over that first minute.

So the existence of rapid regen at all may always dictate prioritizing regen over capacity. We can imagine a dozen ways to gerrymander the issue and force capacity to be more or equally important, but... why? At a certain point I think we need to be ok with the fact that certain kinds of systems will always have optimum configurations.