Brainstorm This Option to have AI shoot a specific block type.

[AtraUnam]

Its a very simple suggestion, allow players to select a specific block type for a turret to target as an additional AI setting, this shouldn't be too much trouble to add seeing as AI already have the ability to target systems. On the outset it seems like a frivilous feature but within just a few minutes I realised that so many cool thing could be done with it:

• Set turrets to target weaker armor types when fighting ships with 'all or nothing' armoring.
• Use a turret as a compass to find a specific ore by telling it to target that ore.
• Allow specialisation of turrets, such as having high penetration turrets built specifically to sever power lines.
• Target rails to detatch enemy turrets (might be a little OP so maybe thats not an option)
• Use turrets as crazy rail joints such as in the following example:
  I tell all three turret joints of my mech's right arm to target yholes. I then have a single turret in the head that has a yhole placed about 100m in front of the core. I now have a sword that I can swing around using mouse control.
  This could also be used as way to slave multiple turrets too a single master turret.
• A particularly tyranical faction could setup turrets to target jump-drive blocks, thus forcing everyone too use their tolled jump gates. (Or you could just decide your faction is racist against tekt or something)
• Anti-Warhead PD could become a thing should it ever be needed.

These ideas are all from just a few minutes of brainstorming. I really think that this feature could add a lot to the game with relatively little effort. Please let me know what you think and if come up with your own uses for such a system please write them down in a comment.

Edit1:
As has been pointed out this could be fairly overpowered in regards to targeting rails and computers, thus I would like to ammend that computers and rails would not be on the list of targetable blocks.

 

[CyberTao]

I like the idea of being able to target systems like Jumpdrive, but it might be a bit broken to design a super punching cannon that snipes out power systems early in a fight. I mean, why would you want to target anything but the lifeblood of a ship?

 

[terra mining corp.]

gee they can't even make ai smart enough to land in a hanger without spazzing out,how they going to do this?

 

[SkylordLuke]

hmm,this would be sooo broken,the magic of shipbuilding and fights,is that YOU DONT KNOW how the other player built his ship,you DONT KNOW what weapons is he using and how that weapon is placed inside the ship. Seems broken right out of the gate.
Maybe Lecic can provide me with a new perspective on this,but for now it just looks broken to me

its a very interesting idea tho,and more bobby AI options would be more than welcomed!
soo maybe,maybe only if that specific block is already exposed,so you already know where that is,but other than that..

 

[AtraUnam]

gee they can't even make ai smart enough to land in a hanger without spazzing out,how they going to do this?

AI already has the ability to target specific blocks. It used to target the core but now it picks a random system and targets its blocks.

 

[Megacrafter127]

Its a very simple suggestion, allow players to select a specific block type for a turret to target as an additional AI setting, this shouldn't be too much trouble to add seeing as AI already have the ability to target systems. On the outset it seems like a frivilous feature but within just a few minutes I realised that so many cool thing could be done with it:

• Set turrets to target weaker armor types when fighting ships with 'all or nothing' armoring.
• Use a turret as a compass to find a specific ore by telling it to target that ore.
• Allow specialisation of turrets, such as having high penetration turrets built specifically to sever power lines.
• Target rails to detatch enemy turrets (might be a little OP so maybe thats not an option)
• Use turrets as crazy rail joints such as in the following example:
  I tell all three turret joints of my mech's right arm to target yholes. I then have a single turret in the head that has a yhole placed about 100m in front of the core. I now have a sword that I can swing around using mouse control.
  This could also be used as way to slave multiple turrets too a single master turret.
• A particularly tyranical faction could setup turrets to target jump-drive blocks, thus forcing everyone too use their tolled jump gates. (Or you could just decide your faction is racist against tekt or something)
• Anti-Warhead PD could become a thing should it ever be needed.

These ideas are all from just a few minutes of brainstorming. I really think that this feature could add a lot to the game with relatively little effort. Please let me know what you think and if come up with your own uses for such a system please write them down in a comment.

A priority list would be better here. when no block of said type is within range, the AI shouldn't just sit there, but instead act as if it wasn't supposed to target a specific block.

 

[Lecic]

My first thought is setting a certain high-pen, high-velocity cannon to specifically target rail blocks and computers, allowing for a hilariously easy kill of an enemy once their shields are down. Even worse, imagine if we ever got, say, an explosive fuel replacement for docked reactors.

I don't think I need to elaborate further on why this would be overpowered.

EDIT- I would, however, still like something like this for mining only purposes.

 

[AtraUnam]

My first thought is setting a certain high-pen, high-velocity cannon to specifically target rail blocks and computers, allowing for a hilariously easy kill of an enemy once their shields are down. Even worse, imagine if we ever got, say, an explosive fuel replacement for docked reactors.

I don't think I need to elaborate further on why this would be overpowered.

EDIT- I would, however, still like something like this for mining only purposes.

We could simply exclude rail blocks and computers from the list of targetable blocks.

 

[Lecic]

We could simply exclude rail blocks from the list of targetable blocks.

Eh, I don't know. It still sounds kind of OP to me, and it takes away from the need for espionage. Why bother spying on your enemy to figure out where their power lines are when you can just have magic AI eyes that can see it and blow it up? Plus, you could have AI that would know where the weapons are, targeting them and shredding them, turning their power efficiency to zilch and effectively making them EMP themselves whenever they fire.

 

[AtraUnam]

Eh, I don't know. It still sounds kind of OP to me, and it takes away from the need for espionage. Why bother spying on your enemy to figure out where their power lines are when you can just have magic AI eyes that can see it and blow it up? Plus, you could have AI that would know where the weapons are, targeting them and shredding them, turning their power efficiency to zilch and effectively making them EMP themselves whenever they fire.

I think theres this thing called armoring your power lines. and ship in general. The problems you mentioned also come about when people shoot you with regular weapons. Besides with a new targeting system comes new counters. I could spread my systems out, I could put a large number of single system blocks in thick armor cubes so the turrets are more likely to target those groups and waste firepower grinding through armor.

 

[Lecic]

I think theres this thing called armoring your power lines. and ship in general.

Atra, you and I both know that that isn't going to do jack-shit to the kinds of weapons that get built, and the kinds of weapons that will always be possible. The whole DOWNSIDE to high-pen weapons is that they don't actually do that much system damage, in exchange for the fact that they can do some damage to almost any armor thickness. By making these weapons able to target critical systems like power lines, you take away their primary downside- their inability to easily cripple a ship on their own.

The problems you mentioned also come about when people shoot you with regular weapons.

To a lesser extent. It requires an educated guess ("most people probably put their thrusters in the back and their power lines near the center") or espionage to actually know what on the enemy you're tearing up. AI don't need any of that. They know exactly where.

I could spread my systems out, I could put a large number of single system blocks in thick armor cubes so the turrets are more likely to target those groups and waste firepower grinding through armor.

There are already reasons to do this with AI's random targetting, and because it increases the durability of your vessel.

Another thing with this idea is that it reduces the need for EMP and JDI. Who needs EMP when you can just have your turrets permanently reduce their power regen or capacity and do SHP damage at the same time? Who needs a massive JDI when you can just tell your comparatively tiny Cannon/Beam to target their JD, constantly resetting their charge to zero, and have a tiny JDI to kill any emergency drives they might have?

 

[AtraUnam]

Atra, you and I both know that that isn't going to do jack-shit to the kinds of weapons that get built, and the kinds of weapons that will always be possible. The whole DOWNSIDE to high-pen weapons is that they don't actually do that much system damage, in exchange for the fact that they can do some damage to almost any armor thickness. By making these weapons able to target critical systems like power lines, you take away their primary downside- their inability to easily cripple a ship on their own.



To a lesser extent. It requires an educated guess ("most people probably put their thrusters in the back and their power lines near the center") or espionage to actually know what on the enemy you're tearing up. AI don't need any of that. They know exactly where.



There are already reasons to do this with AI's random targetting, and because it increases the durability of your vessel.

Another thing with this idea is that it reduces the need for EMP and JDI. Who needs EMP when you can just have your turrets permanently reduce their power regen or capacity and do SHP damage at the same time? Who needs a massive JDI when you can just tell your comparatively tiny Cannon/Beam to target their JD, constantly resetting their charge to zero, and have a tiny JDI to kill any emergency drives they might have?

Those are... all fair points actually; the only part I can really fault you on is "that isn't going to do jack-shit to the kinds of weapons that get built" which can be applied to literally any kind of defense as a justifcation for weapons being OP.

Threads closed everybody.

 

[Lecic]

the only part I can really fault you on is "that isn't going to do jack-shit to the kinds of weapons that get built" which can be applied to literally any kind of defense as a justifcation for weapons being OP.

Yeah, that's true.

 

[Madman198237]

Well, I'd say that this is a good point to shamelessly advertise another suggestion that I developed...except I know that if you've not read it yet, you won't, because there's pages of discussion on it.

The basic premise of that suggestion, or rather the relevant part, is that scanning systems should be able, at a certain level of strength, be capable of gaining this information about a ship. In short, the better your scanner, the better picture you have of your enemies' capabilities and weaknesses.

 

[Lukwan]

A cool idea but exploitable and OP.

I have not read Madman's scanner idea but I prefer that approach. If a successful scan only painted a holographic target indicator on the HUD it would still require skill to aim at the critical systems. As an example this would be less OP.

 

[nightrune]

Why not have scanners highlight systems with no label. Then it's still trial and error to find the "right" system, but the other ship can do it to you as well.

I'm thinking largish colored areas highlighting high concentrations of a specific system for a brief time.

 

[Madman198237]

Well, nightrune, that'd be one of the lower levels of scanner power. So, if you have a 50-block scanning array, say, you can gain the information that there is a lot of energy (In the form of electromagnetic emissions, which my suggestions are based around) focused in this or that general area (Utterly useless on a fighter, obviously). Later levels will reveal more and more detailed concentrations of energy, until you get ID's on particular block groups. You can't see a faction block (Unless you've got one heck of a scanning array) but you can see the power lines running the length of the ship (EM emissions from the generating process) and you can see the power capacitors, weapons groups, thrusters are very obvious, etc.

That suggestion also revamps jamming, so a jammer works like a jammer (Constantly on and destroying enemy scanning capabilities) as opposed to a stealth fighter (Which is basically what the jammer does now---completely visible ship, invisible to radar/scanner).