Power Reactors + Heat + Weapons = End of Gigantism?

[Comradecolonel]

NeonSturm I was mainly addresing gigantism. As far as your suggestions go, let's see how the power system works out before we start working on systems as a whole.

 

[NeonSturm]

NeonSturm I was mainly addresing gigantism. As far as your suggestions go, let's see how the power system works out before we start working on systems as a whole.

Shine said "systems will become smaller".
You replied to my response to another user (perhaps without knowing the original post, so let me quote it for you)

I think there is a difference between a ship that has

1. 6 turrets which occupy 80% of the visible surface
2. 6 turrets which occupy 20% of the visible surface

Because weapons/hull ratio shifted
​

But I do NOT think it will make a difference like this:

Now we call power heat and calculate it in reverse.
Maybe we should stop building capital ships bigger than a fighter?​

If turrets shift from 80% area size to 20% area size, but have the same damage/reactor-demands, … it doesn't affect gigantism, but only the visual appearance or ship design.
I think there are easy ways to visually enhance turret size without enhancing its mass (or should be there), thus it's a great change.​

 

[DrTarDIS]

Again, Comradecolonel that's not what I meant

I haven't said anything about ship size being 100m or 10km. I speak about turret size vs ship size (a ratio).
And if your cannon does not look big enough, you can slab armour onto it or build fewer bigger turrets instead of many small ones + some fake ones.​

Going to point out here: The actual mechanics of the game kinda force you into certain sizes of turrets and make "more of this sizerange" just plain "better" regardless of "looks":

1. Ai doesn't re-target well at all. Yes mr anti-fighter turret, please keep shooting at the one pirate drone that's now out of your fire arc because of my maneuvering. Also, please ignore the new ship that's currently shooting at you specifically while you're trying to grind through the hull at your feet.
   
2. Below a certain damage threshold, hits are only useful for attacking a "pool" directly. Be that shield-pool to keep it down, or AHP pool to deplete and allow actual penetration, or system-pool to actually start the overheat and/or outage penalties. In theory "bonus system damage" effects and "system damage penalty" makes this viable, but due to poor balance...
   
3. Many mechanics favor actual destruction of blocks. "cutting power lines" "starting aux meltdown" "getting the computer" "destroy the faction module to remove affiliation" Because of this the meta-focus is pushed towards alpha/penetration and destruction over DPS&pool-depletion. Why do 5 million(arbitrary number) damage to a pool, when you can "crit" and bypass it all with any 5k(arbitrary number) spike?

Because of all of the above still being applicable even with the various "could-be" brainstorms I've seen, I think you're intuiting some core ratio in a strange way.
Edit: Here's an unfinished, unbalanced, proof-of-concept turret barrel. Pay attention to the outputs of each weapon group.
A finished version of this would be power-stable, and subtitute the constant explosive effect with an intelligent layout of multiple effects: first one Ion, next EMP, next piercing, next explosive, next punch, etc.
More computers = more "crit-proof", more outputs = more chances to crit
Even then, splitting the turret up into 2 turrets once it's got it's "full rainbow" of appropriate penetration is unarguably "better" to avoid over-penetration and give more chances to lock on to a viable target.

 

[Lecic]

You don't build competitive ships. Trying to get the devs to make your ships competitive for you will never work because you aren't trying and you never will.

All youre doing is ruining the game for competitive builders with a bunch of idiotic suggestions that wont work because you don't understand the mechanics, which is also the reason your ships suck.

I agree with the point here, but uh... you quote the wrong person?

 

[Ghent96]

Again, that's not what I meant

I haven't said anything about ship size being 100m or 10km. I speak about turret size vs ship size (a ratio).
And if your cannon does not look big enough, you can slab armour onto it or build fewer bigger turrets instead of many small ones + some fake ones.​

This should never matter in the game, and... currently... it doesn't matter, which is the correct system. Creative freedom is greater, now, when we can have a tiny turret of a mere 20 or so blocks, or a turret the size of your ship. The possibilities are great, and haven't even begun to be fully explored yet, on the current system. Thus... it is not broken, or limited, and we don't need to throw it all out and try a whole new system so fundamentally different that it essentially makes a whole new game. We just need to rebalance the current system.
[doublepost=1487390040,1487389700][/doublepost]

Going to point out here: The actual mechanics of the game kinda force you into certain sizes of turrets and make "more of this sizerange" just plain "better" regardless of "looks":

1. Ai doesn't re-target well at all. Yes mr anti-fighter turret, please keep shooting at the one pirate drone that's now out of your fire arc because of my maneuvering. Also, please ignore the new ship that's currently shooting at you specifically while you're trying to grind through the hull at your feet...

Try deactivating turret AI, then reactivating. This should force new target acquisition.

Also, the game performs much better on the server side, and client side, when you build fewer & stronger turrets.
[doublepost=1487390124][/doublepost]

Shine said "systems will become smaller".
...​

Systems also become smaller when you rebalance the current game and give buffs to stats per block

 

[Hidden Porpoise]

Everything is volume based and things will never get better because of that. Everyone will always settle on the optimal numbers and then pretend they're clever for that.

 

[Comradecolonel]

NeonSturm I was responding to the OP. Just because I post under you doesn't mean I'm responding directly to you. What you are saying makes no sense. What's stopping me from making turrets take up 80% of my hull? If we keep putting arbitrary limits on things people will continue to find ways around them.

 

[Raisinbat]

I agree with the point here, but uh... you quote the wrong person?

Sorry i'm super shit at formatting posts, i was quoting you in response to neonsturm

New Everything is volume based and things will never get better because of that. Everyone will always settle on the optimal numbers and then pretend they're clever for that.

If it's so easy why is it every cosmetic build is such an abject failure at it? What do you want to replace the mechanic with to make it better, because all i've heard is you just want to remove this so you can build things that look however you want with no liminations, and no, having the mechanics shoved into a black box that has no interaction with the main ship, and is completely unaffected by it, is not any better. Also forcing lots of internal space just turns every ship into a carrier, so good job making life even worse for cosmetic builds.

I haven't said anything about ship size being 100m or 10km. I speak about turret size vs ship size (a ratio).
And if your cannon does not look big enough, you can slab armour onto it or build fewer bigger turrets instead of many small ones + some fake ones.

WHAT PART OF WE DON'T BUILD SHIPS TO LOOK GOOD IS IT YOU CAN'T UNDERSTAND???

We make ships to FUNCTION, piling armor on turrets doesn't make them FUNCTION; it makes them SLOW and INEFFICIENT.

People get on my case for saying the rp/cosmetic community doesn't have a clue what the pvp community wants, but here you are literally demonstrating that you have no fucking idea why we play the game, and you apparently don't give a fuck either, because we've spelt it out over and over again and it just gets ignored along with every single argument we make.

Here's a small turret:

Don't worry if you think this is too large, this one is heavily armored with 3-5 layers on all sides, they can be done much smaller.

It's also 200.000 DPS, because you can do things other than slapping the turrets on top of your hull like cheap accessories. This is an inline turret:

Base goes in the center of the ship and rotates like rolling the ship, then the turret spins around left/right giving omnidirectional turret tracking and a tiny visual turret since only the output blocks need to be exposed.

The PVP community have provided other designs, like spherical turrets that are balls under the hull with a small tip peaking out, also with great tracking and a visually small turret (I cannot find the thread explaining these, sorry) and then there are orbital turrets that float outside the ship:

Although these aren't smaller, there are variants with only the main weapon blocks on the floating part and the slave and effect blocks tucked away inside the hull:

Chronos FTL 180K

So two questions

• Given that it is perfectly possible to build smaller turrets, why do you insist that turrets need to be made smaller / generally limited, simply because you aren't able or willing to use the functional designs?
  
• What do you think happens to these designs when weapons are miniaturized, or total turret damage restricted arbitrarily like this? Do you think having orbital drone turrets with 200k DPS sounds fun? Do you hate creativity since you want to limit what we're able to do just because your particular preconception about how turrets have to be doesn't match your (unreasonable) expectations? What do you think happens to designs like gatling guns that are made to overcome problems with fitting multiple outputs too close to each other when miniaturization eliminates this need?

If you want to have a discussion, address this, or you can keep making the same requests for smaller/fewer turrets over and over because they don't match your build style and everyone else doesn't matter.

 

[Hidden Porpoise]

If it's so easy why is it every cosmetic build is such an abject failure at it? What do you want to replace the mechanic with to make it better, because all i've heard is you just want to remove this so you can build things that look however you want with no liminations, and no, having the mechanics shoved into a black box that has no interaction with the main ship, and is completely unaffected by it, is not any better. Also forcing lots of internal space just turns every ship into a carrier, so good job making life even worse for cosmetic builds.

I don't build cosmetically and that's not what I'm getting at. When you build a gun currently it is exactly the same as a gun twenty times it's size in every way but damage and power use; accuracy, speed of shot, range, and reload rate are all server settings.

 

[NeonSturm]

Given that it is perfectly possible to build smaller turrets, why do you insist that turrets need to be made smaller / generally limited, simply because you aren't able or willing to use the functional designs?

I don't insist on that.​

Stop lying and telling peoples I do.
Read my posts carefully (I also said you can slab some low-weight stuff on them to make them bigger). I am only against turrets which cover all the visible side area of a ship.

Eve-online style turrets are fine - just like medium sized turrets.
Turrets which base takes 30% of the ship volume or which cover 80% visible surface are limiting design choice (and Schema said it's a game of ratios they don't want if I understood it correctly)​

 

[Dr. Whammy]

Ok... Arguments aside, has anyone given thought to how turrets will be "powered/cooled" under the new system? I may have missed something among those 42 pages but the original news thread didn't seem to expand on that.

I have a truckload of ideas for refits but and new construction but I'm reluctant to build anything until they roll out the new system. Then, we have to worry about whether or not they modify shields and engines the same way.
[doublepost=1487460248,1487459953][/doublepost]Also, NeonSturm, you made my orbital defense gun sad... Its mass is roughly 20% ship and 80% gun.

 

[NeonSturm]

Also, NeonSturm, you made my orbital defense gun sad... Its mass is roughly 20% ship and 80% gun.

It's a station meant to be a gun - nothing against it.
If systems become smaller, you can just

A: Slab a bigger reactor on it
B: Slab more amour on it
C: build some maintenance access for your systems​

 

[general mayhem]

There are two possibilities in my mind:
1) Ships are downsized and everything becomes a longer battle, and more ships are needed to be able to take out pirate stations, as well as other player built ships and stations.
or
2) it leads to a new class of ships, let's call them super-gigantes. These have the same armaments as before, but are much bigger to provide space for the cooling chambers. They would also have a larger area for turrets, cause more lag, and in general be superior to anything most people can field. However, they would be the same as before, only now they are way more OP, as ships would either have to go extremely large for not that much power, or be smaller, which would mean that less people can defeat them.

IMO, the heating systems would cause ships to grow exponentially larger, which although it would make fewer giants or titans, it would also mean that the battles would belong to those who could field such ships, which would mean that it would favour the rich much more than it does now.

I don't want to sound like I'm arguing against the new heating system, because I think it would be a good idea, but this does seem like that is what would happen

Also, can we call ships that need massive cooling arrays super-gigantes?