Prerelease v0.200.250

[Ithirahad]

This ring will blow up the moment even one of its blocks is hit. And it will do it pretty spectacularly. Because it has no integrity. Good luck eating up to 50k damage in multiple spots around your ring. At current settings you must have at least 2x2 strands for them not to blow up after receiving a scratch.

Stabilizers don't seem to be affected by integrity for some reason.

 

[Zoolimar]

Stabilizers don't seem to be affected by integrity for some reason.

Hmm, so one of the most critical systems on the ship actually could be spread around as a 1x1 line grid ? Ok.

 

[Valiant70]

Hmm, so one of the most critical systems on the ship actually could be spread around as a 1x1 line grid ? Ok.

Yep! Apparently this wasn't supposed to be an issue since you're meant to just have reactors in one end and stabilizers in the other.

 

[Adaxia]

This ring will blow up the moment even one of its blocks is hit. And it will do it pretty spectacularly. Because it has no integrity. Good luck eating up to 50k damage in multiple spots around your ring. At current settings you must have at least 2x2 strands for them not to blow up after receiving a scratch.

Like this. Spaghetti got a little fatter.

Additionally ring designs will have double the dimensions of stick like ships or eat the mass penalty for lesser stabilizer distance. Armouring them too will be pretty costly due to high surface area.

That was just something I whipped together as a proof of concept. Final design would have the integrity to not explode. Also, a single ring already has more stabilizers than needed so you could do much smaller ring segments that are thicker to reduce overall area to cover with armor. Double dimensions also isn't accurate, it would only be double if you placed the ring directly around the reactor itself, if you moved it forward or backwards you could then move it closer to the ship hull. It's also probably safe to say that integrity not effecting stabilizers isn't intended.

 

[Valiant70]

That was just something I whipped together as a proof of concept. Final design would have the integrity to not explode. Also, a single ring already has more stabilizers than needed so you could do much smaller ring segments that are thicker to reduce overall area to cover with armor. Double dimensions also isn't accurate, it would only be double if you placed the ring directly around the reactor itself, if you moved it forward or backwards you could then move it closer to the ship hull. It's also probably safe to say that integrity not effecting stabilizers isn't intended.

Now you're giving me ideas... This has redundancy on its side even though it's technically less efficient than a dumbbell. You could probably get that working well enough for sub-meta PVP.

 

[Matt_Bradock]

How am I supposed to activate the scanner? Charges on left click but does nothing on right click or clicking left again when charged. Tried several setups, like the ore scanner, long range scanner, beefed up level 5 scanner... nothing noticable happened, couldn'T scan a system with long-range, couldn't reveal ores with ore scan and couldn't de-jam (old power/jammer) another ship with the level 5 strength upgrade.

 

[Ithirahad]

Old power/jammer shouldn't work with new power/stealth/recon. Try vs. a level 3 or 4 stealth strength ship with the jamming chamber (activated) in the new system. Also, long-range, ore, and cargo scanners don't appear to do anything at the moment; I just reported that as a bug.

 

[Non]

Scanners, inhibitors, and jump drives are better off not being chambers, them using any reactor capacity is wrong in my opinion.

 

[Valiant70]

Scanners, inhibitors, and jump drives are better off not being chambers, them using any reactor capacity is wrong in my opinion.

The reason they use chamber capacity is for balance. All roles are balanced through chamber capacity, including information warfare and FTL transport.

 

[Non]

The reason they use chamber capacity is for balance. All roles are balanced through chamber capacity, including information warfare and FTL transport.

They are not at all balanced though, I shouldn't have to sacrifice some other chambers so that my jump charge time is half a minute. The whole system is fucked.

 

[Comr4de]

If reactors are manually activated, how do AI use them? Or is it like aux where the first reactor you put down is automatically on?

 

[Ithirahad]

If reactors are manually activated, how do AI use them? Or is it like aux where the first reactor you put down is automatically on?

Reactors don't really toggle off; one of them is always going to be on (except when docked, then they automatically don't do anything and reenable on undocking).

 

[Valiant70]

They are not at all balanced though, I shouldn't have to sacrifice some other chambers so that my jump charge time is half a minute. The whole system is fucked.

FTL sucks. The rest is fine.

 

[Non]

FTL sucks. The rest is fine.

Being able to stay jammed in a fight can prevent enemies from using select fire turrets and decreases over all ai accuracy, requiring me to use half my reactor capacity to make sure that doesn't happen (as opposed to placing an appropriate amount of scanners, for me usually about a 5k mass) breaks the old balance. Now, this update does allow manual turret aim, but doing so restricts a players ability to use a manual cc waffle to shoot down missiles, which is one of the biggest balance factors in large ship vs small ship fights because small ships can use them significantly better than most large ships. So this single decision screw stuff all the way to balance between ship sizes, which is why I don't like it.

Now, I haven't experimented so I can't say for sure, but from looking at the tree, getting to interdiction costs much more than 50% of reactor capacity (assuming that is the only equivalent to a jump inhibitor). That means unless I dedicate my ship to stopping jumps, I can't even stop a basic jump drive, which makes pvp encounters suck cause people will pretty much always be able to jump out, or I can get the interdictor and not be able to compete at a high level. (If I'm misunderstanding this tree, pls tell me and I'll delete this paragraph)

 

[Ithirahad]

Now, I haven't experimented so I can't say for sure, but from looking at the tree, getting to interdiction costs much more than 50% of reactor capacity (assuming that is the only equivalent to a jump inhibitor). That means unless I dedicate my ship to stopping jumps, I can't even stop a basic jump drive, which makes pvp encounters suck cause people will pretty much always be able to jump out, or I can get the interdictor and not be able to compete at a high level. (If I'm misunderstanding this tree, pls tell me and I'll delete this paragraph)

I believe that the assumption going into the future is that PvP encounters will involve fighting over objectives or locations, so if your enemy just jumps out they've effectively lost. Normally retreating should be an option, because there's more at stake than just your ship. In this kind of situation, unless I am missing something - and I most likely am - it seems to make sense to require a specialized ship to actually prevent people from retreating. In the meantime... yes, nonconsensual PvP will suck. :\

 

[Non]

I believe that the assumption going into the future is that PvP encounters will involve fighting over objectives or locations, so if your enemy just jumps out they've effectively lost. Normally retreating should be an option, because there's more at stake than just your ship.

Good reasoning, not a good excuse, its not a problem of winning or losing, its a problem of fun from my side. If the enemy always jumps out as soon as I drop their shields, then I'm not going to be having fun.

 

[Ithirahad]

Then have interdictor beacons ready or something? IDK. Hopefully interdiction can be automated (in this case, on undock from the mothership); we seem to be going in the wrong direction as far as logic/automation interoperability with the chamber system atm.

 

[Non]

I should qualify this and say that jumping out of combat already happens a lot, I think inhibitors stop when power tank hits zero, but priority stuff could stop that. My opinion is that if you go into a combat zone, jumping out is not something you should expect to be able to do.

 

[Valiant70]

If you want ships to stick around and fight, you'll probably have to deploy some sort of jamming drones (assuming Schema makes chambers work with AI) or have another person in a jamming ship.

 

[Non]

If you want ships to stick around and fight, you'll probably have to deploy some sort of jamming drones (assuming Schema makes chambers work with AI) or have another person in a jamming ship.

Thats a stupid thing to have to do that only increases entity count and therefore lag.