Pretty but effective turrets. Discussion of a solution.

[Sachys]

I imagine warheads would be a critical component of ammo, but if warheads are ammo, then you are back to relying on the size of the weapon output to determine ammo power, which defeats the purpose of making small barrel weapons.

I'm purely suggesting on a base level. Next level up could be warhead + thrusters in an advanced factory (for instance). Next level above that perhaps warhead + thruster + explosive module (or insert other effect).
warheads and thrusters may be cheap to produce, but considering cannon / cannon fire rate, you would need rather a lot of the produced ammo to last any time. Warheads mass could even be changed to reflect it (whichever way works best for everybody).
As i said though - just a basic suggestion of ammo, though it would give warheads greater purpose / more purposes in game, and perhaps even provide newer players with a route to making money in player economy on servers.

 

[Endal]

Why do small groups of weapons not do enough damage?
Well, it is very simple. Scale.

You see, weapon statistics (Damage, power consumption, etc etc) are all calculated linearly. If you adjusted the statistics to make a realistically sized weapon do realistic damage, you are going to end up buffing the larger majority of much-less "realistically" sized ships, and worst-case-scenario the explicit system-vomit ships. The main reason why adding more weapon blocks are viable in this game is because there are no factors to consider that would outright slam the door in our face like Real-Life, examples being economics, manpower and square-cube law with respect to weapons, etc. As such "Lumping" and efficiency-driven designs are inevitable since it provides a distinct advantage.
The reason why turrets were invented is because they allowed one to direct fire in a wide range without having to do impractical/time-consuming movement. This is important on a small world like Earth because engagement ranges usually warrant something faster than turning the whole ship around.
However, in space, this advantage is less so because engagement ranges are much larger, and due to the nature of circles, having a puny turret cover a ridiculous area of fire is so much less viable than having a slow, ship/very limited traverse turret which can still cover a decent area and yet have much greater firepower. The issue is not of the numbers or implementation, it is of the concept itself.

Adding new blocks that do more absolute damage than the current blocks will only make them the new meta, since the raw idea of a battle is doing as much damage as possible without taking damage to self; nothing else is more important in this game. If you try and compensate by raising power consumption, it'll only make bigger ships the new meta, too. Compensating with ammunition cost will also not stop anyone, and honestly ammunition should be implemented anyway for the current cannons/missiles (as well as overheating mechanics to make C/C more... intuitive.)

 

[Ithirahad]

Go into your block config, alter the numbers, find something that works better, show the results.
Everything in this thread passes the buck((kicks the can, etc), when YOU HAVE THE TOOLS to playtest and come up with better balance yourself. Get off your ass and find that better setting, THEN complain about defaults.
Less QQ, moar pew-pew.

It's kind of hard to figure out an ideal balance all on your own, honestly. An initially solid balance may reveal itself as full of holes under group testing, and besides, few people would be willing to rebuild large ships repeatedly just to test a config.

Why do small groups of weapons not do enough damage?
Well, it is very simple. Scale.

You see, weapon statistics (Damage, power consumption, etc etc) are all calculated linearly. If you adjusted the statistics to make a realistically sized weapon do realistic damage, you are going to end up buffing the larger majority of much-less "realistically" sized ships, and worst-case-scenario the explicit system-vomit ships. The main reason why adding more weapon blocks are viable in this game is because there are no factors to consider that would outright slam the door in our face like Real-Life, examples being economics, manpower and square-cube law with respect to weapons, etc. As such "Lumping" and efficiency-driven designs are inevitable since it provides a distinct advantage.
The reason why turrets were invented is because they allowed one to direct fire in a wide range without having to do impractical/time-consuming movement. This is important on a small world like Earth because engagement ranges usually warrant something faster than turning the whole ship around.
However, in space, this advantage is less so because engagement ranges are much larger, and due to the nature of circles, having a puny turret cover a ridiculous area of fire is so much less viable than having a slow, ship/very limited traverse turret which can still cover a decent area and yet have much greater firepower. The issue is not of the numbers or implementation, it is of the concept itself.

Adding new blocks that do more absolute damage than the current blocks will only make them the new meta, since the raw idea of a battle is doing as much damage as possible without taking damage to self; nothing else is more important in this game. If you try and compensate by raising power consumption, it'll only make bigger ships the new meta, too. Compensating with ammunition cost will also not stop anyone, and honestly ammunition should be implemented anyway for the current cannons/missiles (as well as overheating mechanics to make C/C more... intuitive.)

What if you kept power consumption per block the same, made base damage per block higher, and made scaling per block slower?

 

[Spoolooni]

Hello OP, If I could make a humble suggestion in the near future of your postings.

You could avoid statements like, "my RP ships sucks" at the end of poll options because some of us genuinely believe that the weapon blocks are weak without considering RP ships at all, you don't want to obligate people to support certain other opinions while they choose an option. It's just one of my annoyances with polls these days is that they insinuate too much or they antagonize or glorify too much.

 

[madman Captain]

What if you kept power consumption per block the same, made base damage per block higher, and made scaling per block slower?

To make it useful going on multibarrel turrets (multiple turrets),hmm... Yes I like the Idea. Maybe we extend this concept with a softcap for the damage scaling (especially for Rapid fire).

But is isn't that easy.
There are many things that need to be changed/implemented to become a good feeling balance, mostly based about: For Ships: What is it and how react it agains another one.

 

[TheGeek007]

To make it useful going on multibarrel turrets (multiple turrets),hmm... Yes I like the Idea. Maybe we extend this concept with a softcap for the damage scaling (especially for Rapid fire).

But is isn't that easy.
There are many things that need to be changed/implemented to become a good feeling balance, mostly based about: For Ships: What is it and how react it agains another one.

The idea was to give the option for people to use larger amounts of power per block, without changing the meta of damage per power (which is constant in every weapon combination so far). Obvious downsides like slower projectile speed and range would keep the weapon from being the only weapon worth using. Lowering ranges also fixes an issue with MP servers having redonkulous sector sizes and not adjusting weapons ranges to compensate. AI ships "drift" to the edge of the firing range of their longest range weapon, even if they are equipped with other weapons. This means that fighters don't have a prayer of hitting other fighters using normal weapons. If we could decrease the range, fighters would fly in closer and have a better chance of hitting. Granted, the AI could be fixed to specify maximum engage range, but that's not coming for awhile.

So in short, I'd like the option of using more power in a weapon system, with drawbacks, to have more powerful turrets or smaller weapons systems on RP ships.

 

[Cluwne]

So in short, I'd like the option of using more power in a weapon system, with drawbacks, to have more powerful turrets or smaller weapons systems on RP ships.

It's funny how people suggest RP ships using more power to boost weapon systems when said ships are often barely able to power their current armaments. If it's not one thing...
More and more it all looks like a systemic problem with the overall game balance.
Or maybe the whole design, since RP ships will suck no matter how much you nerf everything.

 

[Panpiper]

It's funny how people suggest RP ships using more power to boost weapon systems when said ships are often barely able to power their current armaments. If it's not one thing...
More and more it all looks like a systemic problem with the overall game balance.
Or maybe the whole design, since RP ships will suck no matter how much you nerf everything.

There is no excuse for RP ships being power deficient (or combat deficient for that matter). Building proper power lines does NOT take a lot of modules and for the most part it occupies a single one block plane for most of the ship. If RP ships are power deficient, it is solely because their builders either were completely clueless as to how to build ships, or simply didn't care to build it to be combat effective.

It really is not hard to build a combat efficient RP ship. Block out the RP space, then build a combat efficient construction around it. Then decorate the exterior and fill out the RP space you blocked out. Give it a few layers of spaced advanced armor on the front and make sure it is using full pierce and punch protection to optimally capitalize on all that extra hull from the RP space. Done. The notion that an RP ship must be mostly hollow spaces is absolutely false. If any given RP ship cannot fight, it is solely the fault of the builder.

Check out Drakkart's DSY Inc. Type-D Scimitar. You will not find a more RP friendly ship. It's got RP features most RP ships lack. Yet it is so combat efficient it can enter pure PvP combat competitions and place!

There is no problem with game balance. There is a problem with the learning curve of players understanding how to make ships that are combat worthy. Nerfing stuff will change nothing, it will not fix players being lazy or incompetent. Buffing weapons to make small turrets more powerful will change nothing, it will simply make large turrets even more powerful, which will require buffing defenses, whereupon we are exactly where we are now, except for hull now being less useful because of the stronger weapons and therefor combat inefficient RP ships are even more at a loss.

I can build ships with turrets measuring only 23 blocks in diameter that fire 40K per second, doing 4K damage per hit, ten times a second, and I can power those weapons easily. (That's using cannon/cannon/punch obviously, which are great close in weapons. For longer ranged weapons, I'll use self powered turrets using cannon/beam/punch, which can be quite a bit smaller than this if desired and still be effective, however I will put them in ball turrets with diameter of ~23 blocks or more, to be more efficient with my use of precious hull surface real estate. I'll also often include missile/beam weapons, which I will power from the ship's core using aux reactors and capacitors. These too require little space in the turrets.) The only downside to adding RP space on such a ship would be a larger ship profile due to the RP space volume, and a somewhat lower thrust to mass ratio.

RP ships have no excuse to suck other than their builder's preconceived notion that all their space needs to be hollow in order to be true RP ships. This is nonsense. An RP ship needs to have adequate space for it's bridge, crew quarters, facilities such as kitchens, washrooms, recreation, medical bay, a hangar maybe, etc.. Those things do NOT have to take up every ounce of potential space. They are largely fixed size items that a combat effective ship can be built around. Effective turrets do NOT have to be huge. There is a minimum effective size for heavy offensive turrets, which is around 23 blocks in diameter if building ball turrets. (Learn to build ball turrets!) Taking on titans with those turrets is more than feasible, you just want plenty of them. Making them larger is NOT necessary in order to defeat large ships. Numerous works just fine.

 

[Az14el]

Effective SM turrets are large, simply put, the atom of our universe effectively being 1m^3 is a thing, and space/spaceships being huge.

Building turrets weapon systems with 1.5m e/s or 2m e/s is a good idea on larger ships or just for a strong main turret in general, the base ideally supplying ALL the power required for this. This is efficient because each entity has it's own soft cap for power generation, you save blocks overall by spending a little extra to give adequate power your turrets, and so do more damage for your weight than just loading it all on the mothership. Super small turrets like AMS might not really need this, but anything you plan to do actual block damage or decent dps with AND make it look pretty by covering it in hull could use it.

Rapid firing cannons or beams on select target mode, and lock on missiles on either select target or any target mode are imo the best candidates, AI just shreds with these weapons & a good range of movement. Remember to reach a decent damage per hit before adding more outputs, especially with missiles, even with piercing effect they have trouble doing decent block damage to a standard armor-strong systems-weak systems layering at under 100k per missile, which will cost you 500k power. 250-2k for a punch cannon output, 5-10k for an explosive cannon output & some obnoxiously high number per tick for beams (5-10k for punch but don't quote me there) all good marks depending on the space you have, Punch can have its uses for extremely powerful single outputs for its armor HP shredding ability, and Ion/EMP obviously being better off with as large of a single or few outputs as possible.

tl;dr - More dakka, more power, more bigger, less expectations

 

[Ithirahad]

Check out Drakkart's DSY Inc. Type-D Scimitar. You will not find a more RP friendly ship. It's got RP features most RP ships lack. Yet it is so combat efficient it can enter pure PvP combat competitions and place!

WEW, those are some huge turrets. It'd be nice if we could make turrets that are effective but not half the size of the shi... oh, that's what this topic is about! :D

 

[Panpiper]

WEW, those are some huge turrets. It'd be nice if we could make turrets that are effective but not half the size of the shi... oh, that's what this topic is about! :D

We CAN make turrets that are effective and not "half the size of the ship". I find it ludicrously easy to build such turrets. I think at the root of this discussion is not a desire to make small turrets more effective, but to make large turrets somehow 'in'effective, all to satisfy the aesthetic bias of a minority.

A mere 100 modules of cannon/beam/punch will break any advanced armor, even if it has full AHP and full defensive pierce, the block is gone. Make it 150 modules and it will do serious system damage after breaking through that armor. If it hits anything less than full AHP, full pierce hardened, 'advanced' armor, it will make a very deep hole indeed.

Using ball turrets I can make weapons that are VASTLY more devastating than this with 4000 modules or more, and take up FAR less deck space than most of the offensive turrets people post in Community Content. If you boost weapon damage, you will not make any of my turrets smaller, they are small enough already, they will just wind up doing a lot more damage. Once you have a weapon that can break such heavy armor, making it larger is a choice, not a necessity.

The giant turrets you see in tournament PvP play are the result of people wanting to make sure that all their firepower can bear all the time, so they put it all into a single omni-bearing turret. Plus those ships are sufficiently small that they can maneuver that sole turret to face even if it isn't omni-directional. This has nothing to do with them 'needing' to do so because weapons are insufficiently powerful. If weapons were ten times more powerful, they would still do exactly the same thing, they would put them all into a single turret.

Having weapons be more powerful would actually make ship design far less interesting, as it would simply be all about who could cram the most power into the smallest space so as to power the overpowered, tiny turrets. Introducing a nerf for large systems would simply mean we would cram more small systems into the same space. Deck space is a limited commodity and bigger turrets make better use of it. Nothing would change.

I find the game to be excellently balanced right now, with the sole exception of turn mode for medium sized ships being too slow and armor too heavy (in my opinion). People need to stop expecting their 100 meter hollow RP ship with purely decorative tiny turrets to be able to somehow damage, let alone blow up properly built battleships. If you want to fight battleships, build a battleship, and battleships have big guns. If you just want a combat capable ship for any size, learn to build proper power systems, learn to build ball turrets and don't make your ship 80% hollow space.

 

[kulbolen]

as ships get larger, effective turrets get smaller relative. if you want pretty and effective turrets, build bigger ships. the missouris turrets are bigger than its tugboats, and theyre not unrealistic...theyre real. oversized seems subjective.

 

[madman Captain]

I find the game to be excellently balanced right now, with the sole exception of turn mode for medium sized ships being too slow and armor too heavy (in my opinion).

Ahhmmm... No.
When weapons are balanced then tell me ARE THEY ALL EQUALLY USEFUL? And I mean ALL 16 Weapon systems.
Please tell me where are the pros and cons of all this weapons. Dont show me the weapon chart, dont tell me numbers or statisics.
Tell me, are they ALL useful in combat?

Another thing the flightmodel of small, medium and large ships is shit. Small ships feeling to clunky, medium and large ships are to agile compared to its size.

A little help for understanding how I wish to see the game later:
Play PvP orientated Spaceship games like: Fractured Space and Dreadnought (possible actualy in closed beta).
Also Space Sim games like: X3, Freelancer, Starpoint Gemini 2.
And some RTS games like: Star Wars EaW and Sins of a Solar Empire.
Swirl it and infuse it in Starmade.

 

[Panpiper]

Ahhmmm... No.
When weapons are balanced then tell me ARE THEY ALL EQUALLY USEFUL? And I mean ALL 16 Weapon systems.
Please tell me where are the pros and cons of all this weapons. Dont show me the weapon chart, dont tell me numbers or statisics.
Tell me, are they ALL useful in combat?

I am not going to spend two hours of my life writing details that in all probability you will give but a cursory glance to and then dismiss because it does not confirm your bias. Yes, the weapons are far more balanced than you think, they all have their use in the proper context, and yes, even things like Pulse weapons are more useful than you think.

Spoiler

My battleminer after an encounter with a ship armed with a primary pulse weapon.

Another thing the flightmodel of small, medium and large ships is shit. Small ships feeling to clunky, medium and large ships are to agile compared to its size.

I could not possibly disagree with you more. Small ships are marvelously agile compared to larger ones. Medium to large ships are not flying through space but rather wet concrete. Leave titans the lumbering beasts they are as a further inducement to combat size creep, but anything between 10K and 100K mass needs at the least a buff to their turn rate.

 

[madman Captain]

My battleminer after an encounter with a ship armed with a primary pulse weapon.

And? How large was this ship? How large was its weapon array? How it has engage you? Did you shoot back? Was it possible to avoid the damage by doging/retrating? How many damage did he take in the battle? Was it a fair battle (Did everyone know about what the other can do)?
Witch one of you opend the battle? Was it possible to destroy his weapon first before he can ramm you?
Is it possible that a turret based ship cant complain against a ship with concentrate its firepower in a weaponsystem installt directly on the ship?
Was it a fully optimised Battleship ore a Hybrid like yours?
Was it possible that another weaponsystem can do this damage faster(rapid fire) or saver (AMS overhelming Missile barrages)?

Balancing has many details to be looking at.

Tell me how serious is this screenshot?

 

[Gmodism]

If a new more powerful weapon system was introduced no one would use the old ones.... Better to make the current ones stronger and introduce some more effects.

 

[madman Captain]

If a new more powerful weapon system was introduced no one would use the old ones.... Better to make the current ones stronger and introduce some more effects.

Not only stronger but more unique. Give the weapons more clearly purposes. For example:
Rapid fire(C+C) for AMS, short range anti fighter.
Missiles (M+B) for long range anti fighter.
Cannons (C) and Beams (B) for medium ranged fights against mediun sized ships (Corvettes, light Frigates).
Sniper Cannon (C+B) and Sniper Beams (B+B) for extreme long ranged fights against medium and large ships.
Siege Beams (B+P) for medium ranged fights against large and titan sized ships.
Artillery Cannon (C+P) for long ranged fights against large and titan sized ships.
Torpedos (M+P) for medium ranged fights against medium to titan sized ships.

Shotgun weapons need a full rework. To weak for that what they are, and the spread is to large (seriously we are in space even short distances are large), not enough pellets.

Pulses are unique in what they do, they just need better game performances, AI improvements, less laggy colision detectsystem.

ALL weapons need some kind of Damage falloff to give them an max range and opimum range.

Seriously all weapons (exept missiles) has the same DPS per Block! And what you take when all weapons have the same DPS?
Right! You take that one that have the highest range or lowest infrastructure cost for short: Maschine Guns and Snipers.

So the only real difference betwen weapons are reload times and range.
No signifficant differences in: accuracy, bullet traveltime, damage.

I cant understand how people like this.


Here a nice looking Turret. But based on its dimensions only a low damage output. And than say some people that it never should
be possible to make this turret so powerful as they look. Sorry I'm a creative guy, and I also want performance AS part of my design.

REMEMBER Starmade is a creative game not a PvP shooter.

 

[TheGeek007]

I suppose bringing in RP ships was a bit of a red herring. I simply want a way (other than overdrive) of using fewer blocks but more power per block, with reasonable downsides (decreased power efficiency, decreased range, decreased projectile speed, etc), to make powerful but reasonably small turrets. I simply would like that option.

 

[DrTarDIS]

No signifficant differences in: accuracy, bullet traveltime, damage.
...

REMEMBER Starmade is a creative game not a PvP shooter.

I agree with you mostly.
Small notes: Beams have "instant travel time" if you point and they hit...they hit. period.


TheGeek007 Your best bet is use pulse as a support and tailor you "small turrets" to use less than 50k/projectile, then build e/sec to suit. Smallest bang-for-buck you'll get.

 

[TheGeek007]

Fair point.

I'll have to experiment with "floating turrets" in the shape of starfighters, or even smaller capitals for large builds.