PvP Anti-Player Research

[Madman198237]

Possibly, but unlikely. Yes, the big ship is easier to spawn, but that's not quite the best plan, to base your military off of ease of production....

Really, the inefficiency for fighters come in that they are going to be less durable and more prone to loss, while having fewer effective weapons than a larger vessel.

 

[StarWars1981]

Yes. So if there's allies in the area and your turrets can't handle the drone swarm you're screwed :p

No keptick, the allies are screwed. You have the seeker array, you have the bigger ship (this is presumably why you're worried about killing them), and you're getting bothered. Oh, plus, you're holding the trigger, so pretty much, whatever you say goes.

I like the idea of heatseekers for the A-FD role, because only PDTs have any effect on them, so you're pretty much good for hits against small opponent drones. And turrets are gonna take awhile to knock them all out. May not matter in a large ship, but smaller ones are gonna have a problem.

 

[AtraUnam]

I've had some success combining armor tanks with active shield tanks. Now if I only I could build something on NFD without the server overwriting my blueprint with a single core every time I log out.

 

[Az14el]

I don't have having anti-fighter turrets on my titan, in addition to PD, anti-frigate and anti-capital turrets. The turret lag is already more than enough.

Instead I just carry a drone swarm of my own hehehe >:-D

50+ PSUs, half a dozen modular pieces, rail doors, drones for days, tons of AMS, gigantic anti-capital turrets. Yes a bunch of anti fighter turrets sounds lovely on top of all that :D

Funny i think the bigger you go, the more you shoot yourself in the foot by covering yourself in turrets, they're amazing in theory, but once you strap 100+ entities to yourself you're in for a progressively more laggy day. So some lag considerations with Charon sized ships are a very good idea for sure.

I've had some success combining armor tanks with active shield tanks. Now if I only I could build something on NFD without the server overwriting my blueprint with a single core every time I log out.

This really does seem like the way to go, active shielding to partially circumvent 'downtimes' in regen, armor to help shake off what alpha damage gets through your buffed capacity. This seems more power efficient than standard set ups too allowing you to dish out more overall dps compared to other tanks.

 

[Keptick]

50+ PSUs, half a dozen modular pieces, rail doors, drones for days, tons of AMS, gigantic anti-capital turrets. Yes a bunch of anti fighter turrets sounds lovely on top of all that :D

Funny i think the bigger you go, the more you shoot yourself in the foot by covering yourself in turrets, they're amazing in theory, but once you strap 100+ entities to yourself you're in for a progressively more laggy day. So some lag considerations with Charon sized ships are a very good idea for sure.




This really does seem like the way to go, active shielding to partially circumvent 'downtimes' in regen, armor to help shake off what alpha damage gets through your buffed capacity. This seems more power efficient than standard set ups too allowing you to dish out more overall dps compared to other tanks.

Yea, I tend to build with lag-reduction in mind these days. So for example my drone bays have a system that flips the rails once the drone are loaded to ensure that they don't keep pushing into each other on the rail (and cause massive lag). An other example is a massive reduction in amount of outputs on my anti-missile turrets.

It really is a good idea to keep lag in mind. Perhaps that super waffle cannon of doom sounds like a good idea, but if you can't use it without getting 1fps then there's no point.

 

[Nickizzy]

I've had some success combining armor tanks with active shield tanks. Now if I only I could build something on NFD without the server overwriting my blueprint with a single core every time I log out.

Put it in a shipyard design.

Possibly, but unlikely. Yes, the big ship is easier to spawn, but that's not quite the best plan, to base your military off of ease of production....

Really, the inefficiency for fighters come in that they are going to be less durable and more prone to loss, while having fewer effective weapons than a larger vessel.

This is the fighter effect in a lot of games. Fighters are often more efficent but they die more often and therefore cost more. You can see this in games like Homeworld, where most ships can be repaired easially, but fighters and bombers often die first. Starmade had a different version of this for a while, the inability to recall drones made drones always result in a total loss. Larger ships are protected by shield, but smaller ones often take block damage.

 

[Edymnion]

Possibly, but unlikely. Yes, the big ship is easier to spawn, but that's not quite the best plan, to base your military off of ease of production....

Really, the inefficiency for fighters come in that they are going to be less durable and more prone to loss, while having fewer effective weapons than a larger vessel.

Well, we were talking efficiency, and ease of replacement does factor into that. Very inefficient to click "Place Order" on a shipyard 50 times, or click "Buy Blueprint, Add Blocks, Spawn" 50 times, etc.

So its more time efficient to go with the larger ship. Its usually more block efficient to go with the larger ship in the case of a win or a draw. Its more block efficient to go with the fighters in case of a total loss.

But, doesn't have to be one or the other. These days I quite enjoy building carriers that can dish it out on their own and can still launch a fleet of fighters.

 

[StarWars1981]

In StarMade, if you build it big enough, you can do everything.
No framerate guarantees.
And also no fun once you get up there. At least not in part-RP, team-playing servers where you might fly a fleet with friends, where you can have more efficient/effective single-role ships rather than larger multirole ships.

 

[Madman198237]

I think the biggest problem with the big-ship-domination theory is other players....


They hate you for the lag you cause, and eventually you will fry enough GPUs to cause everyone to kill you.

 

[EricBlank]

Then again, with the new fleet updates, you can't staff several defense fleets with only one really big ship. One ship can't be everywhere, and you don't know where your enemy will pop up next to harass your systems' defenses. You would need multiple fleets to cover key points, and to go on the offensive at the same time.

If you put all your resources into constructing your titan, you have no frigates and corvettes to staff your patrol and defense forces.

 

[Az14el]

I've been decimated by a good drone flank in a larger more powerful ship (220k vs 100-120k & 30-40k mass of drones), VERY quickly, like they arrived while i was on ~95%a rmor hp, then took me down to 20/70ish% with all their combined alpha damage (partially due to the majority of my armor being up front instead of spread out over the sides as well, but again thats drones for you)

Well made drones, some small dps/anti missile drones for escort + some sniper drones in the frigate to destroyer range for hammer & anvil is great to have & wont set you back much compared to your average capital ship, and probably the next best investment as far as combat ships goes.

 

[StarWars1981]

I've currently got a gunship. It sucks. But it's packed to the brim with 30K of shields on less than 200 mass, the "armor" is basic hull but there you have it. Pretty jumpy little thing. Then I tore out the engines (this was built on an LAN survival server) and placed more shielding. It's got about 8 PDTs set to target "Missile". That thing is awesomely effective, so I can deploy that in fleets to cover all other vessels from missiles. It will actually save me on turret lag, I think, because main ships can dispense with a lot of PDTs and still be protected. Also this means smaller vessels can also lose PDTs and just rely on not being targeted by anything big / being expendable drones. But a good fleet should have the carrier, then 2-3 cruisers (or battleships if your carrier has to be in the Titan range), either heavy or light, plus perhaps 3-4 destroyers, 4-5 frigates, and a ridiculous number of fighters docked to your carrier. Corvettes can also be around. Maybe 4 total gunships, maybe, that are, like the above, PDT monsters to just hold down space until there's nobody shooting missiles anymore.

I need to finish my fleet to test all these theorems....

 

[Madman198237]

I'm plotting some sort of bomber (Maybe based off the TIE Bomber...) to be player-controlled, with a single insanely powerful nuke as it's weapon, meant to be in a fleet or squadron under the command of a player, with the remainder set to fly in formation. Player makes a run on the enemy vessel, the AI should....should.....engage the same target. Brutally effective if you get multiple runs on a target with no shielding. Or, so the idea goes.

 

[Madman198237]

Interesting note: Tested a docked reactor w/ logic JD setup. Shot the ship it was docked with to pieces, but the problem is that the JD had sustained damage (Read: The docked reactors used in the test were halfway to oblivion before we noticed that they hadn't left) before the reactor was undocked.

 

[StarWars1981]

Even more interesting note: While piloting this target vessel around I was actually -unable- to enable the docked reactors. The logic had not been hooked up and, for my purposes, did not need to be hooked up. So they weren't actually active. Which means they COULD'T jump.
But I never mentioned that to him, so Madman wouldn't know.
But it was a fun weapons test for our cruiser. Proof-of-concept that bigger guns do indeed make bigger holes.
I enjoyed that part.

 

[StormWing0]

lol

 

[DrTarDIS]

Yeah block-pen/pun on bigger guns can be awesome, but does it not make you cry when you see a stream of projectiles exit the other side of an enemy ship? all those lost block killers

 

[Madman198237]

Yep....inefficiency...

 

[Az14el]

Give the AI some good waffle-beams (each output should have its own computer if server xml's allow it, which most do), they have the best target tracking amongst AI weapons by far, they'll just swap target to another block rather than fire *through* the enemy vessel.

As far as putting some logic JD's on your docked reactors, nice idea with one caveat, jump inhibitors are a thing.
Another good redundancy system is making use of magnetic docking to re-dock your free floating gens shortly after they undock, give them lots of redundancy rail dockers along the tops and sides, and add corresponding rail basics/the green & blue rail thingys.

This works against the worst of the collisions, which is when you're sitting still and the reactors just bounce around inside your ship/station instead of clipping out. This will simply reattach the generator in the same spot but on a different docker. Less effective while moving quickly or turning, but in those cases the gens usually manage to exit the ship quickly after so long as the server doesn't crash.
[DOUBLEPOST=1462070670,1462070447][/DOUBLEPOST]Another thing with Gens, if you don't want your big/high gen count battlecruisers and up to get griefed through one very annoying & exploity tactic, give your gens some shields & armor. Or the more clever & unscrupulous pirates will just bypass your fancy shields and take out all the gens safely (hint, they load quickly, bigger things they're attached to often dont...). Mostly a problem on outposts & floating ships, things you can't immediately defend.

 

[Aynslei]

Another thing with Gens, if you don't want your big/high gen count battlecruisers and up to get griefed through one very annoying & exploity tactic, give your gens some shields & armor. Or the more clever & unscrupulous pirates will just bypass your fancy shields and take out all the gens safely (hint, they load quickly, bigger things they're attached to often dont...). Mostly a problem on outposts & floating ships, things you can't immediately defend.

I will thank you for sharing this bit of an exploit, new players to pvp need to be aware that there are people that wont care about abusing a system for any advantage they can get.