Questions, Questions, Questions

[XyNox]

Hello all,

I am enjoying starmade for quite some time but rarely go further than fiddeling around with a few blocks. Watching all these amazing build on youtube and such, I thought I'd finally try myself on something bigger.

Assuming that those ships are being build for online servers with PVP I'd like to ask:


Damage Output


For all I know, it seems to be standard procedure to pack as much shield capacity into your ship as possible with a cap/charger rate of about 5:1

Is there any magical number that would make the most sense for damage output i.e. an amount of DPS that the enemy ships shields realistically cannot recharge due to power recharge limitations ? Also, what damage is needed to destroy a hull/standard/advanced armor per shot ? I did some testing with rapid fire rockets as well as explosive AMC and the amount of damage per shot to destroy a block as well as the displayed damage seems to vary inconsistently between different weapon systems and does not seems to relate to the block HP in any way.


Turrets Controls


Especially on larger ships with many and different types of turrets, I get the feeling the level of precision you can control these with is kinda lacking.

Point defence set to target missiles works fine but lets say I have bigger, high damage turrets with slower moving projectiles against thougher ships and smaller turrets against fighters, how do I coordinate them ? The only viable setting here is either "target: any" or "target: selected". Choosing "any" may lead to my anti-capital turrets shooting at fighters or drones whereas choosing "selected" only allows me to aim ALL my turrets to attack one entity. Is there any workaround for this ?

Next thing, cease fire. Is the only way to stop your turrets from shooting going to the AI tab -> Rail groups -> deactivate all turrets ( which is dangerously close to the "undock all" button by the way ).

Docking turrets. Docking a lot of turrets to a big ship seems rather tedious. Spawning turret -> moving big ship into docking range -> get out of the core and fly over to the turret core -> dock turret to ship -> get out of the turret core back into the main ship core -> repeat 20 times. Is there an easier way ?


Defensive Systems


Are these really worth it ? It seems for every defensive system block thats boosts this or boosts that I could just pump in more shields/armour that give me more defensive capabilities against all kinds of weapons, not just specialized ones. I am not talking about things like overdrive here, instead I am refering to damage mitigation effects.


Jamming


I am no expert in PVP but it seems to me that missiles are probably the strongest weapons there are as of now. AFAIK jamming causes all missile types appart from swarmers to lose their lock-on capability, which seems to be a very powerful defensive capability. Would it make sense to implement a jammer in ALL your ships regardless of size or is this not realistic as the power consumption could not be handled anymore at bigger ship sizes ?

AFAIK jammers also prohibit the vessel from being targeted by turrets, correct ?


That is all I can think of by now that I would really like to know. If anyone would give it a read and leave an answer, thanks in advance.

 

[sayerulz]

1. You want a lot of damage, so just fill in large areas with weapons, and that will probably do it.

2. No, at the moment you can't.

3. I find them to be worth it. Heavy armor+peirce can take a huge amount of punishment.

4. PD turrets are very effective, and if you build an effective network you don't need to worry too much about missiles, so the jammer power can be better spent elsewhere.

 

[Tydeth]

Hello all,

I am enjoying starmade for quite some time but rarely go further than fiddeling around with a few blocks. Watching all these amazing build on youtube and such, I thought I'd finally try myself on something bigger.

Assuming that those ships are being build for online servers with PVP I'd like to ask:


Damage Output


For all I know, it seems to be standard procedure to pack as much shield capacity into your ship as possible with a cap/charger rate of about 5:1

Is there any magical number that would make the most sense for damage output i.e. an amount of DPS that the enemy ships shields realistically cannot recharge due to power recharge limitations ? Also, what damage is needed to destroy a hull/standard/advanced armor per shot ? I did some testing with rapid fire rockets as well as explosive AMC and the amount of damage per shot to destroy a block as well as the displayed damage seems to vary inconsistently between different weapon systems and does not seems to relate to the block HP in any way..

Missile's damage listed in the weapon menu info screen is its total potential damage, which is spread out over the entire sphere of its explosive radius. Because of this, when you hit a flat panel of armor, at least half of the missile's potential damage is wasted as it explodes out into space. The rest is spread over every block in range, and if they're armor, the Armor HP will further reduce the block HP loss from the attack.

If you get the missile to go into a hole you punched into the target, a la Luke Skywalker vs. Death Star, much more of the damage is actually applied to the target, which is especially deadly if the blocks are squishy system blocks.

Turrets Controls


Especially on larger ships with many and different types of turrets, I get the feeling the level of precision you can control these with is kinda lacking.

Point defence set to target missiles works fine but lets say I have bigger, high damage turrets with slower moving projectiles against thougher ships and smaller turrets against fighters, how do I coordinate them ? The only viable setting here is either "target: any" or "target: selected". Choosing "any" may lead to my anti-capital turrets shooting at fighters or drones whereas choosing "selected" only allows me to aim ALL my turrets to attack one entity. Is there any workaround for this ?

Next thing, cease fire. Is the only way to stop your turrets from shooting going to the AI tab -> Rail groups -> deactivate all turrets ( which is dangerously close to the "undock all" button by the way ).

Docking turrets. Docking a lot of turrets to a big ship seems rather tedious. Spawning turret -> moving big ship into docking range -> get out of the core and fly over to the turret core -> dock turret to ship -> get out of the turret core back into the main ship core -> repeat 20 times. Is there an easier way ?.

AI does need a revamp, including more control options for Bobby.

The best workaround for the turrets would be to have the smaller turrets set to any and the big guns to selected. Each turret can be set individually by interfacing with its Bobby.

Turrets set to any stop firing when the target overheats. Turrets set to selected stop shooting when you have no target selected. Otherwise, yeah, you'll need to use the deactivate all if you want to stop shooting.

Advanced Build Mode as of this last update has a new feature to make the docked core for turrets and the like, but you'd then have to build the turrets from scratch. Shipyards can repair based on the blueprints (or designs made from them), so losing turrets in battle no longer means spawning and flying in replacement models. While there is no easy way to load up all the turrets you want for your ship, you do thankfully only have to do so once for each ship blueprint you make.

Defensive Systems


Are these really worth it ? It seems for every defensive system block thats boosts this or boosts that I could just pump in more shields/armour that give me more defensive capabilities against all kinds of weapons, not just specialized ones. I am not talking about things like overdrive here, instead I am refering to damage mitigation effects.

Placing an armor block provides more armor to that spot. Placing the effect that boosts Armor damage mitigation affects all of your armor. Standard and Advanced Armor also weigh more than the effect system blocks, so using the defensive effects can let you have a strong armor defense while not needing quite as many thrusters to go faster than a turtle. Pumping up both punch through and pierce to 100% effect IIRC turns each 250 HP advanced Armor block into something that can tank 2-4k damage.

In the case of shields, the Ion defense effect reduces the incoming damage of every attack that hits shields, so a 100% effect ion shield will take, IIRC, 60% less damage from any given attack than a shield that simply has more raw HP. Someone in this forum did the math and found that below a given shield HP, it's more efficient to just add capacitor, but after that point the effect becomes more useful as the ship mass and shield HP go up. I don't remember where the post is, though, but the general idea was that for fighters you may want more HP but frigates and above may start considering ion shields.

Like with a Tank character in any MMO, you'll want a combination of raw HP buffer and damage reduction/mitigation to be effective at shrugging off attacks if you want a tanking ship.

Jamming


I am no expert in PVP but it seems to me that missiles are probably the strongest weapons there are as of now. AFAIK jamming causes all missile types appart from swarmers to lose their lock-on capability, which seems to be a very powerful defensive capability. Would it make sense to implement a jammer in ALL your ships regardless of size or is this not realistic as the power consumption could not be handled anymore at bigger ship sizes ?

AFAIK jammers also prohibit the vessel from being targeted by turrets, correct ?


That is all I can think of by now that I would really like to know. If anyone would give it a read and leave an answer, thanks in advance.

I think it's cloak + jam that prevents AI targeting; I've been shot at before with just a jammer active. One thing to note is having a jammer active does seem to make enemy turrets less accurate when shooting beams or cannons, in addition to preventing the use of lock-on missiles.

Generally, it is a good idea to have the jammer on your smaller ships, but large ships have another disadvantage in PVP besides the power draw: They're literally so big you can just manually point and fire the missile without a lock and still probably hit them if they have no useful PD. Fortunately, installing and uninstalling jammer is so easy that you can plonk the block down on any of your ships and see if it can handle the power draw. If so, you have another missile defense, as well as the potential to get a first strike in PVP since the enemy can't see the nav marker while you're jammed.


Keep in mind that defensive effects work on number of their blocks versus mass (not block count) of your ship, and the cloak and jammer also use mass for their power draw.

 

[XyNox]

Thanks for that rather detailed post, very helpful.