Salvage Beams As Weapons

[kiraen]

I could throw in a four page persuasive essay as to why it's not a bad idea, if you'd like.

If you are going to have any chance of convincing anyone, then you'd better post it.

 

[Winterhome]

If you are going to have any chance of convincing anyone, then you'd better post it.

Suppose you're right. I'll get going on that this weekend and post it as a new thread - it won't exclusively cover salvage beams as weapons, otherwise I'd post it here.

 

[Andir]

Don't care about weaponizing the salvage beam, but it would be nice to let BOBBY turrets understand how to use them along with some way to transfer the items to the main ship.

 

[Edymnion]

Right, so what is the purpose of your idea then? If you have a ship that's half salvager and half something else, you're going to die to a dedicated warship anyways.

So either take out a warship and fight, or take out a salvager and run from anything with guns.

This is not really true. I routinely build combat miners, ships that can eat planets and kill/eat pirate bases with equal ease. Even my fully dedicated mobile weapons platform warship has a smallish salvage array in it.

Really, unless you're building tiny little shuttlecraft sized fighters, there's no reason NOT to have both weapons and salvagers on the same ship.
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Suppose you're right. I'll get going on that this weekend and post it as a new thread - it won't exclusively cover salvage beams as weapons, otherwise I'd post it here.

You'd have a better time of it making a case for letting you slave salvage beams to a weapon array to eat some of the blocks that would otherwise be destroyed than you would for turning salvage beams themselves into weapons.

 

[Gasboy]

Intentionally misrepresenting the entire argument - clever

No, it's not. You either want the salvager to double as a near useless weapon, when it'd be more useful in combat to spend that energy on any real weapon or defense system. OR you want to be able to salvage before the enemy is even dead yet. The former is eeeh, the later is a big NOPE. If I am missing your intention, perhaps you could make it more clear?

If you actually have an essay written for it, why not post it? There are plenty of such essays written here in the forums. They're generally well received.

 

[Jaaskinal]

Right, so what is the purpose of your idea then? If you have a ship that's half salvager and half something else, you're going to die to a dedicated warship anyways.

So either take out a warship and fight, or take out a salvager and run from anything with guns. There's absolutely no point to salvagers being used as weapons. If you have guns, and you're able to down someone's shields, there's no point in using a salvager as a piddly weapon. If you have salvagers and can only use them on ships with down shields, and you don't have weapons to take down their shields... your idea is useless, yes?

Somewhat less of a response to this specific post, and more of a response to the idea that bad weapons shouldn't be included in the game. Why do all the weapons still exist? Cannon/beam is one that every newbie tries and fails to make use of. Why shouldn't the only weapons in the game be Missile/missile, Missile/beam, Cannon/cannon and Beam/pulse? In fact, why have slaves? We could go back to the good old days where reload and range were determined by the size of the groups of the cannons, where if you wanted a lock on or a smart fire you used KB's and BB's, and then just add in the Beams. Having the old system was much simpler for newbs. You connect the weapon to the right computer and it works. While we're at it, why do we have the EMP effect? Almost no one uses it and other effects are much better than it because they can actually kill ships/prevent you from being killed. Punch and pierce both protect you from weapons, but EMP? EMP protects you from the weapon no one uses. EMP is not necessary in the game. Who uses shield supply? No one. Shield supply is not necessary in the game. Who uses pulse as an actual weapon instead of just astronaut defenses? No one? Why not just make it so the core fires off a pulse around it like the old pulses when the core is fired instead of firing an outdated docking beam.
Lots of things are useless, but just because they're useless doesn't mean they don't have purpose. Cannon/beam is horrible at everything but nailing stations that have PD and decent short ranged defenses. You didn't get to choose the speed/reload/amount of missiles fired with BB's and KB's unless you were just directly changing the group size. The complexity of the current weapons system lends itself to interesting combinations of weapons, even if they're not the strongest. EMP as a passive is pretty useless, but that's just because not many people realize that you can cripple any DPS based ship with it as a weapon.
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No, it's not. You either want the salvager to double as a near useless weapon, when it'd be more useful in combat to spend that energy on any real weapon or defense system. OR you want to be able to salvage before the enemy is even dead yet. The former is eeeh, the later is a big NOPE. If I am missing your intention, perhaps you could make it more clear?

If you actually have an essay written for it, why not post it? There are plenty of such essays written here in the forums. They're generally well received.

You can destroy the blocks on the enemy before they are 'even dead yet.' What's it to the guy being salvaged?

 

[Gasboy]

This is not really true. I routinely build combat miners, ships that can eat planets and kill/eat pirate bases with equal ease. Even my fully dedicated mobile weapons platform warship has a smallish salvage array in it.

Really, unless you're building tiny little shuttlecraft sized fighters, there's no reason NOT to have both weapons and salvagers on the same ship.

That doesn't invalidate the fact that all things being equal, the dedicated warship will beat the ship that isn't. If I have 100 blocks of weapon, and you have 50 blocks of the same weapon plus 50 blocks of salvager, I will out damage you, you will out salvage me.

The reason why I was using this point was to show that if you don't have the weapons to beat your opponent, what is an almost useless amount of extra damage the salvager going to do? Unless he want so salvage ship parts in combat?

 

[Jaaskinal]

That doesn't invalidate the fact that all things being equal, the dedicated warship will beat the ship that isn't. If I have 100 blocks of weapon, and you have 50 blocks of the same weapon plus 50 blocks of salvager, I will out damage you, you will out salvage me.

The reason why I was using this point was to show that if you don't have the weapons to beat your opponent, what is an almost useless amount of extra damage the salvager going to do? Unless he want so salvage ship parts in combat?

Yes, this is a hard-counter. The hard counter to a salvager would be to bring a ship that can kill it. I'd recommend using a big salvager.

 

[Gasboy]

Somewhat less of a response to this specific post, and more of a response to the idea that bad weapons shouldn't be included in the game. Why do all the weapons still exist? Cannon/beam is one that every newbie tries and fails to make use of. Why shouldn't the only weapons in the game be Missile/missile, Missile/beam, Cannon/cannon and Beam/pulse? In fact, why have slaves? We could go back to the good old days where reload and range were determined by the size of the groups of the cannons, where if you wanted a lock on or a smart fire you used KB's and BB's, and then just add in the Beams. Having the old system was much simpler for newbs. You connect the weapon to the right computer and it works. While we're at it, why do we have the EMP effect? Almost no one uses it and other effects are much better than it because they can actually kill ships/prevent you from being killed. Punch and pierce both protect you from weapons, but EMP? EMP protects you from the weapon no one uses. EMP is not necessary in the game. Who uses shield supply? No one. Shield supply is not necessary in the game. Who uses pulse as an actual weapon instead of just astronaut defenses? No one? Why not just make it so the core fires off a pulse around it like the old pulses when the core is fired instead of firing an outdated docking beam.
Lots of things are useless, but just because they're useless doesn't mean they don't have purpose. Cannon/beam is horrible at everything but nailing stations that have PD and decent short ranged defenses. You didn't get to choose the speed/reload/amount of missiles fired with BB's and KB's unless you were just directly changing the group size. The complexity of the current weapons system lends itself to interesting combinations of weapons, even if they're not the strongest. EMP as a passive is pretty useless, but that's just because not many people realize that you can cripple any DPS based ship with it as a weapon.
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You can destroy the blocks on the enemy before they are 'even dead yet.' What's it to the guy being salvaged?

The difference between the salvager and a 'bad' weapon, is that the salvager does it's job as a salvager just fine. The bad weapon can always be reworked or buffed to improve it. If you want the salvager to double as a bad weapon, are you suggesting that the bad weapons should also double as good salvagers?

Instead of having more overlap, yet another beam weapon, why not petition to have the bad weapons fixed?

What's it to the guy being salvaged? Probably not that much, I suppose. But why should people get to battle salvage? Would it not be an abuse of the game to allow someone to use weapons with stop to keep shields down, the ship out of power, drain their jump drive and slowly salvaging their ship from under them?

I think it better that you actually have to force overheating first.

 

[Jaaskinal]

The difference between the salvager and a 'bad' weapon, is that the salvager does it's job as a salvager just fine. The bad weapon can always be reworked or buffed to improve it. If you want the salvager to double as a bad weapon, are you suggesting that the bad weapons should also double as good salvagers?

Instead of having more overlap, yet another beam weapon, why not petition to have the bad weapons fixed?

What's it to the guy being salvaged? Probably not that much, I suppose. But why should people get to battle salvage? Would it not be an abuse of the game to allow someone to use weapons with stop to keep shields down, the ship out of power, drain their jump drive and slowly salvaging their ship from under them?

I think it better that you actually have to force overheating first.

The thing is that the 'bad' weapons are indeed bad weapons, but they perform other roles. With my example of cannon/beam, it's absolutely terrible against ships. It's not horrific against stations though. Missile/missile is somewhat the opposite of that. It's a great weapon if you're alone. It fills a niche role very well, and salvagers could be in the same realm.
If someone allowed themselves to get into that situation, it was either a great play on the part of the salvager, or a bad play on part of the victim. To do that, the salvager had to have brought a bigger ship, or a much better ship. If the victim had a friend around, unless the salvager was just outstandingly massive (which is could be and that'd be 'good' play) it would have difficulty targeting and salvaging one while the other just gets to beat up on it.
And it really wouldn't be overlap. They would overlap in the same way all weapons do, that they break blocks, one would be shorter range, and do less damage, but give you what you hit. They are for different roles.

 

[Gasboy]

The salvager is not in the same realm as bad weapons. Bad weapons are still weapons. The salvager is a salvager, it does not need to be a weapon like it used to be.

Edit: Also, what do you propose as a buff to give to armor since a salvager weapon would now be ignoring it?

 

[StormWing0]

I could see a case for allowing salvagers being used on normal weapons to give them a salvager effect so they picked up destroyed blocks rather than just outright destroyed them but making the salvager itself a weapon isn't needed.

 

[Winterhome]

Edit: Also, what do you propose as a buff to give to armor since a salvager weapon would now be ignoring it?

And here we go, assuming shit.


edit: Why the hell did I post this in General Discussions?

 

[Gasboy]

And here we go, assuming shit.


edit: Why the hell did I post this in General Discussions?

So you're saying that armor would also prevent the salvager from working? They'd have to have 0 shields and 0 armor for it to work?

 

[Winterhome]

So you're saying that armor would also prevent the salvager from working? They'd have to have 0 shields and 0 armor for it to work?

And there's another assumption.

Is it not reasonable to expect that if one is asking for a rebalanced system that it would, you know, get a rebalance? Nobody in their right mind would ask for a weapon that totally ignores any and all armor a block has. Salvage beams do "virtual damage" right now, which basically means that they're running on a totally different system than anything else, which to me suggests that as they exist right now, it is a potential source of lag. This "Virtual Damage" system was put in place specifically to ensure that while they're able to do their salvaging based on damage dealt instead of beam time per block, they would still be unable to do any sort of damage in combat of any sort. It would be easy enough to just make salvage beams do actual damage, with the caveat that they beam the salvaged block aboard when they successfully destroy it.

 

[Gasboy]

And there's another assumption.

Is it not reasonable to expect that if one is asking for a rebalanced system that it would, you know, get a rebalance? Nobody in their right mind would ask for a weapon that totally ignores any and all armor a block has. Salvage beams do "virtual damage" right now, which basically means that they're running on a totally different system than anything else, which to me suggests that as they exist right now, it is a potential source of lag. This "Virtual Damage" system was put in place specifically to ensure that while they're able to do their salvaging based on damage dealt instead of beam time per block, they would still be unable to do any sort of damage in combat of any sort. It would be easy enough to just make salvage beams do actual damage, with the caveat that they beam the salvaged block aboard when they successfully destroy it.

Will salvagers be able to do damage to ships that still have armor? Y/N?

How will armor affect salvager weapons? Do you have to break holes into the ship in order to slowly slurp out the contents? Or will that be prevented while the ship still has an armor HP bar?

And you might have said parts of that paragraph with your OP. Since this is the first you've mentioned lag at all.

Were we supposed to assume that's why you were making your original suggestion?

 

[Jaaskinal]

Will salvagers be able to do damage to ships that still have armor? Y/N?

How will armor affect salvager weapons? Do you have to break holes into the ship in order to slowly slurp out the contents? Or will that be prevented while the ship still has an armor HP bar?

And you might have said parts of that paragraph with your OP. Since this is the first you've mentioned lag at all.

Were we supposed to assume that's why you were making your original suggestion?

Probably yes, but the salvager would probably have reduced speed on armored/high health blocks as compared to unarmored/low health blocks.

 

[Gasboy]

Probably yes, but the salvager would probably have reduced speed on armored/high health blocks as compared to unarmored/low health blocks.

Would the idea work better with salvagers having slaved weapon computers over the salvager becoming a weapon itself?

 

[Jaaskinal]

Would the idea work better with salvagers having slaved weapon computers over the salvager becoming a weapon itself?

It probably would, but it'd also probably work better as an effect as opposed to a secondary, but that'd just be weird.

 

[Winterhome]

I can get behind using Salvagers as an Effect (ie: current salvage setup is a "defensive/utility" effect). It would be very interesting to see if the system could remotely support a computer both being able to be used as a primary (ie: with slaves) AND as a tertiary, albeit not at the same time.

The percentage of Salvage Slave on a weapon is the percentage of blocks destroyed returned as salvage, but in turn reduces its effect on shields by the same amount, perhaps. That seems insufficient for balancing it out as a support effect though. Maybe something like not contributing to a weapon's DPS would also help?