Zyrr
Chronic Troublemaker
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Simple solution to a multitude of problems
- Thread starter Optapodamus
- Start date
Tunk
Who's idea was this?
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e gahds, haven't seen one of these in awhile.
Interdiction/inhibitors:
1 inhibitor computer drains 5k jump charge per second.
You can have a unlimited amount of inhibitor computers draining charge at any time.
A 20 mass inhibitor array can happily hold a drive consuming 1 million power per second and weigh ~250 mass when you include the reactor.
Please tell me how much your drive weighs or how many blocks are involved, and lets see how small I can make the inhibitor.
As for asking for a fight being a admission of failure in ones faculties?
Dude we are talking about combat, put up or shut up.
Its the fastest and easiest method to demonstrate, physically you are incorrect in your assumptions.
You are literally calling dozens of veteran community members retarded poo poo meany heads yourself and refusing to reasonably take into consideration their experience and feedback.
Interdiction/inhibitors:
1 inhibitor computer drains 5k jump charge per second.
You can have a unlimited amount of inhibitor computers draining charge at any time.
A 20 mass inhibitor array can happily hold a drive consuming 1 million power per second and weigh ~250 mass when you include the reactor.
Please tell me how much your drive weighs or how many blocks are involved, and lets see how small I can make the inhibitor.
As for asking for a fight being a admission of failure in ones faculties?
Dude we are talking about combat, put up or shut up.
Its the fastest and easiest method to demonstrate, physically you are incorrect in your assumptions.
You are literally calling dozens of veteran community members retarded poo poo meany heads yourself and refusing to reasonably take into consideration their experience and feedback.
Thank you! This is a reasonable explanation! 2 million mass. Edit* oops I read your thing wrong nevermind, I don't know how much it weights.
Also why could a small ship beat a large ship if the large ship has turrets that can be manned by the player?
I have tried to be reasonable, initially was as polite as possible. When the mocking and belittling began I even made this statement:
Literally asking to be educated.
I've admitted when I was wrong several times, I've admitted to being inexperienced, I even edited the original post to say that I've been convinced that it wouldn't be as easy as I originally thought. I even gave up on the whole idea once, saying
And yet againWell, although I am not convinced on any point by anyone thus far, judging from the response continuing seems to be an exercise in futility.
I did learn some things so it wasn't a total waste, thankscya
Yet I'm the bad guy here?
Last edited:
Tunk
Who's idea was this?
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Well if you wanted numbers here we go, I see you keep mentioning a super awesome 2 million mass ship so ill use that mass range as a example.
Drones have been known for a long time to be horrible overpowered, as in 1/20th or less mass total in drones being able to eat ships alive without issues ever since bobby AI was born.
Same goes for well designed small craft.
Anyways on your jump drive,
2 million mass doesnt tell me the size of your drive, so im going to assume you went for the 5% threshold.
That means you have roughly a 10 million charge/s jump drive weighing about 100k mass.
This can be held with a inhibitor array weighing about 2.5k mass, split among drones/players quite happily.
On defenses and shielding,
lets work off a base of 2 million power per turret or series of turrets as this is what a docked inline reactor or a aux slab can supply, this is 100k to 400k dps.
Alpha weapons generally run off cap, so meh.
If set up with partial ion and proper output splitting these quite happily do lots of block damage too so no need for secondary weapons.
All up about 2.5k mass if you want to exclude aesthetics.
To cancel out this damage with shield recharge you require 12k mass in shield chargers, ~2.5k in shield blocks, and power (~250 mass for reactor, or 1k for aux) this assumes a 100% ion effect.
All up about 15-16k mass.
Or roughly a 6:1.
Without ion you are looking at ~33k mass.
Or roughly
13:1 imbalance.
I mentioned this because a surprising number of ships in the 1-2 million mass range do not have ion passive.
Now lets assume ~35% of your ship is shields, thats roughly 500 million shields (reasonable for that size).
I doubt you've used too much in terms of chargers as shield recharge is a menace and no one really stacks a lot, maybe 5% for about 3.375 million combat recharge if you have 100% ion and costing about 13.5m e/s.
Now lets look at speed and TMR,
speed effects several things, mainly physics, AI tracking, cannons ability to hit, the players ability to aim and hit with anything other than beams (players have crap aim with anything other than point and click).
TMR is most effective at small mass, at speed even a small change completely throws off any projectiles.
Missiles simply CANNOT harm a ship traveling at max speed with overdrive.
A ship with overdrive traveling at 2.5x server speed can literally avoid almost 100% damage from turrets and larger craft by simple virtue of it missing thanks to speed and distance, while their turrets or weapons do work on their target.
Lets add radar jamming to the mix,
Radar jamming has the awesome ability to half AI accuracy distance, which causes AI accuracy to completely fall in the gutter.
The second awesome thing is removing nav markers.
So a team of 8 players, or drones running around in ~10k mass ships can quite happily eat that 2 million mass ship for breakfast.
This is pretty much paper napkin math.
Several players who posted here regularly fly around in low mass ships using their knowledge to destroy larger ships for fun, for example Zyrr and Kulbolen have taken on ships 20+ times larger than themselves and win regularly.
Drones have been known for a long time to be horrible overpowered, as in 1/20th or less mass total in drones being able to eat ships alive without issues ever since bobby AI was born.
Same goes for well designed small craft.
Anyways on your jump drive,
2 million mass doesnt tell me the size of your drive, so im going to assume you went for the 5% threshold.
That means you have roughly a 10 million charge/s jump drive weighing about 100k mass.
This can be held with a inhibitor array weighing about 2.5k mass, split among drones/players quite happily.
On defenses and shielding,
lets work off a base of 2 million power per turret or series of turrets as this is what a docked inline reactor or a aux slab can supply, this is 100k to 400k dps.
Alpha weapons generally run off cap, so meh.
If set up with partial ion and proper output splitting these quite happily do lots of block damage too so no need for secondary weapons.
All up about 2.5k mass if you want to exclude aesthetics.
To cancel out this damage with shield recharge you require 12k mass in shield chargers, ~2.5k in shield blocks, and power (~250 mass for reactor, or 1k for aux) this assumes a 100% ion effect.
All up about 15-16k mass.
Or roughly a 6:1.
Without ion you are looking at ~33k mass.
Or roughly
13:1 imbalance.
I mentioned this because a surprising number of ships in the 1-2 million mass range do not have ion passive.
Now lets assume ~35% of your ship is shields, thats roughly 500 million shields (reasonable for that size).
I doubt you've used too much in terms of chargers as shield recharge is a menace and no one really stacks a lot, maybe 5% for about 3.375 million combat recharge if you have 100% ion and costing about 13.5m e/s.
Now lets look at speed and TMR,
speed effects several things, mainly physics, AI tracking, cannons ability to hit, the players ability to aim and hit with anything other than beams (players have crap aim with anything other than point and click).
TMR is most effective at small mass, at speed even a small change completely throws off any projectiles.
Missiles simply CANNOT harm a ship traveling at max speed with overdrive.
A ship with overdrive traveling at 2.5x server speed can literally avoid almost 100% damage from turrets and larger craft by simple virtue of it missing thanks to speed and distance, while their turrets or weapons do work on their target.
Lets add radar jamming to the mix,
Radar jamming has the awesome ability to half AI accuracy distance, which causes AI accuracy to completely fall in the gutter.
The second awesome thing is removing nav markers.
So a team of 8 players, or drones running around in ~10k mass ships can quite happily eat that 2 million mass ship for breakfast.
This is pretty much paper napkin math.
Several players who posted here regularly fly around in low mass ships using their knowledge to destroy larger ships for fun, for example Zyrr and Kulbolen have taken on ships 20+ times larger than themselves and win regularly.
Sigh. My 2 mil mass ship isn't super awesome. I am not super awesome. I never claimed to be, I'll keep saying it until someone listens. I just wasn't given an explanation that made me understand why large ships aren't the best.
Anyways wow. Man that's aweful. I really liked my big ships.
SO the answer to my question is that while the person in the turret has more shields, the person speed tanking is too difficult to hit, even manually, and the speed tanks damage would more likely overtake the larger shields before the person in the turret could manage to make enough hits, or any at all.
Hm. If a large ship could increase it's turn speed enough to be able to track the speed tank I think a weapon array that hits a large area would be plausible counter. Like say an option in the thruster menu. In that case I'd just reconfigure thrusters when PvPing speed tanks, if I were able to.
And if inhibitors are 12.5 times more powerful than warp modules than the best method of escape is to quickly fly out of range of the inhibitor, further making speed the best defense overall.
I don't get how it makes sense that a tiny ship can interdict a massively larger one. Maybe I'd be ok with 2x more powerful but 12 is ridiculous. Tell me someone agrees with this.
It seems like speed tanks are the best overall then.
See the thing I want to fix is the one strategy above all. That was the whole point in my suggestion. Which now I see would be completely ineffective in balancing speed tanks, in fact I'd just make them much stronger, further increasing their inequality compared to other options. I just want there to be as many equally viable options as possible to defeating ships. Maybe this new update will solve some of these inequalities with the ship specialization.
Now that I understand WHY speed tanks are best I can at least try and come up with some plan. I may still be able to come up with a counter in a 1v1 situation, but not 8v1, I'd never attack multiple players anyway and if I'm stupid enough to get ambushed by 8 people I deserve to die. I may also try some strategies to counter the interdiction as well. I wouldn't mind testing them out on someone who speed tanks at some point but NOT if it's going to be a pissing contest.
i dont think you can tailor your proposal to be "viable" because i dont think its a good proposal. its interesting but it doesnt really fit starmade (at least not without sweeping changes to the entire core game.) i dont typically give out my ship designs publicly, but youre free to watch me use them, although i assume you already have after reading the conversation.
1. small ships can defeat large ships. red flag point. you have a very narrow definition of "victory" that doesnt seem to mesh well with others. while that may be fine for you, people dont agree with you and it shows. you may feel like escaping undamaged is a victory, while others feel destroying your enemy is a victory, or holding or advancing a position is a victory. your view is in the minority here, and it seems to be causing some conflict when you try to push it.
2. armor is semi useful. i think it needs to be lighter at the low tier and have more damage reduction per block at the high tier. i still use it in small amounts around important spots on my ships.
3. cloaking is useful. power regen outscales cloaking energy cost, so you can cloak a ship of ANY size, even if it has garbage efficiency. this means you can cloak ambush someone in a 10 million dps titan.
4. repair beams are not useful. this is a problem with starmades weapon damage scaling lightyears ahead of individual block hp, which has been largely neglected (probably because of ahp/shp system.)
5. shipyards are extremely useful. this point is a red flag for inexperience (even though you probably know why theyre useful.) a shipyard decon/blueprint respawn can fix any damaged ship of any complexity with any amount of turrets and doors by refunding the blocks and adding them to a new ship in a few seconds. the big downside to shipyards is most of their features are buggy and incomplete. deconstruction has never failed me.
6. character weapons are useful. they are not all useful in all situations, which i consider a good thing. more astronaut focused gameplay could be cool though.
7. ship to ship boarding is a thing, and has been done many times. i have boarded and stolen very large enemy ships in survival. most of the pvp matches ive hosted recently involve boarding. some successful, some not. boarding tools could be more reliable.
8. interior ship defenses are a thing because boarding is a thing.
9. not likely. the force multiplier of an additional ship would generally still outweigh the advantage brought by multiple crew. some ways i can see (that im not advocating for) to really make multiple crew a thing is to remove valuable functionality from ships without multiple crew, or make the additional benefits a lot better than just having another piloted warship in the area. maybe make ships cost a lot more so multi crews minor benefit is preferable when unable to afford another ship.
10. ship design makes a massive difference. this point probably sticks out the most as a red flag to immediately disregard what you say as inexperienced, and needs no explanation.
11. massive sloppy borg cubes will always exist, and will always get killed by better designed ships. seems to be a strange misconception that because they have 1 advantage in volume to surface area, that theyre somehow superior. theyre not. new players make them because its easy. note that pvp videos often feature ugly ships, but theyre almost never cubes, and in most cases have interesting or unique shapes.
12. this is probably true. the game has a steep learning curve with a high ceiling, and the devs intend to change that.
13. most people who dont enjoy building ships would still not enjoy this game without tons of other fixes/changes; ship building is the only semi fleshed out mechanic in the game. thats for a different topic though. id bet there are at least a few people who play this but dont like building ships right now.
maybe they shouldnt. but you arent an innocent party. being more subtle with your insults doesnt make you less culpable.
it doesnt make sense, and i agree. you should be allowed to run away and claim your "victory." i suspect its unintended. the difference is you classify this is a victory, and i classify it as a neutral tactical option. it could lead to either victory or defeat depending on how its used. if my objective is to kill a player, it will probably not lead to victory. if my objective is to capture or defend a point of interest, it will probably not lead to victory. if my objective is purely to survive, it may lead to victory in most cases. to claim this is an undefeatable option is narrow minded. further, you were very confident until the point this information was revealed, but now its "ridiculous." something tells me you knew from the start that your strategy is not a resolute victory, but an option that should logically be available in the scenario you describe.
something to understand is, just because the larger ship can run in a 1v1 scenario against a small ship, doesnt mean a small ship isnt useful. you already alluded to this when saying youd avoid conflict with multiple players or if you arent sure youll win. even if inhib strength is fixed, this puts you at a massive strategic disadvantage against anyone you arent sure you can beat safely.
also this:
the ship im using is about 200k mass, and the target is a very shieldy 500k mass. if you come up against a well built offensive ship, you can easily take damage before you even know theres a threat. even with no inhibitors and perfect reaction, you would not have unloaded from the sector from the moment your shields moved to the moment you were taking structure damage, possibly destroying your jd.
this scenario is a ship at just under half mass. at just under 1/4 your mass, the ship can still 1 shot your shields, although it wont likely overheat you before you run. you can still take damage regardless.
something else to consider:
the ship in question is built to do sustained dps, not bursts of fire. with a small fraction of its mass invested into power capacity, at its current dps it could switch to beam/beam and 1 shot the target shields instead of constantly draining them. the ship is under 5k mass and the target is nearly 30k mass. its shields would drop before it could react, but it would have a larger window after initial damage to do something useful, or run. it would not escape immediate damage.
Zyrr
Chronic Troublemaker
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Since "fight me" wasn't explanatory enough and because I just hate letting Veilith have the last word, let me elaborate some. Fighting you is educating you - it's far easier for both parties for someone to be shown than to be told. I could quote a shit ton of dumb educational studies on the huge merits of hands on education over book studies and tests, but I respect everyone enough to assume that we all understand the point.
Word walls aren't captivating to read unless they're funny or you're mad, and I'm not narcissistic enough yet to pretend that I can make the equivalent of a StarMade textbook lesson amusing. I can, however, probably upset you; that was the aim of fighting, so that when you get told why you lost you pay attention because you want payback. Anyways.
1) You can't argue both sides of the fence, saying "my proposal would stop people from shooting and scooting with no danger, also small ships aren't feared by large ships" as well as "well, if inhibitors and offense massively outpace jump drives and defense, stopping shoot and scoot in its tracks and giving small ships the means and motivation to kill larger ships, we should change that" and still have your idea tread water. Either you support small ships killing big ships or you don't, switching sides based on how the discussion has proceeded is a glaring sign of being unable to defend your point.
It's not even that it's balanced in favour of people "speed tanking", it's balanced in favor of people who design stuff reasonably. Even if you were facing a big, fat, slow ship that vomits missiles and sits there like a bump on a log while doing it, your opponent automatically will beat you even at a lower mass, even trading blow for blow, because your investment in JD modules compared to their investment in literally any other block is in their favor. This doesn't even expand into more subtle nuance with power management and EMP, OR the cataclysmic client and server lag that can stem from two massive ships doing a shit ton of damage to each other, especially when shields drop and blocks start dying. Logic jumpdrives and even manual jump drives don't always activate reliably under those circumstances, whereas some weapons still will.
2) Running away isn't as effective either - stop weapons also scale somewhat unreasonably, allowing a small ship to pin down a much smaller opponent with relative ease compared to power cost and mass/entity cost. So now you'd be down the ability to jump out, and the ability to physically run away, what can you do? A smaller ship flies circles around you, poking you to death patiently, or a larger ship can trade with you and, as mentioned before, likely kill you because you now have an absolute ton of wasted mass in jump drives and perhaps thrusters.
You could even add EMP into the mix, which will shut off your passives, shut down your ability to return fire, shut down your ability even to regenerate your shields. So now you can't move, can't jump, can't shoot (very well), can't keep passives, can't regenerate shields. Where then do you go from here? All of these things you can quite comfortably fit into a ship much smaller than 2 million mass.
3) Even if we assume that none of the above is viable, that they don't stop you, don't inhibit you, don't EMP you, you're still at a disadvantage, especially against a smaller ship, especially if it can move fast. Even if you jump in, shoot and then run, you'll hit them maybe once in a hundred tries, if that. On the flip side, as Veilith mentioned, a ship at a quarter of your mass can instantly zap your shields, and smaller can still do damage to them very very quickly. In all likelihood, you and your opponent trade blows, and you lose shields and a pitiful amount of AHP/SHP and blocks before you leave while they lose nothing, which is repeated until one of you leaves. If you're the one jumping out and they're the ones chasing, you will always be on the back foot.
EVEN if we assume the worst possible scenario for the small ship, getting smacked and dying, the amount of resources they have lost from dying in a smaller ship is easy to replace and less than what you would lose should you die, which is a more likely scenario in this case.
4) If we move the goalposts back even further, hell, almost onto a different football field, and say that you kill your enemy when they're not fighting back, AFK, offline or what have you, when they otherwise aren't returning fire, what does that prove? That a much larger ship can kill another one when it isn't shooting? It's no different than hitting a punching bag, you're only confirming that you can kill a practice target.
That's fair enough, I guess. Losing in a game after some high profile arguments can be shameful if you make it that way. All the same, I feel like we've all wasted time and precious forum messages doing this instead of booting up the game and left clicking at each other.
Word walls aren't captivating to read unless they're funny or you're mad, and I'm not narcissistic enough yet to pretend that I can make the equivalent of a StarMade textbook lesson amusing. I can, however, probably upset you; that was the aim of fighting, so that when you get told why you lost you pay attention because you want payback. Anyways.
1) You can't argue both sides of the fence, saying "my proposal would stop people from shooting and scooting with no danger, also small ships aren't feared by large ships" as well as "well, if inhibitors and offense massively outpace jump drives and defense, stopping shoot and scoot in its tracks and giving small ships the means and motivation to kill larger ships, we should change that" and still have your idea tread water. Either you support small ships killing big ships or you don't, switching sides based on how the discussion has proceeded is a glaring sign of being unable to defend your point.
It's not even that it's balanced in favour of people "speed tanking", it's balanced in favor of people who design stuff reasonably. Even if you were facing a big, fat, slow ship that vomits missiles and sits there like a bump on a log while doing it, your opponent automatically will beat you even at a lower mass, even trading blow for blow, because your investment in JD modules compared to their investment in literally any other block is in their favor. This doesn't even expand into more subtle nuance with power management and EMP, OR the cataclysmic client and server lag that can stem from two massive ships doing a shit ton of damage to each other, especially when shields drop and blocks start dying. Logic jumpdrives and even manual jump drives don't always activate reliably under those circumstances, whereas some weapons still will.
2) Running away isn't as effective either - stop weapons also scale somewhat unreasonably, allowing a small ship to pin down a much smaller opponent with relative ease compared to power cost and mass/entity cost. So now you'd be down the ability to jump out, and the ability to physically run away, what can you do? A smaller ship flies circles around you, poking you to death patiently, or a larger ship can trade with you and, as mentioned before, likely kill you because you now have an absolute ton of wasted mass in jump drives and perhaps thrusters.
You could even add EMP into the mix, which will shut off your passives, shut down your ability to return fire, shut down your ability even to regenerate your shields. So now you can't move, can't jump, can't shoot (very well), can't keep passives, can't regenerate shields. Where then do you go from here? All of these things you can quite comfortably fit into a ship much smaller than 2 million mass.
3) Even if we assume that none of the above is viable, that they don't stop you, don't inhibit you, don't EMP you, you're still at a disadvantage, especially against a smaller ship, especially if it can move fast. Even if you jump in, shoot and then run, you'll hit them maybe once in a hundred tries, if that. On the flip side, as Veilith mentioned, a ship at a quarter of your mass can instantly zap your shields, and smaller can still do damage to them very very quickly. In all likelihood, you and your opponent trade blows, and you lose shields and a pitiful amount of AHP/SHP and blocks before you leave while they lose nothing, which is repeated until one of you leaves. If you're the one jumping out and they're the ones chasing, you will always be on the back foot.
EVEN if we assume the worst possible scenario for the small ship, getting smacked and dying, the amount of resources they have lost from dying in a smaller ship is easy to replace and less than what you would lose should you die, which is a more likely scenario in this case.
4) If we move the goalposts back even further, hell, almost onto a different football field, and say that you kill your enemy when they're not fighting back, AFK, offline or what have you, when they otherwise aren't returning fire, what does that prove? That a much larger ship can kill another one when it isn't shooting? It's no different than hitting a punching bag, you're only confirming that you can kill a practice target.
This line alone is what gets me the most. What did you mean by this? Is combat philosophically motivated for you, like "the means justify the ends" and "rationale trumps results" or something? I can't wrap my head around this, sorry. Doesn't that violate what you just said here?
Any means necessary, right? You say here you don't care about honor, so why would it matter to you at all why people want to shoot at you? Or is it more that you don't want to lose in a "pissing contest", as you call it? I suppose the "any means necessary" is about winning, so why would it be worthwhile to use any means and then lose, I suppose? This seems to be the underlying point; why else would you mention that you and your specifically mentioned ship aren't all that good after being asked to fight? It seems strange to me that it would be brought up not once, not twice but three times for any other reason.
That's fair enough, I guess. Losing in a game after some high profile arguments can be shameful if you make it that way. All the same, I feel like we've all wasted time and precious forum messages doing this instead of booting up the game and left clicking at each other.
This is the most informative, clearly presented, easy to understand response yet. Though some of my ideas were terrible and based on things I was completely wrong about, you told me so in a way that wasn't demeaning in the least. The only thing I'd rather you have done is reply sooner lol.
i dont think you can tailor your proposal to be "viable" because i dont think its a good proposal. its interesting but it doesnt really fit starmade (at least not without sweeping changes to the entire core game.) i dont typically give out my ship designs publicly, but youre free to watch me use them, although i assume you already have after reading the conversation.
Shields don't need to be gotten rid of, thanks to everyone's explanations I see that now. I think some things are unbalanced as they are, but I'm sure these inequalities will be addressed at some point. There are some parts of it that I still would like, I'll suggest them separately later on using what I've learned here.
1. small ships can defeat large ships. red flag point. you have a very narrow definition of "victory" that doesnt seem to mesh well with others. while that may be fine for you, people dont agree with you and it shows. you may feel like escaping undamaged is a victory, while others feel destroying your enemy is a victory, or holding or advancing a position is a victory. your view is in the minority here, and it seems to be causing some conflict when you try to push it.
This is true. I place defensive tactics in the highest priority. Or more accurately I feel never losing is greater than everything else, especially when trying to amass the largest ship possible.
2. armor is semi useful. i think it needs to be lighter at the low tier and have more damage reduction per block at the high tier. i still use it in small amounts around important spots on my ships.
I think it could be balanced in such a way so as to allow people to be armor tanks. Another post I made recently unintentionally had that result.
3. cloaking is useful. power regen outscales cloaking energy cost, so you can cloak a ship of ANY size, even if it has garbage efficiency. this means you can cloak ambush someone in a 10 million dps titan.
Wow, I didn't know this. I've been playing for a long time off and on and have missed some updates.
4. repair beams are not useful. this is a problem with starmades weapon damage scaling lightyears ahead of individual block hp, which has been largely neglected (probably because of ahp/shp system.)
I made another post just suggesting changes to this that people seem to agree with.
5. shipyards are extremely useful. this point is a red flag for inexperience (even though you probably know why theyre useful.) a shipyard decon/blueprint respawn can fix any damaged ship of any complexity with any amount of turrets and doors by refunding the blocks and adding them to a new ship in a few seconds. the big downside to shipyards is most of their features are buggy and incomplete. deconstruction has never failed me.
Wow, didn't know this either. Still I'd rather not decon/respawn I still think it should instead just replace the blocks that were lost. Though I imagine this isn't the case yet because it's laborious to implement and they have bigger fish to fry.
6. character weapons are useful. they are not all useful in all situations, which i consider a good thing. more astronaut focused gameplay could be cool though.
That's what I was going for with being able to do more inside than just attack the core strait away. Though I didn't think they were useful at all tbh
7. ship to ship boarding is a thing, and has been done many times. i have boarded and stolen very large enemy ships in survival. most of the pvp matches ive hosted recently involve boarding. some successful, some not. boarding tools could be more reliable.
Huh. I'll have to check that out if it's on your youtube. Didn't seem possible unless the ship was already mostly destroyed.
8. interior ship defenses are a thing because boarding is a thing.
Right. You mean pulse? I'd rather their be turrets, though I know clipping is kriptonite.
9. not likely. the force multiplier of an additional ship would generally still outweigh the advantage brought by multiple crew. some ways i can see (that im not advocating for) to really make multiple crew a thing is to remove valuable functionality from ships without multiple crew, or make the additional benefits a lot better than just having another piloted warship in the area. maybe make ships cost a lot more so multi crews minor benefit is preferable when unable to afford another ship.
I wanted there to be more things to do inside a ship. Like being able to destroy systems though interior battles, or being able to repair them from the inside, or give them a boost. A single person could do it but more than one would be faster. I realize it wouldn't be simple to apply and keep things feeling balanced, it's just an idea.
10. ship design makes a massive difference. this point probably sticks out the most as a red flag to immediately disregard what you say as inexperienced, and needs no explanation.
I should have said "more of a difference". My suggestion with the system core blocks was my reasoning.
11. massive sloppy borg cubes will always exist, and will always get killed by better designed ships. seems to be a strange misconception that because they have 1 advantage in volume to surface area, that theyre somehow superior. theyre not. new players make them because its easy. note that pvp videos often feature ugly ships, but theyre almost never cubes, and in most cases have interesting or unique shapes.
Being as how shields are more balanced than I thought, this is true.
12. this is probably true. the game has a steep learning curve with a high ceiling, and the devs intend to change that.
Well actually I don't agree with this anymore lol. I was suggesting that with my change the game would be more easy to play, after thinking about it I don't see really how my suggestion would change that really.
13. most people who dont enjoy building ships would still not enjoy this game without tons of other fixes/changes; ship building is the only semi fleshed out mechanic in the game. thats for a different topic though. id bet there are at least a few people who play this but dont like building ships right now.
I still think the system cores thing would add another dimension to dog-fighting and ship boarding which would make it more fun for players who only want to do that.
maybe they shouldnt. but you arent an innocent party. being more subtle with your insults doesnt make you less culpable.
This is true. I shouldn't have insulted anyone at all. I live in Florida so I'm currently stuck inside all day, luckily I have power, but it's getting to me.
it doesnt make sense, and i agree. you should be allowed to run away and claim your "victory." i suspect its unintended. the difference is you classify this is a victory, and i classify it as a neutral tactical option. it could lead to either victory or defeat depending on how its used. if my objective is to kill a player, it will probably not lead to victory. if my objective is to capture or defend a point of interest, it will probably not lead to victory. if my objective is purely to survive, it may lead to victory in most cases. to claim this is an undefeatable option is narrow minded. further, you were very confident until the point this information was revealed, but now its "ridiculous." something tells me you knew from the start that your strategy is not a resolute victory, but an option that should logically be available in the scenario you describe.
"Survival above all" is my alma mater, yes. What I'm starting to think is that I should've joined the forums a lot sooner. I've only PvP'd people on the servers I've been on. At one time on a decently large server I was overwhelmingly superior to all others, which now occurs to me is likely because though there were a lot of people on the server it just so happened none were privy to any number of counter tactics. Having joined the forums I've already learned much more than I'd ever learn by playing on a server.
something to understand is, just because the larger ship can run in a 1v1 scenario against a small ship, doesnt mean a small ship isnt useful. you already alluded to this when saying youd avoid conflict with multiple players or if you arent sure youll win. even if inhib strength is fixed, this puts you at a massive strategic disadvantage against anyone you arent sure you can beat safely.
I'm not sure if I understand you here? Are you saying my being too careful is to my disadvantage?
also this:
the ship im using is about 200k mass, and the target is a very shieldy 500k mass. if you come up against a well built offensive ship, you can easily take damage before you even know theres a threat. even with no inhibitors and perfect reaction, you would not have unloaded from the sector from the moment your shields moved to the moment you were taking structure damage, possibly destroying your jd.
this scenario is a ship at just under half mass. at just under 1/4 your mass, the ship can still 1 shot your shields, although it wont likely overheat you before you run. you can still take damage regardless.
Right. Seems imbalanced to me imo. Damage scaling is too high isn't it? I believe other people have said this
something else to consider:
the ship in question is built to do sustained dps, not bursts of fire. with a small fraction of its mass invested into power capacity, at its current dps it could switch to beam/beam and 1 shot the target shields instead of constantly draining them. the ship is under 5k mass and the target is nearly 30k mass. its shields would drop before it could react, but it would have a larger window after initial damage to do something useful, or run. it would not escape immediate damage.
This seems to be an exceptionally well designed ship, but it still seems like it shouldn't be able to do this. If weapons can do ridiculous amounts of damage then is it just a matter of who gets hit first? A few people have told me that shield tanks in the right hands can pretty much avoid all fire, which seems to be an overpowered defense compared to all other options.
I appreciate you taking the time to read and reply to this thread, you've giving me a lot to test out and think about. I don't want to waste your, or anyone else's time any further so if you don't reply at length or at all that's totally fine.
i dont think you can tailor your proposal to be "viable" because i dont think its a good proposal. its interesting but it doesnt really fit starmade (at least not without sweeping changes to the entire core game.) i dont typically give out my ship designs publicly, but youre free to watch me use them, although i assume you already have after reading the conversation.
Shields don't need to be gotten rid of, thanks to everyone's explanations I see that now. I think some things are unbalanced as they are, but I'm sure these inequalities will be addressed at some point. There are some parts of it that I still would like, I'll suggest them separately later on using what I've learned here.
1. small ships can defeat large ships. red flag point. you have a very narrow definition of "victory" that doesnt seem to mesh well with others. while that may be fine for you, people dont agree with you and it shows. you may feel like escaping undamaged is a victory, while others feel destroying your enemy is a victory, or holding or advancing a position is a victory. your view is in the minority here, and it seems to be causing some conflict when you try to push it.
This is true. I place defensive tactics in the highest priority. Or more accurately I feel never losing is greater than everything else, especially when trying to amass the largest ship possible.
2. armor is semi useful. i think it needs to be lighter at the low tier and have more damage reduction per block at the high tier. i still use it in small amounts around important spots on my ships.
I think it could be balanced in such a way so as to allow people to be armor tanks. Another post I made recently unintentionally had that result.
3. cloaking is useful. power regen outscales cloaking energy cost, so you can cloak a ship of ANY size, even if it has garbage efficiency. this means you can cloak ambush someone in a 10 million dps titan.
Wow, I didn't know this. I've been playing for a long time off and on and have missed some updates.
4. repair beams are not useful. this is a problem with starmades weapon damage scaling lightyears ahead of individual block hp, which has been largely neglected (probably because of ahp/shp system.)
I made another post just suggesting changes to this that people seem to agree with.
5. shipyards are extremely useful. this point is a red flag for inexperience (even though you probably know why theyre useful.) a shipyard decon/blueprint respawn can fix any damaged ship of any complexity with any amount of turrets and doors by refunding the blocks and adding them to a new ship in a few seconds. the big downside to shipyards is most of their features are buggy and incomplete. deconstruction has never failed me.
Wow, didn't know this either. Still I'd rather not decon/respawn I still think it should instead just replace the blocks that were lost. Though I imagine this isn't the case yet because it's laborious to implement and they have bigger fish to fry.
6. character weapons are useful. they are not all useful in all situations, which i consider a good thing. more astronaut focused gameplay could be cool though.
That's what I was going for with being able to do more inside than just attack the core strait away. Though I didn't think they were useful at all tbh
7. ship to ship boarding is a thing, and has been done many times. i have boarded and stolen very large enemy ships in survival. most of the pvp matches ive hosted recently involve boarding. some successful, some not. boarding tools could be more reliable.
Huh. I'll have to check that out if it's on your youtube. Didn't seem possible unless the ship was already mostly destroyed.
8. interior ship defenses are a thing because boarding is a thing.
Right. You mean pulse? I'd rather their be turrets, though I know clipping is kriptonite.
9. not likely. the force multiplier of an additional ship would generally still outweigh the advantage brought by multiple crew. some ways i can see (that im not advocating for) to really make multiple crew a thing is to remove valuable functionality from ships without multiple crew, or make the additional benefits a lot better than just having another piloted warship in the area. maybe make ships cost a lot more so multi crews minor benefit is preferable when unable to afford another ship.
I wanted there to be more things to do inside a ship. Like being able to destroy systems though interior battles, or being able to repair them from the inside, or give them a boost. A single person could do it but more than one would be faster. I realize it wouldn't be simple to apply and keep things feeling balanced, it's just an idea.
10. ship design makes a massive difference. this point probably sticks out the most as a red flag to immediately disregard what you say as inexperienced, and needs no explanation.
I should have said "more of a difference". My suggestion with the system core blocks was my reasoning.
11. massive sloppy borg cubes will always exist, and will always get killed by better designed ships. seems to be a strange misconception that because they have 1 advantage in volume to surface area, that theyre somehow superior. theyre not. new players make them because its easy. note that pvp videos often feature ugly ships, but theyre almost never cubes, and in most cases have interesting or unique shapes.
Being as how shields are more balanced than I thought, this is true.
12. this is probably true. the game has a steep learning curve with a high ceiling, and the devs intend to change that.
Well actually I don't agree with this anymore lol. I was suggesting that with my change the game would be more easy to play, after thinking about it I don't see really how my suggestion would change that really.
13. most people who dont enjoy building ships would still not enjoy this game without tons of other fixes/changes; ship building is the only semi fleshed out mechanic in the game. thats for a different topic though. id bet there are at least a few people who play this but dont like building ships right now.
I still think the system cores thing would add another dimension to dog-fighting and ship boarding which would make it more fun for players who only want to do that.
maybe they shouldnt. but you arent an innocent party. being more subtle with your insults doesnt make you less culpable.
This is true. I shouldn't have insulted anyone at all. I live in Florida so I'm currently stuck inside all day, luckily I have power, but it's getting to me.
it doesnt make sense, and i agree. you should be allowed to run away and claim your "victory." i suspect its unintended. the difference is you classify this is a victory, and i classify it as a neutral tactical option. it could lead to either victory or defeat depending on how its used. if my objective is to kill a player, it will probably not lead to victory. if my objective is to capture or defend a point of interest, it will probably not lead to victory. if my objective is purely to survive, it may lead to victory in most cases. to claim this is an undefeatable option is narrow minded. further, you were very confident until the point this information was revealed, but now its "ridiculous." something tells me you knew from the start that your strategy is not a resolute victory, but an option that should logically be available in the scenario you describe.
"Survival above all" is my alma mater, yes. What I'm starting to think is that I should've joined the forums a lot sooner. I've only PvP'd people on the servers I've been on. At one time on a decently large server I was overwhelmingly superior to all others, which now occurs to me is likely because though there were a lot of people on the server it just so happened none were privy to any number of counter tactics. Having joined the forums I've already learned much more than I'd ever learn by playing on a server.
something to understand is, just because the larger ship can run in a 1v1 scenario against a small ship, doesnt mean a small ship isnt useful. you already alluded to this when saying youd avoid conflict with multiple players or if you arent sure youll win. even if inhib strength is fixed, this puts you at a massive strategic disadvantage against anyone you arent sure you can beat safely.
I'm not sure if I understand you here? Are you saying my being too careful is to my disadvantage?
also this:
the ship im using is about 200k mass, and the target is a very shieldy 500k mass. if you come up against a well built offensive ship, you can easily take damage before you even know theres a threat. even with no inhibitors and perfect reaction, you would not have unloaded from the sector from the moment your shields moved to the moment you were taking structure damage, possibly destroying your jd.
this scenario is a ship at just under half mass. at just under 1/4 your mass, the ship can still 1 shot your shields, although it wont likely overheat you before you run. you can still take damage regardless.
Right. Seems imbalanced to me imo. Damage scaling is too high isn't it? I believe other people have said this
something else to consider:
the ship in question is built to do sustained dps, not bursts of fire. with a small fraction of its mass invested into power capacity, at its current dps it could switch to beam/beam and 1 shot the target shields instead of constantly draining them. the ship is under 5k mass and the target is nearly 30k mass. its shields would drop before it could react, but it would have a larger window after initial damage to do something useful, or run. it would not escape immediate damage.
This seems to be an exceptionally well designed ship, but it still seems like it shouldn't be able to do this. If weapons can do ridiculous amounts of damage then is it just a matter of who gets hit first? A few people have told me that shield tanks in the right hands can pretty much avoid all fire, which seems to be an overpowered defense compared to all other options.
I appreciate you taking the time to read and reply to this thread, you've giving me a lot to test out and think about. I don't want to waste your, or anyone else's time any further so if you don't reply at length or at all that's totally fine.
Az14el
Definitely not a skywanderers dev
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Damage could be said to be overtuned, however ideal conditions & actual fight conditions differ and typically things are drawn out somewhat (not to take the piss on veiliths 200k, thats a ludicrous amount of damage no matter which way you look at it), even between highly tuned pvp ships that should be able to obliterate eachother in short order. What it does allow is a high degree of engineering difference between all the ships you'll typically see online as far as combat ability, and I like that for one. Schine may not agree with how high the learning cliff (and couple of loop de loops) goes based on what we're seeing with power 2.0 so this "inbalance" might change, but that's really a matter of experience so we could get real philosophical debating whether or not thats a problem in a game, personally I don't think so, but not necessarily against major change either (like the very imminent ones with power 2.0)
pretty sure there's a in game loading screen tip that is relevant to fighting speed tanks, docked hulled or not
pretty sure there's a in game loading screen tip that is relevant to fighting speed tanks, docked hulled or not
Zyrr
Chronic Troublemaker
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- Jun 23, 2013
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Basically what az14el said, there's a pretty serious gulf between theoretical DPS and actual DPS when it comes down to it. Part of what makes alpha damage based ships capable and comparably easy to make is that even if they lose half or two thirds or three quarters of their damage into the wind for various reasons, they're still imparting an ass ton of damage. Most DPS ships have to consider that they need more DPS than necessary for any given ship because of that.
Since "fight me" wasn't explanatory enough and because I just hate letting Veilith have the last word, let me elaborate some. Fighting you is educating you - it's far easier for both parties for someone to be shown than to be told. I could quote a shit ton of dumb educational studies on the huge merits of hands on education over book studies and tests, but I respect everyone enough to assume that we all understand the point.
I agree with you on education, but find it hard to believe you were so excited to educate me that you sent me a private message, friended me on steam, and even sent a message to one of my friends on steam.
Under the circumstances you'll forgive my skepticism.
Word walls aren't captivating to read unless they're funny or you're mad, and I'm not narcissistic enough yet to pretend that I can make the equivalent of a StarMade textbook lesson amusing. I can, however, probably upset you; that was the aim of fighting, so that when you get told why you lost you pay attention because you want payback. Anyways.
Haha, I disagree with you there, some of us are studious. Though I actually learn much faster through hands on I feel it is a point of respect that if someone takes the time to read and respond to something I posted I am obligated to read it thoroughly and respond, especially if they are doing me the incredible favor of educating me.
1) You can't argue both sides of the fence, saying "my proposal would stop people from shooting and scooting with no danger, also small ships aren't feared by large ships" as well as "well, if inhibitors and offense massively outpace jump drives and defense, stopping shoot and scoot in its tracks and giving small ships the means and motivation to kill larger ships, we should change that" and still have your idea tread water. Either you support small ships killing big ships or you don't, switching sides based on how the discussion has proceeded is a glaring sign of being unable to defend your point.
My aim is balance first, no one strategy above the other, but as much strategic variety as possible. Yes I wanted small ships to be able to kill large ships (which I now believe can) but the right way. Inhibitors being unbalanced isn't the way it should be done imo.
It's not even that it's balanced in favour of people "speed tanking", it's balanced in favor of people who design stuff reasonably. Even if you were facing a big, fat, slow ship that vomits missiles and sits there like a bump on a log while doing it, your opponent automatically will beat you even at a lower mass, even trading blow for blow, because your investment in JD modules compared to their investment in literally any other block is in their favor. This doesn't even expand into more subtle nuance with power management and EMP, OR the cataclysmic client and server lag that can stem from two massive ships doing a shit ton of damage to each other, especially when shields drop and blocks start dying. Logic jumpdrives and even manual jump drives don't always activate reliably under those circumstances, whereas some weapons still will.
I'd like to know why you're saying speed tanking isn't the greatest choice, what countermeasures are used.
So you're saying the most well balanced ship wins? Not the biggest, fastest, etc. I don't understand how this is possible. If two ships both have 25% of their mass devoted to weapons but one ship is twice as big doesn't the larger ship have twice the damage of the smaller?
Definitely not disagreeing with you there, about the lag, I take it into account as much as I can
2) Running away isn't as effective either - stop weapons also scale somewhat unreasonably, allowing a small ship to pin down a much smaller opponent with relative ease compared to power cost and mass/entity cost. So now you'd be down the ability to jump out, and the ability to physically run away, what can you do? A smaller ship flies circles around you, poking you to death patiently, or a larger ship can trade with you and, as mentioned before, likely kill you because you now have an absolute ton of wasted mass in jump drives and perhaps thrusters.
If I had a speed tank I wouldn't use a large JD, my escape would utilize speed to get out of inhibitor range. Being as how I'd need to make sure I always have speed I'd have a explosive computer to counter movement effect weapons.
If I was using a large JD setup I wouldn't need a lot of thrusters, so I suppose I could take that route if wasting space on JD's is going to make that much a difference.
You could even add EMP into the mix, which will shut off your passives, shut down your ability to return fire, shut down your ability even to regenerate your shields. So now you can't move, can't jump, can't shoot (very well), can't keep passives, can't regenerate shields. Where then do you go from here? All of these things you can quite comfortably fit into a ship much smaller than 2 million mass.
Is there a reason I can't have EMP effect defensively to counter this? I don't know enough about EMP I'll admit.
3) Even if we assume that none of the above is viable, that they don't stop you, don't inhibit you, don't EMP you, you're still at a disadvantage, especially against a smaller ship, especially if it can move fast. Even if you jump in, shoot and then run, you'll hit them maybe once in a hundred tries, if that. On the flip side, as Veilith mentioned, a ship at a quarter of your mass can instantly zap your shields, and smaller can still do damage to them very very quickly. In all likelihood, you and your opponent trade blows, and you lose shields and a pitiful amount of AHP/SHP and blocks before you leave while they lose nothing, which is repeated until one of you leaves. If you're the one jumping out and they're the ones chasing, you will always be on the back foot.
I don't understand again this one either. I don't jump shoot and run, I surprise attack if possible and do as much burst damage as I can. If they survive my initial assault or give me much trouble I may leave. Usually people get taken out before they can react, or at least I gain a huge advantage.
If someone with crazy weapons catches me unaware I'm at a disadvantage no matter what ship I'm in. I've got to find them and point my ship at them at the very least. Even in a large ship verses another of equal size I lost precious time in bringing my weapons to bear. All this time has given me a massive disadvantage, if the ship has even half-way decent weapons I'm already too far behind to be able to be certain that I can win. Logic dictates I retreat until it's me who has that first attack advantage.
Why would I wait until my shields drop to warp out? I use a logic system+sensors to keep my chain drive always charged at 95%. After activating warp it almost always instantly fires. I have it balanced in such a way that I can jump forever, being as how the first drive recharges by the time the last one is activated. I have one big one to combat inhibitors, which is only if someone gets the drop on me, in which case I leave immediately, so my other 7 don't lose much charge. I think this is pretty good as is but I'm going to do more testing with this system to see if I can improve it further.
EVEN if we assume the worst possible scenario for the small ship, getting smacked and dying, the amount of resources they have lost from dying in a smaller ship is easy to replace and less than what you would lose should you die, which is a more likely scenario in this case.
If I get the first attack it is highly unlikely the ship isn't instantly done which is the whole reasoning behind my strategy. A lot of people didn't get that. Your second statement is definitely true, but I don't prefer it. I just enjoy amassing more and more strength. If fleets worked better I'd go that route for sure, and I can't wait until they do. I already have designs ready lol.
4) If we move the goalposts back even further, hell, almost onto a different football field, and say that you kill your enemy when they're not fighting back, AFK, offline or what have you, when they otherwise aren't returning fire, what does that prove? That a much larger ship can kill another one when it isn't shooting? It's no different than hitting a punching bag, you're only confirming that you can kill a practice target.
No one has ever played World of Warcraft? No one says Rouges are unfair lol, it's weird to me more people don't ambush. Most people are in their ships though, like I said, most of the time it's a short battle if there is one.
This line alone is what gets me the most. What did you mean by this? Is combat philosophically motivated for you, like "the means justify the ends" and "rationale trumps results" or something? I can't wrap my head around this, sorry. Doesn't that violate what you just said here?
I'm not really getting what you're saying here or what it has to do with the next line. I do test things, if that's what you mean. Not on a survival server where I'd actually lose something if that's what you're wondering. Of course not.
Any means necessary, right? You say here you don't care about honor, so why would it matter to you at all why people want to shoot at you? Or is it more that you don't want to lose in a "pissing contest", as you call it? I suppose the "any means necessary" is about winning, so why would it be worthwhile to use any means and then lose, I suppose? This seems to be the underlying point; why else would you mention that you and your specifically mentioned ship aren't all that good after being asked to fight? It seems strange to me that it would be brought up not once, not twice but three times for any other reason.
Again I'm not really understanding you fully here, maybe I am I'm not sure.
I was actually pretty excited about my idea. I overcame my fear of rejection by telling myself that even if it is a terrible idea at the very least maybe some part of it might be worthwhile to someone. Went through all the effort to make an account and think it all through, write it all out. I thought "I know I might be wrong but if I'm as polite as possible and admit I don't know anything no one will have any reason to bash me" Nope. I even pleaded to be educated.
But that's not what everyone wanted to see, they wanted me to be this arrogant person that thought his big bad 2 mil ship was the strongest and was talking big game to the veteran players. Then a hero swoops in and says "fight me". Which was, I thought pretty obviously, to put me in my place. Other people were even talking about recording the fight, putting music to it and making a meme out of it ffs.
That's fair enough, I guess. Losing in a game after some high profile arguments can be shameful if you make it that way. All the same, I feel like we've all wasted time and precious forum messages doing this instead of booting up the game and left clicking at each other.
Well I at least learned a great many things, so it wasn't a waste for me. Both about the game, and social interaction. I appreciate those who spent the time to educate me. After I come up with some strategy to counter the strategies that were mentioned and put it into a ship, if you still want to 1v1 I'd be down. Now that I have the basic idea I can at least come up with something, which with your help could be honed. If not, no worries, it's all good.
I agree with you on education, but find it hard to believe you were so excited to educate me that you sent me a private message, friended me on steam, and even sent a message to one of my friends on steam.
Under the circumstances you'll forgive my skepticism. Word walls aren't captivating to read unless they're funny or you're mad, and I'm not narcissistic enough yet to pretend that I can make the equivalent of a StarMade textbook lesson amusing. I can, however, probably upset you; that was the aim of fighting, so that when you get told why you lost you pay attention because you want payback. Anyways.
Haha, I disagree with you there, some of us are studious. Though I actually learn much faster through hands on I feel it is a point of respect that if someone takes the time to read and respond to something I posted I am obligated to read it thoroughly and respond, especially if they are doing me the incredible favor of educating me.
1) You can't argue both sides of the fence, saying "my proposal would stop people from shooting and scooting with no danger, also small ships aren't feared by large ships" as well as "well, if inhibitors and offense massively outpace jump drives and defense, stopping shoot and scoot in its tracks and giving small ships the means and motivation to kill larger ships, we should change that" and still have your idea tread water. Either you support small ships killing big ships or you don't, switching sides based on how the discussion has proceeded is a glaring sign of being unable to defend your point.
My aim is balance first, no one strategy above the other, but as much strategic variety as possible. Yes I wanted small ships to be able to kill large ships (which I now believe can) but the right way. Inhibitors being unbalanced isn't the way it should be done imo.
It's not even that it's balanced in favour of people "speed tanking", it's balanced in favor of people who design stuff reasonably. Even if you were facing a big, fat, slow ship that vomits missiles and sits there like a bump on a log while doing it, your opponent automatically will beat you even at a lower mass, even trading blow for blow, because your investment in JD modules compared to their investment in literally any other block is in their favor. This doesn't even expand into more subtle nuance with power management and EMP, OR the cataclysmic client and server lag that can stem from two massive ships doing a shit ton of damage to each other, especially when shields drop and blocks start dying. Logic jumpdrives and even manual jump drives don't always activate reliably under those circumstances, whereas some weapons still will.
I'd like to know why you're saying speed tanking isn't the greatest choice, what countermeasures are used.
So you're saying the most well balanced ship wins? Not the biggest, fastest, etc. I don't understand how this is possible. If two ships both have 25% of their mass devoted to weapons but one ship is twice as big doesn't the larger ship have twice the damage of the smaller?
Definitely not disagreeing with you there, about the lag, I take it into account as much as I can
2) Running away isn't as effective either - stop weapons also scale somewhat unreasonably, allowing a small ship to pin down a much smaller opponent with relative ease compared to power cost and mass/entity cost. So now you'd be down the ability to jump out, and the ability to physically run away, what can you do? A smaller ship flies circles around you, poking you to death patiently, or a larger ship can trade with you and, as mentioned before, likely kill you because you now have an absolute ton of wasted mass in jump drives and perhaps thrusters.
If I had a speed tank I wouldn't use a large JD, my escape would utilize speed to get out of inhibitor range. Being as how I'd need to make sure I always have speed I'd have a explosive computer to counter movement effect weapons.
If I was using a large JD setup I wouldn't need a lot of thrusters, so I suppose I could take that route if wasting space on JD's is going to make that much a difference.
You could even add EMP into the mix, which will shut off your passives, shut down your ability to return fire, shut down your ability even to regenerate your shields. So now you can't move, can't jump, can't shoot (very well), can't keep passives, can't regenerate shields. Where then do you go from here? All of these things you can quite comfortably fit into a ship much smaller than 2 million mass.
Is there a reason I can't have EMP effect defensively to counter this? I don't know enough about EMP I'll admit.
3) Even if we assume that none of the above is viable, that they don't stop you, don't inhibit you, don't EMP you, you're still at a disadvantage, especially against a smaller ship, especially if it can move fast. Even if you jump in, shoot and then run, you'll hit them maybe once in a hundred tries, if that. On the flip side, as Veilith mentioned, a ship at a quarter of your mass can instantly zap your shields, and smaller can still do damage to them very very quickly. In all likelihood, you and your opponent trade blows, and you lose shields and a pitiful amount of AHP/SHP and blocks before you leave while they lose nothing, which is repeated until one of you leaves. If you're the one jumping out and they're the ones chasing, you will always be on the back foot.
I don't understand again this one either. I don't jump shoot and run, I surprise attack if possible and do as much burst damage as I can. If they survive my initial assault or give me much trouble I may leave. Usually people get taken out before they can react, or at least I gain a huge advantage.
If someone with crazy weapons catches me unaware I'm at a disadvantage no matter what ship I'm in. I've got to find them and point my ship at them at the very least. Even in a large ship verses another of equal size I lost precious time in bringing my weapons to bear. All this time has given me a massive disadvantage, if the ship has even half-way decent weapons I'm already too far behind to be able to be certain that I can win. Logic dictates I retreat until it's me who has that first attack advantage.
Why would I wait until my shields drop to warp out? I use a logic system+sensors to keep my chain drive always charged at 95%. After activating warp it almost always instantly fires. I have it balanced in such a way that I can jump forever, being as how the first drive recharges by the time the last one is activated. I have one big one to combat inhibitors, which is only if someone gets the drop on me, in which case I leave immediately, so my other 7 don't lose much charge. I think this is pretty good as is but I'm going to do more testing with this system to see if I can improve it further.
EVEN if we assume the worst possible scenario for the small ship, getting smacked and dying, the amount of resources they have lost from dying in a smaller ship is easy to replace and less than what you would lose should you die, which is a more likely scenario in this case.
If I get the first attack it is highly unlikely the ship isn't instantly done which is the whole reasoning behind my strategy. A lot of people didn't get that. Your second statement is definitely true, but I don't prefer it. I just enjoy amassing more and more strength. If fleets worked better I'd go that route for sure, and I can't wait until they do. I already have designs ready lol.
4) If we move the goalposts back even further, hell, almost onto a different football field, and say that you kill your enemy when they're not fighting back, AFK, offline or what have you, when they otherwise aren't returning fire, what does that prove? That a much larger ship can kill another one when it isn't shooting? It's no different than hitting a punching bag, you're only confirming that you can kill a practice target.
No one has ever played World of Warcraft? No one says Rouges are unfair lol, it's weird to me more people don't ambush. Most people are in their ships though, like I said, most of the time it's a short battle if there is one.
This line alone is what gets me the most. What did you mean by this? Is combat philosophically motivated for you, like "the means justify the ends" and "rationale trumps results" or something? I can't wrap my head around this, sorry. Doesn't that violate what you just said here?
I'm not really getting what you're saying here or what it has to do with the next line. I do test things, if that's what you mean. Not on a survival server where I'd actually lose something if that's what you're wondering. Of course not.
Any means necessary, right? You say here you don't care about honor, so why would it matter to you at all why people want to shoot at you? Or is it more that you don't want to lose in a "pissing contest", as you call it? I suppose the "any means necessary" is about winning, so why would it be worthwhile to use any means and then lose, I suppose? This seems to be the underlying point; why else would you mention that you and your specifically mentioned ship aren't all that good after being asked to fight? It seems strange to me that it would be brought up not once, not twice but three times for any other reason.
Again I'm not really understanding you fully here, maybe I am I'm not sure.
I was actually pretty excited about my idea. I overcame my fear of rejection by telling myself that even if it is a terrible idea at the very least maybe some part of it might be worthwhile to someone. Went through all the effort to make an account and think it all through, write it all out. I thought "I know I might be wrong but if I'm as polite as possible and admit I don't know anything no one will have any reason to bash me" Nope. I even pleaded to be educated.
But that's not what everyone wanted to see, they wanted me to be this arrogant person that thought his big bad 2 mil ship was the strongest and was talking big game to the veteran players. Then a hero swoops in and says "fight me". Which was, I thought pretty obviously, to put me in my place. Other people were even talking about recording the fight, putting music to it and making a meme out of it ffs.
That's fair enough, I guess. Losing in a game after some high profile arguments can be shameful if you make it that way. All the same, I feel like we've all wasted time and precious forum messages doing this instead of booting up the game and left clicking at each other.
Well I at least learned a great many things, so it wasn't a waste for me. Both about the game, and social interaction. I appreciate those who spent the time to educate me. After I come up with some strategy to counter the strategies that were mentioned and put it into a ship, if you still want to 1v1 I'd be down. Now that I have the basic idea I can at least come up with something, which with your help could be honed. If not, no worries, it's all good.
ironically, i didnt post this sooner is because i also live in florida, and my power was out for the last 5 days. came back on yesterday, but my ac is broken now lol
Lecic
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That's how the extreme of the meta is, yes. Shield tanks are good versus the incredibly poorly built ships that the average player flies. They are worthless against competent builders, even without getting into soft-level exploits.
Oh really? Care to go into more detail? I'd love to hear thoughts that oppose what has thus far been a seemingly one sided arguement
Lecic
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Shield tanks are actually very good versus the average player because the average player does not use the power and weapons systems to their fullest potential. Versus most players, a strong shield tank will make you literally invincible. However, this does not hold up in the extremes of the meta, where speed and extremely powerful weapons reign supreme.