Small Condensed Weapon blocks for Interior Turrets

[Napther]

Title pretty much says it all, at the moment, an Astronaut pistol pretty much out DPS's the 7 blocks required on making a functional anti-personnel turret inside a ship (5 if you drop 1x cannon and 1x cannon barrel for a 10 damage per second/shell turret).

Most interiors are rather cramped, or are otherwise tight in use of slabs, wedges, and decoration making implementation of internal defences tedious (especially ones that dont flood your ship with Pulse), especially when the astronaut pistol fits in the palm of the player and deals about 30 or 40 DPS.

Dont know if its easy to make a combination bobby AI and rapid fire cannon, but likely it will have elevated power cost, be a bit more expensive to produce it and a module (or just link a standard cannon barrel) to disuade using as a main weapons system.

This idea could also be used to make micro point-defence turrets, unless there is sufficient reason to NOT use it, such as 1km (IE, Very short) range, slower projectile, hard cap on possible number of blocks linked, etc. therefore cementing it as an anti-boarder weapon turret because it can fit more easily in the confines of most RP ships

While crew with lasers will attempt to solve a boarding issue, Im pretty sure not everyone wants to completely purge the ship of every living thing, including their own (experienced/leveled up) crew, just because one of Saber's many Fauna decides it wants to spawn on the ship...

Its either that, or, er get a turret LoD item that fires a bit like the astronaut pistol currently with a bit worse damage

 

[Tunk]

Or a anti-astro effect block.

 

[jayman38]

Maybe regular block weapons can partially stun an astronaut for a few seconds if it doesn't vaporize them outright. (Allowing them to slowly retreat, but not to fire back or something.)

 

[Groovrider]

I could only agree if they explode in a similar manner to AUX blocks.

 

[Edymnion]

For the record, there are a few good ways of doing this that don't require new blocks.

For one, a locked turret (one that doesn't move) still has a 30 degree angle of fire, so you can build one into a wall at the end of a corridor and it will still snipe anyone coming down it.

You can also line halls/floors with pulse modules connected to a locked turret to fill an area.

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That said, I would totally support something like the new non-block computer console as a mini-turret.

 

[Lukwan]

For one, a locked turret (one that doesn't move) still has a 30 degree angle of fire, so you can build one into a wall at the end of a corridor and it will still snipe anyone coming down it.

You can also line halls/floors with pulse modules connected to a locked turret to fill an area.

Yes this true. Some of the first things I played with in SM were anti-marine weapons. The problem is they don't usually make for a good rousing inner-ship battle. They are more like astronaut murder-traps. (Starmade meets Dungeon-Keeper )

I'm hoping for a scaled-down version for inner-ship defenses that allow for some tide-of-war actions inside ships that are not over in one tenth of a second.

 

[Edymnion]

Heh, sorry dude, but screw that. If there's a hostile boarding my ship, they ain't gonna get the chance to go "Oh hey, there's a turret. I need to make complex battle plans to take it out". They're going to go "WTF just happened?"

Fair fight? Homey don't play that. I'm vaporizing your ass before you know what hit you.

 

[EricBlank]

Providing a mini auto-turret block that fires an astronaut laser pistol in a short range is something I've been thinking about a lot recently. turrets will acquire targets at range and still refuse to shoot at anything else until it moves out of range or dies, and also dont change targets when they move out of its line of sight or are behind a wall. So that fixed turret at the end of a hallway might still refuse to shoot at the astronaut in front of it because it really really really wants to shoot at the other astronaut thats around the corner and behind a wall 60* to the right.
A short range miniturret that prefers to fire on the nearest astronaut and changes targets if multiple shots fail to connect because they hit an obstacle closer to the turret than the target (like the walls of the parent craft) would be a fair improvement, even if it cant take them out in one shot.

 

[Napther]

Heh, sorry dude, but screw that. If there's a hostile boarding my ship, they ain't gonna get the chance to go "Oh hey, there's a turret. I need to make complex battle plans to take it out". They're going to go "WTF just happened?"

Fair fight? Homey don't play that. I'm vaporizing your ass before you know what hit you.

This isnt just for player-controlled craft, all Faction fleet ships that use crew will not even be able to use the Pulse-flooding system because it would kill the entire crew, and basically produce a floating, factioned derelict. Crews will sometimes Mutiny if moral is low according to a devblog, which, small anti-personel turrets can then deal with along side the still allied crew. To counter an increase in docked internal turrets to kill things, perhaps make one of the boarding tools like a small warhead launcher that damages a tiny blast area in the hopes of knocking them out.

Completely player-driven vessels with no crew will still be able to use pulse-flooding, just this adds a way for other ships to defend themselves from the inside without using "The only Solution" of burning the house down because there is a spider in it...
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Or a anti-astro effect block.

that doesnt solve the issue of the turret itself being the size of a car just to deal damage to an astronaut walking down a hallway

 

[Cluwne]

And this is why, ladies and gentlemen, I use transporters...
Easier to arrange a decent logic-powered pulse to PURGE the "entrance" without frying the rest of the ship or adding more entities.
Oh and the power cost, even with rapid rate of fire and overdrive, is much more bearable.

 

[Comradecolonel]

The main topic seems to be the use condensed block for AP weapons. I have been throwing this idea around for while in my head and it was to address the main problem of under powered weapons at smaller sizes. As the OP mentioned it is a bit weird that the astronaut pistol wielded by an unarmed astronaut is strong enough to take on a ship 2x-3x the size of him. Since a lot more space has to be spent on various modules in a small ship, there is far less space for weapons. Ship battles between smaller ships can take considerably longer than a brawl between two titans. Not only do weapons have less room in smaller ships, but armor is much thicker relative to systems. This mostly applies to >100 mass ships, a weight class that could use a little love.

My proposition for condensed weapons blocks is simple. They have a computer and modules like normal weapons. They also have the same 4 categories and linking combinations, but cannot be linked to effects. They will do 2x the damage with 2.5x the mass at the same power consumption per point of damage. The bigger an individual group the more power it will consume per module, sort like an inverse to the way power capacitors work. A cool bonus would be to give them a texture that makes them slab friendly, making them even more space friendly.

I am also in favor of the idea of 1 block weapons like 3d modeled turrets and things like a PD module.

 

[Gandrac]

I guess it would be easier to just lower both the Astronaut-Pistols damage as well as the HP of Astronauts in general. Maybe later on Astronauts could use Armor to even the odds a bit. I always found it to be quite silly that the Pistol is that strong in comparison to a much bigger cannon module.

 

[Spartan-228]

Now that they can make blocks like the computer control panel. I doubt it would be unthinkable for them to build a simple looking sentry turret that is in fact one block.
And if you are worried about people abusing them. Just make them so they can only target astronauts.

 

[Comradecolonel]

This is a problem bigger than just astronaut boarding. It applies to all smaller builds and keeps them somewhat restricted compared to larger builds. I believe we need a more comprehensive solution, otherwise walking around as an astronaut will feel less engaging without a large build to explore.

 

[boomchacle]

Now that they can make blocks like the computer control panel. I doubt it would be unthinkable for them to build a simple looking sentry turret that is in fact one block.
And if you are worried about people abusing them. Just make them so they can only target astronauts.

or have a range of like 20 meters like call of duty

 

[EricBlank]

The main topic seems to be the use condensed block for AP weapons. I have been throwing this idea around for while in my head and it was to address the main problem of under powered weapons at smaller sizes. As the OP mentioned it is a bit weird that the astronaut pistol wielded by an unarmed astronaut is strong enough to take on a ship 2x-3x the size of him. Since a lot more space has to be spent on various modules in a small ship, there is far less space for weapons. Ship battles between smaller ships can take considerably longer than a brawl between two titans. Not only do weapons have less room in smaller ships, but armor is much thicker relative to systems. This mostly applies to >100 mass ships, a weight class that could use a little love.

My proposition for condensed weapons blocks is simple. They have a computer and modules like normal weapons. They also have the same 4 categories and linking combinations, but cannot be linked to effects. They will do 2x the damage with 2.5x the mass at the same power consumption per point of damage. The bigger an individual group the more power it will consume per module, sort like an inverse to the way power capacitors work. A cool bonus would be to give them a texture that makes them slab friendly, making them even more space friendly.

I am also in favor of the idea of 1 block weapons like 3d modeled turrets and things like a PD module.

I had a similar thought a while back. Make a new class of micro blocks (that are full cubic meter cubes), which have an inventory of eight potential component parts. These can be weapons, at which point the block becomes the origin of the projectile, or systems like shields, thrusters, power reactors. You can make very compact "ships" with those, that have most of the usual functions, scaled down. Say each micro component does 10% of the work a full scale component could do, so the total of that 1-meter cubed block with 8 identical components would add up to only 80% the potential of a normal ship block. But useful for really small builds. Combine that with being more expensive than your average blocks, and youve got a built-in incentive to use full-scale blocks on normal ship builds; theyre more powerful, cheaper and space efficient for those larger craft. But valuable in very small builds like a hover bike or car or something, where full size blocks just take up more and more space you didnt want to use, to keep it compact. Could even have a block orientation and a docking component, to let it dock to a rail, only if it doesnt exceed a certain mass (like, 10?)

Oh yeah, and make some of the options to these AP specific weapons, with increased effectiveness versus astronauts and decreased power vs blocks. Do the same for astronaut gear meant to damage astronauts vs making the rocket launcher anti-ship rpgs that deal damage best vs blocks, not astronauts. Its only a half-baked idea still...

 

[Cluwne]

Seems like some sort of hard radiation weapon that's basically useless against blocks, not counting some damage to shields, but deadly to meatbags.
Hm... I wonder if something like that could be saved for the crew update.

 

[rocketman221]

I like the idea of having LOD turrets that have firepower similar to the hand held weapons.
They should have their own shields rather than using the ships shields so they are not invincible.
There could be different turret mounts, bodies, and weapon modules to customize them.