Space battles should be more epic

[NeonSturm]

I like the idea of not allowing diagonals

they should disable each other.



A lot of bombers could drop bombs and instantly re-cloak.

Is it effective enough? (if you want to kill a few turrets inside an array to win easier with your big ship)



Can we not just increase the per-build diversity of this weapon?

1. damage, you have to get close, wait a long time to recharge and kill only very few blocks - get it with a big box of blocks
2. range, good against enemy turrets if you can change your direction fast enough that the enemy can not catch you - get it with a +cross+ in all 6 directions
3. speed, good against small targets - you need a long gun for it.
4. reload, you need many blocks on bottom/top/left/right, not in front or behind the output.

If you can\'t simply press a button and switch between these layouts, there will be some weakness which can get exploited by smaller ships.



Would it help to have a shield-setting which switches between recharge and max charge and can only be set if the shield didn\'t get hit and you didn\'t fired a weapon for 1 minute?

Small ships would survive a bit longer and regenerate while out-of-combat.

 

[ltmauve]

1. Disabling diagonal cannons may sound good, but it seems tricky to implement. Do you mean, however, that large cannons that butt up diagonally against each other should disable one of them, or that cannons that have their outputs diagonal to each other should disable each other?

2. A more effective system might be to have all cannons on an AMC computer have damage calculated as one giant cannon, and then have each cannon be based on the proportion of all blocks on the computer they are attached to. Even with Mr. Furb\'s suggestion, a 2-block cannon will have about 1.01 times a 1-block cannon\'s dps, while 2 1-block cannons have 2x the dps. This means it is preferable to have many cannons for DPS. Right now a \"flak cannon\" is the main weapon for anti-capital because of this.

3. Burst-fire. If we have large cannons with no cap on reload time, perhaps we should have the option to burst-fire our weapons. If you set your burst-fire count up (up to maximum of say 8) then you decrease your damage per shot by about 1% per extra shot, and reload time is multiplied by the number of shots in the burst. This also might make missles more viable, as you can launch salvos.

4. Inaccuracy. Firing continously increases inaccuracy. The maximum inaccuracy is determined by the number of cannons connected to the computer. This way a flak cannon actually fills the sky with a bunch of fire inaccurately, while naval artiliry is one giant cannon that\'s good out to 2km

5. stat diversity. I like this idea. However, I think range should be related to cannon length, and projectile speed related to the bounding box/all directions (basicaly swapped from your idea) Also, the bounding box should have the square root of length or something of that nature to avoid range also gives you speed thing. That way range does give you a bit of speed but it\'s more effective to go sideways/vertical for speed. Also reload should just decrease as damage increases, but not as fast.

6. \"splash\" of AMCs. I know people like the idea of having AMC projectiles match the size of output. I wouldn\'t mind having the AMC projectile size be the same size as all of the blocks on the front. However I would recommend a slight decrease in accuracy for short, stubby cannons. A cannon 2m long and 50m across is hardly a sniper\'s tool.

 

[Hordemx]

I actually enjoy a lot of the points you make, very good ideas.

One thing i thought would be good though is 1. Make the diamond encompass the ship like someone previously mentions. 2. Make turrets have to shoot all around the diamond. Ai shouldnt be able to pinpoint snipe the core, It should be more like in the sci-fi movies that set the bars. You see in it in Star wars, Star trek, Farscape, Babylon 5. All of these movies have turrets that shoot all around the ship to cause as much overall hull damage as possible. It may be slightly unrealistic... but dammit realism in my opinion is boreing as fuck. I love playing games that are maybe slightly real but not. FOR EXAMPLE Halo, jumping around like 5 feet in the air while wearing a 1 ton suit with fighters that defy gravity and all that, its fun. (im not saying implemenet halo ideas just useing as an example).

You see what im saying though? sure at that level of technology they shouldn all fire in one direction, but it just wouldnt be as cool i guess is what im trying to say. Anyways thats my opinion, ive seen a lot of great ideas here.