Space battles should be more epic

[Qweesdy]

Hi,


Because any hit no matter how small stops shield regen, and more weapon platforms flying around means more things to shoot at and makes the area less safe in general.


I agree - turrets are really good for slowing down shield regen (note: shield regen doesn\'t stop anymore, as this was changed a few releases ago).


Or put it this way: Take two equal ships and give only one of them a fighter escort. Which ship do you think is going to take more damage? The fighters might get destroyed in the process but they are cheap and if the ship they are guarding stays alive and beats the other ship, then they have done their job.


Of course - that\'s what you\'d expect for an unfair fight.

Take two groups of ships with equal cost (or equal mass if you like), where one group consists of a single large ship, and the other group has a medium carrier and many small fighters. Now that it\'s a fair comparison, what do you expect will happen? I\'d expect the single large ship will destroy the medium carrier while its turrets do fly swatting.

 

[ardiel]

I agree it\'s unfair and that is the nature of carriers - to fight unfair fights.

That\'s even how they work right now. The main reason carriers are effective right now is because they are surrounded by destroyers and they carry like 80 planes (the US ones do) but most of all they work because few other nations have them! More than half the carriers in the world belong to the US, and other nations which do have carriers have smaller ones and only like 1 to 4 in service each.

The US has TEN nuclear CATOBAR carriers, and like 9 or 10 conventional SVTOL carriers in addition. France has one nuclear CATOBAR. Everyone else has zero of them.

 

[Qweesdy]

HI,


I agree it\'s unfair and that is the nature of carriers - to fight unfair fights.


What I mean is that your argument is flawed and therefore irrelevant. A carrier with fighters that add up to twice the cost of a single larger ship might win (especially if most of the cost is the carrier and not the fighters because a huge carrier is a huge ship and huge ships are powerful); a carrier with fighters that add up to the same cost as a single larger ship will lose; and a carrier with fighters that add up to half the cost of a single larger ship will lose very quickly. In all of these cases it\'s obvious carriers suck and a single larger ship is more effective.


That\'s even how they work right now. The main reason carriers are effective right now is because they are surrounded by destroyers and they carry like 80 planes (the US ones do) but most of all they work because few other nations have them! More than half the carriers in the world belong to the US, and other nations which do have carriers have smaller ones and only like 1 to 4 in service each.


Um, what? Aircraft carriers make sense (aircraft are fast and agile, naval vessels are not). They make sense because aircraft and naval vessels travel through different mediums (air and water).

Spacecraft carriers do not make sense. They don\'t make sense because spacecraft and spaceraft carriers both move through space (and not different mediums). In the same way there are no \"boat carrying boats\", there are no \"submarine carrying submarines\", there are no \"aircraft carrying aircraft\", and there are no \"land vehicle carrying land vehicles\" (at least not used during battles).

For space (e.g. StarMade) everyone else has been complaining that fighters are not effective against large capital ships. That\'s why they want them changed. Everyone else is right (they aren\'t effective, and all they do is distract my turrets for a fraction of a second). I just don\'t think changes are needed or that fighters should be effective against huge ships to begin with, because this is nonsense.

While I\'m here, I\'d like to give FlyingDebris an award for the only intelligent comment. Big ships are more efficient, so a carrier that carries a few big ships is far more sensible than a carrier that carries fighters.

 

[ardiel]

I was only refuting the idea that fighters can do absolutely nothing to large ships. I proved a way that they can. Saying that it should be a fair battle is moving the goalpost.

Also the medium has nothing to do with it. Carriers are not used to travel on a different medium. If they could make a carrier fly, they probably would! It travels on water because that is the only way it can, and it carries planes to increase their range and give them a mobile base.

Currently ships don\'t use anything like fuel and they cost practically nothing, so attrition means zip. If attrition were a big factor then fighters become useful because commiting your capital which might be the only one you\'ve got in the area would be serious business.

So ok, when two ships meet and fight for no reason in the middle of nowhere and just get respawned, then yeah, go ahead and use deathcubes. But when you\'ve got actual war going on with limited resources, you work with what you can get and do not send your best, most expensive ship to get blown to bits without fighters to do sector scans in advance for example. This is what they don\'t show in sci fi movies because factions have magical resources by plot demand.

Edit: Also really the only way fighters become useless is if you take into account detection equipment where a small ship can\'t detect as qickly as a large one, ships see further than they can shoot accurately, if scaled up weaponry is so precise and fast as to be almost unavoidable, and if ships have warp drive that use little to no fuel of any kind but you need a big ship to fit it. Then yes, you end up with just big ships and bigger ships and actually end up with a scenario were fighters serve little purpose that the big ship itself can\'t do. However most of this is not true in StarMade.

 

[FlyingDebris]

To the argument--^
I learned the hard way that fighters are quite effective. I nearly lost a heavy cruiser to two of them, because they were working together.

 

[Qweesdy]

Hi,


I was only refuting the idea that fighters can do absolutely nothing to large ships. I proved a way that they can.


For real life \"air vs. sea\"; the aircraft can do damage against the ship because the ship has no shields at all. It doesn\'t have anything at all to do with StarMade (e.g. I\'m fairly sure nobody is suggesting that all shields should be removed from the game completely).

Comparing aircraft carriers to anything in StarMade is silly - it\'s completely different equipment for completely different purposes. It\'s like saying donuts should come with gravy because roast chicken is good with gravy. If this was a world war II game then I\'d be wanting aircraft carriers myself.


Saying that it should be a fair battle is moving the goalpost.


I didn\'t move any goalposts - unfair and/or biased comparisons have always been unfair and/or biased.

Currently ships don\'t use anything like fuel and they cost practically nothing, so attrition means zip. If attrition were a big factor then fighters become useful because commiting your capital which might be the only one you\'ve got in the area would be serious business.

People should be placing their capital ships in stategic positions, not using them to run around between shops, sight seeing and mining. Smaller ships are better for these things and should be used instead (but currently there\'s no fuel, and no reason not to use a massive capital ship for chores). If fuel was added, fast/cheap scouts would be useful and \"fighter vs. fighter\" fights would be more common. This would all be good.


So ok, when two ships meet and fight for no reason in the middle of nowhere and just get respawned, then yeah, go ahead and use deathcubes. But when you\'ve got actual war going on with limited resources, you work with what you can get and do not send your best, most expensive ship to get blown to bits without fighters to do sector scans in advance for example. This is what they don\'t show in sci fi movies because factions have magical resources by plot demand.


For scouting, I\'d want a something designed for scouting (something that can perma-cloak) and not a fighter.

 

[Qweesdy]

Hi,

Can you describe the heavy cruiser?

Were there \"blind spots\" where a small ship could sit without being hit by any turret? Was there too little thrust, too much DPS and not enough shields? Was a pilot in the cruiser at the time? ;-)

The ship I\'m currently building is designed for 14 medium turrets and one large turret. It\'s mostly just an empty hull at the moment. To make sure the medium turret fits right I put one on it. Every half an hour or so a wave of Isanths comes along. They could approach from almost any direction without getting hit, but somehow they\'re always dead before I notice they\'ve spawned. I just see \"core overheating\" blue diamonds while I\'m building The ship has been floating in space like this for the last 4 hours because I\'m too lazy to bother docking it and got distracted (food, TV, etc).

Now I know the pirate Isanths aren\'t the toughest fighters and I know AI isn\'t as smart as human pilots, but if this was on a multi-player server full of enemies equipped with huge carriers armed only with human pilots flying fighters, I\'d probably just put a second turret on it and still be too lazy to dock. It\'s the carriers own weapons that would worry me.

 

[FlyingDebris]

Its goal was good maneuverability, high shielding, and a decent DPS. However, the ship\'s turrets were in the back, bht tgey are able to fire over the ship towards the top and bottom. The ship itself has 2.01mil shielding, solid all the way through, aeatshield, good cannons, and, well, it\'s more of a glorified boxship. It looks like a flying pill with two turrets at the back.

 

[Angus and Alexis]

IMHO, i believe there should be a triangle going \"Capitals beats fighters beats bombers beats capitals\"

Bombers shold be literally dedicated for anti capital work, so get owned by fighters, which get swatted by AA turrets, and capital ships get crippled (or destroyed, whatever) by slow moving bomber torpedos.

Capital vs Capital should be a several minute (up to 10 minutes) slugfest of complete destruction.

Fighter vs Fighter should be quick, erratic fights which can be over if someone fails to manuver.

Bomber vs Bomber should utilise small turrets, small AMC arrays and strafing with torpedos.

 

[FlyingDebris]

They would need to do it in numbers. Many of those who pushed for the shield nerf were complaining that their 1000 mass ship wasn\'t capable of taking down an 80000 mass supercap alone. Personally, I think it should\'ve remained that way.

 

[BeefBacon]

People are still whining about the shield nerf?

Fighters/bombers should be a viable option, as should other non-capital ships in a large battle. The side that wins should be the side that uses a variety of ships tactically, not the side that just has a fleet of near-identical giant death cubes.

Changes also need to be made to AMCs to make big battles a little less brief.

 

[refirendum]

a carrier type ship must have some kind of maximum distance setting for AI ships. that way the ai ships don\'t move away from the actual carrier off into some dark void of a sector and never come back.

 

[FlyingDebris]

Currently, it is possible for some troll to come online, spend ten minutes building a 1000 mass \"ship\", and suddenly have the capability to, by himself, tear down a ships who\'s shields alone weigh 10 times as much as the other person\'s ship. That shouldn\'t happen.

 

[Zyrr]

I\'m going to stop arguing with you, Qweesdy. You obviously have never fought in a fleet engagement or possibly have never even played Starmade, ever watched any Sci Fi or read any Sci Fi, and consistently contradict your own points.

I\'m going to move on to positive things before this turns into a flame war.

 

[BeefBacon]

I agree. That\'s silly, but that\'s a problem with the way AMCs work and not necessarily the fault of the shield system... though they could still do with some tweaking. I think AMCs should be a higher priority though.

 

[zelphir]

I do like the idea of the iff not being centered on the core however why make it the center of the craft at all or a shape around the craft at all when at range the diamond thing works great but when your close enough to see the ships why not just outline them.

the only issue I can come up with having outlines as apposed to diamonds or whatever shape you prefer marking targets/objects of intrest is that it could produce server/clinent lag of some descryption being a non-coder I cant say which but if thats the case I would much rather the geometric shape went around the entire ship because of the way most ship creation goes if the core isnt the center of your ship its a gaint pain in the ass to dock on anything having to make the dock twice as long as your ship. I guess other than that there really isnt any other reason for it not to be the way you said it just having it be the center of the ship but this still doesnt really fix the issue of hull being nothing more than paint for your ship.



I wish there was some way to make AMC\'s only work on sheilds or something similiar and have Mass Drivers or something that do next to nothing to sheilds but do alright damage to hull. maybe lasers or something I dont know.



as a another note/solution maybe its just me but when you have a bigger gun doesnt it take longer to fire bigger more powerfull guns in everything, so why dont AMC\'s scale accordingly the greater the damage the slower the reload. I mean sheilds seem to be that way, the bigger more powerfull shields you have the slower they recharge or maybe thats just in the way I am building my shield generators.

 

[zelphir]

I for one dont care how spacecraft and aircraft work in real life, what I care about is how this game is blanaced and brining more to the table then he who has made the most expensive ship wins.

perhaps I am bit naive but isnt the saying go something like \"the machine is worth more than the sum of its parts\"?

lets take what your saying and look more deeply at it for a second

you have a capital ship and its armed to the teeth and just tears through other ships like butter competely annialting them, now the closet thing I can think of in real life is a battleship.

now if you have a fleet of just battle ships and you come across a fleet of ships that have battleships and aircraft carriers I for one think the one with aircraft carriers would win, even if it was only a 3 v 3 match.

why is this? well an aircraft carrier can carry I think somewhere around 4-7 planes an each of these planes can mount torreopes and or bombs, which decimate and cripple battleships because of there slow plodding nature.

in our game currently why dont have this rock paper siccors effect because what happens is that the three capitol ships are not only as fast as these fighters but they mount the same exact weapons and shield technologies, let me return to my battleship example.

if the airplanes couldnt equip bombs and or torpedoes they would use machineguns or cannons on everything and these kinnetic based weapons would be next to useless on a battles ship not to mention the battleship would be firing twice the firepower back at them blowing them out of the sky.

I realise that space is not the ocean but I grew up watching starwars and startreck and dreamed of a game where I could build and fly those ships against people where style mattered just as much as technology. this is as close to that game as I have gotten and I dont know about the rest of the people here but at the very least this is what it looks like everyone wants to see in this game.

now then I am going to ask you to defend yourself, in any instance of any movie or game you have played or watched has a handfull of fighters not been usefull against a capital class ship in a sci-fi or space genre? Because thats what this looks like its based off of.

 

[FlyingDebris]

To be honest, I have never put much thought into that. I could see how that would work. However, there needs to be some limiting factor for what can kill what. If, perhaps, it was five or six 1000 mass ships, I could most certainly see them taking out a supercap. What the issue is currently, and we have felt its effects, is that anything can kill anything. Sure, it may take a single AMC an hour to take down 1 million shields, but it is completely possible if the other player is offline. Now, before you say turrets, the specofic issue we are having is with a certain player who does not have a faction, requiring us to declare war on neutral to stop his attacks. We don\'t WANT to accidentally destroy everything without a DFN faction module, but it is currently the only way to stop him.

 

[Angus and Alexis]

To clarifly what i said above, i mean that bombers should beat capitals when in number, not alone (effing Freelancer made one bomber beat capitals...It sucks now)

Anyway, carriers should lose 1V1 against equally sized dreadnaughts, but beat fleets of frigates.

A titan sized ship should be one of those \"Holy shit they have a flying city with guns, get all of our battleships NOW!\" moments.

I personally think shields need a buff, so that each shield module added, it gains a expodential bonus, but significantly nerf the power of one shield block.

Zyrr, your idea of \"fighter can hurt capital deathmachine\" is incorrect, unless you find starwars the single only sci-fi, capitals in other sci-fi\'s will almost always solo an entire fleet of smaller ships. Its simple maths.
How does a fighter (mass of 10-30) beat a capital (which has a mass of 3000 shield blocks anyway)?
I must say that bombers in numbers (5-6 for even the biggest capitals.) should pose a threat.

 

[FlyingDebris]

That is a good way things should be arranged. (I want to be that dreadnaught! :P)