StarMade Weapons Update Prebuild

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    ok, its been a bit since i last played. thought i would check it out. i cant seem to figure out how to activate my scanner :(
    i have it in my tool bar.... but i only seem to have the option to left click to toggle the auto charge...... but how do i use the scanner to, like, you know.... scan?
     

    Ckeeze

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    Up to a certain point, the combat and the rendering engine actually breaks down in the old system if you increase the sector sizes too high. You're basically fighting with an enemy's nav marker, not their actual ship, and combat is limited to missiles. Missiles, missiles, missiles. Nothing but missiles. On GenXnova, 100% Beam+Beam didn't even render the beams because the range was too long. The ships aren't even drawn at that distance. I agree, having two 1000-meter-long uberdreadnought titans duking it out with a max weapon range of 4km looks very silly. You have this giant spinal-mount gun that only goes four times the length of the ship, I mean, come on. But many servers also have block limits that limit you to a 100 to 300 meter cruiser maximum, and a shorter weapon range isn't too bad with those.

    It'd be interesting if range scaled with damage, so small bombers have to get closer and find gaps in the enemy's defenses to unleash their weapon payload, but big titans aren't gimped with spinal guns and turrets that only go a few times the length of the ship. Like, have it set up so that the server config file can have range as a sliding scale between a minimum figure and a maximum figure, and there's a curve where it starts off easier and then gets exponentially harder to squeeze more range out of a weapon by increasing damage. Like, maybe set the minimum to 4km and max to 8km on a server with 10km sectors, and have it so that typical fighter weapons and corvette weapons can easily reach out to 4 to 5 kilometers, but a missile boat with some big-ass missiles can go 6 to 7km, etc.

    In "realistic" space combat, all the weapons would have infinite range pretty much, because once you accelerate something in space, it doesn't stop unless something makes it stop. There's no wind resistance, nothing to slow it down. The reason why weapons have range in Starmade is because of engine limitations and gameplay balance reasons. Players don't like having to shoot at one-pixel specks hundreds of kilometers away, even if "real" space combat would have them shooting at things they couldn't even see with the naked eye. If we had real-world combat spacecraft, it wouldn't be out of the question to launch a missile at a target from a good 10,000 to even 100,000 kilometers away. It would simply accelerate at insane, unsurvivable G-forces (being unmanned, obviously), coast to the target for maybe ten minutes to half an hour, and use small maneuvering thrusters for terminal guidance. Starmade's galaxies aren't even big enough to represent the insane scale that real-world interplanetary space combat would take place on. Even the combat in The Expanse, which is about as realistic a space opera as I've seen in recent years, is the space equivalent of a coked-up knife fight.

    A lot of the newer changes to the game's systems are kind of bewildering. However, I think I'm up to the challenge, and I'm very curious to see what I can do under the new system. I think the devs have worked pretty hard on this and given it a lot of thought, and the new damage model creates interesting opportunities. I think a strong loadout for an assault frigate would be to pair heavy armor-piercing cannons with smaller "shredder" volley guns that take advantage of the new volley fire system to help keep the energy consumption manageable under rapid fire. If the AP goes all the way through a lightly-armored target, switch to the shredders and rip them up.

    The ability to set turrets to volley fire could be used to make "flak cannons" that run through multiple barrels in a ripple-fire sequence, or missile turrets that launch relentless salvos that strike one after another. I'm really excited for that.
    The zoom helps with some of these issues and with the 10km sector size the cannon-beam had 45km range wich is bonkers, i think max range of 8km (with certain weapons only) is more than enough but having all of the weapons at only 4km isn't good.
    at 8 km titan fights look okay and smaller cruisers actually feel like a proper scifi battle, of course there needs to be options for clouse quarters combat (bombs, beam, auto-cannon) as well as ranged (missiles, artilerry cannon, sniper cannon)
     
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    Edymnion

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    In all honesty, trying to balance things around ships measured in kilometers is probably a bad idea.

    VERY few people are going to be able to even field a titan that size in the first place (pretty much anyone who's got year markers on their account on this forum are the exceptions, pretty much everybody here is an obsessed builder by definition at this point). And if if they can, most guilds capable of fielding a titan are only going to do so as a threat display, they're not going to have the resources to easily replace it, so they're generally not going to be having titans battling other titans on anything but a build server where they can spawn it in for free.

    If anything, we still need to come up with a good mechanic to penalize huge ships to the point they lose some of their popularity.

    Now don't get me wrong, trying to get things optimized to the point where two titans CAN duke it out without crashing a server is going to be great. And I'd love to see it get to the point where ships can do this:


    Although please note that the single smaller defiant class ship here got it's ass curb stomped by the cruiser, the whole flying around it close enough to avoid the turrets thing is cool.
     
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    So I finally got around to testing cannon+missile and it seams a little op how much damage can be done with such a small gun
    EDIT: and now I tried it on the new built and its not op, is that what the new build changed?
     
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    Jake_Lancia

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    The weapon visuals and volley-fire alone might be enough to drag me back in tbh, but if the weapons don't function properly in release then all my new plans are screwed lmao
     
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    Ithirahad

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    The weapon visuals and volley-fire alone might be enough to drag me back in tbh, but if the weapons don't function properly in release then all my new plans are screwed lmao
    What do you mean 'properly'? The weapons work, they just don't always do what you'd necessarily want them to do.
     
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    What do you mean 'properly'? The weapons work, they just don't always do what you'd necessarily want them to do.
    I believe he means: will they be a balanced and comprehensive system that continues to foster innovation, diversity, and intrigue, or will they be a hodge podge mess of features that are annoying to work with, unbalanced, illogical, and/or just plain not fun.

    So far I feel like the features added by the weapons update are great, but how the features come together are kinda killing the game for me. All the new features feel way too "pre-packaged" instead of weapon design being an innovative process of nudging features as you slowly find your own military/engineering doctrine. For me exploring things like this has always been at the heart and soul of what made StarMade so much better than the other similar games out there. As a day one player, you could just slap a cannon on a ship and it will shoot and do what cannons do, but getting good meant playing with lots of different configurations.

    Having some but not all weapons gimbal, charge up, drop shields, recoil/dissipate, is nice, but I think a better approach to a doom beam for example would be to make a player start out with a basic Beam weapon, then attach a module group that gives it a charge up mechanic in exchange for more damage, then add one that makes it drop your shields in exchange for maybe better power efficiency, then a third module that decreases your fire-rate for better alpha... and if you want the weapon to gimbal, you could but it would take another module group that would make it much bigger and heavier for the same firepower, and if you wanted it to have longer range, you could plug in a range enhancing module group which would also make it bigger and heavier, want to have the latch on effect? give it a targeting module group, etc...

    In this example, there would not be a "doom-beam" per say, but rather dozens of variations of the doom beam where players decide what handicaps they will pay to maximize their weapons.... I should probably write a formal suggestion for this actually...
     

    Ithirahad

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    I believe he means: will they be a balanced and comprehensive system that continues to foster innovation, diversity, and intrigue, or will they be a hodge podge mess of features that are annoying to work with, unbalanced, illogical, and/or just plain not fun.

    So far I feel like the features added by the weapons update are great, but how the features come together are kinda killing the game for me. All the new features feel way too "pre-packaged" instead of weapon design being an innovative process of nudging features as you slowly find your own military/engineering doctrine. For me exploring things like this has always been at the heart and soul of what made StarMade so much better than the other similar games out there. As a day one player, you could just slap a cannon on a ship and it will shoot and do what cannons do, but getting good meant playing with lots of different configurations.

    Having some but not all weapons gimbal, charge up, drop shields, recoil/dissipate, is nice, but I think a better approach to a doom beam for example would be to make a player start out with a basic Beam weapon, then attach a module group that gives it a charge up mechanic in exchange for more damage, then add one that makes it drop your shields in exchange for maybe better power efficiency, then a third module that decreases your fire-rate for better alpha... and if you want the weapon to gimbal, you could but it would take another module group that would make it much bigger and heavier for the same firepower, and if you wanted it to have longer range, you could plug in a range enhancing module group which would also make it bigger and heavier, want to have the latch on effect? give it a targeting module group, etc...

    In this example, there would not be a "doom-beam" per say, but rather dozens of variations of the doom beam where players decide what handicaps they will pay to maximize their weapons.... I should probably write a formal suggestion for this actually...
    This would be excellent, and honestly it would probably be easier to understand than the current system, even though it is more complicated. Unfortunately, something like this will presumably never be implemented.
     
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    This would be excellent, and honestly it would probably be easier to understand than the current system, even though it is more complicated. Unfortunately, something like this will presumably never be implemented.
    Why not? Sure it would be some extra work, but it seems to me to be more inline with the overall direction of the game. It's basically just reactor-chambers for weapons which pretty much everyone has already requested at least once. The mechanics are all there, they just need to be made modular.
     
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    Sure it would be some extra work, but it seems to me to be more inline with the overall direction of the game.
    Because you more or less describe the previous system, or even deeper one, and it was scrapped in favour of what we have now.
     
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    Because you more or less describe the previous system, or even deeper one, and it was scrapped in favour of what we have now.
    More of a hybrid really. Old system had output spam issues because of damage model issues. That is why I say, do the new mechanics of acid damage, do missile HP, do ammo limits, etc. Even do all the new weird handicaps. I'm just saying to keep secondary attributes de-coupled from a weapon's main template, because that was the part of Weapons 2.0 the was working really well, and with a little bit of rework would fit very well with the new system.

    These new weapons are great prototypes for a better system, but they feel really incomplete and boring as they are.

    How to make Weapons 3.0 Modular
     
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    There seams to be a problem with the ability of cannon+beam turrets tracking and hitting targets.
    The reason I say this is because the ones I am testing are having trouble hitting a 101 by 101 meter target at 600 meters with a very slow drift. As I watch them it seams they ether shoot too far behind the target or too far in-front of it
     
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    Koloss_Meshuggah

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    Having some but not all weapons gimbal, charge up, drop shields, recoil/dissipate, is nice, but I think a better approach to a doom beam for example would be to make a player start out with a basic Beam weapon, then attach a module group that gives it a charge up mechanic in exchange for more damage, then add one that makes it drop your shields in exchange for maybe better power efficiency, then a third module that decreases your fire-rate for better alpha... and if you want the weapon to gimbal, you could but it would take another module group that would make it much bigger and heavier for the same firepower, and if you wanted it to have longer range, you could plug in a range enhancing module group which would also make it bigger and heavier, want to have the latch on effect? give it a targeting module group, etc...
    This

    I expected the weapon update to be a continuation of the chamber system. When I first read the weapon update post I wasn't necessarily disappointed, just confused.

    Does schine really know what they're doing ?
     

    Ithirahad

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    This

    I expected the weapon update to be a continuation of the chamber system. When I first read the weapon update post I wasn't necessarily disappointed, just confused.

    Does schine really know what they're doing ?
    Wat? The weapons update was never stated to be an extension of chambers, in fact that system really isn't applicable to weapons as they're individual separate systems and chambers are necessarily global (without some major mechanical changes, at which point they wouldn't really be chambers as we know them any more)
     
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    It would be nice to have the devs weigh in on some of the things we have been talking about like weapons ranges. I would like to know what they think of what we have been talking about here.
     

    Crimson-Artist

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    ok, its been a bit since i last played. thought i would check it out. i cant seem to figure out how to activate my scanner :(
    i have it in my tool bar.... but i only seem to have the option to left click to toggle the auto charge...... but how do i use the scanner to, like, you know.... scan?
    I'm pretty sure its right click. if not then something wrong.
     

    Edymnion

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    It would be nice to have the devs weigh in on some of the things we have been talking about like weapons ranges. I would like to know what they think of what we have been talking about here.
    Pretty sure they're still a bit gunshy after "The Unpleasantness".

    They're reading, I assure you, but they're less likely to say what they're doing too long before they do it now, due to how... poorly... the community acted the last time.
     
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    What the hell is going on with the update servers? The Prebuild 0.201.088 download is stuck at 0% perpetually for me, and then it timed out and left the install corrupted, forcing me to try patching again. :(