Surprise Dev Update

[Mered4]

Nevermind then, and no it would not be viable.

I can confirm his observation. Docked -> mothership only

 

[Blodge]

I agree turrets should not be as well shielded as the rest of the ship. Providing smaller ships with something they have the firepower to handle actually gives them a tactical use in a battle.

How about instead of the turrets sharing a percentage of the ship's shields, they share a percentage (maybe even 100%) of the recharge rate? Taking out the need for shield rechargers helps with small turret builds. They would still need to be stuffed full of capacitors to be well shielded though, so smaller turrets could still get taken-out quicker than the rest of the ship by a strong enough single hit or persistent attack.

While we're on the subject of making smaller turrets still viable, how about a new block: The Turret Core? Basically the same as an existing Core except it can dock directly with the new rail blocks. It would allow for a very basic turret to be built which could still turn on the horizontal axis. To get rotation on the vertical axis, you then only need to add one rotator block. It could even have built-in AI config options which would remove the need for a Bobby AI module too.

 

[Mered4]

I agree turrets should not be as well shielded as the rest of the ship. Providing smaller ships with something they have the firepower to handle actually gives them a tactical use in a battle.

How about instead of the turrets sharing a percentage of the ship's shields, they share a percentage (maybe even 100%) of the recharge rate? Taking out the need for shield rechargers helps with small turret builds. They would still need to be stuffed full of capacitors to be well shielded though, so smaller turrets could still get taken-out quicker than the rest of the ship by a strong enough single hit or persistent attack.

While we're on the subject of making smaller turrets still viable, how about a new block: The Turret Core? Basically the same as an existing Core except it can dock directly with the new rail blocks and still rotate on the horizontal axis. It would allow for a very basic turret to be built which could still turn on one axis remove the need for 2 sets of joints just to get rotation on 2 axis. It could even have built-in AI configs which would remove the need for a Bobby AI module.

We need turrets to share 100% of the ship shields and recharge - that is, they be considered the same entity as the Mothership. After all, turrets aren't really *another ship* - they are an integral part of the mothership and should be treated as such. Otherwise Drones will rule.

 

[Blodge]

We need turrets to share 100% of the ship shields and recharge - that is, they be considered the same entity as the Mothership. After all, turrets aren't really *another ship* - they are an integral part of the mothership and should be treated as such. Otherwise Drones will rule.

But then you end-up with someone building the Death Star, only you can't take out the turrets guarding the small exhaust port because they're just as tough as the whole Battle Station.

 

[Lecic]

We need turrets to share 100% of the ship shields and recharge - that is, they be considered the same entity as the Mothership. After all, turrets aren't really *another ship* - they are an integral part of the mothership and should be treated as such. Otherwise Drones will rule.

Uh, no. That's how you end up with ships where 100% of the weapons are in turrets instead on on-ship, because improved maneuverability with no downsides. I do not look forward to a day where all the weapons are mounted into hundreds of small turrets because they don't suffer from the slow turn speed that larger turrets have and they're fully shielded.

No or partial shielding is the only thing that allows smaller ships to have an edge in a battle against a larger ship- they can blow off turrets and potentially turn the battle in their favor by sticking out of the main guns fire and wearing the enemy down.

 

[Mered4]

Uh, no. That's how you end up with ships where 100% of the weapons are in turrets instead on on-ship, because improved maneuverability with no downsides. I do not look forward to a day where all the weapons are mounted into hundreds of small turrets because they don't suffer from the slow turn speed that larger turrets have and they're fully shielded.

No or partial shielding is the only thing that allows smaller ships to have an edge in a battle against a larger ship- they can blow off turrets and potentially turn the battle in their favor by sticking out of the main guns fire and wearing the enemy down.

Small turrets have low DPS and will always have a huge maintenance cost.

In addition, drones will continue to dominate large ships because they simply outmaneuver them after shredding their turrets.

The idea of a dogfighting Starmade needs to be dropped completely for ships larger than a thousand mass. Otherwise we will have more and more of the *stare at eachother and shoot till dead* gameplay, which is boring enough.

You can't expect large ships to be piloted like a fighter. They won't be. Surrender to the concept - it is inevitable. Turrets (not the God-like turrets we have now) are the way of the future for Starmade Capital Ship combat.

 

[Blodge]

Small turrets have low DPS and will always have a huge maintenance cost.

Small turrets should be designed to take out small, lightly shielded manoeuvrable targets such as Fighters and missiles. Not to swamp a larger ship with enough accumulative firepower to overcome their shields with unerring accuracy.

In addition, drones will continue to dominate large ships because they simply outmaneuver them after shredding their turrets.

Admittedly, once a large ship loses it's small turrets it will probably have no way of destroying small drones/fighters. But, large ships can have very high shield capacities and very high recharge rates (not to mention really thick armour) which the small ships wont have the DPS to overcome. Stalemate, unless the small ships are extremely large in numbers or part of a battle group which also contains one or more large ships. Or, if the large ship which just lost all it's turrets was also part of a battle group which contained a few smaller escort ships.
This promotes the need for team-play and tactics in battles, rather than it being decided by a duel between the two biggest ships.

The idea of a dogfighting Starmade needs to be dropped completely for ships larger than a thousand mass. Otherwise we will have more and more of the *stare at eachother and shoot till dead* gameplay, which is boring enough.

Agreed. Duels can be fun for the participants, but there can only be 2 participants. Hence needing something to encourage team-play and tactics.

You can't expect large ships to be piloted like a fighter. They won't be. Surrender to the concept - it is inevitable. Turrets (not the God-like turrets we have now) are the way of the future for Starmade Capital Ship combat.

I don't expect large ships to be piloted like a fighter. I expect them to either be taking out large static installations and other large ships, or carrying lots of smaller ships into battle.
Assuming a battle where you only have 2 capital ships slugging at each other though, then turrets are probably the answer, yes. Although if one of those large ships happens to have a huge built-in Death Star style cannon then it may be a different story. Would be interesting to test that out...

 

[Lecic]

Small turrets have low DPS and will always have a huge maintenance cost.

In addition, drones will continue to dominate large ships because they simply outmaneuver them after shredding their turrets.

The idea of a dogfighting Starmade needs to be dropped completely for ships larger than a thousand mass. Otherwise we will have more and more of the *stare at eachother and shoot till dead* gameplay, which is boring enough.

You can't expect large ships to be piloted like a fighter. They won't be. Surrender to the concept - it is inevitable. Turrets (not the God-like turrets we have now) are the way of the future for Starmade Capital Ship combat.

Small turrets have low DPS yes, but when there's the equivalent of a 50k turret spread out among 100 0.5k turrets, that low DPS combines into, shocker, THE SAME DPS AS THE 50K. Because we have this thing called "linear weapons," remember?

I don't like dogfighting titans either. But you know what's even less fun? Needing to coat your ship in hundreds of small turrets to have a good combat ship. Which is what 100% shielded turrets would do to the game. Drones would be worthless. Forward guns would be worthless. Smaller ships being able to do anything in a battle would be over. Why? Because quickly turning things with high damage is overpowered, and it's the exact same reason we have big ships turn slow.

Drones dominating is an issue with turrets not being able to target multiple things well. Give turrets an improved AI, and you'll see issues with overpowered drones quickly dropping away.

Turrets are not the future. Turrets are simply one of multiple equally viable strategies for ship armament, alongside drones and forward guns.

 

[Blodge]

Turrets are not the future. Turrets are simply one of multiple equally viable strategies for ship armament, alongside drones and forward guns.

I totally agree. In a game which is trying to encourage creative engineering, we can't have a single tactic which trumps all others 100% of the time.

 

[Yetimania]

I think turret shielding could be as simple as this:

Let's say a ship is 1000 blocks large.

Let's say the turret is 25 blocks large.

The total amount of blocks in the ship is 1025.

The total ratio of turret blocks to ship blocks is 25/1000.

So if a ship would have a 1 000 000 shields, then the turret would have only 25 000.

That way the bigger the turret, the more shields it would have, but at the same time, it would mean the mothership would have less shields to compensate.

It is a shame that I can only click "agree" once. I think this solution is perfect. Anything that lets me build effective turrets that don't have to be half the size of the ship they're docked to is alright in my book. With this implimented, I'd just transfer the shield caps I'd otherwise put on turrets onto the mothership, preserving total shield capacity and cost of the ship with a more aesthetically pleasing/sane mothership:turret ratio.

Also, this would presumably apply to docked ships, which would be great. I hate it when the little shuttles or emergency escape pods docked in my ships get blown to smithereens by missile blast radius's because they're too small to be survivable in the scale of conflict ensuing.

 

[Snk]

I heard turrets are going to share part of the mothership's shields.

Also, the new update means more and better ways to put in your turrets. For example, you could have something like a phaser bank from star trek: A saucer shaped turret in the middle of your ship. Turret based combat doesn't have to mean hundreds of tiny turrets everywhere.

 

[Lecic]

I heard turrets are going to share part of the mothership's shields.

Also, the new update means more and better ways to put in your turrets. For example, you could have something like a phaser bank from star trek: A saucer shaped turret in the middle of your ship. Turret based combat doesn't have to mean hundreds of tiny turrets everywhere.

Yeah, we're aware. We're opposing 100% shield sharing, because it WILL lead to ships coated in massive numbers of turrets. The downside to having freely aiming things which aren't constricted by your main ship's turning rate is that they can be destroyed easier. By removing that, you remove any semblance of balance around turrets. Partial sharing is fine. It just needs to be balanced carefully.

 

[Snk]

Yeah, we're aware. We're opposing 100% shield sharing, because it WILL lead to ships coated in massive numbers of turrets. The downside to having freely aiming things which aren't constricted by your main ship's turning rate is that they can be destroyed easier. By removing that, you remove any semblance of balance around turrets. Partial sharing is fine. It just needs to be balanced carefully.

Ah, gotcha.

 

[Mered4]

Small turrets have low DPS yes, but when there's the equivalent of a 50k turret spread out among 100 0.5k turrets, that low DPS combines into, shocker, THE SAME DPS AS THE 50K. Because we have this thing called "linear weapons," remember?

I don't like dogfighting titans either. But you know what's even less fun? Needing to coat your ship in hundreds of small turrets to have a good combat ship. Which is what 100% shielded turrets would do to the game. Drones would be worthless. Forward guns would be worthless. Smaller ships being able to do anything in a battle would be over. Why? Because quickly turning things with high damage is overpowered, and it's the exact same reason we have big ships turn slow.

Drones dominating is an issue with turrets not being able to target multiple things well. Give turrets an improved AI, and you'll see issues with overpowered drones quickly dropping away.

Turrets are not the future. Turrets are simply one of multiple equally viable strategies for ship armament, alongside drones and forward guns.

Forward guns are only usable under a certain mass because of Drones. Having a massive 500k DPS weapon is great - but if you cant hit something then it's worthless. Titans are only good against other non-cube Titans.

Drones are solely limited by maintenance costs. If they weren't, every ship I built for combat would be a shielded interior/exterior with 24 Drone slots of increasing size. And my faction would rule the ShroomVerse. Thankfully, we don't, and no one's got time for dat maintenance.

Turrets make Titan and Ultra class vessels actually useful. Otherwise, you could just out turn them and have a laugh as this massive dreadnought gets wrecked without firing a shot. That said, turrets are GOD MODE right now. If we give turrets a specific set of limitations (like a predictable firing arc and a minimum turning speed), then we could create a system with depth and complexity for large ships - which would even out the odds in a pure Drone v Turret contest. It would also give enough levers for Calbiri to balance without making things super binary.

Will forward guns (like the MAC cannons from MES) be useful in large ships? Sure. But only in specific situations. You shouldn't bring a ship as a jack-of-all trades, like we all do now. Using Turrets should make sense for larger ships, but it shouldn't be relied on for killing larger vessels - that should be left to forward weapons or maybe drones. Diversify is the call to action here - if every weapon does everything well, we'll be left looking for the best one.

 

[epicfacethe3rd]

HYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPE

 

[Blodge]

Forward guns are only usable under a certain mass because of Drones. Having a massive 500k DPS weapon is great - but if you cant hit something then it's worthless. Titans are only good against other non-cube Titans.

Titans with forward guns are also good against planets, space stations or any other large immobile objects. Same goes for Titans with a small number of very large turrets.

Turrets make Titan and Ultra class vessels actually useful. Otherwise, you could just out turn them and have a laugh as this massive dreadnought gets wrecked without firing a shot.

Titans with a very large number of small turrets and/or carrying a ton of drones (i.e. Super-Carriers) are very good against drones and other smaller ships. Not quite so good against other Big Gun Titans as one covered in small turrets can at best only bring around 50% of it's firepower to bear on a single target. This is why the World's navies began to favour Dreadnought-style battleships over ones covered in rows of smaller guns.
In essence, I agree with you. Not being able to hit your target, or only being able to hit it with half your firepower is pretty useless.

Drones are solely limited by maintenance costs. If they weren't, every ship I built for combat would be a shielded interior/exterior with 24 Drone slots of increasing size. And my faction would rule the ShroomVerse. Thankfully, we don't, and no one's got time for dat maintenance.

Your frequent mentioning of Drones and maintenance costs makes me think you only play offline. Is that the case? It's how I play for the moment. You seem to be thinking about one Player manageing a whole fleet by themselves. What if you're on a multiplayer server? Maybe you don't want to be a fleet Admiral, maybe you just want to fly a small fighter as escort for Traders, hunt bounties or be a Pirate. If that's the case, everyone is managing their own small ships and the Admiral's maintenance time and costs decrease somewhat.
If I'm piloting one of these small ships, then I'd like a job to do if a big battle comes up. That job should be taking out point defences on larger ships and/or taking out enemy Drones/Fighters. If all point defences are as equally tough as their parent ship, then Drones have no use and there's nothing for me to do.

That said, turrets are GOD MODE right now. If we give turrets a specific set of limitations (like a predictable firing arc and a minimum turning speed), then we could create a system with depth and complexity for large ships - which would even out the odds in a pure Drone v Turret contest. It would also give enough levers for Calbiri to balance without making things super binary.

Will forward guns (like the MAC cannons from MES) be useful in large ships? Sure. But only in specific situations. You shouldn't bring a ship as a jack-of-all trades, like we all do now. Using Turrets should make sense for larger ships, but it shouldn't be relied on for killing larger vessels - that should be left to forward weapons or maybe drones. Diversify is the call to action here - if every weapon does everything well, we'll be left looking for the best one.

Again, I agree. Turrets should be accurate but turning speeds should decrease with mass, possibly at a slightly higher rate than it does for ships, so small ships have a chance at outmanoeuvring their firepower. Large slow Turrets with a brick-ton of firepower should still be able to hit heavily shielded but slow/immobile targets.
However, a Drone v Turret contest is no contest at all if that Turret is sharing 100% of the big ship's total shields. That's why I think a system like the one proposed by Inspired2150 (Turrets get an increased % of total shield with increasing mass relative to the ship) is a good idea.

 

[Mered4]

Titans with forward guns are also good against planets, space stations or any other large immobile objects. Same goes for Titans with a small number of very large turrets.



Titans with a very large number of small turrets and/or carrying a ton of drones (i.e. Super-Carriers) are very good against drones and other smaller ships. Not quite so good against other Big Gun Titans as one covered in small turrets can at best only bring around 50% of it's firepower to bear on a single target. This is why the World's navies began to favour Dreadnought-style battleships over ones covered in rows of smaller guns.
In essence, I agree with you. Not being able to hit your target, or only being able to hit it with half your firepower is pretty useless.



Your frequent mentioning of Drones and maintenance costs makes me think you only play offline. Is that the case? It's how I play for the moment. You seem to be thinking about one Player manageing a whole fleet by themselves. What if you're on a multiplayer server? Maybe you don't want to be a fleet Admiral, maybe you just want to fly a small fighter as escort for Traders, hunt bounties or be a Pirate. If that's the case, everyone is managing their own small ships and the Admiral's maintenance time and costs decrease somewhat.
If I'm piloting one of these small ships, then I'd like a job to do if a big battle comes up. That job should be taking out point defences on larger ships and/or taking out enemy Drones/Fighters. If all point defences are as equally tough as their parent ship, then Drones have no use and there's nothing for me to do.



Again, I agree. Turrets should be accurate but turning speeds should decrease with mass, possibly at a slightly higher rate than it does for ships, so small ships have a chance at outmanoeuvring their firepower. Large slow Turrets with a brick-ton of firepower should still be able to hit heavily shielded but slow/immobile targets.
However, a Drone v Turret contest is no contest at all if that Turret is sharing 100% of the big ships total shields. That's why I think a system like the one proposed by Inspired2150 (Turrets get an increased % of total shield with increasing mass relative to the ship) is a good idea.

Most of my time is spent in a single player sandbox, but I spend that time building new ships instead of flying around shooting pirates

I'm an active member of a ~6 person faction. Usually 3 of us are active at a time, so we do our own maintenance. I think this could easily be expected of all large factions, because no one has found the proper incentive to make someone mount turrets and replace blocks or drones for hours on end (at least in my experience). Most factions on MushroomFleet are also single-man, with an alliance of sorts existing between most of these factions.

I dont agree with your last statement - I think it needs balanced out and tested to be sure that that is the outcome. Remember, turrets are quite inaccurate against small, fast targets, even now - who's to say we don't keep that little tidbit of balance in the next phase?

 

[Blodge]

Most of my time is spent in a single player sandbox, but I spend that time building new ships instead of flying around shooting pirates

Me too, and I imagined that was how most people play this game. Use a Sandbox to create and test your designs before releasing them into the "real" world of a multiplayer server. However, I do find shooting Pirates handy when I want to test out my latest weapon designs

I'm an active member of a ~6 person faction. Usually 3 of us are active at a time, so we do our own maintenance. I think this could easily be expected of all large factions, because no one has found the proper incentive to make someone mount turrets and replace blocks or drones for hours on end (at least in my experience). Most factions on MushroomFleet are also single-man, with an alliance of sorts existing between most of these factions.

I also assumed this was the case on most multiplayer servers as they exist now. There should definitely be some practical way a player can be in a one-person faction and still contribute, either with a massive dreadnought-style ship that can one-shot your Titan/Starbase/Planet or with a huge Super-carrier stuffed full of AI Drones and enough small turrets to fend off those pesky enemy fighters. Ideally though I think we'd all like to see this game end-up like Eve Online where even a player in a small Frigate can contribute something in a big battle.
When we eventually get automated Shipyards, I'm hoping maintenance will be much less tedious. The motivation will come from someone paying me for the privilege of using my yard :D

I dont agree with your last statement - I think it needs balanced out and tested to be sure that that is the outcome. Remember, turrets are quite inaccurate against small, fast targets, even now - who's to say we don't keep that little tidbit of balance in the next phase?

Which part of my last statement, sorry? The part about turning speeds & accuracy? Or about the shield sharing? Or both?

 

[Mered4]

Me too, and I imagined that was how most people play this game. Use a Sandbox to create and test your designs before releasing them into the "real" world of a multiplayer server. However, I do find shooting Pirates handy when I want to test out my latest weapon designs



I also assumed this was the case on most multiplayer servers as they exist now. There should definitely be some practical way a player can be in a one-person faction and still contribute, either with a massive dreadnought-style ship that can one-shot your Titan/Starbase/Planet or with a huge Super-carrier stuffed full of AI Drones and enough small turrets to fend off those pesky enemy fighters. Ideally though I think we'd all like to see this game end-up like Eve Online where even a player in a small Frigate can contribute something in a big battle.
When we eventually get automated Shipyards, I'm hoping maintenance will be much less tedious. The motivation will come from someone paying me for the privilege of using my yard :D



Which part of my last statement, sorry? The part about turning speeds & accuracy? Or about the shield sharing? Or both?

This is the part I disagree with:

However, a Drone v Turret contest is no contest at all if that Turret is sharing 100% of the big ship's total shields. That's why I think a system like the one proposed by @Inspired2150 (Turrets get an increased % of total shield with increasing mass relative to the ship) is a good idea.

 

[Blodge]

This is the part I disagree with:

However, a Drone v Turret contest is no contest at all if that Turret is sharing 100% of the big ship's total shields. That's why I think a system like the one proposed by @Inspired2150 (Turrets get an increased % of total shield with increasing mass relative to the ship) is a good idea.

This system means bigger turrets automatically get more shields, making them more resilient to big guns and pretty-much invulnerable to Drones. Smaller ones get less shields meaning Drones can tackle them. Seems balanced to me.

Do you have an alternate idea?