Tactica Wombaticae: A Collection of Tactical Design Tips

[Yetimania]

I've always been a munchkin at heart. Regardless of the game, I can't play long before I break out a calculator, spreadsheet, or pen-and-paper and start brainstorming ideas/number crunching optimal strategies. I've been doing that in Starmade lately, and I think I've come up with some pretty good ideas. I was intending to keep them secret, but decided instead to publish them to the community as a whole for review and suggestions. I think it is in everyone's best interest for successful design paradigms to be common knowledge.
To that end, I'm writing up a guide of sorts for how to get the most bang for your block, disclosing some trade secrets of my small faction, the Sacred Order of Wombats. Some of this information may be obvious to more experienced players, but there will probably be something for everyone here.
This guide was primarily written for version .154, and some information may be out of date. It is not a guide for aesthetics, but purely for the practical side of ship construction and brushes on in-combat tactics.

Table of Contents:
1. General Concepts and Definition of Terms
2. Power Generation and Storage
3. On the Use of Turrets and Docked Weapons
4. Weapons, Supports, and Effects
5. In-Combat Tactics
6. Miscellaneous Tips and Tricks

 

[Yetimania]

1. General Concepts and Definition of Terms
Definitions:
Its important that we're all on the same page here. There isn't much of a standardized language among StarMade players for technical discussion, so I'll define my own here.

• AMC: Anti-Matter Cannon
  
• FIRE-LINKED: Fire-Linked Weapons are attached to the same computer on the same ship core
  
• COAXIAL: Coaxial are weapons attached to different computers on the same ship core. They might be the same type of weapon (both AMC's for example) or of different types (an AMC and a missile array)
• TURRET: A turret is a spaceship docked to a Turret Docking Module and contains a BOBBY AI block set to 'turret' (as opposed to 'ship') and will fire at your opponents. Turrets usually contain minimal thrust and Habitation.
  
• DEFENSIVE TURRET: A Defensive Turret is a Turret set to fire on 'all,' as opposed to 'targeted.' It will pick its own targets, which may not be the targets you were hoping it would fire upon.
• POINT-DEFENSE TURRET: A turret whose primary purpose is to destroy ships much smaller than the ship it is mounted on.
  
• MANUAL TURRET: A Manual Turret is a Turret set to fire on 'targeted' as opposed to 'all.' It will only fire on the ship you are focused on, meaning an additional level of micromanagement is necessary.
  
• DOCKED WEAPON: A Docked Weapon is a spaceship docked to a Docking Module (not a Turret Docking Module) that nevertheless contains a BOBBY AI set to 'turret.' The Docked Weapon will fire upon enemies that enter its Field of Fire
• ARC-OF-FIRE: The area in which a weapon (whether fixed to the ship or turret mounted) can fire free of obstructions without rotating the spaceship.
  
• FIELD-OF-FIRE: The area in which a Turret or Docked weapon can fire free including by rotating the Turret or Spaceship. The percentage of the Field-Of-Fire that is unobstructed (that is, the area that the turret can fire without hitting the docked ship or another turret) is the Clear Field of Fire.
  
• SHIP AXIS: The line passing through the front and back of the ship's core. When moving forwards, the ship moves along the ship axis.
  
• WEAPON AXIS: The line passing through the front and back of the emitting block (usually the front block) of the weapon.
• COCKPIT AXIS: the line passing through the front and back of the cockpit block you are flying from (or the Ship Axis if you are not using a cockpit)
  
• PROJECTILE ANGLE: The angle at which the projectile is fired as it deviates from the Weapon Axis. Caused by having a difference between the Ship Axis and the Weapon Axis and using left click to fire, rather than right click. Generally undesirable on piercing weapons and when leading your target.
  
• HABITATION: The area of a spaceship which is accessible by humans, such as corridors, rooms, and non-weapon docking areas. Generally small on dedicated war ships, and higher on Carriers.
  
• MASTER (WEAPON): A weapon computer (such a d1000 computer, a Damage Beam computer, or an Antimatter Computer) and linked weapon blocks linked directly to a ship's core and fired as a weapon.
  
• SUPPORT (WEAPON): A weapon computer and linked weapon blocks linked to a Master, used to modify the Master and not fired as its own weapon.
  
• EFFECT: An effect computer (such as piercing or ion) and linked effect blocks linked to a Master to modify its effects, not used as a standalone defensive effect.
  
• DEFENSIVE EFFECT: An effect computer (such as piercing or ion) and linked effect blocks linked to a ship core, and not to a Master Weapon, used for their standalone defensive effects.
  
• RAPID FIRE: A weapon using an AMC support for high rate of fire.
  
• CARRIER: A spaceship, usually a large one, which carries a substantial number of smaller ships.
  
• CAPITAL SHIP: A spaceship at the outer limit of what is practical for you to build and fly, whether because of resources or lag. Your concept of a capital ship will likely vary from your opponent's concept of a capital ship.
  
• FIGHTER: A spaceship that is significantly smaller than a capital ship. Your concept of what constitutes a fighter will vary from your opponent's.
• TWR (Thrust-to-weight ratio): Your ship's thrust divided by its mass. This determines your acceleration and top speed (as limited by server settings and Overdrive blocks). A TWR of higher than 1 is required to ascend on a planet.
• BOUNDING BOX: An imaginary box that takes its height, width, and length from the largest height, width, and length of its contents. The bounding box of a spaceship is the smallest box that could fit that spaceship (so a long, small antenna on the top of a ship could significantly increase the height of the bounding box, even though it makes a small change to mass).
• BLOCK GROUP: a group of orthogonally adjacent (non-diagonally touching) blocks of the same type, such as a group of doors, thrusters, or weapons.
• DPS: Damage-Per-Second. The damage per projectile of a weapon multiplied multiplied by the number of shots per second (or divided by the number of seconds per shot), assuming that every shot hits.
• EDPS/Effective DPS: The damage per shot of a weapon only including shots that will actually hit. This is generally impossible to mathematically quantify, but is still important to consider. If a weapon deals 25% less DPS but is 100% more likely to hit, it will deal more actual damage over the course of the engagement than the weapon with the theoretically higher DPS.
• DPP: Damage Per Projectile. This is the damage per each individual shot. DPP of 100 will kill non-hull blocks in one shot, DPP of 125 will kill hull blocks, DPP of 250 will kill glass, and DPP of 400 will kill hardened hull. DPP over 400 is generally wasted, except against shields.

 

[Yetimania]

2. Power Generation and Storage
Ship cores grant a starting power storage of 50,000. Additional power storage blocks (SD pc1.3 Power Tanks) grants a pitiful amount of power, but each additional block in a group adds more than the one before it. Last time I did the math, it took ~300 blocks to double the ship's starting power (this number has since changed). Unless you can hit that number, its really not worth it. However, as ship's get bigger, storing power becomes increasingly effective.
You can never have too much power storage or generation on a spaceship. Generally speaking, the main limitation of thrust is power generation, not blocks (it doesn't take a lot of blocks to get a lot of thrust, but it does take a lot of power). Lots of extra power generation means you can afford to add extras like radar jammers (which cost 5 power per second per mass) and defensive effects like Overdrive and Ion.
There are other guides on power generator placement, so I'll run through this really briefly.
Ideally, you should aim for somewhere around the 1 million power soft cap (after ~1million power, additional blocks only add 30 power generation per block without bonuses from bounding box). For smaller ships, that's a pipedream, so just get as much as you can. I usually aim for 8-12 generator groups that each reach the front, back, left, right, top, and bottom of the spaceship, but more is always better. Larger ships can have fewer separate generator groups, as they hit the 1million cap faster. Really big ships might have to take advantage of the 30 power/block minimum, and have thousands of power generator blocks providing minimal power each in addition to the few with maximum bounding box.

You want to aim to have enough power that you can use your thrusters and fire your weapons without draining your power at all.

 

[Yetimania]

3. On the Use of Turrets and Docked Weapons
Most people seem to class turrets as 'small, light weapons for shooting fighters.' They could not be more wrong. There is a place for those small turrets, but as a ship gets bigger, it becomes more practical to have heavy anti-capital ship weaponry mounted on turrets, not simply small, anti-fighter weapons. The following are advantages of turrets and docked weapons:

• Turrets let you dodge the main downside to massive ships (low turning speed). It might take your capital ship a decade and a half to turn around to meet your target, but your turret can do it much, much faster.
• Turrets reduce the amount of micromanagement required from the pilot. As a pilot, the more things you have to focus on, the fewer you can do effectively. With a powerful turret, you can concentrate on dodging and positioning, and let the turret worry about hitting the enemy.
• Turrets increase the number of concurrent actions that a ship can perform. With only one player on a ship, you can't lock-on with a missile and fire the AMCs. A docked missile rack can worry about missile lock-on while you use the AMC.

However, they come with their own disadvantages, too:

• The AI is dumb as bricks. Say you have a turret mounted on the left side of your spaceship. Your intention was that it would shoot at enemies to your left, but the turret might have a 'better' idea, and try to fire to the right. However, your control tower is in the way. The turret will happily waste its time firing into your spaceship (fortunately without doing any damage).
• There is no guaruntee that your heavy, anti-cap ship turret will fire on large ships and your point defense turrets will fire on small ships.
  
• The AI accuracy is undependable. Different servers have different accuracy settings, and its hard to predict before going into battle just how accurate your turret will be.
• Turrets are not protected by your spaceship's shields. This makes them vulnerable. In a capital ship engagement, even if your ship walks away fine, you can expect to lose several if not all of your smaller turrets.

While these disadvantages may seem crippling, there are ways to get around or mitigate most of them.

• Idiotic AI's can be mitigated with effective turret placement (see below).
• Heavy, anti-cap ship turrets can be set to fire on enemies you have targeted, reducing the odds that they will waste their time.
  
• Poor accuracy can't really be helped, but look on the bright side: if your anti-fighter turrets can't hit for crap, you can bet the AI-controlled fighters you're battling can't hit you either. And if the fighter's aren't AI controlled, well, you have other problems. If your enemy faction can mobilize enough players that even their fighters have actual players piloting them, you're probably screwed in any case. Further, now that lock-on missiles can be fired from turrets, their actual accuracy is less important. The missile will handle the rest.
  
• Turrets are cheap to replace, and their lack of thrusters or interiors allows for more space for shields. This means turrets are often tougher than the equivalent size of spaceship.

There are several design considerations to, well, consider when designing a turret:
Turret or Fixed?
Most people probably don't even know that you can mount a fixed AI weapon to your spaceship with docking modules. This may seem like a terrible idea, but there are several circumstances where it is beneficial for the docked weapon not to be able to rotate.
In general, use a Turret-mount in the following circumstances:

• When the turret has a Clear Field-Of-Fire close to 100%. This minimizes the chances of your turret wasting its time by targeting an enemy it cannot actually hit. A turret that does so may as well be dead or nonexistent for all the help it gives you.
• When the turret is a minor enough consideration in the overall design that it wasting its time is not a major concern, for example, for point defense turrets.

A weapon should probably be fixed-fire whenever the above circumstances are not true. Even without being able to rotate, fixed-weapons can still shoot in a pretty wide field of fire. Properly placed weapons will *never* waste their time firing into the ship. Just remember that if they're docked to the bottom of the ship, they'll fire backwards.

Defensive or Manual?
Defensive Turrets (those set to fire on 'all') and Manual turrets (those set to fire on 'targetted') each have their pros and cons. In general, I set my turrets to Manual if all of the following are true:

• The target I want the turret to shoot at is the same kind of target my ship's main weapons are designed to fight
• The turret has a clear field of fire forwards
• Most importantly, if the turret wasting time by firing at the wrong enemy or into the ship would be disastrous. If your main weapon is a turret, you need it to fire at the right enemy.

In any other circumstance, I set my turrets to Defensive.

 

[Yetimania]

4. Weapon Masters, Supports, and Effects
Remember that a Master is a weapon that you can fire (it shows up on your hotbar), a Support is a weapon used to modify another weapon, and an Effect is an additional set of blocks that can modify the Master. Having more Effect or Support blocks than Master blocks won't help you, a 1:1:1 ratio is optimal.
When it comes to weapon design, there are a few things to keep in mind:
1. Supports maintain a constant DPS. Increasing the rate of fire of a weapon or the number of projectiles fired divides the DPS by the number of projectiles/rate of fire. This means that 20 AMC's will deal twice the DPS of 10 AMC's with 10 AMC's as support.

2. DPS is a lie. It assumes that every single shot will hit, which is wildly incorrect. Heatseeking missiles rarely even pick the right target, and when they do, they usually don't hit it. Unless you're firing at point blank range, AMC's will usually not hit the target as you'll need to lead them to take into account the travel time of the projectile. Damage beams have the least disparity between theoretical DPS and effective DPS (EDPS) as there is no travel time for the weapon. However, even that assumes you can successfully keep your mouse pointed on your target for the entire engagement, which is obviously unrealistic.

3. Rapid Fire Is Your Friend: By default, AMC's only fire once per three seconds. Even one missed shot (and you'll miss a lot) is a catastrophic investment. That is one of the two advantages of a Rapid Fire weapon: each shot is a smaller investment, and you can much more effectively see the stream of tracer rounds, allowing you to adjust your aim to hit the target far more. For that reason, unless you're doing something clever, I highly recommend rapid-fire as your 'default' AMC.

4. DPP (Damage Per Projectile) over 400 is wasted. Hardened hull blocks have 200 hp, and take only 50% damage from shots. That means that weapons that deal more than 200 damage per projectile will get no benefit from their damage against hulls, and you may as well increase the rate of fire (using an AMC Support) or split the weapon into multiple Fire-Linked Weapons (so they might hit multiple blocks) or use Ion blocks to reduce damage to hull and increase damage to shields. If you're fighting lower-tech enemies, or pirates, damage over 125 is wasted. Further, power usage is counted by Damage Per Projectile, so a lower DPP with constant DPS will allow your generators to keep up.

5. Absurd Charge Weapons Have a (highly specialized) Place. There's another extreme of weapon paradigm, and that is of the ludicrously powerful, one-shot weapon. The effectiveness of this weapon is strongly limited by your accuracy (you will only get one shot) and your max power storage (which limits your Damage Per Projectile). Here's the idea the total damage a weapon will deal in an engagement is the DPS multiplied by the length of the engagement. Usually. There is one exception: if the weapon takes significantly longer to reload than the entire length of the battle, you can deal one shot of massive damage. Say a fight will last around 1 minute. A weapon that shoots every second for 1 damage (1 DPS) will deal 60 damage. But a weapon that fires every 1000 seconds for 200 damage (0.2 DPS) will deal 200 damage over the battle--if you hit. Thus, even a lower DPS weapon can deal more damage than a high DPS weapon. You can decrease rate of fire using a Damage Pulse support. For this highly-specialized weapon, the slower the reload, the better.

6. DPP is capped by Power costs: Weapons drain a constant amount of power based on the damage per projectile. By default this is 10 power per damage. This means that a ship without Power Storage (read: anything but a capital ship) is capped at 5000. This may sound like a lot, but its really easy to hit that limit with d1000 missiles, which deal 75 damage per projectile per block. This means that, without reducing DPP with rate of fire or a shotgun effect (d1000 support), small ships can't mount d1000's in groups higher than 66.

7. DPS is constant across all weapons: 1 d1000 block adds 75 DPP with a reload time of 15 seconds (5DPS), 1 AMC block adds 15 DPP with a reload time of 3 seconds (5DPS), etc.

Defensive Effects:
If you have an effect computer linked to effect blocks but not connected to a Master Weapon, you can activate it from the hotbar to get a special defensive effect. Most are pretty pointless, but two really stand out:

• OVERDRIVE: Overdrive blocks increase your ship's top speed above the server setting. Apparently this is going to be nerfed, but currently, a small ship with lots of thrust can use overdrive to hit over 1500km/h.
• ION: This is the most important one. Ion effect's efficiency is damage reduction to shields. With some Ion defences in place, you might get, say 50% damage reduction, which is equivalent to a doubling in shield defences. This is awesome.

Weapon Placement:
Generally, where the weapon is physically located on your ship isn't super important. Weapons can fire right through your own ship without issue. However, there are some things to keep in mind:

• A high Projectile Angle (the angle the weapon has to fire at in order to hit the location of the cursor) is generally undesirable. This is caused by having the weapon's output block (the Weapon Axis) placed horizontally or vertically far from the Cockpit Axis. High Projectile Angles are bad for two reasons:
  • When leading your target (firing at empty space in front of them) the projectiles will not converge on a centrepoint. This means it is entirely possible to construct a ship that will fire to the left and right of a small, mobile enemy, but never actually hit. Yes, I've done that.
  • When trying to penetrate the hull, you want your shots to go hit the block directly behind the block you just destroyed. This is easiest when the projectiles are firing from near where your camera is located.
• Weapons placed behind your own turrets CAN HIT AND DAMAGE YOUR OWN TURRETS. Try to keep the area in front of your cockpit clear to avoid this tragic mistake.

 

[Yetimania]

5. In-Combat Tactics
Most of my guide is about the construction of ships, but I have a few tips for in-combat as well:

Finish off one enemy before moving on
When fighting a group of foes, it is important that you completely destroy one enemy before worrying too hard about the other one. Two ships at 50% shields will do just as much damage to you as two ships at 100% shields, but one ship that is dead and one ship at 100% shields will deal half the damage. It is therefore important to focus your fire, especially if you are coordinating with allies.

If you are outnumbered, make your foes chase you
This one is far less obvious. Say you are in a capital ship and a large group of fighters or medium-sized ships attack you from all sides. You are at a big disadvantage: your enemies are spread out on all sides of you. If you have turrets, they will spend a lot of time swivelling, not firing (they might kill one enemy on your right then choose to attack an enemy on your left rather than the other one on your right, thus wasting a lot of time rotating) and your forward-firing guns will be at even greater disadvantage.
So run away.
If you back away from them, you change the dynamics of battle. A cluster of enemies chasing you is now in a cone, rather than a sphere centred on you. This means that the angle between enemies is very small, so turrets need to rotate less distance. Further, you can fire your forwards-firing weapons at everyone without needing to turn, which is slow. This can make the difference between life and death.

If you outnumber your target, surround them
This is the inverse of the above situation. Surrounding an enemy takes advantage of their poor turning speed and limited weapon arcs to attack from relative safety.

Use Friendly Fire to your advantage
AI turrets are not smart enough to avoid targeting through allies to hit enemies. If you have two enemies, try to position one of them directly behind the other. All of the second's automated weapons will hit its ally, rather than you.

Use your turrets as shields
If your shields are taken out, you're probably dead. But you might be able to hold on long enough for them to recharge if you can angle to keep a big turret of yours between you and the enemy. This is a long shot, but at that point, what have you got to lose?

 

[Yetimania]

6. Miscellaneous Tips and Tricks
These tips don't really fit anywhere else, but are good to know, nevertheless.

1. Missiles don't render through glass. In combat, don't position your cockpit behind glass blocks. It can be fun to fly a ship this way (it looks like you're in the control tower) but in combat, switch to a different view.
2. If the Computer faces sideways, the projectiles will fire sideways. This is generally a bad idea, but can be useful in very specific circumstances. You can create a broadside weapon this way, for example. Further, lock-on missiles will fire out in cool, curvy arcs, Macross-style. With the exception of guided missiles, AI will fire their weapons perpendicular to the target if you do this.
3. Weapon computers can be linked to light-emitting blocks to alter the projectile colour. ANY LIGHT EMITTING BLOCK. This includes crystals, lava, and power storage tanks, as well as plexlights of various colours.
4. For battles between smaller ships, hardened hulls are not actually useless. With the new weapon system, it takes a fairly large weapon to deal 400 DPP with any reasonable rate of fire.
5. Try to keep your hallways at least 2x2, if you have space. You never know what angle a player will be rotated at, and a 1x2 hallway isn't accessible unless the player is moving at exactly the right angle. I usually aim for 3x3 on big ships and stations.
6. Avoid hallways directly from your ship core to the exterior of the ship. You're just *asking* for a Star Wars-style attack: a shot directly down that corridor will core your ship with minimum effort. If you must, you can fill the entire hallway with plexdoors, which will stop attacks even when open.
7. You can use open PlexDoors or the new Area Trigger as selectively-permeable force fields. I prefer area triggers because you can't accidentally activate them while you're inside them. Both of these blocks allow full travel through them and are invisible, but they stop gunfire. Weapons hitting them will have to go through the ship's shields. If the shields are down, then they act as blocks that might help protect your key systems without restricting movement. Weird? Yes. Expensive? Yes. Practical? Maybe.

 

[Top 4ce]

Awesome write up!