The Current State of Weapons

[Criss]

Might be of some use on salvage arrays, but not sure if it's possible to slave missiles to salvage lasers...

It is, it looks just as ridiculous.

 

[Mariux]

It is, it looks just as ridiculous.

If so, I'll have to try that anyway. It might allow some cleaner salvager designs as you wouldn't have to checkerboard and only use one output point.

 

[Vengeance42]

Is there any place I can find what the actual range of weapons is, including any distance modifiers like Beam support?

 

[RedDwarfIV]

Might be of some use on salvage arrays, but not sure if it's possible to slave missiles to salvage lasers...

It works.

It's also incredibly useful. It hoovers up salvage like no one's business.

The above ship has ten arrays of about thirty salvage units each, with a slaved missile system. I salvaged a Fides corvette in ten seconds flat.

 

[Lecic]

I think the shotguns need to be slightly more focused. Wasn't the shotgun beam originally going to be a "pencil shotgun" design, with little spread until further distances?

 

[Crimson-Artist]

It works.

It's also incredibly useful. It hoovers up salvage like no one's business.

The above ship has ten arrays of about thirty salvage units each, with a slaved missile system. I salvaged a Fides corvette in ten seconds flat.

while useful. it turns out that they use a ridiculous amount of energy even for a small array

 

[NeonSturm]

while useful. it turns out that they use a ridiculous amount of energy even for a small array

I see the best use salvaging a tunnel for the own ship
But unfortunately there is nothing for which we need that :/

 

[SilentRider_14]

Once we get working anti-grav it would make initial tunnel exploration of a planet a lot easier a small scale TBM

 

[RedDwarfIV]

while useful. it turns out that they use a ridiculous amount of energy even for a small array

That's okay

the Juno destroyer has plenty of powerrrrrr for such things.

 

[Mariux]

It works.

It's also incredibly useful. It hoovers up salvage like no one's business.

The above ship has ten arrays of about thirty salvage units each, with a slaved missile system. I salvaged a Fides corvette in ten seconds flat.

Cool, might make a ship that utilizes this.

 

[VillainousTaco]

Something that concerns me moving forward is heat seeking missiles and the relationship of Titans and fighters.

A soft counter to Titans are swarms of small units, drones, fighters, etc.. However, an easy counter to those units is heat seeking missiles. You could potentially have situations where a single Titan can lay waste to an entire fleet of fighters and drone with a simple left click of the mouse button, no aiming or skill required.

Now, I realize that the devs are planning on making missiles targetable by AMC's but I don't think this will solve the issue. Fighters can't really use turrets as the turret would be as big as the fighter itself, and while shooting down missiles manually would be possible a single missed missile would likely destroy the fighter/drone.

I've thought of a couple of potential solutions.

1) Make heat seeking missiles prioritize targets by mass. Logically speaking a large ship would produce a lot more heat than a small ship and therefore it would make sense for a heat seeking missile to prioritize Battlecruiser >Fighter.

2) Make a "missile cloaking system". My thoughts on this is to make it efficient to use for fighters and become increasingly less efficient the larger the mass of the object you're attaching it to. Lets say for example you have a Fighter with 100 mass, perhaps for this small size it would only take two missile cloaking system blocks for it to be 100% efficient.

On the other hand you have a Battlecruiser with 10k mass. In order to get 100% efficiency perhaps it would require 50-100 or more missile cloaking system blocks because of all the heat that a large ship generates. This would mean sacrificing a lot of potential shielding, power, or weapon systems in order to "cloak" your ship from heat seeking missiles. I also think that dumb fire missile speed should be much higher as a counter-counter measure. This way large ships are heavily discouraged from abusing the missile cloaking system.

 

[RedDwarfIV]

A titan is useless without its turrets.

It couldn't wipe out a fleet of smallcraft with heat seekers because the heat seekers just lock onto its turrets.

 

[VillainousTaco]

A titan is useless without its turrets.

It couldn't wipe out a fleet of smallcraft with heat seekers because the heat seekers just lock onto its turrets.

You're looking at the small picture; at some point they will fix that bug. My post is assuming that everything is working as intended which it will be at some point in the future.

 

[RedDwarfIV]

You're looking at the small picture; at some point they will fix that bug. My post is assuming that everything is working as intended which it will be at some point in the future.

I believe the phrase is "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it."

And in any case, I happen to think that death of a thousand paper cuts is a poor way for a titan to lose a fight. A mass-kill weapon against fighters is a perfectly logical defence system for a titan to be carrying.

 

[VillainousTaco]

And in any case, I happen to think that death of a thousand paper cuts is a poor way for a titan to lose a fight. A mass-kill weapon against fighters is a perfectly logical defence system for a titan to be carrying.

A Titan having counter play vs Fighters is fine (AKA: Turrets), and as you said logical. The Fighters also need counter play vs a Titan however. Instantly dying to a lock on weapon is the definition of anti fun. It is still a game after all.

A swarm of fighters wouldn't even necessarily be able to destroy a Titan, it would be extremely difficult. The purpose of using fighters against a Titan is that fighters SHOULD BE difficult for the Titan to hit because its so massive and they're so small, but heat seeking missiles negate this small advantage. Fighters are mainly there to harass the Titan and weaken its shields while a bigger ship is also laying down fire.

 

[Keptick]

A Titan having counter play vs Fighters is fine (AKA: Turrets), and as you said logical. The Fighters also need counter play vs a Titan however. Instantly dying to a lock on weapon is the definition of anti fun. It is still a game after all.

A swarm of fighters wouldn't even necessarily be able to destroy a Titan, it would be extremely difficult. The purpose of using fighters against a Titan is that fighters SHOULD BE difficult for the Titan to hit because its so massive and they're so small, but heat seeking missiles negate this small advantage. Fighters are mainly there to harass the Titan and weaken its shields while a bigger ship is also laying down fire.

Missiles don't have health. A single projectile will usually kill them. You could basically have a very small anti-missile turret on every drone, which would provide an almost absolute protection against missiles.

 

[NuclearFun]

Missiles don't have health. A single projectile will usually kill them. You could basically have a very small anti-missile turret on every drone, which would provide an almost absolute protection against missiles.

I hope that will change though, missiles getting oneshot by every small cannon would nerf them into oblivion.

 

[Keptick]

I hope that will change though, missiles getting oneshot by every small cannon would nerf them into oblivion.

Yep, luckily most people haven't realized it yet. It also requires some thinking from a person in order do design a proper point defence system. So I don't think that it'll be much of an issue.

 

[Ithirahad]

what do you think about adding a natural explosion like effect to all non rapid cannons combos as alternative to the speed adjustments?

a cannon should act like you know a cannon and slower firing rounds should have a natural AOE aspect to them to make them both satisfying to use and compensate for the relative slow projectile speeds. Cannon/cannon combos would not have this effect since the rapid fire makes up for the lack of skill needed to aim it.

of course merging these 2 systems could make for an interesting result

Maybe natural explosion+piercing? Rapid cannons could get a slight pierce effect too, just not as large.

Also, guys, Schema messed up. Cannons are the ones intended to be able to shoot down missiles.

 

[Crimson-Artist]

Maybe natural explosion+piercing? Rapid cannons could get a slight pierce effect too, just not as large.

Also, guys, Schema messed up. Cannons are the ones intended to be able to shoot down missiles.

that became apparent very fast.

now i feel a little stupid cuz i started outfitting some of my ships with damage beams under the assumption that beams would be able to shoot down missiles

well the idea is that cannons that do more damage in exchange for firing speed need something more. we don't want to put too much effects on to the cannons cuz then they will go back to being OP so one is fine.

someone suggested a natural punch through effect to prevent a redundancy with missiles but to be honest a natural explosion effect would be better since the explosion effect only applies damage to the 6 blocks next to the one you hit as well as cannons tend to fire faster. missiles even small ones will make a crater so theres no conflict of function.