The Quickfire Initiative: Rebalancing StarMade.

[SchnellBier]

We actually tried that first and I am pretty sure we would still add it if it would work. Having the ships hp bar reflect the state of all systems is preferable to just the reactor.

 

[Keptick]

"The multiple-output penalty for weapons is currently disabled"

If you knew the number of times I told the devs to remove this outdated, broken, and outright unnecessary mechanic... That change alone is reason enough for me to use this config pack (that and removed stab distance, good god).

 

[Scypio]

Edit: And just as a side note... Crafting needs that same kinda TLC that the combat systems are getting. The game can't survive on just weapons hit scan, the economy needs to be looked at carefully too. Build-time-per-block (optimized or hand crafted, including gathering and refinery time) is the only REAL currency metric I've been able to find in the game. It's a total mess and produces so much "waste material" for investment to fill a ship blueprint it's a downright shame.

There is no point to look at that before we, at least, know how will be implemented the universe update.

 

[Keptick]

Does the config touch on rail mass enhancers at all? I always felt like mass enhancers were a bit on the weak side (mass/enhancer wise).

 

[Scypio]

The only thing that has been changed is their mass/hp per block to match other systems blocks. Other than that they still function the same way as before.
Mass enhancers have a big problem in the current starmade is that the mass is per entity and not the whole sum of all entities. It means that if you have 3 entities of X size or 1 entity of 3X size, you don't need the same amount of enhancers. Which is not ideal for balance reasons and i am sure you certainly see why.

 

[Drakkart]

We probably will. We've been working with the project since its beginning.

The QF team is currently preparing a document detailing the changes they've made for schema's review. If that's all good, we can go ahead and officially adopt them in a dev build for testing.

Having taken the time to read up the changes and comparing them them to my own analysis of "what is killing the fun in the game", i strongly recommend to implement these changes for the time being but also further following the layed out argumentation of the QF team to pick stuff that is annoying in the mechanics core. and also eradicate this stuff for freeing ressources. I.E. the recoil has nothing to add to starmade is a pure annoyance. Listen to these people implement such changes and then go from there.
And just for heavens sake admit that power 2.0 was a step in the wrong direction, take all the time needed and come up with a real solution that again allows for artistic building and adding freedom of design again because this is where SM shined and what kept people building admirable stuff.

 

[DukeofRealms]

Having taken the time to read up the changes and comparing them them to my own analysis of "what is killing the fun in the game", i strongly recommend to implement these changes for the time being but also further following the layed out argumentation of the QF team to pick stuff that is annoying in the mechanics core. and also eradicate this stuff for freeing ressources. I.E. the recoil has nothing to add to starmade is a pure annoyance. Listen to these people implement such changes and then go from there.
And just for heavens sake admit that power 2.0 was a step in the wrong direction, take all the time needed and come up with a real solution that again allows for artistic building and adding freedom of design again because this is where SM shined and what kept people building admirable stuff.

You're quoting something that was months ago, read the news section, this was already implemented into the dev build and continues to be updated with their changes.

 

[nulitor]

"The multiple-output penalty for weapons is currently disabled"

If you knew the number of times I told the devs to remove this outdated, broken, and outright unnecessary mechanic... That change alone is reason enough for me to use this config pack (that and removed stab distance, good god).

I think that removing the output penalty is a good thing.
But we need to a way to cap the total amount of outputs on a ship in order to avoid ships lagging the entire universe each time it fires 80000 missiles at once.(capping ship size helps with that a bit)

 

[Zoolimar]

But we need to a way to cap the total amount of outputs on a ship in order to avoid ships lagging the entire universe each time it fires 80000 missiles at once.(capping ship size helps with that a bit)

You don't need to. Due to how armour works large numbers of outputs are extremely ineffective (as in 0.0001 damage). And missile capacity limits the number of missile outputs you can use at once.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

You don't need to. Due to how armour works large numbers of outputs are extremely ineffective (as in 0.0001 damage). And missile capacity limits the number of missile outputs you can use at once.

Agreed.

I often use large blocks of crystal armor to simulate ballistic media for weapons testing. Small guns do next to nothing to the block; even with rapid fire or multiple simultaneous hits.

There also seems to be a "soft cap" of roughly 240 missiles held in storage. Adding storage beyond that point yields excessively diminishing returns. Even if you use fast loading, low damage missiles, you'll get hit with the soft cap and have to wait for a reload. You also can't reload until you stop shooting.

My guess is you might get 1000-2000 missiles on screen at once if you're constantly firing and use a star as your reactor.

 

[Ckeeze]

Agreed.

I often use large blocks of crystal armor to simulate ballistic media for weapons testing. Small guns do next to nothing to the block; even with rapid fire or multiple simultaneous hits.

There also seems to be a "soft cap" of roughly 240 missiles held in storage. Adding storage beyond that point yields excessively diminishing returns. Even if you use fast loading, low damage missiles, you'll get hit with the soft cap and have to wait for a reload. You also can't reload until you stop shooting.

My guess is you might get 1000-2000 missiles on screen at once if you're constantly firing and use a star as your reactor.

The only possible use of swarm missile is to kill off drones, and even for that you don't need a thousand missile on screen just a hundred.

Besides, if acid damage on both beam and cannon now work perfectly (Haven't tested it myself but i saw some claim it should work now) you really don't need a million output for any weapon now, wich is really nice I always hated how viable weapons looked like a flat surface of zig zagged weapon outpots instead of an actual gun (a few long barrels)

 

[Keptick]

The only possible use of swarm missile is to kill off drones, and even for that you don't need a thousand missile on screen just a hundred.

Besides, if acid damage on both beam and cannon now work perfectly (Haven't tested it myself but i saw some claim it should work now) you really don't need a million output for any weapon now, wich is really nice I always hated how viable weapons looked like a flat surface of zig zagged weapon outpots instead of an actual gun (a few long barrels)

Yep, there's no cap to the radius of acid damage, so in theory for the same amount of weapon blocks you can get as much block destruction with a single beam output as you can with 100 (not sure how it applies in practice though).

 

[PriZm]

well, that was one of the good changes. i tend to use sth like 4 beam outputs atm mostly. before the acid damage came i used big beam waffles for turrets and/or pilot controlled beams and used 1 computer per output to not suffer power penalties. But i haven't tested damage application with 1 really big beam weapon with only 1 output. I tend to think that you lose some block damage, but this could also be some sort of trauma from pre-acid-damage years :/

 

[Dr. Whammy]

The only possible use of swarm missile is to kill off drones, and even for that you don't need a thousand missile on screen just a hundred.

Besides, if acid damage on both beam and cannon now work perfectly (Haven't tested it myself but i saw some claim it should work now) you really don't need a million output for any weapon now, wich is really nice I always hated how viable weapons looked like a flat surface of zig zagged weapon outpots instead of an actual gun (a few long barrels)

I can think of a few practical uses for swarms besides anti-drone defense. ...but you'd better have a good handle on how to effectively use logic if you try them.

On smaller ships, acid damage is a bit of a problem; as your overall damage is divided by 6 on impact. Under a certain size, your weapons (including missiles) are useless.

I do agree that on larger arrays, acid damage is better than waffling. Did anyone ever fix that output width issue? ...or is acid damage just "always on" no matter what you do?

Yep, there's no cap to the radius of acid damage, so in theory for the same amount of weapon blocks you can get as much block destruction with a single beam output as you can with 100 (not sure how it applies in practice though).

In my experience, acid damage is forced/always-on; even on small weapons. As a result, the smaller weapons get affected by armor at an individual level and lose a lot of their damage, while larger weapons lose damage only once and use their higher single shot damage to penetrate the armor and apply acid damage. Please keep in mind that I am using vanilla configs; not Quickfire, so please correct me if QF has already addressed these issues.

well, that was one of the good changes. i tend to use sth like 4 beam outputs atm mostly. before the acid damage came i used big beam waffles for turrets and/or pilot controlled beams and used 1 computer per output to not suffer power penalties. But i haven't tested damage application with 1 really big beam weapon with only 1 output. I tend to think that you lose some block damage, but this could also be some sort of trauma from pre-acid-damage years :/

I found large single-output beams can be pretty nasty; even against armor. I prefer the B/C rapid fire type over the heavy continuous ones. They cut deep while inflicting acid damage; resulting in a much wider damage channel than what you might expect. Once again; vanilla configs.

 

[The Quickfire Initiative]

well, that was one of the good changes. i tend to use sth like 4 beam outputs atm mostly. before the acid damage came i used big beam waffles for turrets and/or pilot controlled beams and used 1 computer per output to not suffer power penalties. But i haven't tested damage application with 1 really big beam weapon with only 1 output. I tend to think that you lose some block damage, but this could also be some sort of trauma from pre-acid-damage years :/

This could also be a result of the vanilla Weapons 2.0 configs. There was an - apparently forgotten - setting for beams which halves the damage from the beam that transfers to the acid model. Other, less well-defined damage losses do appear to exist, but there is now a tradeoff: take your chances with the (significantly reduced) damage loss but be able to destroy armor with the weapon, or attempt to optimize multiple outputs for systems destruction but require a separate weapon to penetrate armor.

 

[Zoolimar]

In my experience, acid damage is forced/always-on; even on small weapons. As a result, the smaller weapons get affected by armor at an individual level and lose a lot of their damage, while larger weapons lose damage only once and use their higher single shot damage to penetrate the armor and apply acid damage. Please keep in mind that I am using vanilla configs; not Quickfire, so please correct me if QF has already addressed these issues.

The problem with very small outputs is not even armour itself but HP of blocks. The smaller your ship the worse the result will be. Vanilla armour more or less just stops damage if it is smaller than a certain value depending on thickness of armour (it deals all the damage to a single block no matter how much of it you had). QF armour that is in dev build diminishes the incoming damage depending on how thick is the armour and how large is the incoming damage.

And yes, at least in QF acid damage works with all the weapons including beams.

 

[GnomeKing]

the recoil has nothing to add to starmade is a pure annoyance. Listen to these people

 

[Keptick]

Just re-posting here from the discord to make sure my test results don't get swallowed up by the chat:

I made 2 weapons of the same size: 1) beam-cannon (100% slave). Here's the result against armor after a single burst (1s, 5 ticks):



2) cannon-cannon (90% slave to get 190ms reload, to emulate the ticks on the beam, same total weapon size). Here's the result against armor after 5 shots (equivalent to a single beam burst):

I intentionally spread the damage out a bit on the cannon shots cause the latch-on mechanic of the b-c made the beam veer off a bit. I made a second set of tests using beam-beam and cannon-beam (100% slave for both combos) against the same armor target, with the same weapon sizes as above. Here are the results:

Beam:

cannon :

Are these test results within expected ranges? Cause I feel like there's something terribly wrong with the beam damage here... Just as a note I didn't use any effects on either weapon (to keep it simple). It kinda makes sense that the b-b combo is better than c-b since it deals it's second tick against reduced armor, but then again the cannon shot from c-b has way more damage to begin with... However, nothing explains why b-c does more damage than c-c in the test.

If you want to re-create the test, the weapons are 21x21x21 blocks per weapon computer (so 18527 blocks total per weapon). The armor block is 10 std - 20 adv - 10 basic armor (with std being at the front/shot at first).

 

[GnomeKing]

For me, a problem visualizing beam/energy/laser weapons damage is that their effects are all about relative scales & frequencies...
Interesting and varied damge patterns might do a lot for the enjoyment of the game.

Perhaps it is worth considering different types/concepts of beam-weapons in 'sci-fi-physics':

-wide area beams: eg mazers, micro-waves, radiation ultrasonic - these impact throughout a mass, or perhaps a whole target, and require some time to accumulate damage (eg scattered small scale hull/systems damage, getting worse over time)

-narrow beam : focused infrared, focused sonic drill, electron ablation, static/lightning pulse - effects as above but much quicker and limited to a portion of a 'surface' (eg pitted/scared hull-surface damage, eventualy ripping away whole chunks)

-ultra-focused beam : laser cutter up to planet-killer-doom-beam - XY impact area is exchanged for Z impact depth - effects on very small area are super-destructive and penetrate deep very quickly (eg. deep 'pin-piont' holes, cuts, slices, gashes, rips & tears

Realtive size/frequency of the beam compared to target/material shifts the effects ...

 

[EricBlank]

Sounds good, but allowing any weapon to damage an entire ship at once sounds way OP, you could theoretically compromise the reactor or important computers without really making a hole or path through the armor, totally nullifying the point of having it in the first place. Maybe if its radius of effect, number of blocks targeted and damage increase with each tick, only up to a reasonable radius. That would be fine, probably. But not the entire ship.