Dr. Whammy Beams are currently bugged against armor. They sometimes do much much much higher damage than they are supposed to, the reason is currently unknown (I don't have time to test atm). It's super random, so 1 tick might do normal damage, and the next 10 do stupidly overkill damage. From what I can tell this doesn't apply to normal system blocks. That could explain why armor feels "useless" in your test. Try a cannon based weapon with the same block count, it'll probably destroy less blocks (I say probably, because the bug doesn't occur all the time).
Regarding beams: Are you sure it's a bug?
The reason I ask is because all my tests with beams produce consistent results so I was under the impression that they are working as intended. If I had to make a guess as to why they are so effective vs armor, I'd say it likely happens when the first beam tick destroys a block layer; thinning the armor and allowing subsequent tics to deal more and more damage, as overall damage reduction is lowered with each layer that is lost. This happens with all beam combos, powerful enough to defeat the first layer. The only bug-like issues I saw with beams were as follows.
- Sector changes during a fight sometimes negate all damage for a beam tick. The larger sectors in QF's configs help with this somewhat.
- Releasing the trigger during a beam burst will negate all damage for a tick and sometimes, the rest of the burst.
- Sweeping the beam across the target will result in the loss of the penetrating effects I described above.
What is your interpretation of this? Do your tests show similar?
My tests with cannons showed that a significantly powerful shot (usually CM) can defeat armor up to a certain thickness; after which, it becomes extremely ineffective; to the point where BM or missiles are the better option. To be fair, they did nerf CM so I suppose that's to be expected somewhat. I tried all other combos; in different ratios. In the end, at my scale, I saw no real incentive to use anything besides CM or BM; with a preference for BM. Are there other combos you recommend?
As always, thank you for being civil and constructive. You are always a big help and I appreciate that.
Smaller ships are naturally more maneuverable, meaning it's inherently going to be harder to land a hit. Do you really want corvette/FAC or fighter battles to take an hour because defenses and 'damage sponge scales' are scaled perfectly to how they work with face-tanky capital ships? Also from the looks of it you're mostly complaining about /M weapons, which aren't that easy to hit another small craft with in the first place. If those were nerfed, not only would they be pretty useless, but there would be no counter to small ships that are basically giant armor blobs with minimal systems except for having a bigger ship. Now that would encourage gigantism ._.
Regarding maneuverability; At my scale (25K mass and below) I find maneuverability is at best, "tolerable". Anything above that scale starts to become unusable for me unless I use turrets and is still annoyingly slow. If I use armor at this scale, I lose even more speed and maneuverability. If I add thrust to compensate, it eats up all my power; forcing me to nerf my weapons (so I can't effectively penetrate armor with anything besides CM/BM) and shields (so they barely charge at all), while adding more mass, which negates the purpose of adding thrust in the first place. Setting thrust to low priority had did not help the situation. So I just forego the armor in favor of speed and turn rate.
Regarding CM/BM; I have ZERO complaints about these systems and I would never suggest nerfing them. My concern is that other weapons feel quite underwhelming in comparison. I've found no use for C, CC, B or BC, as they fail against all but the thinnest armor and tend to result in that 30 minute battle you just mentioned. CB and BB are decent vs armor but I find them ineffective against heavy shield regen due to low ROF (CB), damage falloff (BB). Others may have different results but in terms of the combos I can most effectively use at my scale, it always comes back to BM and sometimes, CM.
Do you have a different recommendation for ships at a smaller scale?
Also, thank you, as well for keeping this civil and constructive.
As i said earlier, you ARE comparing ships based on looks. NOT SYSTEMS. To compare two ships they have to have the same SYSTEMS. Stop comparing based on volume. Volume is worth nothing in starmade. Decoration blocks and hull are worth little to no mass on your ship and unless you have your ship made out of 60% of interiors it won't perform so badly that you cannot win vs someone not doing any interiors. IT CAN EVEN BE USED AT YOUR ADVANTAGES as several users and more pvp players did and proved it. And don't tell me that minimalist interiors are not realistic. Today's submarines are very minimalists. You could look at the u-boats plans online if you want to get some idea how minimalistic interiors can be. They even share beds and sleep in shifts to gain space.
This whole rp ship vs pvp ship is nonsense. This is just the Pygmalion effect going over and over and the people believing it spreading even further the misinformation. I'm not a pvp player, i do not play enough to consider myself one however i want my ships to be the bests engineered ones. As such i take time, trials and errors to get the best of my ships. Looks is part of it. If you do not want your ship to be on par with people that build with efficiency in mind then it's not a problem. It is fine. But do NOT call out others if you do not want to. It just make it look like you're asking for YOUR build style to be the meta. I know from the little discussion we had on our discord that you are not that stubborn and can understand when you care to listen compared to some others. So please try to listen before doing a tsonak and rejecting any sort of changes. But from your message i guess you made already your choice regarding anything. Might as well tell me why you even bother coming here if you do not care to listen to anyone besides starting a war against qf ? Besides you four i'm having some good feedback on the starmade discord server concerning qf changes.
Quickfire Systems Changes- Full summary and notes - First of all, this part won’t include a full list of all the changes made by the QF team - the reason being that it is impossible to describe in detail every change, as almost every aspect of the game changed. Plus, there is no point going ove...
docs.google.com
At the end of the document are some general guidelines to build with intended qf configs. Please note that eveything is subject to context. For example high rof weapons are not good against armor (and so some claim that they are useless) but they are good if you fight non-heavy armored ships. On the contrary if you use low rof weapons you'll be good against armor. But said weapons are much easier to dodge due to low fire rate. And so it's better to use light armored ships to dodge more easily.
Again, QF configs encourage specialized ships, which enhance even more the chamber system. And so there is no jack of all trade ships good in every aspects. Everything turning in circles.
Why wouldn't you be able to peacefully build your ships in solo ? Fleets and balance doesn't prevent you from doing so.
If you just want to build, disable npc's and pirates then build. If you want survival use the fleets functionnality, adapt yourself to your ennemy or just build big enough so that you win vs npc's.
If you know anything about a BUG you would be of nice help to fill out a bug report and help track down this issue. If not then this is not relevant to the balance of the game. Beams were not that bugged when we set up the numbers for them. Now they're even worse.
Maybe you don't but actually some people here do. THAT'S CRAZY RIGHT ? I've even met people whoose smallest ships are 300k mass. Let me take an example. Your friend, troll82 here, do not build anything smaller than several hundreds of thousands of mass. And he's not alone. So i guess, because you don't like this way of building you disaproove their ships too ? Or is that just so you can tackle a bit QF so you take anything you can get ?
Anyway. Why armor needs to be so thick has been explained countless times. And it has been done so that SMALL SHIPS some people complain about here can be balanced. Or y'know. I can make it so that armor blocks are the equivalent of 5 but with 5 times the mass and so he cannot even consider putting armor on his beloved ships because too damn heavy. Welp, your choice. We tested both and people complais about both. So we keep the one giving more freedom.
Regarding looks: Actually no. ...and
Zoolimar , please take note of this as well, since it relates to our exchange on stabilizer distance. My concern is block spam vs open interiors and the notable performance diference between the two. I just gave you guys an example of a Pathfinder with open space and one filled with systems. There is no comparison between the two in terms of power and performance. Schine set out to reduce the number of system blocks needed to make a ship run effectively. Under QF, we need far more system blocks than ever before, just to move/turn a ship at a reasonable speed and make a dent in armor. You
can argue that above a certain size, open space is of defensive benefit but provided the ship isn't moving/handling like a brick, more systems is more systems; which by and large, means, larger shield buffer and better guns. i.e.; a Pathfinder that gives love taps and can barely take 'em vs a Pathfinder that has double the shields and hits like a truck with similar maneuverability.
Regarding submarines: Have you ever served on a submarine
Scypio ? No offense but I
have and you don't seem to have a realistic understanding of what they are like. Space is limited but it's not like being in a tank. We
can move around in there and other than the reactor and the generators, there were no impassable solid chunks of system like what this config promotes. Just keep your head low so you don't hit it on a pipe and you'll be fine.
Regarding RP vs PVP vs PVE: Like others in the past, you're so intent on trying to "class" me that you completely missed the point. ...which is, that you've focused so heavily on combat engineering that players now
have to build a certain way. Regardless of what your PVP consituents may tell you, that is
not everyone's idea of "fun". and as has been mentioned before, it is the polar opposite of what Schine intended. Despite what you believe, I was originally onboard with your efforts but now, you're basically telling us; "META is all that matters. Build your systems
exactly like this and use
only these weapons and
only these tactics." Believe it or not, I
don't want my ships' shapes, sizes or system layouts to be META. What I want is for there to not be a META at all; as METAS are the exact opposite of game balance and build diversity.
Think about that for a second before assuming that I simply hate PVP or Quickfire.
Bottom line; If you work to create a setup that is usable by virtually anyone in virtually any
way, I will support you. If you try to force everyone to build/play in one specific way; to the exclusion of all others while using "the clique" as your justification, I will
not support you. My position on this matter really
is that simple.