So this First post here:
http://star-made.org/content/space-battles-should-be-more-epic
And then this post here:
http://star-made.org/comment/77074#comment-77074
READ THIS POST BELOW REALLY WELL BEFORE RESPONDING.
The above links me to consider, a key problem with Starmade, which is precision core drilling with AMC's...and poof your core gets overheated, you die, and now your rather in-tact ship is free to be pillaged.
The first link above gave a great suggestion on how to stop this problem by introducing secondary ship cores that all have to be killed for the ship to overheat (pilot to die). And the other issue, more in the utterly ridiculous range of problems... the old "decimate the enemy ship nothing but the core left" and its still flying around with gusto...which I personally find ridiculous but I doubt this will / could truly change.
HOWEVER, what WOULD make "deep core drilling" or epic levels of bombardment and "the fker wont die" problem become LESS of an issue....is...
1. Make the real ship core invisible to sensors unless its exposed to outer space somehow (via some algorithm). Nothing to do with having an atmosphere.
2. Introduce "various secondary ship cores" as Saria suggested in the first link above.
Except each secondary ship core has its own simple function. "Power Core", "Weapons Core" etc.
Now it is optional to use these secondary core blocks, but if you do, e.g. say "Weapons Core", all AMC damage is doubled. The downside is, if that core is disabled (no blowing it up - just disabling / "overheating" it), then all your weapons become disabled unless its reactivated. If it stays dead for its countdown timer (say 10 minutes) - no option for to "kill it faster" like you can with ship cores, only then does it disapear. Your weapons return to normal mode upon it disapearing. You can "fix it" by entering it in astronaut mode. In a combat situation this would require you run to it and fix, which would be very hard unless you had a second man aboard with gravity on or put BobbyAI on and hope for the best.
Which would make "teamwork" ship battles possible, but also, as most battles are 1 vs 1, it would make it hard for you to fix your weapons core without running out to it and getting raped by the enemy ship, making losing your weapons core a very bad situation, requiring you flee, ram the other guy (if ramming damage gets added), or try to fix it.
There should be a minimum distance from every core in your ship to each other, at least say 10m apart (forced by game). This is to stop people putting them all together in one very protected location, and instead force people to spread them apart. Bigger ships would be needed for more cores as per Saria's rule there regarding number of minimum blocks (or whatever rule).
Little fighters cant have secondary cores due to lack of size / block count.
Let me note, if you shoot the regular enemy "ship core" block and overheat it, the player dies, like normal - no change to that block at all.
Also as a reason to ensure these secondary cores are placed appropriately, you get a 10% bonus to all blocks near by of the "type" the secondary core represents. So a Thruster secondary core being near thrusters, would give the thruster blocks in its 10x10x10 radius, a 10% performance boost.
This is so on your enemy's nav computer, when it says "Thruster Core" they can assume it really is near thrusters, and your thrusters are positioned as a normal person would have them, and that your Thruster Core is not inside an 8x8x8 hardened hull box.
If you blow up the thruster core, the ship drops to 10% thrust efficiency for 5 minutes until it disapears or is repaired (makes acelerating almost useless) Or whatever is decided.
You see where I am going with this. A Power core (due to complex arrangements required by the game atm for efficent power cells), might be able to be placed anywhere on the ship to give a significant boost to power. But if the power core is blown, your recharge rate turns to utter shit until it disapears or you fix it. Still cant be within 10m of any other core.
Shield core, same thing, no shields until its fixed, or it eventually disapears from overheating, in which case your shields go back to "normal mode", and stops being in "beast mode". Side note, in the case of shields, spamming them in every nook and cranny of your ship really needs to stop being ok by this game! If the shield core goes down, no shields.
The closer your respective secondary core is to a block of its type (e.g. Thrust core to thruster blocks), the bigger an advantage you get in efficiency for those blocks in its "circle of influence". This is ON TOP of the already heavy boost having a secondary core produces.
Secondary cores must provide a big boost to performance of that element of your ship otherwise there is no incentive to use them and risk them being targetted and crippled by an enemy ship. Understand this point before bitching with "huuuurrrr over powered" rants.
Only one secondary core of each type allowed per ship. You cant have two Power cores etc.
These secondary cores would have to be the last items to be deletable from a ship, just before the ship core - in build mode.
Now to address the ridiculous issue of you have shot the shit out of another ship, it's now half its already size (lol), but its somehow still firing back (obviously worse now), and it's still flying. Remember above, you require X amount of blocks/mass to add more secondary cores? The game can delete them descending order of when they were added, if your ship loses too many blocks. So if you ship was 10k mass, and you had 3 cores, and now its 6k mass, your last core, lets pretend it was the Thruster core, will overheat and be unrepairable and will have to wait the full 10 minutes (or whatever) to disapear, and your ship is crippled, movement wise, meantime. This represents your ship taking REAL damage and real consequences - and not being a skeleton of its former self, merrily still flying around shooting you. So you wouldn't add ship cores if you JUST barely met the blocks/mass requirement. Also this stops people cheating the system by making gigantic garbage "temporary" ships, adding in secondary cores, then deleting the bulk of the ship to keep the secondary cores.
Now, ANOTHER Brilliant idea to make ship fighting "more epic" besides the above...
Introduce cables / electricity from the Secondary Power Core! The cables could be like Minecraft's redstone, or perhaps actual cables that take up real space, or take up a quarter of one block, so you can fit 4 separate cables into one block, to make one central pipe of cables so to speak, to spread apart to power things. Optionally, each cable could have a maximum power transfer from the SECONDARY POWER CORE block (NOT power cells all over your ship thats stupid trust me), so your 50000 block canon would require several cables to run it from the Secondary Power Core block, if they are to be 100% capable... to make things more complex design wise (I like complex).
All your separate cannons and misc blocks (thrusters/shields/etc) require a cable to them from the Power Core. If the cable is cut, the affected weapons stop working.
I thought about doing this with each individual core to their respective "child blocks", e.g. a Weapons Core with cable to AMC/Missles instead of the Power Core, but because that means the Weapons Core will likely be placed to the AMCs (for the bonus damage etc I mentioned above), its not much of a "cabling challenge". But if you that require the Power Core power everything via cables, then that will be a greater ship design challenge to achieve, more fun, and more prone to breaking if somehow the enemy gets to see them. Which is good, weak points and whatnot are good and you can factor in how to minimise them.
You cant cable from a regular power cell because right now the game rewards you have a zillion separate X0X0X power cell arrangements...so really wierd to try...if you could make power cells a big fact cube it would be ok but you cant. So Power Core would have to do.
You dont need cables if you dont have a power core and dont have a secondary core for the system it would affect. E.g. If you dont have a weapons core, your weapons dont need cables. This keeps it simple for noobs, the game stays the same for them, but for the pro's wanting a beast ship, a bigger building challenge, more strategy in fighting, then cables would be required otherwise your AMCs would not fire at all. They would require a Power Core + cabled to it, and a Weapons Core onboard somewhere. Obviously they get a big bonus to damage output for having these added "weak / targettable points".
The noobs will have to learn if they want to move into the higher levels of ship building, otherwise they can keep building their regular ships without any impact or change to them. But for those of us who want ship warfare and building to be "more" than it is, this is a great step forward, and I dont think it would be a massive job to code either considering half these things exist in star made already, like being able to target turrets (e.g. you can target Secondary cores), the game knowing if a power cell is connected to another power cell (e.g. useful for cables).
READ THIS POST EPICLY WELL BEFORE RESPONDING
ITS STILL POSSIBLE TO BUILD IN REGULAR JOE MODE IF DESIRED. Just dont place secondary cores in your ship. Read above.
http://star-made.org/content/space-battles-should-be-more-epic
And then this post here:
http://star-made.org/comment/77074#comment-77074
READ THIS POST BELOW REALLY WELL BEFORE RESPONDING.
The above links me to consider, a key problem with Starmade, which is precision core drilling with AMC's...and poof your core gets overheated, you die, and now your rather in-tact ship is free to be pillaged.
The first link above gave a great suggestion on how to stop this problem by introducing secondary ship cores that all have to be killed for the ship to overheat (pilot to die). And the other issue, more in the utterly ridiculous range of problems... the old "decimate the enemy ship nothing but the core left" and its still flying around with gusto...which I personally find ridiculous but I doubt this will / could truly change.
HOWEVER, what WOULD make "deep core drilling" or epic levels of bombardment and "the fker wont die" problem become LESS of an issue....is...
1. Make the real ship core invisible to sensors unless its exposed to outer space somehow (via some algorithm). Nothing to do with having an atmosphere.
2. Introduce "various secondary ship cores" as Saria suggested in the first link above.
Except each secondary ship core has its own simple function. "Power Core", "Weapons Core" etc.
Now it is optional to use these secondary core blocks, but if you do, e.g. say "Weapons Core", all AMC damage is doubled. The downside is, if that core is disabled (no blowing it up - just disabling / "overheating" it), then all your weapons become disabled unless its reactivated. If it stays dead for its countdown timer (say 10 minutes) - no option for to "kill it faster" like you can with ship cores, only then does it disapear. Your weapons return to normal mode upon it disapearing. You can "fix it" by entering it in astronaut mode. In a combat situation this would require you run to it and fix, which would be very hard unless you had a second man aboard with gravity on or put BobbyAI on and hope for the best.
Which would make "teamwork" ship battles possible, but also, as most battles are 1 vs 1, it would make it hard for you to fix your weapons core without running out to it and getting raped by the enemy ship, making losing your weapons core a very bad situation, requiring you flee, ram the other guy (if ramming damage gets added), or try to fix it.
There should be a minimum distance from every core in your ship to each other, at least say 10m apart (forced by game). This is to stop people putting them all together in one very protected location, and instead force people to spread them apart. Bigger ships would be needed for more cores as per Saria's rule there regarding number of minimum blocks (or whatever rule).
Little fighters cant have secondary cores due to lack of size / block count.
Let me note, if you shoot the regular enemy "ship core" block and overheat it, the player dies, like normal - no change to that block at all.
Also as a reason to ensure these secondary cores are placed appropriately, you get a 10% bonus to all blocks near by of the "type" the secondary core represents. So a Thruster secondary core being near thrusters, would give the thruster blocks in its 10x10x10 radius, a 10% performance boost.
This is so on your enemy's nav computer, when it says "Thruster Core" they can assume it really is near thrusters, and your thrusters are positioned as a normal person would have them, and that your Thruster Core is not inside an 8x8x8 hardened hull box.
If you blow up the thruster core, the ship drops to 10% thrust efficiency for 5 minutes until it disapears or is repaired (makes acelerating almost useless) Or whatever is decided.
You see where I am going with this. A Power core (due to complex arrangements required by the game atm for efficent power cells), might be able to be placed anywhere on the ship to give a significant boost to power. But if the power core is blown, your recharge rate turns to utter shit until it disapears or you fix it. Still cant be within 10m of any other core.
Shield core, same thing, no shields until its fixed, or it eventually disapears from overheating, in which case your shields go back to "normal mode", and stops being in "beast mode". Side note, in the case of shields, spamming them in every nook and cranny of your ship really needs to stop being ok by this game! If the shield core goes down, no shields.
The closer your respective secondary core is to a block of its type (e.g. Thrust core to thruster blocks), the bigger an advantage you get in efficiency for those blocks in its "circle of influence". This is ON TOP of the already heavy boost having a secondary core produces.
Secondary cores must provide a big boost to performance of that element of your ship otherwise there is no incentive to use them and risk them being targetted and crippled by an enemy ship. Understand this point before bitching with "huuuurrrr over powered" rants.
Only one secondary core of each type allowed per ship. You cant have two Power cores etc.
These secondary cores would have to be the last items to be deletable from a ship, just before the ship core - in build mode.
Now to address the ridiculous issue of you have shot the shit out of another ship, it's now half its already size (lol), but its somehow still firing back (obviously worse now), and it's still flying. Remember above, you require X amount of blocks/mass to add more secondary cores? The game can delete them descending order of when they were added, if your ship loses too many blocks. So if you ship was 10k mass, and you had 3 cores, and now its 6k mass, your last core, lets pretend it was the Thruster core, will overheat and be unrepairable and will have to wait the full 10 minutes (or whatever) to disapear, and your ship is crippled, movement wise, meantime. This represents your ship taking REAL damage and real consequences - and not being a skeleton of its former self, merrily still flying around shooting you. So you wouldn't add ship cores if you JUST barely met the blocks/mass requirement. Also this stops people cheating the system by making gigantic garbage "temporary" ships, adding in secondary cores, then deleting the bulk of the ship to keep the secondary cores.
Now, ANOTHER Brilliant idea to make ship fighting "more epic" besides the above...
Introduce cables / electricity from the Secondary Power Core! The cables could be like Minecraft's redstone, or perhaps actual cables that take up real space, or take up a quarter of one block, so you can fit 4 separate cables into one block, to make one central pipe of cables so to speak, to spread apart to power things. Optionally, each cable could have a maximum power transfer from the SECONDARY POWER CORE block (NOT power cells all over your ship thats stupid trust me), so your 50000 block canon would require several cables to run it from the Secondary Power Core block, if they are to be 100% capable... to make things more complex design wise (I like complex).
All your separate cannons and misc blocks (thrusters/shields/etc) require a cable to them from the Power Core. If the cable is cut, the affected weapons stop working.
I thought about doing this with each individual core to their respective "child blocks", e.g. a Weapons Core with cable to AMC/Missles instead of the Power Core, but because that means the Weapons Core will likely be placed to the AMCs (for the bonus damage etc I mentioned above), its not much of a "cabling challenge". But if you that require the Power Core power everything via cables, then that will be a greater ship design challenge to achieve, more fun, and more prone to breaking if somehow the enemy gets to see them. Which is good, weak points and whatnot are good and you can factor in how to minimise them.
You cant cable from a regular power cell because right now the game rewards you have a zillion separate X0X0X power cell arrangements...so really wierd to try...if you could make power cells a big fact cube it would be ok but you cant. So Power Core would have to do.
You dont need cables if you dont have a power core and dont have a secondary core for the system it would affect. E.g. If you dont have a weapons core, your weapons dont need cables. This keeps it simple for noobs, the game stays the same for them, but for the pro's wanting a beast ship, a bigger building challenge, more strategy in fighting, then cables would be required otherwise your AMCs would not fire at all. They would require a Power Core + cabled to it, and a Weapons Core onboard somewhere. Obviously they get a big bonus to damage output for having these added "weak / targettable points".
The noobs will have to learn if they want to move into the higher levels of ship building, otherwise they can keep building their regular ships without any impact or change to them. But for those of us who want ship warfare and building to be "more" than it is, this is a great step forward, and I dont think it would be a massive job to code either considering half these things exist in star made already, like being able to target turrets (e.g. you can target Secondary cores), the game knowing if a power cell is connected to another power cell (e.g. useful for cables).
READ THIS POST EPICLY WELL BEFORE RESPONDING
ITS STILL POSSIBLE TO BUILD IN REGULAR JOE MODE IF DESIRED. Just dont place secondary cores in your ship. Read above.