StormWing0
Leads the Storm
Oh heck lets get this thread back up and running and see what's new. :P
Is it possible for you to do bigger docks for your drones without messing up majorly your ships?Keptick ,
You started this thread with that rather brilliant drone rack design. Since I have an almost irresistible urge to cram fighters into my ships, I too would like to see this thread continue since there have been a few changes over the past 2 years.
Do you feel that under the current build of the game, small drones can still be effective? Personally, I'm finding them a bit underwhelming in terms of fire power. I suppose I can cut my drones' reactor stability to 25-50% like the hardcore META players do, but I'm told that quickfire is going to do away with being able to do that without losing overall power output.
I really haven't played enough with the current systems to judge accurately, so don't quote me on this, but afaik small ships are broken under the quick-fire config. Something about their damage being nullified to zero by armor, not sure. Idk about the balance in vanilla, but if I were you I'd swap to QF config when trying to balance ships, since that will most likely become default. The peeps behind QF hope to fix small ships eventually though (by small ships I mean under 1k mass, so smack in drone territory).Keptick ,
You started this thread with that rather brilliant drone rack design. Since I have an almost irresistible urge to cram fighters into my ships, I too would like to see this thread continue since there have been a few changes over the past 2 years.
Do you feel that under the current build of the game, small drones can still be effective? Personally, I'm finding them a bit underwhelming in terms of fire power. I suppose I can cut my drones' reactor stability to 25-50% like the hardcore META players do, but I'm told that quickfire is going to do away with being able to do that without losing overall power output.
I've been holding off on the QF dev builds since they haven't (last time I checked) made it official. Maybe it's timeI really haven't played enough with the current systems to judge accurately, so don't quote me on this, but afaik small ships are broken under the quick-fire config. Something about their damage being nullified to zero by armor, not sure. Idk about the balance in vanilla, but if I were you I'd swap to QF config when trying to balance ships, since that will most likely become default. The peeps behind QF hope to fix small ships eventually though (by small ships I mean under 1k mass, so smack in drone territory).
Do missiles ignore armor? If so it might be possible to use missiles on drones to bypass the issue. If not then nevermind.
So I spoke with SchnellBier and the problem with small ships is that if the damage they deal is under a certain amount it will get completely absorbed by armor (depends on the armor thickness and weapon size). So just make sure to have weapons that deal sufficient damage per projectile/tick in the case of cannons/beams. Missiles ignore armor ratings so that's also a good weapon candidate.
Dr. Whammy Also, don't use the default AI accuracy, it's trash (might be your problem).
We do not hope to fix fights below 1k mass. It's a problem we will always have with starmade as it is a voxel block based game. We try to make it so that combat between really small ships (below 1k for example) is balanced but there is a point where you run into the same issue again and again. And this problem is not fixable without breaking everything else. At the moment it should be somewhat balanced for combat between small ships.I really haven't played enough with the current systems to judge accurately, so don't quote me on this, but afaik small ships are broken under the quick-fire config. Something about their damage being nullified to zero by armor, not sure. Idk about the balance in vanilla, but if I were you I'd swap to QF config when trying to balance ships, since that will most likely become default. The peeps behind QF hope to fix small ships eventually though (by small ships I mean under 1k mass, so smack in drone territory).
Qf's configs are somewhat official since it's on the dev builds. But if tomorrow someone comes with a set of configs that are far superior to ours and that all of the community agrees that it fixes the game and the devs as well, then it will be accepted.I've been holding off on the QF dev builds since they haven't (last time I checked) made it official. Maybe it's time
I recommend outfitting drones with missiles instead, They go fairly close to the enemy so there is lesser chance of AMS to work, 1 or 2 drones can't fire too much missiles but imagine what 20 can do, Missiles also tend do a lot more damage to even heavy armor,They lose the advantage of being compact since you have to sacrifice overall fire-power due to having to cram in a bunch of stabilizers to get full power out of your reactor. As a result, you end up with a carrier full of mobile decorations that can't generate the power needed to fire something that can put a dent in heavier armor.
My latest incarnation of this fighter is 15m x 15m x 9m and less than 100 mass, yet it requires more than 30 stabilizers for only 20 reactor blocks.
Exactly! I think it might be even more effective than that, since it really splits the enemy's attention between the drones and the main ship. It opens up the possibility to a bunch of strategies. For example, it makes the job of keeping your distance easier since the enemy will probably focus the drones (if they don't they'll die a death of 1000 cuts).The thought process shouldn't be: "20 300m bombers should be able to kill a 20k ship", but "20 300m bombers plus the carriers longe range fire should be able to fight a force of equal or slightly greater mass"
I do use fighters with missiles.I recommend outfitting drones with missiles instead, They go fairly close to the enemy so there is lesser chance of AMS to work, 1 or 2 drones can't fire too much missiles but imagine what 20 can do, Missiles also tend do a lot more damage to even heavy armor,
The sub-capital I posted earlier has some nice fire power. However, it doesn't carry enough fighters for them to be of any real benefit to the larger craft. Also, they're not strong enough, they don't use their max speed, they have no concept of evasive manuevers and you can't coordinate their attacks to your advantage.I also recommend Building your carrier as a "BattleCarrier",
The moment you let loose of all of your fighters is the moment your ship suddenly becomes much faster and more mass and power efficent, Plan the carrier to be somewhat combat effective without the fighters mass, (I recommend Long ranged weaponry) Once you dumped your fighters the only difference is volume wich might not even be a disadvantage as shots hitting the empty large hangars would be almost as insignificant as missing, sense there is no longer anything usefull there, Especially from a distance your hangar could absorb shots quite effectively.
I really like your idea as a concept. However, in practice it's not quite that simple.The tought process shouldn't be: "20 300m bombers should be able to kill a 20k ship", but "20 300m bombers plus the carriers longe range fire should be able to fight a force of equal or slightly greater mass"
The average mass of each of my fighters is about 100. With about 40 fighters that's about 4000 mass. My ship's base mass (without turrets) is 4451; which includes reactor chambers and a fair amount of RP gear (medical bays, stair cases, transporters, decorative elements, etc.)Dr. Whammy what's the mass of your fighters? Was the total mass of the drones equal or above the mass of the ship? Because it might be the case that the combined mass was just way too inferior to the ship.
[doublepost=1573257635,1573257535][/doublepost]I'll refit my soul drones with quickfire configs, they're around 115 mass with QF. I'll let you know how it goes.