Turret (balancing) arc/facing and docking logic. AI with more options and targetable missiles

[Admiral.Piett]

Well, into the fact the database backup erasing my post, I'll repost this ideas I think are worth taking a look at.
This game will succeed more the more flexible designing a ship is. Therefore, I think the current "fit turret/ship into a box" mechanic should go away, we need mass docking, at least for turrets, and a secondary docking counter-piece to the turret rotation ain't the core. We need to be able to have turrets FACE a single direction, and set their movement arcs. Sliders should be good for it. Make it so the turret actually "collides" with the ship it is attached to, creating true turret coverage, and forcing better designs to be made, limiting movement arcs and the such. Or don't make it collide, But give people the chance to make their turret so they actually don't go thru half of your ship.

TL; DR
Add sliders to be able to set turret facing and movement arcs, and a cube to dock the turret other than the core.


AI settings should be able to target ships according to a given mass. Not all turrets can target all objectives. This should be done in order to add more preference to the AI targeting control.


Finally, I believe missiles should have a viable physical representation. I believe there should be a missile that spawns when the weapons is shot and the same should be target able, adding the need for point defense systems. The look of the missiles should depend on the power of the gun, its secondary and tertiary effects. Like a small missile group should span a little one, still target-able, while the shotgun missile would fire many missiles of small size that are not target-able and the such. I believe that would add a lot to the game-play of the game, the way it feels and plays too.


EDIT
Or at least, the missiles that lock on a target should be target-able.
Turret mass should be added into the ship they are docked on for trust calculation, as suggested Darth Plaigus
Also, I believe that if turrets are gonna share the mass for trust, they should share the shields of the ship, and/or the defensive bonuses the main ship has (tertiary effects on defense mode)

Edit 2
Turret shield sharing should be based on a % of mass against the main ship. Bigger turrets get bigger shields, but not share the total "pool" of the ship. I can't write down exact numbers of balance, but this strikes 2 things: Improved turret design, as they no longer need shield blocks of their own, (although if they do have they get a full shield bonus, like they do now) and makes small turrets viable. Shields, could be "taken from" the main ships shields. For example, a ship 1000 mass with a 100 mass turret, ship has 10k shields, the turret gets 1k shields and the ship now has 9k shields. this is just an example of the idea, numbers may vary as we see fit. Or simple stick to sharing a % which.... scales with both ship size in mass and turret mass (bigger ship, less turret shields, bigger turret, more turret shields or something like that)

 

[Krazykat]

Make missiles stronger, so point defense becomes worthwhile for capital ships to invest in. idk if that's already been mentioned I haven't been watching this thread until the rollback happened

 

[Darth Plaigus]

I like some of things you're suggesting, one thing i'm not sold on is ship/turret docking by mass. This may already be implemented, but docked entities mass needs to be added to the main ships for computing thrust. I just don't see the improvement of having mass based docking over volume. If any one can show me different go right ahead, still think volume is better especially when it comes to docking ships in hangars.

I do agree that the turret collide mechanic needs to be replaced. Sick of my larger turrets phasing through half my ship. Give them a little wiggle room, but not what they have now.

Also would like the ability to set which way my ships dock. As of right now any upside-down docking blocks make the ships dock, well upside-down which makes it a bugger to get to some of the entrances sometimes.

Last is I do think the physical missiles would be interesting.

 

[Admiral.Piett]

Well, in addition to mass docking I agree turret mass should be added to the ships total mass. Make that implicit on the post, I totally agree. But turrets need to collide with the ship they are attached to. It simply needs to make sense out of some ships designs. Most ship designs now make use of free space on the ship's exterior to avoid that issue, but i want side facing turret with limited firing arcs. That is a must.

Also, volumetric turret docking limits terribly ships design, as there needs to be "more space than the turret actually uses" in most cases.

 

[Darth Plaigus]

What if it we had something where it was a volume counter instead of just the square. Like if you put down a docking unit and it would give you say 100 units of volume to work with, and enhancers would just add more volume for you to be able to use.

 

[Lecic]

I agree with all of this except turrets sharing shields. It makes it impossible for strike craft to be used to knock out turrets to improve the chances of bombers and larger ships.

 

[Admiral.Piett]

Well, on that insight you are right, but then, turrets should share shields based on their mass too. Say, a turret that has a specific percentage of mass vs the main ship gets only a % of the main ships shields, that way turrets are more efficient and not overpowered, at the same time we improve turret design. This shields should be "withdrawn" from the main ship. It is just an idea of balance, but i think worth revising too.

This also make small turrets viable, since they no longer need shield blocks of their own.

 

[BeefBacon]

Having turrets inherit a % of their mothership's shields is an interesting idea. Small turrets would still be vulnerable, but you wouldn't have to make them mostly shields to have them survive 5 seconds against an Isanth.

I also really like the idea of targetable missiles. Perhaps some turrets could be designated as point defence, so they only target missiles and never ships. Fighters could specifically target point defence turrets to make the main ship vulnerable to missiles.

In the mean time, countermeasures to distract either heatseeking or lock-on missiles could be implemented to give small ships some modicum of survivability against missiles, since they'd be unlikely to be able to support many point defence turrets but would also be too agile to be hit with dumbfire missiles.

I also absolutely agree with the AI targeting preferences. It's a pain to have massive, slow firing cannon target fighters while all the little turrets target the mothership. I have to assume that AI changes will be coming anyway, though.

Turret direction sliders would be nice too. I hope that one day turrets won't look so derpy - especially the big ones.

 

[Krazykat]

snipped


I also really like the idea of targetable missiles. Perhaps some turrets could be designated as point defence, so they only target missiles and never ships. Fighters could specifically target point defence turrets to make the main ship vulnerable to missiles.

More tactical combat=better combat imo, I agree

In the mean time, countermeasures to distract either heatseeking or lock-on missiles could be implemented to give small ships some modicum of survivability against missiles, since they'd be unlikely to be able to support many point defence turrets but would also be too agile to be hit with dumbfire missiles.

This is a great idea, like a flares computer system that is extremely efficient on small surface area ships but get progressively less effective when trying to use flares from a larger vessel

I also absolutely agree with the AI targeting preferences. It's a pain to have massive, slow firing cannon target fighters while all the little turrets target the mothership. I have to assume that AI changes will be coming anyway, though.

I really need these changes, my larger ships have enough turret firepower to take down vessels of similar size, if only all the turrets actually did what they were intended to do
Turret direction sliders would be nice too. I hope that one day turrets won't look so derpy - especially the big ones.

not sure what you mean by derpy, but ye Directional sliders are a must ESPECIALLY since turrets can now hurt their mothership

you had a couple of different ideas so i responded to each one in red

 

[Malacodor]

I just don't see the improvement of having mass based docking over volume. If any one can show me different go right ahead, still think volume is better especially when it comes to docking ships in hangars.

My point of view

I do agree that the turret collide mechanic needs to be replaced. Sick of my larger turrets phasing through half my ship. [...]
Turret direction sliders would be nice too. I hope that one day turrets won't look so derpy - especially the big ones.

It should be possible to create real turrets with a turret base which can only rotate horizontally and a chain-docked gun which can only rotate vertically. This way phasing were still possible, but easily avoidable by clever design. The current system could remain in place as easy-to-handle default option for newbies or players who want it less complicated and don't care about phasing; and for backwards compatibility, of course.

In the mean time, countermeasures to distract either heatseeking or lock-on missiles could be implemented to give small ships some modicum of survivability against missiles, since they'd be unlikely to be able to support many point defence turrets but would also be too agile to be hit with dumbfire missiles.

Countermeasures are a great idea, I made a thread about it.

 

[Admiral.Piett]

I agree to the extreme, that chain docking can help out design in big ways. We could make turrets look so much better, if instead of moving the whole thing to change the vertical angle of the shot, only the cannon did. But the biggest drawback to that is that we don't how complex it is to implement such things in the game's code.

 

[Lecic]

I agree to the extreme, that chain docking can help out design in big ways. We could make turrets look so much better, if instead of moving the whole thing to change the vertical angle of the shot, only the cannon did. But the biggest drawback to that is that we don't how complex it is to implement such things in the game's code.

Well, I haven't coded for Starmade, obviously, but I think it would be rather easy. They can already limit the angle of movement on a turret, as they can only look so far up vertically. So, you'd make it so that they cannot rise any angles upwards relative to the docking block. Next, you'd have a turret dock on it's side attached to the base, so that the relative side-side movement to the turret block is actually up and down.

This change would of course need docking to be done with mass or some other system that doesn't rely on the old box style for smaller turrets to still exist.

Weapons and power and shields should be shared between the turret base and barrel, I would think.

I made some quick doodles for this.

Spoiler: Pictures

 

[Malacodor]

But the biggest drawback to that is that we don't how complex it is to implement such things in the game's code.

Turrets already rotate around two axes, the rotation around the second axis just has to be passed to the docked gun. The biggest problem is probably the communication between entities.

 

[Admiral.Piett]

Turrets already rotate around two axes, the rotation around the second axis just has to be passed to the docked gun. The biggest problem is probably the communication between entities.

Exactly the issue. I know turrets already move vertically lad.

 

[Yetimania]

As a temporary solution, you can use fixed-docked ships with bobby AIs to make 'turrets' with a limited fire arc (that is, forwards, and around 30 degrees in every direction). It's quite effective.

 

[Ithirahad]

What if it we had something where it was a volume counter instead of just the square. Like if you put down a docking unit and it would give you say 100 units of volume to work with, and enhancers would just add more volume for you to be able to use.

That would require volume calculations, which apparently have a heavy performance cost.