Weaponry Overhaul

[Jolkanin]

I've seen a couple similar posts, but nothing which is substantially the same as what I had in mind.
I love how ship weaponry is implemented in this game, how groupings affect their strength and individual weapons can be fine-tuned for specific appliances. But I don't think they really take advantage of how weapons can be built block by block.

As of now, both antimatter cannons and missiles both get stronger the more blocks of their kind are in a single grouping. This also means, unluckily, that a large and bulky multi-stack cannon fires faster than linear cannons found on fighters, and the same goes for missiles. Who ever heard of a 180mm cannon firing faster than a 30mm minigun?

To solve this, I thought it might be better if the characteristics of the cannon in question were altered by the shape and size of it, much akin to the pulse weapons. For ease of understanding, I will organize this in terms of weapon statistics.

Antimatter Cannons:

1. Damage: This should be affected by number of connected stacks and number of blocks per stack. Each block added to a stack should increase the damage incrementally, while adding an entire new stack right next to the existing one will increase the damage exponentially.Of course there are disadvantages to this, mentioned in the below stats.
2. Range: Range should be determind by the length of the cannon, unaffected by how many stacks are connected. In addition to this, any cannon under the ratio of 3:1:1 in terms of length-to-width-to-height should have ridiculously low range.
3. Reload: Now the twist. The longer the cannon, the longer the reload incrementally. The more stacks a single cannon has, the longer the reload exponentially. In this way, our turrets and fighters will actually preform like turrets and fighters armed with advanced antimatter weaponry instead of antimatter flintlock pistols. This will also limit super long single-stack cannons to a more of a support/sniper role, and gigantic multi-stack cannons to an anti-capitol ship or anti-station role.
4. Speed: The speed of the fired projectile should increase with length, but decrease exponentially with each stack added. In this fasion, sniper-cannons will be easier to hit long range targets with, dogfights between fighters will require more skill, and capitol ship battles will require more predicting of enemy movement and will be less point-and-click.

To Be Implemented:

1. Penetration: Another concept of weaponry which could be implemented to the game is projectile penetration. What's the point of a 500 block single-stack sniper-cannon if it only destroys a single block per shot? Starting from around 10 blocks in length, the number of bullets the round passes and applies damage to should increase exponentially for evey additional 10 blocks in length. In addition to this, the damage of the round should deteriorate for each block it has to pass, until its penetration limit is reach. This can be determined by the defense of the blocks it hits, which will take a percentage of damage depending on the defense from the base damage of the projectile.
2. Radius: This has been implemented to missiles for obvious reasons, but antimatter cannons also deserve the luxury of hitting multiple targets. In terms of antimatter cannons, radius should only be affected by the number of stacks per cannon, so that a single-stack cannon will only hit a single block, but a 3x3 stack cannon will hit and apply damage to a sphere of 1.5 radius.

Missiles:

1. Damage: The damage figure of missiles will be the same with antimatter cannons, but on a different scale as a thermobaric blast and fragmentation would probably do less damage than the impact from concentrated antimatter.
2. Range: Similar to Antimatter Cannons, except that the distance will be measured in tens instead of ones.
3. Reload: Similar to Antimatter cannons, but on a different scale as missiles would probably take more time to reload than an energy weapon.
4. Speed: Once again similar to Antimatter cannon, but on a different scale.
5. Radius: Similar to the damage scale proposed in this post, the radius of missiles should increase incrementally with length, and exponentially with each stack added.

To Be Implemented:

1. Lock Speed: It seems strange that both a giant planet-buster and an anti-fighter missile should have the same locking time. To fix this, the time required to lock onto a target should increase incrementally with length, and exponentially with each stack added. In this fasion, a large, doomsday missile will take a couple minutes to lock on, allowing the opponent time to destroy it before such a weapon is fired.
2. Turn Angle: It also seemed strange that a large and bulky missile should be as agile as a sparrow. In a sparrow-spacesuit. With jetpacks. Similarly to Lock Speed, the smaller and shorter the missile, the more agile it should be. In this way, fighters equipped with short, single-stack missile launchers will be more equipt to take on targets in close proximity and in dogfights, whilst support ships equipped with longer missiles, which travel faster but turn slower, can shoot down ships from afar.

Pulse Weapons:

As pulse weapons are new to the game, they should be allowed more time to be developed before being pelted with suggestions.

Thanks for your time in reading this, and I welcome any criticism/discussion/comment on my ideas.
If you didn't bother reading this. TL;DR: Big giant cannons shouldn't fire faster than small fighter guns.

 

[Morrigi]

+1 cookie for you. And missiles should probably go faster than a braindead poodle.

 

[Jolkanin]

...When I say multi-stack cannon, I mean a weapon which is considered to be a single weapon by the weapons computer which comprises of multiple adjacently connected stacks, not a giant array of multiple single-stack cannons.

 

[spacemarine658]

i love it

 

[Jolkanin]

These are just two random, extra ideas I thought might compliment the game nicely.Those two being an auditory and visual change to AMC shots, depending on the shape and size of the weapon it originates from. On this concept, AMC shots from a single-stack, short fighter cannon would take the shape of a thin, shorter pulse with a more brief, staccato sound to match the appearance. AMC shots from a longer sniper-cannon would be more of a long oval in shape, with a more dramatic discharge sound effect to match the more powerful-looking appearance. Shots from a multi-stack, anti-capitol ship cannon would be gigantic spheres, with an equally brutish, gigantic sound to accompany it.

The same could also be done to missiles as well, and these changes would surely bring more color to a battle as different forms of weapons are used.

 

[LazerusKI]

i really like the AMC ideas (made a few thoughts myself a while ago http://star-made.org/content/amcs-idea-calculation-and-mechanic-rework)
would make sense, would bring more options to play with, i really hope that this will be implemented in a future version

 

[GROOV3ST3R]

I don\'t agree with the speed.

Generally, high-powered weaponry has a much higher projectile speed.

9mm bullets travel below the speed of sound.

Sniper bullets from a Barret M82 fly at over twice the speed of sound.

Tank shells can fly at nearly 5 times the speed of sound.

The only difference between these systems is their size. They are all technically cannons - just varying size and thus also power.



Speed of the projectile also impacts it\'s range. I believe that larger systems should inherently have more range and faster projectiles - where speed and range are tied together in a balanced way.

It sounds odd, but bigger, more powerful and destructive projectiles fly faster than smaller ones.

This also ties in with reload speed. It takes a lot more time to reload more powerful projectiles. It does not matter what range they fly to - the actual size and weight (or in case of AMC\'s, the power/charge) of the projectile dictates how much time it takes to reload.

I believe that more powerful AMC\'s should have a reload speed inversely proportional to their power. Range and speed of the projectile have nothing to do with reload, but COULD be sacrificed for quicker reloading.





I\'m merely pointing out the properties of those kinds of systems. For smaller dogfighter systems, power should increase slowly at first, diminishing the benefits of having more power in cannons over having more separate cannons.

 

[Jolkanin]

That is technically very true, and are great suggestions in themselves. But I had made my suggestion with gameplay and balance in mind, opposed to realism. I did try to add a degree of realism to my ideas, but in the end, pure realism makes for not too fun of a game.

 

[Jolkanin]

...the range of pulse weapons is a bit underwhelming compared to the push power and reload. As it would make pulse weapons too overpowered if the range is only raised, what if, in addition, the push power and stun duration would gradually grow less the further apart enemies are from the origin of the pulse?

 

[Jolkanin]

So I\'ve completed my infinite jam/stealth ship, and can\'t help but be irked with how all 3 weapon types turn off the cloak. I\'m not suggesting weapons should be allowed to fire without turning off the cloak, but maybe there could be a weapon type which can be fired without disturbing the cloak, or a special block to be placed on the output of weapons which makes it fire within cloak, but decreases stats? (sort of like a silencer)

 

[Cool3303]

Actually I think Weapons shouldnt deactivate Cloak at all but maybe make the ship a little bit less transparent (maybe with a similiar animation of hitting shields going from the weapons )

The original Idea of deactivating the stealth (as seen in StarTrek) was that the ship doesn´t Have enough power to be cloaked and Fire at the same time so why can´t we have this in starmade?



About the Original Post:

Nice Ideas but I think you should need to choose Radius or penetration because It would be easily be possible to create a Sniper which flies at insane speed is extremely powerfull and flies through an entire enemy ship and leaves a 10 block wide hole.Even though this would be funny as hell it would be a bit overpowered .

Also some better Ideas for reloading would be nice since I simply don´t like the idea of having peashooters or Cannons of Doom(Even though those are nice).Spray and Slay thats what I like.(Fighter destroying Weps aren´t good until you got atleast 30 of them)

Also how would energy be calculated? By the damage or all things combined?

 

[Kaamio]

If I understood correctly, weapons made this way would be pretty much cylinder shaped... as in, making \"freeform shapes\" would not be useful like it is now. Not necessarily bad, but it does restrict building a good bit. That said, sounds goodish. Making the gun shape matter would be great, since now it\'s pretty much output here and a trail of blocks to where we have space to fit the main body, while it\'s nice and flexible, it would be also cool to design warships around the necessities of large cannons.

Also, I\'d say less is more for making gun arrays. It may be personal preference, but generally I\'ve found that putting in one good gun is better than two or three average ones until drawbacks start to factor in, for example low firing rate can be bothersome if shields start recharging when you miss one shot.



I\'d prefer separate weapon systems for different sized ships, because it\'s easier to balance a gun for 10-400 block range, another for 400-1000 range and yet another to 1000+ than making one type that fits into fighters and battleships alike. But this would be fine alternative.



Come to think of it, one old guide had this kind of info on it... missiles and AMC:s may have been shape-dependant at some point? Nothing so articulate but dimension cube was used similar to power generators with x, y and z dimensions affecting different qualities.

 

[tubadancross]

I propose first that antimatter be nerfed a bit (even with a million shields one can still break through to a ship\'s core in under 20 seconds, making all large battles a game of \'who shot first?\') but for the most part, they should remain the same.

I also think there should be a new weapon added (let\'s call it the \'plasma cannon\' for lack of a better term) to fill out this idea. Make it a huge drain on energy (at least 3x what the same weight in antimatter cannons would take) and extremely low power per block. I mean low like a single block AMC would have higher dps than 25 of these. However, after you add enough blocks to one gun (the size that would make it impractical on a quick, agile fighter) the damage begins increasing exponentially.

The damage increase would be complimented by a linear decrease in reload speed so big ships would still want AMC turrets and the like. Range and Projectile Speed would still increase at the same rate as the AMC (or possibly higher rate for range) and projectile size would also be a factor. Possibly the most important factor.

Ideas for dimensions:
Total blocks: Determine damage, inverse firing speed, and projectile speed.
X&Y: the lower value (x or y) determines the diameter of the projectile at a rate of (XorY)/3 with a minimum possible value of 1.
Z: Determines range and length of projectile at a rate of Z/10.

The diameter of projectile would, of course, determine how many blocks could be hit at once. The length of the projectile would determine it\'s piercing capabilities with each point in length being able to destroy one block. This means a beam with a 3x3 area of damage and length of 5 would be capable of destroying 45 blocks in one shot. If we say this cannon is doing 400 damage per shot then that would mean against shields it would do 18000 damage per shot to shields.

In practice, though, I would see such a cannon doing far more per shot than that. Enough to the point that it would be more efficient (in terms of dps) than an AMC array of the same size. This would only be feasable on large ships due to the number of blocks needed and would only be good against large ships due to the low firing speed.

Tl;dr: A seperate gun with massive power rather than re-working how AMC\'s work. Also a nerf to AMC damage.

 

[MrNo]

I must say, I thought that at one point the changelog listed decreasing AMC fire speed with size, but I cannot find it again, and in-game testing shows that to be most definitely untrue.

A question about a term that I\'m not quite clear on (even after reading post 3): Is a stack a single weapons block which is part of a weapon (so adding a single weapon block increases the number of stacks by one) or is a stack related to the dimensions of the weapon in question (so adding a weapon to complete the last part of a cube would not increase number of stacks, but adding one to the outside of said cube, in such a way that it increases the x,y,z size would increase the stacks). If you could clarify this, I could give a good response to this

 

[Jolkanin]

...A stack would refer to a single line of AMC blocks.

 

[MrNo]

Okay, thank you for the clarification. Now I can give you a reply which makes sense.

I like the idea a lot. Let me just put that out first. I think this would be a great addition to the game. That said let me explain the arguments against it:



The first issue with this is how it impacts creativity. If you limit weapons to being more effective in a particular size or shape, you limit what people can do around them. We can already see this to some extent with the generator blocks. You can see some really ugly ships which are built the way they are because it is the absolute most effective way to do so. And, having seen a fair number of people complaining about it, I know that this goes for the other end as well: People can make really awesome looking ships which are useless because generator blocks don\'t work well with the shape.

The second issue I see with this is complication. It makes sense to me, after about half an hour of close studying of the post, but many players may have trouble figuring this out. I think this is only a minor issue, and one that can easily be worked around with tutorials and demonstrations.

I see no particular solution to the first one, and I don\'t think it\'s much of a problem. Same thing happens in minecraft: We see people make beutiful pixel art/maps which would be completely non-functional for the basic needs of the game. The same can almost certainly work here. Just thought I\'d put it out there as \"the devils advocate\" as it were.

Other than that, I have no issue with this. It is well planned out, and is among the few posts in the suggestions section which are as well planned. Well done. I\'m afraid I have nothing to add, just the problems to state.