Weapons 2.0 - :(

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    So, I only really logged in when I checked on the forums because of this thread. That being said I'mma share some ancient wisdom with the newbs having the same old arguments.

    TLDR: It's not weapons 3.0, systems 2.0 or even really unnamed Fascist left-wing retards they decided to promote to mod in 2017's fault the game doesn't game anymore.

    So, circa 2012-13 on my older account, the game was, quite frankly, crap. But it still had more "game" to it than it than as of the last time I actually played. I'll leave that one as an obtuse statement you can check out for yourselves if you download one of the ANCIENT build.

    Fast forward to 2014-15, I'll call this era Weapons 1.0 era. I check back in, but alas I can't remember my password and old email provider has shut down so I'm not getting that back any time soon. Oh well, I'll be DrTarDIS (the name is a meta-joke, and I doubt many have ever figured it out). Oh wow, we got cannons AND missiles now? Cray cray. Missiles are crap tho, yer cray if you use them. Functional player-driven tech tree, better build mode, semi-sane crafting system...damn the game is a GAME now. It is a golden age, each weapons system has a bunch of sliders to let you REALLY tweak your builds. you want a sniper-cannon? Dial-back your reload or your Damage Per Projectile and crank that Projectile Speed and Range. Real easy customization for your blobs of weaponry. Arguably, there is a very exact "best weapon period" being a 2kish blob with 0.1 reload, 8km(4 sector) range, max proj velocity and 2-3 dmg above the hp of advanced armor. Core-drilling was all that mattered. Mounting this weapon system was utterly game-breaking, but only because core-drilling was a thing. Missiles were fun, but useless, only because core-drilling was a thing. SD-BB & SDKB cool concept, flat-faced implementation. GenX Nova admins can only defeat my 2-man-clan if they use /destroy-entity-dock. Even then, it only lasts for about 20 seconds because we own ALL the credits in every shop for 90-some sectors cubed and have them stashed in "black-box" stations. The end-game is forming a post-scarcity society anyway, PvP is just a side-game. Stacking a chain of max-level recipes (which you have to research yourself) so that you have an infinite supply of literally every resource on hand. Cannons, shields, hull? Can make all of it in server-breaking quantities in around 10 minutes out of a 2 flowers and a bit of lava for seed. That's the endgame. Sweet. PvP salt-n-pepper on the side.

    2015-16 we see several major improvements to the game. Also, several total face-plants that are to this day unaddressed. Shields are split into recharge and capacity to allow more variance in ships, fkin awesome. AIming changed to a "random block" instead of just "the core" so 8km insta-gib turrets aren't the ONLY meta anymore. kinda cool. Good job. Weapons 2.0 drops. We get beams now. Nice. WE lose our awesome slider-weapons tweaking but it's moved over to ratios of the "main blocks." Sure. Can adapt. makes some sense. PvP is once again viable as core-drilling is phased-out and system/mass HP replaces it. (cause yeah, insta-gib core-drilling up to 3k blocks in under 1 second is just wrong and broken and we should feel ashamed for taking advantage of it in our ship-that-never-leaves-cloak while killing ships that are 3 times over Bobby's server mass-cap just to make them feel bad about themselves...) Good job Schine. We have a game. CRAFTING 2.0 drops Adding the 3 different factory types, getting rid of the old crafting system with a super broken one that uses too many resources and doesn't use them well is kinda bad but...I guess grinding is a thing now. Adapt, overcome. Oh, all the server-optimizations are screwed-over because people need to have a personal Unicron/beast to be able to field a ship over 10k mass...well...ignore that...grind is a NECCESARY PART OF A SPACE SIM...Do NOT address horrible "crafting system" and it's impact on server-lag and game playability because "people need to grind to be allowed to build ships now and that is how this game is supposed to be and that is that STFU playerbase we are here now!" Find new ways to become post-scarcity societies is still the end-game(**cough cough shipyards are useless as shipyards but I can get free resources out of them so cool COUGHCOUGHcough**). Systems 1.1 is a thing, for a while we can have Ships that Absorb weapon damage over-parity in either shields or hull, resulting in hilarious unsinkable things that GAIN up to "null-pointer" shield integrity by taking damge. Well that's fixed not by enforcing a max value on shields systems or armor hp, but by tweaking the max-active-blocks of your systems. Whatever, you do what you want shiine. it works...too bad the servers are still being rendered unplayable by massive block-changes from mining rigs but...

    2017 we have fleets now! They add a whole new level of depth to gameplay! they can mine for you so you don't have to grind...oh wait they're spinning in place...i guess fleets are ballerinas now...ballerinas crashing into everything and causng more lag....whatever we're bored working on fleets it's time for...Oh, yeah Systems 1.1 wasn't enough. We need 2.0 now, because 1.1 is laggy (It's totally NOT because of laggy mining system and crafting system we are NOT going to talk about that! Do NOT look behind the curtain! Don't look at fleets and their poor behavior either!) We don't have a "game" anymore but it's not crafting 2.0's fault! it's not system's 2.0's fault either! Oh, and we're not going to spreadsheet the systems 2.0 or use any of our "assets" we spent months making for the fleets enhancement as guidelines before we "design it".....aaaaaaannnnnd we're going to update weapons too...no spreadsheeting on that either.....aaaannnd it's 2018 now and those weapons are just Starting to be spreadsheeted, a little, but only because they're laggy and unbalanced...
    I hate the crafting system so much. It's something that actually interests me, playing survival to build up ships from a planet etc., but it's just so overly complicated for no reason. I also really hate grinding.
    At the moment, I don't bother with survival anymore, and the times I do try it, I just sell ore instead of bothering to try to refine it. I also dislike the change to stations that prevented getting them easily and getting salvage...completely stupid; tearing apart one of those stupid asymmetrical square stations for hull to make my ship out of while home-basing at an intact one was fun and not OP; the new abandoned stations would be super OP to tear apart, but really, they should be NPC-owned and you hav to fight for them; instead they're just these empty set pieces you visit once to look at and then that's that.

    Now, all of that stuff about crafting aside, I'd say the tl;dr here is that a lot of StarMade's mechanics are just implemented half-baked without actually being fun, often with a cry of PERFORMANCE except that the game is never performant because everything is so high scale and complicated.

    I think Power 2.0 doesn't help things, and the current state of Weapons 2.0 won't either.
     
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    CAN GO FUCK THEMSELVES.
    Have you been drinking the angry juice?
    Let's recap the whole thing, because I seriously think you're flipping for the wrong reason.

    - Some guy says the only cause of crazy recoil problems is the player's habit of building disproportionately large guns, and it's more realistic to have a very very low weapons to total mass ratio

    -I correct him, stating that ratio is actually much higher than he thought, even if we don't count certain parts.

    -You pop in, saying that ratio is even higher because we totally should count those parts (which I didn't say we shouldn't)
    -You also say we should count the entire turret as a weapon.
    -Then you go about spouting a lot of nonsense about RP and PVP building styles and certain shortcomings I'm pretty sure you imagined, or based on some of the least talented builders' stuff out there exclusively.


    -I tell you why we shouldn't count the entire turret as a weapon.
    -I let you know I'm aware of those extra parts that COULD be counted as weapons, but energy weapons doesn't necessarily have an ammunition storage and feed system.
    - I agree that recessed turrets are indeed a good idea, but it's not realistic for the actual gun part to hang so deeply into the ship's main hull as the pics you showed, as ships generally aren't built with enough room for such a contraption to swing around inside.
    -I also tell you, different designs exist as well, that doesn't allow for such a method.
    -I ask if you're aware that you mixed up the hallmarks of dedicated RP and PVP building.


    -You stay quiet about the turrets being counted as weapons in their entire weight, or the ammo storage that might not be there for an energy weapon, because one can't admit to being wrong when he's this loud.
    -You decide having one, single, very unrealistic barrel type is the norm and standard, and anyone who's not building a ship that can accomodate such a contraption is a moron.
    -By suggesting the other designs ought to make love to themselves, you also conveniently ignore the fact that not all turrets in existance are super heavy naval style dorsal mounted batteries.
    - You steadfastly deny that building a nice interior or cosmetic parts is actually an RP habit, essentially arguing that water is not wet.
    - Then you insist that enclosed empty space costs nothing, referring to your earlier explanation in a different thread:


    Not this stupid shit again. Almost all PVP ships come with interior; empty space costs -NOTHING-,
    Look at it this way:



    Three variations of the same ship, but the 2. one has a single armor block moved away from its interior and now contains one extra unit of empty space. Repeating this step gives the 3. ship which now has !!!4!!! extra units of empty space! Point is all these ships are made of the exact same blocks and will have the exact same stats even if you keep repeating the step it remains the same, except for turn rate which shouldnt really be affected anyway... The empty space inside your ship is no more detrimental to your ship than the empty space surrounding it. It's a non-issue.
    Now it's my turn.

    smwtf.png

    You didn't think it through, and worse, you only thought in two dimensions. This method of free interior space only stands up as long as you intend to bump a small section of a shape, As seen in fig. A1 and A2. Fig. A3 clearly shows that unless you want a single pipmple, interior space is in fact, not free.

    Now put the whole thing in three dimensions, as it's doubtful you'd fly a ship a single block wide, and it turns out, even a small bump costs you a small increase in mass (Fig. B2), and the larger your empty space gets, it naturally causes a greater mass increase due to the skin required to cover it(Fig. B3).

    All this is quite heavily derailing from the original meat of the topic, btw.
     
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    He can actually use the same method on the sides too, getting a more or less pyramidal bump without needing to increase count of armor blocks.

    But what I loved was (approximate quote) "Bumping is doable only in direction of decorative outer elements (antennas and stuff) in order to not increase ship's overall dimensions".

    What outer decorations? I use under-hull missile drum turrets without turret base with vertical launch to keep my ship's overall dimensions in check and he talks about antennas on a ship he claims is a PvP ship? I know everyone has a different style in building, but still...
     
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    Honestly, making corridors to access turret bases when you can visit them by means of side arrows from the main ship core seems a bit useless, a waste of space you could have used better. But to each his own. Maybe you feel you need them in combat, IDK.
    It's not a waste of space if you build them right. You need to build them on outside and they should be bulging outwards.

    Something like this. Add some insane angles for additional intersecting corridors and insane looks and it should work as pretty nice whipple shield. Just don't make them out of advanced armour - hull is more than enough for the purpose of catching missiles.
    [doublepost=1527698380,1527698033][/doublepost]
    What outer decorations? I use under-hull missile drum turrets without turret base with vertical launch to keep my ship's overall dimensions in check and he talks about antennas on a ship he claims is a PvP ship? I know everyone has a different style in building, but still...
    Antennas make sense with old scanner system to get maximum power. If I remember right it was dependant on the largest dimension of the scanner modules block group. So you absolutely can have useful antenna as long as it doesn't stick beyond other features of your ship.

    Decorative antennas made out of lightweight blocks work as poor man's spaced armour.
     
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    He can actually use the same method on the sides too, getting a more or less pyramidal bump without needing to increase count of armor blocks.
    Fair's fair. This is true.
    But it costs a serious amount of creative freedom, and at the end of it all, whatever interior volume was gained is still best spent at additional systems, rendering his whole argument moot.
     
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    But it costs a serious amount of creative freedom, and at the end of it all, whatever interior volume was gained is still best spent at additional systems, rendering his whole argument moot.
    Nah. Amount of systems is gated by reactor power. Even before 2.0 you didn't want too many additional weapons or shields as it was starting to eat into your speed.
     

    Valiant70

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    pre 2.0 alpha cannons (can/pul) were useful as sidearms because you could have a can/pul/ion weapon and a can/can/punch and use the can/can/punch all the time then briefly switch into can/pul/ion when the cooldown was up and go back to your machinegun wasting less than a second of DPS. With the charge mechanic they lose this ability since you can't use the machinegun while charging so you're wasting DPS for much longer and the sidearm ends up being a complete waste. 2.0 is extremely detrimental to have a varied weapon loadout.

    Aside from messing up weapons, the reduction in weapon mass you're allowed is one of the worst changes in the game's history. Long post ahead, but i do have a point.



    Turret And Hull Weights Of Various Tanks - Modern Vehicles Discussion





    "gun" part in starmade isn't just the barrel and chamber, it's also doing the reloading, ammunition storage, ammunition feed etc.

    Make that 1:2, not that MUH REALISM is any kind of sensible argument, but you really should be able to tell, simply from the size of a tanks turret compared to its hull that those numbers were bullshit. I'm sure the relative weight of guns would go down for tanks if they could fit shield generators as well.

    Having a healthy weight cost between the different systems is good for the game because we have the option had the option to modify how much mass we wanted to invest in different functionality; if 3% of your ship is your dps and 60% is your armor, why would you not drop armor to 57%, a tiny survivability bonus, to DOUBLE your dps? This is the problem with RP thinking; you decide what your ship should be like on some arbitrary conceptual basis, like rebuilding some dumbass star trek ship, while PVP building is tailored to the mechanics; you can NEVER tailor mechanics to someone who is ignoring them, it's ridiculous to suggest that you should.

    Wrt the realism, rp gunsizes and MUH SMALL GUNS:


    Take a look at the turrets here. On a battleship everything in the turret is what would be considered part of the weapon system in starmade, probably also some of the other stuff like munition storage, but i think starmade equivalent is reactor/capacitor blocks and those dont always go in turrets either, so fairly similar. This is what my turret designs for optimized PVP building looks like:



    Internal turret size:



    I'd say there's a lot more similarity between modern warships and PVP ships than RP ships, because they're both built around the same core idea of MASS DISTRIBUTION. PVP ships and warships are both optimized around having as much of the systems that make them effective (guns, engines, defense etc) and as little as possible of the stuff that's keeping those things running, or otherwise not contributing for the purpose the ship is built for.

    From watching RPers in their showers (yes i can do this) i've reverse engineered their building style as closely as possible, and it goes something like this:

    1. Construct a tube
    2. Doodle on it
    3. ???
    4. Beautiful, inefficient trash
    RP sees adding turrets to a design as nothing more than doodling; i've never seen an RP ship with turrets recessed into the hull, except as a tiny socket. No attempts at incorporating them into their interiors either; no gunnery stations no internal turret access, not even internal view of the turret so you can see them moving:



    No internal access like this:



    No visible / mechanical sockets like this:



    The key reason you don't see this is the method through which RP ships are built; you make the tube THEN you doodle on it. If the tube/hull is the first thing you make i imagine it's very dificult to get something like this to fit without severely compromising your design, especially if you've already started on your interior. PvP ships are, at least for everyone i know, built turrets first, because they are the most dificult part of the ship to adjust later in the build, so getting them right first and adjusting everything else accordingly is much easier, and PVP builders usually keep mass limits in mind before laying the first block so we know how many turrets we're going to fit and how heavy they'll end up being. Basically in PVP creating and fitting the turrets for a ship is part of conceptualizing it, similar to when RP builders are making wireframes for their ship's skeletons.

    My point here, and the following is pure, unadulterated conjecture, is that all the complaints from RP and cosmetic builders about turret/weapon sizes has nothing to do with realism or aesthetics. In terms of realism, turrets on real warships simply are fucking huge, not like the peashooters RPers build. Granted, they dont fit all their mass into their barrels, and theres a good coupple of arguments for allowing turrets to fit slaves and effects in the bases, but that also allows for a lot of potential exploits and much worse complexity in making turrets; for instance what happens if you have multiple weapon computers on the barrel and base? what if there is no base? what if you have multiple barrel entities(would be extremely common for single axis turrets)?
    The calls for realism also seem EXTREMELY particular about which "realisms" they want incorporated. Never seen anyone complain about how much a character can carry or sound in space.

    As for aesthetics, if it was simply about having turrets that look small, why don't RP builders use ball turrets? I don't have a good picture of one but you basically cram all the weapon systems into a sphere with 10-20% of the sphere sticking up above the hull, like this:



    With a double jointed center. Sure they can't depress at all, but little things like turret coverage never bothered them before. Sure turrets wont have the exact same shape or movement as a regular turret, but the point is there are plenty of options that allow visually small turrets that are still high mass and i've never seen an RP ship use them, so i'm calling bullshit on the aesthetic argument for microturrets as well.

    I believe, and feel free to correct me on this you larping bastards, that it is neither aesthetics nor realism that cause the call for smaller weapons, but rather that RP process introduces turrets to a ship in the final stage of shipbuilding, often after interior and definitely after exterior are supposed to be finished, where fitting a turret of sufficient mass to the ship would force the builder to completely rebuild huge sections of their ships because there's a huge deathball in the bathroom all of a sudden. It's the only thing that explains why they never have turret oriented interiors, because when adding interiors to a shell that already has huge turrets integrated, it's super obvious to add a few walkways and consoles to the turret and let it have it's own little room.

    If changing weapon sizes did nothing but let RPers build ships the way they want as it's natural for them, i'd be all for it, but the reduction in weapon sizes has come at unacceptable cost to PVP builders. The only way you could limit weapon sizes without simply multiplying the damage of existing weapons was through 2.0's reactor system that has taken away mass distribution as a design mechanic so we can no longer exchange mass in one system for mass in another, because everything is gated by the power restriction. This forces all ships into fixed ratios, or extremely limited ones, completely eliminating the possibility of different ship doctrines.

    The ability to make functionally unique ships, not merely painting different looking ones, is the core draw in starmade for every competitive builder, and it has been ERASED by 2.0. We are NOT going to convert to roleplayers or cosmetic builders, we are simply going to leave. The elimination of variety in ship doctrines is also horrible for combat in general. Even if the game has multiple weapon options, if all ships have the same speed, defense and staying power then one weapon is going to be the best, because all fights will have the same context, except for ships being smaller/larger, but since that now translates to being a fixed amount stronger/weaker than the other guy i don't see a situation where one weapon would be best against a similar sized ship and less than 50% as good against a ship half your size as the others. Most fps have characters with the same stats, but they have terrain to offset things. If an FPS takes place in open space with no obstacles for 10s of kilometers i call dips on the sniper rifle.

    So if the weapon miniaturization and 2.0 which is necessary to enforce it has completely destroyed the fun in competitive shipbuilding and drastically reduced the fun in simple combat which amounts to the vast majority of players losing out on what they enjoy, and all that it gains is that RP builders don't have to adapt the way they build ships, isn't that a super stupid update?
    Some of the points you make here are accurate. A lot of pure-RP builders are just really bad at making turrets. However, even ball turrets tended to be underpowered compared to the massive ship-mounted weapons that defense was balanced around. In what I term a PVPRP build, you'd start out much like a PVP ship, and then add roleplay decorations onto and around a functioning machine. Well-done PVPRP builds have always been rare to my knowledge.

    Power distribution is now the gold standard for designing and analyzing ships. That's almost without question now. However, I don't agree that this completely eliminates different ship doctrines. In the stable build it does, because so many things are broken or unfinished, but I don't see any reason to condemn the game based on that when we essentially got half an update with the new power.

    What *should* happen with a more complete system update is the emergence of ships designed to undermine the "sniper rifle" doctrine. Most likely this will begin with close-range stealth alpha once stealth is debugged and given an initial balance pass. To counter "ninja bombers," ships will need to detect them, avoid them, or withstand the attacks, and possible solutions need to be balanced against each other.

    If players are completely unsuccessful at countering any specific tactic, that should be considered an imbalance that needs to be corrected. Obviously like any game there will always be a strategy that is either more versatile than others or is marginally stronger than others, and that will become the meta. That could very well be the sniper meta, and that's okay as long as it isn't orders of magnitude more successful than competing tactics.
     
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    Raisinbat

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    - Some guy says the only cause of crazy recoil problems is the player's habit of building disproportionately large guns, and it's more realistic to have a very very low weapons to total mass ratio

    -I correct him, stating that ratio is actually much higher than he thought, even if we don't count certain parts.

    -You pop in, saying that ratio is even higher because we totally should count those parts (which I didn't say we shouldn't)
    -You also say we should count the entire turret as a weapon.
    The point of the entire argument is people suggesting that the mass of weapons should be lowered. The tank mass (33%) corresponds very heavily to how pre 2.0 fighters were made, usually 30-50% of their mass would be weapons. You SHOULD count everything in the turret setup as weapon, because everything that goes inside a turret in starmade is weapon.

    My points are, calling for 1-3% mass as the "standard" for ship mass is ridiculous, even from a REALISM standpoint, which is fucking dumb because we don't have realistic spaceships with plasma guns. Second, lowering the mass like this does not equal to ships having smaller guns, it results in ships having much higher DPS, unless it's accompanied by bullshit (2.0) that removes your ability to shift your mass, which, again, is the core of PVP shipbuilding.

    -You decide having one, single, very unrealistic barrel type is the norm and standard, and anyone who's not building a ship that can accomodate such a contraption is a moron.
    -By suggesting the other designs ought to make love to themselves, you also conveniently ignore the fact that not all turrets in existance are super heavy naval style dorsal mounted batteries.
    I was providing examples of how deviating from a standard turret design allows you to better accomodate turret designs that are aesthetically small. I am not suggesting ANYTHING should be the standard. What we want is for the concept of a "standard ship" to not be what the mechanics are focused around, as in the polar opposite of what you're calling for.

    My point is that ships that are not designed to be effective have no reason to be effective. Why should a ship that is built, not according to the rules of the game, but the whims of its creator be on par with a ship that is? Try complaining at the hearthstone forums that your deck comprised entirely of cards with pictures of dogs in them isn't competitive.

    - You steadfastly deny that building a nice interior or cosmetic parts is actually an RP habit, essentially arguing that water is not wet.
    It is not exclusive to RP builders. I am not an RP builder, and i make interiors, as does every single pvp builder i know.

    You didn't think it through, and worse, you only thought in two dimensions. This method of free interior space only stands up as long as you intend to bump a small section of a shape, As seen in fig. A1 and A2. Fig. A3 clearly shows that unless you want a single pipmple, interior space is in fact, not free.

    Now put the whole thing in three dimensions, as it's doubtful you'd fly a ship a single block wide, and it turns out, even a small bump costs you a small increase in mass (Fig. B2), and the larger your empty space gets, it naturally causes a greater mass increase due to the skin required to cover it(Fig. B3).
    That post is shit on my part and nosajimko already chewed me out for it. The examples aren't right, and the whole point doesn't apply in them nor for very small builds. What i meant was that the empty space surrounding your ship, while inside the bounding box, has the exact same negative impact on your ship as the empty space inside it. It's not directed at PVP builds, but the RP and aesthetic builds that complain about empty space ruining your ship. It also applies to the ludicrous notion that filling the empty space inside your ship with system blocks makes it stronger, which is obviously true, but then again so would adding system blocks OUTSIDE your ship, and the actual mystery you've solved here is that making ships larger also makes them stronger.
     
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    Have you been drinking the angry juice?
    Let's recap the whole thing, because I seriously think you're flipping for the wrong reason.

    - Some guy says the only cause of crazy recoil problems is the player's habit of building disproportionately large guns, and it's more realistic to have a very very low weapons to total mass ratio

    -I correct him, stating that ratio is actually much higher than he thought, even if we don't count certain parts.

    -You pop in, saying that ratio is even higher because we totally should count those parts (which I didn't say we shouldn't)
    -You also say we should count the entire turret as a weapon.
    -Then you go about spouting a lot of nonsense about RP and PVP building styles and certain shortcomings I'm pretty sure you imagined, or based on some of the least talented builders' stuff out there exclusively.


    -I tell you why we shouldn't count the entire turret as a weapon.
    -I let you know I'm aware of those extra parts that COULD be counted as weapons, but energy weapons doesn't necessarily have an ammunition storage and feed system.
    - I agree that recessed turrets are indeed a good idea, but it's not realistic for the actual gun part to hang so deeply into the ship's main hull as the pics you showed, as ships generally aren't built with enough room for such a contraption to swing around inside.
    -I also tell you, different designs exist as well, that doesn't allow for such a method.
    -I ask if you're aware that you mixed up the hallmarks of dedicated RP and PVP building.


    -You stay quiet about the turrets being counted as weapons in their entire weight, or the ammo storage that might not be there for an energy weapon, because one can't admit to being wrong when he's this loud.
    -You decide having one, single, very unrealistic barrel type is the norm and standard, and anyone who's not building a ship that can accomodate such a contraption is a moron.
    -By suggesting the other designs ought to make love to themselves, you also conveniently ignore the fact that not all turrets in existance are super heavy naval style dorsal mounted batteries.
    - You steadfastly deny that building a nice interior or cosmetic parts is actually an RP habit, essentially arguing that water is not wet.
    - Then you insist that enclosed empty space costs nothing, referring to your earlier explanation in a different thread:
    I don't think he meant this this be "this is the meta". Rather, he was going for the idea that there are ways to add appropriate weapon mass to RP ships to make them PVP viable. If for example I was going for an enterprise type ship, I could use something similar to this to make the omni-directional phaser bank in the disk not suck without adding a giant floating turret that is 20% of my ships mass and not very accurate either. While I may have criticized this as a purely PVP weapon, it's a great idea for making RP builds strong enough to hold their own.

    Now it's my turn.

    View attachment 49096

    You didn't think it through, and worse, you only thought in two dimensions. This method of free interior space only stands up as long as you intend to bump a small section of a shape, As seen in fig. A1 and A2. Fig. A3 clearly shows that unless you want a single pipmple, interior space is in fact, not free.

    Now put the whole thing in three dimensions, as it's doubtful you'd fly a ship a single block wide, and it turns out, even a small bump costs you a small increase in mass (Fig. B2), and the larger your empty space gets, it naturally causes a greater mass increase due to the skin required to cover it(Fig. B3).

    All this is quite heavily derailing from the original meat of the topic, btw.
    My turn:
    His depiction of things in 2d were all accurate models of the trends of what happen in 3d: expanded armor DOES give free space, and that space can be used to either cram more systems or as a defensive system unto itself.

    upload_2018-5-31_9-36-15.png

    A few things to consider here include:
    • Expanding your hull always gives proportionally more space than it costs in new armor.
    • The wedge trick shown does give free space in 3D, but you have to pay for the caps if you don't angle it.
    • Added armor contributes to survivability, so it's not just wasted investment. While it may not always increase your survivability vs any one single shot, the less % of your armor you lose per shot makes it that much less likely for the next shot to bypass your armor through said hole. This is especially true of spaced armor, where your armor can keep an explosion max radius away from your systems completely wasting explosions and forcing acid damage to traverse it.
    • Also not illustrated here is that the larger an entity is, the less proportionally heavier your armor becomes as you begin to space it; so, while this small thing takes 255% more armor to add 3 spaces of armor too. Large battleships can be given 15 m spacing with very little extra investment relatively speaking.
    • Hugging your systems with armor such as in B1 necessitates heavy armor to mitigate any sort of damage. Spaced armor is much more practical with hull which is 5x lighter; so, in most cases, B3 is also going to be the cheaper and lighter solution even if it takes more blocks.

    He can actually use the same method on the sides too, getting a more or less pyramidal bump without needing to increase count of armor blocks.

    But what I loved was (approximate quote) "Bumping is doable only in direction of decorative outer elements (antennas and stuff) in order to not increase ship's overall dimensions".

    What outer decorations? I use under-hull missile drum turrets without turret base with vertical launch to keep my ship's overall dimensions in check and he talks about antennas on a ship he claims is a PvP ship? I know everyone has a different style in building, but still...
    Antinas used to be good for hiding certain exploit technologies on PVPRP ships. Particularly AI targeting disruptors. While these disruptors are far less practical than they used to be, that does not mean that similar technologies won't become simi-common in future versions of the game... but that all has nothing to do with this mechanic.

    Some of the points you make here are accurate. A lot of pure-RP builders are just really bad at making turrets. However, even ball turrets tended to be underpowered compared to the massive ship-mounted weapons that defense was balanced around. In what I term a PVPRP build, you'd start out much like a PVP ship, and then add roleplay decorations onto and around a functioning machine. Well-done PVPRP builds have always been rare to my knowledge.

    Power distribution is now the gold standard for designing and analyzing ships. That's almost without question now. However, I don't agree that this completely eliminates different ship doctrines. In the stable build it does, because so many things are broken or unfinished, but I don't see any reason to condemn the game based on that when we essentially got half an update with the new power.

    What *should* happen with a more complete system update is the emergence of ships designed to undermine the "sniper rifle" doctrine. Most likely this will begin with close-range stealth alpha once stealth is debugged and given an initial balance pass. To counter "ninja bombers," ships will need to detect them, avoid them, or withstand the attacks, and possible solutions need to be balanced against each other.

    If players are completely unsuccessful at countering any specific tactic, that should be considered an imbalance that needs to be corrected. Obviously like any game there will always be a strategy that is either more versatile than others or is marginally stronger than others, and that will become the meta. That could very well be the sniper meta, and that's okay as long as it isn't orders of magnitude more successful than competing tactics.
    PVPRP builds were much more common among the older factions, particularly the ones that left as a result of the Power 2.0 update since they were most negatively impacted by the changes. Trinova, Trident, Vaygr, Infinite Legion, Thrynn, etc were all prime examples. MagiTech was actually one of the only truly high-end PVP exclusive factions. Most other PVP factions just made cheap knock-offs of his stuff that actually could not survive against the major PVPRP faction ships.
     
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    A little off topic, but has anyone had trouble getting Warheads to work? Ramming does not seem to set them off in my tests.
     
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    A little off topic, but has anyone had trouble getting Warheads to work? Ramming does not seem to set them off in my tests.
    Since pre-rails versions, I used to slave the warhead modules to one area detector in front of them. A whole bunch of warheads, one single detector. This detonates them every time. I mean, it does in older versions, try in current one yourself and please tell me how it goes. I hate pow2 with a passion, not going to install it anytime soon.