weapons update design philosophies

[Neon_42]

Hello folks, I've been trying to figure out how many blocks to allocate between shields, weapons, and thrusters? My thoughts on this are a bottom up approach. Building small ships first starting with a reactor size of 19 then 199 and so on. So for a starfighter reactor size of 19 blocks how many shields, thrusters, weapon blocks do you use? Or more appropriately how much e/s do you allocate to these systems? This obviously depends on weapon types, but I am curious as to everyone else's functional designs and design philosophies.

 

[Energywelder]

My personal philosophy is to prioritize maneuverability on all ship classes. If you don't have at least a 2.5 TWR, and therefore the ability to go full server speed, it's a bad ship. I go further in most of my build by prioritizing max speed chambers. Shields 2nd, then weapons.

 

[Neon_42]

My personal philosophy is to prioritize maneuverability on all ship classes. If you don't have at least a 2.5 TWR, and therefore the ability to go full server speed, it's a bad ship. I go further in most of my build by prioritizing max speed chambers. Shields 2nd, then weapons.

Very interesting. I suppose it makes sense to go for damage avoidance first. But why shields before weapons? In principle you could fill your ship with shields and not have any weapons at all, so there has to be some limit where you have enough shields and move onto offensive capabilities. Is that point set by armour values? Say a cannon that can break 1 block of hull is the minimum weapon size you'd use?

 

[Nosajimiki]

Shields as a priority vary based on ship size. Small ships don't need them since pretty much any hit you take will oneshot you anyway; so, I'd put everything you can into firepower so that en-mass, they wear down bigger ships as they get plucked off one-by-one. Bigger ships in contrast, can benefit from being able to use shields to walk away from a fight without battle damage vs an underbuilt ship, but in terms of total survivability, armor seems to be a better investment these days; so, normally, I allocate 20-30% of my power to shields just so I can take some stray hits, but rely more on maneuverability and/or armor when it comes to winning a fight.

For weapons, I normally aim for 40-60% power consumption.

Some of these number vary based on if the ship has active abilities I would use in a fight that consume power such as scanners or stealth.

I also like to keep a 5-15% buffer over what I would theoretically need so that shield regen or other combat factors don't completely kill my power once the bullets start to fly.

 

[MacThule]

My approach is still adapting, but currently I have been using an approach to systems based on percentage of reactor used (i.e. looking towards the final performance experience will be for the pilot).

So if I'm working with a L10 reactor on a fighter, I am assuming maximum mobility at whatever power cost first and foremost (though I don't use mobility chambers for my drone fighters as of yet because I'm not sure whether they are of yet any use to the AI).

Next I add shields based on the fighter's role: if it's a Superiority fighter, then I aim for shields that occupy ~25% of the reactor's output when full, and ~50% when charging; if it's an Assault or Shock variant, then I aim for shield profiles more like ~20%/~35% or ~35%/~65%, respectively, because those shield profiles suit the way I want to use that model (i.e. fast, disposable assault unit with high DPS, or heavy shock unit meant to endure more punishment at the cost of DPS - both are specialized compared to my general superiority fighters but in different ways). So I add as many blocks get it to where I want it in terms of performance.

For a fighter, weapons are really the whole rest of the power loadout. I choose my one or two weapons for it, and grow them until they use up ALL of the remaining power potential - with perhaps a tiny bit of over-draft if thrust is engaged - when firing.

When I know AI is using chambers, I will probably add mobility & stealth chambers on my Assault craft, and shield defense chambers on my Shock craft (improved shields + alpha reduction), probably a reactor overclock chamber and stealth for my Superiority fighters.


So I guess the number of blocks I use at the moment is not a function of a set formula - the numbers have been changing so much it's a waste of time to calculate it first - but rather a rough slice of the total power pie based on role considerations and established by saving and testing it at each stage of development.
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I allocate 20-30% of my power to shields just so I can take some stray hits, but rely more on maneuverability and/or armor when it comes to winning a fight.

For weapons, I normally aim for 40-60% power consumption.

A familiar-sounding approach!