What would happen if we removed missiles?

[aceface]

nerf missle explosion radius

its currently WAY to big. missle is king because all you need is a single hit with shields down and your going to kill any ship that doesnt have many layers of hardened hull or isnt extremly big in all directions.

most ship designs i see can be taken out by a single missle hit on the side/top/bottom and that shouldnt happen on ships the size im talking about (25-45k mass shouldnt get 1HKOed by a single missle)

the current missle mechanics encourage gigantism just to survive them

Yep, they should not do less damage just smaller radiums (alt lower hard cap) and make armour a lot more resistant to missiles

 

[jpf190279]

I don't even understand pulse weapons... they have no range that I can tell and it's just like a wave that emanates from your ship?

Yeah they are pointless.... nuff said!

 

[Winterhome]

nerf missle explosion radius

its currently WAY to big. missle is king because all you need is a single hit with shields down and your going to kill any ship that doesnt have many layers of hardened hull or isnt extremly big in all directions.

most ship designs i see can be taken out by a single missle hit on the side/top/bottom and that shouldnt happen on ships the size im talking about (25-45k mass shouldnt get 1HKOed by a single missle)

the current missle mechanics encourage gigantism just to survive them

...way too big?
Mate, have you seen what any missile that's not missile-pulse-explosive does to a 25-50k mass ship?

Not a whole lot, that's what.
You want to kill a biggish ship, you have to spam at least a half dozen shots per salvo in the hopes that multi-strikes increase the blast radius.

 

[Gerion]

...way too big?
Mate, have you seen what any missile that's not missile-pulse-explosive does to a 25-50k mass ship?

Not a whole lot, that's what.
You want to kill a biggish ship, you have to spam at least a half dozen shots per salvo in the hopes that multi-strikes increase the blast radius.

Who shoots only one missile (unless its a pulsemissile)?

Anyway, I guess it would be interesting to not have missiles. If just for the kill-weapons people would device to get the effect back. Rapid fire explosive cannons someone?

 

[max stripe]

nerf missle explosion radius

its currently WAY to big. missle is king because all you need is a single hit with shields down and your going to kill any ship that doesnt have many layers of hardened hull or isnt extremly big in all directions.

most ship designs i see can be taken out by a single missle hit on the side/top/bottom and that shouldnt happen on ships the size im talking about (25-45k mass shouldnt get 1HKOed by a single missle)

the current missle mechanics encourage gigantism just to survive them

*sacastic statement ahead* why dont we nerf punch threw wile were at it. hell ion effect tooo. cause ya know people with the larger ship can kill shields alot faster with ion effect and then punch threw the ship to death.
o and how about nerf sheild beams. ive made sheild beam fighters that can take out large ships without much trouble

 

[Ithirahad]

make armour a lot more resistant to missiles

This, and having armor actually protect stuff behind it from missiles, are the primary needed changes. Otherwise just some minor tweaks to balance things out and make them satisfactory but not overpowered weapons.

 

[Chances_Ghost]

...way too big?
Mate, have you seen what any missile that's not missile-pulse-explosive does to a 25-50k mass ship?

Not a whole lot, that's what.
You want to kill a biggish ship, you have to spam at least a half dozen shots per salvo in the hopes that multi-strikes increase the blast radius.

explosive is actually useless on a missle under 7957500 damage assuming the target has a single layer of hardened hull

because explosive only increases the size of the hole if you were already capped out at 40 to begin with and any damage under that amount will produce a hole smaller than 40 and therefore will not gain the the increased radius from explosive due to not having enough damage.

i put gigantic holes in things in my 40k mass ship with NON-misle/pulse/explosve missles

math is OP

 

[Winterhome]

explosive is actually useless on a missle under 7957500 damage assuming the target has a single layer of hardened hull

because explosive only increases the size of the hole if you were already capped out at 40 to begin with and any damage under that amount will produce a hole smaller than 40 and therefore will not gain the the increased radius from explosive due to not having enough damage.

i put gigantic holes in things in my 40k mass ship with NON-misle/pulse/explosve missles

math is OP

I put max radius craters in hardened hulled ships with 40/40/40 missiles, what're you talking about?

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

explosive is actually useless on a missle under 7957500 damage assuming the target has a single layer of hardened hull

because explosive only increases the size of the hole if you were already capped out at 40 to begin with and any damage under that amount will produce a hole smaller than 40 and therefore will not gain the the increased radius from explosive due to not having enough damage.

i put gigantic holes in things in my 40k mass ship with NON-misle/pulse/explosve missles

math is OP

Explosives is far from useless on smaller missiles, it does extend the damage dealt, this is from practical testing, not just math. The max radius is easier to reach than you imagine. But if you like math I can tell you it would take a sniper missile of both missile and beam modules equaling 26525 each for a total weapon size of 53050 modules to deal 7,957,500 damage. I'm not about to build a missile launcher that size to test though. A pulse missile would surpass that at 8842 each or a total size of 17684 dealing 7,957,800 damage.

 

[Chances_Ghost]

Explosives is far from useless on smaller missiles, it does extend the damage dealt, this is from practical testing, not just math. The max radius is easier to reach than you imagine. But if you like math I can tell you it would take a sniper missile of both missile and beam modules equaling 26525 each for a total weapon size of 53050 modules to deal 7,957,500 damage. I'm not about to build a missile launcher that size to test though. A pulse missile would surpass that at 8842 each or a total size of 17684 dealing 7,957,800 damage.

radius is used in two ways in starmade

first is the size of the impact, where the max radius is used to determin what is hit. this is only really useful in multi-ship scenarios and for turret destrustion, as two turrets on a ship both 50m away from the missle impact site will be effected and have independant damage rolls

now my math isnt perfect as i cant figure out of the damage for each of those two turret hits are calculated first or second, and weather or not the damage they take is removed from the damage total for the initial hit or weather each hit recieves the full damage of the missles blast.

what i do know however is that the holes created by the impacts are created in a layer by layer manner where a sphere of damage is moved one layer at a time through the object and damage is done based on what blocks intersect the sphere of damage, the damage sphere continueing untill it either runs out of available damage or hits its max radious from the impact point (thus meaning at max it can make a perfect half circle)


so what using explosive does is it increases the size of that damage sphere, this creates a slightly wider but shallower hole in the target. at lower damage levels (sub 8mil) this creates a situation where you may have a hole thats 1-5 blocks wider but 1-3 blocks shallower than any other missle combo of equal damage (except one special exception where 1 missle build can create a hole 60% larger than explosive untill it hits that 8mil damage cap)

that means its almost always better to use alturnate effects then explosive, xplosive being a "jack of all trades" type of missle and a "nuke" aka >8mil damage missle


even then your better off using ion to bleed of excess damage over the 8mil cap converting it to a higher level shield damage becuase the difference between 40m radius and 50m radius isnt all that important when most ships arnt big enough to ensure that a gigantic 80m by 40m sphereical hole in thier ship isnt crippling.

also in order to make it a 50m by 100m hole using explosive you need 15,062,500 damage otherwise your just creating a 38m by 84m sphereical hole in their ship trading penetration for a wider impact radius. you need somewhre around the 10mil damage mark to overtake a 40m radius missle in penetration.[DOUBLEPOST=1415780109,1415777695][/DOUBLEPOST]after some quick testing the damage on multiple targets (or turrets on a ship that gets hit) are done simultaniously using the exact damage sphere that calculates the primary impact, if that sphere intersects a second object (such as a turret or a nearby ship) then when it calculates that layers damage it does it n all things within the sphere of influance one layer at a time expending the missles potential damage to do so.

what happens is that the missle impacts a point, and the damage calculates layer by layer radiating from the centermost point of the sphere outwards one layer at a time. untill it reaches its either maximum radius or its damage threshold.

this means ultimatly all missles that do the exact same total damage have the exact same sized hole at the end all the way tunill that magic number just under 8 mil damage, i was achieving slightly different results before because of an error in my testing method wich i corrected.

meaning explosive is 100%useless before you hit 7957500 damage as you never get the chance to do damage past a 40m radius without at least that much (assuming only 1 layer of hardened hull on a flat impact point) if the target isnt flat or has multiple layers of hardened hull you actually need MORE damage before explosive becomes worthwhile so that number is an absolute minimum. if the target is using lesser hull then you only need just over half that damage to inflict maximum radius however (est 4.5mil dont feel like running that math again)

keep in mind each layer contains more "blocks" than the one before it so its not a liniear equasion, meaning you can get CLOSE to max radius with smaller damage missles as each layer requires more damage to fully remove than the last you can create a 35 radius hole with ALOT less damage than it takes to make a 40 radius hole

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

@Chances_Ghost
While you may be right about the radius you're still wrong about explosive not being useful on smaller missiles.

These two missiles listed damage is identical, can you guess which one made the bigger hole? Now there is a bug where effects add double damage so the two missile launchers sizes are not identical one being 10/10/10 and the other being 20/20 but the damage dealt is identical so therefore the damage inflicted should be as well according to your "math". Either way the smaller weapon made the bigger hole.

 

[Chances_Ghost]

@Chances_Ghost
While you may be right about the radius you're still wrong about explosive not being useful on smaller missiles.

These two missiles listed damage is identical, can you guess which one made the bigger hole? Now there is a bug where effects add double damage so the two missile launchers sizes are not identical one being 10/10/10 and the other being 20/20 but the damage dealt is identical so therefore the damage inflicted should be as well according to your "math". Either way the smaller weapon made the bigger hole.

listed damage IS NOT the ACTUAL damage, you have to calculate that seperatly, the error is in your weapon construction and math.

the listed damage of missles isnt the correct number becuase it doesnt add the damage of the effec tmodules properly, your getting higher damage with the explosive becuase the explosive weapon has more damage than the 20/20 setup even if they show the same amount under listed damage. as you said theres a bug where"effect modules add double" but this isnt reflected properly in the tooltips you need to do the math manually. the hole is bigger because its doing more damage if they were doing equal damage then it would be an equal sized hole despite teh increase in radius

use that same setup and replace explosive with piercing :P[DOUBLEPOST=1415782135,1415781789][/DOUBLEPOST]

listed damage IS NOT the ACTUAL damage, you have to calculate that seperatly, the error is in your weapon construction and math.

the listed damage of missles isnt the correct number becuase it doesnt add the damage of the effec tmodules properly, your getting higher damage with the explosive becuase the explosive weapon has more damage than the 20/20 setup even if they show the same amount under listed damage. as you said theres a bug where"effect modules add double" but this isnt reflected properly in the tooltips you need to do the math manually. the hole is bigger because its doing more damage if they were doing equal damage then it would be an equal sized hole despite teh increase in radius

use that same setup and replace explosive with piercing :p

run a 10missle/10pulse/10 explosive against a 10missle/10pulse/10piercing and see what i mean (piercing will create a bigger hole despite them having the same number of blocks and same listed damage) this will show that listed damage is incorrect

it took me a while to create an acurate test environment do to this issue in the end i had to build missles with 7957500 Actual damge as proof of concept and a target with 1 layer hardened hull and the rest any system except shields to replicate everything nicely

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

listed damage IS NOT the ACTUAL damage, you have to calculate that seperatly, the error is in your weapon construction and math.

the listed damage of missles isnt the correct number becuase it doesnt add the damage of the effec tmodules properly, your getting higher damage with the explosive becuase the explosive weapon has more damage than the 20/20 setup even if they show the same amount under listed damage. as you said theres a bug where"effect modules add double" but this isnt reflected properly in the tooltips you need to do the math manually. the hole is bigger because its doing more damage if they were doing equal damage then it would be an equal sized hole despite teh increase in radius

use that same setup and replace explosive with piercing :p

Those numbers listed are backed up by my knowledge of how much damage every weapon system in this game is supposed to do. Every weapon/slave/effect is supposed to add 5DPS (except beam master). When you add an effect to a 1:1 weapon slave each module adds 10dps instead of 5. Therefore the weapon damage listed IS accurate. Now what you don't seem to realize is that pierce doubles the damage inflicted on all system/hull blocks therefore of course adding pierce will make a bigger hole.

 

[Chances_Ghost]

Those numbers listed are backed up by my knowledge of how much damage every weapon system in this game is supposed to do. Every weapon/slave/effect is supposed to add 5DPS (except beam master). When you add an effect to a 1:1 weapon slave each module adds 10dps instead of 5. Therefore the weapon damage listed IS accurate. Now what you don't seem to realize is that pierce doubles the damage inflicted on all system/hull blocks therefore of course adding pierce will make a bigger hole.

nope i realised that 100%, i just wanted to illustrate that some damage values arnt represented.

the difference your experiancing is because your 20/20 weapon has no effect module and effect modules are incorrectly weighted at teh moment so your two setups despite having the same listed damage arnt actually doing the same damage.

now make a 10/10/10 explosive and a piercing weapon with HALF the listed damage (as exact as you can in a 1/1/1 ratio IMPORTANT) they will now create the exact same size hole becuase they will cause the exact same actual damage, meaning explosive isnt gaining radius over an equivilant damage missle of another type[DOUBLEPOST=1415784068,1415782873][/DOUBLEPOST]i think what your not getting is that how damage is done is that an initial impact pint is determined, then the game builds a sphere around that point, everytime it builds a block in that invisable damage sphere it removes damage fromt eh missles total damage pool to do so.

you can see how this is happening in the picture you posted , notice the damaged blocks and their placement (specifically the outside ring on the outermost layer, you can see that each time damage is calculated its effecting an entire layer at a time and dealing using whats left of teh damage pool to inflict damage upon them untill destruction, if not enough damage is available in the pool it leaves them damaged rather than destroyed deviding teh remaining damage from teh pool amung all blocks in the layer. this means the radius of the hole is determined by damage NOT the radius stat of the missle. the radius stat on the weapons stat page only represents the total MAXIMUM size of hole it can create before excess damage is wasted due to not having any blocks within that radius to apply damage to.

this means if the damage of teh two missles (actual applyed damage not listed damage) is the same then the hole is the same.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

nope i realised that 100%, i just wanted to illustrate that some damage values arnt represented.

the difference your experiancing is because your 20/20 weapon has no effect module and effect modules are incorrectly weighted at teh moment so your two setups despite having the same listed damage arnt actually doing the same damage.

now make a 10/10/10 explosive and a piercing weapon with HALF the listed damage (as exact as you can in a 1/1/1 ratio IMPORTANT) they will now create the exact same size hole becuase they will cause the exact same actual damage, meaning explosive isnt gaining radius over an equivilant damage missle of another type

Once again, you are wrong. The listed numbers are correct in most cases. Yes the listed damage for pierce weapons isn't shown but "puncture" doesn't effect missiles that much anyway, the listed damage on overdrive also is inaccurate as the damage is applied per block after impact.

You can clearly see the 18000 damage missile and those with pierce and punch deal nearly identical damage to the target but the 18000 damage explosive effect missile has a larger radius. Overdrive also dealt more damage but the amount is insignificant, the overall radius is the same but 100% of blocks in it were destroyed because the damage calculations for overdrive are done after impact. If you look close enough you will see the damaged blocks in the punch crater are slightly more damaged than those in the plain missile and slightly less than those in the pierce due to the nature of punch and pierce. (although you probably can't see it in the picture but I can in game)

 

[Chances_Ghost]

im taking a look at some things here to see whats different between the tests

with this we can determin that the explosive missle is doing MORE damage than the rest.

fact 1, damage has to be applyed to a block to remove it.

fact 2 explosive effect removed more blocks

we can then assume the explosive effect did more damage because it removed more blocks, as blocks cannot be removed without damage being applyed.

explosive is effeciant in certain ways, but its creating a bigger hole because its doing more damage, not because it has a higher max radius

so the question becomes, why is it doing more damage, and how can we calculate the amount of damage its doing.

(you can calculate manually by counting the number of removed blocks and then calculating the total EHP of those blocks to see how much damge was inflicted, then design a basic missle that inflicts that same damage and compair hole composition)

your achieving differnt results becuase the explosive missle your using isnt doing the 18000 damage you claim but instead its doing much more. unless of course your claim is that explosive effect is removeing blocks without doing damage to them

thus proving that listed damage is inccorrect in every case where an effect module exsists.

since my statements were based off the assumption of equal damage, (not block count or lsited damage) they are still true.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

im taking a look at some things here to see whats different between the tests

with this we can determin that the explosive missle is doing MORE damage than the rest.

fact 1, damage has to be applyed to a block to remove it.

fact 2 explosive effect removed more blocks

we can then assume the explosive effect did more damage because it removed more blocks, as blocks cannot be removed without damage being applyed.

explosive is effeciant in certain ways, but its creating a bigger hole because its doing more damage, not because it has a higher max radius

so the question becomes, why is it doing more damage, and how can we calculate the amount of damage its doing.

(you can calculate manually by counting the number of removed blocks and then calculating the total EHP of those blocks to see how much damge was inflicted, then design a basic missle that inflicts that same damage and compair hole composition)

your achieving differnt results becuase the explosive missle your using isnt doing the 18000 damage you claim but instead its doing much more. unless of course your claim is that explosive effect is removeing blocks without doing damage to them

thus proving that listed damage is inccorrect in every case where an effect module exsists.

There is a lot more going on under the hood than you or I understand.

The size of the hole is not simple a mater of "missile deals x damage" and "the blocks have y hp" so there for the size of the hole is "do x - y until x = 0"

 

[Chances_Ghost]

There is a lot more going on under the hood than you or I understand.

The size of the hole is not simple a mater of "missile deals x damage" and "the blocks have y hp" so there for the size of the hole is "do x - y until x = 0"

i dont see anythign in that image that would be out of place with my understanding of things assuming the same missle did all 3 holes.[DOUBLEPOST=1415786976,1415786869][/DOUBLEPOST]

i dont see anythign in that image that would be out of place with my understanding of things assuming the same missle did all 3 holes.

if you calculate damage based off the EHP of teh specific blocks removed, then you should find that the damage is teh same for all 3 holes


edit: scratch that, that middle hole is not quite right... your correct somethings off here

 

[Thalanor]

@Sven_The_Slayer @Chances_Ghost
From the middle hole, I'd say that a missile probably considers all blocks in it's current "sphere" (which is hollow and has radius+1 after every iteration) to have EHP and armor corresponding to the most sturdy block affected for the purposes of "damage used up" calculations. This would explain why even a thin layer of hardened hull can sometimes drastically reduce missile damage even if the missile actually directly hit a system block.

If that theory was even remotely correct, it would be incredibly efficient to have one advanced armor block in every ~10x10x10 segment of the ship, even in parts that are vital systems only. That way every single missile would operate under the assumption of 200hp and 50% armor for most blocks.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

@Sven_The_Slayer @Chances_Ghost
From the middle hole, I'd say that a missile probably considers all blocks in it's current "sphere" (which is hollow and has radius+1 after every iteration) to have EHP and armor corresponding to the most sturdy block affected for the purposes of "damage used up" calculations. This would explain why even a thin layer of hardened hull can sometimes drastically reduce missile damage even if the missile actually directly hit a system block.

If that theory was even remotely correct, it would be incredibly efficient to have one advanced armor block in every ~10x10x10 segment of the ship, even in parts that are vital systems only. That way every single missile would operate under the assumption of 200hp and 50% armor for most blocks.

If that were true the middle strike would have a radius somewhere between the other two but it's identical to the one on the left. I did more shots with this configuration and shooting farther away from the joint I was able to make the larger hole. It must just determine the radius if certain percentage of the area is armored hull. I have not seen any in between sizes. I am interested in knowing how much hardened hull you need to keep from getting the larger radius. I also have to do more tests against materials in-between the two shown as they the weakest and the strongest respectively.

I've posted results of my recent tests here: http://starmadedock.net/threads/missile-theory.4170/

as we have more or less derailed this thread.