FuryoftheStars

I delete both. You will notice minor issues after. For example, all of your weapon groups on your ships in sectors that you delete will be reset. Any sectors where (non-player) stations had been destroyed will be back. Stuff like that.

That's a separate issue. https://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,6225.0.html

Yes, the skewer thing would be neat to look at, but I don't think it'd make sense for huge, fat ships/stations. So having a limit on how many blocks would allow for that effect on smaller craft or thinner sections of the larger ones, but on the bigger ones the slug would get stuck in it midway. Having it able to skewer anything, though, could cause extra problems if the enemy was in front of a friendly ship/station, too....

So then what would be the point behind having the two different weapons? :) I'd be ok with either of these (though lean towards the purely kinetic to keep the distinction from it and cannons, but not with infinite pass through), except you were saying before that a railgun could pierce (pass through) armor but not hull. This is opposite of how it should be. Hull is weaker than armor. It should strike armor, and whether you want to say that it penetrates into the block or not, it should not then pass through to the next block in line. Armor should stop it from continuing on and damaging other blocks. Weapons need a nerf, actually, too. The fact that once shields are down it only takes a hit or two to destroy even dreadnoughts is what we're talking about. That is OP. Especially if you think for a second that there is a torpedo that will take shields completely offline for a few seconds if it hits. And that's not hard to do with multiple launchers. Some interesting ideas. I like the idea of the damage falloff for them. The damage falloff could even be reversed making them more of a sniper weapon, making players want to close the distance to reduce the damage. Changing them as more of an EWAR weapon disabling systems is not a bad idea, but it will need a damage reduction to keep it balanced. I like Cairo1's idea on lightning weapons, but would disagree with reversing the damage falloff to make it into a sniper weapon.

Hey, so I just was doing some playing around, happened to kill some Xsotan in a sector where relations weren't that great, and it did improve my relations with the faction. This was on Beta, though, so don't know if it's "new".

Actually, I do feel as though shields need a nerf for exactly the reasons you stated. One of them could be interior walls, making it so you have a minimum size for the block. Another is to not have the shields recharge so fast. I may even go so far as to say the sp density of them should be reduced, possibly even have diminishing returns (same could possibly be said about other blocks like generators). I also feel as though we’re using the penetrate term differently here with the railguns. I mean it in the games current mechanic sense where if it penetrates a block, it deals damage to it and the next block after. Armor would still take the full damage it should by being hit, it just won’t let the round damage the next block in line. However, I think the amount of damage it causes needs to be balanced. I think closer to how I thought it was working. If it can penetrate one block, then it deals something like 100% damage to the first block and 40% to the second. Penetrates 2, it can deal 100/60/20, so on and so forth. Then the actual damage the railgun can cause should be reduced to compensate. A railgun firing a round with a charge in it just sounds like another cannon, imo.

I'm not sure on the suggestion of making railguns only penetrate armor. Seems counter intuitive to how weapons work. I get that railguns are supposed to be better at being armor piercing and whatnot, but why could they penetrate an armor block but not a regular hull? I think I get what you're trying to do (give hull a purpose), but it seems like one of those things that has been done that way simply for that reason, you know? To be honest, the one ship I designed is an armor ship (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1999829057). I don't use regular hull in it (other than in a decorative area that's surrounded by armor anyway). Other designs that I download I typically convert the outer layers of hull to armor. If they have more layers inside, I leave those as hull. Edit: Although, to be honest, if many of the functional blocks had a minimum size (like cargo), then I think much of what I did inside my ship design would actually be hull. I just considered hull a waste. Why use it when I can just put a shield generator there? Edit 2: You can kind of see what I mean by looking at the framework I have in the design. ;D

I haven't seen a message on it with Xsotan, so am inclined to believe not, but don't know for sure. I also find that pirates are typically more common than Xsotan? Though does that change at or near the core?

With the volatile and semi volatile blocks, the damage they deal when destroyed, is that to surrounding blocks, or only to the ship HP pool? I think it'd be good to have them deal it to surrounding blocks (and by extension that then effects ship HP pool if not surrounded by enough armor to "contain" it :) ). Also, as a balance/incentive to use the single massive generator despite the obvious drawback, have it like cargo blocks with the internal walls. This would also make it so that generators under a certain size are useless, further cutting down on the hunting out of scattered blocks. Something similar should maybe be done with all functional blocks, each with their own individual wall sizes as what makes sense for their type. Hmm, you know, I've seen the same. I know what I described I had read somewhere and I thought it was from some patch notes, but I may be wrong. I believe what you've said is absolutely true.

Some thoughts that could mitigate this. A ship is considered "dead" when it's unable to move or fight or anything else. All crew dead Unable to move due to all engines, thrusters, & gyros being destroyed -or- all energy production destroyed No turrets left to shoot -or- make turrets draw power to operate (vary based on size and type) and thus once all generators are dead they're dead. Generators could also take damage when power draw exceeds generation by at least x%. Boost may need a rebalance to instead only draw a fixed amount of power, but reduce the top speed gain. In this way, if you hit enough of the generators in the ship to put its energy draw over the "starts causing damage" threshold, then any other generators that are "scattered" about will start receiving damage (could be done randomly so they don't all pop at once) and eventually are destroyed unless the player manages their energy usage. Oh, and make blocks like generators volatile. Maybe also allow the player to designate the root block and have it so the root block must be a minimum size and only certain block types (have it essentially represent the bridge of the craft?). Sections that are blasted off separate from the section containing the root block are dead. Loss of the root block results in death. Maybe allow a secondary root block, but loss of the primary should have some major effects or require other things for the secondary to work correctly (like extra captain). Agreed. Larger turrets can certainly cause significantly more damage than smaller ones in my eyes, but should have a much harder time tracking and locking onto smaller craft to compensate. In 0.31.1 or so, they nerfed the High Damage specialty. It used to give a damage bonus of up to +330% (x4.3). Now it's only up to +150% (x2.5). This may be why the damage numbers are so much lower now. Railguns, though, I thought were supposed to divide their damage up based on number of blocks hit, or rather there was some kind of diminishing return as it went through? I think, though, from what someone else said, there's some kind of a bug in there cause if it hits armor first, it actually causes more damage than its listed value. Edit: Re, the striked out portion, I thought I had read that somewhere in one of the patch notes from a while ago or something, but I may be wrong. Base dps during turret generation is calculated the same for all turrets: distance from core, ignores material type. Ranges from 18 to just over 233. While the fire rate of the turrets doesn't have a direct impact on dps (damage is calculated based on what fire delay is selected so they're all the same; High Fire Rate specialty is an exception as it's applied after this calculation), some turrets get "balanced" more or less than others based on specialties they have (Pulse Cannons are x0.75 on dps due to Ionized Projectiles) or don't have (Bolters and Pulse Cannons both get rebalanced to nullify their cool downs on the reasoning that they don't receive other damage boosts like rockets and cannons). Then of course you have things like cannons and rockets that have an explosion radius, railguns penetrate, etc.

I feel as though those were actually what were destroying the balance and was making the game unenjoyable for me.

Yes, agreed, it should be removed from the base game. Edit: Or at the least reduced. I think at most it should be -25% nerf.

I'm assuming this is relevant:

There shouldn't actually be an issue with being able to fire a weapon before it is fully cooled/recharged. They are continuously cooling/charging, so regardless if you wait the extra time until you can do a full round of shooting or only 75%, the net dps is still going to even out to the same. That's not really where the problem with the weapon dps is. Part of the reason you have such a hard time finding a laser near 10k range is because their max is actually 7.5k (it's random from 4.5k to 7.5k). Larger sized weapons get an extra 15% per used slot over 1. There's also the High Range Specialty that has a % chance of being applied (4% Common, 24% Uncommon, 44% Rare, etc to 104% Legendary), but there's a random chance of its not "making the cut" if for some reason the RNG engine adds more specialties to the weapon than what its rarity allows (Common/Uncommon: 1, Rare/Exceptional 2, Exotic/Legendary: 3. Petty cannot get specialties). But if it does make it on, then Common will only add 10%, Uncommon is random between 10% and 16%, Rare is random between 10% and 22%, etc up to Legendary being random between 10% and 40%. As for DPS, it's kind of in the same boat. Actual max base DPS at the core is just over 233. Then you have a random variation factor that multiplies the base damage by 0.8 to 1.2, rarity further multiplies it by 0.95 to 1.25 (Petty to Legendary, 0.05 increments), then energy charging comes in which will decrease the dps (randomized shooting time between 16 and 24 secs, independently randomized recharge time between 24 and 36 secs, equates to worse case of 30% of original dps to best case of 50% of original dps). Now you can factor in size (damage x used slots x 3 if coaxial) and the High Damage Specialty (chance of being applied is 5% at Common, 30% at Uncommon, 55% at Rare, etc up to 130% at Legendary, then the random chance of its being cut if there are too many specialties for its rarity, and then the actual bonus is 30% at Common, random 30%-54% at Uncommon, random 30%-78% Rare, etc up to random 30%-150% at Legendary). Lasers also have a 10% chance at Plasma damage type, which can give a shield damage bonus of x1.8 with worst RNG roll at Petty to x3.15 with best RNG roll at Legendary (RNG roll is between +0 and +0.15 to the value). So really, not taking Plasma damage type into account, lasers' dps can range anywhere from 22.8% to 187.5% of base dps at size 0.5. With dps at the core capping at roughly 233, this means that sized 0.5 weapons can only really see a dps range of 53-437. Size 1.0 makes that 45.6%-375% (dps 106-874), size 1.5 is 68.4%-562.5% (159-1311), size 2.0 is 91.2%-750% (212-1748), and size 3.5 (it skips 2.5 and 3.0) as a coaxial is 410.4%-3375% (956-7864). If it happens to receive the Independent Targeting specialty, this of course cuts it by 50%, and a coaxial has a chance of getting this as well, which results in its being converted to a regular turret (losing the x3 damage bonus of coaxial) and still gets the 50% nerf, so a sized 3.5 auto turret would see identical damage numbers as a sized 1.5 turret.... (It should be noted that the Raw DPS number on the card for the turrets does not take cool down/recharge into consideration.) Oh, and that reminds me, I completely forgot to take the Less Energy Consumption Specialty into account! It decreases recharge time by a factor of 0.9 to 0.3 (at Legendary). So if this specialty gets applied, this modifies my earlier calculation on shooting & recharge time causing it to have 50% of dps at best to being 76.9% of dps at best. This modifies the before numbers to more like below: Size Min % Min DPS Max % Max DPS 0.5 22.8% 53.2 288.4% 672.6 1.0 45.6% 106.4 576.8% 1345.2 1.5 68.4% 159.5 865.1% 2017.8 2.0 91.2% 212.7 1153.5% 2690.5 3.5 410.4% 957.2 5190.8% 12107.0 (coaxial) But remember, those numbers require that you jump through the RNG hoops of best quality weapon, and getting all 3 specialties at max value that can increase the dps. So the chances of actually getting a weapon that good are pretty poor. All turrets are pretty much calculated in the same manor. The major things affecting their dps from each other are different shooting time to cool down/recharge times, different chances for specialties being applied (and different lists of possible specialties), and then some weapons have different things applied that others don't (cannons and rockets explode, railguns penetrate multiple blocks, pulse cannons penetrate shields (though receive a 25% damage nerf to compensate), and other obvious things like that. Not so obvious is that Bolters and Pulse Cannons are the only weapons to have their dps recalculated after cool downs are applied to nullify their effect. Notes from the devs site that this was done for these two weapons due to them not receiving other damage boosts like other weapons (I don't thing this holds true anymore). Fire rates do not effect dps unless they have the High Fire Rate Specialty applied. During generation, the weapon fire delay (inverse of fire rate) is randomized, then the sector dps is multiplied by this value to get damage. This effectively means that, if everything else is the same, all turrets would have the same dps regardless of their rates of fire. Wow... long post. Sorry. I think, though, that part of what reduces a laser's dps potential is the shooting to recharge time ratios. But all that said, even if the laser didn't have a recharge cycle (ie, could fire continuously like mining lasers), you'd still be looking at an absolute best dps of 874.7 for a sized 0.5 laser weapon found at the core. All other weapons would be the same if it weren't for the fact that they can potentially get other things (ie, chaingun can get High Fire Rate). But remember, too... lasers have 100% accuracy with instant travel time. So sure, something like the chaingun can get better dps, but it has a shorter range potential and has a slower projectile that you need to lead. Bolters are only 0.5k longer in range potential, but do get that weird damage balancing thing done to them after cool down is applied. I think that should be removed for them (and Pulse Cannons). Edit: Some wording/grammer so a couple sections read better and more as originally intended.

IMO, should probably drop the whole tech level thing and make dps dependent on turret material, but that’s a minor thing.

I usually use borderless, but don’t have an issue with the mouse leaving the screen when in mouse steering mode.

Yup, aware of both and both still work just fine. That said, mods =/= solutions. Most people do not use mods.

I see both the problem and the solution right there. Do you? Hint: press 'T' What does ‘T’ do? I think deadok is saying leave your ship and let the captain pilot and shoot. Then you won’t need auto fire turrets and thus not incur the 50% damage penalty. Personally, I don’t consider that an answer/solution.

Moderators, feel free to delete this.

Cross posting as I sometimes feel there are less people who look at the Steam subforums, especially for mods: https://steamcommunity.com/app/445220/discussions/5/3845448341022902216/ EDIT: *sigh* It's working, now. Aside from it being a few hours later, I'm also at a different location, now. I wonder if there was something about the firewall I was behind earlier in the day that was allowing most Steam functions to work, but just not the uploading of a mod?

I have not observed either behavior you both mention. My salvagers with both weapon types will only use salvage lasers on wrecks and their combat weapons will fire on hostiles that get close enough. I’d say you two are more experiencing bugs than actual game design that requires feedback.

I don’t know as if this is so much an “issue” that needs fixing as a balance decision. Really, if you try boarding a ship in the middle of a heavy fight, there should be a chance that the ship will still be destroyed and you’ll lose most of the boarders you sent aboard (how are they supposed to get off? Jump out an airlock? Escape pods I’d imagine wouldn’t be readily accessible to unauthorized personnel). I do agree that friendlies should stop auto targeting and attacking the ship, but if the enemy decides to fire upon it after capture, that’s the risk.

Only thing I’m gonna comment on from your post is this. You as the player can build these types of stations. They’re (I believe) in the last tab of station classes that you can build.

I was about ready to post in here that it didn't appear to be working, but then I noticed I put the file in the wrong place in my mod. *sigh* I am having some trouble, but not with this function specifically. I'll start a new thread if I can't figure it out in a couple hours. :P Thanks!

It'd be nice if there were a property associated with the current turret base block that could allow us to restrict the degrees of motion of the attached turret, all the way down to 0 (locked). But this would have to be independent of the custom turrets we can build so it's usable with game generated turrets and we're not locking the one custom turret design to x degrees of rotation where ever it's used. This would allow more freedom in creativity and also allow the devs to get rid of the rotation lock block.