FuryoftheStars

Yeah, that was something I've been thinking about, too, and I think another part of why I made the suggestion earlier about armor. But I wonder if IFGs are to blame here? I mean, they increase the block hps by x10 while only lowering the damage to the ship hp pool by /2.

This was (part of) the comment I left on the news post of this update on the Steam forums:

I have seen other comments about armor being useless and I thought one of the reasons behind it had something to do with the affects it has on the ship's hp pool when destroyed. I may be wrong on this, but that was the basis behind my suggestion. Something else that occurs to me as well from past posts, when a block gets hit by an extreme amount of damage that's enough to break it several times over, does it pass on the full damage to the ship's hp pool, or only to the point of where it would have been broken if it was slowly over time? I ask cause I know (at least in the past, but I think it's still an issue?) that folks used to have problems with clipping something like an asteroid and the whole ship goes kaboom. I've also played with some really over powered railguns that can one shot most ships after shields, but it doesn't seem to matter where on them I hit. I can hit them on one extreme corner and the whole ship still goes boom. If this is the case and that's what is happening, then that should probably be changed as well. There should be some kind of hard cap on how much damage a block receives that can be passed to the ship's hp pool, and that cap should be based on the block's hps, not the amount of damage the weapon is dealing. 1e006 damage that clips a lone thruster should still be damage that merely rips that thruster apart and not result in an instant kill of the ship.

It'd still be the same amount of force if the rounds were the same weight and and accelerated to the same speed. And really, while yes, the railgun does it over a "longer period of time", we're still talking about milliseconds, perhaps less. (Best I could find on short notice was about one of the tests where the round was fired at mach 5 experienced acceleration of over 60000 g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun Should also note that elsewhere in that same article, there's mention of one of the tests accelerating the round to mach 10.) We're also only guessing at the size of the railgun and cannon rounds used in game. The default turret images make them look similar in size. And watching the videos of the US Navy trials of a railgun, the amount of damage those rounds are causing to the steel looks significantly less compared to what the 18 in cannons could do. Though on that note, I'm pretty sure they're being designed to replace the smaller 5-in guns on cruisers and destroyers, anyway, which use 70 pound rounds. (I would be interested in knowing the density/weight differences between the high explosives used and the steel of the shell, though.) I've also read some stuff that they're still trying to scale these up further. Based on the wording, it makes it seem like they don't consider these current models as capable of dishing out as much damage as even the 5 in guns, yet. This article mentions wanting to get up to 40 pound rounds with 64MJ of energy. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/409497/electromagnetic-railgun-blasts-off/ All I'm trying to say is that a railgun trying to fire an identical sized round as a cannon to identical speeds is going to see identical counter forces being applied. Recoil wise it may be slightly different, but for all intents and purposes on its overall effect on the craft it's mounted to, it's going to be pretty similar cause we're still talking about acceleration in a time span that's so small that you might as well consider it the same. Edit: Found others discussing similar:

Your earlier post read to me as if you believed that because the railgun was using electromagnets instead of powder charge, that there was less recoil/counter force felt by the weapon. I was merely trying to say that isn’t true, that two weapons firing the same sized projectile to the same speed would feel the same counter force regardless of the propulsion method.

Cause 7km+ range is too much for a fighter, IMO. TBH, I'm not exactly sure that PDCs in general should have that range. PDLs I think are already in the 3-4km range threshold, so they wouldn't necessarily need to be reduced. Or even 4-5km I'd be ok with. Just not what PDCs have now. When I just loaded up the game and tested with chainguns, their damage was reduced to 10%. I don't know if it reduces the damage by the same amount on all weapons, or if it varies depending on what the weapon is? Definitely in agreement that bombers (if it's a class of fighter they introduce) and shuttles and the like should have minimum sizes that are higher than 1. Sorry, Vis, but a railgun feels the same recoil effects. Doesn't matter the method of accelerating the projectile, the counter force is still felt. Missiles are awfully slow in this game. I don't think they're traveling at realistic speeds, but I haven't taken the time to look that info up yet. Also, you could have the return to reload be automated, but not as an exact "once the last missile is fired, return to base". There could be different conditions and limits put on it. Although, in modern warfare, I don't think they would return for reload, anyway. They'd just use them very sparingly. Not necessarily. As I said, no bonuses (thus remove the damage bonus to other fighters) and no penalties (thus no damage penalty for being equipt on a fighter). Of course, at the time I wrote this, I still had a tech 37 PDC floating around in my inventory from 0.30 with 48+ dps. When I just used the debug menu to attempt to generate some more tech 37 PDCs to see what kind of damage they could get to, the best I could get was around 7 dps. I think the devs did something to nerf them in 0.31, or else I had something else going on at the time that allowed that. Also, all the other weapons in this game are super unbalanced and can get to stupid high damage atm because of the RNG setup they have. If they were to pull that back in under control and considering the 90% damage reduction on weapons being used to build fighters (except on PDCs as per my suggestion above), then it wouldn't have been that unfeasible (except now the devs nerfed the PDCs, so, you know). Sorry, when I wrote that, I didn't mean you could equip any turret you want as the secondary weapon. I meant that your only choice was a missile weapon or the like (and not necessarily even a turret from your inventory, but a predetermined weapon), but with the size penalty.

Offhand, this idea sounds kind of nice. To add to it, I wonder if it’d be nice to change armor into an expendable block that adds nothing (other than weight) to the ship, but also won’t send any damage received to the ship’s HP pool.

TBH, I’d be perfectly fine if only PDC/PDL turrets could be used with fighters, with no damage penalty/bonuses applied, and range was reduced to somewhere around 3-4km. But then it’d be nice if a secondary, limited shot or high reload time missile or similar type weapon could be applied, but doing so increased the size of the fighter (requiring more points to get it down to size 1).

Hi, sorry, posting from my phone so can’t properly copy paste the relevant info, but take a look at this thread’s second to last post and give that a try? https://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,6140.0.html

you didn't read the latest announcement on Steam yet? They are going to rebalance stuff before the final release, it would be wrong to give you the ability to clone OP-Turrets and other gear... I've known that the balance is bad, but I don't think I realized just how bad until I started pawing through the code recently. I've only covered through Bolters at this point and the dps differences are staggering. From base/neutral of any given tech level, the dps can range anywhere from x0.4 (base dmg variation of x0.8 with Petty rarity (factor of x0.5) and no specialties) all the way up to over x166 (base dmg variation of x1.2 with legendary rarity (factor of x3.5), and specialties of high damage (up to x4.3), high rate of fire (up to x2.3), and high shooting time (up to x4)... don't want to know what burst fire would do, but it'd have to replace one of the other three as legendary can only have three specialties, not counting weapon type requirements, which bolters have none). And that's not factoring in the antimatter hull damage multiplier. That ranges from x1.3 to x2.54, but obviously would only apply once shields are down. So, against an unshielded target, we're now talking x0.52 to x422 damage variations. This means that, against a shielded target, the best possible bolter in game of a given tech level is roughly 415 times more powerful than the weakest bolter of the same tech level. Against an unshielded target, the difference almost doubles to over 811 times. :o Edit: Oh, and that’s also with the comparison assuming same size for the turret.

In code, I've noticed a possible issue regarding the AutomaticFire specialty and coaxial weapons. In turretgenerator.lua, all weapons go through the TurretGenerator.scale function, first, where coaxial and related damage boosts are determined and applied. After, they go through TurretGenerator.addSpecialties where there's a chance of Specialty.AutomaticFire being applied. If automatic fire is selected and applied, it sets turret.coaxial to false without also down-scaling the turret. This results in a larger than normal automatic turret with the size and coaxial x3 damage boosts applied. It also means the chances of getting a coaxial are reduced by the probability of getting automatic fire applied. Depending on whether or not you would want these oversized turrets to be a possibility, I'd recommend checking for the coaxial status in the TurretGenerator.addSpecialties function and either skipping/removing Specialty.AutomaticFire as a choice, or at least down-scaling the turret damage by the coaxial x3 when applying the specialty. EDIT: Whoops, probably should have posted this in beta bugs seems I'm running on beta, though I believe this code was present in stable as well. Oh, and the line number (in the beta version of turretgenerator.lua) where applying of Specialty.AutomaticFire begins is 523, though the check for this could be made earlier (like somewhere around 472 when it's pairing down the specialties list based on the max number allowed, or around 463 when it's picking the specialties).

Ah, yes, I like that suggestion, too!

Vis, very good post. Like it all. TBH, I'd almost kind of like the decision on attacking at point blank vs max range to be AI driven (influenced in part by pilot skill) to cut down on micro managing. Something else I've been thinking about, instead of increasing fighter HPs (or maybe that will still need to be done, but before that...), cut down or even eliminate the damage bonus that PD/Flak weapons get to them. I'm not sure what the max HPs of fighters is, but I know most of the ones I create top out around 5-600 HPs. I've gotten PDCs with 50 DPS and flak with over 1100 DPS (though I agree with Vis that flak should have a lower DPS, and maybe trade this with a slightly increased range). These should fairly good DPS rates to deal with fighters at the HPs I see. The weapon ranges for the turrets used on fighters should probably be decreased some, too, just like how the damage is reduced, that way you can't have fighters shooting from 20km out, out ranging most weapons. Not really to solve the OPs point, but more cause I was thinking more about a previous post of mine where I said I had issues with the current point system for fighters, I'd kind of like to see it where adding a point to one stat can potentially impact the other stats. Examples: adding a point to speed/maneuverability would cause a minor increase to size (say 25% of what one point directly to size would affect it by). Adding a point to durability would cause a minor decrease to speed/maneuverability (say 25% of what one point would affect it by) and a slightly bigger increase to size (say 50% of a stat point). Adding a point to size could cause a decrease to durability (say 25-50% of a stat point). Something of that nature.

Strictly speaking, it's not a bug cause it's a balance issue. If they were significantly cheaper, it would offset how quickly they die (which is why they're unusable). However, there are still pilots to account for, so they shouldn't be allowed to die too often, either. Yup, that was kind of in the area that I was thinking of for that, too.

Turret factories should also allow you more customization of the weapons it builds. I find it a little odd that they're like "You want a cannon? We have dual barrel burst fire only. Take it or leave it."

Exactly. Why should a fighter cost as much as something that big? I have issues with the current point system they use in part because it's hard to make distinct fighter classes unless you purposely use a lower grade turret or don't spend all of your points. Making distinct fighter classes that adjust the base stats accordingly could be a step in the right direction there, but I don't think it addresses the OPs main concerns. While this is the "suggestion" forum, the game's "feedback" forum is within the beta section, which kind of makes it feel like it should be used for feedback on the current beta and the things they are working on in that beta, not the game in general. That said, the OP did make a suggestion... reduce their costs.

There’s certainly no reason for these small things to cost as much or more as the ships that launch them.... They could still use other love as well, but the production costs and time are extremely high.

Hmm, in regards to the hyperspace rework, I kind of liked it that larger ships had a longer cooldown. :-\ Kind of like the rest, though. Sounds promising.

I don’t know about the camera not rotating part, but I have had the issue where when I go into build mode the camera always rotates with the mouse movement. For me, though, merely clicking and releasing the right mouse button then clears that issue.

I don’t know about the burst fire, but for engagement range, I use a mod for carrier commands that seems to do the trick. When I get a sec I’ll look up the current versions and link to them. Edit: Here they are. As far as I can tell, they still work as of 0.30.2. Carrier Commander (base mod; has no commands): https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1741735681 Basic Commands for Carrier Commander: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1741744976 Loot4CarrierCommander (adds loot command): https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1924641337

Seems good, now. Thanks! :)

Why is it that those of us that have opted in on betas have to then opt out to get this one?

And now the RNG ships are getting a facelift: https://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,6167.0.html It kind of already has a paint job: "Dim Gray" on all exposed surfaces. That'll probably be the extent of my paint job as, again, I'm not very artistic. Same goes with the turrets. There are a few of the in-game turret designs that I like, but as we don't have access to them....

Because to me just sticking blocks together to get the needed stats looks worse than many of the procedural stuff? I just took a screenshot of the one station that was in sector with me, then jumped to a nearby sector and grabbed screens of three more. All four of these I think look decent enough to use and are better and (most importantly) faster to get than my doing it myself. But again, I'm talking about simply making this available as an option in ship builder, not replacing the ship builder. You can see the four stations here: https://imgur.com/a/RpJGx9n And to give an idea as to why I consider that as faster, I have a ship I've been working on. I'm currently doing a revision (MKII) of the ship. The first one took me over 2 months to complete. Recently, I upped the difficulty from Normal to Expert. With the immediate block breakage that starts, I decided to redesign it a little. I stripped back the outer layers, extended the engines forward a bit (to give the ship more speed), then reapplied the outer layer, making it slightly thicker and making other minor tweaks along the way to the thrusters, turret positions, and other minor things. That's taken me another 3 weeks. I have a few minor tweaks left, but otherwise I think I'm done with it now. It's a 3 slot ship. Seriously. Over 3 (probably was closing in on 4) months work for it at an average rate of 25 hours a week. This is a screenshot of the MKII in the builder: https://imgur.com/a/PNTqycf (EDIT: Oh, should probably mention, in regard to some of the stats it has, that it's currently using Trinium and Xanion.) I am not as fast at this type of stuff as others. I see posts from some people where they put up these giant, detailed ships and then someone asks in the comments how long it took. They respond with something like a few hours a day for a few days or a week. :o

[*]It may be good to add a key binding option for the turret groups' Attack Target command, but have it apply only to those turret groups that are already in Attack Target mode. In this way we can reissue the Attack Target command for each turret group set like this without having to take our attention away from the fight and click through each, one by one. [*]Please allow us to bind the scrolling of the mouse wheel. I'd like to use it to control throttle up/down of my ship when in Keyboard Steering layout. [*]Option/keybind to lock throttle open when in Mouse Steering layout.