WSY

Of course! Always having fun when it comes to Avorian and writing. Glad you enjoyed it. Avorian has a pretty good community as well. So it is probably one of the only forums I come back too after life keeps me a away for an extended time.

Thank you unbekannt1984. This will be good as I will want to look at those values as well. I know we can change dodge count too and I have that somewhere. While giving a fighter more speed (from points) is good I was hoping to also make their speed dynamic somehow. A flat speed boost, while enabling them to get to a target quickly, means unless that target is flying away from them, lowers their time on target. Fighters are either stopped or max speed. The only time I have seen this change a little bit I think is when they are docking. I could be imagining this though. Curious if I could get some interesting behavior if I mess with turning speed and crank velocity. Used to get the the AI to do some really cool stuff in homeworld by change just rotation, roll and braking values.

Are we able to mod anything about fighters? With all the ships afterburning around fighters really cannot keep up. Is there a way too either: Give fighters an afterburner ability or temporary speed boost until they are say in weapons range? Or Possibly change their behavior to that of a torpedo to close distance then switch back to fighter behavior. Even if it took fighter carrier commands to change their state it would be preferable I think to what we have now. If it is possible, and someone could provide an example, happy to do the balance of numbers and extra work etc myself. I'm good at reverse engineering code, but do not have the skill level to know what is possible through code innovation. Thanks!

I agree with you Vis, weapons are built to purpose under strategic assumptions with strategic and tactical mission in mind. You wouldn't be cobbling together every part you could too assemble the next batch of randomized weapons with the sole purpose of doing at least some damage. But some of this also depends on story/lore. If the randomization happened per faction space, or per 10x10 sector grid etc it would keep things a little neater. You could then make rarity have a bigger affect on gun rof, range and dmg, then control npc spawn power not only via ship size, and weapon type/purpose, but also by it's rarity. This would still give you some nice randomization but allow players to farm for uniform weapons in specific groups of sectors. No two galaxies would be alike still since all initial rolls for each 10x10 grid or whatever size would occur when a player first enters. Maybe lock factories to variances within these rolls. So a factory is not selling a 8k dps weapon in faction space where theirs ships are struggling to hit 1k dps with multiple guns. You would still see some variances of course, accounting for size, ship rarity and weapon type, but the ability to farm ships with a larger risk for farming rarer (more powerful) ships would be nice for players. Just a couple rambling thoughts from myself though.

The hardest thing is how everything interacts with each and it's feasibility based on strategic goals and assumptions. It's hard to have many different systems be the best because inevitably the best will be discovered and used over everything else, so you have to find a way for everything to have a benefit and a drawback. A purpose. The game certainly does move forward with every update. 99% it's always for the better to me. Could be more or less for others as it depends on ones preferences of course.

Ahh you may be right fury, never tried the other way. Sorry gk258, may have thrown you for a loop there.

I apologize as I originally meant to put this thread here, but put it in suggestions. It's a bit of both, so I just linked it here as well: https://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,5977.0.html It's quite long so apologies in advance. Thanks!

For security reasons, I would like to see this as something that is configurable at server level if it was implemented. Admins are allowed, Designated super users (people who ask for the right) And all users (for a private server for example.) Though, does copy and past not work? My concern would be people spamming chat with links on public servers.

Star Trek online uses shield bleed mechanics. While interesting, unless it's a squishy glass cannon, most ships Hull Regen makes up for it. While it would be cool, I think your proposal would end up supporting the bigger is better meta. Hull Regen is higher numbers on bigger ships as I believe Regen in the game is percentage based. In addition people I think this would also become tremendously taxing on a server to track all that additional information. On the games that have it, you must remember the ship is one unit, not a collection of entities you would have to track the health of independently. As for coaxial I haven't seen coaxial on anything except avorian. But this game does have a strange mechanic that once you somehow acquire something, it just starts showing up for you as lower materials. I have an iron rail gun that does a thousand dps somewhere. Which kinda opens into weapons a bit. I think the dev is specifically not locking down the numbers for weapons, which is their right, it's their game after all, so I can only make suggestions within the confines of their decided approach. I also would love to see a pass and lockdown on the numbers, as I think it would make designing or modding other parts easier, but again it's the devs game and we can limit ourselves if we wanted too. Balancing can be a tremendous task, so leaving it open allows players to play how they want. If you don't use turret factories the game actually is a lot more interesting. Would love to see a little bit of a balance pass on factories, but I guess there again I can always nerf myself (shrug). As for torpedoes, it's a logistics thing. You can get some crazy stupid powerful torpedoes, so limiting the ammo on them makes sense. On the other hand, arming more of the enemy with them and making them lootable would I think create a happy balance. Unless making the torpedoes took cargo components and not just mineral material like titanium or xanion. This would force a stock of components. Or maybe a module slot too manufacture them. (Would be fair for essentially 9 more weapons. ) Though that's my crappy two sense. I don't really mind either way on the torpedoes, I just happen to like the need for a little logistics planning. Could make it server configurable? Or in creative they are limitless? Convergence at range of current target would be awesome. Would love to see something like that, that way you can just not select a target to use the current system!

One more possibility for fighters and I feel this would be practical is: Re-label the current "fighter" ship type as either "Simple fighter" or "drone". Make them cheaper to build, build faster, no afterburn, just basic speed like now and no dodge. Essentially becoming the disposable fighter. Think like a tie fighter, or disposable space combat drone. Introduce a second type of fighter. An actual Starfighter. (Or call it a Corvette) A more complex and smaller numbered fighter. Now I assume these would probably be more game resource intensive so you will want limiting mechanics of some form. These things will need to be made to an appropriate scale. What I mean by that, is even a 15 slot ship, unless dedicating a massive percentage of it's mass to hangar space, is going to struggle to deploy 24-36 of these. Think of a longsword fighter from Halo. The thing is over half the size of a Boeing 747. Actual same wingspan, but greater displacement and weight, while 2/3rd or so length (or like the Millennium Falcon -similar size-) . A real fighter with armor or shields, maybe even a secondary weapon (missiles or a PD turret), can afterburn, hell with a limit to a smaller number give it a decent health pool, giving players time to pull them back if they start taking damage too quickly, maybe even a single dodge. These should instill fear in a capital ship, and even smaller more maneuverable and speedy ships. Maybe make it so a player has to equip a special carrier module in order to use it, and a lower number per player and ship hard limit on top of the hangar sizing soft limit. Each of these fighters requires 5 or so additional engineers, or a new personnel type "hangar mechanic" or something. Maybe even give them a 300 block limit. However for each Starfighter/Corvette squadron, you lose/use 2 basic fighter/drone squadrons capacity. They are also more easily hit by PD weapons, but still hard for regular weapons. This would give players that more fighter management, survivability and elite feel, while allowing others to still have their base disposable fighters or drones. The disposable drone/fighter mechanic also plays well with the air module, saving money on replacing pilots. Enemy Fleet Compositions: One of my favorite battles is the mission where you are offered a very substantial reward for artifacts (keeping it vague to avoid spoilers). The repair ship made the battle way more fun, I had to target and eliminate the repair ship first. More fleets with logistical support. I think you have been working on this, but I would like to see more carriers and logistical ships. The use of long range torpedo carrying ships, and anti-fighter ships is great. Carriers probably only if you address some of the fighter and fighter targeting stuff, otherwise will get annoying have to spend several long minutes trying to swat at the little mosquitoes that barely do anything to you. – Of course, you could buff them and make them scarier too, but I would say you def need to address TTK of fighters before doing this. Now I am going to move onto weapons. I feel One of the biggest elephants in the weapon room is scaling. The scaling works well if you can only ever get weapons dropped by NPCs, with the occasional decent drop. Factories simply break this. Poof, boom, gonzo. I now have Super Saiyan Railguns and Fury Mode cannons. All of which 1 shot any and all enemies. Bosses? Bah, 1 of my 57 turrets can kill the boss. If you farm drops enough this can also occur. However for the most part, not so much. Research? I don’t know how many hours of researching better weapons I have done, only to have my legendary Xanion weapons be weaker than a green iron machine gun – I feel this needs some tweaking…maybe it has been? Its has been a while since I have tested, I simply gave up as it was a huge waste. Researching module? 'Très bien'! Turrets? Not much reward, or point I feel. I will say though, I have been testing a bit the last two weeks and it does seem better. Because of the factories, and sometimes really lucky drops, you can get halfway through the galaxy and have one shot kill capability vs pretty much anything. This of course creates problems, and just upscaling the damage on the enemies creates shorter battles, and teaches the player to upscale their health and shields (which with suggestions above can be limited), but doesn’t really address the enemies dying faster. A lot of these problems probably comes from random rolling, and seeds of the turret factories. I my honest opinion if you really want to address the core of the matter, your going to have to develop min and max damages, ranges, projectile speeds, etc, which I feel you a want to avoid to keep the sandbox feel. Because of that, I have some other suggestions which may help: Rail Guns: The best weapon in the game. Due to the nature of most auto generated enemies, once the shields are gone, my high DPS 7 (essentially a x7 damage) block penetration weapon can one shot kill ANYTHING. Build a blob of these, and they are extremely lethal. Sure, maybe a barrage on the shields, and then POP. Do not get me wrong, that pop is very satisfying, and DPS chasing is always a fun pass time, but once you get to this point….your a god in ship form. Now, lets add the extreme range, AND...HIT SCAN…., WHOOP DE WHOOP! SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT! AND...I’m bored…. once a player reaches this point...not a reason to grab bigger and better weapons, sure you can maybe get even bigger DPS, but, once you hit one shot capability...who cares? From a PVP perspective, these are the win guns. (When your not thrusting at high velocity and spamming missiles/torpedoes, which is about the only counter.) These guns make it a straight up, who shoots first, or has more straight DPS output wins otherwise. Which honestly is realistic, but players are able to field so many of these, they stay out of range and missile spam - effectively the counter is to never get in range so the enemy can ever have a chance to hit you. (This is of course not surprising, we see this in real life, see: cruise missiles) From PVE perspective the challenge is all but gone when I hit this point. Unless random generated ships start coating themselves in armor, railguns are the endgame. though the ability and mod to add other universes ships as AI factions does counter this a bit, since people can design ships coated in armor. I have a couple suggestions/idea on these, some may hate them though as these bad boys need some sort of drawback: They do 15-25% damage against shields Make them so they are more in line with shorter range weapons, where we see the max range out to 8-9 KM. Make it so every shot initiates the overheat mechanic and from there drastically drains the power from your ship to the point that either you need to be massive to deal with power demands or have batteries or a couple power upgrades. If you can, also have a charge mechanic too or shot delay. This would require players to do some form of weapons management, so drain the shields, then fire them railguns. Exception: Spinal mounts range out to 20 or more so KM, do 50-85% damage to shields. ALL Railgun drops: after maybe 5-6 KM, power demand is multiplicative of each Km of range. So that long range spinal is going to make a big ship hurt in the power department and those turreted rails beyond 5 KM are going to require a lot of power, but not as ridiculous as a spinal which will require a large ship to use. Change the shot effect? A stream of energy is awesome, but if you could do something like a smoke trail, (See Eraser: ) something like the particles of the round de-stabilizing from speed or near explosive expansion after ultra magnetic compression (Cool handwavium excuse). Could also use some sort of ring expanding out from the path of the round in segments, or just a static glowing ring to represent where the round went. Lastly I also know in theory rail guns should have super range, but then so should correctly focused lasers, cannon rounds, and missiles after thrust is gone, but I am aiming for balance at this point, otherwise we would be having 100 to 1000KM engagements. You want some lore flavor for the shorter range? The projectiles are super heated from such acceleration and kinetic energy dumped into them as they go through the barrel, the slug begins to evaporate into gas near instantaneously. PLasma Weapons - they are great as they are. Pulse Weapons: They need some love, not sure what needs to be done here. Shield penetration is nice, but they feel like they are nothing more than a shield penetrating chain gun. I tried to use them in my testing as rapid fire anti-fighter weapons, but they were not effective in that role either. They are just lackluster as they are now. Honestly the only thing I can come up with is a near complete change. Or make it so when you put them on fighters they do not get a damage nerf. Shield Pen fighters would be scary. -actually this would be really fun. LASERs - honestly you could probably leave them but I have suggestions anyway :) Point defense lasers, nope they make sense and are great where they are in concept. However they are useless in that they target behind torpedoes and fighters unless coming strait at them. You may just have to spreadsheet these and leave visuals client side. Standard lasers: Make these very long range. To where the rail guns are on average now. Handwavium: There aren’t as many particles in space so range should be longer, but not infinite because we can only focus the light so well? Anyhow, maybe make these much lower damage at range, but make shorter range version higher damage. Maybe even in factories that if you decrease range, they do more damage? Is game engine able to support diminishing damage based on range while firing? this would be ideal for that instead. Keep it so they still require a decent amount of power, but this would give range and a cost of power, but not the ridiculous “I-win” capability rail guns enjoy now. Bolters - good for beginning too a bit of the midgame Chainguns - Good Rockets - Really they are fine, increase the speed a bit, or can you give them acceleration while traveling up to maybe 1.5x what they have now? maybe even 2x after a few seconds? Really they probably don’t need change. This will bring me to the final discussion of missile getting additive speed based on the parent ship. While this totally makes sense, sadly it is easily abused. Either make it so after a certain set speed, they go “Dumb” and cannot track, or really, explode for safety reasons...because…”SPace Safety First” Really just PVP and PVE balance. However for slow lumbering ships I would love to see that 1.5x to 2x default speed. Also, need prettier smoke trails - because my space barbies want prettier pew pew. NEW WEAPON TYPE or Change to pulse weapons: Something like a particle lance, or ion cannon: Similar to laser ranges like we have now but: Either hit scan shot like the railgun is now, use the current railgun particle effect, but use an energy weapon sound. Or make them a 1-3 second burst laser like weapon that always has a cool down. They do 100% damage to shields and armor, including heavy armor, and integrity field damage mitigation doesn’t work against them. They require power to shoot like lasers do, but a lot more. In a sense they become the new laser, but more effective at shorter range with higher power draw, which leads to my laser change suggestion above. Make these weapons also have a power to range multiplication in energy usage. Just not nearly as high as a railgun. Cool handwavium reason: The particles are excited and dissipate over distance, higher intensity discharges are required for more range. Spinal Mount Version - Much like the railgun, allow greater ranges at higher cost to energy, though KM per KM more energy efficient than the railgun spinal. The trade off is you don’t get multi block penetration. CANNONS. I love cannons. Should be as no surprise, I prefer the Star Wars like way of space combat, which is modeled after WW2, and what was prevalent in naval battles of WW2? BIG OL CANNONS! Personally I love cannons as the general all purpose gun in the game. No gimmicks, no drawbacks just shock and awe of awesome. Every time they fire I hear Macho man say "Oh yea!" However to give them a little bit more reason to be used over... lets say, railguns, or even my suggested particle weapon, or ion cannon above: Armor doesn’t mitigate their damage. Sure you have to blast through shields, integrity fields still mitigate their damage, but make it so if you use your slower firing, slower bullet speed cannons and connect, they don’t don’t suffer when they hit stone or heavy armor. They destroy everything equally. I would also give them a bit of a speed bump to rounds, maybe not much, or make it so they are generally pretty accurate. Also Space barbie requirement : give them a bit of a trail as they fire initially or even as they travel. You could probably just modify the round graphic to have a bit of a particle or very light smoke trail. Right now, with all the highspeed dashing combat, using cannons is difficult. There are a couple reasons I am seeing from this: Convergence. Your turrets only accurately converge with the target when you highlight it/put cursor over it. For hit-scan weapons this is fine, for something like cannons this is horrendous, as you only get weapons convergence when highlighting your target. If that target is moving or your moving, after about 5-6 kilometers you are not going to hit - you have to lead the target and thus lose the convergence of your weapons. Moving 70m/s lateral and aiming at a medium asteroid 13 kilometers away my cannons would miss. I can aim in front of or behind and hit, but then I have a large spread, so some would still miss. This wasn’t as big of a deal before the speed update since you could still sorta predict where ships would go, fire and hit, even at a long distance which was SUPER SATISFYING, but now, with ships moving so fast and npc ships afterburning around, and if they are far away, they are on top of you within seconds, so cannons as the long range damage over time, is no longer as effective. Round speed. Before everything was dashing about, changing directions like an ADHD ridden child having a seizure, guessing about where the target was going and firing your cannons was quite satisfying, now, most of that is gone, I would like to see this return. This leads to the next subject. RECENT MOVEMENT CHANGES I want to talk about recent changes to everything being able to chase you and dash/afterburn around. I like it since people cannot just run from the them, and yet I also find it incredibly irritating and don’t like it. I will explain below: The good: - Ships follow better. - My ships chase down the enemy the enemy chases me down - this makes kiting or “reverse turreting” much more difficult. - a dashing dodging ship using missile kiting spam (I have seen both xsotan and I think pirates) is a great fight counter to my play style. I eventually just get - ticked and fire off torpedoes >:D This is a great thing to have, not so irritating to make me want to shut off the game, but irritating enough where I get the - pleasure out of blowing the little bugger up with a flight of torpedoes. The bad - Long range weapons mostly mean nothing anymore as the enemy immediately dashes into point blank range - exception being ships with cannons. - more ships need this. - Sometimes they stop temporarily but not long enough for cannons to reach them at a distance - Probably preference: EVERYBODY dashes back and forth in combat now. Moving is ok, but every ship dashing around; pretty much lasers and rail guns, or go home. Or if you have all chainguns/bolters because with all the all the movement. You cannot and I mean CANNOT, effectively used mixed arms against the enemy at all. difficult before but impossible now. Unless you have independant targeting weapons. - Non tracking missile launchers = worthless if your a slower ship. If your playing the exploitive complete dashing around ship build with shooting missiles at enemy it may fine within a limited window. Until the enemy dashes to the side again. However having to build my entire ship around 1 type of build to get use out of a single weapon is not great in my opinion. Mixed (good and bad) the dashing around while they are point blank range is good and bad. Irritating because my damn cannons even when they are close have a hard time tracking and hitting them (I do get hits when turrets do finally catchup - which is also good because this represents them “getting under” my guns, and shows off the disadvantage of slower turning turrets. While my secondary weapons have no issue taking care of this problem - which is what they are fore- it is very sad that I hardly ever get to use my main cannons since everything acts like it is under command by Admiral Ackbar and engages me at point blank range :( Pirate torpedo ships now have the same problem. They get within point blank range, and cannot angle their torpedoes at me, so everything they fire circles around me. Good because “HAHA”, bad because it hardly ever is a threat now, and that is not how they would be used (Strategic Goals, Fleet missions and Fleet Design) Suggestion - mix the bag a little bit with the behaviors. Or if you implement some thrust movement changes, allow certain “chaser” or “picket” ships the ability to get under the guns and engage point blank (basically allow designated NPC ships the ability to ignore movement penalties and acting as they do now), but still have some long range engagements. As it is now, I am not having much ship to ship combat fun because everything dashes to be at blinding speed, and my secondary auto-targeting weapons have all the fun. Which wouldn't be so bad if I could launch fighters and they could kill them too, but again they dash around and my fighters just kinda follow. TORPEDOEs I haven’t used them much, but I like that they cost money and you cannot build spam these. I see torpedoes are your “Oh @#$%” weapons when your in a tight spot, and they work great for that. Honestly, I love their implementation. I am stopping here as this thing is already long enough, but I would like to see some Carrier fleet support modules, enabling special functions, like group jump etc or your jump range automatically applied to fleet, enhanced auto repair while in range of carrier, or buff to repair turrets, and maybe "Mothership" modules that are defense and manufacturing oriented. I won't post those now, this beast is already long enough :P

Fighters (Strategic Assumption, Goal, Force Management, Force size, Fleet Mission and Fleet Design): So this is a tricky one. I have another thread from some time ago I had been using to post my testing of these fighters and through that testing I have ran into a couple things, and from some updates some additional ideas to address. However, that post was a while ago, and in turn you have made a few updates over the last many months - (ok last year now, I wrote this thing before some family events happened that pulled me away for some time), and I have seen some definite bonuses and improvements. The biggest elephant in the room for this section that I want to address first: People want their fighters to not die too quickly, and yet want to be able to kill enemy fighters (player enjoyment vs realism balance). Right now it is not much of an issue I think because the enemy never really spawns that many nor are they ever a threat. There are two camps probably at this point. People just want to play and enjoy the game and not focus on rebuilding their fighters, and then there is the other side. The other side (the one I am part of) is the cold realization that hey guess what….fighters die. You release your best squadron against MEGA FLACK DESTROYA!!!, you are going to lose them. However, I feel there are tools that could be implemented that as the captain will further engage the player to track and keep an eye on them, to help ensure their survivability. Now some of this probably also depends on Dev vision of fighters. If you see most ships as usually not having more than two squadrons, then fighters are fine as they are as the few you do have need survivability. However in most cases I see players with several squadrons, and if you are to engage NPC fleets with 4+ squadrons of fighters, the below changes make more sense. There is also probably some performance considerations at play I am sure for some of approaches to them, so maybe some of my suggestions may not work. 1st and foremost from my other threads findings. Fighters with any transverse velocity in relation to an auto-targeting turret are pretty much invulnerable. Torpedoes are easily hit because they fly straight lined right towards the target. This has drastically improved since I first brought this up. Point Defense turrets can do a decent job if they have a little spread on them. Flak turrets are great thanks to AoE, and lasers really are ineffective; the laser trails behind the fighters, may as well be an imperial guardsman standing outside on your ship with a las rifle yelling "pew, pew!" into space...you know, where sound doesn't even cary... Fighters are only hit when they are really close, or flying at or away from the ship firing at it. Even when flying at a ship, if the ship is large enough, the turrets that are further away from the fighter are experiencing enough transverse velocity in relation to their position on the ship that they miss. –Even with changes they still seem to miss a bit which is fine if they miss a bit, just when you add in dodge mechanics it compounds into a problem. ( Flack turrets do help mitigate this issue). I am going to elaborate on the fact that it is a “compounding” fighter problem more, because I think it does become a near exponential problem the more enemy fighters you have to deal with. Example: If you have a single ace fighter, it comes into range of your 10 Point defense cannons. Even with all 10 firing at it, it has about half a minute worth of dodge animations which make the fighter invulnerable (As transverse velocity = fighter invulnerability to tracking dependent weapons and start mechanics invulnerability while dodging anyway). Then the dodge cool down is short enough, that if the 10 guns take to long for whatever reason to kill it, say it's circling around, thus giving it adequate transverse velocity to not be hit, its then invulnerable for another almost half minute -flaks do well at countering this issue and are the perfect answer to this problem. Sadly, it could be 70 PD turrets and still be invulnerable for about 30 seconds because of the dodging . While a lot of the transverse velocity issues are resolve with flak weapons from what I have tested, PD lasers are near worthless. PD chain guns don’t do as horrible since they try to predict where the fighter is and especially with spread - but they still aren’t as great. - this however is fine given some suggestions I have for this later on. Lets now attack with a squadron. 12 fighters attacking a ship with 20 PD weapons. I gave more PD to adequately represent what I am trying to communicate as a compounding problem. The twelve fighters attack, normally all turrets with same arch will fire on one fighter (an issue I will get into later), so lets say you have 5 turrets per a quarter sphere or quadrant of coverage around your ship. All five turrets firing on one fighter, (we will make it an ACE fighter,) so about 30 seconds of invulnerability of dodge. Now lets say the fighter moves into another arch of fire, and leaves the arch of the five turrets firing at it. The new arch it moves into is already engaging a fighter, so now the fighter is not getting fired at and its dodging cool down resets eventually trading with another fighting and using its 30 seconds invulnerable dodging again. Essentially when a battle starts, with each arch, your engaging 4 fighters and the rest are fighting without dodging, and as the fighters change into other archs which are already firing at a dodging fighter, their cool down resets. Now in this example, since you have more turrets than fighters, eventually as the battle goes on, you will wear down the numbers and kill them. Though its dependant on a bit of luck, because if the fighters are switching between the turrets archs of fire enough it could take a long time. The other consideration for this example will be as it leaves one arch, the arch it left, all the turrets will pick a closest fighter to each tirret, so they may all engage a couple different fighters after the first leaves their arch/range. This example also assumes the fighters immediately spreading out and engaging evenly in each quadrant, normally the fighters stick to their angle of attack close to their hemisphere of approach for some time and a few will slowly change their angle of attack, meaning that some of those PD (Point defense) turrets are useless due to wasted coverage that fighters are not attacking from. However, this problem becomes worse the more fighters you have due to the nature of multiple PD turrets typically picking the same target regardless of the number of PD turrets. If you have more fighters than turrets, the fighters have a near guaranteed invulnerability. This typically never becomes an issue, or I believe noticed because NPC fighters normally do a dismissive amount of damage to the player, and/or the player can just afterburn away from fighters. This moving away from fighters resets all the fighters back to having the same angle of attack at first -that is if they can catch up. Ok so back on track: I think the dodge mechanic is a fantastic idea but needs a counter balance, and I have worked in some suggestions around it: Problem: Transverse velocity = fighter invulnerability, And Adding too many dodges on ace fighters = near invulnerability (Both of these become ever compounding issues the more fighters are on the field) Solution 1: Remove dodge invulnerability. Max level pilots where fighters can spend nearly half of a minute in dodge animations, just remove the invulnerability dodge provides. With the lower damage anti fighter/point defense weapons, maybe allow fighter hit points to have more of a play, and on the off chance they do get hit by a big weapon, BOOM, as should happen. (X-wing or tie-fighters don’t do well if they do get hit by turbolasers, but should be a rare event.) As a counter balance to fighters now being more vulnerable, some UI changes for fighters will be necessary for players so they can recall their squadrons if they seem them either, A, taking damage, or B dropping like flies. Like a little set of boxes next to the squadron button color coded, and that color changes from green down to red much like a HP bar of the ship. Lower accuracy of Point defense weapons a bit. Though this may make players more vulnerable to torpedoes, but I do not think it will. Solution 2: Decrease dodges so non veteran fighters do not have dodge mechanics, but ace pilots get one or two, with longer dodge cooldown and allow fighter HP to play a role in their survivability. Along with this, start lowering accuracy a bit of weapons? Though this may make players more vulnerable to torpedoes, but I do not think it will. Improve fighter to fighter mechanics Make it so fighters can always intercept and hurt other fighters. (If you do this, thus allowing fighters to die more often, may want to change how long fighters take to build, or allow fighter build upgrades – so someone literally could have the drone boat that while burning through resources, keeps spamming fighters) Fighter vs fighter mechanics and ships vs fighter mechanics Unless you are a ship covered in anti-fighter weapons or have escorts covered in anti-fighter weapons, if someone launches 100+ fighters all capable of 100 DPS or more which can be easy, you’re in deep dooty if you’re a heavy ship with speed nerf mechanics as I have suggested above. See “The Yamato”. Or even in general if you’re a slower moving ship. What would you likely do? Have your own fighters. When it comes down to it, the best answer to a fighter…is another fighter – kill them before they can kill you, sure some would get through but you would then have your own point defense as well. Or MOAR ARMOR AND SHIELDS!!!!!! Though most likely you would have your own set of fighters to deal with the enemy fighters. (Unless you are a lighter fast moving ship to evade enemy fighters) Unfortunately, as it is now, fighters cannot realistically engage each other, and if you are like me, and have managed to build 600 DPS fighters (got a lucky OP Chain gun), 125 of them could completely wipe an opponent before their fighters can even do anything. Ironically enough, it still takes these 600 DPS chain gun (rapid fire 12 rounds per second) fighters a while to engage and destroy one opponent fighter. Not long mind you, but long enough where an entire squadron firing at one fighter becomes an issue. Way more efficient to ignore enemy fighters, wipe the entire battle zone of all ships (so you’re not wasting DPS), and then let them engage the fighters leisurely. There are a couple causes to this that I have seen: Like turrets, you have groups of your fighters (I have seen about 20 – count could be off as they move around) engaging 1 fighter, who lets say has a dodge, so he has about 5-10 seconds of not taking damage. Then as they have transverse velocity and flight around, still hard to kill. Though this time to kill is a lot shorter since fighters are closer and behind it, thus eliminating Transvers velocity at times and allowing a near instant kill. There are a couple things that I think could address this. I am not sure what is easier or more difficult for the dev so I just have a list of suggestions (you may have addressed this, I have not had a chance to test this with as much depth as I have in the past): Improved fighter targeting mechanics. I am not sure on this, but it seems a squadron in defense mode tends to all engage the same fighter, (probably like a turret, they engage the closest first until it is destroyed.. )Since the dodge mechanic takes a few seconds, a fighter with a max level pilot can spend nearly half of a minute in dodge animation, that is an entire squadron wasting 30 seconds of pew pew time on one fighter if it maintains decent transverse velocity. Maybe enable a max of two or three fighters to engage one target, - though would be fixed if dodging while fighter to fighter fighting is addressed. Improve Point Defense weapon targeting mechanics. Same situation as above, only a few turrets engage the same target unless no other targets available, or not needed if dodging mechanic has been addressed. Max DPS on fighters This one is an iffy one because it begins to put a hardline on dps max which you seem to want to avoid, but putting max DPS on fighters, or give them a scaling DPS depending on their target may help. So when engaging another fighter (if you have followed some of the dodging answer suggestions from above fighter section) your fighters can still be a threat to other fighters, and yet be a threat to the ship they are engaging without being so ridiculously overpowered as to wipe them out in a single pass. Though this could easily come down that you need to have a squadron of fighters with lasers, point defense chain fun or flak as their weapon to effectively engage other fighters. I see fighters as glass cannons, so if you have 124 fighters coming at you, you should be able to set your squadrons to perform defense, and assisted with your PD, you will come out on top, though will either lose some fighter or take some good damage. Fighters should be scary, but not gods. As it is now, there is a chance your fighters and turrets will only engage a handful of fighters, and while they are wasting valuable DPS on a few dodging fighters, the rest of the swarm is killing you. - however since the AI hardly ever uses large fighter swarms, or fighters that do any threatening damage a lot of this is not readily noticeable. Now something else that players will want, is they will want their fighters to survive most of the time or more often if they are Aces, and the enemy to fall faster than their aces. Maybe either give scaling HP to veteran pilots, or make it you do not get dodges until you get to ace, however still address a check so the enemies turrets are not still all firing on one fighter. Though may not be as big of an issue if they only have 1 dodge. Lastly, I would love to see Fighters either have an afterburner or multiplier to their speed when not engaging a target so they can catch ships trying to run, or be useful to slow big ships to get across the system a little quicker, giving fighters more use. Maybe you don’t have this for performance reasons or because it allows players to counter fighters by afterburning away since Point defense takes too long to kill them. To elaborate on this, I see fighters having three states: Travelling to target state: When have chosen a target and are flying towards it (or returning to mothership/carrier), much like a torpedo they are flying and accelerating to a much higher top speed than normal. Engaged State: Here the fighter has entered into engagement range (weapons range x1.5?) and has slowed down to the speed that you see when your building the fighter. (Represents routing power to anti-g systems, weapons etc.) If taking my suggestions above, this has more effect on their survivability. Since higher speed while getting shot at while dodging around = survivability. Landing State: While I haven’t talked about this, it would be nice if fighters slowed down to their engage speed, then flew to the very end of the hangar white entrance bar, then turned into the hangar. Would avoid so much of the weird clipping and fighter return issues I see in nicely detailed carriers. Or, just remove clipping of the owners ship, so their approach is “good enough” for the optical illusion they are returning to a hangar. Fighters really are tricky, as I am glad they are in the game, but beyond floating turrets around a carrier or for mining/salvage operations, I am not seeing a lot of purpose to them. As they are implemented now, I feel they do not truly fit into Strategic Goals, Force Management, Force size, Fleet Missions and Fleet Design beyond the purpose of really being the slow floaty turrets, which are rendered ineffective the way ships maneuver and dash around in high speed combat now. I was in a battle with the AI for testing, probably was a good 10-15 minute long battle while I was in a carrier. I had a ridiculous amount of shields but wanted to see how things went. I watched as my poor squadron (just one) ran to the giant AI ship, then the AI dashed to the other side of my carrier, and the fighters slowly followed. Then it dashed away again as they got in range, so again they chased the AI ship. Keep in mind this entire time I was not moving my carrier, so it was just dashing a few Kilometers to each side of my ship. The fighters spent a majority of the battle travelling to their target, firing shots for a second or two, then chasing the ship again. Yes I know I can upgrade the speed of fighters, but that is ridiculous expensive to the build/construction effort, and even then wouldn’t fully solve the problem I think, and would end up up looking silly with dancing super speed fighters. Anyhow as the battle went on, when it broke apart and the pieces that came off didn’t immediately move away, the fighters were able to engage and clean up the mess before going back to the main AI ships. Keep in mind this entire time, the AI is firing a massive amount of point defense turrets at my fighters. After about 7 minutes the xsotan showed up, and things got even more fun. Anyhow 10-15 minutes after battle start, everything was dead. Two things were apparent: With all ships having the ability to dash (afterburn) -This particular combat behavior of dashing to and from is common in most NPC ships- Fighters need the ability to more effectively pursue their targets. Second, I only lost 3 fighters, yes thats right...3. Maybe 4 at most. That is not an acceptable TTK for fighters from a large fleet of xsotan with point defense ships and the AI’s point defenses. TTK for fighters probably would have been faster I will admit if it had FLAK guns and not just PD chainguns. If fighters really are just a flavor thing, then I would say just Hard cap the damage they could ever do per difficulty and be done with it then. Another fighter suggest in next thread.

Engines, thrust, maneuverability (Strategic Assumption, Goal, Force Management, Fleet Mission and Fleet Design): Another major contributor to bigger is better is how thrust works. I know originally you had it set to surface area – which makes perfect sense as that is essentially how it works IRL to an extent (thrust is function of surface area and not volume - to an extent-), however players quickly found a way to abuse it. You fixed the abuse, but in turn another problem still occurs: Super MEGA Star Destroyer interceptor fighter ships!!! WHEEEE!!!!! This I think could be difficult because some players are going to want the more maneuverable fast super big ships like star trek, and others like myself, are going to want have the lumbering capitals of Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica. Not to say star trek is not great (please no Star Wars vs star trek posts – I am a fan of both) it is just personal preference of how I want my space battleships to slug it out. I think a solution can be found for both sides as this comes down to player preference. Quick Anecdote here: I have read people defending bigger is better for speed and maneuverability, and it appears a majority are against bigger ALWAYS being better, but don’t necessarily want their Star Destroyer or Spirit of fire to become a worthless brick either to which I agree. Some on this forum have posted that bigger ships having faster acceleration, top speed, and maneuverability is more realistic – which (Given current understanding of even currently plausible -not theoretical or sci-fi conjecture- Engine technology and how traditional thrust works aside) short of mass or space time countering technology this is simply incorrect, – and I don’t believe those technologies are intended to be in this game; feel free to correct if I am wrong. Compression, Moment of Inertia, centrifugal, and centripetal forces would destroy a massive ship trying to turn or accelerate fast. A massive “traditional” engine able to actually output the necessary thrust to rapidly accelerate a massive starship would cause a large compression force on the midsection of the ship without adequate superstructure. However the superstructure would begin to start taking up a larger internal part of the ship resulting in diminishing returns in useful space as the ship grew larger, and short of a technology, or metallurgical jump would still have a max size before becoming impractical. Limiting your acceleration to lower Gs or less than 1 G would be a common behavior/consequence - AKA bigger moves more slowly and carefully so it doesn't rip itself apart. A quick example is our lack of ability to build a space elevator. In 1 G of gravity we are prevented from building a practical space elevator without a technology leap (such as mass production of carbon nano-tube). This example is relevant because of Einstein’s Equivalence Principle. Now apply multiple Gs of acceleration to that scenario which is what a lot of ships I see accelerate at in Avorion. Now Compression forces can be countered a few ways *using known technologies* on starships, such as length running spinal mount engines, or additional engines along the length of the ship, or building a SPACE PANCAKE, but moment of inertia, and centrifugal forces would be a lot more difficult if the thing turns, requiring a complex of engines dotting the surface of the ship, and even then due to law of cubed (Which doesn’t scale exact due to how spaceships with human living space etc work) could become an issue. Especially if the ship is also accelerating or decelerating on top of that. Anyhow I have digressed enough, back on topic. (Happy to have a discussion on this in a separate thread or pm - however please have a source if you would like to tell me I am wrong, happy to be wrong and learning something new then just keep being wrong :) , but please have a source, no armchair professor generals who think they heard something different from their uncle who new guy who's cat's groomer applied to be astronaut once please. If I am wrong, I will update this feedback/suggestion thread) PROBLEM: Super Mega Star Destroyer Interceptor fighters WHEEEE!!! (Really, I just like typing this) Possible Solutions Diminishing returns on acceleration, braking and maneuverability tied to the mass or volume of the ship. (Maybe you already have this to an extent with how physics work in game?) Keep the engines as they are, and just make it so at some point, your ship being bigger just won’t allow you to be very maneuverable. Sure, your top speed can still be ridiculous but it will take a while to get there and forever to stop, so it’s a “use at your own risk”. I doubt we would see massive ships doing this often. I think this perfectly “emulates” thrust being a factor of surface with what I hope to be a relative simple calculation using the system you have in place to prevent abuse. - Allow special modules that counteract a percentage of mass to a maximum number. This will allow players to fly around all nimbly pimbly in their Defiant or Bird of Prey, but at sacrifice to shield, power or weapons capability (upgrade slot use) vs a heavy ship. Similar to star trek ships in general, “Typically” they only have a set number of phaser banks and torpedo launchers, but they still have the advantage of maneuverability – to me an elegant balance. (current engine bonus modules may be enough for this.) - Reason a percentage of mass up to a maximum number for new module: if you have it as only a percentage, it will be abused; players will build the super armor reaper spikes of imminent death that are 10^100 Mass of oganite heavy armor, make all 15 upgrades percentage based mass negation and ram everyone. - Why a percentage to a maximum number and not a set number: So it can benefit smaller ships, but not be overpowered. Otherwise you will see small to medium ships with 1 dinky engine move around like a speed ball on crack because 99% of its mass is negated by one module. - Lastly, this creates an additional need for the engine module. Strait cap of ship acceleration and maneuverability tiered through either slot size or volume size. Example, No caps until you get 6 or 7 slots then 7th slot, has a maximum acceleration and Rad/s rotation speed. - Allow configuration of multiplier of standard mass of thrusters/engines. - Allowing this, means that if you change it so thrusters/engines are 50 to 200% of mass, means you can directly control the returns thrusters give ships, however this is static, and negatively affects smaller and early iron ships, but would provide a quick dirty option that players can control. - You could use this as a server option that enables scaling that starts at a set number of upgrades curving to the maximum specified in this variable for server config. This would allow a customizable scaling solution. - Leave engine physics alone and enable ship damage and morale damage if you exceed acceleration thresholds on ships beyond a certain size. - Make it so up to a certain size, or acceleration point, or a mix of both, ships have an innate anti-g field, however after a certain size, anti-g blocks or modules are needed to counter ship damage and morale damage are required. - I would say not to link this to speed. - This adds a unique mechanic that enforces the use afterburners on large ships as detrimental. Represents a good emergency maneuver etc. that would strain the ship, but something you do in an emergency to avoid death. - Modules would need to have a negative percentage to power generation, this represents re-routing ship power to a g-force compensators or similar. - same as if it is a block, should require a massive amount of power. Of course link the scaling of all the above to the material used on the engine, example: avorion could go onto a 7 upgrade ship before diminishing returns, while iron after 2 upgrades has the detriment to Acceleration. The return of the need for a fleet from a combat perspective: If someone is flying a fast-nimble ship that keeps dodging in and out of range of your giga destroyer, you need a couple smaller ships in your fleet that can run him down, or seriously amped fighters. Don’t get me wrong, you can be outmaneuvered by a smarter player still (with tons of engine upgrades and circling back with your picket ships too far out to help, but you in turn could set all the picket ships on a perimeter around yours, and change them out, allowing shields to recharge.) At this point it becomes player vs player in a fun way, not just, “I’m BIGGER MWHAHAHA ROFL STOMP!!!!” - Bigger will not always mean better: Smaller ships can disengage easier than their big brothers, (Bigger ships can too by jumping, in theory they would have the tank to wait till they can align, charge and jump) - Smaller ships could stay in blind spots and continue to engage large ships - Medium to medium-large could have the maneuverability and shield advantage (if considering my shield suggestion) if built right, though the bigger slower ship may have the shield, armor and stacks of turrets to still hold their own. - This also will come into play with spinal mount weapons – where smaller to medium ships can more easily bring spinals to bear, and super massive capitals may need to rely on turrets, or if they do have spinals, (Qaud Barreled MAC anyone?) may not be able to bring them to bear fast, but…it would be your own fault if you didn’t move out of that big ol barrels way. Though I would like to see spinals at lower levels of the game- maybe oganite, or even xanion. - If you are being outmaneuvered by a player, you need to consider retreat from the system, not just a dash – this can make pvp fights less aggravating, as smaller ships won’t have to just chase big ships flying backwards. Nothing more irritating than the infamous “reverse turret” maneuver in every fight. - Especially if the large ship has the range on you, and you can never catch it. (You are addressing the fact that players can’t just dash away from NPC since they will chase now which is great.) - This interacts with suggested shield changes, so bigger and bigger ships become even slower and heavier since they will start relying on armor. This represents a diminishing return reach a point where practicality becomes a concern. Return of the fleet: - Your large ships are not going to be able to dart across the sector to assist that ship sending a distress call, in turn you may have to rely on smaller escort ships with the speed to get there quickly, or fighters. YAY an actual sensible need for fighters besides “Cool…” (may require fighters to have some sort of ability to boost) - Freighter or supply ships in the fleet. Now with weight suddenly being an issue, you may want to have a dedicated freight ship so your own combat ship isn’t too vulnerable or sluggish from that big ol cargo bay, and can still get around a system quickly. Which could lead into the next point. - Need for fleets to protect mission critical ships, (especially true if you see spinal mounts) player fighters could catch that ship that may be too slow and destroy it. Or even pirates, depending on their maneuverability vs your ships. - A player may forgo the large ship completely and just a have a fleet of medium ships that can zoom around with them for cheaper. Strategy, Tactics, Commitment to the fight. - If you’re in a massive ship, your decisions are going to matter more. When your sensors cannot handle the number of signals about to enter the system, you need to deeply consider your options because you’re not just going to boost away in a massive ship to recharge you shields - which are now also limited. You’re going to have to jump, which can take time, which if you take too long, is going to cost you your ship. (plays well with my shield suggestion as well) – this amplifies in systems where there is hyperspace jamming, or if players can implement hyperspace jamming. – careful balance may be required to make it so it is not a frustrating mechanic - Fighters have more purpose. If your engaging a faster enemy ship, or one that is good at staying in your blind spot (big engines on back of your ship) you may need those fighters to cover your aft. Or you could build smart and have turrets on that aft, it’s all up to the player. - Fighters also will be a bigger threat to you as a bigger ship, you’re not going to be able to outrun them while giggling gleefully at the waste of resources they are. - If you decide to fly the giga carrier – you may have a hard time bringing your quad barreled auto-loaded super mac to bear on the target. You’re going to need to rely on other ships in the fleet to use theirs for that nice dps spike. However when you do bring them to bear…I imagine there will be smiles. Or as a player with a couple smaller fast ships, you could engage much larger ships, and possibly for cheaper, and still win. - Inversely, a couple enemies with smaller ships loaded with spinal mount weapons could be a threat to you, you’re going to have to consider how you respond carefully or jump… - You’re going to have to consider your options more carefully also when engaging pirate fleets, faction wars, or even pirate missions when you jump into the sector where you may be surrounded. - Ai ships will be able to more easily hit you, you can’t just strafe or boost and come back to have them miss their shots when your a massive ship. This means more effective DPS against players with super ships. - The end of the circling dance of death capital engagements. Fighters doing it is one thing, but watching two capital ships do it is…it feels wrong. Even in star trek the ships flew around each other. Not dancing while facing each other - even it makes more sense for vector physics. - Boss fights coupled with shield changes could be a lot more challenging and/or engaging. Repair ships could matter more. - No quick retreat of your capital to “shield recharge” then burn back to resume the fight. (One disadvantage would be the fact that depending on the number of players and power of spinal weapons, one needs to be careful to not encourage a meta game of roving bands of light player ships loaded with spinals – this would need to be considered when balancing appropriately when ships start to become very slow, and power of spinal ships as well as energy requirements to keep little ships from spinal spamming – or a upgrade or size requirement) Though it seems you have this in hand with them taking a lot more slots to use. While super big ships will still have advantage of max turrets, ever growing fighter capacity, massive hit points and still able to add more shields, they won’t be the end all be all that they are now. You as a player are going to have to make sacrifices to have that “Presence” in a sector. Massive ships will be the brute force answer, and anything smaller would have the option to be maneuverable, etc. Keep in mind I am not sure where that maneuverability drop should occur. Possibly the “typical” mass/volume around what you(or on average – maybe using normal hull blocks) find around 8 upgrades, (not including upgrade (computer core blocks) which can skew this). But you say, “Then how am I ever going to kill that faster nimble ship!!!!, ITS NOT FAIR!!!” Well, they aren’t likely to be able to kill you either, it’s a draw (falcon vs star destroyer anyone?). However, as the player with the bigger ship with more eggs in the basket, you could get lucky (or have some skills), and land some rail gun or pulse weapon shots on the engines, or have fighters that land some shots on those engines – hit scan will still have the advantage depending on the size of your turrets. Keep in mind that small ship will have made some serious sacrifices in modules etc to have that large speed and maneuverability, most likely they will have less turrets. The absolute one thing that I see some games do that to me is a failure, is they try to balance it so a small little ship can take out the giga titan. In almost every case this really should never happen. Sure if there is some amazing player skill on the little ships side, the larger ship could decide to jump, but honestly if that big ship has 100+ turret, and 100+ fighters, the likely hood of making it through the 2nd pass should be close to null. Sure the little ship may be able to fly by full boost and get away, but never should it be able to turn around and engage and expect to live to tell the tale. On the other hand, the massive ship shouldn’t be nigh invulnerable either.

I apologize in advance as this is essentially a giant wall of text (this thing spans 4 posts), and can be seen as a feedback/suggestion thread. If you are going to just reply with TL/DR then please don’t unless you are responding to a section, it doesn’t contribute to the conversation otherwise, I know its too long already :) So I have been reading through the forums and have seen a ton of posts of suggestions concerning engines, fleet mechanics, weapons, and the lean towards bigger is better. I have been thinking on this and have some ideas/suggestions, and hope to open some discussion on it. Some of it is from other’s suggestions, which I have added into my suggestion thread. Quick Disclaimer: I really enjoy this game, and I think a large part of its charm is how open it is, so one person’s idea of how they think the game should be will not necessarily match someone else’s, but they can simply just build their own ships to match their own idea of how they want it to play. Personally, as a hobbyist writer I do not like it when people tell me how they think my stories should go, but do like when people bounce ideas off me, usually from that I further formulate my own ideas, so I hope this post is seen as nothing more than list of ideas and concept discussion that koonschi can use to have even better ideas. In summary: Its your vision, but hopefully you can gleam some ideas from it. I am going to start with the biggest influence of all aspects of the game, however all my suggestions tie together: (special note, while I know logistics can affect some of what I am bringing up, I am ignoring that due to Avorion not taking into account logistics beyond personnel and torpedoes– ammo, fuel, etc) Considerations: When I am posting I am taking several things into consideration - I have taken this list from a Naval Analyst who summed it up nicely: Strategic Assumptions Strategic Goals Fleet missions Fleet Design Force Size Force Management Shields (Strategic Assumption, Goal and Fleet Design): Shields change a lot of things because all of human history is pretty much our ability to destroy almost always exceeding our ability to defend; our nature to adapt and overcome. Thus the saying “The best defense is a good offense.” Its why we protect mission critical assets with escorts. Think WWII fleets protecting carriers, or supply ships. The goal is to destroy whatever the threat is before it can get to its target. Another example is the Phalanx system, or sea whiz (CIWS) as some US Navy peeps call it. It’s a multi barreled active radar anti-fighter, anti-missile defense system. (Ground version used to protect against artillery.) It destroys the missiles or shells before they can reach whatever it is they are protecting. However it can be overwhelmed, and there is a “chance” things can get through. We see this in game with Point Defense against Torpedoes, which I absolutely love. Shields however are different. They are what I would call an “absolute defense”. This changes the dynamic. Take that same WWII fleet, and apply to a space fleet with shields. Well now with shields, you do not need a surrounding escort to eliminate any chance of threats reaching their target. A military is going to invest in what it know WILL protect an asset as oppose to something that “may”. In the case of shields it simply has to survive long enough till the threat is destroyed. Not sure it will survive long? SLAP MOAR SHIELDS ON IT!!! Now all you have to do is wait till the giga-class super battleship next to it wipes out all the enemies. No need for any escort beyond that to prevent penetrations through a “defense screen”. – Not saying there wouldn’t be escorts if shields were present, but it would eliminate a portion of the need for them as well as certain aspects of point defense – all depending on how shields work too of course. I know this is a bit of an over simplification, but I feel it fits. I also feel the Dev has a good handle on this as he has torpedoes that can Penetrate shields, and also the module that hardens shields for large shield point and charge time costs. The same principle applies to fighter dynamics. The Yamato was destroyed by US air power. Such a concern were fighters that they went from 24 AA guns to 162 AA guns (this is not emplacement count, which could accommodate up to 4 guns). This large amount of AA still didn’t save it. Battlegroups would have cruisers and other support ships around to provide additional AA fire, thereby creating a “defense screen” for other ships. (Special note, this added to the Yamato’s demise, where the multiple cruisers and support ships with additional AA guns were not present or destroyed prior to when it was finally sunk) With shields, again this becomes less necessary. I as a player love the idea of a fleet with escorts, some providing anti-fighter defense, and some as additional firepower, etc. However the truth is, it’s not really all that necessary from a mechanics point of view, why? Shields is one of them. No single fighter (in this game) is a threat to a mission critical ship because you can stack more shields on it. Not enough shields? Shield upgrade and boom, you have a near impenetrable box. (unless they have 120 fighters with overpowered weapons, in which case balance drastically swings the other way – more on that later ( I never see the AI have this though). Some players forgo armor and hull completely because they can just stack shields and some integrity fields and be done with it. Nothing wrong with this, as it can look cool or functional, but I think like with anything, it should be a design choice with vulnerabilities. I see some great answers to this, such as rail guns and the pulse weapons. Pulse weapons can penetrate shields, and thus return the need for some “layered defenses” but the DPS is fairly low, and big system blocks with integrity fields can likely tank it long enough to be a balance. I think railguns are great for needing a form of “layered defense” PROBLEM In summary: Shield’s remove the need for “defensive screens,” and “Layered Defenses” and contribute to BIGGER IS BETTER. (Partially resolved with Shield pen torpedoes and things like tesla and plasma weapons which has bonuses against shields.) Possible solution ideas: Diminishing returns on shield count: Using interpolation math, y=1/F, or exponent functions of less than 1. (Some math guys can confirm that, I may have that wrong.) From a lore perspective, you can just say that the nature of shields cause this affect Bonus module idea: You could have a special module that lessens this diminishing return. – though current shield upgrades would likely be enough. Exponential power demands: Make it so the shields require exponential amounts of power as they get past a certain point. Could use interpolation math on this too – or even tie the power requirement per shield to volume. From a lore perspective, more power (or exponential power past a certain point) required to cover larger and larger ships Power modules could play more into the game besides just adding power blocks, and modules that give % of shield in exchange % of power need to be more carefully considered by players. A variation of this idea: You could have power requirements related to volume, and the shield blocks related to points? Or Shield blocks a mix of both in addition to power requirements for volume. Diminishing return on shield based on upgrades/volume: Tie in the return on shield blocks to upgrade slots. Lore perspective, more shield modules required to cover more volume of the ship for same shield strength – like density. I am not as big of a fan of this one because it could lead to people cutting a few units of volume off their ship to go down one upgrade slot and having way more hitpoints – depending on the curve set for this. (You could also mix A and B) Benefits to suggestion: Bigger will not always be better, my other suggestions will come into play for this later. As an example a 15 upgrade super ship with lots of shield blocks and all turret upgrades, may in fact have less shields than say an 11 upgrade ship with one or 2 shield upgrade modules. Unless the 15 Upgrade ship is super huge – trying to increase shield numbers by sheer volume of shield blocks as opposed to upgrades-, but if that is the case, its cost (resource and power consumption) would become near exponential as you get further diminishing returns. Super large ships may consider more armor since after a certain point as it would become cheaper (crew, power, resource, and mass wise) per hitpoint than shields. - Great in lore explanation as to why space stations don’t pack more shields, or if they do, why they wouldn’t be in the billions. - Encouragement to have other small ships in fleet with shields, and not pack it all into one ship. - Possibly help the balance point of endgame, whereas the answer to the end game will not be simply a bigger ship with MOAR SHIELDS!!!! AI ships with more omicron could become scary since you cannot simply shield tank everything. This could in turn encourage either large heavily armored ships, or smaller more nimble ships to dodge fire. Maneuverability is also Ina way an absolute defense - which segways into the next section.

I apologize as I will likely come off as a bit of a devil's advocate, and I still admire the game, put a lot of hours into it, and have taken a break myself and have come back due to life reasons etc, but 1100 hours of entertainment for the cost of this game is in my opinion, a pretty good trade off. Considering I pay just about the same cost if not more to go see a movie with popcorn and a large drink for 2 hours of entertainment. There have been steady improvements, and why not a Zerg rush of changes, I think a lot of them have been pretty meaningful. Not to mention, so far in my experience a pretty damn good community. Hope to see your return in a year meet expectations!

Sorry I meant increase likelihood of running into NPCs with fighters, their strength etc, I need cannon fodder to test against :) Maybe the Xsotan option for fighter carrier will be enough.

I have been away for over a year due to some family medical stuff but as I pick back up I find this which is awesome. So awesome job Hammel. I do have a question, is there a way to increase likely hood of fighters spawning? Maybe some different aspects of fighters could be configured? I know a lot is still locked out from Lua, but wasn't sure what the extent was. Want to do some extensive fighter testing, and would be easier if fighters weren't so rare to run into.

Implementing a spawn cool down timer as well as a ludicrously armed response would also work. The problem being is if your in let's say iron tier territory and you have trinium, nothing strong enough is going to respond. Unless you had a fleet labeled "Third party response team" or "mercenary enforcement" that spawned with either oganite level tech or scanned player ship for material and their highest material is the tier the enforcement fleet shows up at, or better, one higher, with the exception that it cannot be avorian. Would encourage hit and run. If you defeat the mercenary group, one more civilian ship shows up, and then after you kill it, all legal traffic to the system stops, and waves upon waves of local faction fleets keep coming as if there is a faction war. Probably a bit complicated though, when you leave system, starts a timer on player before system resets. Like pirates or xsotan, the fleets aren't saved, but immediately respawn upon player return if they return before the timer runs out. Can't exploit for money except for twice for a cooldown period, but a fun way to declare war on a faction in a way. Maybe even have it so during that cool down, their fleets have a chance to spawn on you like pirates or xsotan. Could create a risk vs reward system.

This is fantastic that someone is tackling this. I have not tried it yet, but I had a couple quick questions: Is this mod able to handle carriers and their fighters? I could probably look through the code and get a rough idea...maybe...but figured I would just ask you directly 😉

Spoken like a true professional who works with computers for a living ;D

I am certainly happy with seeking being the optional aspect. Your weapons could very easily be a re-skin of in game missile but with different attributes, and thus I think could very easily be added into the game. And while your certainly not wrong with shields, integrity fields and ftl being akin to space magic, I feel those are more grounded. Now my feelings on these weapons are outside game mechanics and discussion. My pov on the weapons being guided below is purely outside the game and thus superfluous, but hopefully a fun discussion: I think my issue stems from the tracking/ turning: the fact you have something that traditionally cannot change trajectory, changing trajectory without adequate handwavium. If you have the ability to remotely manipulate energy weapons, then you should be also manipulating the enemies energy weapons so they cannot hit you, which then comes down to a black and white winner take all victory of who has more ability to manipulate the others weapons and overwhelm their opponent. Which means if you fire and none of your shots hit, you wait and fire when the enemy fires (to see of their manipulation systems are at capacity while they fire). If none of your shots still hit, and one of theirs does, then you know you would lose absolutely and simply withdraw. Who ever has more weapons/energy manipulators wins with zero loss. This is slightly simplified and could be more complex with strategies or surprise tactics, but I feel for the most part, holds true. We could go into ECM discussions, such as maybe your weapons have some sort of frequency that is required to manipulate it that the enemy doesn't have, but then, couldn't they analyze it, find the frequency and still do it? If you have technology to remotely manipulate energy, wouldn't you have the technology to analyze it? We could easily get into Star trek levels of piled on handwavium, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, could be a fun intereaction such as missiles and active defense vs shields, but if done wrong can get overly tedious and feel like nothing more than trying to hold on to something for the sake of "cool". Which works in the shows since they never try to explain it and it's one of their primary weapons. The other part of tracking energy weapons I struggle with is if you can remotely manipulate energy, that same ability could be used directly against the enemy. Re-directing engine exhaust back into the ship, manipulating or crushing shields or even hull, maybe even screwing with biological or technological functiona on board the ship. Even backfiring weapons before they even leave the barrel, I could go on. You could say it's simply blocked by shields, but that doesn't easily dismiss everything. There is also the possibility that the energy projectile itself can be programmed to seek a target, or like old school torpedoes, change direction after a set amount of time. However if your programming energy to then also change it's trajectory, your dealing with technology (programming energy) that I feel is way beyond torpedoes and cannons, and very easily into the forerunner and even pre-cursur levels of space magic and near invulnerability. As I have written this, a couple cool handwavium reasons came to mind for why you could get the weapon to act the way it does, and goes around or negates a lot of my points. So I am probably a bit more ok with them now...lol

While I feel this game is about players playing whatever sci-fi trope / style suits their fancy, so I can not be wholly against this; I do feel like this should be locked behind either researching combo of weapons to get this weapon or some special setting to set whether or not enemies can or cannot get this weapon. Reason being,:while I do enjoy the anime and such that use some of these tracking energy weapons or bending beams, I find they don't fit to my tastes as they they just don't sit right with me. They are akin to "space magic" from my point of view or energy torpedoes. Now this isn't to start a flame war to say whether or not they are good, bad or suck, as I have no opinion other than I would prefer them to not be in my games, and I know many who share my view, and I know some who like them, otherwise you guys wouldn't post asking for them :) Because of that, if they ever did get implemented I would want the option to keep the enemy from having them.

I know Koonschi is not always on the forums much, but a while ago I did send him a message with some information on bots that we're running rampant on his forums and he took care of them right away. To me this is how fans can help and shows he cares but probably is tight on time. Startups are hard. I also gave some feed back on community managemt then. I would have offered some help as it is part of what I do for a living myself (free as I do not live in Germany), but I had just found out the wife (at only 33) had cancer ( hopefully I didn't sound like too much of a #$&k when I sent him the message) so work, kids and her were my priority. I have been lurking for the last 10 months though as I did enjoy the game that much. I had even dabbled in a little bug hunting and troubleshooting with hammmel who is pretty active on here as I am big fan of the game. Anyhow, I was just wanting to say, while not always on, Koonschi does check these forums and makes an effort to read the suggestion threads even if he doesn't always reply. And I can attest that replying in a professional, measured manner, can take time. Such as above where he stated it took a while to reply.

Haven't been on or available due to life issues but have still been following this. Just wanted to say, "Great Work, and Congratulations on another release!"

At some point beginning pirates seem to have gotten some sort of buff. Used to be maybe 10 max, or very rarely rare drop a spawn of 30 omicron for beginning pirates, now they normally have 60+ frequently past 100 which is enough to vaporize a beginning player ship

Integrity fields act as a multiplier (x10 If I remember correctly) of a "blocks" hitpoints, BUT NOT of your "ships" hit points. This is a dumbed down version but gives you the idea: So a ship with 90 HP, you add a block with 10HP. Ship total is now 100 HP. Somebody blasts your ship with a giga cannon (or more commonly we hit an asteriod, but when friends ask....it's always a giga cannon) and hits that block; block is destroyed but ship is left is left with 90hp. If that block has an integrity field, the block now has 100hp. If you clip an asteriod now on that block (err I mean get hit by the giga cannon), that blocks HP is equivalent to you ships HP, so your ship HP is reduced to 0 and you go BOOM. So, basically it is possible to have more blocks worth of HP than your total ship HP due to integrity fields. Great for making little detail blocks being more resilient, bad for armor layer blocks, or if you have designed your ship with the idea of losing chunks to save overall ship HP deductions from hits.