TESL4

Really if it were an explosive charge it would still cut through hull blocks too then the explosive charge would detonate at the penetration level. So I guess in my original post I should have changed that. Would be a great weapon for sniping important blocks like shields and generators. I like the purely kinetic idea as well, the only reason I'd want it to cut all the way through was so the firing animation could go through your ship making it look like your ship was getting skewered. Edit: I still like the idea of just giving lightning greatly increased spread too. Essentially the same as having damage falloff at long range

Some interesting ideas. I like the idea of the damage falloff for them. The damage falloff could even be reversed making them more of a sniper weapon, making players want to close the distance to reduce the damage. Changing them as more of an EWAR weapon disabling systems is not a bad idea, but it will need a damage reduction to keep it balanced. I'm not too sure how well this would work. While it sounds really cool, it would be a bit unfair to have railguns have this much flexibility, all the other weapons would become obsolete I think. Would be a great idea for a mod! Also, I have noticed that railguns are not as potent on the beta branch as they once were, but still do extremely well against hull, especially with antimatter damage. Perhaps they have already been balanced.

The only real difference between a railgun projectile and a cannon projectile is the velocity at which the projectile is traveling, so it would make sense imo that a railgun projectile would use an explosive charge once piercing armor/hull blocks. A cannon projectile usually won't have enough velocity to pierce through thick armor (especially on the large scale giant space ships) so its explosive charge would detonate on the surface or within the first block. Of course you don't want to simulate all the real world physics of it, so a good representation of this would be for railguns to penetrate the outer layers of armor and hull, where a cannon shot is just applied at the surface it hits. I was using the term pierce as essentially a bullet hole through a piece of paper. A purely kinetic projectile would just slice through a certain amount of the ship unless it hits something volatile which could cause an explosion. The amount of damage it would do wouldn't be much considering that railgun projectiles are usually much smaller than cannon projectiles in order to reach their high speeds. The damage to the hull/armor would be a hole and slight deformation around where the projectile went through. You could of course have a super massive railgun projectile, but that would be more of a doomsday weapon as a super massive projectile hitting a ship at a high speed would punch a large hole through the ship, vibrate it to pieces, and knock it back substantially. So Perhaps the best representation of a railgun with an explosive charge would be to do ~10% damage through every block it pierces then full damage to the block where the explosive charge would detonate. Another option if you wanted a kinetic only projectile would be to have it pierce through the whole ship doing damage to each block it passes through. The damage of the railgun would need to be drastically reduced though (~10% of value currently) and only do extra damage when hitting volatile blocks. Shields might could use a nerf, but with enough plasma damage applied it may not need the nerf. Plasma damage type torpedoes are extremely good at taking out shields last I checked as well. Hull and armor still needs a buff though, imo. Antimatter damage absolutely lethal if your shields go down thanks to hull HP being much harder to build up and less rewarding since armor adds a ton of mass.

Can confirm

While I get the appeal of stuffing as much shield and hyperspace into a ship as possible and having a thin armor membrane as the exterior of the ship, in the games current state that type of build is much stronger than going for a hull tank since shields, hyperspace cores, generators, ect (even needing a larger volume) will still provide much more value to the ship than armor and especially hull. Hull and armor tanking is currently vastly inferior than shield tanking because the HP density of shield blocks. Also, shields regenerate much quicker and even have systems which boost their HP way more than hull polarizers ever could. There are even exceptional shield systems which boost the shields back up 35% when depleted. Given enough shields you can make your shields impenetrable with the impenetrable shield system and still maintain a massive shield tank. I'm not claiming shields need a nerf, hull could just use a buff, especially if armor is separate. As far as the explanation of realism of the railguns the charges shot could contain an explosive charge which auto-detonates after piercing through armor. And for unarmored ships, because these railgun charges travel so fast, and the projectile is small they simply pierce through hull of the ship leaving a small hole doing no real damage BUT the charge still detonates doing the damage. You could also make it so where blocks not affected by integrity fields DO take piercing damage due to the hull of the ship being less resistant to overall damage. Just a thought

Also, you can go to all of those "help we are under attack by pirate" pop ups. Look for the free the slaves mission as well and when you don't ask for a reward you get a pretty hefty chunk of reputation. I'm not sure about the number of Xsotan near the core. I would expect there would be more the closer you get though.

I was just thinking HP pool that way ships could be more salvageable. Might be easier on performance as well. If railguns were made to only penetrate armor, you couldn't just build an "armor ship". 1 hit from a railgun would be devastating.

One way is to bribe them every hour, giving them credits or ores. This should work in getting you to neutral where you can start trading with them and increasing it that way. You can also help them out in wars with other factions you don't care about. That pretty much assures you maximum status last time I checked. I thought if you got the final blow on an Xsotan you would gain faction standing? Is this not the case anymore? The wiki needs to be updated

The idea of having no hull HP might still be risky, but I do really like the idea of having to protect key blocks in order to prevent ship destruction. I'm torn between liking it and not. I feel like a ship build like "The AI" would be very good if this happened. Lots of small segments of the ship that are self sustaining (crew, power generation, thrusters, ect). Perhaps (values as an example): - Keep armor separate from hull - Armor HP is per individual block, allowing it to protect the hull and key components. - Armor block HP values are increased 3x with integrity field generators - Hull block HP values are increased 2x with integrity field generators - Overall Hull HP of non volatile or armor blocks is significantly higher (lets say 10x to 20x) - Scoring a critical hit ie: Destroying a block that is considered "volatile", deals 25x to 50x the HP of the block to hull HP - Semi volatile blocks like thrusters and engines do 4x to 5x of the HP of the block to hull HP - Ship still dies when HP goes to zero This could be a way to incorporate a more ship operability approach? This way spreading out hundreds of volatile blocks wouldn't really work as hitting one would cause massive damage and it would be hard to properly protect every one of them. A single massive generator wouldn't be wise either, because you could just slowly destroy blocks until you reach the generator which when destroyed would instantly kill the remainder of the ship. Thoughts? I didn't realize that railguns did that now. I remember not too long ago one of my battleships only had 3 railguns but the 3 of them would 1 shot volley any NPC ship once to hull and 2 shot volley the three ships in that boss fight. They only had a base damage of about 9000 as well so I was seeing numbers in the 100k range when all 3 hit. What made it worse was it was a 6 round burst fire with a crazy fire rate.

Having armor inside the ship would still be very beneficial as it could protect the important blocks like the generator and shield blocks when the outer hull is destroyed, especially if you were wanting to go with the system's loss approach. My only concern would be hiding hundreds of small support systems throughout the ship requiring relentless pelting to the point where you have to essentially destroy ever block in the ship for it to finally be destroyed. I like the integrity strength to boost armor as well. I suggested that very idea in my big comprehensive suggestion post I made. In my eyes, bigger should not mean better. Sure, in a head on head fight a 15 slot ship should be able to take on several 5 slot ships if it is a fight to the death. What makes small ships competely useless is they can't even attempt gurilla warfare and making attack runs on the large ship because they are faster and thanks to their abundance in systems can easily equip a couple of engine mods making them even more insane while still having the system slots availible for turrets, shields, ect. I'm not suggesting nerfing their speed to the point where they are esentially a station that barely move, but there needs to be something that changes the way max speed and acceleration is calculated in order to prevent these issues. Having OP turrets also contributes to the problem because you can stack so many on a large 15 slot ship, that it can nearly 1 shot any 5 slot ship passing by no matter the tank. I haven't seen any turret factory turn out those numbers on the beta branch (which is what is coming to the game next update), but I haven't looked thoroughly enough to justify that statement. Based on the loot quality I have been getting the wepons seem to all be fairly low and balanced with a clear line between quality levels and sizes. The railguns may have lower overall dps, but its the penetration affect that makes them OP. Sure they have lower "DPS" but when they penetrate 8 times you multiply that 9k dps by 8 and end up with 72k dps per turret assuming no armor is hit. They are also hitscan which means it always hits whatever it is pointed at. (same with lightning). I'm sure the devs will get most of the weapon damages balanced before 1.0 though. I sure hope that turrets in the core aren't weaker than the xanion region too lol. I mostly mess around in creative untill the final release, so I don't venture into the core much. I just stay around the xanion/trinium area to test builds agianst relevent ships as xanion and trinium are my favorite two building materials.

That -50% penalty for independent targeting should be removed too... but that's what we have mods for I guess.

I agree that is already a very good game, and based on the changes I'm seeing on the Beta, I believe it will be one of the most complete recent games upon launch. I too will be buying the DLCs provided they give enough new content based upon the price. I'm very content overall with the game, but think it could still really benefit from balancing and TLC, weather it be before 1.0 or shortly after. In regards to your statement about the bolters and combat balance, the OP bolters you have are rather irrelevant now, since they seem have fixed the craziness with the turret RNG. I've been playing in the most recent version of the beta branch and can confirm that turrets are more consistent now without the random nutty modifiers or stats. If you and your friends use only turrets received from the new beta branch, you will find that if your friends with the large and tanky ships were to equip lightning turrets with plasma damage, and railguns with antimatter damage, there will be no real contest. Small ships will not be able to get within range of the longer ranged weaponry for long, and they can't really kite either due to large ships having the ability to have a much higher thrust and top speed. They are much more balanced in beta, but still are the "meta". As I've so adamantly proclaimed in this thread already, I don't think a range reduction is the right method to take, but instead change the mechanics of these two weapons. Lightning should be given a very high spread making their ability to hit small and some medium sized ships, especially at range, more difficult. Railguns should also be changed to pierce armor blocks to do a flat damage to hull underneath (armor blocks shouldn't contribute to hull HP, but instead have individual HP and serve to actually protect the hull and components underneath). The thrust and speed issue of large vs small ships is probably the biggest change that needs to happen in my honest opinion. Bigger ships are just plain and simple better with their only drawback being the are bigger and easier to hit because the are faster, accelerate more, can be boosted in speed even further thanks to more system slots, tankier, more potential damage output (more turrets). They even have a better hyperspace reach in most cases thanks to being able to run a larger hyperspace block volume and plenty of system upgrades which can reduce the jump charge time to equivalent to any small ship. I still greatly enjoy the game and think the dev team has done a great job considering the size of the team. I look forward to the balancing to come!

Seems like the turrets get varying damage bonuses to hull/shield which can vary but is shown on the turrets themselves. I'd really like the system to more revolve around resistances and have damage types just be used in different resistance stats. Antimatter would still be great against hull, and plasma shield, but this would be represented in the block's/shield stats. Also some visual indicator of shield resistances would be amazing imo.

It would be nice if the 50% penalty was removed and all turrets were independant. Let the gunners do what they are payed to do... shoot lol. I don't think rail/lightning range nerf is the right move, though. I agree they need to be nerfed, but as previously mentioned here their mechanics should be changed to bring them more in balance with the other weapons. Lightning = much greater spread (especially at long range) and Rails only penetrate armor (which should be seperate from the ships Hull HP). Having lightning with very high spread makes smaller ships and ships at range very hard to hit giving it a more specialized role as a capital/station killer (unless electric damage and asteroid base). Feel free to check out my suggestion post I made about my comprehensive game balance and give me feedback. Agree with everything else in regards to combat balance and the goofy iron turret drops you suggested though.

Are you using or messing with steam mods by any chance? I had this issue when switching to/from the beta branch and adding/removing different mods. I can't remember exactly what I did but once I verified my workshop mods or something it fixed it and I could play on the server again.

There is nothing wrong with damage type gameplay, Pokemon do this and look how big that industry is. I have to strongly disagree with all of your points based on my analysis of obvious game problems that everyone here can see crystal clear within the first day of gameplay, by how you sound it just adds to my diamondstrong belief that it just feels like everyone wants to defend their ability to snipe and be unbeatable to due the range problem..., which makes this game...NOT a game. The fabric of the game mechanics are completely torn down by this issue and the defenders need to move aside for the sake of the games future. The game has NOTHING to fight you back with once you have your lightning and rail cheese. I dont mean to sound like a doctor but... Step one to fixing range problems with lightning and rail is to admit that range with lightning and rail is a problem, this denial harms Avorion. Defending this is what is going to be one of the main causes of people walking out the door, me included and we're fed up of it. Its time to stop the ''i want to keep my godly build'' and change it to ''ok its time to seriously balance this''. There absolutely are issues with me being able to play the game due the games fabric being so torn full of these gamebreaking holes and bugs that right now i cant play because these issues are a showstopper. They frustrate me to the point i cant continue. If by function and work well you mean enemies flying over 300km and disappearing from your HUD because they are so far away is good mechanics, i just....i dont understand why you continue to defend an obvious gamebreaking bug. I have no idea why some of you Defend obvious, proven bugs, youre killing Avorion with even this being a debate, which it shouldnt be. Extra sales does not = faster development speed. In many cases especially in the Indie industry, it can often mean the total opposite. Some decide to keep developing, some take the money and RUN. With a AAA game company youre almost garauntee'd further development, but with Avorion...it is not possible for us to know, even if they say they plan to continue, they may not. Nobody knows. 1.0 needs to be stable, and bug free as possible. Currently, it is neither. 27 days left. See how quick these days are ticking by? And we still have denyers blockading the vital changes neccasary. Enough of this Shielding and deflecting, put it aside for vital fixes and changes. Clock is ticking. Are you even reading what I write completely? Please read others posts throughly before responding. And when you disagree, explain WHY exactly that is instead of being closeminded. I don't mind debating the issue, but when you are not giving enough proof for me to believe you and NOT really reading what I'm writing then I find it pointless. Currently, it just seems like you want to toxic flame post because you are upset (which I get). Everything I have suggested will fix the lightning/rail "meta". I have never stated I want to "keep my OP lightning and rails" and I can assure you I want them nerfed. This is you putting words in my mouth, I literally said I want them nerfed because they are OP. I just disagree that nerfing their range is the right choice, because I don't want weapons that all have similar ranges... many railguns I find in the beta branch already have a range barely of 10 km. I ALSO previously stated, the ship speeds need to be changed such that larger ships with the long range weaponry will not be faster than smaller ships which results in the "cat and mouse" 300+ km away from the start. The issue is when these longer range large ships are speeding away tring to get at the optimal range (which it is based on) and the small ship chasing after because of its shorter range. This is why the new AI isn't flawed, just how the game calculate's ship's speed which is also an easy fix. I ALSO never said I dislike the damage type model. I just don't like making all the weapons with similar ranges where the only real difference is infact the damage type. That is far too simplistic for a game with one of the best ship building. You are correct that alot of game companies will take the money and run, and that could be what happens here, who knows? I'd like to think the devs with this game won't but it is a possibility. I just hope that they use the extra money to ensure their game gets fully polished. It doesn't hurt to be optimisitc.

You said it, I am not putting words in your mouth. If you reduce the range of 2 of the 3 long range weapons to equivalent to the other non long-range weapons, then yes all weapons will basically be the same just with different damage types with these two still being OP thanks to the penetration and high damage. As I stated, the mechanics of lightning and rail need to change not their range. As do the mechanics with large ships having a higher base speed than small ships. The NPC ship AI should not ever revert to their old and cumbersome selves, it made the game incredibly boring and easy. There has never been issues with you playing the game, it is functional and it works well mechanically. The only thing "preventing you from plaing" is your gripes with issues which do indeed need resolving, and they have fixed alot of issues already. I'm not saying they are done because there indeed does need to be fixes, which is what they are currently working on. Nearly all "1.0" releases by every single company need patches, do you know why? The answer is because nearly no games are released perfect. This game is already functional and MAGNITUDES more bug and glitch free than any Bethesda game, its not really a contest. This is not a cop out card I'm giving the devs, so far they have continued to fix the game issues and give us new content. Yes its at a slow pace, but when you have such a small team like the devs have... what do you expect? More than likely they can't really afford to hire extra help, and are hoping the extra sells on release will allow them to get help and finish patching up the completed game (content wise).

Wouldn't be a bad idea for a DLC possibly, attack the aliens back!

Hmm the idea of a Z direction is interesting. Perhaps add a material which takes avorion's place on the material list, and once you defeat the WH guardian you can go to a different "Z" dimension which could be the alien's "home systems" and there is nothing but the upgrade Avoion in those systems. It will be incredibly hard to mine because the alien "home systems" will be heavily defended by fleets and defensive stations. Its a cool concept, but idk if it will be implemented with the 1.0 release. Maybe one of the DLCs that they decide to release?

Yeah, some do shield, some do hull, some are supposed to do both. All random chance which you get. Good to know! That makes them slightly more appealing now :) (if they work)

So nerf weapon range. The elephant in the room is Lightning and Rail, some of us have been screaming from the bottom of our lungs for over 2 years to nerf these. The nerf has never happened and these 2 types of weapon are damaging the games potential, Lightning and Rail have been holding Avorion hostage for too long. You cant just design the entire game differently, to revolve around these 2 weapon types. Clearly, the easy fix is to nerf range. DONE. Sure there are other ways of doing things, but 1.0 is March 9th, they no longer have time to redesign the combat for the 50th time. This whole dilly dallying over these issues is costing time and harming the game, these urgent issues need nailing out NOW or it will be too late, the game will launch, and the reviews are going to divebomb because combat is so disfunctional. We need to stop argueing and get these issues SLAMMED DOWN before 1.0 (they ARE in a rush at this point). That deadline is so short, theres no time for us to keep butting heads, we need quick RAPIDFIRE solutions and not to debate ideas for redesigns. Release your game right, THE FIRST TIME. 28 days left... I hope my formatting emits the aura of proper urgency Avorion is currently in, to get these fixes down. 28 days is a blink in the development world. The deadline is not long enough for indecision. You can't just nerf weapon range and expect to be fixed, THAT is what should be obvious. There are meant to be weapons with longer ranges and mechanics for different playstyles. Yes, Lightning and Rails are indeed OP and 100% the meta. But that doesn't you mean you make all the weapons the same and boring with little to no variation. Lightning could be made to be way more inaccurate, especially at long ranges, railguns could be made to pierce armor blocks (doing no damage to armor) and hit the underlying hull underneath doing a FLAT damage with no penetration. Armor should also be sperate from hull, cannon and missile projectile speeds should be raised. I made an indepth post on how all this would work in a suggestion I made. While your idea may be one way to help the game, I, personally do not view it as the right way and here is why, give it a consideration. Railguns would still be overpowered because of the penetration multiplier, and lightning would still also be OP because of its very high damage output. Lightning and rail ships will still dominate in close up fights with the only contender being teslas. Add the slow and cumbersome old AI to the mix and you are guaranteed to hit these slow ships There needs to be a comprehensive balance to weapon damages, damage types, projectile speeds, resistances, ect in my opinion to make the game diverse and engaging. Yes the devs have a lot of balancing to do and yes they are going to be under a lot of time pressure to fix it. The last thing the devs need is a post telling them THIS IS THE ONLY WAY TO FIX YOUR GAME and guilt tripping them.

EDIT: idk why it posted twice

An interesting Idea for sure. Might be hard to do in a multiplayer setting though. The game would have to run several different galaxies at once which would not be very performance friendly. It would also be kind of a bummer if you set up a trading empire and loose it all when you go to the next area. I love the idea of a boss unlocking more content though.

Preach! I've been wanting the speeds to be flipped for awhile. I've rarely seen the case where ships fly that far off either. And as far as the OP, I 100% disagree that the NPC ship AI should go back to the way they were. This is a terrible idea as the game was incredibly easy and you could literally just snipe an entire system from where you jumped in without ANY of the AI getting to shoot back. If anything make easy like that, but its not engaging or challenging. I do not want the devs to make the combat dull again. Ship speeds just need to be fixed as furyofthestars suggested.

I thought the repair turrets only "repaired" shield? I don't remember them saying that they repaired hull last I checked (barely use them anyways).