Random person from the Internet here to suggest another couple ideas to the several hundreds already suggested, because we all know devs go to sleep at night looking forward to more every morning!!!! :o
Kidding aside, I have some "hopefully" realistic suggestions that hope are in line with what the engine can already do, and I have some less realistic ones, because, why not. Also you will find I am fairly passionate about a good medium of balance, gameplay, and visuals. Also sorry for grammatical errors, doing this on the phone for lunch.
Ok, so for the most realistic:
Fighters are incredibly powerful, as well as they should be given their exuberant cost (I love fighters). I also love the Dodge mechanic but I feel like it does not scale properly with numbers.
What I mean is that as the fighter flies in and out of range, you really have to focus everything on that one fighter to take him down, this gets much much worse when numbers increase and you involve ai ships or auto fire turrets that will switch targets (range, fire arc) and result in fighters always having dodges available.
I had a trinium level ship, came back to beginner area to help friend and then, myself, had a hard time taking down system invasion iron area fighters. Now I don't have a ship with all big guns, I have a dozen scatter fire chain gun turrets as well. Which of course use to just slaughter fighters. After a few minutes of focusing on one...just one I had to give up. When I fire, the front of my ship looks like a six barreled automatic shot gun firing tracer rounds; it is a big wall of glowing pew pew, but still nothing went down.
I think it would be a good idea to make it so dodge chances and associated cool down are server configurable, this would allow us to experiment to find a happy medium with guns we have. (Maybe you have this and I completely missed it)
Now onto weapons.
I think honestly all the mechanics are in place, but I think a really good point defense weapon are the zero spread rapid fire burst and overheating chain guns. They look like modern day AA fire, and / or the point defense fire from Earth ships in Stargate. A group of ships with a couple of these going off with arcs chasing fighters would be oh so sexy.
From a mechanic perspective, these guns could have a higher percentage accuracy, maybe even over a hundred, or accuracy bonus against fighters, or not affected by the accuracy debuff against fighters, however you would want to do that. The overheating mechanic would then play a part as well, helping fighters use up their dodges but not guarantee a kill since it couldn't keep firing. You would need other similar turrets, or this would give your regular guns/laser a chance at killing the fighter.
You could also make it super low damage vs the fighter and simply have it as an effective system for forcing fighters to use up their dodges. On the other hand these guns would not much damage vs other larger vessels either way. You could also make a pulse weapon version for players who have an aversion to bullets or a later game rapid fire rail gun version (ala Stargate)
This could also be done with a point defense laser, (faster tracking, no accuracy debuff vs fighters) and also overheat quickly. You could then choose the route of super low damage so they use up the fighters dodge chances or make em more effective so they also do some damage, so if more than one focuses on same fighter or it is out of Dodge chances, it may take fatal damage. Really it would be just like the chain gun point defense mechanically, just different projectile type.
Another suggestion, more difficult I'm sure to implement is a variation of a flack weapon. You could use bolters turret model and projectiles, but the max range would be like 3 k or so, then have a variation in projectile time to live within that 3k. When projectile hits or dies from ttl expiration, it could have a small AOE damage, such as .5 or .25, this does zero damage to cap ships, but hurts fighters. This kind of gun while largely ineffective against a lone fighter thanks to the randomized time to live on the shell, would be extremely effective against overwhelming swarms. Trade off being it would have to be a fairly thick swarm and one turret doesn't do enough damage, but would force fighters to use up dodge chances so other guns can hit them.
Anyhow just some quick suggestions.
Hit me up if you want more details and or ideas. I think the above could still allow fighters to be really effective, but allow ai and players a counter giving them some chances, while also making some good looking space battles. This would force someone such as myself to say oh look, blobs of flack, let's hit him with the longer range stuff from my ship and then send in the fighters. Even if someone has a mix, they are giving up big ship pew pew for point defense capability, and I feel would help strike a balance of effectiveness against a large group of fighters vs other large ships. I also feel like the relationship will scale fairly well as ship sizes and fighter number and turret number available to ships involved increase.
Suggestion
WSY
Hello hello,
Random person from the Internet here to suggest another couple ideas to the several hundreds already suggested, because we all know devs go to sleep at night looking forward to more every morning!!!! :o
Kidding aside, I have some "hopefully" realistic suggestions that hope are in line with what the engine can already do, and I have some less realistic ones, because, why not. Also you will find I am fairly passionate about a good medium of balance, gameplay, and visuals. Also sorry for grammatical errors, doing this on the phone for lunch.
Ok, so for the most realistic:
Fighters are incredibly powerful, as well as they should be given their exuberant cost (I love fighters). I also love the Dodge mechanic but I feel like it does not scale properly with numbers.
What I mean is that as the fighter flies in and out of range, you really have to focus everything on that one fighter to take him down, this gets much much worse when numbers increase and you involve ai ships or auto fire turrets that will switch targets (range, fire arc) and result in fighters always having dodges available.
I had a trinium level ship, came back to beginner area to help friend and then, myself, had a hard time taking down system invasion iron area fighters. Now I don't have a ship with all big guns, I have a dozen scatter fire chain gun turrets as well. Which of course use to just slaughter fighters. After a few minutes of focusing on one...just one I had to give up. When I fire, the front of my ship looks like a six barreled automatic shot gun firing tracer rounds; it is a big wall of glowing pew pew, but still nothing went down.
I think it would be a good idea to make it so dodge chances and associated cool down are server configurable, this would allow us to experiment to find a happy medium with guns we have. (Maybe you have this and I completely missed it)
Now onto weapons.
I think honestly all the mechanics are in place, but I think a really good point defense weapon are the zero spread rapid fire burst and overheating chain guns. They look like modern day AA fire, and / or the point defense fire from Earth ships in Stargate. A group of ships with a couple of these going off with arcs chasing fighters would be oh so sexy.
From a mechanic perspective, these guns could have a higher percentage accuracy, maybe even over a hundred, or accuracy bonus against fighters, or not affected by the accuracy debuff against fighters, however you would want to do that. The overheating mechanic would then play a part as well, helping fighters use up their dodges but not guarantee a kill since it couldn't keep firing. You would need other similar turrets, or this would give your regular guns/laser a chance at killing the fighter.
You could also make it super low damage vs the fighter and simply have it as an effective system for forcing fighters to use up their dodges. On the other hand these guns would not much damage vs other larger vessels either way. You could also make a pulse weapon version for players who have an aversion to bullets or a later game rapid fire rail gun version (ala Stargate)
This could also be done with a point defense laser, (faster tracking, no accuracy debuff vs fighters) and also overheat quickly. You could then choose the route of super low damage so they use up the fighters dodge chances or make em more effective so they also do some damage, so if more than one focuses on same fighter or it is out of Dodge chances, it may take fatal damage. Really it would be just like the chain gun point defense mechanically, just different projectile type.
Another suggestion, more difficult I'm sure to implement is a variation of a flack weapon. You could use bolters turret model and projectiles, but the max range would be like 3 k or so, then have a variation in projectile time to live within that 3k. When projectile hits or dies from ttl expiration, it could have a small AOE damage, such as .5 or .25, this does zero damage to cap ships, but hurts fighters. This kind of gun while largely ineffective against a lone fighter thanks to the randomized time to live on the shell, would be extremely effective against overwhelming swarms. Trade off being it would have to be a fairly thick swarm and one turret doesn't do enough damage, but would force fighters to use up dodge chances so other guns can hit them.
Anyhow just some quick suggestions.
Hit me up if you want more details and or ideas. I think the above could still allow fighters to be really effective, but allow ai and players a counter giving them some chances, while also making some good looking space battles. This would force someone such as myself to say oh look, blobs of flack, let's hit him with the longer range stuff from my ship and then send in the fighters. Even if someone has a mix, they are giving up big ship pew pew for point defense capability, and I feel would help strike a balance of effectiveness against a large group of fighters vs other large ships. I also feel like the relationship will scale fairly well as ship sizes and fighter number and turret number available to ships involved increase.
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