bug report + 6 new part ideas

Agent-Daniel_46

So, lets start of with a little bug I discovered. After some time playing, i found out that my ships fly in a pretty odd way... It's flying backwards. so it's approaching the enemy from the wrong side. though, it knows that it's wrong so it turns back around, but only when it's already in the face of an enemy, causing damage that i shouldn't take. This can be fixed by telling it to turn around before attacking, but sometimes it still makes a 360 before attacking add to that, it's just tricky. Maybe there should be a way to tell the AI where the actual front of the ship is. I tried a lot already. like turning the entire blueprint upside-down. or moving the cockpit.

anyhow, the ideas:

A Laser Gatling turret.
basically the big brother of the small laser.
Dimensions: 2x2
Crew: 2
Power cells: 4
less accurate than the small laser but shoots 3x as fast. really effective to rip apart non-armor parts.

Anti-matter laser
an upgrade to the ion-beam.
deals 1,2x as much damage.
uses 0,6x as much power
same size as the normal ion beam
big price tag
3 crew

EMP launcher
needs EMP balls to operate.
shuts down all energy using parts in a small radius upon impact. (7x7 radius)
deals no damage to armor or any other blocks. (balancing)
cannot affect the same part if it is still affected. so it cannot make the effect infinite, making it overpowered.
the "cannon" that launches the balls has a limited angle.
[storage:]
Dimensions: 3x3
holds up to 4 balls. every ball is made out of 4 quarter pieces that the crew carries around. (just like the rockets)
[factory:]
needs 3 energy cells to operate.
has a standard storage of 2 balls.

Railgun
A large cannon like gun that fires a large projectile at an incredible speed. making it capable of packing a hefty punch. maybe even shooting right through a couple of parts.
crew: 3
Dimensions: 3x5
it can one-shot trough armor, but it will heavily reduce further penetration. meaning that another shot is required.
needs special ammo to operate.
needs 10 energy cells to fire.
if it hist a shield, it will deal a ton of damage to it, but it won't break in one shot.
reloading it takes a long time, since it needs all 10 energy cells and the projectile to fire another shot.
it can only hold 1 shot at a time.
the gun prepares to fire for 1 second before launching the projectile. once charging, it cannot be stopped.
it cannot turn, meaning that you have to face your enemy, just like the Ion-beam.
[storage]
this can hold up to 2 rail.
dimensions: 3x5
the rail is made with a highly explosive part in it. if the storage gets destroyed with a piece of rail in it, it will explode.
[factory]
needs 2 energy cells.
produces rail which is made out of six parts. you should probably get some crew ready to reload your gun...
has a standard storage of 1 rail.

Decoy:
a small cannon like part made to protect against a rocket barrage.
dimensions: 2x2
crew: 0
power cell usage: 2
does NOT require specific ammo.
This decoy launcher is not meant to attack an enemy shit. just like the point defense, it is meant to use against rockets. this device will trigger when it detects more than 3 rockets inside it's field of view. it will launch a small bleeping ball into space. the rockets will start to chase that instead of your ship.
its reload time is longer than that of a rocket launcher so if the enemy ship is fast enough, it can fire again before the decoy can reload.

Drill / chainsaw.
A melee weapon for your space warrior.
consumes 1 energy cell per 2 seconds
energy cell capacity: 2
crew: 1
dimensions: 2x2 [with of course a 2x2 no-build area in front where the blade is. it has the same hitbox as the shield generator for example]
simply grinds down everything in front. but to do so, you have to basically hug your opponent.
the saw takes more damage when it is rotating. making it vulnerable to attacks while using it.
because it can easily be destroyed that way, it should be a rather cheap part. since you\re probably going to lose it sometimes.

P.S: I love your game and I can't wait for any updates that would make the experience even better. 🙂

Rhyme

Agent-Daniel_46
That "bug" happens when you have more or equal reverse thrust compared to forward thrust.
Add a couple more thrusters facing forward and you shouldn't have that problem.

Jakeblake

Agent-Daniel_46
GATLING LASER - LOVE IT (as long as its balanced)
ANTI-MATTER LASER - I don't thing Walt wants to just buff the stats of a weapon and just triple the pricetag... cause once you have money, the original one is no longer viable. If you want OP weapons, go to the mods section! im sure some people there could help you out.
EMP LAUNCHER - The electro bolt is enough of an anti-shield weapon, we don't need a second antishield weapon that would make shields too weak
RAILGUN - I think Walt has plans for a railgun? For now, the mods section have plenty of railguns
DECOY CANNON - this would have to replace point defense cause that would be too many anti-missile weapons and make missiles underpowered.
MELEE - WALK HAS PLANS FOR THIS YYYYAAAAAAYYYYYYY!!!!!!

Agent-Daniel_46

AH! thanks a lot man! that seemed to be the issue. i made a ship that had 2 rows of thrusters. 1 back and 1 forward. the one that shot the ship forward had some shield gens in it, making more back thrust than forward thrust. though, it would be nice if this was possible without my ship going nuts... 😛

Bruce0206

Nice

Bruce0206

LOL decoy is more like flare

Venima

Regarding the 'bug': I agree this is quite confusing when there's an option that says "enable diagonal flight". In my opinion, player ships should be forced to face the opponent unless that option is ticked or it has no thrust in that directon (and by face I mean in the same orientation as the control module).

Atarlost

I wouldn't want it to go by the control center. I've had ships where the control center was in the tail facing backwards because that was the safest place for it and it had to have the doors facing the rest of the ship.

I do very much want the ship's preferred travel direction to be fixed at design time, though. Possibly always towards the top of the design screen. I'm quite certain that the optimum ship has equal forward and reverse thrust due to the natural symmetry of ideal internal thruster layouts, the need of the front facing for weapons and shields, and the dreadnought design principle (that battleships should mount only long range batteries and fight at long range).

Fulminis

Jakeblake You don't need balancing for vanilla.. since he will make new ships for bounty mode and thus making it balanced, "OP" weapons are necessary to upgrade your ship.. it's not an multiplayer game where you need balancing because of weapons better than others, bounty mode is made to upgrade your ship, having everything balanced wouldn't make it an "upgrade your ship" mode.. just design a ship.
If the game follows what you say the large cannon would be "OP"

Walt

Customization of the "forward travel" direction is coming soon-ish.

Atarlost

Fulminis Balance isn't irrelevant. No vanilla weapon completely supersedes another. You cite large cannons as superseding other weapons, but they don't. They're less efficient than standard cannons in terms of both crew and ammo per damage. The standard cannon is not my preferred choice of weapon, but it does more DPS per frontage tile than the ion beam and is easier to shield around than the large cannon.

Jakeblake

Fulminis Hell yeah you need balancing for any game!!! Just cause a game is singleplayer doesnt mean it should be unbalanced. As of now the game isnt really upgrade your ship but rather expand your ship which means that electrobolts and med cannons are still viable in a massive ship that also has missile launchers and and large cannons. if you made another weapon that was OP but just expensive people would upgrade their ship to have a bunch of that OP weapon accross the front, and there would be no diversity. If large cannons were really OP, you would never use ion beams and electrobolts ever again would you?

Tobi-wan_Kenobi That would be too much anti-missile defenses cause no normal ship shoots 72 missiles at once, and if they do, it must be a pretty massive ship, right? So that means the enemy ships are massive too right? So the enemy would have shields and some point defense to lessen the blow, and other weapons to also attack your ship.
In the end, we already have 3 defenses against missiles - point defense, shields, and good old armor

Tobi-wan_Kenobi

Love the railgun and the decoy.

For the railgun, I think it should be the same size as the ion beam, not 3x5. Make it basically the physical equivalent to the ion beam. The difference is the high alpha for railgun. Ion beam should be higher sustained dps, whereas railgun should do less dps, but far higher burst damage. I like to imagine a tandem railgun salvo of 3 shots - it slams through one layer of shields with two rounds, and the third penetrates deep into the hull in a line. Also, make the railgun use the same ammo as the other guns - just more of it per shot, maybe 8 ammo, just like the ion beam takes 8 batteries. Lastly, in keeping with the design of the other physical weapons, it probably shouldn't use energy at all.

The decoy or something like it is absolutely necessary. I have a missile battleship that fires 72 missiles at once. To be able to defend against that many missiles, you would have to sacrifice half of your ship surface to point defenses.

Tobi-wan_Kenobi

Jakeblake A fair point that there are other ways to tank a missile salvo. Maybe some good player-made ships might be able to tank a 72-missile salvo. All I know is I haven't met any built-in ships that can survive the salvo with enough weapons left to break my shields. The only threat to me is the Cerberus, and that's just because the missiles can't penetrate to its ion beam emplacements for a while.

Atarlost

Tobi-wan_Kenobi

This just means the game needs some anti-missile optimized platforms in the elite and vanguard tiers. Maybe The Beast could be modified since it's otherwise kind of easy to kill for any style of ship.

Jakeblake

Tobi-wan_Kenobi I don't think Walt built any of the ingame ships with the threat of missile spam in mind

Tobi-wan_Kenobi

Jakeblake And that's the problem with missiles - you have to build for them. Every serious ship needs at least a dozen point defenses just in case it runs up against lots of missiles. In most fights, these point defenses will be useless.

Ooh! What if the point defenses were short range machine guns as well! High rate of fire, very short range(40-60), low dps, high projectile speed. An additional bit of high accuracy dps that people won't mind having on their ship. Then more ships might be built with sufficient missile defenses. Make the ship not take them into account for choosing engagement range, and make them unable to be focused - just an automated anti-fighter/corvette defense.

Jakeblake

Tobi-wan_Kenobi That would be really nice but it pretty much HAS to be underpowered because it can shoot down missiles! It will always target missiles over the enemy craft, and will always leave enough shots in its system to at least take 5 shots at an incoming missile.

but because it is a machine gun, shouldn't it require ammo not power?

Jakeblake

Atarlost I'm not exactly sure what you mean but I did mention that PD should alwayst target missiles over shooting the enemy craft

Jakeblake It will always target missiles over the enemy craft, and will always leave enough shots in its system to at least take 5 shots at an incoming missile.

Atarlost

Mounting AMS is not a hardship. They're a single tile, don't require crew, and aren't eating power if there are no missiles to fire at. They could be given more durability so they're not chinks in your armor, but they're already spammable.

Some, perhaps most, NPCs should lack point defense. If they all had it missiles would be useless.

Jakeblake

Atarlost Im pretty sure there are a lot that dont have PD, and the ones that do have very few and can be easily overwhelmed

Atarlost

Jakeblake Most ships shouldn't have much AMS. If they did missiles would be completely useless for the player. That none have really solid AMS is a lack of design variety, not a flaw in the way AMS works.