SpaceCat + I just do not like autoloading because i think crew management is so fundamental to the game as it is now.
Also conveyors transporting "Stuff" without crew would logically call for Cables to transport electric power.
Both not bad ideas but would change cosmoteer A LOT.
Yeah, I sympathize. Crew management is incredibly important, and will hopefully stay that way forever.
Walt I hereby give permission for this thread to stray from it's original topic. (I think there's interesting and valuable stuff being discussed.)
Speaking of which... remember this problem?
Dalas120 Unintented consequence of the bleed through damage change - large railguns run out of shield damage long before they run out of penetration.
Dalas120 I can't think of any ways to change this without drastically altering railgun balance. Maybe wait until after the tournament so it's easier to see how powerful/weak they are?
The best solution I thought of involved completely changing how penetration works as a mechanic, but since that would alter cannon balance I didn't want to suggest it. But since you're thinking of buffing cannons already, my thoughts:
Remove both fixed penetration damage and the variable damage pool. Instead, allocate damage from a base amount across all the penetrated parts, based on how much damage the projectile has remaining. Basically, damage dealt to each tile (including shields and the initial tile) is determined by the base damage, the penetration remaining, and the sum of the inital total penetration. Here's a couple of examples of how this could work:
Projectile (2000 damage base, 3 penetration) impacting 1x1 rooms (1 pen resist). Sum of penetration = 3+2+1 = 6. First room damage taken = 2000(initial damage) * 3(penetration remaining) / 6(sum of penetration) = 1000. Second room damage taken = 2000*2/6 = 667. Third room damage taken = 2000*1/6 = 333. Then the projectile runs out of penetration and vanishes. So the penetrating damage gets lower as the projectile gets weaker/slower, which IMO makes a lot of sense.
Projectile (20000 damage base, 9 penetration) impacting 1x1 armor (7 pen resist), then 1x1 rooms (1 pen resist) Sum of penetration = 9+8+7+6+5+4+3+2+1 = 45. Armor damage taken = 2000*9/45 = 4000. First room damage taken = 2000*2/45 = 889. Second room damage taken = 2000*1/45 = 444. So as you can see, armor (or other high penetration resistance parts) reduces the total amount of damage dealt by reducing penetration depth, just like it does currently.
Projectile (108000 damage base, 17 penetration) impacting shield (let's say 15 pen resist), then 1x1 rooms (1 pen resist). Sum of penetration = 17+16+15+... = 153. Shield damage taken = 108000*17/153 = 12000. First room damage taken = 108000*2/153 = 1412. Second room damage taken = 706. So this avoids the sort of binary situation we have now where if you penetrate shields you deal full damage to everything behind it, but if you don't penetrate shields you deal basically no damage.
Overall, I think that it's very intuitive for a projectile to deal less damage as it runs out of penetrating power. This also helps with balance by removing "critical points" where you can penetrate 1 shield or 2 shields and continue to deal full damage. And if cannon balance is changing anyway, then there's no need to worry that changing penetration would break balance.
The specific examples I gave were just to demonstrate the general idea. The formula I used in the examples is probably too flat to work, but you get the general idea - to base penetration damage off of penetration resistance.