A discussion that used to be about capacitors

Walt

Dalas120 I was thinking of it as a watered down version of the ability to have enemy-relative facing with grid-relative movement (which would definitely be very, very useful).

Perhaps a way to change the location of an attack command just by clicking on a point in space, and it'll auto-calculate the new attack angle & radius? That's not quite what you're talking about because it'd still be enemy-relative, but it'd be a lot more convenient than having to drag the command handle.

nop

Walt a lot more convenient than having to drag the command handle

I'd like it if the size of the handle scaled with the radius of the ship or the zoom level or something to make it easier to grab. Now that railguns exist I'm often zoomed out more and it's trickier to grab them.

While we're on UI, it bugs me that when I'm trying to target a part, sometimes the "eyeball" icon is on top of it and that prevents right-clicking on the part. I don't even know what the eyeball represents.

Dalas120

Walt It would definitely be convenient (moreso for people who use attack angles a lot), but it wouldn't really let you do any of the things you could do with enemy-relative facing and grid-relative movement.

Examples would be something like disengaging from an enemy before you hit the zone, but keeping your spinal weapons focused on them so you don't get disadvantaged by retreating. Or breaking out of surrounds from a swarm while keeping spinal weapons focused.

Ideally you would be able to do all that while focusing weapons on a specific part of an enemy ships, instead of only center +/- a degree offset. But if that's not feasible I understand

It's only really needed for spinal weapons though. Turreted weapons can hit their target if you only use move commands and just approximate the correct facing.

Walt

nop I'd like it if the size of the handle scaled with the radius of the ship or the zoom level or something to make it easier to grab. Now that railguns exist I'm often zoomed out more and it's trickier to grab them.

Yeah they're really tiny when zoomed out. I can probably make them scale until they'd start overlapping.

nop I don't even know what the eyeball represents.

If you click it the camera will focus on the position between the two ships.

I could add an option to turn it off if it gets in the way.

nop

Walt If you click it the camera will focus on the position between the two ships.

That would be useful, I might use it if it were a hotkey like I use "F" and "Ctrl+F" all the time.

nop

Walt I could add an option to turn it off if it gets in the way.

It would be good enough for the eye widget to not capture right clicks.

FireShredder24

Walt Hey Walt, wouldn't it be fun to randomly generate asteroids in normal BH maps even if they have no resource use? It would be interesting to have like a railgun frigate hide behind an asteroid, undetected by a larger ship, until SKADOOSH the larger ship gets its bow blown off.

Tho, this would require a rework of the detection thing into a line-of-sight system.

SpaceCat

nop Walt If you click it the camera will focus on the position between the two ships.

That would be useful, I might use it if it were a hotkey like I use "F" and "Ctrl+F" all the time.

True the "eye" symbol is unclickable when game is in action - needs a hotkey or button.

nop

Dalas120 you're talking about movement relative to either world or a ship and heading relative to either world or a ship independent of each other, right?

Those examples are already possible with the controls we have. Disengaging "through" an enemy while facing them is practically ramming (or closing), circling relative position when in contact, then shifting relative position again to get an inside position, all while keeping the same relative bearing to target. Breaking out of swarm is kiting one of the ships and adjusting relative position to mix in strafing thrust, which can be done in one right click and drag.

One case where I find the controls wanting is disengaging back into the ring even when in a good position. The only good solution is reversing flight direction and using a world-relative move unless you're in a perfect relative position where you are lined up with center. Being able to set flight direction quickly is still a want.

Dalas120

nop Circling relative position isn't very practical when the enemy is much faster than you though. Most of my ships are slower than their opponents, which makes it very clumsy to try and do what you suggest (if I understand you properly). But I guess it would still be clumsy if my ship was slow even with different controls

But I still think that improved controls would be good. Collision avoidance, for example, can be avoided with the current controls - but I'm still glad there's going to be option to disable it

I agree with you about the ring.

nop

Dalas120 I don't see how different controls will help then? If your ramming move is offset to the side, your ship will move directly toward the silhouette such that your spinals are still hitting the target (maybe not where you want) and you have a good chance of knocking them out of the way your higher mass. If you keep the spinals aimed during this maneuver you are blending your forward thrust away.

Against a swarm, kiting can still slow down the flankers while you blast anything in front of you. If they leave an opening in the middle, rushing through will put them all in a cluster on the other side. Otherwise you can just keep spinning and your railguns will either hit the sides of your tunnel or still be able to hit ships as you spin. It does a pretty good job of predicting when to shoot.

I'm itching to try my new ramming railgun ship, which has 360 shield protection..

Dalas120

nop Its more about how relative speed impacts the controls. If you're moving much faster than me, it becomes very difficult to constantly adjust the attack command to produce the strafing effect. And each second the attack command is incorrect cuts your speed and your momentum. I agree with you on the best maneuver to perform in each situation (I've had plenty of practice doing similar things on the armadillo), but I don't think it's practical from a controls perspective if the other ship is much faster

Railgun rammer sounds cool! It rams to get through shields?

Ultranova

Oh, so this WAS about capacitors but not anymore 🤔

nop

Dalas120 It rams to protect its railguns from laser+eb focus, and to get all the usual position control perks. It's better against rushers than the "obvious" kiting railgun design.

An important advantage of ships that don't rely on spinal weapons is circle kiting. This is the practice of not only setting a far relative position and adding a strafe component, but also changing the relative bearing (rotation) of your ship to blend reverse thrust into strafing thrust. This rotation blending is crucial, and lets you outstrafe most (non-diagonal) ships unless they manually set a world-relative intercept course. Spinal ships lose damage anytime this maneuver is used. Missile barges expose their sides when they use it.

Having slow ships is hard, but not so bad when you have the longest ranged weapons (auto-fire missiles kind of break this..) Your designs usually add 360 protection and kill one target at a time. Side and rear shielding have been unpopular for a long time, but maybe useful now?

Dalas120

nop Sounds very interesting! How much does it cost? I've yet to see an effective small railgun design, but I imagine it would be difficult to ram a super large railgun right up against an enemy

jbox1

Walt changed the title to A discussion that used to be about capacitors.

🤔

nop

Dalas120 It is 1mil, two railguns in the middle, a pile of reactors and shields along the sides, with mostly forward and some side thrust.

samepage

Walt Lol...the discussion title. Hope there are still discussions about capacitors. Because I do have some thoughts about the use of them in rail guns. It's called doubling the power consumption of the rail gun.

Why you may ask? It's both for the balance and the lore perspective. From the lore perspective, rail gun is supposed to be a power-hungry weapon, dealing lots of damage but draining tons of power in doing so. But if you look at how much power it currently uses, you would noticed that rail gun don't consume that much power at all. A rail gun with 8 accelerators consume less power than an ion beam, but has the damage output way exceeding it. This is totally unfair.

I think the original number of the rail gun's power consumption in RC is the correct one. However, it was halved in the official release because most people had problem to continue powering it. This can be resolved easily with the introduce of capacitors. Of cause, with the increase in power and crew requirement, there should be some decrease in credit to compensate it as well.

Mc2

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A rail gun with 8 accelerators consume less power than an ion beam, but has the damage output way exceeding it. This is totally unfair.

What is the DPS for Rail and Ion with 8 accelerators?

samepage

Mc2
2000 DPS for an ion beam.
3040 DPS for an 8-accelerator rail gun "without" the penetration damage.

Edited:
In rare case where rail gun deals its full penetration damage, the maximum DPS of such rail gun is around 9140.

Mc2

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So, Rail gun with 8 extenders is 3,5 times less effective for cost per 1 DPS. Why you want to make it even less cost effective?

Edit: in rare cases Rail is almost same cost effective as ION is.

BTW - show me design with two rails and 8 extenders for each rail on 100K ship 😃

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Mc2 No, I am not complaining about how "cost" effective or ineffective the rail gun is. I am OK with the rail gun's damage/cost ratio. You paid more credit for more damage as it always should be.

I simply point out that the damage/power ratio of the rail gun is way off. Take an 8-accerlerators rail gun for example, each shot form it has the potential to deal around 36,000 damage (impact+penetrate damage) and only cost 4,740 power (1 launcher, 8 accelerators, 6 ammo). How many damage you can deal using 4,740 power with small laser or ion beam? The answer is around 7,500, only 20.83% of the rail gun despite they consume the same amount of energy. Some how the rail gun is 4.8 time effective than other energy-based weapon.

I am suggesting that the overall cost for using rail guns should emphasis more on supply elements like reactors, crews, and capacitors rather than the rail gun itself.

Mc2 BTW - show me design with two rails and 8 extenders for each rail on 100K ship

Couldn't do it. But for a 100K ship you probably don't want to use ion beam either. Small laser is the way to go.