SpaceCat i did "hold" the hotkey and then wanted to give an order - did not know i had to release the hotkey.
Ah, I can probably make that work. Thanks for letting me know that was your first instinct.
SpaceCat Can they be Order AND Toggle - because BOTH very often is the best solution
Can you elaborate on how that would work?
CGDW I just got a crash. 2 ships fighting in creative, one has a railgun.
Thanks, will investigate.
nop They will strafe for a while, then rotate, then move, then rotate. Maybe I just need to learn the new buttons. Is there a tutorial?
This is probably the new logic that tries to prevent ships from orbiting their destination. It's definitely causing some problems in some situations.
nop Also it seems like it should save the staggered fire mode with the ship, cosmetic or not.
It's supposed to, looks like it's bugged.
SpaceCat Have Railgun cooldown times been prolonged and thus firing rate reduced for longer Rails?
No, but there's a bug causing them to not shoot in some situations.
SpaceCat I do not get why the railgun cost was reduced ... (?)
This was an accident, I'll change it back for the next RC.
Dalas120 I think it's reasonably balanced, though very, very bland (it's basically just 3 laser blasters). I would suggest making the heavy laser more interesting, possibly long range + high projectile speed + low damage (long range precision, but low damage), or drastically increased cost, power consumption, and damage per heavy laser (compact but expensive, would also make larger reactors more useful when they happen). Or rapid fire burst with a long cooldown period (strafing runs maybe?), or who knows what.
I'm open to tweaking the number of the Heavy Laser, but I don't actually want it to be too different in how it plays from the Small Laser. It's really just intended to be a bigger upgrade of the Small Laser. I want it to be about as different from the Small Laser as the Large Cannon is from the Standard Cannon.
Dalas120 Penetration Suggestion: I know I brought this up before, but I really think it's worth trying out 0 impact damage on cannons (but increased penetration damage and normal shield damage). This emphasizes penetration and internal damage, which IMO is more interesting than just picking off weapons. (0 impact damage on railguns is probably trickier, and IMO would benefit from a more complicated solution like non-linear damage decay/multiple penetration values/a secondary invisible projectile, which might be more work than it's worth.)
I actually had a build where both cannons and railguns had effectively no impact damage. I took it out not because I didn't like it, but because I felt like I had already changed so much and I wanted to get feedback on the changes I had already made.
Dalas120 Penetration Suggestion: I know I brought this up before too, but I also think it's worth trying having parts lose penetration resistance as they lose health. Realism reasons aside, this is important to prevent overkill, and also makes penetration resist less binary. I'm not certain if these two changes are good ideas, but I definitely think they're worth getting a feel for
Same answer as above. The game code actually fully supports this now, it just need the data changes to make it happen.
Dalas120 Penetration Bug? + Suggestion: yet another thing related to penetration - railgun shots can penetrate shields without destroying them if they impact a part/armor before hitting the shield. This is actually fairly common with laser triangles (laser turrets often stick out from the shield a little), depending on the railgun length. To fix this, I would suggest calculating shield damage like penetration damage (scaling with penetration), which would make a lot of sense to do anyway if impact damage is removed.
Could I get a saved game that shows this? I'm a little unclear about what you're describing, and as the old saying goes, a saved game is worth a thousand words. 😉
Dalas120 Cannon Suggestion: For weapon diversity's sake, I would suggest not buffing the projectile speed on large cannons (or buffing it by less). Low projectile speed increases the effectiveness of alpha strikes (a unique and interesting mechanic), and keeps small and large cannons from feeling too similar. IMO a large cannon barrage should be hard to land, but devastating if it hits.
I'm open to this. It was 30, is now 40, maybe change it to 35?
Dalas120 Cannon Suggestion: Increase cannon health by an additional 25% (total of +50%). The current +25% is noticeable, but IMO cannons still feel fairly fragile, not tough and armored like their visual. No opinion on cannon damage/overall balance yet, since I'm hoping to see how they feel with 0 impact damage.
I think I agree with this. +50% would be 6000->9000 for the Small Cannon and 12000->18000 for the Large Cannon. That sounds about right to me.
Dalas120 Railgun Suggestion: I like nop's suggestion from a while ago about making railguns start a fire when they run out of penetration. Little balance impact, but fire has been forgotten for too long and it fits the theme that ammo weapons start fires. Just a random suggestion, nothing important.
If they only start fires when they run out of penetration, is that not a bit weird since cannons start fires for their full penetration length?
Dalas120 Ion Beam Opinion: If ion beams are getting too weak - personally I think they're still plenty good, plus the ion prism is coming - but if they are too weak I would rather nerf other weapons than buff the ion beams, otherwise you get power creep.
My current inclination is to buff their range to match cannons but not their damage.
Dalas120 maybe prevent resupply while boost is active (because the room fills with a hazardous plasma?).
Yeah I had thought of this. It's a bit complicated to make work, and I'm also not convinced it's necessary. I'll think about it.
Dalas120 it would be nice to have graphics indicating power drain while inactive, and instant drain when boost is turned off. Maybe some kind of "plasma exhaust" animation.
You mean power drain while active? I can probably add a little particle effect, I think that'd be nice.
Dalas120 UI Suggestion: it would be nice to use the attack command to target yourself. Not important, but I see no reason not to (unless it's extra dev work). For those cheapskates who want to save money on explosive charges.
You can attack yourself by selecting the specific weapons and targeting yourself.
(I am considering disallowing this in multiplayer though.)
Dalas120 Engine Room Bug: engine rooms REDUCE burst thruster power consumption, not increase it. I'm almost certain that's not intended.
Good catch, thanks.
Dalas120 It seems like ships don't want to turn until they're stationary, which can be extremely annoying.
I'm not seeing this, can I get a saved game?
