Dalas120 Ships fights with flak PD look amazing. It gives me a real battlestar galactica vibe where ships are surrounded with these huge fields of flak and missiles and bullets and explosions.
Agreed, though on the flip side, I did personally find that it also makes fights a lot harder to follow. (Though I think that has more to do with PD sometimes destroying cannons/lasers than it does with the actual flak VFX.)
I like the flak VFX enough that I might keep it even if I end keeping PD anti-missile only.
Dalas120 Making PD extra-good vs missiles lets them feel special, and keeps missiles feeling unique.
Being able to increase missile damage is one of my favorite things about this PD. Double-damage missiles just feel really great. (Though I worry this makes short-range missiles too strong, since at that range the PD tends to get really distracted shooting at non-missiles.)
Dalas120 I noticed that PD often collides with single projectiles without destroying them, even when those projectiles have far less than 1000 HP. It seems like PD still has a kill %, but I can't see this indicated anywhere in the PD shot file. When this happens, the PD bullet continues on past the explosion for a little while before vanishing. Is this intentional or a bug?
PD no longer has any collision at all, I completely removed that. (Though maybe I should put it back in.)
I think what you're seeing is just a graphical glitch where the PD appears to fly farther than it really does. That I can probably fix.
In your example screenshot I believe that the PD just happened to detonate in the place that makes it look like it hit the missile, but that's just coincidence.
Dalas120 Unfortunately, even with the aforementioned bugs(?), PD is now incredibly overpowered. Shooting a single PD bullet costs around $1300 credits. A small laser bolt, the cheapest projectile available, costs around $5000. And one PD bullet can destroy multiple projectiles with it's AOE.
Yeah this is what I suspected.
How do you feel about PD balance vs missiles? Is that also too strong, or just vs non-missiles?
Dalas120 Random question: In the future, are you planning on changing PD to use ammo instead of power?
I'm open to that. My main concern, both with ammo-using PD and with targeting computers, is that it makes PD a lot less viable on small ships.
samepage it's really weird to see PDs shotting down cannons and lasers
I agree with this, especially with lasers.
samepage As for the anti-missiles capability, PDs become completely useless in this prototype with their short range, slow firing rate and high energy consumption. Even if you spam them in a wall fashion, a swarm of missiles can easily pound through. And with their doubled damage that bypass shields, nothing beats a missile-spam in this prototype.
I'd be curious to see the ships you tested this with.
DraconisTheWyvern I am against the idea of the targeting computer mostly because its going to be a pain an feels unnecessary to me.
So I have two reasons in favor of adding targeting computers:
- They allow for the overall cost of PD to be increased significantly without making the cost of an individual PD unit unrealistically high.
- They force PD to be clumped together, making them easier to deliberately target and destroy.
An alternative that would still accomplish #1 but not #2 would be to add targeting computers but allow them to be placed anywhere on your ship.
Dibs Thanks for testing!
Dibs Combat looks stunning with flak present, very cool visuals
I'm pleasantly surprised at how nice they look with like 10 minutes of work on my part. 😛 (It's just a simple flash with enlarged smoke particles I stole from the other VFX.)