Dalas120 I agree that flak, with limited anti-ship power, probably makes sense as a separate part from the minigun. If possible, I think it would make sense for them to shoot the same bullets vs both ships and projectiles (the same explosion could even hit both a projectile and a ship).
100% agreed.
Dalas120 I think that flak might make more sense as a larger weapon, maybe 2x6, 2x8, 3x8
I'm pretty hesitant to do this, mainly for lore reasons, flak that is far larger feels pretty wrong to me.
Dalas120 if flak is larger, it's more reasonable for flak to consume 1 ammo per 1 shot fired. If flak shoots 10x per second and uses 1 ammo per shot, you'd need 5 factories costing $25k. For a small, <$5k flak gun that would be a ridiculous amount of ammo, but for a large, $15k or $20k flak gun that's a reasonable ammo cost.
My current thinking is that flak won't be rapid-fire like it is in the current prototype, maybe 2 shots per second, 1 ammo per shot, with a larger, more powerful explosion.
Dalas120 because flak has a very long, narrow arc (which I think is very important to make it interesting), I don't think it would ever be strong on small ships. So since flak is already best for larger ships, making it a larger part doesn't hurt small ships at all.
This is a fair point, and from a lore perspective, it definitely makes sense. Okay maybe I'm coming around to larger flak, I'm envisioning a pretty cool-looking 3x5 quadruple-barreled flak battery.
Dalas120 Right now, it doesn't seem like flak can actually destroy or reduce the damage of cannon shells, only slow them down and/or push them away. Aside from being very weak currently, I think this will cause problems. Flak won't be able to focus fire on a single cannon shell to push it away (instead they'll slow all the cannon shells a little, and then take full damage), and side-facing flak will push cannon shells to the side instead of slowing them. It also lends itself to kiting/dodging builds that keep away from cannons. If possible, I would suggest letting flak reduce the damage of and destroy cannon shells. Either by giving cannon shells hp and reducing their damage proportionally to remaining hp, or by adding a momentum component to cannon damage so that slowing them down reduces their damage (though that's a big can of worms to open, and wouldn't make side-firing flak any less useless vs cannons).
From a lore perspective, I feel like cannon shells should be the most impervious to flak, though I realize that's problematic from a balance perspective. Having cannon damage/penetration depend on impact momentum is sounds interesting, but yeah, that's a pretty big can of worms to open and would need to apply in all cases of a cannon hitting a ship, not just after its speed has been reduced by flak.
Dalas120 What would you think about having completely or nearly invisible flak bullets? So you'd just see a bright muzzle flash and almost-simultaneous explosion. Personally, I think the current flak bullets look a little weird, and I always liked the look of flak from WW2 movies (where you don't see the bullet). And personally, I still think it would look cool for flak to be a deeply recessed gun, which would help explain the narrow arc and long part size.
The only thing that's slightly weird is, why is flak so much faster than cannons and lasers?
Dalas120 It would probably need to be at least 100 to make side-fired mines useable in combat, and I get the feeling that's too long to do. Maybe mine attraction could behave differently when they're launched in combat vs sitting around as a minefield? Minefields being attracted to enemies isn't that important.
Yeah 100 is way way too large to do realistic magnetic pull.
What do you think is the most important part of the mine's magnetic attraction? Is it that mines are less attracted to smaller ships? In that case, what if mines weren't magnetic but were homing and activated by a proximity/movement sensor that is more easily activated by closer, larger, faster-moving ships? (So a very large ship would have to move very slowly through a minefield to avoid activation, but a smaller ship could potentially move at full speed as long as it doesn't get really close.)
Dalas120 I considered this, but I wasn't sure. It might be weird if a reactor on one side of an EMP explosion can absorb all the drain and protect a laser on the opposite side of the explosion.
How often is this likely to actually happen? And honestly this doesn't seem that weird to me as long as the logic is closest-drains-first. I'm also thinking that maybe it's not an "explosion" per se but a bunch of electrical "lightning bolts" that arc out from the EMP to the nearby power-using parts.
