Missile Prototype 3

Vess

Here's a thought. What if, Instead of new factory's we make the missiles require mixed components. For instance, One EMP missile would require 4 Missile parts and eight Batteries to be brought to the launch tube. Or the mines would be 1 missile part and 12 ammunition. Basically utilizing multiple component types would enhance the Sim city aspect of building efficient routes while also giving you that mid battle option of changing munitions for tactical variety. With out the required burden of placing factories you may not use.

Vess

Vess Not to mention opening doors to munition variants of other weapons. Like bringing batteries to the Rail gun Makes a short range Penetrating EMP round. Or combining missile and ammunition in in the rail gun for a course correcting HE round. In general Using combined components would add a wonderful layer of variety, with out over complicating existing resources.

Walt

Oneye well they seem really fast, did you just change the trail or something?

I did change the trails, yes, but that's only a graphical change.

Lafiel They got much higher acceleration but same speed limit so their time on target is much better.

The only change I made is that acceleration is now expressed per-second instead of per-frame. The actual acceleration should be identical, and looking at the old-vs-new missiles side-by-side, I can't see any different in speed or acceleration.

Vess Here's a thought. What if, Instead of new factory's we make the missiles require mixed components. For instance, One EMP missile would require 4 Missile parts and eight Batteries to be brought to the launch tube. Or the mines would be 1 missile part and 12 ammunition. Basically utilizing multiple component types would enhance the Sim city aspect of building efficient routes while also giving you that mid battle option of changing munitions for tactical variety. With out the required burden of placing factories you may not use.

Yeah I've thought about this. Unsure about the extra complexity it would add.

Vess

Blockquote Walt Yeah I've thought about this. Unsure about the extra complexity it would add.

Would you want to prototype a weapon that requires 2 components to use, to see if it's buggy?

Walt

Vess It's not bugs I'm concerned about (the railgun already uses both ammo and power), it's making things more complicated for the player.

Vess

Walt I'm glad you Focus so much on player conveyance, It is a great thing to keep in mind. though complicated can be good if it's not confusing. Currently, weapon wise you have A 3 unit Economy with two munitions requiring the based reactors to run. I could seen a 4th "Pulse" component fitting into the equation but currently the system is Basic and easy to understand. I feel modal weapons are risky but within reason. It's the Idle factories that concern me. so like the Rail gun having multiple dependencies for the higher tier weapons is a great way to balance cost and complexity. Though this might be a poll-able issue But I do feel the rail comparison is apt for the conversation.
Also I recognize that this Is very close to being it's own suggestion, outside the fact that it interceeds on the systems currently being tested.

CGDW

I think having some ammo types that require 3 ingredients (or more) is fine, but having played factorio a bunch it simply doesn't feel that complex to begin with...

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Just want to bring this up since not much people had mentioned this in the discussion: Currently the missile launcher can take up to 12 crews while reloading. But in real it only needs 6 crews to completely drain a adjacent factory, which means 6 out of 12 crews were wasted on unnecessary task, forcing people to compartmentalize their ships in order to improve the crew's performance.

I think the crew's behavior can be largely improved if the number of crews that were assigned to reload each launcher is capped at 6 rather than 12, as adding more crews to the task only causes congestion without actually increasing the reloading rate. Similar case can be said for the large cannon where piles of crews just wait in line trying to refill the cannon. Their task management can really use some optimization.

CGDW

My test shows otherwise... the six crew factory will be filled up completely part of the time, meaning it's not producing rocket parts parts then, whereas the 12 crew factory never fills up, so is producing at 100%. The 12 crew factory does fully drain every now and then, so maybe 8-10 crew is enough? 6 definitely is not.
Also, because the factory holds 9 parts max, you will want at least 9 for the fastest burst reload.
image https://i.imgur.com/3KcrQKw.jpg

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CGDW Both the launcher and the factory can hold up to 12 missile parts. Depend on the distance between the launcher and the factory the result could be quite different. Here is an example of having only 6 crews for reloading but still drain the factory at 100%.

image https://i.imgur.com/9RFXpId.png

However, you are probably right about having 6 crews is not enough. As this only works if the launcher is directly adjacent to the factory. So I agree with you that 8 crews is sufficient in most case. Having 8 crews for reloading means they can simutanously bring 2 missiles, and will not waste too many crews when the factory is depleted. (assuming the factory is not too far away)

CGDW

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For some reason I never counted properly and always thought a single missile was 3 parts... thanks for correcting me.

Equalizer
That's a really good idea, I hope it's possible.

Equalizer

Ideally, crew drawn to tasks would be scaled by the travel distance.

Note that reducing the crew used for missile loading would make the bounty missile ships even worse than they already are.

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Equalizer Ideally yes, but I doubt it would be possible to calculate every distances between launchers and factories, and have the crews being optimized in this way. Alternatively, this can be resolved if players were given the option to manually assign tasks for crews. However, as I recalled the idea of having different types of crews is still far ahead and won't come out anytime sooner. So the idea of having the loading task capped at 8 crews is more of a temporary solution.

Dalas120

Walt Hmm, maybe? I'm a little hesitant to have all missile types be highly specialized, though maybe being specialized/situational is a good downside for long range homing weapons? I'm open to proposals.

I think that some specialization for missiles makes sense, because it encourages mixed-weapon ships. Right now ships almost only use a single weapon type (maybe with electrobolts). I'm hoping that missiles with a particular specialty (e.g. minefields vs flankers/orbiters), but still with general purpose use (e.g. in-combat mines). This also applies to missile swapping, which I hope will be a useful strategy.

Still thinking about exactly how specialized HE missiles could work.

Walt Dalas120 Would it work to have each mine attracted to the point midway between the nearest non-structure enemy part and the ship’s center of mass? That might be a reasonable approximation.

That could also have edge cases, like what if that point is in open space, or the mine is between that point and the center or mass?

Some more ideas:

What about having mines attracted in the *direction* of the nearest part (maybe with some randomness), with *strength* based on the enemy's mass and distance to their center of mass?

What if mines used a realistic gravity simulation, but were only attracted to reactors (or only active engines)? Since there are relatively few reactors/engines on each ship, would gravity-like attraction be doable? That could fit in with possible future stealth mechanics as well.

In general, I think that the main purpose of mine attraction is to make mines useable in regular combat, instead of only as an auxiliary mine-laying weapon. While attraction is also helpful for making minefields more deadly (and maybe allowing some ships to sneak through), I don't think that's the core purpose.

Walt

Dalas120 What about having mines attracted in the direction of the nearest part (maybe with some randomness), with strength based on the enemy's mass and distance to their center of mass?

Still seems pretty weird to me.

Dalas120 What if mines used a realistic gravity simulation, but were only attracted to reactors (or only active engines)? Since there are relatively few reactors/engines on each ship, would gravity-like attraction be doable? That could fit in with possible future stealth mechanics as well.

Probably not any better unless reactors/engines get stored in their own special data structure, which comes with its own performance costs and complications. The problem is that 95% of the cost comes not from calculating the attraction of each part but from determining what parts are close enough to attract in the first place.

Do you have any sense of how big the attraction distance should be? Smaller distances are much less problematic than large distances.

Dalas120 Using the new explosion "slices" method, maybe give EMP missiles a low total energy drain but 100% absorption on shield arcs and all energy-using parts? Also, using a small # of slices might help them drain internal parts like ammo factories once shields are down.

Unsure how a percentage drain would work with the new explosion slice method. It might need to be an absolute value.

There's also no reason EMP couldn't have just one "slice", i.e. it drains from the closest parts first until it runs out of drain. I'm not really sure what having multiple slices gets us.

Dalas120 Also, what if EMP missiles actually toggled power ("disrupted") components they hit, instead of just draining energy. I think this would primarily be strong against engines - toggling power resets their ramp-up, and completely drains boost thrusters. Since EMP missiles don't deal any direct damage, I think that this could help them be used against kiters without being too strong on kiters. Power toggle could also help with the laser+EB vs cannon/missiles issue in the last paragraph, if EMPs could toggle power on parts like cannons that don't use energy (by disrupting their targeting computers, or something like that).

Hmm, this is pretty interesting, I'll think about it!

Unsure about EMPs toggling non-power-using parts, simply from a lore perspective it seems a bit weird.

Dalas120

Some thoughts on EMP missiles:

Right now, EMP missiles are (relatively) incredibly strong against laser+EB, and nearly useless vs cannons/missiles. I think that this will cause serious balance issues, and at any rate it's never fun for an enemy to stop you from shooting back. Using the new explosion "slices" method, maybe give EMP missiles a low total energy drain but 100% absorption on shield arcs and all energy-using parts? Also, using a small # of slices might help them drain internal parts like ammo factories once shields are down.

Also, what if EMP missiles actually toggled power ("disrupted") components they hit, instead of just draining energy. I think this would primarily be strong against engines - toggling power resets their ramp-up, and completely drains boost thrusters. Since EMP missiles don't deal any direct damage, I think that this could help them be used *against* kiters without being too strong *on* kiters. Power toggle could also help with the laser+EB vs cannon/missiles issue in the last paragraph, if EMPs could toggle power on parts like cannons that don't use energy (by disrupting their targeting computers, or something like that). Some kind of intelligent guidance might also make sense for this, if there's a way to make EMP missiles wrap around a ship and aim for engines. Not sure about that idea though.

In general, I think that EMPs should be more of a utility disruption weapon than an anti-shield-only-and-useless-otherwise weapon (i.e. EB).

Dalas120

Walt Do you have any sense of how big the attraction distance should be? Smaller distances are much less problematic than large distances.

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.

Walt Unsure how a percentage drain would work with the new explosion slice method. It might need to be an absolute value.

Yeah, that's what I meant.

Walt There's also no reason EMP couldn't have just one "slice", i.e. it drains from the closest parts first until it runs out of drain. I'm not really sure what having multiple slices gets us.

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.

Dalas120

Some thoughts on the minigun/flak:

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).

I think that flak might make more sense as a larger weapon, maybe 2x6, 2x8, 3x8, or something along those lines. This might make sense for a few reasons:

1) larger, more expensive flak makes ship geometry more important. Similar to how engine rooms or railguns work, a very expensive flak encourages designers to build their ships in ways that can take full advantage of a limited number of flak parts.
2) longer, narrow flak puts fewer restrictions on surface area, which I think is a good thing in general.
3) 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.
4) 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.
5) I know I bring this up for every weapon, but I think there are too many small/medium parts, and not enough big/huge ones. A very large flak would feel more unique compared to the large and standard cannons.

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).

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.

More thoughts coming later

Walt

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.

Dalas120

Dalas120 It would probably need to be at least 100 to make side-fired mines useable in combat

Or maybe not. If your ship is backing up, you might be able to fire mines and have the enemy ship fly into them (since they're grid-relative instead of ship-relative). Though I can't guess how effective that might be.

Maybe get rid of mine attraction for the first rc, and if they need it to be effective worry about it then?

Dalas120

Walt Got to run right now, will respond later today

Equalizer

Walt Maybe a bit off-topic but have you considered boosting projectile speed in general?
Since the engine room was added and thrusters were changed ships can be far faster than they use to be.

it isn't that uncommon for ships to be fast enough that when using large cannons, small cannons, or heavy laser for ships to circle each other being unable to land enough hits to do any damage.

Regarding the mini-nukes, I am not sure how you intend to prevent them from being too strong on a ship that rams its target. At point blank the slow speed and low range disadvantages have no effect and any anti-missile defenses wont work either.

Maybe have them cause friendly fire damage when they detonate on a target (and not detonate if they happen to randomly crash into a friendly ship due to guidance) to make ramming not as an effective way to avoid their disadvantages.

Dalas120

Walt Okay maybe I'm coming around to larger flak, I'm envisioning a pretty cool-looking 3x5 quadruple-barreled flak battery.

It could be interesting to choose between simultaneous fire and alternating fire like on the heavy laser. Simultaneous might be more useful against things like railgun bullets, while alternating would probably be better against things like lasers and ions.

Walt 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.

That sounds good to me. It sounds like lightning bolts would very clearly indicate which components get drained, which should avoid any confusion.

Would a "smart visual" like this be possible for regular explosions too? So if an explosion gets blocked by a shield (or armor), the exposion visual could also get blocked by the shield.

Equalizer Maybe a bit off-topic but have you considered boosting projectile speed in general?
Since the engine room was added and thrusters were changed ships can be far faster than they use to be.

it isn't that uncommon for ships to be fast enough that when using large cannons, small cannons, or heavy laser for ships to circle each other being unable to land enough hits to do any damage.

Standard and Large Cannons got a projectile speed boost one or two updates ago actually. But in general I agree with you - ships have been getting faster and faster (and faster).

Instead of boosting all projectile speeds, do you think that new parts like mines, EMP missiles, and tractor beams would help? Mines force fast ships to slow down or hit minefields, EMP missiles will hopefully be very strong vs engines, and tractor beams have obvious applications.

I've also been meaning to suggest changes to weapon targeting and ship flight AI. Right now weapons will lead a target based on their current speed, and ships don't lead their target at all (I believe they fly straight to the current position of an attack command). I think it would be great if ship flight would lead a target like weapons targeting does, and they could both even take acceleration and jerk into account, based on which enemy engines are firing and how far ramped up they are. Would that help with ships being too fast and projectiles not hitting?

Partially related: I've also been thinking about some suggestions for the engine room (which is basically a must-have) and heavy laser (which I think is fairly underpowered). Engine room suggestion would involve removing the engine room's ability to reduce thruster ramp-up time, but reducing thruster base ramp-up time to compensate (mostly). Heavy laser suggestion would probably involve a big projectile speed increase, range increase, and damage decrease. I'm not sure and still thinking about both of these ideas, but since they're relevant I wanted to mention them here.

Dalas120

Walt 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.

I assume you mean "most" out of laser-missile-cannon, but still more vulnerable than ions or railguns?

I think it's ok for cannon shells to be more durable than lasers and especially missiles, as long as they're not nigh-unkillable. And since flak is AOE, it'll naturally be worse vs the slower-firing cannons anyway. Mostly I'm worried about current flak being nearly useless vs cannons, and being all-or-nothing (either you push the shell away or it deals full damage). I think it might make sense to just give cannon shells HP, and reduce their damage proportionally to the amount of HP remaining.

Would proportional HP/damage work for railgun bullets as well? I don't think flak will ever be shooting down a whole railgun bullet (and if it does that's a problem), but proportional damage lets flak be not completely useless vs railguns, without being very effective at all.

What do you think about making EB even lower hp? Since it deals very little direct damage, it seems like it would also be very easy to dissipate.

How do you envision flak vs ions? Is it feasible to have flak clouds attenuate ion beams partially - enough to make flak v ions not completely useless, but not so much that it's strong?

Walt The only thing that's slightly weird is, why is flak so much faster than cannons and lasers?

I think the real question is - why are lasers so much slower than flak?

image https://i.imgur.com/DT44Sz5.jpg

Ok but jokes aside, I don't think this would be a big issue. Both ion beams and railguns already move faster than lasers, and fast enough ships can outfly them. Personally, I've always imagined lasers as "plasma blasts" or similar, since they definitely move slower than the speed of light.

And regular cannons shoot big, heavy, metal cannonballs, which probably take a ton of energy to shoot. Flak shells are probably very small and lightweight, so could the same amount of energy that shoots a cannonball slowly shoot a flak shell very quickly?

Walt 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?

I think the biggest part of attraction is making mines useable in direct combat. So I could get near an enemy, start shooting mines (either forward or out my sides), and they would hit the enemy instead of floating uselessly away. Attraction for pre-layed minefields is probably a lot less important (though still very interesting).

I'll probably agree with whatever mechanic you think can accomplish this. A proximity sensor sounds reasonable.