Walt I guess the thing that seems the most odd to me is that then we have one defense (Flak) that is good against everything, and another defense (PD) that is good against everything but lasers.
Yeah... that's a good point... come to think of it, any combination of stuff is probably going to be a little weird. If PD can shoot ships then why shouldn't it shoot cannon shells? If flak can shoot lasers why shouldn't it shoot ion beams? If PD can shoot missiles, why shouldn't lasers shoot missiles too? Why shouldn't all weapons shoot all projectiles?
So... if it were completely up to me, I would probably break things into 2 distinct categories - weapons and defenses - with weapons targeting only ship parts for high damage, and defenses targeting everything for low damage. So I'd have PD shoot down lasers and figure out a semi-plausible explanation (maybe it detonates into a cloud of plasma, which disrupts laser bolts), and figure that it's more important to have consistent game rules than for things to be as realistic as possible.
But that's just what I would do, and I'm not sure if that would really be a good decision or not. Ultimately I think it's about compromises between realism, consistent game rules, and balance, and I think you're the only person who can really decide that.
Walt Disagree about having a 2-wide flak or about shrinking the 3x4 flak to 3x3? Or both? (Guessing both.)
Yeah, both. Though I'm slightly less against shrinking flak, if it has to be done.
Walt It's far larger than any other weapon (well I guess except railguns). With nothing in between Large Cannons and Flak, it feels especially enormous. 3x3 flak would still be the largest 1-part weapon in the game.
Isn't the large cannon currently 3x3 and flak currently 3x5? Or am I misunderstanding part dimensions.
Regardless, I don't think that the flak battery is necessarily too big when compared with how the other weapons scale. For example, compare the large cannon to the small cannon, or the heavy laser to the small laser, or even the huge thruster to the large thruster - they're all double or more than the size of the next part down
I do agree that there are no single-part weapons that are as large as flak, but there are other parts that are comparable in size. The huge thruster is 3x4, and was 3x5 for the first RC. And the current nuke factory is a pretty huge 4x4.
But mostly I think that, at some point there will be larger weapons and defenses (and internals like reactors and control rooms), and whenever those are released they'll end up being the largest, probably by a significant margin. So I don't think it's that weird if flak is the largest now.
Walt It's hard to justify in terms of art/lore. Like, why does flak need to be so damn long? I can justify 3x3 by recessing the barrel a bit more and maybe give it long ammo racks, but 3x4 seems like a stretch.
Yeah, the way it is now flak I agree that flak looks weird (all that internal space). I was originally envisioning flak as a heavily emplaced/recessed weapon with a very long barrel, so most of the weapon's space (both internal and extrenal) would be taken up by supporting equipment for the barrel. More like a bunkered artillery gun than a tank turret. So there would be a lot less random empty space, which I think would make it's size look a lot more reasonable.
Though I do really like the look of having 4 barrels, so really I'm not sure what (if anything) makes sense.
Walt It just doesn't make sense from a lore standpoint, especially if the larger flak has 4 barrels like in the prototype. Why can't there be a 2-barreled version of flak?
I don't think this is really an issue. The same argument could be made for basically any part - why can't we have a single-tube missile launcher? Or why not a 3-wide railgun, or a medium cannon between the standard and the large?
Walt The large flak is basically unusable on small ships. Maybe not a huge problem, especially if PD are changed as you suggest, but it still bothers me a bit.
I don't really think this is a big issue either. Both railguns and missiles are currently awful on small ships, and ion beams are very niche on them. I don't think it would be all that weird if large flak on small ships was a pretty bad strategy, just like a short railgun or a 1-missile-launcher fighter.
Walt Um... I don't think I changed anything? Not since 0.14.4 I'm pretty sure. I have made a handful of improvements to the flight algorithm in the past few versions.
Oh! Ships still don't lead their attack targets based on current velocity? I'm 90% certain that they're leading targets more intelligently than they were before.
For example, if I tell my fighter at (0,0) to intercept an identical fighter moving from (-10, 10) to (10, 10), it'll fly straight north and intercept properly, whereas before I'm pretty sure it would've started flying at a diagonal (towards where the enemy is now) and missed the intercept.
Maybe it's because I'm using different, more maneuverable ships?
Walt What I have improved since 0.14.4 is the crew A.I., but no one has noticed how much better it is yet. 🙁 😃
I'll have to experiment! I always compartmentalize really really heavily, so I'm not completely sure what it was like before 🙂