Weapon targeting & momentum range buff discussion (renamed by Walt)

Nordwolf

I want to report issue/bug with nukes, their targeting is very frustrating and nukes just don't fire a lot of the time if you are not coming onto an enemy straight up.
Now, this might be a balance decision, but while nukes do account for momentum in their calculation, they don't seem to account for increased range the momentum gives, so if you are just above medium speed they pretty much don't work even if you approach an enemy ship point blank
(like this)
Approach angle

In the picture my nukes are diagonal angled to front, but it neither works when they face sides or back diagonal. If I manually launch nukes some distance before, than it would be possible to hit the enemy ship, in fact I can already to it with autofire.

Now, if this is an intended way nukes work, I would strongly ask for a dedicated button to fire nukes once, without messing with autofire (similar button to "Launch mines"), this would allow people to still manually slingshot nukes onto enemy, however hard it is. It would be much worse for higher ping players though.

PS: If this is indeed an intended feature I'd ask this to be moved to General Discussion

Walt

I'm going to move this into General and rename it, not because you were wrong to post it Tech Support, but because it raises a larger design question that needs to be discussed.

First, let me explain a couple things about weapon targeting in Cosmoteer:

Weapons (all weapons, not just nukes) that are set to Fire At Will will never auto-target something outside of its prescribed range, even if they would be able to hit it due to momentum -- they will never account for the range increase they get from momentum. Fixing this is not something I want to do because it would be bad for performance.
Most weapons, when given a specific target, will fire on that specific target even if it's outside their prescribed range, as long as they can hit it once momentum is taken into consideration. This is why manually targeting weapons gives a longer range.
However, fixed-direction projectile weapons (nukes & railguns), due to using a different targeting algorithm, still do not take momentum range increases into account when deciding whether to fire, even when given a specific target.
The range increase that a projectile gets when fired from a moving ship towards a non-moving ship is directly proportional to the projectile's lifetime and the ship's speed. So, for example, if a projectile is fired from a ship moving 30 meters/second and the projectile's lifetime is 5 seconds, then the projectile will have an extended range of 30x5 = 150 meters. This is why slow-moving projectiles like cannon shots get, unintuitively, a bigger range increase from momentum, because they tend to have longer lifetimes than faster-moving projectiles. This is why sometimes cannons can outrange railguns!

Now, fixing #3 is something I can do pretty easily; I can make it so that nukes (and railguns) take momentum into account for range when deciding when to fire.

But I think the much bigger problem at hand is #4, specifically the fact that slow-moving projectiles get much larger range increases from momentum. So I want to decide what to about that problem before doing anything about #3. I have a couple ideas, which I welcome feedback on:

Increase projectile speed (and thus shorten lifetime) of most weapons, especially slow-moving projectiles, such that the difference in range increases among different weapons is much less than it currently is. While I'm not averse to giving cannons and lasers projectile speed buffs, I really like the slow speed of nukes, it just feels good, and so I'm loathe to buff nuke speed very much. And it would reduce the importance of thrusters, which may be a good thing or a bad thing. (I think after the 0.14.5 thruster balance changes, it'd probably be a bad thing.) Buffing projectile speeds also wouldn't entirely eliminate the problem, it would just reduce it.
Only allow weapons (all weapons) to shoot at targets within their prescribed range, even if they could theoretically hit the target outside of their prescribed range due to momentum. This would put all weapons on a level playing field, essentially giving the nuke/railgun targeting "issues" to all weapons, which would at least make their behavior more consistent. But this would be a pretty huge balance/mechanics change that would likely significantly change how the game plays, potentially eliminating tactics that use momentum to get a range advantage. It also feels a bit arbitrary to restrict range like this. (Though is arguably no more arbitrary than how auto-targeting is already restricted.)

Overall, I'm not a big fan of either of these ideas, but I haven't come up with anything better yet. If I had to pick one of these, I think I'd pick #2.

What are everyone's thoughts on this problem?

Dalas120

Walt Weapons (all weapons, not just nukes) that are set to Fire At Will will never auto-target something outside of its prescribed range, even if they would be able to hit it due to momentum -- they will never account for the range increase they get from momentum. Fixing this is not something I want to do because it would be bad for performance.

Could this be helped somewhat by having the ship set an automatic ship-wide target (based roughly on momentum and weapon placement but not thinking too hard) if there's no manual one, and then checking that for each weapon without a manual target? Obviously there's many cases where it wouldn't work, but I don't think it would impact performance, and it would be better than nothing?

Walt Overall, I'm not a big fan of either of these ideas, but I haven't come up with anything better yet. If I had to pick one of these, I think I'd pick #2.

One thing I'd be worried about with #2 is that players can autofire weapons to bypass the targeting restrictions.
Bullet lifetime could be artificially limited like with missiles, but that feels a little weird. But I also don't really like #1, for the reasons you gave.

What would you think about having bullets transition to a grid-based frame of reference over a little while, like mines do? That would significantly reduce the impact of momentum range boosting without removing it entirely, and would also make targeted weapons and autofired weapons work exactly the same. IMO it feels a lot more natural than imposing targeting limitations.

I'm not completely sure how serious of a problem momentum boosting is, but if it needs to be changed I think I'd prefer the above option to either #1 or #2.

Guy

Walt What if projectiles took bonus damage from pd/flak, scaled to their speed relative to the defender? Something moving twice as fast as its base launch speed could take double damage from defenses, for example.

Nordwolf

Thank you for an elaborate reply, you do raise a lot of points in this.

First I'm just going to say that I was manually targeting but it's beside the point because you confirmed that it's not supposed to work atm.

#3
In my opinion fixing #3 would be the best thing you can do right now - and then balance nukes/railguns while taking that feature into account (right now autofiring nukes using momentum is really powerful, making it also targetable will potentially make it op, however it would be really fun to use bombers with nukes, so maybe reduce the explosion range for nukes to compensate?)

Issue #4
To the issue #4 and it's impact on the game: right now the range increase is only useful for fast cannon walls and autofire nukes, I don't think the fact that it happens is a bad thing, however the difference in proj speed and thus lifetime is too great right now.
Personally I absolutely don't like 2nd solution in it's current form because it would really remove fluidity from the game, however partial implementation of this could be interesting (read more ways to balance this)

Projectile speed
In general I would prefer projectiles in this game to be faster, it's just incredibly frustrating that you can outrun bullets with normal engines (maybe make it possible with boost engines?), but I don't think that every projectile needs a buff - there is a threshold I think, of when the projectile becomes too slow to gain the range effectiveness - examples would include nukes, I don't think I'd want them to become faster even if their lifetime gives them a longer range.

More ways to balance this
In general I prefer gameplay solutions to gameplay problems, artificial limitations, while balance things don't feel fun or interesting in any way.
One of the ideas I had is having more use for sensor array in the targeting department - make it increase the weapon targeting range as well, and thus have the second solution partially in this. If you want to have range advantage - use some expensive (and sometimes maybe heavy?) parts. Maybe even add some antennae/dish like external parts that specifically cover a limited angle of where they are pointing to.

PS: also Flak can pretty much render missiles unusable and it's all kinds of weird mechanically, also its fire makes a smokescreen you can't see through, but it's probably a discussion for another topic.

EDIT:
A small idea for balancing the cannon projectile speed increase is making their recoil much greater, making them harder to use on light ships.

Walt

Dalas120 Could this be helped somewhat by having the ship set an automatic ship-wide target (based roughly on momentum and weapon placement but not thinking too hard) if there's no manual one, and then checking that for each weapon without a manual target? Obviously there's many cases where it wouldn't work, but I don't think it would impact performance, and it would be better than nothing?

Hmm, maybe. I worry it'd be a bit unpredictable, like sometimes it'd work great and sometimes your weapons wouldn't fire when you expect them to because they had picked an automatic ship-wide target that they can't actually hit.

Maybe a "good enough" solution that's more predictable would be to let weapons auto-target the ship's attack target? That only adds one more ship that the algorithm needs to check and I don't think would significantly impact performance. And it would behave predictably and controllably.

Dalas120 What would you think about having bullets transition to a grid-based frame of reference over a little while, like mines do? That would significantly reduce the impact of momentum range boosting without removing it entirely, and would also make targeted weapons and autofired weapons work exactly the same. IMO it feels a lot more natural than imposing targeting limitations.

Hmm, this is an interesting idea. I think it's worth trying, though I'm not convinced it can be properly balanced at all ship speeds. Ideally, combat between two ships moving very fast relative to the grid but at the same speed relative to each other would be essentially the same as combat between two ships standing still relative to the grid. I'm not sure if it'll be possible to find a transition time and rate that sufficiently reduces momentum range boosting while also not greatly affecting the physics of combat between ships moving at high but similar velocities.

Walt

For the sake of completeness, here's another idea for tackling momentum range boosting:

Significantly increase the range of the longer-range weapons such that there's a greater disparity in weapon ranges. Perhaps even give most projectiles the same lifetime such that faster projectiles generally have longer range. (With probably some exceptions such as electro-bolters and nukes.)

Obviously this would be at least as big a can of worms to open as my other ideas, but figured I'd throw it out there.

Dalas120 I'm not completely sure how serious of a problem momentum boosting is, but if it needs to be changed I think I'd prefer the above option to either #1 or #2.

To be clear, my issue is not with momentum boosting itself, which is a cool part of piloting skill, but with the fact that it's much more effective with slower weapons, to the point where it causes strange issues like cannons outranging railguns.

Nordwolf

If we are just putting out ideas for completeness, there's one more:

Limit some projectiles like cannons by distance, not by projectile duration.

In general I am not a huge fan of the idea, but I think it could be applied to some weapons (most probably future weapons)

Walt

Nordwolf Limit some projectiles like cannons by distance, not by projectile duration.

Assuming you're talking about distance relative to the background grid, that would cause weapons to have very short ranges when fired from fast-moving ships.

Saesee_Tiin

Walt Whatever you do, please let the Nukes keep a long lifespan. Using momentum, Nukes can be used as the munitions for strike bombers. I'm extremely pumped to finally have something that 100k or less credit ships can use against much larger and more powerful Frigates and such.

mleise

I just imagined the gameplay for kiters when using the background grid for reference in any way:

Limiting cannon shells by distance traveled instead of lifetime

= If I kite at the cannon shell's speed I can lay mines, because the shells don't move relative to the grid and never despawn! 😉

Transition to grid frame of reference

= The ship in pursuit fires shells that will slow down to (shell speed - ship speed) and eventually fly at negative speeds and crash into the cannons they were fired from, while the kiter's shells would constantly accelerate (to shell speed + ship speed).

As Walt said somewhere, [acceleration] and the relative speed between two ships is what matters and weapons should ideally behave the same whenever two ships fly at the same constant velocity and direction.

Terket

Guy ~~Now that's a kiting nerf!..... wait.~~

Guy

Terket Hmm. It could be a kite nerf if the bonus damage were allowed to go negative, but not if the minimum bonus were zero.

Checking relative velocities for each projectile might be too laggy anyway, I have no idea on that. But if it isn't, adding an if statement to prevent a negative bonus wouldn't cause a problem.