Cosmoteer Release Candidate 0.14.10_rc3

Walt

Thanks to everyone who tested 0.14.10 RC1 and RC2! RC3 is now available for testing! No major changes, just a handful of bug fixes.

Download 0.14.10_rc3

Changes since RC2:

Balance:
- Prisms will no longer rotate if their ship doesn't have an operational control room.
Graphics:
- Improved appearance of multiple combined ion beams.
Bug Fixes:
- Prisms would release one extra burst of power when shutting down, which could create feedback loops that build up huge amounts of energy.
- No-Ammo indicators were being displayed after loading a saved game even for parts that had ammo.
- The A.I. would target its own prisms on the prisms of other ships.
- Prisms that were targeted on other prisms wouldn't do damage to enemy or junk ships that got in their path.
Modding:
- Filter blocks now support Junk and TargetedJunk filters. (Junk is no longer treated as "Friendlies".)

KrankysFirebrand48

Walt The A.I. would target its own prisms on the prisms of other ships.

I just got mind F’ed

Sombreroman

Walt Prisms that were targeted on other prisms wouldn't do damage to enemy or junk ships that got in their path.

Woo! The bug was fixed!

rottis

Yey

Vess

I feel that the Prisms buff to individual Ions is too great. I suggest changing the dmg reduction of an Ion to be per Prism. Basicly an Ion is reduced 33% dmg each time it passes through a prism.

Dalas120

So I did get cosmoteer working on linux (though it crashes every few minutes, which is really annoying) and got some testing in with the ion prisms. One concern: I think that the current "best" way to use ion prisms is to use many small prisms (1:1, 2:1) and bury them deep behind armor, angled so that they focus. I believe this is a problem for several reasons:

it's very similar to railguns, both having massive fixed firepower buried behind armor,
and it outshines all the unique things about ion prisms:
the prism's ability to change prism targets mid-battle
the prism's ability to combine ion beams together
the prism's ability to track with a hitscan weapon

I think there are three main mechanics causing this. First, ion beams have an infinitely small width, meaning they can be buried at weird angles so they effectively have 0 exposed surface area. Second, there's little reason to take advantage of the prism's ability to track targets with its unique hitscan ion beam, because prism rotation is so slow that it's very nearly a fixed weapon. Finally, there's little reason to combine prisms because a combined prism has no real advantage over several small prisms (since you can overlap many small ions into the same small surface area), and does have a major disadvantage (less damage).

So, I suggest (realizing I've mentioned some of these before):

1 - Give all ion beam at least some phsical width (though probably not so much that regular ion beams can't be protected with triangle armor). This means that:

prisms can't be used to cram ion beams through extremely narrow gaps to make them extremely difficult to kill. This makes prisms less like railguns and encourages players to take advantage of the unique combining mechanic.

2 - Massively increase the prism's rotation speed. This means that:

the unique prism hitscan aiming/tracking is more relevant, rather than it being best to aim your whole ship directly at an enemy.
this buff does not improve prisms buried behind armor, making it relatively better to mount prisms on the surface rather than behind armor. This also helps make prisms less like railguns, because they're encouraged to be surface-mounted and track targets rather than buried deep behind armor

3 - Allow large prisms to gain increased range. This means that:

players have an incentive to use a single large beam over many small beams. Right now the surface area advantage can be mostly ignored by aiming many small prisms through focused armor, so there's not much other reason to use very large ion beams.
the changing prism targets mid-battle unique mechanic is much more powerful. Ships could combine many prisms for extra range, then separate prisms once the enemy closes in for more damage.
while this does make them more similar to railguns (as they would both have long range), I think that the increased focus on the unique ion prism mechanics and the incentive to mount prisms on the surface as rotatable turrets (from #2) would still be enough to make prisms feel more different

Hopefully, the net effect would be that ion prisms would have a greater focus on what makes them unique.

Some concerns about my suggestions:

rapidly turning prisms combined with hitscan ion beams might be too strong at range. While even 1:1 prisms have very low damage (roughly half the dps/cost of a laser), it's possible that won't be enough to make up for a 100% guaranteed hit chance and the ability to ignore flak. If this ends up being a problem, I think that making falloff more severe might be a good solution, since it adds to the uniqueness of ions (only weapon with falloff) rather than subtracting from it.
this discourages mixed-arms ships, since you only get the range benefit from combining ions if you have enough ions in the first place (and if you're buying ions, you're not buying other weapons). Depending on how many ion beams it takes to reach max range this may or may not be a significant issue.

And some minor things:

is there any reason to have "link prism" as a separate command? Since ions can't normally damage prisms, players could just use the target/attack command to link prisms (as long as prism targets were saved with ship designs), which makes the UI a bit simpler.
what would you think about making mines less visible? One of their biggest features was that you could easily fly into a minefield if you weren't paying attention. The 0.14.7 red spinny lights look cool, but they make mines a lot weaker since it's very difficult to accidentally hit them. Maybe the spinny light is only visible when near sensors?
are there any plans to differentiate the two firing modes of the heavy laser, or to give the small thruster reverse ramp-up?
are there any plans to change the boost thruster to be more bursty? (instead of permaboost, which is its primary use right now)

Nordwolf

Dalas120 I think that the current "best" way to use ion prisms is to use many small prisms (1:1, 2:1) and bury them deep behind armor, angled so that they focus

Here's a quote from my discord post about it and a few images to illustrate:

So I am finally back home, and here are some of my developments

Ships will now spawn with prisms already pointing at their linked prisms.

This is really important because now you can have a prism at the focus point and several other prisms linked to it with fixed rotation, you can then just remove/explode/disconnect the focus prism and voila, you have a working fixed ion focus with the prism.

But why would that be useful?
1. You don't need to combine beams for fixed focus rammers/other uses, therefore not losing too much power
2. You can layer the armour so close to the beam you practically don't need shields to protect them, here are a few examples:

My thoughts on this matter:
- I haven't seen anyone use these beside me, but it might just be a matter of time
- It's not easy to make, it's important to calculate the right focus angles for it to be on par with other ion configurations, you also lose quite a bit of power due to range falloff.
- It might need a small width increase, but only very slight, to make the holes bigger, I think it's quite a unique way of using prisms.
- I agree with range increase, there needs to be more benefits from combining beams into one besides just being more defensive, not 100% sure about rotation speed increase, but I still like the idea in general
- Interesting idea about the rotation speed: make it non-linear, fast when it's far from the target, slower when it's near the target (looks smoother, makes it harder to focus on one spot too fast), although I do like the linear look as well, fitting for an ion beam.
- I would also like to suggest some range falloff buffs for combining ion prisms, you lose a lot of power from both falloff and your formula.

Walt

Dalas120 I think that the current "best" way to use ion prisms is to use many small prisms (1:1, 2:1) and bury them deep behind armor, angled so that they focus.

Can you please post an example of this, or send me one if you don't want to share it?

Dalas120 Give all ion beam at least some phsical width (though probably not so much that regular ion beams can't be protected with triangle armor).

Sounds reasonable to me as long as it's not too wide. I can probably go about 80% the width of a tile before it starts having issues missing things.

Dalas120 Massively increase the prism's rotation speed.

I worry that this will make it too easy to focus-fire ions on a single target without combining them via prisms first.

Dalas120 Allow large prisms to gain increased range.

How would this not be extremely broken balance-wise? A long-range, ultra-powerful, perfectly-accurate, un-flakkable weapon?

Dalas120 is there any reason to have "link prism" as a separate command? Since ions can't normally damage prisms, players could just use the target/attack command to link prisms (as long as prism targets were saved with ship designs), which makes the UI a bit simpler.

Two reasons:

Using the link command you can't misclick on a non-prism and force-fire on yourself.
The link button makes it clear to players unfamiliar with prism mechanics that prisms can be linked together.

Dalas120 what would you think about making mines less visible? One of their biggest features was that you could easily fly into a minefield if you weren't paying attention. The 0.14.7 red spinny lights look cool, but they make mines a lot weaker since it's very difficult to accidentally hit them. Maybe the spinny light is only visible when near sensors?

Oh man, I got so much pushback with mines being too hard to see, people seemed to hate it. Doing something with sensors would be cool though. (Stealth mines I think we've talked about previously.)

Dalas120 are there any plans to differentiate the two firing modes of the heavy laser, or to give the small thruster reverse ramp-up?

I'm open to both of those, just hasn't been on my radar lately.

Giving small thrusters reverse ramp-up may or may not be hard to make work with the flight AI.

Dalas120 are there any plans to change the boost thruster to be more bursty? (instead of permaboost, which is its primary use right now)

Again I'm open to this, just haven't thought about it. I agree that boost thrusters are being used in permaboost mode much too commonly currently.

Nordwolf It's not easy to make, it's important to calculate the right focus angles for it to be on par with other ion configurations, you also lose quite a bit of power due to range falloff.

How much harder do you think it would be if the beams were about as wide as 80% of a tile?

Nordwolf Besides, why even leave it in if the prisms only don't damage them, not even redirecting their energy?

Shooting an ion into an enemy prism does redirect the energy.

Dalas120

Walt Can you please post an example of this, or send me one if you don't want to share it?

Basically what Nordwolf posted, but a lot uglier when I did it 🙂. I also haven't been burying mine nearly as deep

Nordwolf - I haven't seen anyone use these beside me, but it might just be a matter of time
- It's not easy to make, it's important to calculate the right focus angles for it to be on par with other ion configurations, you also lose quite a bit of power due to range falloff.
- It might need a small width increase, but only very slight, to make the holes bigger, I think it's quite a unique way of using prisms.

I don't think buried small prisms are necessarily OP, but I do think they're the best way to use ion prisms currently (and everything else is UP). Obviously combining beams isn't very strong for reasons already listed, but I also think surface-mounted 1:1 prisms are similar to but mostly outclassed by lasers (though I could certainly be wrong). So I think it would be a shame if buried small prisms completely went away, but I don't think it should be the standout best option either.

Walt I worry that this will make it too easy to focus-fire ions on a single target without combining them via prisms first.

I don't think they have much trouble focus-firing right now. At medium-long ranges it only takes a few seconds to change prisms from pointing forward to converging on an enemy (especially if you have two+ focal points), and players also have the option to pre-aim their prisms like on nordwolf's ships. Once prisms are converging, most of the actual aim can be done by rotating the ship.

Even if combined prisms was the only way to focus fire, I don't think that's enough of a reason for players to use them. Focus fire is good, but probably not when you lose 40%+ damage to do so. It also doesn't encourage switching prisms - you'd just bury the combined prism behind armor and focus on it all the time.

Walt How would this not be extremely broken balance-wise? A long-range, ultra-powerful, perfectly-accurate, un-flakkable weapon?

It would come at the cost of much lower damage than available at close range, both because of the falloff and because of the prism combining inefficiency. Long range prisms would be more of a harass weapon, in contrast to the railgun which is more of a siege weapon. If range boosted falloff continued at the normal rate (-20%dmg for each 100m), an optimized 16-ion prism would only deal 3,752 dps at 400 range - around half of a single flak.

Or if the falloff range was extended at the same rate as the normal range (-40%dmg at max range), an optimized 16-ion prism would still only deal around 1/3 the damage of 16 ordinary ions at close range. That might be too high though, in which case:

Dalas120 If this ends up being a problem, I think that making falloff more severe might be a good solution, since it adds to the uniqueness of ions (only weapon with falloff) rather than subtracting from it.

This would also be a good way to keep noncombined turreted ions from being too powerful, if that ends up being an issue.

Nordwolf

clojelo Error loading game: Shared sound effects must be played with a speed of 1

Same error but without mods:

World file:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1EjLm0aMf2TnrpY9DKhe8VX8Im77B3aIV

Walt

Nordwolf Same error but without mods:

World file:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1EjLm0aMf2TnrpY9DKhe8VX8Im77B3aIV

Thanks, should be fixed in the stable update.

Nordwolf

Opinion on ions not being able to deal damage to enemy prisms:
It's a very counter-intuitive mechanic, you can shield your ship with prisms to be practically immune to ion damage,
When you target enemy weapons you want to destroy them, that includes prisms.

While it's a cool gimmick I don't think it has a place in the balance of the game. Besides, why even leave it in if the prisms only don't damage them, not even redirecting their energy?

Nordwolf

Walt How much harder do you think it would be if the beams were about as wide as 80% of a tile?

Significantly harder in my opinion, even having a width of 20% would result in reduced effectiveness, I'd leave them at about 40% tile width and not more if it was up to me.

Walt

Dalas120 I think it's too late to make a change as major as adding dynamic range for 0.14.10, but let's keep discussing after the stable update when we have more info on how they work in practice.

I will make them thicker though, I don't see any reason not to do that.

Walt

Nordwolf Currently I have it at 50% which allows it to just squeak by a prism that's offset by 1 tile.