Akama

On the subject of ammo management, what I had in mind was something akin to an 'ammo factory' block, utilizing a resource similar to how energy works. You wouldn't need to manually purchase or equip any given sort of ammunition, unlike torpedoes, and the amount of ammo you'd be able to fabricate would dictate for how long cannon-type based weapons would be able to fire continuously least their stocks deplete. I thought of it as the price to pay for an over-armed ship, but it is not of paramount importance. Ammo also shouldn't, under this model, cost any resources to be fabricated. It is thought of as merely a detail, not something you'd have to actively manage. From the posts I believe I made myself hard to understand; to be clear, I did NOT mean an ammo system like the current torpedo system. You could, for example, set your factory, configure which kind of ammo (maybe with varying costs in the amount fabricated per second/minute?) each weapon or weapon group would use, and be done with it. It would not cost any resource or require any micromanagement whatsoever aside from this initial configuration. About the possible implications of armor angling's impact on performance, it greatly depends. If the game is being engineered as an RTS, in the sense of having tens of ships battling each other at the same time, it -might- have an impact depending on how it's implemented. Again, the goal isn't to overcomplicate gameplay as much as it is to reward good ship designs that feature sloped/angled armor on their hull. The formulas and metodology utilized can greatly vary, however, and it is impossible to answer whether or not the performance price would be costly. Overall, the most important things in my opinion are the turret and damage model issues, which shouldn't be that hard to implement and would add wonders to the gameplay.

Hey folks, I've been a fan of this game for a long, long time. With that being said, some of the stuff I'll suggest here probably won't be to everyone's taste. These changes are geared towards making the game somewhat more realistic (not LITERALLY realistic, but you'll understand once you read it!) and interesting. First of all, I think the number of turrets shouldn't be limited by PP, but by something else, or even not limited at all - aside from technical limitations you'd have to work around. Perhaps this could be done with an ammo system - you'd need a lot of ammo, stored somewhere inside of the ship, to fire a large number of turrets for a sustained period of time. This could be very expensive, very heavy, and especially very dangerous. This could be solved with turrets requiring either ammo or energy to fire, and functioning like fighters in the way that you could transform a turret you have into a blueprint and make many more of that. It would also be way easier to standardize a ship's weaponry. On the aspect of danger, I think critical parts (such as generators, fuel if it's ever introduced into the game, torpedo storages, that sort of stuff) should produce catastrophic results if ever blown up. It should be a design's first concern to properly armor its 'citadel' if it wishes to survive. The current system relies on a matter of 'HP' to calculate damage, and sturdier blocks naturally have more HP, but I find that somewhat lacking. The main issue you have with one of your generators blowing up is that it's costly to replace. With what I have in mind, you'd be lucky to even survive a central, large generator blowing up. Likewise, a critical hit on an enemy's exposed entrails should reward you with a large, satisfying explosion. This ties into the usage of armor and, just maybe, ammo types. Imagine if blocks, aside from their HP, had an armor rating metric. Projectiles could potentially punch through said armor and reach the ship's inside, and do it without largely damaging the armor block itself. If implementation is taken to another level, variables such as armor angling could be taken into account as well. This would add another whole level of depth into the game; the fancy-looking ships from the workshop, normally featuring sharp angles on their armor, would do something aside from looking good. This naturally tends to limit overpowered ships, because you'd either armor yourself adequately OR have a very large number of turrets and ammo. You could potentially do both, but you'd end up with a very expensive design. On the matter of ammo types, maybe ammo factories could produce different kinds of shells/ammo for certain types of turrets. A cannon, for example, could fire a purely HE shell, a purely AP one, some sort of APHE, so on and so forth. HE could be potentially devastating for an under-armoured vessel, but utterly useless against thick armor. Those are historical examples and we're talking about space, so there's a lot of room for imagining something that makes sense and is easy to balance. How energy or lightning should react against armor is up for debate, for example. Again, the current model uses something like a 'shoot the enemy until it's dead' system and combat can feel very dull at times. When all of this is taken into account, the game drastically changes. You could be potentially oneshot by a low tier ship's torpedo hitting an ill-protected generator, whose explosion could chain into everything sensitive nearby and decimate the insides of your ship. A thick-armored monster could perhaps even bounce AP right off, but would be tremendously sluggish and easily overwhelmed. You could make a small gunship with tens of turrets, but a single penetration could detonate your appropriately large ammo rack and spell your doom. You get the idea. I understand this would take a tremendous amount of work and would throw previous systems into the garbage bin, but personally I think this sort of approach would make the game even more enjoyable. It would naturally encourage smart designs and punish mistakes. Of course, the enemy generation system would have to account for this as well lest the game becomes too easy.