Weapon and armour/hull/shield dynamics

[Morbo513]

An expansion of a concept I briefly touched on in another thread:

 

So, you've got chainguns, plasma, cannons, all this good stuff. Right now the only differences between them are their stats - damage, rate of fire, projectile velocity/hitscan, overheating and all that. What I propose is no small change: Give each weapon class a different purpose.

 

For now, let's say:

Chainguns/Bolters are effective against shields, decent against hull and components, but fare extremely poorly against armour - able to do raw damage, but with a diceroll to be deflected. Some chainguns/bolters could have an "AP ammo" trait reducing this chance by a large degree, ensuring more of the shots do damage to armour.

 

 

Cannons are the anti-armour. Their shots can penetrate X units through the point of impact, doing damage to all components it intersects with. It doesn't damage armour much, so against cannons, armour acts as a buffer against that penetration and nothing else. Very thick armour will defeat a cannon round, but this'd come at a huge expense in speed/maneuverabilty. Spaced hull/armour pieces would be a thing too. As for their performance against shields, I think they should be the primary defence against cannons, but with a chance for the shot to penetrate or something, using the shield as the point of impact, meaning sometimes it'll only reach as far as the outmost hull/armour bits, but still giving them a means to punish otherwise unprotected tech components.

 

Plasma is the dependable all-rounder; at the expense of its slow projectiles, general inaccuracy and poor performance at range, and energy consumption, it does equal damage to shields and melts individual blocks - Thick and layered armour would be the primary means of protection, with maneuverability and speed being an alternative.

 

Lasers take the role of a supporting weapon: Low DPS, but long range hitscan and near-perfect accuracy (But still dependent on gunnery ofc). Lasers would slowly sap shield and hull alike, and be a good means of defence against small, and fast, but lightly protected ships, helping keep them at bay. They'd help swing the qualities of the target ship leaving them more open to the vulnerabilities of your main armaments by draining the shield and slowly stripping away armour blocks and rubbing salt in the wound.

 

Lightning becomes a special-purpose weapon: Instead of dealing raw DPS, its purpose is now screwing with the target's energy production, essentially eventually rendering it unable to fire or recharge its shields. Armour would act as insulation, meaning the lightning needs to be focused on the target longer to have an effect, but firing it on exposed tech components would increase their energy drain on the target ship, and as they drain more energy, they also do more damage to those components, upon destruction of which the target ship's energy systems are much less taxed at the expense of having lost a shield generator for example.

 

Tesla, I'm not sure on, I kinda see it as superfluous. Feel free to fill this in for me

 

Railguns become dual-purpose. They generally have a good chance to negate shields entirely, but when it fails to do so, it does no damage to the shield or what's underneath it. However, when they do hit hull, they take a good chunk out, dealing hefty damage to blocks in a small radius, with armour able to withstand the splash but not a direct hit.

 

Missile launchers, well. Further diversification! The warheads of each launcher's missiles would inherit the properties of one of the above weapons: Ballistic missiles have the same effect on targets as chainguns (good v shields, bad v armour, alright v hull), Anti-Armour the same as cannons (penetrates, does linearly falling damage to each block it intersects), Plasma the same as Plasma (Good for hitting weak points and tearing away at layers of blocks), you get the picture.

It gets more complex. Missile launchers are then split up into three categories: Rocket launchers, Missile launchers and Torpedoes.

Rockets can be either guided or unguided, but are generally slow (Still faster than current missiles though, they're awful for that) and do a small amount of damage. They are fired in large salvos with a medium reload time, with a successfully connecting salvo doing a fair bit of harm to the target. Some could have a dicerolled quality of trading damage for speed and/or tracking, to perform better against faster/smaller ships.

 

Missiles however would be taking that role. Typically missiles will always be guided and fast with a medium payload, about equivalent to near a full rocket salvo. Against fast ships, the missile will stand the highest chance of getting there and delivering the warhead's damage, while it will typically be inefficient against bigger, more heavily protected ships, however with the highest guarantee of hitting the target. They'd have a pretty long reload, making the timing of their use essential if the target's vulnerability is enough for it to be decisive.

 

Torpedoes are anti-capital-ship. Slow and weakly, if not un-guided, they are nevertheless the most powerful, delivering a large payload to the target. They have two further qualities: A large splash, which may damage the firing ship, and a diceroll for a minimum arming distance - Proximity to the target becomes a big factor in their use, meaning your target has to be immobilised or otherwise sluggish to be vulnerable to them. Their reload is very slow, meaning you have a limited number of opportunities to put them to use against the target. As with missiles, timing and target choice are key: A ballistic torpedo can potentially cripple a target's shields, but if its shields are down and there's armour underneath, you've missed the opportunity to put it to its greatest use. Likewise, you're going to have to wait for the shields to go down to use an Anti-Armour torpedo effectively.

 

 

(Note: Maybe swap the railgun's properties with those of the cannons - considering hitscan, the cannon's properties may be more appropriate)

 

The diverse properties of how these weapons interact with the different defences they're to overcome will result in weapon choice being truly meaningful, making a comparison between two ships much more granular, but also wider-ranging - An armoured box with railguns and no shields against a shield-generator with chainguns and an engine strapped to it? Ship design would be so much more involved with accounting for the different types of damage you are or expect to be facing, and your choices in weaponry will help further define your methodology in combat. That about sums it up.

[amimai]

Here are the guns in avorion

 

Chainguns: bog standard

Bolters: chain guns that overheat

Lasers: hitscan pew pew

Plasma: anti-shield pew

Railguns: long range hits an pew pew

 

Non-normal guns

Cannons: work like torpedoes/artillery slow, damaging, ideal for hit and run

Lightning: lighting o so very frightening! Mama Mia Mama Mia (Freddie Mercury FTW) it's a pretty cool weapon like cannons but fast reload with queen blasting in the background!

Missiles: lets you perform a macross missile massacre!

 

 

I rather like the weapons as is, they aren't too specific but still have a personality

I would not like a situation where the only good gun you have is X and enemy built their ships to completely no-sell X so you die to a ship 10x your size...

[Diregame]

I find this to be a great concept and really love the idea of weapons specializations- it would add a whole new level of combat to the game with some ships being shield breakers and such, not just one ship being the go-to for all things destructive.

[Morbo513]

I find this to be a great concept and really love the idea of weapons specializations- it would add a whole new level of combat to the game with some ships being shield breakers and such, not just one ship being the go-to for all things destructive.

 

That's the idea. Nothing would stop someone from equipping multiple turret types to be the jack-of-all-trades type though.

 

[GrimJahk]

I like it.

 

Create flavor and require some tactics.

 

Shield Pen not needed in lowbie areas... etc.

[DivineEvil]

Ballistic weapons

 

Chaingun (Ballistic): Rapid-fire, low impact automatic weapons.

Low Damage

Low Overheat

Low Power Demand

High Velocity

Medium Range

Low Accuracy

Chainguns completely bypass shields due to low projectile mass, that shields do not react to. Armor and more rare materials counter them by sheer amount of HP given compared to Chaingun's damage output.

Bolter (Ballistic): Medium-caliber autocannons.

Low Damage

Low Overheat

Low Power Demand

Medium Velocity

Medium Range

Medium Accuracy

Bolters fire fragmentation shells, that deal additional damage against blocks based on their mass. Hitting smaller and therefore lighter blocks cause more damage to the block and the ship.

 

Artillery (Ballistic): Conventional high-caliber cannons.

Medium Damage

Medium Overheat

Medium Power Demand

Medium Velocity

High Range

High Accuracy

Cannons use HE/AP projectiles, that are equally good against most targets and reliable, but do not have special properties.

 

Railgun (Ballistic): Linear mass accelerators working by magnetic induction.

High Damage

Low Overheat

Very High Power Demand

High Velocity

High Range

High Accuracy

Railguns throw metal armatures at extreme velocities, that are capable of punching trough exterior blocks and damaging internal components, with a penetration factor equal to 1/50 of the base damage. A Railgun round damages the block they hit by half of their current damage potential before proceeding to hit next block in a line with the same effect, until penetration factor is expended, at which point the remainder of damage potential is dealt to the last block. Armor prevents penetration, consuming the entire damage potential when hit. Very, VERY energy hungry.

 

Energy Weapons

 

Laser (Energy): A projector firing a coherent beam of amplified photons.

Low Damage

High Overheat

Medium Power Demand

Instant Velocity

Medium Range

Perfect Accuracy

While lasers has low base damage value due to dissipation, they deal increasingly more damage the closer they are to the target. Prone to overheat while fired continuously. Lasers do not do any damage to Reflectors.

 

Ion (Energy): Fires a small high-velocity marker, that traces the ionized gas path in its wake, which is used to conduct a super-charged electric arc into the target hit by the marker.

High Damage

High Overheat

High Power Demand

Instant Velocity

Medium Range

High Accuracy

Ion Projector's electric arc overloads targets power-management system, which multiplies its Power demand. The higher a target's own power consumption is, the greater the effect. Shields prevent or reduce that effect for as long as they're keep Ion weapons from damaging the Hull. Ion projectors do not do any damage to Rocks.

 

Plasma (Energy): A powerful short-range weapon, that shoots bursts of concentrated, super-heated particle blobs.

Medium Damage

High Overheat

High Power Demand

Medium Velocity

Low Range

Low Accuracy

Plasma projectiles has an enveloping effect, that gives it an exceptional efficiency against shields as a high innate damage bonus. When no shields are present, plasma has an short-living effect on target's maneuverability and acceleration, which can be prevented by equipping Velocity Security Bypass module.

 

Acoustic (Energy): An unconventional projector unit, that fires super-compressed particle waves excited with kinetic reverberation.

Oh it's nothing special, its just my bass cannon!

Medium Damage

High Overheat

Medium Power Demand

Low Velocity

Low Range

Low Accuracy

Acoustic waves colliding with solid objects in vacuum environment causes violent vibrations, that passes rapidly trough metal structures and deals extensive damage in their weakest spots. That effect gives Acoustic projectors a substantially higher damage potential against heavier and larger blocks.

 

Tactical weapons:

 

Missiles (Tactical): Relatively small but dynamic self-propelling projectiles with conventional HE warheads.

Medium Damage

Medium Overheat

Low Power Demand

Low Velocity

Medium Range

Medium Accuracy

By their very concept, Missiles start at low velocity, but accelerate over time in the direction they're fired. They effectively lack range, but instead rely on life-time: a number of seconds each missile is capable of accelerating until its own thrusters overheat it, causing it to explode. Hitting targets at higher achieved velocity produces more focused destructive power, dealing more damage. Nevertheless, achieving higher velocity also reduces maneuverability of Seeker Missile variants.

 

Torpedo (Tactical): Large, dumb-fire and relatively slow self-propelling rounds designed for destroying massive capital ships and stations.

High Damage

Medium Overheat

Low Power Demand

Low Velocity

Medium Range

Medium Accuracy

Every torpedo launcher have one of the three possible warhead options: Heavy Explosive, Shaped Charge and Disruptor Pulse.

- HE warheads deal mediocre damage in a large Area-of-Effect, damaging each exposed block caught within, but most notable for causing a tremendous kinetic impulse unmatched by any ballistic weapon, that can disorient smaller targets.

- SC warheads produce a focused kinetic impulse perpendicular to the target hit. This deals an immense amount of cumulative damage, perpetually damaging and destroying any blocks in its path until the entire damage potential is expended.

- DP warheads trade their physical damage power for several orders of magnitude higher potential to drain target's Energy Batteries. This effect ignores shields entirely, and if target's Energy Batteries are completely drained by several successive hits, it will drain Energy Generation instead, applying a temporary debuff that stacks, but rapidly wears-off over time.

Torpedoes are powerful, but hard-to-hit armaments with lowest re-fire rates of all weapons.

 

Charge (Tactical): Pneumatically-released canister explosives with proximity-based primers.

Medium Damage

Low Overheat

Low Power Demand

Low Velocity

Low Range

Medium Accuracy

Utility-oriented weapons, Charges are essentially space-warfare analogues of both grenades and mines. When reaching their intended range without hitting a target, they decelerate and switch to sleeper mode and await for any targets coming close before exploding. Each charge canister has a long, several-minute live-span, but do not persist between sectors, and only limited amount of charges per turret can persist at a time, which requires judgement in their use. Charges produce damage in medium-sized AoE and can feature a broad variety of potential damage and behavior modifiers similar to other weapons, including Seeker Charge variants, that are magnetically attracted to their victims. Charges can be used to lay traps in path of incoming or chasing enemies and are an essential counter to future stealth ships.

 

Flak (Tactical): Quintessential point-defense area-saturation autocannons.

Low Damage

Med Overheat

Med Power Demand

High Velocity

Low Range

Low Accuracy

More of a defensive system than an effective ship-to-ship weapon. Flak turrets are innately Autonomous, meaning that they do not respond to any sort of player input. Instead, Flak tracks its own targets and fire massive, short bursts of timed-fragmentation rounds, that lay waste to unarmored or mildly protected targets, prioritizing the smallest ones. Flak readily intercepts incoming Missiles it is capable to track, destroys torpedoes with several successive volleys and best suited to make excessively brave Fighter pilots to reconsider their behavior. Flak does not do any damage to Armor.

[Morbo513]

Bump. I've not played Avorion since around the time I made this thread, and it's between this, shield dynamics (or the lack thereof) and AI as to whether that changes.

I'd like a straight answer from the devs on how they feel about this or the many other wastes of time I wrote up on this forum back then; yes or no to specialised weapon/damage types instead of just delivery, yes or no to making shields a compelling choice over foregone conclusion or necessity, yes or no to having the AI be challenging in their behaviour in addition to firepower, shield strength and numbers. These are questions the answer to which will determine whether your game is exciting, compelling and supportive of diverse design philosophy, or whether success in combat revolves around "More of everything", ie whether a ship's stats surpass a certain threshold rather than their design and player skill playing a significant role. Apart from AI, one way to achieve those things is right there in the OP.

 

Forgive me for sounding entitled - this game's potential is vast and I'm worried it won't be fulfilled.

[Zankastia]

This and This

[Warrax]

Great post (#5).

Wondering about the post's age - is the info still relevant?  Any recent nerfs or upgrades?

[DivineEvil]

Great post (#5).

Wondering about the post's age - is the info still relevant?  Any recent nerfs or upgrades?

In case you haven't played for a while, I'm just going to write down some of the new features and my present issues with the balance and weapon/protection interactions:

 

- Torpedoes has been added as a block-based super-weapon. They have a dedicated storage space similar to Fighters, and given ammunition varies in velocity, range, durability and warhead type with different preset damage values with an overall scaling on rarity tier. Main problem at the moment is that they can only be purchased in Equipment Docks and has to be manually loaded. There's no point in using them anywhere but on your flagship, because AI ship will expend them mindlessly and won't be able to rearm or manufacture them.

 

- Players can design their own visuals for the turret, and different weapon types have associated size brackets, that define the damage output and range in exchange for the lower tracking rate and higher turret slot requirements. Overall a positive change towards the variation between different turrets, although it lands a hit against the general weapon capacity relative to ship size and make them seem under-armed in most cases.

 

- We now have specialized point-defense weapons, and not one but three variants of them. It's a very good thing with little to whine about, although these weapons attack large ships too when there's no other more feasible targets around, and there's no answer why would they ever do that, considering their virtually insignificant damage output against them.

 

- Some substantial changes has been made to behavior of most weapons. In general, Energy weapons like Plasma, Tesla and Lightning deal extra damage to shields, while explosive weapons like Bolters, Cannons and Missiles deal splash damage past the shields. These multipliers doesn't seem to be openly displayed anymore for some unknown reason.

 

- Railguns are still extremely overpowered by far and throughout. Despite there's being a displayed penetration modifier for some of these, it doesn't seem to have any effect. Railguns are still instant-hit, long-range, high-accuracy, largely non-restrictive weapons, that deal multiplied damage to ship's hull despite armor and whatnot and easily decimate anything in their wake, with only Lightning cannons coming second, as they help to drain shields on similar range.

 

- On the other hand, Missiles still seem completely redundant. They're utterly meaningless without the Heat Seeker modifier and too weak and laggy with it. There's nothing they do well, that other weapons can't do better, and thus there's no reason to use them. Other than that, Cannons seem to remain a worse version of Railguns, without the instant-hit and multiplied damage quirks to bear, Lasers are the worse version of Tesla's, and Pulse cannons are worse version of Chainguns.

 

- General balance issue still lies with the convoluted system of unlimited, escalating energy drain on some weapons like lasers, instead of a more restrictive, but user-friendly flat energy consumption. That makes weapons with the associated mechanic very unfavorable for player flagship (due to unpredictable demands and superfluous manual management) and utterly useless for AI-controlled ships (which power-drain themselves to death using those weapons). I still cannot figure out how some weapons simply overheat, and others don't and instead drain infinite amounts of energy to manage heat.

 

- PvP combat is still effectively dead, because there are no energy-draining weapons and no prerequisites for boosting out of combat.

 

- I've also reconsidered some details around my ideas, but generally they remain the same. Weapons still follow the technological progression, culminating in Railguns and Lightning turrets removing the necessity for most other kind of weapons, and my idea, is that all weapons has to have their niche, and that heavier weapons with longer range also should give less DPS and require additional investments into energy supply, which unfortunately not the case atm.

[Kamo]

Yup, right now the meaningful weapons are principally:

Torpedoes: Torpedoes are grossly unbalanced weapons that serve the duty of exploding any ship they are fired upon, regardless of size difference and agility (theoretically they would even hit fighters with their AoE damage), making them a far more practical weapon than they have any right to be. Front and rear torpedo shafts are borderline useless as torpedo shafts eject torpedoes laterally, causing the torpedo to then go where it's headed.

Railguns: Kills enemies dead as the damage is multiplied by the amount of blocks penetrated: just fire where there's a lot of blocks and the 6k damage xanion railgun inflicts 54k at the level where enemies have 30k to 70k hull ::). Railguns absolutely have to be nerfed, especially compared to the Pulse Cannon (who does piddly damage while passing shields, which'd count as double damage), as in addition to their damage multiplier, they benefit from extraordinary base damage (a Railgun makes roughly five times as much damage as same rarity Cannons).

Lightning Guns: A rare or late-game weapon, but since Lightning is a shield drain. But Plasma makes a much cooler noise. Plasma is divided between the pew pew green bolts and the yellow balls that home in a bit and explode.

Point Defense: Divided in three categories. Point Defense Chainguns are best against torpedoes: a single round often kills a torpedo especially at higher rarity and material levels (I have a 25 damage PDC and 9 HP torpedoes). Point Defense Lasers struggles against torpedoes (my best PDL does around 4 damage per second, so kills a torpedo in 2,25 sec) but massacres fighters because percentile dodge do not work well with continuous damage. Flak Cannons are the most satisfying to use and kills both fighters and torpedoes easily (though the fire rate may cause torpedoes to pass in-between shots), but to use them you must not use fighters or be extremely careful with positioning, because the flak will indiscriminately kill them :'(: if you hate fighters, Flak are the best-all-end-all point defense..

Missiles: Where non-Seekers are borderline useless (unless, again, used on fighters), Seeker Missiles are the ideal long range weapon against anything: nothing beats a ceaseless onslaught of slow and unavoidable projectiles, especially from an explosion fan standpoint, and especially when converted into a swarm of fighters ;D. Also does wonders as a Defensive Mode Point Defense weapon as the missiles ceaselessly pursue fighters until they run out of dodges and die to the n-th loop.

Chainguns: Non-independant chainguns tend to do more damage (I saw 110 damage rof 10 common rarity titanium chainguns at xanion level) than their size would indicate, especially as they usually need neither reloading nor energy. Independant chainguns make great anti-torpedo point defense while actually damaging ships for a little damage. All and all they are balanced weapons though the weapons mentioned above outshine 'em. Lasers are also useful for the same reasons.

 

The rest are litterally useless or grossly outclassed.

Bolters: Does the same damage a chaingun does if factory-made so that they barely need to reload. Most looted models fire faster, causing downtime, which mean the global damage per battle is reduced as the downtime seems actually a bit too big for the DPS calculation. Factory-made independant targeting max-range bolters are a great weapon for stations :).

Fighters: Fighters are either an awesome power multiplier (3 fighters equalling a weapon slot, so 120 fighters equals 40 weapon slots' worth of damage :D), or a huge waste of resources and especially time as they get wrecked by Point Defense, so you have to race to kill the Point Defense while the fighters attack the other enemy ships because they'd take time to return if you asked: so fighters are all things considered pretty bad in drawn-out fleet battles where the enemy point defense fires for a long time. Fighters need a way to tell them to fire from a distance, especially those fitted with long-range weapons which meaninglessly charge the enemy :P.

Cannons: Does medium-rare amounts of damage but way too infrequently. If the total damage of Cannons and Railguns (with both damage multipliers' equivalents) were interverted both would have a purpose, but right now a cannon does less damage, DPS-wise, than a chaingun, unless range is involved, but at that moment an independant targeting cannon would be preferable, further reducing the "meh" damage :-[.

Size-1 cannons are nice to put on stations but those are limited to the Iron Wastes and Titanium Belt, where they all become size-3. Also, Cannons have become really rare in the Titanium Belt.

Tesla Cannons: Unlimited POWERRR !!! Except Lightning Guns are better in all aspects. Even the Mobile Energy Lab changed from teslas to lightning, poor teslas :( ! Maybe those need to have a damage multipliable by energy generation, so they do more damage than Railguns, but drain huge amounts of energy, to nail the unlimited power feel.

Pulse Cannons: Yay, a weapon that passes through shields to destroy shield-heavy opponents !... Except it does so little damage you would rather use an independant targeting Cannon ::), or worse, other weapons with random shield bypass chance.

Any and all Coaxial Weapons: Coax right now is way too stupidly core-distance-dependant >:(, and weapon size needs to be put in the hands of players for Coax to be a thing out of the Inner Sphere. (Cue Skaven-like "Inner Sphere Stravags !" cries.) Also, someone forgot to recode the AI so they would try heading the ship to aim the weapon at the target (that's what coax is all about after all), so those are only ceremonial weapons right now at the hands of the AI, and I didn't manage to find and test even one of them :-\.

Force Guns: A cool way to make Force Guns useful in combat would be to tether the beam to the first thing it hits while following the relative heading of the firing craft's camera, and add a strong lateral push to all of them, so one would make a flinging motion to fling asteroids at big ships and stations :D. They are also pretty good at relocating stations to make pseudocomplexes :).

Salvaging Beam: Salvaging beams' effectiveness after getting to the Naonite Belt has been nerfed to nothing, as those do nothing against shields :'(... They may need to do 50% to 90% (random modifier increased by rarity, like Pulse Cannons chance to bypass shields) damage to shields.

 

P.S.: Whoa Zankastia has wonderful ideas for missions :)