independent Targeting nerf is upside down

[Duckroll]

Right now large ships as a player are really silly thematically. They act like small ships would, essentially flying at enemies, shooting all weapons while facing them, and perhaps flying past again as if they were doing an attack run if fighting a difficult enemy.

 

What I would expect to be happening for a large ship, is for it to be slowly moving around and broadsiding the enemy, with it's various turrets shooting at appropriate targets (e.g anti-hull weapons at shielded ships, anti-shield weapons at others, Gatling guns at fighters and missiles coming at it). To turn the ship and have every single gun fired by the player is really bizarre and doesn't make much sense.

 

I would actually go so far as to say there should be a limit on the number of turrets a player can control at a time, say 4-6. Given how crazy powerful large ships are right now, this would tilt the scales slightly back towards smaller ships. Or reduce the damage past the first 4 turrets fired together, because the ship captain is obviously having to use a computer instead of gunner crews to coordinate them all together.

 

I also don't understand why all turrets don't have independent targeting, given there are 4 crewmen operating them. Manual firing turrets already has a huge advantage; you can focus fire on one target at a time, instead of spreading your DPS. But instead the game goes so far to to nerf independently targeting turrets even further by reducing their damage artificially.

 

This, or at least let me fire my 100 gunner crewmen and still use the turrets, because they're not doing anything for me right now.

[Sable Phoenix]

Goodness this is funny.  I just made a post over on the suggestions forum discussing this exact thing, with the exact same thought processes behind it.  It really makes no sense at all and just increases tedium.

[thedamngod]

Old discussion on gunners and independent targeting: http://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,1147.0.html

(I have also linked to this in the above mentioned thread)

[AstroOwl]

This three threads are not the same. Here, the "why do we have to aim manually even with gunners" is just one of the topics.

 

What author is likely saying, and i agree, is:

 

The game currently fails to make large ships be as they usually are in sci-fi: a vessels acting differently from small ships, not rotating the whole ship to engage each target, using different groups of weaponry against different ships, having a seriously (and not slightly) reduced maneuverability a drawback of size etc.

 

If the intent is to make large ships to appear in such a way (and if i understand koonschi posts correctly, it is) - then something need to be changed.

 

However, i think it is important not to use artificial restrictions, like limit on number of directly controlled turrets, to make players behave in a certain way  - instead, it's better to leave players with choice, but to make it so that for a large ships optimal behavior is not as it is now (making starfighter of ship of any size), so that player, driven by a free will, but not restrictions, would find another playstyle more natural and beneficial.

 

For example: how it can be made that rotating your turrets, or using independent targeting, would be more convinient than rotating your ship every time you want to engage someone else?

 

Probably, the rotation speed of turrets should be increased, so that is won't be always easier to rotate the whole ship, like it is now?

Probably, the penalty in damage for indep. targeting should really be removed or reduced?

Probably, improvements in how good turrets aim on their own can be made?

Probably, thin-spaghetti enemies should be  somehow dealt with (since ai turrets have troubles hitting them, which forces player to aim manually)?

 

 

[Duckroll]

Thanks for the replies - Yes, I agree that turning speed would be a better way to cope with things that limiting the number of turrets controllable. Big ships should not be doing 360 flips in less than a second like they are now tbh. Manoeuvrability should become exponentially more difficult to apply to larger ships.

[LordMaddog]

Thanks for the replies - Yes, I agree that turning speed would be a better way to cope with things that limiting the number of turrets controllable. Big ships should not be doing 360 flips in less than a second like they are now tbh. Manoeuvrability should become exponentially more difficult to apply to larger ships.

 

MY reply to this from another post apply perfectly here as well.

 

I agree and I wouldn't mind if ships 13-15 slots moved slower and maneuvered slower as well.

 

The problem is, is that size progression is to fast.

 

You typically start out with a ship that is gynormious and requires any where from 12-30 crew. Are space station don't even support that many yet!!

 

And you rapidly climb from there with in 30 to 40 minutes you have a ship with a crew of 70-100. On this level you are essentially already a small capital ship.

 

You never have the filling of being a fighter and you never really fell the sense of becoming a big ship, your just thrown into it. So when your vessel starts not being controllable you never understand why. This is what happened and why every one was upset.

 

As you have pointed out and I believe most are starting to want now is the great joy and slowness of a full on Masive ship and things will need to be changed again.

There are a few thing that need to happen tho before this fix can happen.

 

1 THE ABSOLUTE MOST IMPORTANT A single capital weapon needs to deal A massive amount damage compared to smaller Vessels and the weapon needs to feel like a massive weapon as well. other wise it will always be better to have a 10-11 slot ship with all the weapons pointed in one direction.

 

2 Players need to start out as a fighter on the scale of 0.01 and Npc should as well. In truth there should be very few Npc vessels with over 50 crew. Remember how it felt to see Battle ships in freelancer? or the X series? they were behemoths you could actually fly into. We need to have that aw here and slowly work are way up to getting a larger ship so we appreciate the slowness.

 

3 Small, medium, and large ships need to all have there place in end game content. A bomber of 0.05 scale armed with torpedoes should be a deadly threat to battle ships so fighters are needed. A light cruiser should have fast aiming low damage guns that rip fighters apart clearing the way for bombers but is not armed or fast enough to evaded the massive weapons of a capital ship so at the same time it has to stay out of range. So on and so forth something like World of Warships.

 

If this is done we can see this beautiful change with out it being the death nail to this game other wise you will just pee off 90% of the player base.

[NITROtbomb]

Thanks for the replies - Yes, I agree that turning speed would be a better way to cope with things that limiting the number of turrets controllable. Big ships should not be doing 360 flips in less than a second like they are now tbh. Manoeuvrability should become exponentially more difficult to apply to larger ships.

 

MY reply to this from another post apply perfectly here as well.

 

I agree and I wouldn't mind if ships 13-15 slots moved slower and maneuvered slower as well.

 

The problem is, is that size progression is to fast.

 

You typically start out with a ship that is gynormious and requires any where from 12-30 crew. Are space station don't even support that many yet!!

 

And you rapidly climb from there with in 30 to 40 minutes you have a ship with a crew of 70-100. On this level you are essentially already a small capital ship.

 

You never have the filling of being a fighter and you never really fell the sense of becoming a big ship, your just thrown into it. So when your vessel starts not being controllable you never understand why. This is what happened and why every one was upset.

 

As you have pointed out and I believe most are starting to want now is the great joy and slowness of a full on Masive ship and things will need to be changed again.

There are a few thing that need to happen tho before this fix can happen.

 

1 THE ABSOLUTE MOST IMPORTANT A single capital weapon needs to deal A massive amount damage compared to smaller Vessels and the weapon needs to feel like a massive weapon as well. other wise it will always be better to have a 10-11 slot ship with all the weapons pointed in one direction.

 

2 Players need to start out as a fighter on the scale of 0.01 and Npc should as well. In truth there should be very few Npc vessels with over 50 crew. Remember how it felt to see Battle ships in freelancer? or the X series? they were behemoths you could actually fly into. We need to have that aw here and slowly work are way up to getting a larger ship so we appreciate the slowness.

 

3 Small, medium, and large ships need to all have there place in end game content. A bomber of 0.05 scale armed with torpedoes should be a deadly threat to battle ships so fighters are needed. A light cruiser should have fast aiming low damage guns that rip fighters apart clearing the way for bombers but is not armed or fast enough to evaded the massive weapons of a capital ship so at the same time it has to stay out of range. So on and so forth something like World of Warships.

 

If this is done we can see this beautiful change with out it being the death nail to this game other wise you will just pee off 90% of the player base.

 

I agree with everything said here!!

[Alpha393]

I like everything here except the idea of starting as a fighter. a small ship for sure, but nothing anywhere near as small as the drone for a relatively large starter ship. Please. If I wanted a tiny nearly insignificant fighter I'd stick with the drone. For the sake of comparison, A jet ski or a yacht, which would you take as a long term living space?

[Velaja]

Well.. and for WHAT do you need a Battlecruiser then, when you cannot control all turrets a time? For what does a Battlecruiser have such a high amount of Specialists (Engineers, Gunners etc..) on board? It's unrealistic and stupid to nerf that. Fighterpilots shouldn't be able to use more then 1 turret a time then, to keep it fair and balanced and max. 3 for a light cruiser. As you see .. All these ideas are stupid. If something like this would come into the game (You could use a Mod for you, that would be ok for me..), i would definetly quit playing it. I wan't my freedom and i wan't as much weapons as possible. For that i built a heavy Battlecruiser. Not, for being harmless cause of Turrets they cannot fire cause of ... hm.. cause of why? I have more then enough gunners on Board ..

 

Just a big NO to this Idea.

 

EDIT: Btw .. if you watched Stargate .. The Daedalus can also turn VERY quickly, same as the Gua'uld Ships, even capital ones. ;)

And they also have a Crapload of firepower.

[Amazigh]

A bomber of 0.05 scale armed with torpedoes should be a deadly threat to battle ships so fighters are needed.

Then why bother spending hours designing your battleship if some schmuck in his tiny poverty bomber that took like 2 minutes to make can kill you with ease?

 

Also consider the following:

Torpedoes that are powerful enough to pose a threat to a battleship are small enough to fit on a bomber.

A battleship is easily two orders of magnitude larger than a bomber, as such it can fit a good dozen torpedoes with room to spare for anti-bomber weaponry/fighter bays.

So, how exactly is this bomber a viable ship again?

[LordMaddog]

Also consider the following:

Torpedoes that are powerful enough to pose a threat to a battleship are small enough to fit on a bomber.

A battleship is easily two orders of magnitude larger than a bomber, as such it can fit a good dozen torpedoes with room to spare for anti-bomber weaponry/fighter bays.

So, how exactly is this bomber a viable ship again?

 

Here watch this

 

 

 

See how slow the torpedoes are? Watch the destroyers and the Bombers. See the difference?

 

Its a very fine balance but a realistic one.

 

If tech ever got to this point I can guaranty some one is going to be launching nukes from tiny fighters at MASSIVE ships. Thus fighters and anti bomber Frigates will be a most! Because if one bomber gets through by the time the Battleships LAMs are close enough to swat those nucular torpedoes out it will be to late.

 

 

[NITROtbomb]

^^^ which would be amazing and add a layer of tactics to ship building and ever to go a far as fleet building!! which I'm sure is in some part a far off goal.

 

 

cause at the moment I find if I get enough shields I can chip away at anything without any struggle.... which is no fun ahahaaha

But, to have some cool tactics like alpha strike bombers used to disable the ship Like aiming them at engines for example would be cool too.

 

Anyway, none of this is demands or anything just like keeping the convo flowing haha

[DivineEvil]

See how slow the torpedoes are? Watch the destroyers and the Bombers. See the difference?

 

Its a very fine balance but a realistic one.

The difference I see, is that there's an artificial fixed balance between what particular ships can do.

- Destroyers carry torpedoes against larger ships and survive by size.

- Cruisers carry AA batteries, that counter deck aircraft and survive by mobility.

- Battleships do not have either torpedoes or AA batteries and ridiculously clumsy.

- Carriers are both large and brittle.

 

In case of Avorion:

- You cannot limit anti-cap weapons to small ships without introducing artificial customization bounds. Anti-cap weapons would be just as good on other capital ships.

- You cannot limit AA batteries to small ships. AA batteries would be just as good on capital ships.

- You cannot make carriers artificially vulnerable.

- At best, Avorion can combine diminishing returns to mobility by size, slow-tracking, energy-hungry weapons working well only on these ships, and Hangar Bays, that require much more volume investment. These ideas relate much more to Fractured Space model, than to WoB.

[LordMaddog]

See how slow the torpedoes are? Watch the destroyers and the Bombers. See the difference?

 

Its a very fine balance but a realistic one.

The difference I see, is that there's an artificial fixed balance between what particular ships can do.

- Destroyers carry torpedoes against larger ships and survive by size.

- Cruisers carry AA batteries, that counter deck aircraft and survive by mobility.

- Battleships do not have either torpedoes or AA batteries and ridiculously clumsy.

- Carriers are both large and brittle.

 

In case of Avorion:

- You cannot limit anti-cap weapons to small ships without introducing artificial customization bounds. Anti-cap weapons would be just as good on other capital ships.

- You cannot limit AA batteries to small ships. AA batteries would be just as good on capital ships.

- You cannot make carriers artificially vulnerable.

- At best, Avorion can combine diminishing returns to mobility by size, slow-tracking, energy-hungry weapons working well only on these ships, and Hangar Bays, that require much more volume investment. These ideas relate much more to Fractured Space model, than to WoB.

 

True I was just using it as an example.

 

However my entire bases is on my proposed weapons using energy and engines  change along with a host of other balances/fixes I have been pushing :).

 

my thought is that Cap ships will typically use Massive slow aiming guns making them close to ineffective against small targets. Now of course they could have small anti fighter weapons equipped as well, tho doing so would result in them being a hybrid that is not as effective against other caps because they would have to split there energy and gunners up(witch are both a limited resource with my suggestions) that or they have to make their ship even larger witch means even slower and less maneuverable and in the end making them even a better target to bombers.

 

witch it basically what you said 

- At best, Avorion can combine diminishing returns to mobility by size, slow-tracking, energy-hungry weapons working well only on these ships, and Hangar Bays, that require much more volume investment. These ideas relate much more to Fractured Space model, than to WoB.

 

Tho I have never played Fractured Space model so I am not 100% sure were on the same page but I think we are.

[Ohm is Futile]

This thread (and others) is why I think we need specialized weapons. Ones with very different stats. Doesn't matter what kinda ship you can fit them on. Number of weapons is limited per ship. Number of ships is potentially limited by resources. Victory is determined by a compound of resources invested and specialization.

 

As such, you can either divide your firepower to fit many roles but not particularly well, or you can specialize. Then you can have small interceptors to kill bombers, bombers to kill larger ships, larger ships that are not suited to fight other large ships but deal well with both interceptors and bombers and larger ships that deal well with other large ships but not so much against small ones.

 

Differences between weapons come mostly in the form of DPS, fire rate, tracking, projectile speed and accuracy. Like we need actual, significant differences between weapon types.

 

Of course, these changes don't work too well with linear scaling of both engines and thrusters since that allows you to make a 15 slot battleship turn as fast as a 5 slot corvette. Heck, right now you can probably make a 5 slot corvette be much faster and maneuverable than a 1 slot fighter.

[AstroOwl]

Of course, these changes don't work too well with linear scaling of both engines and thrusters since that allows you to make a 15 slot battleship turn as fast as a 5 slot corvette. Heck, right now you can probably make a 5 slot corvette be much faster and maneuverable than a 1 slot fighter.

 

Exactly my thought. Nonlinear rotation behavior might be the answer for satisfying both those who can't get good rotation and evading making achieving ridiculous rotation speed to easy. Going to try some non-linear variants and check dependency on size (and number of slots) in Excel and then write a post in Suggestions.

[Amazigh]

See how slow the torpedoes are? Watch the destroyers and the Bombers. See the difference?

 

Its a very fine balance but a realistic one.

Another reason why torpedoes are balanced in that game? The artificial limitations of visibility, destroyers are "stealthy" and can't be seen from as far away as battleships, so they can sneak up and fire torpedoes without having to run through a barrage of fire continuously.

In avorion there's nothing stopping a battleship firing it's main guns at a fighter from 8km+ away and making it extremely hard to get into the close range needed to score hits with their torpedoes.

 

This thread (and others) is why I think we need specialized weapons.

It'd be really nice if each weapon class had it's own niche, like plasmas being hands down the best anti-shield weapon, teslas the best all-around weapon in exhange for really short range, bolters very good against hull, rails better against hull than bolters, but only un-armoured hull, and so on for all the other weapon types.

I'm hoping that the dev intends to rebalance weapons at some point, because currently railguns are The best weapon type hands down, they're one of the longer range weapons, have good base damage, and the penetration mechanic makes them insane against hull. Not to mention that they are hitscan and have high accuracy.

[cy414]

If tech ever got to this point I can guaranty some one is going to be launching nukes from tiny fighters at MASSIVE ships. Thus fighters and anti bomber Frigates will be a most! Because if one bomber gets through by the time the Battleships LAMs are close enough to swat those nucular torpedoes out it will be to late.

no matter how far you minituraise a waeapon for a fighter, that battleship will have either hundreds of that weapon to fire back at you, or bigger better versions of that same weapon. as well as target prediction systems the size of your fighter.

 

nothing about sci-fi star fighters is realistic or viable due to this.

[LordMaddog]

no matter how far you minituraise a waeapon for a fighter, that battleship will have either hundreds of that weapon to fire back at you, or bigger better versions of that same weapon. as well as target prediction systems the size of your fighter.

 

nothing about sci-fi star fighters is realistic or viable due to this.

 

A 1 megaton nuclear bomb creates a firestorm that can cover 100 square miles. A 20 megaton blast's firestorm can cover nearly 2500 square miles. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were small cities, and by today's standards the bombs dropped on them were small bombs.

 

A bomber would be deadly :)

 

If one can evade the fighters and weapon blast from a capital ship long enough to get in even 100 miles releasing a 10 megaton nuke with an proximity explosion it would decimate if not obliterate that ship.

 

And that's just today nukes! we not even talking about Hydrogen bombs and the possible advancement of other weapons.

 

Now for game continuity we fly by kilometers not 10s of thousands of miles like real space would be so for reasionablity if bomber got in as close as lets say 500m and the slow moving torpedo would have a blast radios of 100m it be kinda hard for if not impossible for bigger ships to doge.

 

 

[Alpha393]

I think we're all missing the obvious answer in the form of depth charges. A little ship could duck and weave between them for the most part. A big ship will get shredded by glorious shield-ignoring armor-tearing murder balloons if they're dumb/slow enough to barrel into a minefield.

[Amazigh]

A 1 megaton nuclear bomb creates a firestorm that can cover 100 square miles. A 20 megaton blast's firestorm can cover nearly 2500 square miles. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were small cities, and by today's standards the bombs dropped on them were small bombs.

You do realise that a majority of the power of a nuke is caused by the shockwave?

In space they're really anemic. There's no atmosphere to carry the shockwave, so all that hits your ship on a proximity detonation is the flash of light, which loses power over distance very rapidly. Sure they are still deadly on contact explosions, but that requires a direct hit.

 

nothing about sci-fi star fighters is realistic or viable due to this.

Fighters are a bad idea, true. you'd not want to sit inside something with so little armour, But Drones? those are definitely viable.

As they don't need a pilot, they can be smaller than a fighter would need to be, and as such even harder to hit. So if they have a comparably accurate weapon to a larger ship the drone can score reliable hits from much further away.

Not to mention that a drone can manoeuvre at obscene G-forces and have no worries about pulping the pilot.

[Alpha393]

What about making only larger fighters and eventually small corvettes take pilots, while the rest are 'unmanned' and still require a pilot to work, but said pilot is safe at a computer terminal staring in disbelief at the game over screen rather than you know, screaming and burning and freezing and disintegrating all at once.

[MetalX]

Realistic?  Seriously?  You want realism?  Okay!

 

How about I fire a laser at you from 100,000 kilometers away and it hits you with pinpoint accuracy?  How is that for realism?

 

Howabout I launch 100 nuclear warheads at you from 100,000 kilometers away and still hit you with poin poin accuracy with every single one of them?

 

Projectiles in space will travel in the direction they are sent and with the same initial velocity throughout their entire course of travel, until acted upon by another source, because there is no resistance in space.

 

Similarly, laser light, while it may diffuse at VERY long ranges, in space it travels MUCH further because there is nothing out there.

 

Space is mostly nothing.

 

If it ever came down to space combat, no weapons would ever be fired unless you had a "firing solution".  Which basically means a guaranteed hit 100% of the time.  Trajectory is math, it is a science.

 

There is much that NEEDS to be sacrificed to make games fun.  You want realism?  No, no you don't.  This game would be epically boring if it were as close to real as is possible.  Space is boring.  Space is mostly nothing, emptiness and void.

 

Look at how plentiful the asteroid fields are, asteroid fields are nowhere near as plentiful as they are in this game.  And nowhere near as dense either.  But we need a large quantity of asteroids and we need many asteroids in those asteroid fields so we can do our mining.

 

You don't want realism.  So stop asking for it.

[KooperChaos]

I agree that large ships are far too manoeuvrable to feel massive. some how any ship besides it dice feels like a light corvett. Also the authors mentioned all turrets fire forward at the same time doesn't help it I agree to that independent targeting needs some how a rework. my suggestion would be to give high tech turrets independent targeting by default with out the damage penalty so basically if you build a ship in the late game that is huge you can choose to set the turrets to independand targeting if it matches your play style. anlernativly independand targeting could be the standard ability for chain gun turrets like overheat is for bolsters and cannons since chain guns are some what that what, atleast I, would think of if point defence/ weapons that track anything coming close enough is mentioned.

[Sable Phoenix]

If it ever came down to space combat, no weapons would ever be fired unless you had a "firing solution".  Which basically means a guaranteed hit 100% of the time.  Trajectory is math, it is a science.

 

Only if the target is not actively moving and evading.  At a few light-seconds of distance, it would be pretty difficult if not impossible to score hits 100% of the time, even with a laser.  And even with a laser at a distance that guarantees a hit, if the target is rolling, you're unlikely to do any significant damage because lasers do damage through heating up the target, which means dwell time on a single location is pretty important.  It would actually be easier for the target ship to dissipate the heat of the laser hitting it than for the ship firing the laser to dissipate the heat of operating it, meaning space-based laser weaponry is likely only going to play a significant role at short range as point defense.

 

That being said, your point is well taken and we are definitely not looking for a reality simulation in this game.  If we had that, engagement would take place at distances and speeds which would mean you couldn't visually acquire your target or respond to it in time even if you did.  If you want a game that's as accurate to the physics of space combat as we currently know how to predict, you're looking for Children of a Dead Earth.