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Post by boosters on Oct 17, 2016 15:27:14 GMT
So, yesterday I was playing around with a couple ship designs with the same armor and armaments, only one had its guns concentrated on the nose (needle), the other in batteries on the side (broadside). Personally, I was seeing way better results and survivability from the needle variant, because although the broadside variant was able to outrun gunfire, when it did get hit, it was much more likely to lose an engine or a reactor or even split in half. The needle variant was able to shrug off a whole lot of fire, maybe losing a fuel tank or a radiator. Another thing about this is that I feel like a smarter targeting algorithm for guns could "lead" a broadside ship much more effectively, such that their ability to outrun incoming projectiles is more an artifact of game design than of an actual advantage of the broadside format. I had previously settled on the needle as the ideal ship format, but the ability of the broadside to dodge while still firing seemed worth investigating. What's your preference and why?
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wooaa
New Member
Posts: 10
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Post by wooaa on Oct 17, 2016 15:54:20 GMT
I likewise like needle ships. Having a devastating broadside does not mean jack when you are a huge target. By going at them nose first, you present a smaller target.
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Post by redparadize on Oct 17, 2016 16:04:53 GMT
Needle ship can have a insanely good frontal armor for a relatively small mass. My ship usually have a light side armor, mainly designed to counter nuke and hit at high angle. There is a downside to this as well. A rain of high energy impact, even if not penetrating, can generate enough trust to tilt your ship. I invested into strong RCS to counter this.
The main limitation of needle design is forward looking weapons, you can't have much of them. I hope we get radial forward looking turret. Tank style turret would do it. It would also improve broadside setup. Two turrets on opposing sides could fire at the same target. And once the turret destroyed, remaining shot going in its direction would not finish inside the ship!
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Post by argonbalt on Oct 17, 2016 16:14:34 GMT
Much like many actual real life designs i don't think there is one "perfect" design. It entirely depends on use and design philosophy. I think for any ships mounting a single massive offensive armament needles is the ideal, the tiny profile and maximised sloped armour makes it the best thing in the world for tanking hits, back up your big gun with a re-purposed radiation shield-turned-to-armour and you are good to go. I have honestly lost more coil guns than Coil Lancers thanks to this design, with crew survivability from multiple flak warheads being somewhere around 80%. Also while at first thought to be a design that could not conceal radiators, you just have to make them, well very long. This combined with a bit of sloping to conceal them and you have an even greater deflection angle.
That being said broadside designs also have some excellent bonuses. the length of a ship gives far better options for distributed fire and spaced weapons. Overall giving you a far greater number of overlapping fields of fire as opposed to one narrow point from which to pivot. Armour starts to go to shit, sure, but that is why a defensive prioritisation for vessels like this is ideal, in a very much "You better damn defend well or you will be dead" kinda way.
As for dodging both could dodge ideally, what i am waiting for is a better integrated RCS mechanic that doesn't eat up all the Dv because of thruster confusion.
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Post by wafflestoo on Oct 17, 2016 17:06:34 GMT
As for dodging both could dodge ideally, what i am waiting for is a better integrated RCS mechanic that doesn't eat up all the Dv because of thruster confusion. This would be nice. Ideally some way to designate certain engines as 'Battlefield engines' would do nicely (so they aren't being used for plane-change maneuvers, etc).
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Post by captinjoehenry on Oct 17, 2016 17:25:02 GMT
personally I like needle ships but every single one of them that I have made just go and get themselves killed no matter what I try by just turning broadside on to the enemy! In addition they just wiggle and wobble like crazy and I can't get the weapons to mount on the steep slope side of the ship and shoot forward. So any help would be great with this
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Post by concretedonkey on Oct 17, 2016 17:33:49 GMT
I prefer needles for the carriers and missile cruisers, but I'm trying to do a broadside for the escort. When deploying missiles and drones they don't need to face the enemy , lasers on the other hand...
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Post by redparadize on Oct 17, 2016 17:38:30 GMT
personally I like needle ships but every single one of them that I have made just go and get themselves killed no matter what I try by just turning broadside on to the enemy! In addition they just wiggle and wobble like crazy and I can't get the weapons to mount on the steep slope side of the ship and shoot forward. So any help would be great with this You can use the "broadside" maneuver to keep your ship oriented toward the enemy. Just make sure your longest range direct weapon is on the front. As for RCS burning all the fuel. I use a small nuclear truster for RCS. Its strong enough to propel my 50t heavy drones. My ship turn in 18sec. You need them to be that strong otherwise the incoming enemy round will turn your ship. With the broadside maneuver on it seem to not burn too much, its probably because it won't burn unless the gun can't aim. I add good result when orienting the ship manually as well. If RCS burn when you don't want them to, just deactivate them.
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Post by captinjoehenry on Oct 17, 2016 17:44:40 GMT
I have tried using broadside order and just sending them straight at the enemy. I'll need to try again but previously it has not worked :/
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Post by redparadize on Oct 17, 2016 17:53:20 GMT
I have tried using broadside order and just sending them straight at the enemy. I'll need to try again but previously it has not worked :/ Thinking about it. If you only use the main engine to orient your ship it could be a problem. It will accelerate your ship and change its approach vector. I did had to desactive the main engine in few fight...
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Post by captinjoehenry on Oct 17, 2016 18:03:47 GMT
Ok I'll definitely give that a shot as needle ships definitely have some nice advantages. So be it they loose weapons like you wouldn't believe and they have more than a few weird things with having only the most forward section of the ship armored. For example I made one that had 10 meters of depleted uranium on the front few % of the ship. So it was a flat disk 10s of meters across and 10 meters thick of depleted uranium and it did not weigh anything at all So I would caution that the weight savings from having just frontal armor might be a bit bugged.
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Post by redparadize on Oct 17, 2016 20:10:10 GMT
Ok I'll definitely give that a shot as needle ships definitely have some nice advantages. So be it they loose weapons like you wouldn't believe and they have more than a few weird things with having only the most forward section of the ship armored. For example I made one that had 10 meters of depleted uranium on the front few % of the ship. So it was a flat disk 10s of meters across and 10 meters thick of depleted uranium and it did not weigh anything at all So I would caution that the weight savings from having just frontal armor might be a bit bugged. My most successful ship have the following armor layout (as far as I remember, I am at work): (form center to outer) 1.5cm of boron (all ship) 3.5cm of boron (nose only) (I think I might have change composition to something else I will check tonight) 30cm of Graphite aerogel (all ship) 0,5cm of boron (all ship 1cm of boron (nose only) I usually don't go into ship to ship combat. but to test this I decided to do it. I played that ship against a fleet of 10 stock ship and two of my laser fregate. They sent volley of drone and missile against me. The flare prevented KKV to hit and deflected Nuke enough. Stinger drone didn't do any damage. I managed to get into ship to ship almost intact. Droped my super small 4kt nuclear missle, mostly to keep enemy laser bussy. Started to fire my my 10mw rail gun at 80km. the 200gram round worked on them quite nicely. Then I started to get hit by their railgun. But I was suffering no damage at all, pointy nose are awesome. I could sustain the fire of 4 stock gunship that were still alive at 5 km. Then my ship turned to 40 degree as I past them and they managed to seriously damage my side armor. But still I won!
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Post by bluuetechnic on Oct 17, 2016 22:12:35 GMT
I brought this up in my 'Alternative Armor Layouts' Thread a few days ago, and while most of the discussion hasn't revolved around that design, I personally made quite a few points on it; most notably, that due to the large ratio of the surface area of the weapons, to the surface area of the armor on such designs, most forward facing weapons tend to get obliterated. There are some ways to mitigate this at least partially (Which again I touch on in my thread), and I'm personally a fan of the design, at least in terms of combating the AI, but I don't think either design is objectively better in most situations.
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Post by redparadize on Oct 17, 2016 23:49:40 GMT
I brought this up in my 'Alternative Armor Layouts' Thread a few days ago, and while most of the discussion hasn't revolved around that design, I personally made quite a few points on it; most notably, that due to the large ratio of the surface area of the weapons, to the surface area of the armor on such designs, most forward facing weapons tend to get obliterated. There are some ways to mitigate this at least partially (Which again I touch on in my thread), and I'm personally a fan of the design, at least in terms of combating the AI, but I don't think either design is objectively better in most situations. For forward weapons, I usually go for a group of smaller weapons. I did some experiment with a single Coil gun trought, unless targeted by a laser they should survive long enough to deliver effective fire. That said, my RCS tend to slightly drift my ship, that's why its usually not hit by solid shot. About the ship and battle I described previously, I did it with two of my ship with great success. Here it is. The full description will be in "post your design here" tread.
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Post by bigbombr on Oct 18, 2016 8:02:28 GMT
I prefer broadside. Then again, with 10+ km/s of delta-v at 500 mG, dodging is very effective.
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