acatalepsy
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Post by acatalepsy on Sept 27, 2016 13:36:00 GMT
While we're putting stuff on a wishlist, I'll try to restrict myself to some pretty simple Quality of Life stuff.
- The ability to name modules. Plenty of times I'll have a component with a specific use (and properties for that use) intended that's not obvious from a quick glance, or want several variations on a similar design (with, for example, different turret properties on the same weapon) and the naming scheme (7mm 10 MW Railgun 2) is not helpful. - The ability to create new modules from the ship creation screen. This is especially frustrating with propellant tanks and radiators, where I realize I need a new tank/radiator for this design, and need to exit the ship builder, make the new design, and go back to the ship builder, but in general the ability to select "New Item" from the component select dropdown would be incredibly helpful.
I'll also chime in and second the orders and stuff as well as better missile behavior, but, you know, one thing at a time.
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acatalepsy
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Posts: 97
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Post by acatalepsy on Sept 27, 2016 13:25:41 GMT
It turns out that cutting power consumption by a factor of 13 doesn't even halve the launch speed. It drops to a gentle 1.9 m/s, which I bump up to 2.0 m/s by adding a cm to the track.
I'd be very uncomfortable with a launch speed under 3 m/s, and would really prefer 4 m/s. It's possible to lose drones while deploying if they don't clear the hanger fast enough.
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acatalepsy
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Posts: 97
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Post by acatalepsy on Sept 27, 2016 13:19:30 GMT
I disagree about some of your points (flares not making sense, interception logic being a trivial matter) but I cannot agree more with this one I wouldn't call interception logic trivial exactly - especially when you're dealing with uncertain sensors, uncertainty in both own position and enemy vector, and more that the game don't have to deal with - but it can be solved in game, and at the end of the day any interception logic that tried to kill lateral velocity rather than accelerating towards a heat source (again, this guarantees a miss against any maneuvering target) would be a vast improvement on the usability of missiles and make both point defense and orbital maneuvers more vital to defense. I don't think flares can't make sense, but that they're bad for the game and not really logically necessary. The same logic that makes, say, radar-guided missiles not a thing (because the 'metagame' of missiles and countermeasures worked out towards heat seekers) could just as easily apply to flares. Flares as essentially perfect missile protection is boring, and makes missiles barely worth including.
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acatalepsy
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Posts: 97
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Post by acatalepsy on Sept 27, 2016 13:06:05 GMT
I've been thinking about this, and I was wondering if you needed to do the integration each time the gun fires? Couldn't the gun be simulated once when it's designed and use the values generated during testing in gameplay? Presumably it is, but it's also recalculated every time to change something in the designer. If it started taking minutes every time you dragged a slider, that would be pretty unbearable. Unfortunately, increasing the simulation accuracy to fix the issue causes performance to plummet until things are unusable. I'll likely just have to clamp the values in these cases to the kinetic energy. This is still pretty unsatisfying, at least as far as it means that it means that coilgun and railgun design would still likely revolve around breaking the numerical integration to yield perfectly efficient linear accelerators. Or do you mean doing some kind of clamping in the intermediate steps? Gotta agree with jakjakman here: this takes me back. So many matricies - I can't help but feel there's a solution here that maintains the physical approximation.
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acatalepsy
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Posts: 97
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Post by acatalepsy on Sept 27, 2016 2:33:07 GMT
I think we need to have a conversation about how range and accuracy is calculated in this game. Within the stock ships, range is fairly limited, by design. This is good for the game; it means that there's a balance between weapons, and deciding how to intercept a given target matters. If we all had infinite range death guns, the game would be a lot more boring. Introducing your infinite range death gun. Credit for this one goes to open_sketchbook on SV. This one is mine; it's small enough to fit several on a single ship or even a large sized drone. Yes, that muzzle velocity is 9.95 Megameters per second - or nine thousand, nine hundred and fifty kilometers per second. Yes, that will destroy almost any ship instantly from ranges of over six hundred kilometers. Similar experimentation will get you similar results with coilguns and railguns - if you make a small projectile, or simply optimize for speed of projectile and range, you will very quickly find yourself with a ship that will murder anything stock for cheap. You can even mount some of these artillery pieces on (reasonably sized) drones for less than 200 kw - in case you thought there was a downside to all this juicy firepower, there isn't. I think this is, for lack of a better word, a problem. I don't know if I'd consider combat solved in the very first weekend, but certainly it's been broken. The ideas presented in the game for how to fight are at-best irrelevant to how the combat paradigm works under the game's own rules. The combat speeds being what they are, weapons of this range, accuracy, and power render all attempt at maneuver irrelevant; when speeds are on the order of at-most a few kilometers per second (and usually much slower), someone with a gun that fires accurately at hundreds of kilometers more will win. If both sides have the same weapon, then the contest becomes a pure gun duel, without the complexities of missile/point defense engagements, or even the effect of different relative velocities and arrangements of ships. A buffet of options is reduced to one decent but bland flavor. One thing to ask is what the rules regarding accuracy are, and if they are not too simple, or otherwise broken by crafty players taking advantage of a weakness in the rules that would not be viable in the real world. At the ranges we're talking about, should other things that the physical characteristics of the weapon be determining accuracy? Might there be a patch to rebalance precisely this kind of thing?
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acatalepsy
Junior Member
Not Currently In Space
Posts: 97
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Post by acatalepsy on Sept 27, 2016 1:44:50 GMT
Some friends and I have been messing with the system for railguns and coilguns, and, uh, I think we broke it? Yes, that coilgun is firing five gram projectiles at one hundred and eleven kilometers per second. Yes, it can engage most targets with a high degree of accuracy at ranges of more than five hundred kilometers. Yes, this breaks every single stock ship into pieces more or less by itself.
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