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Author Topic: Starfarer 0.53a (Released) Patch Notes  (Read 368083 times)

ClosetGoth

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Re: Starfarer 0.53a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #690 on: July 30, 2012, 08:22:11 PM »

Hey Alex, I wanted to revive discussion on the bonuses granted by hardpoints. I know you said you didn't have a strong idea on what to do with it just yet, and I think this would be a great place/time to get some ideas flowing. Personally, I think a placeholder bonus could be a 15% range bonus and a 15% max spread reduction. That being said, I think it should be different for each of the three weapon types. They would realistically benefit from the fixed positioning differently.

Bonuses that I have been mulling over:
- Ballistic: 10% range bonus, 20% max spread reduction, and 20% spread reset speed increase (from having a longer and more sturdily mounted barrel)
- Missile: 15% reload time reduction and 30% launch speed bonus (from having a more optimized reloading mechanism, and a longer/heavier launch tube)
- Energy, non-beam: 15% range bonus and 15% damage bonus (having wires that don't need to move allows for higher efficiency)
- Energy, beam: 25% range bonus and 25% damage bonus (a non-moving mount can have MUCH more precise optics)

Now, my intent is to give missile weapons the least bonuses, as they are generally expected to use hardpoints, and this would give the incentive to use non-missile weapons in universal hardpoints (my attempt at balance). Realistically, I feel that beam weapons (and energy weapons in general) would benefit most from this, as ballistic weapons are built with recoil in mind, which is similar to forces from turning a weapon. Laser systems don't have to deal with recoil (as they are not firing shots with significant mass), and would have to make a larger trade-off.

For in-game terms, the high bonuses to beam weapons somewhat counteract the awkwardness of having several beam hardpoints. Some ships accomplish it well, when it is their main weapon, but beam weapons are still (even after the bonuses) not better than non-beam weapons. All this aside, I don't consider my suggestions fully fleshed-out or balanced, but a stepping stone to start discussion.

I have one final question, unconnected with hardpoints. I want to know, what was the reason to not have weapons' spread return to normal while they are reloading? It seems to me that larger, slow-firing weapons (the Heavy Mauler comes to mind) should be quite accurate because they have a lot of time between each shot. But, the spread grows and grows while they are firing, until they are very inaccurate. Finally, if I let off firing for under one second, the spread returns to default. It just somewhat breaks immersion to see the spread stay at full spread while it is reloading, but shrink fully in the blink of an eye once it is finished reloading.
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arwan

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Re: Starfarer 0.53a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #691 on: July 30, 2012, 08:34:59 PM »

i had an idea come to me when you said 6 was the fighter wing size limit Alex.

what if when you get around to making the skill tree for your avatar in the game one of the skills would be a way to increase the number of fighters in fighter wings that have 2, 3 or 4 fighters. by say 1 or 2 fighters. i think this could be a novel way for the aspiring carrier captain to help his fighters become greater force multipliers, of course i would also imagine these skills to be at the end of a skill tree and not something you could get easy.
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Alex
You won't be able to refit fighters and bombers at all. They're designed/balanced around having a particular set of weapons and would be very broken if you could change it. Which ones you pick for your fleet -out of quite a few that are available- is the choice here, not how they're outfitted.

Thaago

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Re: Starfarer 0.53a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #692 on: July 30, 2012, 09:15:09 PM »

I would love to have hullmods that specifically enhanced hardpoints, even if only for modding: http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=1864.0

An expensive rate of fire or range bonus would be interesting to give the player for the Onslaught and Dominator. Those two frontal hardpoints could be made really killer at the expense of other systems.
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Avan

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Re: Starfarer 0.53a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #693 on: July 30, 2012, 11:38:55 PM »

IIRC hullmods are actually defined by their effects & ability to apply them, letting you mod in custom ones. We can already do range bonuses, not sure about ROF though; also not sure if it can be limited to just hardpoints/turrets/etc

Okim

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Re: Starfarer 0.53a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #694 on: July 31, 2012, 12:55:41 AM »

Bonuses that I have been mulling over:
- Ballistic: 10% range bonus, 20% max spread reduction, and 20% spread reset speed increase (from having a longer and more sturdily mounted barrel)
- Missile: 15% reload time reduction and 30% launch speed bonus (from having a more optimized reloading mechanism, and a longer/heavier launch tube)
- Energy, non-beam: 15% range bonus and 15% damage bonus (having wires that don't need to move allows for higher efficiency)
- Energy, beam: 25% range bonus and 25% damage bonus (a non-moving mount can have MUCH more precise optics)

I would rather give missiles just few extra ammo (say, +20-25%). Since you don`t need a complex reload system that has to be adopted for rotating launcher - you can have some extra space for missiles. This won`t have a powerful impact of 3-ammo launchers, but would benefit annihilator-type rocket launchers and other launchers with lots of ammo.

WKOB

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Re: Starfarer 0.53a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #695 on: July 31, 2012, 12:56:56 AM »

Quote
Can now specify custom engine glow color and contrail data (see data/shipsystems/proj/flare_standard.proj for example)
Out of curiosity will this be defined with the .ship or will the .ship reference a hypothetical lowtech_fighter.engine?
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Starlight

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Re: Starfarer 0.53a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #696 on: July 31, 2012, 05:32:37 AM »

The thing I would most like to see for missiles would be [RENDER_BELOW_TURRET] and [RENDER_BELOW_HULL] tags.  Those would be really useful in general but would make hidden missile mounts a lot better, especially on fighters.  It would be nice to make missile launchers which hun their missiles under arms and poking out from launch mechanisms.   Fighters it could have the most dramatic impact upon, since you can then have missiles poking out from under wings and such, rather then lying clumsily on top. 
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phyrex

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Re: Starfarer 0.53a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #697 on: July 31, 2012, 10:56:21 AM »

Bonuses that I have been mulling over:
- Ballistic: 10% range bonus, 20% max spread reduction, and 20% spread reset speed increase (from having a longer and more sturdily mounted barrel)
- Missile: 15% reload time reduction and 30% launch speed bonus (from having a more optimized reloading mechanism, and a longer/heavier launch tube)
- Energy, non-beam: 15% range bonus and 15% damage bonus (having wires that don't need to move allows for higher efficiency)
- Energy, beam: 25% range bonus and 25% damage bonus (a non-moving mount can have MUCH more precise optics)

I would rather give missiles just few extra ammo (say, +20-25%). Since you don`t need a complex reload system that has to be adopted for rotating launcher - you can have some extra space for missiles. This won`t have a powerful impact of 3-ammo launchers, but would benefit annihilator-type rocket launchers and other launchers with lots of ammo.

both the original idea and the missile idea update are really good, i like it.
they even make sense, which i find even better
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Alex

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Re: Starfarer 0.53a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #698 on: July 31, 2012, 12:23:00 PM »

Spoiler
Hey Alex, I wanted to revive discussion on the bonuses granted by hardpoints. I know you said you didn't have a strong idea on what to do with it just yet, and I think this would be a great place/time to get some ideas flowing. Personally, I think a placeholder bonus could be a 15% range bonus and a 15% max spread reduction. That being said, I think it should be different for each of the three weapon types. They would realistically benefit from the fixed positioning differently.

Bonuses that I have been mulling over:
- Ballistic: 10% range bonus, 20% max spread reduction, and 20% spread reset speed increase (from having a longer and more sturdily mounted barrel)
- Missile: 15% reload time reduction and 30% launch speed bonus (from having a more optimized reloading mechanism, and a longer/heavier launch tube)
- Energy, non-beam: 15% range bonus and 15% damage bonus (having wires that don't need to move allows for higher efficiency)
- Energy, beam: 25% range bonus and 25% damage bonus (a non-moving mount can have MUCH more precise optics)

Now, my intent is to give missile weapons the least bonuses, as they are generally expected to use hardpoints, and this would give the incentive to use non-missile weapons in universal hardpoints (my attempt at balance). Realistically, I feel that beam weapons (and energy weapons in general) would benefit most from this, as ballistic weapons are built with recoil in mind, which is similar to forces from turning a weapon. Laser systems don't have to deal with recoil (as they are not firing shots with significant mass), and would have to make a larger trade-off.

For in-game terms, the high bonuses to beam weapons somewhat counteract the awkwardness of having several beam hardpoints. Some ships accomplish it well, when it is their main weapon, but beam weapons are still (even after the bonuses) not better than non-beam weapons. All this aside, I don't consider my suggestions fully fleshed-out or balanced, but a stepping stone to start discussion.
[close]

Well, as it stands now, hardpoints are twice as tough to disable (this is in 0.52.1a). I'm not entirely sold on going beyond that - that's a lot of extra complexity/rules the game has to explain to the player. Not to say that it's a definite no, but I'm just not sure what that gets you in the long run. You'd basically be making hardpoints a more powerful - but you could accomplish much the same by simply having more of them on a ship, and besides, existing ships are more or less tuned around the number & power of hardpoints they already have.


I have one final question, unconnected with hardpoints. I want to know, what was the reason to not have weapons' spread return to normal while they are reloading? It seems to me that larger, slow-firing weapons (the Heavy Mauler comes to mind) should be quite accurate because they have a lot of time between each shot. But, the spread grows and grows while they are firing, until they are very inaccurate. Finally, if I let off firing for under one second, the spread returns to default. It just somewhat breaks immersion to see the spread stay at full spread while it is reloading, but shrink fully in the blink of an eye once it is finished reloading.

Let's say weapon targeting systems can't be effectively re-calibrated until the weapon is loaded. That seems perfectly reasonable to me.

The reason the way it is now is to have an easily controlled buildup in inaccuracy from each successive shot. If it recalibrated while reloading, ALL that would do is force me to come up with a different set of numbers that would ultimately result in *exactly the same* spread by the time the weapon is loaded. And I'd have to change these numbers every time the rate of fire was adjusted. In effect, the gameplay impact of this would be right around zero, but it'd be a pain to maintain :)


i had an idea come to me when you said 6 was the fighter wing size limit Alex.

what if when you get around to making the skill tree for your avatar in the game one of the skills would be a way to increase the number of fighters in fighter wings that have 2, 3 or 4 fighters. by say 1 or 2 fighters. i think this could be a novel way for the aspiring carrier captain to help his fighters become greater force multipliers, of course i would also imagine these skills to be at the end of a skill tree and not something you could get easy.

Interesting idea. Might be hard to reconcile with the lore, though - where the fighter wing blueprints are fairly restricted in this regard.


I would love to have hullmods that specifically enhanced hardpoints, even if only for modding: http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=1864.0

An expensive rate of fire or range bonus would be interesting to give the player for the Onslaught and Dominator. Those two frontal hardpoints could be made really killer at the expense of other systems.

Hmm. I'll keep this in mind :)


Quote
Can now specify custom engine glow color and contrail data (see data/shipsystems/proj/flare_standard.proj for example)
Out of curiosity will this be defined with the .ship or will the .ship reference a hypothetical lowtech_fighter.engine?

In the .ship file.

The thing I would most like to see for missiles would be [RENDER_BELOW_TURRET] and [RENDER_BELOW_HULL] tags.  Those would be really useful in general but would make hidden missile mounts a lot better, especially on fighters.  It would be nice to make missile launchers which hun their missiles under arms and poking out from launch mechanisms.   Fighters it could have the most dramatic impact upon, since you can then have missiles poking out from under wings and such, rather then lying clumsily on top. 

This comes up now and again, and unfortunately I can't quick track down my previous (rather extensive) answer. Basically: rendering weapons below hulls leads to some nasty layered rendering contradictions. For example, a missile launcher is rendered under a hull, and then it fires - the missiles have to suddenly jump to the "above ships" layer, leading to visual artifacts. Similar issues for weapon glows, disabled effects, muzzle flash, smoke, etc.
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icepick37

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Re: Starfarer 0.53a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #699 on: July 31, 2012, 12:28:45 PM »

Well, as it stands now, hardpoints are twice as tough to disable (this is in 0.52.1a).
I didn't know that. That's pretty awesome actually.
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hadesian

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Re: Starfarer 0.53a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #700 on: July 31, 2012, 12:34:20 PM »

The thing I would most like to see for missiles would be [RENDER_BELOW_TURRET] and [RENDER_BELOW_HULL] tags.  Those would be really useful in general but would make hidden missile mounts a lot better, especially on fighters.  It would be nice to make missile launchers which hun their missiles under arms and poking out from launch mechanisms.   Fighters it could have the most dramatic impact upon, since you can then have missiles poking out from under wings and such, rather then lying clumsily on top. 

This comes up now and again, and unfortunately I can't quick track down my previous (rather extensive) answer. Basically: rendering weapons below hulls leads to some nasty layered rendering contradictions. For example, a missile launcher is rendered under a hull, and then it fires - the missiles have to suddenly jump to the "above ships" layer, leading to visual artifacts. Similar issues for weapon glows, disabled effects, muzzle flash, smoke, etc.
You actually said the problem would be if it passed through a friendly ship it would look like it was just going through it. It was in a topic relating to multiple layers. I may have a solution?
The missile launcher sticks out from under the hull, just enough that when a missile is fired, it fires in open space, though I then have no idea how hard it would be to code in a layer change. My guess is combine  having the missile launcher sticking out from under the hull, and having missiles fired onto a 'missile layer' and this layer is above ships so it passes over friendlies and it hits enemies. Seem reasonable?
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Alex

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Re: Starfarer 0.53a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #701 on: July 31, 2012, 01:20:39 PM »

That wouldn't work because where the missile is spawned depends on the weapon, not on the weapon slot. (Deja vu - I've definitely said this before at some point. Ah, well, at least I'm consistent!)
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hadesian

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Re: Starfarer 0.53a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #702 on: July 31, 2012, 01:27:09 PM »

That wouldn't work because where the missile is spawned depends on the weapon, not on the weapon slot. (Deja vu - I've definitely said this before at some point. Ah, well, at least I'm consistent!)
Ah, that makes sense.
http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=2844.0 and there's your topic, you have said this before... I think
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Wyvern

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Re: Starfarer 0.53a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #703 on: July 31, 2012, 01:29:58 PM »

Actually - don't you already track the information you'd need to make a mostly-seamless transition?

  • Missiles can no longer hit the launching ship if they fizzle out, UNLESS they've left the ship's bounds at some point

You'd still get a bit of a pop as the missile's engine glow goes from below to above, but I'd think that'd actually look right.  Smoke trails might still be an issue, though.
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Wyvern is 100% correct about the math.

Alex

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Re: Starfarer 0.53a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #704 on: July 31, 2012, 01:40:27 PM »

That wouldn't work because where the missile is spawned depends on the weapon, not on the weapon slot. (Deja vu - I've definitely said this before at some point. Ah, well, at least I'm consistent!)
Ah, that makes sense.
http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=2844.0 and there's your topic, you have said this before... I think

Thanks - yep, that's the thread.

Actually - don't you already track the information you'd need to make a mostly-seamless transition?

  • Missiles can no longer hit the launching ship if they fizzle out, UNLESS they've left the ship's bounds at some point

You'd still get a bit of a pop as the missile's engine glow goes from below to above, but I'd think that'd actually look right.  Smoke trails might still be an issue, though.

There are still cases where it'd be problematic. Trails would indeed be an issue - and so would smoke - since those have their own layer. It's just a lot of complexity, a virtual guarantee of some rough edges, and ultimately nothing much to gain. It's a 2D game, and this is fighting against that. Just roll with it :)
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