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[Talkie Toaster]

Lastly, will we have visible supply consumption for missile ammo now? Supplies only have applied to crew, fleet repair, and fleet "maintenance" (for being over limits), yet not to the expendables/consumables known as ammunition. I ask the same if ballistic weapon ammo usage will affect CR and such at some later time (if at all). I just find it kinda strange that supplies really only consist of 2 things: Food (crew) and ship components (Fleet; think armor, wiring, conduit, etc.) Apparently ammo is freely available?

The problem with adding supply consumption for ammo is it adds a metagame of 'Shoot as little as possible' to combat, which is not going to be particularly fun- especially when you have regenerating shields and it's easy to waste ammo. It also means a lot of frustration with the AI over ammo wastage; the AI is set to be conservative and avoid hull damage, which is good, but the cost for that is lots of wasted ammo as it doesn't press the advantage and drags fights out. So suddenly one of the AI behaviors that minimises player annoyance (less likely to throw themselves into trouble & explode) becomes a source of it.

It also puts higher upkeep costs on ballistics-heavy low-tech ships, which doesn't seem to go along with the codex descriptions (and presumably a balancing mechanic that'll arrive at some point for them) that say higher-end ships are harder to upkeep.

I can kind of get behind missiles costing OP as they're low-quantity, high-effect things like grenades in an FPS rather than staple weapons, but they're a bit anemic in general use for that IMO.

[RawCode]

Shield and energy weapons can drain fuel, and maximum possible amount of flux can be implemented.

like:
Frigate with energy weapons and shield can only proces up to 10 000 flux (or 50k or x times maximum flux), after that value venting rate start to degrade.
Flux used to shoot weapons counted as X times more.
Flux pool go negative (with basically unlimited negative value) and can be restored with fuel over time.

This will place missiles\ballistic\energy\shields in same tactical level - use only if you really need it, if you dont want your missile destroyers to spam pilums - dont deploy them or order to hold fire.

As for stats:

No matter how well you at shooting gun, bullet have constant speed\weight\armor penetration.

Ever if you reached level 90 at shooting, you can't pierce heavy tanks with 9mm pistol.
Every type of ammo\damage increase from stats\crew is magic.
Magic is OK for sci-fi game.

And not, IRL you cant just rig with submarine reactor to increase it's power by 2% per level you gained from destroying other submarine.

[arcibalde]

As for stats:

No matter how well you at shooting gun, bullet have constant speed\weight\armor penetration.

Ever if you reached level 90 at shooting, you can't pierce heavy tanks with 9mm pistol.
Every type of ammo\damage increase from stats\crew is magic.
Magic is OK for sci-fi game.

Well... Hmmmm... No!    It's not fair to compare tank armor vs 9mm pistol. All weapons in this game CAN (really, they can man) damage any ship. So it's like tank vs other tank. If you know where to shoot aka. where is armor weaker then you will make more damage against your opponent who shoot in thicker armor. Right? 

And not, IRL you cant just rig with submarine reactor to increase it's power by 2% per level you gained from destroying other submarine.

O yeah?! Yes you can man.Yes you CAN! After blasting all that submarines when you see next one your blood boils, safety protocols don't mean fart for you any more, you push your ship to the max like there is no tomorrow and cos of that you manage to squeeze that 2% or more out of it buuuuut in compare to normal usage of reactor. YEAH!     But then again you may blow up in process 

[ValkyriaL]

How about oval shields? because the round ones are limiting ship size and functionality by a lot.  1 extra value to set in the editor can't be the end of the world.

[arcibalde]

How about oval shields? because the round ones are limiting ship size and functionality by a lot.  1 extra value to set in the editor can't be the end of the world.

It can 

It's not about shields it's about collision radius. Collision radius dictate all. My guess is that it would take a lot of time to make game work with oval collision radius.
Don't get me wrong it would be awesome because we could make long thin ships, or bigger long ships but i don't think it's gonna happen.

[ValkyriaL]

well, 2 extra values, set width of collision radius and shield radius, length is already there.

[arcibalde]

well, 2 extra values, set width of collision radius and shield radius, length is already there.

I know that but i don't know how hard is it to implement it in-game. I guess Alex would do that if it just that easy. He didn't put it so i guess it's more complicated than it looks. Probably it have lot's with AI. Its one thing to know where is circle boundaries but it's another thing to know where are boundaries of something that isn't circle. If you turn circle a bit left its same but if you turn oval thing a bit left it's not same. Maybe it would required much more coding for AI... Dunno. 

[Alex]

Alex, do you think any other ammo-based weapons will affect CR? I'm thinking mostly of Ballistics, but there are some ammo-based Energy-DMG type weapons. (AM Blaster or Mjollnir, for example). You'd need to reload ammo based weapons between fights, no? Technically, that would affect combat readiness. I imagine you kinda don't want to touch on that yet (if at all) since that could push players towards pure, unlimited-ammo Energy-type weapons.

Probably not. Missiles are different in that they're both low-ammo and not generally a primary weapon type. For ballistics, ammo is there more for feel than mechanical reasons. I might actually eliminate ammo for ballistics altogether, or just bump it up to where it doesn't matter. Limited ammo on primary weapons creates some undesirable dynamics, such as waiting out the AI's ammo, aforementioned issues with what the desired AI behavior is (cautious to avoid damage vs aggressive to make efficient use of ammo), etc.

On the flip side, might CR eventually affect ballistic ammo count if CR is too low between fights? Speaking of which: if battle are now in phases, will ammo levels at the end of phase one reflect in phase 2? Or will ammo be restored between phases/engagements?

No, for the same reasons - not the kind of dynamics I'd want to encourage. All ammo is reloaded between phases.

Lastly, will we have visible supply consumption for missile ammo now? Supplies only have applied to crew, fleet repair, and fleet "maintenance" (for being over limits), yet not to the expendables/consumables known as ammunition. I ask the same if ballistic weapon ammo usage will affect CR and such at some later time (if at all). I just find it kinda strange that supplies really only consist of 2 things: Food (crew) and ship components (Fleet; think armor, wiring, conduit, etc.) Apparently ammo is freely available?

At the moment, regaining CR has a slight supply cost associated with it, and ships have a per-hull maintenance cost, so I'd look at ammo as being one of those.

Maybe change the percentage speed bonus to a flat bonus based on hull size?  Compare to, for example, unstable injector - for a slow capital ship, the skill (even maxed) adds maybe +3 top speed, versus +20 for the hull mod, while a zippy frigate gets notably more benefit (even in comparison to the increased benefit from the hull mod).  And then it wouldn't get quite so silly in combination with an increase to base frigate speeds.

Hmm. The percentage bonus from the skill is only a small part of it, though. You get +75 (0-flux) +50 (2x Nav Buoy) +40? (Aug Engines) +40? (Injector). That's, what, +205 to speed? Then another 20 or so from Helsmanship for a 200-speed frigate, which at that point isn't a big deal. So, I don't know. Might disallow the AE + UI combo, but... well, this should probably go into another thread. I think speed for many ships, not just for frigates, tends to get a little out of control if stacked.


Re: shields stuff - let's keep this on-topic. There are several threads in the Suggestions forum talking about this very idea. (Short answer: it's rather involved.)

[Gaizokubanou]

WOoo unlimited ballistics would be awesome!  I recommend going unlimited rather than limited but with limit so high as to not mattering at all... because even if it had no practical limitation, ammo count itself would probably end up bugging obsessive people like me.

[Apophis]

I might actually eliminate ammo for ballistics altogether, or just bump it up to where it doesn't matter

I hope you don't remove ammo for ballistic or it will feel too arcadish

[Wyvern]

Actually... you know what might work better?  Instead of increasing the limits for ballistics, lower them - and add a "regenerate ammo when at zero flux" statistic, or maybe "regenerate ammo after X seconds of not-firing", typically with fairly high values for regen rate.  Thematically, this would mean, when you're not actively in combat you can resupply their magazines from stores.  And then the autoloader ship system?  The one that increases fire rate on ballistics?  Have it activate ammo regeneration, too, giving ships with it both increased firepower & increased longevity.

Edit: Another option might be, tying ballistic ammo regeneration to venting - maybe hitting the "vent flux" button also triggers munitions restoration, and weapons remain offline until their ammo is fully restocked.  Ideally, I'd want a solution that doesn't involve adding yet another button for the player to remember, but still has the feel of "ballistic ships have limited combat windows, but can back off and restock munitions when they aren't actively fighting."

[Uomoz]

Actually... you know what might work better?  Instead of increasing the limits for ballistics, lower them - and add a "regenerate ammo when at zero flux" statistic, or maybe "regenerate ammo after X seconds of not-firing", typically with fairly high values for regen rate.  Thematically, this would mean, when you're not actively in combat you can resupply their magazines from stores.  And then the autoloader ship system?  The one that increases fire rate on ballistics?  Have it activate ammo regeneration, too, giving ships with it both increased firepower & increased longevity.

Sounds good!

[Psiyon]

Actually... you know what might work better?  Instead of increasing the limits for ballistics, lower them - and add a "regenerate ammo when at zero flux" statistic, or maybe "regenerate ammo after X seconds of not-firing", typically with fairly high values for regen rate.  Thematically, this would mean, when you're not actively in combat you can resupply their magazines from stores.  And then the autoloader ship system?  The one that increases fire rate on ballistics?  Have it activate ammo regeneration, too, giving ships with it both increased firepower & increased longevity.

Probably one of the best ideas I've heard regarding weapons. This way, it makes it so you can't just endlessly spam low-flux kinetic weapons, while at the same time, making it so they aren't totally useless after they run out of ammo.

[icepick37]

Alex, do you think any other ammo-based weapons will affect CR? I'm thinking mostly of Ballistics, but there are some ammo-based Energy-DMG type weapons. (AM Blaster or Mjollnir, for example). You'd need to reload ammo based weapons between fights, no? Technically, that would affect combat readiness. I imagine you kinda don't want to touch on that yet (if at all) since that could push players towards pure, unlimited-ammo Energy-type weapons.

Probably not. Missiles are different in that they're both low-ammo and not generally a primary weapon type. For ballistics, ammo is there more for feel than mechanical reasons. I might actually eliminate ammo for ballistics altogether, or just bump it up to where it doesn't matter. Limited ammo on primary weapons creates some undesirable dynamics, such as waiting out the AI's ammo, aforementioned issues with what the desired AI behavior is (cautious to avoid damage vs aggressive to make efficient use of ammo), etc.

But if you don't have to worry about ammo counts at ALL then you'll just spam it all the time and game the AI that way. No one likes flying into a constant stream of death.

[arcibalde]

Ideally, I'd want a solution that doesn't involve adding yet another button for the player to remember, but still has the feel of "ballistic ships have limited combat windows, but can back off and restock munitions when they aren't actively fighting."

Well maybe all ballistic weapon could have reload timer. When you run down your ammo (and only then) it's kicks in. Weapon is inactive for XX time and that time is used to, well, reload ammo So it's something that you can't control and goes automatic.