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Author Topic: Ballistic Weapons & Ammunition  (Read 24590 times)

Aethelric

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Re: Ballistic Weapons & Ammunition
« Reply #30 on: March 19, 2013, 07:10:23 PM »

Some sort of triple-button system would be just too plain complex: if reloading is necessary at all, it should be attached to a single button with a flat, short reload time. A more complex might be appreciated by some (including me), but I think it's a little too much to have varying amounts of button presses for different reload amounts (particularly if the button is also used for another critical function).
« Last Edit: March 19, 2013, 07:19:33 PM by Aethelric »
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RawCode

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Re: Ballistic Weapons & Ammunition
« Reply #31 on: March 20, 2013, 12:44:37 AM »

Ballistic shoud have "limited" ammo, with max ammo scaled with CR.
If you have needler with 1000 max ammo, on CR 25% it will start only with 250 ammo.
With CR 200% it will start with 2000 ammo.

For missiles this rate shoud be 200% \ 25%
CR 90% will result in 20% ammo drain on missile weapons.
CR 200% will provide only 25% bonus ammo for missiles.
Most missiles shoud not regenerate incombat.

If you decide to enable ammo regeneration (this shoud be per weapon group control option) this weapon group will be disabled and regeneration process starts.
Process shoud drain flux, lots of flux, modded ships may handle it, but ship without maxed vents will just buildup lots of hard flux without any viable results (it will overload sooner then any ammo produced)
Flux cost shoud be bound to weapon, regenerating large weapons shoud cost more then small ones, regeneration may cost as much flux, as weapon need to fire.

Regeneration on\off toggle shoud cost 10 second or more.

After 10 seconds of working it actually start to produce ammo, if you decide to stop, you will need 10 more seconds for ammo to load and weapons activated.
This will eliminate option to turn regeneration just for few rounds.

Such concept eliminate "i will just fly around on +75MS to regenerate ammo";
first, you will have ability to regenerate ammo in midcombat at cost of unable to shoot weapons currently regenerating
second, ships with multiple weapons will have chance to shoot constantly if managed properly, extending skill gameplay component.


As i stated before, max ammo limited by CR, regeneration process drain CR by itself, if you already shot 250 nedleer ammo, your CR already not 25%, regeneration process will drain it ever more.

Soo you wont reach same max amount of ammo after reload, it probably will end with 100 or less ammo.

At CR less then 10% regeneration not possible.

Such concept provide a lot more tactical option that regeneration on zero flux and does not require ship to leave combat completely for some time.
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Dr. Death[Lexx]

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Re: Ballistic Weapons & Ammunition
« Reply #32 on: March 20, 2013, 01:40:50 AM »

One thing that keeps me thinking is why ballistic weapons generate flux in the first place...shouldn't they operate on somewhat simpler mechanisms then energy weapons?

I was thinking about what would happen if you for instance, don't change the ammo count at all nor add any modifiers, clips, reloads/ers, etc... but just half or remove the flux usage for ballistic weapons. From a consistent viewpoint, it would make sense. The problem would probably a huge gap in between ballistic weapons and energy weapons. Imagine having a low tech ship with such a loadout - all ballistic weapons. Like missiles, they don't generate flux upon shooting... I do believe that would them make them more powerful and it's likely that the balance would be completely off... but that was just a simple notion and thought I had and wanted to share it with you guys. I understand that energy weapons raise flux upon shooting...so why ballistic weapons? Don't hit me guys, it was just a thought. :D
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RawCode

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Re: Ballistic Weapons & Ammunition
« Reply #33 on: March 20, 2013, 05:11:20 AM »

they require active cooling, it cost energy, energy cost == flux.

if ballistic weapon's flux cost removed, something like heat shoud be implemented, to disallow constant shooting, and in this case, flux reserves of ship wont allow to get more from weapon, it will have completely constant stats, equal at any ship.

this will not make game more interesting and will make any ship design work useless, no matter how well (or not) you assemble ship, it will act same.
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JH1

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Re: Ballistic Weapons & Ammunition
« Reply #34 on: March 20, 2013, 06:56:29 AM »

I agree with Death; it doesn't make much sense that shooting guns creates flux. Maybe make the ammo weapons raise little flux until you raise shields and shoot through them.

Ships could have ammo pools based on hull size, from where weapons could reload in chunks when idle/depleted, as was suggested earlier. This would prevent kiting with small ships.
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Dr. Death[Lexx]

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Re: Ballistic Weapons & Ammunition
« Reply #35 on: March 20, 2013, 07:31:08 AM »

And the thing about active cooling...last time I remember is that we're playing in space...isn't the heat supposed to dissipate with a environmental temperature of appox -250 degrees celsius rapidly? To strengthen my theory that they don't need active cooling...the weapons are on the outside...so yet again...not much sense in there since they are in direct contact with the cold and dead space. :D

The thing about reloading ballistic weapons makes a lot of sense...I was thinking about it the whole day and nothing feasible came up. I know alex mentioned the affirmed bad-strategy which arises and starts out by waiting for an enemy ship until it depletes it's entire arsenal of ballistics to strike back...so as stated again, it's really a nice feeling that you have ammo and that it's limited. It doesn't make you feel OP and it let's you think before you aim, before you shoot and before you choose what to do exactly when the ammo run's slowly dry...

I'd not endorse the notion that it would have to be removed entirely, but then again...if it's for the better and to remove the bad-tactics problem...well, I'd probably get used to it one way or another. On the other hand the weapons would feel maybe a bit more similar and not so different anymore, ballistic weapons and energy weapons that have unlimited ammo, that is. :)
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arcibalde

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Re: Ballistic Weapons & Ammunition
« Reply #36 on: March 20, 2013, 07:34:32 AM »

And the thing about active cooling...last time I remember is that we're playing in space...isn't the heat supposed to dissipate with a environmental temperature of appox -250 degrees celsius rapidly?
No, cos vacuum is one of best isolators. Things they show in movies when people freeze instantly when exposed to vacuum is there just for effect. So, you would loose temperature but really slowly.
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Dr. Death[Lexx]

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Re: Ballistic Weapons & Ammunition
« Reply #37 on: March 20, 2013, 07:44:54 AM »

I wouldn't say slowly though, the heat would and can dissipate through radiation, infrared mostly...plus the hotter something in a vacuum in space get's, the more radiation it's giving off and the faster it's cooling down...since no other means really work, arci but that's a bit off topic.  ;D

So back on topic...
« Last Edit: March 20, 2013, 07:48:00 AM by Dr. Death[Lexx] »
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Wyvern

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Re: Ballistic Weapons & Ammunition
« Reply #38 on: March 20, 2013, 08:41:07 AM »

Yes, slowly.  Trying to keep spacecraft cooled is no joke; if it were as simple as you say, the international space station (for an example) would need heating elements instead of multiple cooling systems.
As for flux costs on ballistic weapons - given that Starfarer ships operate in some form of non-ensteinian "phase space"*, I tend to assume that much of the flux costs for such weapons are just the field generators needed to make the shots not drop down into real-space and slow to irrelevance.  Then again, there's also that quote from Alex, that in-setting, nobody really understands how flux works anyway.

On topic:
Adding CR costs to ballistic weapons is just not a good plan - these are main guns, we don't want a minigame of trying to minimize your overall usage and make every shot count (or at least, not above and beyond current flux concerns).  Especially, we don't want to penalize the player for the AI being overly cautious - right now, it's tuned to favor survival over closing for a kill, and personally, I rather prefer it that way; I'd really rather my escorts survive, thank you very much.

I'm not interested in going to "no ammunition", or "ammo regenerates as fast as you can fire it", type situations.  I would, however, expect that, under normal circumstances, a ship that relies on ballistic weaponry won't have to care about ammunition.  The exception - the case where I'd expect it to matter - is when you have a single ship in continuous combat for an extended period of time.  In other words, if you take on the system defense fleet with a solo Conquest... you're going to have to deal with ammunition and whatever mechanism for reloading gets implemented.  (Also, if you're at really low CR - less than 20%, the point where you start getting random malfunctions - I'd expect ammo to suddenly be a much bigger issue, as ammo regeneration would probably be slower & much less reliable.)

_____
* I forget exactly where, but there's a bit of lore mentioning something like "phase anchors" on a regular ship, in reference to the drive systems.  Possibly one of the skill descriptions?  Don't have the game in front of me...
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Thaago

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Re: Ballistic Weapons & Ammunition
« Reply #39 on: March 20, 2013, 10:06:48 AM »

This is a really interesting discussion, but I don't think new mechanics for ammo are really needed. The current ammo counts are high enough that for the majority of weapons firing time is not an issue. There are a few exceptions of course (flak and gauss cannon come to mind).

In really long fights ammo can become an issue, but that can be compensated by putting extended magazines on ships - trading off combat power (from OP's) to combat endurance. This is less effective after the EM was decreased from +100% to +50% (which I support due to the charge based weapons), but is still a choice the player can make. How about we continue in this trend and make a new hullmod (which I think has been suggested before, but I can't find them):

Ammo Microfactories: By putting a specialized mini-autofac near the main magazine, ammo can be quickly constructed in combat. Ballistic ammo regenerates at the firing rate (infinite ammo).
OP Cost: Moderate/expensive.

Why I think this would be good:
1) Simplicity. No new mechanics are added to the game.
2) Combat behavior doesn't change: it does not introduce any pulsed ammo behavior or anything else. There is no new button to press.
3) Player choice. The ships lose immediate combat power, but gain endurance. I don't think I would use this hullmod much... but maybe in a long siege or something. Or certain weapons might have low ammo counts on purpose, creating synergy with this hullmod.
4) Flavor. The autofac/blueprint mechanic seems to be a big part of the lore and this continues in that trend. This also preservers the 'feel' that players expect, ie limited ammo on guns that go bang.

Downsides:
1) Enables kiting behavior - but then again there aren't really any kiting type ships that have ballistics. However, ballistic destroyers could kite capital ships to death... but that just increases the value of escort ships.

Possible modifications: an out of combat value? Then again having the fac be DRM'd would be in line with carrier mechanics.
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Psigun

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Re: Ballistic Weapons & Ammunition
« Reply #40 on: March 20, 2013, 10:25:32 AM »

How about when a weapon reaches 0 ammo it enters an extended period of reloading during which it is disabled and does nothing. When it finishes reloading it has maximum ammo again. It could be varied weapon to weapon. Total ammo capacity would probably need to be lowered as well.
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Wyvern

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Re: Ballistic Weapons & Ammunition
« Reply #41 on: March 20, 2013, 10:47:58 AM »

How about when a weapon reaches 0 ammo it enters an extended period of reloading during which it is disabled and does nothing. When it finishes reloading it has maximum ammo again. It could be varied weapon to weapon. Total ammo capacity would probably need to be lowered as well.
Already suggested - the issue with that is that then you'd have times when you need to "game the system" - namely, fire those last three bullets in order to start the reloading process.  Which just feels wrong.
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Gabrybbo

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Re: Ballistic Weapons & Ammunition
« Reply #42 on: March 20, 2013, 11:02:36 AM »

I don't know if this idea has already been suggested before, but i'll throw it out:

Every ballistic weapon has a maximum number of bullets, just as they do now. When idle (ie: not firing nor cooling down) the weapon regenerates ammo at a certain rate.
In this way, you have the disadvantage of having a finite number of bullets so you can't simply spam endlessly and continuously, but you can still retreat for a while, let your autoloaders reload the magazines and then get back into the action with no direct penalty.

Magazines then should be slightly reduced in size to give a reason to get the Extended Magazine hullmod that could become nearly obsolete if we keep the current sizes AND implement a reload over time mechanic.


The way i'd implement this into the weapons is to introduce a new column into the weapon csv file called "rechargeMode" with the possible values of "recharge_always" (for the current energy charge-based weapons, that recharge even while firing) and "recharge_when_idle" (which would be what i proposed above), and then use the current charges/sec column to set the recharge rate at the value we want.
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Talkie Toaster

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Re: Ballistic Weapons & Ammunition
« Reply #43 on: March 20, 2013, 11:34:11 AM »

Also already suggested. With that, you'd run into situations where you'd want to turn off 1 gun within a group for it to reload but not be able to- consider if you have 2 forward-facing PD guns and an enemy at the front. Both would run down at the same time- so ideally, you'd like to be able to reload 1 at a time whilst the other covers you. Same for if you have multiple forward-firing autocannons, say, and the break to reload them lets your opponents vent. Groups aren't really granular enough for that.
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Jovus

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Re: Ballistic Weapons & Ammunition
« Reply #44 on: March 20, 2013, 11:44:56 AM »

Possible alternative: instead of a reload mechanic, do these two things
  • Bump up the ammo count by half again or even twice.
  • Have a speed and maneuverability boost take effect once a group of weapons is out of ammo, cumulative with other speed and maneuverability boosts. Tweak to taste.

That last bullet point can be justified by the idea that, now that hands aren't needed to man the guns, they can help the engineering corps to maintain the drives at flank speed, thereby allowing more juice from the engines.

The game purpose would be to allow ballistics ships a good chance of escape once their firepower is depleted. (or, if you're crazy/awesome, to encourage RAMMING SPEED!)

One immediate problem I see with this is the question of what happens to ships that rely on a mix of ballistics and energy, like the Eagle or the Hammerhead. If they get a partial speed boost for having depleted ammo, but still have other weapons, it might be a valid (but undesirable) tactic to fire off all your weapons and then pursue other ships at higher speeds.

Of course, this bonus would be restricted to ballistic weapons slots, not universals. Otherwise Medusas would get a serious power boost.
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