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Author Topic: Hardpoint only hullmod/weapons  (Read 20498 times)

hadesian

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Re: Hardpoint only hullmod/weapons
« Reply #30 on: July 31, 2012, 04:33:02 AM »

Hardpoints are just really hard to disable, right?
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BillyRueben

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Re: Hardpoint only hullmod/weapons
« Reply #31 on: July 31, 2012, 07:50:35 AM »

No. As I understand it, the difficulty in disabling a weapon is based on where its located on the ship. The further they are away from the outside of your ship, the harder they are to disable.
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Wyvern

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Re: Hardpoint only hullmod/weapons
« Reply #32 on: July 31, 2012, 07:53:53 AM »

Hardpoints, I believe, do get more hit points than turrets - but not by enough that I notice the difference in-game; the factors BillyRueben mentions are much more obvious (since a weapon that doesn't get hit won't be disabled, no matter how many hit points it does or does not have.)
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BillyRueben

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Re: Hardpoint only hullmod/weapons
« Reply #33 on: July 31, 2012, 01:31:37 PM »

Yeah, my post was 50% wrong. Hardpoints have double the hit points that turrets have according to this statement.
Well, as it stands now, hardpoints are twice as tough to disable (this is in 0.52.1a).
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hadesian

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Re: Hardpoint only hullmod/weapons
« Reply #34 on: July 31, 2012, 01:34:32 PM »

It was fairly easy to notice anywho - you'd take x amount of damage across your ship, and watch as the turrets died instantly but you could still fire hardpoints. Hardpoints can survive utter hell, it's great and very survivable.
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BillyRueben

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Re: Hardpoint only hullmod/weapons
« Reply #35 on: July 31, 2012, 01:43:13 PM »

I've personally had the opposite experience, where my hardpoints are usually inoperable but my turrets keep firing. Which led me to believe that hardpoints didn't get any benefit.
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Alex

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Re: Hardpoint only hullmod/weapons
« Reply #36 on: July 31, 2012, 01:45:45 PM »

Hardpoints having double hitpoints is a bit deceptive - they also tend to take a lot more damage, being right on the edges. They're still more survivable than most turrets, but a turret that's really far inside the ship's hull could be entirely un-disableable. Except for, in 0.53a, a bombing run that goes over the ship - since those can hit anywhere on the ship now, not just on the bounds.
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angrytigerp

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Re: Hardpoint only hullmod/weapons
« Reply #37 on: July 31, 2012, 07:12:08 PM »

While it is, unfortunately, not an original idea, I liked how SPAZ did it (or maybe it was just the mod I was using?) -- anyways, either in the base game or a mod I was using, you could convert a turret into a fixed hardpoint and, in doing so, garner a larger slot (i.e. small turret to medium hardpoint, medium turret to large hardpoint, etc.) There was a built-in penalty to the fact -- by doing so, yes, you had a bigger gun, but it also drained energy faster.

Same situation can easily be put into Starfarer, and it's already accounted for -- okay, fine, go ahead and give up those turrets for hardpoints. Now, not only do you not have a turret, but you have a weapon that takes more OP and consumes more flux, perhaps more than the ship was meant to.

Alternatively, some mod authors (I'm looking at FlashFrozen's Neutrino Corp.!) have put in weapons that are hardpoint only -- or rather, you put them in, and they are unable to turn (I'm guessing they must change the traverse variable in whatever files to 0, so that the turret moves at the speed of 0, i.e. not at all). For that mod at least, the mighty Pulsed Beam Cannon is definitely worth the lack of turning, as it just punches through most anything. Alex and co. could easily make more weapons along these lines, or modders can keep adding them in, weapons that are hardpoint-only by design.

(if there is any weapon in the base game that is the same "becomes a hardpoint on installation" deal, I apologize for not giving the SF devs their credit -- I never really played vanilla beyond some idle tinkering, it's only with Uomoz's Collection installed that I really got into the game)
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phyrex

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Re: Hardpoint only hullmod/weapons
« Reply #38 on: July 31, 2012, 07:19:35 PM »

While it is, unfortunately, not an original idea, I liked how SPAZ did it (or maybe it was just the mod I was using?) -- anyways, either in the base game or a mod I was using, you could convert a turret into a fixed hardpoint and, in doing so, garner a larger slot (i.e. small turret to medium hardpoint, medium turret to large hardpoint, etc.) There was a built-in penalty to the fact -- by doing so, yes, you had a bigger gun, but it also drained energy faster.

Same situation can easily be put into Starfarer, and it's already accounted for -- okay, fine, go ahead and give up those turrets for hardpoints. Now, not only do you not have a turret, but you have a weapon that takes more OP and consumes more flux, perhaps more than the ship was meant to.

Alternatively, some mod authors (I'm looking at FlashFrozen's Neutrino Corp.!) have put in weapons that are hardpoint only -- or rather, you put them in, and they are unable to turn (I'm guessing they must change the traverse variable in whatever files to 0, so that the turret moves at the speed of 0, i.e. not at all). For that mod at least, the mighty Pulsed Beam Cannon is definitely worth the lack of turning, as it just punches through most anything. Alex and co. could easily make more weapons along these lines, or modders can keep adding them in, weapons that are hardpoint-only by design.

(if there is any weapon in the base game that is the same "becomes a hardpoint on installation" deal, I apologize for not giving the SF devs their credit -- I never really played vanilla beyond some idle tinkering, it's only with Uomoz's Collection installed that I really got into the game)

actually in spaz (the original) turrets of a certain size had the same stuff has hardpoint of said size, but there was a turret tech that allowed to cram more gun on a single turret, at a cost in size for the guns in said turret
« Last Edit: August 01, 2012, 08:52:03 AM by phyrex »
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Alex

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Re: Hardpoint only hullmod/weapons
« Reply #39 on: July 31, 2012, 07:21:40 PM »

Same situation can easily be put into Starfarer, and it's already accounted for -- okay, fine, go ahead and give up those turrets for hardpoints. Now, not only do you not have a turret, but you have a weapon that takes more OP and consumes more flux, perhaps more than the ship was meant to.

I don't know think that'd actually work well visually - there's only so much room on the ship sprite, and generally a larger weapon will look crowded, overlap with nearby weapons, etc. Plus, turret facings aren't set up with converting to hardpoints in mind, so that tends to be awkward - you'd end up with weapons pointing every which way.

Alternatively, some mod authors (I'm looking at FlashFrozen's Neutrino Corp.!) have put in weapons that are hardpoint only -- or rather, you put them in, and they are unable to turn (I'm guessing they must change the traverse variable in whatever files to 0, so that the turret moves at the speed of 0, i.e. not at all). For that mod at least, the mighty Pulsed Beam Cannon is definitely worth the lack of turning, as it just punches through most anything. Alex and co. could easily make more weapons along these lines, or modders can keep adding them in, weapons that are hardpoint-only by design.

(if there is any weapon in the base game that is the same "becomes a hardpoint on installation" deal, I apologize for not giving the SF devs their credit -- I never really played vanilla beyond some idle tinkering, it's only with Uomoz's Collection installed that I really got into the game)

Some weapons actually used to be like that - the Reaper torpedo is one example - but I felt it didn't work very well for aforementioned turret facings reasons, and changed it. If your ships are designed with that in mind, it could work much better. Or, alternatively, if a non-turning weapon would always point as much forward along the axis of the ship as it could, instead of in the middle of the arc. Hmm. Well, worth thinking about.
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angrytigerp

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Re: Hardpoint only hullmod/weapons
« Reply #40 on: July 31, 2012, 07:30:46 PM »

Same situation can easily be put into Starfarer, and it's already accounted for -- okay, fine, go ahead and give up those turrets for hardpoints. Now, not only do you not have a turret, but you have a weapon that takes more OP and consumes more flux, perhaps more than the ship was meant to.

I don't know think that'd actually work well visually - there's only so much room on the ship sprite, and generally a larger weapon will look crowded, overlap with nearby weapons, etc. Plus, turret facings aren't set up with converting to hardpoints in mind, so that tends to be awkward - you'd end up with weapons pointing every which way.

Yeah, that's one problem of the PBCs in Neutrino -- I was all hyped to get them installed onto a capital ship for maximum death from afar, then realized that the turrets' centerpoints was often facing somewhere other than forward -- so I could put on a pretty lightshow, but not much else.
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Alrenous

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Re: Hardpoint only hullmod/weapons
« Reply #41 on: August 04, 2012, 05:39:53 AM »

My highly-optimized Onslaught build is back to storm needlers and no hardpoints. All my attempts to add hardpoints weakened the design, despite the fact they let you overlap three large mounts instead of two.  

Isn't the point of hardpoint buffs to avoid this situation? Does Alex &co think avoiding the hardpoints is a failure of design, or is it just a valid strategy?




I wonder why exactly the hardpoints aren't worth the vents and hull mods I can otherwise get.

Partly, it's because they are hardpoints - the arcs are small, which means it is hard and therefore rare to keep them trained on a target.
---Which means OP spent on hardpoints doesn't get to fire as often as OP spent on turrets.
---Which also means I'm taking all the fire on one point of the armour if I want the hardpoints in the fight.
Partly it is because mediums are more flux-efficient than larges.
---This is important because the Onslaught runs through its flux capacity in seconds, especially with the shield up. Burst is not important in an even fight; sustained is very important. In uneven fights, you win anyway.
---I can't fire the heavy forwards anyway, because the mediums are spending all the spare flux, and more efficiently.
-the storm needler is so powerful that two of them is plenty, both because of their high raw damage and their excellent dps/flux.
---Also, means the variant is equally if not more effective on hi-tech.
---The burn drive has negated the effect of the needler's range disadvantage.
-annihilators. Vastly more effective than other missile options. Since my design beats another Onslaught without hull damage, I'm now measuring how much of a pod it uses up. Currently: one half. Theoretically that means my Onslaught can kill two Onslaughts in a row without taking hull damage, plus it's a capital, so it wrecks anything smaller. (Which the hardpoints would be useless on anyway.)
---between annihilators and the maulers, the design doesn't need more explosive damage, and once the armour is gone, the storm needlers can really shine.

...I think. Starfarer is sufficiently complex that solid theorycrafting is impossible. The only means to be sure a way is effective is to build a ship and then see how well it sinks other ships.

For example, I just tried mark 9s instead. Huge OP gains, small decrease in killing power. Sadly, not enough spare flux to use that extra OP on more weapons.




Edit:
-using the hardpoints means you're using at most 3/5ths, 60%, of your large mounts and the OP spent there. Using only the turrets means using 2/3rds, 67% most of the time, and doesn't risk using only 2/5ths.
---Perhaps this would be better put as: with the hardpoints, you're not using at least two large mounts, possibly three, on any particular target. With just the turrets, you're not using, at most, one.

---I think that one may be the most important. I can't remove the side large mounts without crippling the Onslaught, because it turns slow - it needs heavy firepower available on both sides. I can't remove the middle mount, because then I can't get three large mounts overlapping. Which means putting the hardpoints on gets me a little more burst (not very important) in exchange for effectively mounting a gun I won't normally shoot.
------Maybe this matters more because capitals are overabundant? If my Onslaught wasn't expected to normally see other capitals, the ability to fire in multiple directions is more important, and I'm not likely to end up letting weapon slots idle.
------However, the Onslaught doesn't need the hardpoints to kill cruisers anyway.
------I guess my question is; what are the hardpoints for? I don't seem to need them for anything.
« Last Edit: August 04, 2012, 07:26:15 AM by Alrenous »
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TaLaR

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Re: Hardpoint only hullmod/weapons
« Reply #42 on: August 04, 2012, 07:44:34 AM »

Onslaught seems kind of unique in this respect - it has considerably more mounts than it can afford flux/OP-wise. On most other ships you usually won't have enough turrets to efficiently arm using only them (on ships that have hardpoints of course).
« Last Edit: August 04, 2012, 07:46:48 AM by TaLaR »
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Alrenous

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Re: Hardpoint only hullmod/weapons
« Reply #43 on: August 04, 2012, 08:11:08 AM »

Any ship with hardpoints the same size or smaller than its normal complement strongly risks a similar issue.

I always under-use my Eagle's hardpoints, my Apogee's two frontal smalls, and my Conquest's. I substantially improve my Medusa by skimping on the hardpoints too.

The only reason the Paragon doesn't suffer this is because all four large mounts overlap.
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TaLaR

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Re: Hardpoint only hullmod/weapons
« Reply #44 on: August 04, 2012, 08:42:31 AM »

Any ship with hardpoints the same size or smaller than its normal complement strongly risks a similar issue.

I always under-use my Eagle's hardpoints, my Apogee's two frontal smalls, and my Conquest's. I substantially improve my Medusa by skimping on the hardpoints too.

The only reason the Paragon doesn't suffer this is because all four large mounts overlap.

Point for point medium ballistics are most efficient flux/OP wise and Eagle now has maneuvering jets, so i'm not sold about them being useless.

On Apogee these 2 are kind out of place, something larger would be more welcome, so here you are probably right.

Conquest hardpoints  ::) ?  Ah, you mean missile ones - i either use them for pilums or not at all. Direct fire weapons in these would create priority conflict with broadsides - so kind of pointless (yes, i'm looking at default Conquest layout ;D )

On Medusa hardpoints are quite useful. One word: needlers! Medusa has absolutely no other way to efficiently inflict hard flux (sabots don't count, since they don't last long enough).

...Doesn't seem to be enough to conclude that hardpoints are too bad idea in general, on already existing ships.

Still, I agree with notion that given adequate choice between turret and hardpoint (on rare ships, where that actually happens), hardpoints clearly lose. So i'm not against idea of giving hardpoints some additional benefits, but in this case rebalancing existing hulls will be probably needed...
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