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Author Topic: Plasma (and other heavy guns) piercing missiles/bombs  (Read 4630 times)

Thaago

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Plasma (and other heavy guns) piercing missiles/bombs
« on: July 10, 2012, 07:16:20 PM »

Small suggestion: make the bolts from the Plasma Cannon pierce through missiles and bombs like the Tachyon lance does (although not fighters). The same arguments also apply to the other heavy, one shot guns. I think this would be good for the game for two reasons:

1) It takes a massive amount of flux to fire the weapon, so even a single bolt getting stopped by a tiny object is a big, semi-arbitrary blow to the effectiveness of the weapon. I say semi-arbitrary because it is the choice of the player whether or not to expend the resources to fire, but for a slow projectile like the plasma bolt the player has no way of knowing if the target is going to launch a LRM or Harpoon or whatnot, nullifying the attack by pure chance. This also applies to other heavy, single shot guns - the Hellbore and Gauss cannon in particular come to mind.

2) While it cracks me up to see this massive ball of plasma getting stopped by Piranha bombs or Annihilator rockets it is very immersion breaking. Should any large gun be able to hit missiles/bombs, if not specifically PD? Its a common occurrence in the 2-d space of Starfarer but raises a question mark from our 3-d intuition of how hard targeting really is.

I don't think these arguments apply to all guns - only guns where every shot fired is a serious investment on the player's part. I still like having my defensive cloud of Annihilator rockets for my Enforcer! :D

Thoughts?
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Alex

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Re: Plasma (and other heavy guns) piercing missiles/bombs
« Reply #1 on: July 10, 2012, 08:04:13 PM »

It's definitely something to consider - I think having the more powerful projectiles simply plow through any missiles/bombs/etc might make sense. I'll note it down as something to take another look at - I remember looking at that a couple of months ago, but ultimately not doing anything. Don't remember why that was - probably a combination of not having the time just then, and it not being straightforward.

Might have been some gameplay reasons that I'm now forgetting, too. Want to play devil's advocate and try to come up with some? :)
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StahnAileron

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Re: Plasma (and other heavy guns) piercing missiles/bombs
« Reply #2 on: July 10, 2012, 10:50:16 PM »

For energy weapons, like the Plasma Cannon, you could simply say the plasma ball gets defused when it hits matter. Plasma in reality is pretty destructive. Since it's a gas, I would think something blowing up would disperse the plasma quite readily.

I see this piercing effect work with the TL since in-universe, it's fire a high velocity rounds of some sort that can punch through anything that isn't substantially solid (like the armor/hull of a full size vessel.) I just don't recall if the acual round has any real mass behind it, a purely directed energy weapon, or some sort of hybrid. (I'm guessing pure DE weapon since it's listed under energy weapons, unlike the ballistic gun that does energy dmg.)

The heavy ballistics weapons I think should have the piercing effect of the TL on smaller objects. At least, I think it should have a "dimishing dmg" pierce effect for ballistics: the more small targets it punches through (missiles, small asteroids, maybe even fighters) and destroys, the less damage the next impact does. So if I fire a big gun through a cloud of Annihilators, each rocket it punches through will reduce the bullet's subsequent damage. By how much, I'm not sure. For missiles/rockets, I think maybe 50% of the missile's damage? Hitting a torpedo with a slug should destroy the slug in the resultant explosive (unless you model it to simply "disable" the missile/torpedo without detonating it.) I don't know how horrid or not it would be to code this for the game though. I can imagine it getting a bit excessive on calculations in certain scenarios.

I can think of other things to add, but in the interest of keeping this short, I'll stop here. If anyone cares to hear anything else I have to say, just let me know. Assuming I can recall my thoughts, I'll add more. It would be nice for the big, heavy weapons (or even a couple med weapons, like the HVD) get some sort of piercing effect as a side bonus.
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DJ Die

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Re: Plasma (and other heavy guns) piercing missiles/bombs
« Reply #3 on: July 10, 2012, 10:50:56 PM »

hmmm i dont see any reason not to do it gameplay wise....even close contact with plasma ball should destroy any missile without stopping the plasma itself
also yeah low tech ships iwth those huge salvos of unguided rockets are most annoying with this and its basically ultimate defense against some slow firing weapons....
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Reshy

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Re: Plasma (and other heavy guns) piercing missiles/bombs
« Reply #4 on: July 10, 2012, 11:45:37 PM »

It's definitely something to consider - I think having the more powerful projectiles simply plow through any missiles/bombs/etc might make sense. I'll note it down as something to take another look at - I remember looking at that a couple of months ago, but ultimately not doing anything. Don't remember why that was - probably a combination of not having the time just then, and it not being straightforward.

Might have been some gameplay reasons that I'm now forgetting, too. Want to play devil's advocate and try to come up with some? :)

Possibly make them lose damage equal to the amount of HP of the missile.
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Alrenous

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Re: Plasma (and other heavy guns) piercing missiles/bombs
« Reply #5 on: July 11, 2012, 01:20:41 AM »

Might have been some gameplay reasons that I'm now forgetting, too. Want to play devil's advocate and try to come up with some? :)

Having large shots plow through pilum swarms is essentially free PD. It makes missiles almost utterly worthless against ships packing large slots. The triple-HAG Onslaught design could probably even shrug off rocket swarms.

Having large shots miss missiles makes missiles much much more powerful against ships with large mounts. If you have enough missiles to overwhelm the PD, not that difficult to do if you go for it on purpose, then you can essentially cripple or kill them at will. E.g. the Onslaught has three forward-facing large mounts, which is alone more than all of its flux dissipation. At high flux it may be firing only those weapons. Conversely, if the AI is smart enough, a missile threat from the front could force the Onslaught to stop firing its large mounts, lest its PD get overwhelmed, which sounds like a win to me. On the Standard Onslaught, that means three HACs and two light dual ACs.

Yes, it's pretty hard to overwhelm two flaks using stock loadouts. However, fact is my PD gets overwhelmed sometimes, and doing it on purpose only means firing enough missiles at once or managing a coordinated strike from two ships at once. For example, imagine quad harpoon racks plus expanded magazines. Can two flaks stop 20 harpoons all at once? I doubt it. (...) Just tried it. My opponent Onslaught overloaded and lost almost half their hull. Red number 5700 right now...made it over 9000 before it turned enough to move the number, the new one's 1500, and it still hasn't finished overloading. Right, so there's that.

Oh right, bombing runs. Piranhas are already serious threats if you don't intentionally and specifically counter them. How much worse if the heavies can't hit the bombs? It would also make the fighters themselves die even faster, as the Onslaught's HAGs would be hitting them unimpeded.

Also, I would personally find everything but heavy mounts hitting missiles to be more counterintuitive and jarring, not less.

Is that all? Probably not. But enough for now.



That said I agree with Raynor. Missiles should weaken but not stop large shots. Though honestly this is mainly a problem for annihilators, which have enough ammo to stop, with luck, all such shots for an entire fight. Do something about annihilators and I would've thought it would stop being an issue. For example harpoons - one harpoon rack can stop one plasma volley. One harpoon pod can stop four plasma volleys, but the plasmas cycle slightly faster, and it means every harpoon did zero damage to armour.
It's only annihilators that can peel armour and stop shots.
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Thaago

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Re: Plasma (and other heavy guns) piercing missiles/bombs
« Reply #6 on: July 11, 2012, 08:01:52 AM »

It's definitely something to consider - I think having the more powerful projectiles simply plow through any missiles/bombs/etc might make sense. I'll note it down as something to take another look at - I remember looking at that a couple of months ago, but ultimately not doing anything. Don't remember why that was - probably a combination of not having the time just then, and it not being straightforward.

Might have been some gameplay reasons that I'm now forgetting, too. Want to play devil's advocate and try to come up with some? :)


The only downside I can think of is the flipside of what Alrenous said about bombers: The effect this would have on Piranha bombing runs would be a problem: a bolt aimed at the bombers would take out a whole swath of bombs at once, making bombers much less effective against a ship so armed. The idea brought up that the projectiles wear down as they go through small objects (damaged reduced by some multiplier of object hitpoints) would be ideal for this - a stray solo missile wouldn't stop the bolt but a whole cloud bombs would. Of course that sounds like a lot more coding!


Might have been some gameplay reasons that I'm now forgetting, too. Want to play devil's advocate and try to come up with some? :)

Having large shots plow through pilum swarms is essentially free PD. It makes missiles almost utterly worthless against ships packing large slots. The triple-HAG Onslaught design could probably even shrug off rocket swarms.
Spoiler
Having large shots miss missiles makes missiles much much more powerful against ships with large mounts. If you have enough missiles to overwhelm the PD, not that difficult to do if you go for it on purpose, then you can essentially cripple or kill them at will. E.g. the Onslaught has three forward-facing large mounts, which is alone more than all of its flux dissipation. At high flux it may be firing only those weapons. Conversely, if the AI is smart enough, a missile threat from the front could force the Onslaught to stop firing its large mounts, lest its PD get overwhelmed, which sounds like a win to me. On the Standard Onslaught, that means three HACs and two light dual ACs.

Yes, it's pretty hard to overwhelm two flaks using stock loadouts. However, fact is my PD gets overwhelmed sometimes, and doing it on purpose only means firing enough missiles at once or managing a coordinated strike from two ships at once. For example, imagine quad harpoon racks plus expanded magazines. Can two flaks stop 20 harpoons all at once? I doubt it. (...) Just tried it. My opponent Onslaught overloaded and lost almost half their hull. Red number 5700 right now...made it over 9000 before it turned enough to move the number, the new one's 1500, and it still hasn't finished overloading. Right, so there's that.

Oh right, bombing runs. Piranhas are already serious threats if you don't intentionally and specifically counter them. How much worse if the heavies can't hit the bombs? It would also make the fighters themselves die even faster, as the Onslaught's HAGs would be hitting them unimpeded.

Also, I would personally find everything but heavy mounts hitting missiles to be more counterintuitive and jarring, not less.

Is that all? Probably not. But enough for now.



That said I agree with Raynor. Missiles should weaken but not stop large shots. Though honestly this is mainly a problem for annihilators, which have enough ammo to stop, with luck, all such shots for an entire fight. Do something about annihilators and I would've thought it would stop being an issue. For example harpoons - one harpoon rack can stop one plasma volley. One harpoon pod can stop four plasma volleys, but the plasmas cycle slightly faster, and it means every harpoon did zero damage to armour.
It's only annihilators that can peel armour and stop shots.
[close]

This is a fair point - I don't think this specific example holds though, because I don't think the HAG would qualify. The idea is not that every large gun gets this treatment, only those with really large projectiles that take a significant amount of resources to fire. Its a matter of opinion which guns would qualify (and ultimately balance if this gets implemented) but I wouldn't include the autopulse laser, the mark IX, or the storm needler either. But if you change the above from HAG to Gauss cannons or Hellbores then the example falls apart: the guns don't fire often enough to have much of an impact on a swarm. As it stands, it takes more flux to fire one of these guns than it would to take a missile on the shield! The same goes for plasma - each bolt costs ~ 1250 (guessing) flux to fire so its cheaper flux wise to take stuff on the shield than to shoot them down.
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Cosmitz

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Re: Plasma (and other heavy guns) piercing missiles/bombs
« Reply #7 on: July 11, 2012, 11:23:13 AM »

Plus, if you fire a linked swath of 2 Plasma Cannons on an Oddysey, trust me, you won't want to aim for missiles as to use them for point defense.
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Alrenous

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Re: Plasma (and other heavy guns) piercing missiles/bombs
« Reply #8 on: July 11, 2012, 11:53:43 AM »

Good point about the HAG being a large slot, not a large shot.




I was also thinking of the support Dominator's pilum volley. If it doesn't shoot straight on, all nine pilums cluster together, and a well timed plasma bolt could take out say seven of them, and then hit the Dominator on top of that. I don't know about you, I can't fire plasma on cooldown anyway, it's no loss to delay it a bit for timing. Presently I do the opposite - I delay it so it isn't stopped by the pilums.

Even in less ideal situations, it can easily make the difference between the PD handling the missiles and building up hard flux.




Good point about bombers too. If they simply miss, the bombers will be murdered. If they plow though unaffected, the bombs will be hollowed out and the bombers will be murdered.
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Temjin

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Re: Plasma (and other heavy guns) piercing missiles/bombs
« Reply #9 on: July 11, 2012, 07:12:54 PM »

Yeah, I like the fact that Piranhas are scary because they come with their own built-in destructive shield; removing that would make them quite a bit less effective.
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Kommodore Krieg

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Re: Plasma (and other heavy guns) piercing missiles/bombs
« Reply #10 on: July 11, 2012, 07:16:36 PM »

Might have been some gameplay reasons that I'm now forgetting, too. Want to play devil's advocate and try to come up with some? :)

Having large shots plow through pilum swarms is essentially free PD. It makes missiles almost utterly worthless against ships packing large slots. The triple-HAG Onslaught design could probably even shrug off rocket swarms.

On the other hand, an Onslaught with 4 Annihilator pods needs no PD because the rocket stream intercepts almost all incoming fire, and plowing right though flak as well.  Granted, this is a situation unique to rocket pods because they have no cool down, but something to consider nonetheless. 
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Thaago

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Re: Plasma (and other heavy guns) piercing missiles/bombs
« Reply #11 on: August 04, 2012, 06:19:46 PM »

Might have been some gameplay reasons that I'm now forgetting, too. Want to play devil's advocate and try to come up with some? :)

Having large shots plow through pilum swarms is essentially free PD. It makes missiles almost utterly worthless against ships packing large slots. The triple-HAG Onslaught design could probably even shrug off rocket swarms.

On the other hand, an Onslaught with 4 Annihilator pods needs no PD because the rocket stream intercepts almost all incoming fire, and plowing right though flak as well.  Granted, this is a situation unique to rocket pods because they have no cool down, but something to consider nonetheless. 

This is so much worse than it used to be! The burn drive lets the Onslaught ride in right behind a cloud of rockets making them completely invulnerable. The double plasma Odyssey cannot fire through the rocket stream at all anymore - its incredibly frustrating. The rocket cloud can easily block 5/6 of a double volley - 5000 damage down the drain. Maybe I'm just doing it wrong?
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hadesian

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Re: Plasma (and other heavy guns) piercing missiles/bombs
« Reply #12 on: August 05, 2012, 02:39:26 AM »

Might have been some gameplay reasons that I'm now forgetting, too. Want to play devil's advocate and try to come up with some? :)

Having large shots plow through pilum swarms is essentially free PD. It makes missiles almost utterly worthless against ships packing large slots. The triple-HAG Onslaught design could probably even shrug off rocket swarms.

On the other hand, an Onslaught with 4 Annihilator pods needs no PD because the rocket stream intercepts almost all incoming fire, and plowing right though flak as well.  Granted, this is a situation unique to rocket pods because they have no cool down, but something to consider nonetheless. 

This is so much worse than it used to be! The burn drive lets the Onslaught ride in right behind a cloud of rockets making them completely invulnerable. The double plasma Odyssey cannot fire through the rocket stream at all anymore - its incredibly frustrating. The rocket cloud can easily block 5/6 of a double volley - 5000 damage down the drain. Maybe I'm just doing it wrong?
Nope, you're not. That said, supporting with some other ships will bring em down a bit easier but right now having fifteen shots from an autopulse minus how many incoming missiles can be very annoying.
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