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[HeliosRX]

I love how this game's weapons work, but they can be seriously frustrating.

Firstly: I personally don't believe that projectiles should fade so fast. I think they should travel another 500-1000 SU before fully disappearing, but that at the true maximum range it essentially becomes a plinker, doing 10-20 damage per Heavy Mauler round, probably, like they do now but with a slower decay rate. It would make battles more chaotic and provide a chance to hit longer ranged targets. AI should use them as such, too. Makes more of a focus of managing range and keeps the pressure on light ships that try to run away.

Secondly: PROJECTILE SPEED. A Gauss Cannon, which uses kinetic energy to make an impact should be travelling far faster than a Heavy Mauler projectile which explodes on impact. The amount of lead for some large Ballistic and Energy weapons (Mjolnir, anyone?) is really impractically long for something that generally fires slowly or turns slowly. I would recommend increasing projectile speed, to make dodging harder for both the AI and the player.

Comments?

[Faiter119]

I love how this game's weapons work, but they can be seriously frustrating.

Firstly: I personally don't believe that projectiles should fade so fast. I think they should travel another 500-1000 SU before fully disappearing, but that at the true maximum range it essentially becomes a plinker, doing 10-20 damage per Heavy Mauler round, probably, like they do now but with a slower decay rate. It would make battles more chaotic and provide a chance to hit longer ranged targets. AI should use them as such, too. Makes more of a focus of managing range and keeps the pressure on light ships that try to run away.

Secondly: PROJECTILE SPEED. A Gauss Cannon, which uses kinetic energy to make an impact should be travelling far faster than a Heavy Mauler projectile which explodes on impact. The amount of lead for some large Ballistic and Energy weapons (Mjolnir, anyone?) is really impractically long for something that generally fires slowly or turns slowly. I would recommend increasing projectile speed, to make dodging harder for both the AI and the player.

Comments?

The range of the weapons as such to account for the depth of space, it is a way to represent it in a 2d game where there is no 3rd dimension.

Dodging is supposed to be a part of the game, if you think it is too slow you could get the 50% increased projectile speed skill.

[PCCL]

I for one agree, personally I see this as a fleet action simulator as opposed to a test of piloting skills (you DON'T pilot a destroyer to dodge main gun fire, imho anyway). While I don't think that would change, there's always modding...

my personal mod features slower ships, bigger weapon arcs, less damage for weapons (so battles last longer), faster moving projectiles, and longer range

if you'd like I can upload it, but all these changes are applied at once. I can just upload the weapon part but you're still gonna have to live with the reduced damage (unless you can be bothered to change that)

[Gaizokubanou]

I'm with Faiter119 on this one.  Dodging is already hard enough as it is and once you get projectile speed buff from character talent tree it's flat out impractical.  Any faster then beams will be made completely redundant as well.

[Cycerin]

This is what modding is for. Personally I would find the core gameplay much duller if there was less room to excel in a fast frigate or through controlling where you take armor damage.

[DelicateTask]

I personally don't believe that projectiles should fade so fast. I think they should travel another 500-1000 SU before fully disappearing, but that at the true maximum range it essentially becomes a plinker, doing 10-20 damage per Heavy Mauler...

I disagree. While I know that sometimes reality must be suspended for the benefit of good game mechanics, I would not like to see that done in this instance. A bullet isn't going to slow down in space unless it encounters something that slows it, whether it be dust or a ship's hull. If anything, it would be more realistic to have this happening for energy weapons where the energy could dissipate and become less cohesive over distance, unlike projectiles which will preserve their mass and velocity indefinitely.

[David]

If you increase weapon range and speed, then we might as well play the game in the warroom all the time and just move little icons around instead of bothering with detailed ship sprites. Supreme Commander had this issue, actually -- it was more optimal to play the game from the map-view so you could see the entire battlefield while giving orders.

So, hypothetically, we could take that icon-pushing game, divide all the weapon ranges  by some number and decrease game simulation speed by some factor, then make the ships beautiful sprites with weapon effects instead of icons and play that game instead because it's a heck of a lot prettier!

What I'm saying here is that the weapon ranges are what they are to facilitate a game that you can play while seeing the ships fighting each other on one screen and see all the pretty explosions and debris flying off etc. There is no 'realistic', no reality to simulate because there is no real space combat -- it's entirely what we choose to make it. Truth be told, Starsector is very, very roughly based on some extreme idealization of WW1/WW2 naval combat which took place in a time when ships could see each other by sight!

(And if we start asking questions about bullet velocities, why cap ship velocities? Or battlefield size? Why even have giant space battleships when you could just use tiny missiles accelerated to a decent % of light speed to blow up planets from the next star over? Why the heck is it viable to trade manufactured goods between planets when the energy required to move said goods is far greater than that required to manufacture said goods a few million times over, at least? Ow, my brain!)

There is perhaps a place for a hard-science space combat game based on strict interpretations of velocities and distances, but it ain't the game Alex is making. And it'd be a bunch of icons, velocity lines, and numbers. Which could be cool, actually.

That said, modders are of course absolutely free to do what they like with the game! Don't like limited ranges? You can fix that.

[TJJ]

Faster-moving projectiles + longer range weapons is equivalent to reducing the size of the ships (relative to the visible play area).
Go play gimbal to understand why this makes for crap gameplay.

Starfarersector has got the combat scale just right.

[HeliosRX]

Not quite, as ship speed doesn't increase correspondingly.

I just find it ludicrous for a Dominator to be able to Burn Drive away from a stream of medium-speed projectiles. Anyone else here think that the ratio of ship speed to projectile speed is just too high?

[ShadowEvangel]

There is perhaps a place for a hard-science space combat game based on strict interpretations of velocities and distances, but it ain't the game Alex is making. And it'd be a bunch of icons, velocity lines, and numbers. Which could be cool, actually.

Strict Velocities?
Strict Distances?
Icons, Velocity lines and numbers?
Here you go: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php

I agree though, StarSector is a fun, small-medium fleet based shoot-em-up between starships wielding oversized guns. Reality holds no sway here 

[Iscariot]

No sway? I don't know about that. It'd be science fantasy if they ignored reality entirel.

[CrashToDesktop]

Hmm...David has a point in his wall of text. o.0 I tend to play it more from the warroom than being a helmsman.  I do find, however, when you're piloting smaller ships, like frigates or (in the case of devmode, or in the near future...) fighters, I tend to stay in the battle longer and it's vastly more enjoyable.  +1 for figher control with a hullmod?

As for faster-moving projectiles, I do agree, in some aspects.  Some weapons, like the LMG and Heavy Mauler, have perfect weapon speeds that balance aiming ahead and range.  Other ones, like the Hellbore cannon, have such a slow speed that it's not even realistic in any way.  I'm sure PD at this time in the world could shoot down a shell moving THAT slow. -_-