Forums » Bugs
Player capship Turrets don't take damage while the ship is being piloted
Issue: When a capship is piloted by its owner, the turrets cannot be damaged even if the shields are down.
Reproduce: deshield a capship and fire on the turrets while the player is piloting the ship.
Reproduce: deshield a capship and fire on the turrets while the player is piloting the ship.
I don't think this is a bug.
Well, if this is intentional it should be changed, I'm not sure why it would be that way. If this is in fact intentional, let me know and I'll make a suggestion post to discuss it.
Imagine how utterly useless capship turrets would be if you could just destroy them all with one rocket blast the moment the shield went down. Then what? Do they stay destroyed until you dock somewhere? Do you have to go repair them individually with a repair module? Or do we just have them magically reappear the moment you enter them the way they regrow ammo?
Think about it from a wide-reaching gameplay perspective, not just "I wanna kill this other player right now" perspective
Think about it from a wide-reaching gameplay perspective, not just "I wanna kill this other player right now" perspective
Believe me, I am thinking about it from a wide-reaching gameplay perspective. The capships that currently exist are not meant to be effective in combat. They are glorified freighters and staging platforms, and are armed accordingly with very few turrets. Despite this, capship turrets are the most powerful weapons in the game, and capships remain lethal and hardly interactable via any means besides multi-player coordination with PCB to stop the capship from moving while its incredible amount of armor is depleted.
There are a long list of problems with how capships are currently implemented, and we could continue to rehash the discussion on them as has been done repeatedly in the forums before. There are a lot of things that could be changed or added and a lot of things that would improve gameplay but would require major overhauls; this is a simple change that could be made without a massive rework (i assume, since NPC turrets are already destructible but this assumption could be wrong) that would drastically improve the gameplay around capships.
To answer your questions: 1) they don't have to be destructible by one rocket blast, they could be much more durable than other small turrets. There is a big difference between durable and literally indestructible. 2) There are a lot of ways this could be handled; they could be disabled for a certain amount of time, or could be repaired either directly/individually or could recover functionality as the capship itself is repaired. They obviously should not magically reappear, and I am not in favor of mechanics that require capships to dock frequently unless the number of locations where capships can dock is increased, but docking could immediately restore them similarly to how shields are restored if it is time-based. Just because you can't think of a way to handle something more reasonably doesn't mean that your unreasonable suggestion is actually the only alternative to the way it currently works.
If in fact this is intentional, I would request that this thread be moved to Suggestions so we can get more feedback from the playerbase on how to best change this mechanic to improve gameplay.
There are a long list of problems with how capships are currently implemented, and we could continue to rehash the discussion on them as has been done repeatedly in the forums before. There are a lot of things that could be changed or added and a lot of things that would improve gameplay but would require major overhauls; this is a simple change that could be made without a massive rework (i assume, since NPC turrets are already destructible but this assumption could be wrong) that would drastically improve the gameplay around capships.
To answer your questions: 1) they don't have to be destructible by one rocket blast, they could be much more durable than other small turrets. There is a big difference between durable and literally indestructible. 2) There are a lot of ways this could be handled; they could be disabled for a certain amount of time, or could be repaired either directly/individually or could recover functionality as the capship itself is repaired. They obviously should not magically reappear, and I am not in favor of mechanics that require capships to dock frequently unless the number of locations where capships can dock is increased, but docking could immediately restore them similarly to how shields are restored if it is time-based. Just because you can't think of a way to handle something more reasonably doesn't mean that your unreasonable suggestion is actually the only alternative to the way it currently works.
If in fact this is intentional, I would request that this thread be moved to Suggestions so we can get more feedback from the playerbase on how to best change this mechanic to improve gameplay.
What problem are you trying to solve, exactly?
Trust me, I'd really love to be able to peel all the turrets off of them every time some knucklehead brings out another obnoxious PCB/Firecracker spam goli, but I understand the ramifications of that change enough to know that it would make gameplay utterly suck and the net result is people would fly them less.
Trust me, I'd really love to be able to peel all the turrets off of them every time some knucklehead brings out another obnoxious PCB/Firecracker spam goli, but I understand the ramifications of that change enough to know that it would make gameplay utterly suck and the net result is people would fly them less.
We should wait for the devs to determine if this is a bug or not, and then make a suggestion based on their determination. Lets please keep the bugs subforum related to _bugs_ and the reporting of them.
Also, Bug reporting rule 2, "title says it all" is not appropriate. I have edited your message accordingly.
Also, Bug reporting rule 2, "title says it all" is not appropriate. I have edited your message accordingly.
The behaviour of content in the game should generally try to be internally consistent. So, a capship should be a capship, and within reason it should function the same way, whether it is being piloted by a human user or piloted as an NPC by the server.
There are other game balance mechanisms available to achieve limits on destructibility and other factors, without depending on strange magical barriers that emerge due to some kind of programmatic issue.
Now, I can't immediately speak to whether this was really a "bug", per-se, or a known limitation of the implementation at the time (many aspects of capships were kind of "rushed" at one point). I certainly don't remember it. But, it doesn't strike me as "desirable".
All that being said, there will be times when reasonable 1:1 internal consistency of the game is not really feasible, and we'll all have to accept implementation tradeoffs. But, I don't think the current situation, as outlined, is one of those issues.
I'm not (yet?) aware of any development reason that this couldn't be made more internally consistent.
There are other game balance mechanisms available to achieve limits on destructibility and other factors, without depending on strange magical barriers that emerge due to some kind of programmatic issue.
Now, I can't immediately speak to whether this was really a "bug", per-se, or a known limitation of the implementation at the time (many aspects of capships were kind of "rushed" at one point). I certainly don't remember it. But, it doesn't strike me as "desirable".
All that being said, there will be times when reasonable 1:1 internal consistency of the game is not really feasible, and we'll all have to accept implementation tradeoffs. But, I don't think the current situation, as outlined, is one of those issues.
I'm not (yet?) aware of any development reason that this couldn't be made more internally consistent.