Forums » Suggestions
Large vs Small Ship balance
I thought of this as a solution to the fact that highly maneuverable ships are very difficult to balance with slower, heavily armed and armored ships.
I know similarly named things have been suggested in the past, but most of the suggestions would be extremely hard to implement, where as I believe that this suggestion would not be too difficult.
Tractor beam or Energy Grapple
Small port
Shot moves 200m/s
Consumes 60 energy per shot
Damage 100
Autoaim same as Advanced Gatling Turret
No error in the shot direction (i.e. like a tach, not like the flechette)
The shot would be fired when the shooter hits the fire key, but would not repeat, until they let go and clicked again. Once the shot hit it would "latch on" while the shooter continued to hold down the fire key. If they release the fire key at any time the shot is no longer "latched on"
"Latched On"
60 energy per second to maintain
Max Range 600m, if the target is farther than 600m away the shot is no longer "Latched on"
The shot will stay "latched on" even if the target leaves the shooters field of vision.
If LOS calculations are not done it will continue to work through objects
Otherwise it will break if there is an object between the shooter and target
Effect:
Based on the mass of the shooter, the target experiences a force towards 20m in front of the shooter. If the shooter is in a more massive ship the effect will be greater. (This relationship does not have to be linear)
NOTE: the force would always be less than turbo, and most engines' normal thrusts.
The exact direction of the force would not need to be updated constantly but only every couple of packets, to reduce network stress.
I know you guys (devs) have a lot of work and are pressed for time. I decided to still suggest this because I know the difficulty of balancing fast ships against slow ones. We've seen both be overly powerful, but I don't think I'm alone in feeling that they have yet to ever be equal. Hopefully the code to do this is mostly stealing from the explosion code, and weapons that are already in game (lmines and charged cannon). If that's not the case then this probably isn't worth the time.
Anyone feel free to comment/critique.
I know similarly named things have been suggested in the past, but most of the suggestions would be extremely hard to implement, where as I believe that this suggestion would not be too difficult.
Tractor beam or Energy Grapple
Small port
Shot moves 200m/s
Consumes 60 energy per shot
Damage 100
Autoaim same as Advanced Gatling Turret
No error in the shot direction (i.e. like a tach, not like the flechette)
The shot would be fired when the shooter hits the fire key, but would not repeat, until they let go and clicked again. Once the shot hit it would "latch on" while the shooter continued to hold down the fire key. If they release the fire key at any time the shot is no longer "latched on"
"Latched On"
60 energy per second to maintain
Max Range 600m, if the target is farther than 600m away the shot is no longer "Latched on"
The shot will stay "latched on" even if the target leaves the shooters field of vision.
If LOS calculations are not done it will continue to work through objects
Otherwise it will break if there is an object between the shooter and target
Effect:
Based on the mass of the shooter, the target experiences a force towards 20m in front of the shooter. If the shooter is in a more massive ship the effect will be greater. (This relationship does not have to be linear)
NOTE: the force would always be less than turbo, and most engines' normal thrusts.
The exact direction of the force would not need to be updated constantly but only every couple of packets, to reduce network stress.
I know you guys (devs) have a lot of work and are pressed for time. I decided to still suggest this because I know the difficulty of balancing fast ships against slow ones. We've seen both be overly powerful, but I don't think I'm alone in feeling that they have yet to ever be equal. Hopefully the code to do this is mostly stealing from the explosion code, and weapons that are already in game (lmines and charged cannon). If that's not the case then this probably isn't worth the time.
Anyone feel free to comment/critique.
Acutally that tractor beam would be more effective to pull cargo crates from nearest enveroment
at the moment weapons don't hit cargo and nor do forces move them so it probably wouldn't be very effective at that. Even if it were changed with the current auto aim you're very unlikely to hit something that small at any reasonable distance.
So what is so great about being able to pull a valk closer to you with a force the valk can easily out-turbo?
If it's turboing close to you it's easy to kill, it moves in a straight line without dodging.
It accelerates.. and shots have very slow relative speed (valk has a valeocity of 200, your ship 55, and your shots 180+55=235 - and that is about 35m/s of relative speed with valk)