A Case for Energy Based Weaponry - SE2 Concept

Shields would be a terrible idea, as would hit-scan weapons, as both would likely result in the game becoming seriously unbalanced (while it may not be as important in single-player it is necessary for multiplayer).

If the energy-weapons fire some kind of energy-bolt with a travel-time then it would be fine, but lets leave shields and hit-scan energy-weapons for stuff that needs to be enabled in some way so we don't break multiplayer with a hard pvp-meta.

It could be 100% balanced properly, it was already done in multiple games, i don't really understand your point.

Majority of games in different genres that touch on space combat with laser weapons and shields in mind work in a very simple way. Energy weapons are effective vs the shields, kinetic and explosive weapons (rockets) are effective vs the hull, and the other way around with them being less effective vs the other armor type. That's it, You could even add special shield capacitors with limited capacity and the need to turn them offline for them to recharge (like you would recharge batteries for your mining ships). Hitscan or not, it would add a lot of depth to the combat in SE2 xd

Shields and lasers being balanced in ST:O, EVE, or some other space-game with significantly different mechanics doesn't make them work in SE.

In SE no two people are going to have the same ship, and they shouldn't. SE is a game about engineering and design, the variety of things people come up with is a significant portion what makes the game interesting, there may be better designs but there is no monolithically best design. Shields change that, they turn your ship's durability in to a math problem that isn't terribly hard to solve, resulting in what is effectively a fixed design every ship anyone wants to compete in pvp must adhere to.

As for hit-scan weapons... In a game like SE, projectile velocity is potentially as important as a weapon's actual damage output, most of the time projectiles moving slow enough that they are evaded may as well have never been fired. While this doesn't exactly matter when fighting huge capital-ships that take 3-5 business days to start moving, it is what pilots specializing in more agile combat builds live and die on, its what determines a lot of battles where victory seems like a coin-flip, and it's what hit-scan weapons remove from the game. Hit-scan weapons could be the lowest damage weapons in the game and people would just fit more of them, they'd be the bread and butter meta-weapon "because they never miss", and would be yet another fixed design feature of every pvp design.

I'm not against people having the option to play with these, they can do what they want in their own worlds, and I'd even support having them be a check-box somewhere like random encounters or asteroids that a server-host can just click to enable, but they can't be part of the "press quick-play and go" default vanilla game, they'd just create a hard meta forcing anyone looking to get in to pvp to only build clones of the one "best" build.

@Husz: Tael is one of those guys that is a rabid anti-shielder and doesn't want shields "polluting" his game even though he can just turn them off and not use them. It's not enough that he could turn them off or download mods to rebalance them as he pleases, if it's not up to HIS standards or he doesn't like it, no one should have it. I've been creating content for other games for over 20 years and I've told him how it could be balanced plenty of times, but he's never going to be convinced of anything. He's also so focused on keeping the status quo of his preferred pvp meta even on servers he'll never visit. Be aware he's always going to throw arguments of pvp in your face and accuse you of wanting "gun bricks" if you call out his logic.

As for the shields, all they have to do is decide what kind of scaling formula they want to use, x amount of regen per second, x amount of health, and roll from there. up to everyone else to dial it up or down from that point and to come up with designs to get through it. If they can't get through the shields, then they go back to the drawing board, if they can then they're good.

@Captainbladej52 You may find it harder to convince anyone you are correct when projecting if what you say about the person you are projecting on to is plainly in conflict with posts they made before you said anything.

now now, no bitch-fighting, keep this civil, you don't like eachother? Fight it out in the game :)

I can understand Taels point about the shields, i've used a shield mod in one of my solo survival aswel, and i'm completly wrecking endgame battleships with a light cargo ship with barely 6 assault turrets and 2 gatling turrets.

But every weapon and defence has its limits, one of my favorite servers is Sigma Draconis, where i have a ship (named The Rocketeeer) which is a pure missile boat brimmed with missile launchers and no shields.

Often i get "attacked" by people seeing me as an easy target, approach me, to than see the sky turn black (in a matter of speaking) with a huge wall of missiles coming at them, wrecking their shields and their ship before they even got in firing range with their "lazors 'n shit". does it mean shields are OP? Not at all, does it mean my Rocketeer is unbeatable? Not even close, railguns outrange me big time and can ruin my day if i can't get close enough, or with more advanced/skilled players, using their jumpdrives to get right next to me and wreck my ship with interior turrets..

Since you mentioned EVE, just as in EVE, everything has its pro's and con's and everything can be countered one way or another, like an Amarr Abaddon with its fancy lightshow and huge armor tank, can be overwhelmed by a minmatar maelstrom rustbucket up in its face with autocannons. Or a Caldari Rokh with railguns getting destroyed by a Gallente Dominix drone boat.

Cya on the other side, be it the other side of the guns, or the other side of the base, either way is fine by me <3

@Vermeulen Kenny

"...Fight it out in the game..."

-Network is currently terrible and I'm quite busy IRL, so we'd need to put some effort in to finding something I can join, and even then buildup to the point of producing combat ships in said neutral server could take a bit, but I'm game.

"...every weapon and defence has its limits..."

-The problem is never that a single block is "unbeatable", but rather how that single block warps construct-design and gameplay around it, often reducing the number of viable designs to a very narrow "meta" set. My goal is balance in the form of a multitude of options suiting many play-styles. This isn't to say I think solo fighters should be matching capital ships in their abilities, but an ace in a high-end fighter loaded for bear shouldn't be getting ignored by a capital just because the capital's shield invalidates any weapon the fighter could carry and its hit-scan turrets invalidate the agility and evasive capacity upon which the fighter depends to survive.

As for your example, why does your ship not have shields? (I can't even see the server for network reasons, but servers I've been in with shields tend not to disincentivize their use) Also, could you send me the mod-list and server settings so I can have a look at the server's balance myself?

@Tael But you start with a "creativity" argument, and follow it up with a "pvp-meta" argument, those 2 don't really hold together. If the energy weapons and shield argument does anything, it actually expands on the variety, making meta even less of a thing. You assumed the shields are gonna be OP on a get-go, and that's really biased, because everything can be adjusted and balanced, it's just that you really stand against variety in the game xd

And don't start on the "mods can do so as well" argument, mods never implement anything that's actually balanced, and if so, there are no real damage types in the game that would support the whole balance to exist. Also based on what @Vermeulen Kenny said, it's exactly why having it as a feature in the base game would be better, because it would be easier to add and build on top of it where end-game ships would utilize them, than leave it to a single person that would need to modify every existing ship in the game to not make it a one-sided advantage, and i won't even start on the issues with compatibility between mods that would create.

@Husz I can see how you'd come to that conclusion, but as they say "devil's in the details".

-The goal of multiple options doesn't mean creativity, but rather ensuring the pinnacles of different play/design paths aren't simply rendered totally irrelevant by a single feature. People should have what they want, but if what they want breaks everyone else's game then it should be something they need to enable for that server/world instead of something that just gets pushed on everyone that just happens to click "quick-play".

-I want energy weapons, they are (metaphorically) cool and should be in the game, but if they function as hit-scan weapons then they can't be dodged and effectively render the only defense of small high-agility low-armor builds irrelevant. As such if energy weapons are hit-scan then they should be behind a check-box in a server's settings so that people can still have them, but so that new players who just hit quick-play aren't being railroaded out of playing that way before they know if its a play-style they'd enjoy.

-I want shields, they are cool and should be in the game, but they turn defense in to a relatively simple math-problem that can be answered. The moment you can just "solve" a major aspect of combat people start min-maxing everything else, and suddenly pvp devolves in to a bunch of nearly identical meta-builds. If you're in a fighter with a non-fighter shield-meta then you're useless because you don't hit hard enough to break anyone else's shields. If you're in a behemoth capital ship with a non-capital shield-meta then you're useless because you're a huge target that has the shield of a smaller ship and can't control range well enough to put disabling damage on your target. And if you're in a cruiser with a non-cruiser shield-meta then you're effectively stuck being either the less optimal choice between being a fighter or capital from the previous 2 metas, but slightly less obviously so. As such, shields should be in the game behind a check-box in a server's settings so that people can still have them, but so that new players who just hit quick-play aren't being railroaded out of playing the non-meta combat style before they know if its a play-style they'd enjoy.

As for mods, people can and do try to balance them, though to rather obviously mixed results. They are a good way to test things, to see what works and doesn't work and how they do or don't break things when other people with different ways of thinking get their hands on them. They are worth studying and making examples of, and if someone manages to get something perfectly balanced then it should be added to the game.

I like the idea of energy weapons, but I'd much rather have realistic laser weapons, which we have mounted on irl naval vessels right now. These would be even more effective in the future where SE is set.

I don't understand why people want what's essentially a reskinned gatling gun firing red bullets.

realistic laser weapons? brother, I am a retired sailor. There are exactly zero laser weapons mounted to ships in a practical capacity.

they did put one on a Zumwalt (an experimental testing hull) for a short time, but that thing is nuclear powered and its a several hundred-billion-dollar project ship, which was designed to test various high energy demand weapons. laser missile defense turrets were determined to be not useful at sea. they function very poorly there are clouds, or a lot of wind-- and there's a lot of wind at sea Not to mention energy-based turrets make it easier for missiles to see the ship due to the waste heat they produce.

That hull will never see combat. We do not use ships that produce the amount of energy needed for a laser system simply because they are way too expensive. And let me tell you about the economics of war.... you don't want your weapons to be valuable, and you definitely don't want to encourage someone to shoot at a nuclear reactor that you live on, who's only defense is a massive heat generator ... against heat seeking missiles.

the only practical laser 'weapon' in the world is built into an observatory and is used to deflect space junk into the atmosphere. It's a 750kw system which can't actually be used to destroy anything substantial.

You're both right and both wrong.

Yes there are ships with laser weaponry, no they are not effective (yet), it just means we don't have to needed technology yet to make em effective. (just like 25 years ago (and further) when people had all information they needed into a portable computer the size of your hand on a TV show (Star Trek) and believed it to be impossible and look arround you now :) ) Friendly reminder that SE is a futuristic sciencefiction survival.

There is no wind or coulds in space.

Red glowing bullets from a gatling gun? There are planes with gatling guns, ask vietnamese veterans about the AC 74 "spooky" => "red Dragon" =>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rS8ysXG2A8M (skip to 13 minutes into the vid and continue watching)

You 2 just seem to argue simply to argue, without any actual imput that can help the game.

@Frumpkin

"I don't understand why people want what's essentially a reskinned gatling gun firing red bullets."

-Because it's a game about engineering, and hit-scan weapons tend to invalidate the the point of engineering a ship to be agile enough to evade incoming fire.

@Vermeulen Kenny

I think Frumpkin's reference to a "reskinned gatling gun firing red bullets" is a sarcastic reference to the idea of energy weapons that fire non-hit-scan projectiles (such as how Star Wars has "lasers" on its ships that fire glowing projectiles that clearly move slower than light-speed).

@gorgofdoom the Dragonfire laser is a 50kW weapon, and is planned to be mounted onto four royal naval vessels by 2027. Probably Type 45 destroyers.

Reminder that the engineers in the story line have been traviling while in cryo, and thus didn't advance in technology for 10k years :)

@Vermeulen Kenny: that's at least a valid lore argument. Which is more than the "but balance" crowd has. Could easily say that once they arrived in Almagest we discovered a new type of power source leading to said items, or discovered old tech from a previous bunch that inhabited the system. I could go on but you get the idea. If folks just don't like the idea, then cool they're entitled to not like it. But if they're going to cite argument, make them rational.

Well, for the sake of lore argument, it doens't have to be a "new technology" they discorvered, it could be simply blueprints of technology prototypes they had with them. As stated before in the other comments, now in current RL there are already railguns prototypes on ships (Japan has evolved further than the US on this) There are already laser weapons in testing and developing. and since Space engineers is a near-future but still futuristic survival where railguns already work effecient and not a prototype anymore. in SE they could have easily evolved itself before the departure to Almagest, and they could evolve them themselves past blueprints of prototypes, it would open a whole new area, which might best be done in a future DLC when the story itself has evolved imo.

But before talking about future DLC's of SE2, let us focus on getting the current basic game working properly cause thats the reason of the alpha release in the first place :)

blueprints and understanding of new technology could be transmitted to outgoing ships as advancements are made on Earth. The transmissions would travel at light-speed of course, but it doesn't feel like the colony ship was moving at FTL speeds considering it took 10k years to reach Almaghest. So receiving new information in transit feels reasonable.

Good points.

Energy – large-scale energy sources, such as nuclear reactors, actually have an efficiency of only about 30–40% – 70–60% of the energy produced is heat, and only 30–40% is electrical energy. In the game, it might be 50% + 50%—but even so, a huge amount of heat needs to be dissipated.

Firearms (conventional, gunpowder-based) have an efficiency of 20%–35% in converting the chemical energy of the gunpowder charge into the kinetic energy of the projectile. (The energy of organic-based gunpowder is only slightly higher than that of TNT ~4–5.5 MJ/kg). The rest is converted into heat and the kinetic energy of the gases.

The scene in the video... Yes and no.

A 20-kiloton atomic bomb sounds pretty terrifying—but a 10-meter iron meteorite enters Earth’s atmosphere with kinetic energy equivalent to more than 30 megatons of TNT...

Common projectiles from “ballistic” weapons in orbits around planets correspond to larger pieces of space debris and behave similarly—they end up in the planet’s atmosphere relatively quickly; depending on the trajectory (direction of fire and velocity), they enter the atmosphere within a few hours to several years. ... Within the planetary system, they behave just like meteorites of the same size. Projectiles fired during a space skirmish create something similar to a meteor shower.

But Not all planets have an atmosphere and airfriction as our planet earth :)

But to also make my case in supporting energy weapons, also based on physics, Energy Beams of any kind dissipates over time and distance.

So with having lets say Pulse lasers (as this is mentioned in the original post) would do less damage over big distance than it would do up-in-your-face.

So if anyone would just fill his ship with energy weapons to the brim of every nook an cranny, just keep your distance and fire railguns from long range. You get to repaint your ship, and they can gasp at the holes in theirs :)

And it was just a pun with a fun videoclip that makes me laugh every time :)

But to go back to your IRL nuclear reactors, they are ment to produce heat, the heat is used to heat up water to power the steamturbines... its those turbines that produce electricity, not the nuclear fission itself :)

The energy of any electromagnetic radiation, the energy of mechanical waves (sound, etc.), and the intensity of physical fields decrease with the square of the distance (inverse-square law).

This law significantly limits the effective range of radiation-based weapons, active reconnaissance systems (radar, lidar..., sonar in water...), and the dimensions of energy shields.

In other words, even energy weapons are not an almighty panacea, but only placebo... At twice the distance, only a quarter of the energy hits the target. Kinetic projectiles retain the same energy throughout their entire trajectory (in a vacuum, with no air drag)

Fired kinetic projectiles in orbital paths

This is an interesting—and in the real world, a serious problem. In the game world, this problem is also (fortunately/unfortunately) very closely tied to the range of kinetic weapons.

And through range, it’s also linked to the problem of the projectile’s lifespan and the duration of the computational tracking of its orbital motion...

If the game limits the range of kinetic weapons to a point beyond which the projectile loses effectiveness, it thereby limits the projectile’s “lifespan” / duration of existence and thus the duration of computational tracking of the projectile’s movement.

I can’t think of any “fair” setting.

Simply because we don’t have the computational capacity to “track” a large number of fired projectiles over the long term.

The second problem is directly related to the game’s “digital” world. It concerns aiming accuracy—we can only adjust the firing direction in steps of a certain minimum size, even though precise aiming would require continuous adjustment of the direction. At the same time, calculating the projectile’s flight path requires continuous “computational tracking” of the projectile’s position and direction, because even small initial differences (caused by rounding errors) accumulate very quickly as the duration of the motion increases. Computer simulation thus very quickly loses the ability to simulate the motion of a real projectile.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

I appreciate realism, but to some degree this is meant to be a game. Problems stem less from said realism and more from our theoretical laser being the one hit-scan weapon that would mess up game-balance by entirely removing the core combat mechanic of evasion.

@Tael, little question, have you actually been reading the responses? There have been several proposals on how to balance them with current game. With Lazor weaponry its not just about dodging bullets anymore, but the need to think tacticly aswel. Imagine (as in your thought) some dude is brimming his ship with lazors.... and thus the lack of heat vents / cappacitors or enough power supply.... he gets one shot, and his lazors melt / blow up, ship runs out of power, he fired way too early and you have to repaint your ship cause his wal of lazors burned the paint of your ship away... he'll now be a sitting duck unable to do anything but watch you grind his ship into parts while he hears you sing "Jungle life".

From what i take out of your responses, you've just had a bad experience somewhere and gave up on that server.

You kinda sound a bit like in history "radio is going to kill the news paper", "TV is going to kill the radio", "Internet is going to ruin the TV", and in the end its the damn phone that ruined it all at once :p

@Vermeulen Kenny I have read what people have posted, and thinking tactically has been in SE1 for a while (though there are plenty that don't use it). So, imagine a ship brimming with lasers, only the engineer wasn't foolish enough to ignore the needed power-output or heat dissipation (if Keen listens to our requests for heat)... Kind of makes evasion and by extension any ship that relies solely on it for survival pointless, doesn't it?

As for bad experiences with lasers, that would require first the existence of servers with laser mods to not also be running two dozen other weapon-mods that make balance concerns over a simple low-damage hit-scan weapon laughable. Now if someone shows me a server (or a mod-list and server settings given my terrible network quality) that is decently balanced even though it has hit-scan weapons then I will gladly change my tune, lasers are cool (metaphorically speaking) and I want them. That said if they can't be balanced then I would much rather they be a check-box to be enabled in the server-settings next to all the other cool but unbalanced things we want, that way when a new player gets their hands on the game and presses quick-start, they get a balanced game where they can learn how they want to play without potentially getting railroaded by an unbalanced mechanic.

You ask, you get:

Sigma Draconis servers

(one of the best servers arround, taking SE1 to the next level :D )

a little launch trailer if it can peak your interest :) => https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTCD6g3nuR8&t=78s

Server Site => https://sigmadraconis.games/#remnants

There are beam lazors, pulse lazors, plasma cannons, plasma missiles, shields and whatever one can love to put up an incredible lightshow :)

and frequently they host a tournament aswel in 1 vs 1 combat. where you don't only win by defeating everyone, but also by the looks of your ships :)

But in SE1 survival, on Titan you get attacked barely 5 minutes in the game by spiders that take about 6 clips of ammo to kill 1, and there's another 2 inthere. Easily solved just by a simple and cheap interior turret.

You'll just have to set your priorities on what to do first.

When istart a new game on titan, fist thing i look for is magnesium, while filling my pockets with rocks and let the survival kit turn it into workable materials, by the time you find magnesium you have enough Iron, nickel and silicon to get a basic small set-up ready with an interior turret. (most of the time, depends howfast you find magn).

A small lazor turret just powerfull anough to protect you from spiders / wolves doesn't need to be endgame. it would be an option for people who don't want to spend hours to find magnesium to get thet cheap interior turret going to be able to havbe some safety.

You don't need guns to solve the spider problem at all. I'll start with a tower frame, wind turbine, then dig a small tunnel down from that and put a refinery and collector for rocks and ice underground. if you just stay in or on a grid you don't have to shoot, don't need ammo. It's a choice of sorts, a constant tension where your freedom depends on your ability to manage resources.

Spiders used to just be a way to get loads of free building materials, and they dropped a substantial amount of magnesium. I'd buid traps, put my character in a safe but nearly accessible spot, and use a ship grinder to kill them for like 300 steel plates per spider, or 20 magnesium. It was a lot, and easily exploitable.

these days they drop food and the cheapest ammo costs only gravel, i think. The reason to kill them is for food, which is fair enough, but to fight them is a choice, not something you have to do.

I can agree this is an important topic, and i think they should add energy weapons of some flavor to SE, but it still goes to be said ... for a good artistic expression of physics it should be noted that not nearly all the kenetic energy that hits a target will become thermal energy. Most of it remains kenetic, in the projectile, directly transferred to the craft it hits. if it blows through the target or bounces off especially it doesn't impart anywhere near 100% of the energy applied to the round.

you get a lot more friction (kenetic > heat) with rounds that expand physically after they hit the target, which is for a totally different application than punching through heavy armor. otherwise, the majority of heat applied to the target would be from explosives, which in a vacuum, would instantly disperse and convey pretty much zero heat to whatever it hit. (in comparison to the energy needed to melt steel, anyway)

real world numbers: It takes 613 kj of 100% efficiently applied energy to melt a 1 cm diameter hole through a 1 meter deep cube of steel.

Meanwhile you can do the exact same thing with about 6 lbs of thermite.

Which would you choose: a ship that is a 1 GJ battery that can only melt one and a third *tiny* holes in your enemy with a *perfect* laser system, weighing in at 14 metric tons (with i think 10 .5m batteries from SE2), or a half-filled lunchbox of magnesium?

In a game where all other projectiles are slow so that pilots can have a chance at evading them? I'll take 500 hit-scan pinhole generators and a computer capable of identifying surface-structures on my target thanks.

I appreciate realism, but to some degree this is meant to be a game. Problems stem less from said realism and more from our theoretical laser being the one hit-scan weapon that would mess up game-balance by entirely removing the core combat mechanic of evasion.

Thermite and armor.

You can’t burn a hole like that with six, sixteen, or even sixty pounds of thermite. (Even if we ignore the fact that this mechanism doesn’t work at all in zero gravity...) Yes, the energy would theoretically be sufficient to melt a volume of steel corresponding to the volume of the hole. But the actual physical process that occurs when burning through a metal block with thermite involves enormous energy losses.

You could try a shaped charge with a suitable metal liner and attempt to penetrate a steel block with a shaped charge beam accelerated to very high speeds. Again, when calculating or modeling the actual process, we encounter significant energy losses.

The same applies when modeling the penetration of a block with a fast metal rod (an APFSDS-type projectile)... These two armor-piercing mechanisms are very similar.

Even a laser beam cannot avoid energy losses when burning through the block... In fact, in an accurate modeling of all related processes, it will fare worse than the previous three penetration mechanisms, because the metal must not only be melted but directly vaporized...

On the other hand, even a block of "heavy armor" does not consist of a homogeneous block of metal, but rather a complex three-dimensional structure composed of a large number of thin metal layers separated by gaps.

We find ourselves in a situation where we must begin to consider the problem of assessing a hit in terms of the "impact energy" of the projectile (or laser pulse) and in terms of the "resistance" and "number of life points" of the armor block.

One part of the question is when we consider the armor to be penetrated, “shot through.”

The second part of the question is how a penetrated, shot-through armor block should behave.

It is clear that an armor block in which a laser beam has burned a hole with a diameter of 1 cm has not lost much of its protective properties; another laser beam that strikes even just a few centimeters further must overcome nearly the same obstacle as the first beam. An APFSDS metal rod will behave similarly, although it will cause greater damage to the block’s internal structure and the damaged area will be larger, but the armor block will still retain some of its resistance to penetration by subsequent projectiles.

Conversely, an explosive projectile may not be able to penetrate the entire block, but by exploding inside the block, it completely destroys it and removes it as an obstacle for subsequent projectiles. How should such a situation be evaluated? The damage mechanism should be the same for all block sizes.

Another question concerns a projectile (beam) that has penetrated the armor—that is, it has passed through the armor block while expending part of its impact energy. How will it affect the next layer of armor, or the ship’s internal systems?

The mechanism could be as follows:

- A 1x1x1-meter block has a surface area of 10,000 cm² on one side.

- The block's resistance and the beam's energy are expressed in the same units (e.g., kilojoules)

- The laser beam strikes an area of 2x2 cm (i.e., 4 cm²)

- Let the block’s resistance be (some value), and let the beam’s energy be (some value)

- If the beam energy is greater than (10,000 ÷ 4 = 2,500) 1/2,500 of the block’s resistance, the beam penetrates the block and continues onward.

- The block loses 1/2500 of its resistance; the beam loses an equivalent amount of energy

- When the block is hit by a second laser beam, it loses the same amount of energy as the first beam, but the block loses twice the amount of resistance, i.e., 2/2500 of its remaining resistance (meaning each subsequent hit is more damaging)

A hit by an APFSDS-type metal rod will be calculated similarly:

- The metal rod strikes an area of 5x5 cm (i.e., 25 cm²)

- If the impact energy of the metal rod is greater than (10,000 ÷ 25 = 400) 1/400 of the block’s resistance, the projectile penetrated the block

- the block loses 1/400 of its resistance, and the projectile loses the same amount of energy

- when a second projectile hits the block, it loses the same amount of energy as the first projectile, but the block loses twice the amount of resistance, i.e., 2/400 of its remaining resistance (meaning each subsequent hit is more powerful)

Artillery shells with explosive fillings can be of two types: "armor-piercing" and non-armor-piercing.

- A "non-armor-piercing" shell can be modeled as a steel cylinder of a given caliber, 5 calibers long (1:6 is the maximum length of a spin-stabilized projectile of "classic shape")

- We will provisionally agree that the explosion of a non-armor-piercing shell releases energy equal to twice the impact energy, and the shell’s impact energy is added to the explosion energy (thus, the explosion is three times the impact energy)

- A non-penetrating grenade explodes upon contact with an obstacle

- A minor problem arises: how to determine the radius of the area affected by the explosion

In reality, the radius (in meters) of the area affected by the explosion is calculated as the cube root of the charge’s mass in kilograms multiplied by certain coefficients... Since we are working primarily with impact energy, let the radius (in centimeters) of the area affected by the explosion be equal to the cube root of the explosion energy in joules.

- The explosion acts in stages: in the first step, the explosion energy strikes the affected block

in the second step, the residual energy is divided into five parts and strikes the blocks connected by walls to the first struck block; in the third step, the residual energy is again divided among the blocks connected by walls to the struck blocks—so some blocks may be struck repeatedly.

- We can model an "armor-piercing" shell as a steel cylinder of a given caliber, 5 calibers long (1:6 is the maximum length of a spin-stabilized projectile of "classic shape")

- For now, let’s agree that the explosion of an armor-piercing shell releases energy equal to half the impact energy

- An armor-piercing grenade strikes an area (2d x 2d); thus, a 50mm grenade strikes an area (10x10=10) of 100 cm², and upon impact with a 1x1x1m block, it damages the block by 1/100 of the block’s resistance.

- An armor-piercing grenade explodes upon coming to a stop (after expending its impact energy) or when energy loss ceases (i.e., behind layers of armor)

- The explosion should be calculated the same way as the explosion of a non-armor-piercing grenade with the same explosive energy.

Tael, at Sigma Draconis Server i have a light armor beamshape ship brimmed with missile launchers, come too near and your sky will be filled with over 1000 missiles, i'd love to see you dodge that :)

Does this make it a META and unbeateble? Ow hell no, iv'e had many unvolentary people being slaughterd, but i have died way more than that, because they then build a ship to outrange me and stay on distance, or build a heavily armored ship and just take the beating while blowing me in pieces... all they had to do is come back with a different strategy.

With lazor weaponry it would be exactly the same. :)

Don't be stuck in a certain gameplay like it seems you are.

SE is mostly about solving problems. There is no best ship, there is always a counter :)

As (again) you mentioned EVE Online, you should defenatly know that if you're (like me) an EVE online Grumpy Old Veteran.

Plasma is a state of material-- beyond gas. A supercritical fluid really, both a gas and liquid at the same time. Spooky stuff. The welder is evidently an electrical-only system so what we're seeing is, theoretically, electrical arcing.

plasma weapon charges are described in other universes to be contained spheres of a volatile substance which is ignited when launched. the container of that charge can withstand the thermal reaction, but it is broken when it hits a target, or after a small time due to pressure, releasing the very recently created plasma upon the object it strikes. (i think this is a Halo universe explanation)

I wouldn't want to be the guy holding the ammo can of volatile stuff that could turn itself into plasma and break if struck. So, that's to say, the ammo should be really volatile, if not a weapon system that would draw a lot of electrical energy. You could have it either way-- extremely volatile ammo or a huge energy cost to melt and project whatever the material is.

Hydrogen fuel that's pressurized into a plasma charge at the weapon would make a lot of sense, but i don't know if SE1 engine can demand gasses be present for reloading, additionally to ammo and power.

I personally like the idea because it opens up possibilities for engineering, and ties in with other systems. Like building the ammo.

The canister shot could be 'adjusted' by the engineer, and scalable. Add more gas to the tank, HE round. Add a larger battery, AP round. Make it of tiny components, fire out of a rifle. Really wish there was a 'weapon foundry' block that enabled customizing weapons and ammo.

Since it is just an electromagnetic field, add those emitters to a ship. Now you got shields against plasma weapons and solar flares.. Lasers and ballistics will punch right through it, but you have the gravity generator. That gives you two vectors, one pulling....and one pushing out the bottom...and now there is your ballistic shield (and micro-meteorites), with the vector going away from your ship.. All adjustable by the engineer. Conic sections for the shield (sphere/torus/cigar) and XY planes for gravity (square/pyramid/octagon), or however you decide to manipulate it. And lastly, armor blocks for laser.

(edit: just to make sure, I was thinking the 'canister' shot as the battery/tank/emitter being launched. It gives something to tinker with and experiment on)