Combat,stealth,emissions,suits and dynamic systems

jake R shared this feedback 20 days ago
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Space engineers 2 combat- a write up


To preface after this week's sneak peek i wanted to put into words what I WOULD LIKE TO SEE from space engineers 2


Firstly lets start with how you find things


1. Lets call this ( radar and scanning )


For space engineers 2 to implement this feature in any capacity it would need to have a few key features –


1.--all blocks need emission value that is dynamic depending on the current condition of the surrounding playerspace —- asteroid field —planet–open space–items off items or on and weapon and thrusters firing etta

2.--each type of object would need to have modifiers Things like asteroid fields -gas clouds and other bigger player spaces that could have attributes–-objects that have no signature and atmospheres should dramatically reduce the signature range of objects dynamically based on how close and far you are.


3. Blocks and conditions of blocks should have a signature output


Example

1.Blocks have no signature

2.Reactors ion thrusters jump drives shields all have extreme signature

3.Things like hydrogen thrusters , and generators have lower signature


States of blocks and how they are placed should also make a big difference on signature and direction detectable (for example a ship that has a mix of high and low output blocks–reactors vs batteries hydrogen generators and such can turn off high output items to opt for lower overall power and capability but significantly less signature.) If you make the system dynamic things like thruster covers(blocks on rotors that cover the thruster port) can work to hide signatures till only when they are firing. Or another example is thrusters hidden very deep inside of ships so all but one direction is covered.


Power output vs capability


Things like shields should require so much power they should be detectable from a great distance - lets say that one large shield generator (covers a red ship sized ship in the xyz) requires 3 large reactors to run at full – two very high output systems produce extreme signature able to be seen from 50k(or a large balanced distance away) or more … but if they have all of those systems off you might only be detectable at 15km a massive difference promoting using cover concealment(asteroids and atmospheres) and building ships to be stealthy, or loud and proud. Each system in game that is related to high vs low output should be balanced so there is no meta, another way to help this out is if you lock onto a target that was stealth you have there signature till there out of your range (a balanced range according to gameplay) obviously this would need tremendous balance and some good work on the data of the blocks to do but i feel like a system similar to this would be very beneficial to the longevity of the game in a multiplayer setting. Additionally these systems can be used for ai ships to allow for more varied dynamic scenarios and encounters.


On to characters


One of the best ways to progress(in se1) is the character spawn spam into a pirate ship ..its stupid it sucks and with fps npc's and more thoughtful ai and pve systems this hopefully will not be a thing However i have a few ideas so keeping with signature i'll dive into character combat as well Suits

suits should have traits that make them good for specific jobs.

suits should come in three flavors medium heavy and special


1.Medium is the default suit you start with. Good at everything does a little resource processing and basic backpack building. This has a signature of one small reactor

— - sight is 200m radar searching is 750m etta


2.Heavy armor allows for several attachable gadgets like breaching charges manual door openers hacking units and localised emp generators and access to heavy weapons - belt fed machine guns grenade launchers missile launchers this suit has a double jump assisted by microthrusters but altogether is slower and heavier

Has the signature of 5 small reactors as an example

—---Sight is 500-radar is 1.5km


https://www.artstation.com/artwork/W6Vnv for inspiration


And for special suits you have

3.Heavy mining suit

—---Sight is 500-radar is 1.5km

Has a space only hyper efficient jetpack (has .8 thrust to weight in 1g ) so you can use it in atmo to not fall to death but cant fly traditionally- you can hop and leap with a double jump(jetpack) but cant fly


4..Low signature suit

Jetpack is very low thrust and is hydrogen only and has low capacity-had a built in emergency planetary landing thruster (one use ). -(cable to attach to ships and reel you in)

Only access to light weapons - smg pistols and small gadgets like breaching charges hacking charges and localised emp devices—---Sight 50m radar is 50m


All of these should make the gameplay of boarding a ship more varied, some additional systems to help with this would be - dedicated pdc turrets for cwiz and anti personnel boarders 1500m and in (or a balanced distance) and make the tracking significantly better so you CANT board without disabling at least one of the turrets on one side through a missile, torpedo, handheld rocket launcher, railgun, or emp weapon.


Moving on the ship durability shields and most importantly weapons


Ship durability should depend on three things.

Armor (design) not an arbitrary armor number that's added based on the amount of health each armor block has.


Shields- shields based on size and power consumption. Can be set to have more recharge or capacity depending on modifier blocks-(upgrade slots)

s=3 small reactors-

m=3x 1 m reactor-

L=3 large reactors-

xl=5 large reactors-

c=10 large reactors


I'd like to advocate for a more interesting approach -this is space engineers after all


Weapons should have things like deflection / penetration /shattering

Non pen and explosives should be affected by what they hit - for example if i have a plate 2m away from the hull of my ship I would expect a weapon that has a blast range of 3m to not damage the hull just the plate like the explosive was stopped.


Deflection angles based on type of weapon ammo and angle of hit

PDC gatling - 80-100 =pen/ 50-70 =70% chance of pen/30-60=40% chance of pen

Autocannon - 60-100 =pen/ 30-50 =70% chance of pen/10-40=50% chance of pen

Cannon - 50-100 =pen/ 30-40 =60% chance of pen/10-20=40% chance of pen

Light railgun - 30-100 =pen/ 10-20 =50% chance of pen

As examples


Penetration should happen by the amount of blocks thick and block type and angle hit or just use any block classifier like a gatling can go through and light armor .5m blocks at any angle but heavy has the deflection stuff like that would go a long way to add a rock paper scissors approach to size thickness and layering


With this configuration of damage, ships built with smart and thought out armor and protection mean a lot more and you have a variety of ways to make ships more durable.


Example


Exterior hull is a thin layer of heavy sections topped by spaced armor with heavy plating and interior engineering areas like reactors and such with another thin layer around those.


Missiles explode on the outside of the spaced armor blow a section out but doesn't touch the hull


Gatling guns and autocannons pepper the rest of the hull bounce off of armored areas and penetrate soft sections


Autocannon cannon fires and bounces off of an angled slab of armor


Railgun goes straight through but stops at the interior armor around the reactor


A heavy railgun goes straight through, hits the hydrogen tank and implodes the ship.


End..


Adding more dynamic systems allows for this please dont simplify it to much like se 1 or like avoirions system let us build armor that works.


Weapon types and sizes

Based on 1m sized turrets of se1

Gatling gun 1500 rpm /high damage/ low penetration and accuracy

PDC ( gat gun turret ) 2500 rpm /high damage/ low penetration/ low engagement range

Autocannon 300 rpm /high damage/ medium penetration/high accuracy

Autocannon ( turret ) 600 rpm /high damage/ medium pen med /medium engagement range

Cannon 30 rpm /high damage/ medium pen /medium accuracy

Cannon ( turret ) 60 rpm/high damage/ medium pen /medium accuracy


Special weapons-fixed

Railgun light 20rpm/ high damage /extreme pen/extreme accuracy/high power cost

Railgun heavy 2 rpm extreme damage extreme pen extreme accuracy extreme power cost

Cannon heavy- 6 rpm extreme damage medium pen med accuracy


Special weapons turrets or other-

Laser (pdc) high damage low pen high accuracy

Torpedoes-light/medium/heavy- extreme damage extreme range 1rpm(or less) ( targetable by player and has high signature ) tracking is good but poor turning performance. (SAP WARHEAD= HITS PENS 2 SECOND DELAY TILL EXPLOSION)


Missiles -light-medium-heavy multi fire - high tracking great maneuverabilities ( HE WARHEAD )

MISSILE TURRET -light-medium-heavy multi fire - high tracking great maneuverabilities ( HE WARHEAD )


Various guided bombs


PMW-tools like an ai core for manufactured torpedoes - generally can be better than premade but require set up- or even the ability to customise weapons like in FROM THE DEPTHS but in a scene please


And other crazy stuff like plasma fire and other weapons


Keen se2 can be crazy please give us some variation of this we love you keep it up

Replies (3)

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Scanners, radar, comms and detectors would have some of the largest detectable signals.

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yes i didn't get into this so this would be in the passive section with a "ping' having ALOT of momentary signature, and if you have the correct equipment in the area scanned you can get a cone narrowing closer to the ship emitted from, you can do alot with this section and i haven't fully thought about the counterbalance to a ping, even if undetected

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On what physical principle is the detection of a working nuclear reactor supposed to work?

NOTHING escapes from a working nuclear reactor - except heat, of course.

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There are three main ways what an object can manifest itself externally (aka "signature"):

1) the object actively emits light, radio waves and microwave radiation = radar, radio beacons, communication and signal radios, active lidars, searchlights...


2) the object has a temperature higher than the cosmic background temperature - and a functioning spacecraft always has this because the background temperature is close to absolute zero, while a functioning spacecraft always contains devices producing waste heat (any form of energy will be always finally converted to waste heat)


3) The object reflects incoming light and radio radiation - whether the light of the sun (the central star), or the light of searchlights, lasers, or radars.

We can discuss how gravity generators and jump engines manifest themselves externally (IMHO nothing, or they may be disturbances in the gravitational field).

A space suit should have signatures proportional to its dimensions, surface temperature, power consumption of internal devices, and radiated power of radios. The signatures of a spacesuit will almost always be substantially smaller than the signatures of a spacecraft.

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I'd rather not talk about the idea of guns, because I would have to use ungrammatical expressions.

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one observation from the game - doors are solid and take a long time to cut through... It is much faster to cut through the wall next to the door.

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so taking all of these factors and simplifying it to a "signature " for gameplay would be much more effective.

on the note of the reactor it would more be a game balance perspective rather than a full real based solution for gameplay


when you start out your using batteries and solar-then hydrogen-then reactors- so for gameplay that's how "signature" should be handled. basicly the progression dictates what you can use and you dictate why you use it or if you don't use it

how actual scanning works would be a numbers game


so lets try this out


you have a ship that has one 1m reactor and 16 1x2m small ion thrusters and the ship is 10mx10mx10m (for an easy numbers game

The reactor has a signature of 10000

each thruster has a inactive signature of 100 and an active signature of 150

lets say a bounding box is created for the xyz of the ship and for every 1m of surface area of the ship calculates for 50m to the baseline detection range so for this the expected minimum detection range of this ship with everything powered off is 5000m


this number is the -visual range - of the ship in question


for scanners lets say a passive scanner set for the next example

the ship is powered up and thrusting

the visual range is 5000m

now the detectable range is calculated as the (visual range) + ( signature output)=(passive detection range)

this equals 17400m for the given example

disregarding the negatives for this

now for active scans lets say -- an active scan for a large antenna has a range of 500000 m each 100000 m interval has a reduction in power of 15% and lets also say that the (power) is 75000( this number represents the signature threshold- the range at witch a certain signature is detected )

so

500000m = >75000 -15%

400000m = >63750 -15%

300000m = >54187 -15%

200000m = >46059 -15%

100000m = >39150 -15%

50000m = >25447 -35%

so at 500000m ships under 75000 signature are not detectable

likewise at 50000m ships under 25447 signature are not detectable

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That's a nonsensical idea.

On what basis do you determine what the signature of an object is?

You can only find out the signature by observing the object from the outside, you can't see inside the object.

But you are essentially suggesting that the object is obligated to communicate its structure and construction to surrounding observers.


On radar, as in a telescope, you can see the dimensions of the ship because it reflects radar radiation - or sunlight. How well an object will be visible at a certain distance depends on its surface texture and colour.

Similarly, in telescopes or infrared telescopes, you can see working engines. You cannot see non-working engines from a distance. (Unless you can see the target in sufficient detail and can visually identify the engines.)

A radio wave sight can detect if any radio or radar signals are being emitted.

You can't detect anything else - you have no way of detecting it.

Conversely, if you track the target with radar, you will reveal your presence and location at a much greater distance.


You are also calculating the detection distance wrong.

The chances of detecting a target by radar decrease with the fourth power of the distance. (see radar equation)

The chances of detecting a target by optical observation decrease with the second power of the distance.

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AGAIN the idea is to simplify all of this down to a gameplay oriented system that is technically simple and has greater implications on the game overall

Q. On what basis do you determine what the signature of an object is?

A. a signature would be based on several things. at what point in the progression chain the item is - solar vs reactor-

how much energy is used or produced , and the purpose of the block. this way balance is made by block type and qty and it gives you a choice based on what you want to do with the structure or ship your building.

this coupled with the x-y-z size to give a baseline without any signature producing blocks.


to your comments about the scientific properties of all of this, they will not be implemented in the way your talking about, a simple easy to understand solution is the answer. and the solution is combining all of those into the two things i have discussed

additionally i have not talked about the signature production of a active scan just the receiving end.


and as far as the item obligation to show what it is yes...if it on..

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...Well... thats...


"...Shields..."

-Shields are fine as a mod, or something you otherwise have to go just a bit out of the way to enable in a server, but effectively turn defense in to a relatively easily solved math-problem that produces a meta and throws game-balance out the window, so they don't belong in vanilla.


"...Things like asteroid fields -gas clouds and other bigger player spaces..."

-I question what a bigger player space would be. Also, SE is a game, but the idea of opaque gas-clouds and asteroid thickets outside of a proto-planet's/star's accretion-disk will not fly with some folks need for realism.


"...hydrogen thrusters , and generators have lower signature..."

-You can get away with this for engines and perhaps atmo-thrusters, but most large rocket engines put out enough heat to be visible to IR-systems from space well before they actually make it to space. If you want a stealthy space-thruster then you'll either want to give the low sig-range to ions, or you'll want an entirely different thruster (such as compressed-gas).


"...double jump..."

-If I have a functional jetpack and need to cross such small gaps, why wouldn't I just tap the pack to fly the extra gap?


"... .8 thrust to weight in 1g ) so you can use it in atmo to not fall to death but cant fly..."

- . . . Is this supposed to be a new starting suit? I don't know why anyone would willingly use this. Hand-mining is probably the single most tedious part of SE1, and except for grinder-monkeys sneaking up on people's bases hand-drill usage tends to end the moment people can slap a drill on the side of anything. Also, that isn't how TWR works in gravity, if you want to not fall to death you need a parachute, at .8 TWR you'll just take a bit longer to hit lethal velocity.


"...Weapons should have things like deflection / penetration /shattering..."

-Projectile spalling would be cool, but this is otherwise already mostly a thing in SE1, larger projectiles either penetrate or deflect (smaller ones aren't worth the system resources to calculate deflection for), it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect it in SE2. Also, while small-arms will fail to do anything of note against an adequately thick piece of hard material, larger weapons (like say a rotary-cannon firing 25x184mm) would still damage things it couldn't penetrate and quickly erode them with sustained fire.


"...1500 rpm...2500 rpm..."

-No. I get that realistic numbers are cool, but anyone looking for a fight doesn't just set one weapon on their ship and call it good, and I have no desire to set my cpu on fire trying to track trying to track the 12,000+ projectiles per second from a light-carrier battle.

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"...Shields..."

-Shields are fine as a mod, or something you otherwise have to go just a bit out of the way to enable in a server, but effectively turn defense in to a relatively easily solved math-problem that produces a meta and throws game-balance out the window, so they don't belong in vanilla.


A. SO yes i agree that it can be an overpowered feature which is why shields would be relegated to very large ships not smaller ships, and without any changes to armor they may be one of the best ways to do what they are in vanilla. so

think of it this way you have the red ship with a large shield generator and 4 reactors on board to power it. you can be seen from like 150k meters this would balance the shield

"...Things like asteroid fields -gas clouds and other bigger player spaces..."

-I question what a bigger player space would be. Also, SE is a game, but the idea of opaque gas-clouds and asteroid thickets outside of a proto-planet's/star's accretion-disk will not fly with some folks need for realism.


A. this is more talking about curated areas like keen has been talking about-example a section of space has more background noise so scanners are less effective near a faction hub- or planets with specific attributes, dense vs not dense asteroid fields stuff like that.


"...hydrogen thrusters , and generators have lower signature..."

-You can get away with this for engines and perhaps atmo-thrusters, but most large rocket engines put out enough heat to be visible to IR-systems from space well before they actually make it to space. If you want a stealthy space-thruster then you'll either want to give the low sig-range to ions, or you'll want an entirely different thruster (such as compressed-gas).


A. so this particular idea is to link progression to signature. effectively hydrogen is the middleground and consumes fuel so a good bonus would be low "signature" output -signature being the energy consumption or production numbers applicable to usable items


"...double jump..."

-If I have a functional jetpack and need to cross such small gaps, why wouldn't I just tap the pack to fly the extra gap?


"... .8 thrust to weight in 1g ) so you can use it in atmo to not fall to death but cant fly..."

- . . . Is this supposed to be a new starting suit? I don't know why anyone would willingly use this. Hand-mining is probably the single most tedious part of SE1, and except for grinder-monkeys sneaking up on people's bases hand-drill usage tends to end the moment people can slap a drill on the side of anything. Also, that isn't how TWR works in gravity, if you want to not fall to death you need a parachute, at .8 TWR you'll just take a bit longer to hit lethal velocity.


A. so i didn't develop this thought a bit more but based on keens progression on building from backpack to blocks this suit would refine more complex blocks.

the .8 would be to balance the use in atmo and the double jump would double as a braking thruster- limited time lets say 3 sec use 5 sec cooldown


"...Weapons should have things like deflection / penetration /shattering..."

-Projectile spalling would be cool, but this is otherwise already mostly a thing in SE1, larger projectiles either penetrate or deflect (smaller ones aren't worth the system resources to calculate deflection for), it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect it in SE2. Also, while small-arms will fail to do anything of note against an adequately thick piece of hard material, larger weapons (like say a rotary-cannon firing 25x184mm) would still damage things it couldn't penetrate and quickly erode them with sustained fire.


A. se1 doesn't do this actually. the rounds go into a block and whatever angle the block is at it deflects but through the block it hits.. this should also be in but im talking about surface deflection with minor damage if any-AGREE TO THE REST- BLUNT OR HE DAMAGE SHOULD WORK TO!


"...1500 rpm...2500 rpm..."

-No. I get that realistic numbers are cool, but anyone looking for a fight doesn't just set one weapon on their ship and call it good, and I have no desire to set my cpu on fire trying to track trying to track the 12,000+ projectiles per second from a light-carrier battle.


A. The new engine should allow for this kind of use of resources with much less lag than se1 and you should be using these guns on fighters or pdc placements out of range of the ship itself most of the time.

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... It would seem the board doesn't like my posts any more... perhaps if I keep it shorter...

-Your shield idea would invalidate solo fighter-ace play styles by making them waste all their limited ammo on an opponent's shield, while simultaneously almost exactly replicating Dual Universe's shielded speedster meta.


-Thankyou for clarifying on the spaces.


-Ion thrusters may be the worst thruster in the game now thanks to how small your spiderweb of conveyors feeding your hydrogen thrusters can get. H2 needs the drawback more than Ion.


-So why am I supposed to mine in a suit that can't fly once I get basic hardware? Mining ships will almost certainly be orders of magnitude more efficient.


-SE1 does exactly as it should given that every armor block is a hollow lattice/honeycomb supporting an outer shell and not a solid block of steel. Surface deflection would be cool, but we'll need a "solid armor" block that weighs a few hundred times as much as current blocks do in order to make it realistic.


-Keen is pushing a lot of stuff that will load down the new system, we'll be better off aiming low for something like this (like SE1's current 600rpm) and waiting until things can be properly tested to see what we can practically bump the numbers up to. If we start out high only to find we've overestimated the system then a lot of people will feel like the inevitable correction is a nerf (even if other stats are tweaked so it isn't).

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I like these thoughts, and I think some of them are some specific weapon/armor/countermeasure/stealth examples of some tradeoff axes I was thinking about for combat. Curious on your thoughts OP:


Engineering is all about tradeoffs, and so I think combat in an engineering game should be really clear about the axes of combat effectiveness and their tradeoffs against each other, as can then be manifested in ship designs/engineering. Ideally the min/max equations of those tradeoffs would encourage "giving up" on some of these axes to excel at others, creating variety of ship roles:


- Stealth / Detection - Being stealthy should have to take away from firepower, speed, defense, and/or detection. Ideally through understandable and realistic systems like mass, power usage, thermals and radar cross-section (size). Similarly, strong detection capabilities shouldn't be "free" and should weigh against stealth and/or the other attributes (power requirements, lots of big antennas that take up weapon/armor space on outside of ship, and active vs passive detection all help with this)

- Evasion / Chasing - Speed tanking should be effective at least against heavier damage potential weapons at range, and maybe more for small fighters to be effective. Giant ships with more weapons and armor should struggle to catch small ones, at least if both are designed for combat use.

- Damage Potential - high damage potential weapons should both be harder to hit with (accuracy, for missiles ability to jam/shoot, for lasers ability to mitigate with special armor, whatever), and probably also force a tradeoff through size, mass, ammo size/amount, or power requirements to reduce other ship capabilities. This makes super high damage weapons suited for larger/closer/slower/less-stealthy targets.

- Accuracy - makes weapons more or less effective against far targets and speed tankers, projectile speed is a component of accuracy.

- Countermeasure immunity/effectiveness - Ability for large and even slow ships to play defensively by stopping or greatly reducing certain high damage-potential attacks, at some cost. Point defense and flares are examples of this. If certain types of jamming/countermeasures relate to ship attributes, it can help small/light ships be harder to target and hit with high-damage weapons (ex. flare/jamming more effective if defending ship signature is much smaller)

- Armor - should make ships worse at chase/evasion, require less exposed magazines for powerful weapons to reduce weakpoints, decrease stealthiness, etc.

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"Stealth / Detection"

-Agreed


"Evasion / Chasing"

-This isn't EVE Online, turrets and players will lead a target going fast along a predictable path so if you want to avoid getting shot you need to engage in actual maneuvers with a ship quick enough to pull them off. Being small helps, but it also makes you more likely to get wrecked if you mess up, and most people see how fragile small-grids are and give up before they figure out how to properly maneuver.


"Damage Potential" "Accuracy"

-Yes and no. Bigger turrets should track more slowly, bigger guns should have ammo that takes up more space, and while it annoys my sense of realism I can get behind making bigger guns on average have slower projectiles for balance reasons, but all of this must be done within certain limits. Players like to min-max, and it wouldn't be the first time I've seen someone use a whole battery of smaller guns in place of one larger one because they fit in the same space and the smaller ones were collectively better. There are also other possible balance mechanics to consider, such as giving fixed weapons a short delay before firing to impede accuracy (railguns), the use of a heat-system, and the hitpoints of a weapon making it more or less susceptible to being disabled by return fire.


"Countermeasure immunity/effectiveness"

-Yes and no. Having the ability to use flares and E-war to disrupt incoming fire would be a good thing, and having it be more effective when used to defend a smaller ship is also a good thing, but it must all be within limits. A ship's cross-section/surface area, and volume do not increase at the same rate, so it will be necessary to find a way to compensate for a larger ship's ability to hold significantly more flares/e-war for its size than a smaller craft does.


"Armor"

-The mass/surface area of armor would already do this... who puts the ammo magazine on the exterior of a ship?

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"Players like to min-max, and it wouldn't be the first time I've seen someone use a whole battery of smaller guns in place of one larger one because they fit in the same space and the smaller ones were collectively better."

For sure, this seems like an obvious problem in the systems design. These tradeoff equations don't need to be linear, on the same axis or between axes.


"A ship's cross-section/surface area, and volume do not increase at the same rate, so it will be necessary to find a way to compensate for a larger ship's ability to hold significantly more flares/e-war for its size than a smaller craft does."


Again, these equations don't need to be linear


"The mass/surface area of armor would already do this... who puts the ammo magazine on the exterior of a ship?"


I feel like you're assuming I'm advocating for explicit bonuses/maluses, the best ones are those built into the systems. For this example, if for large caliber weapons I need sufficiently large conduits or conveyors from power/magazine -> weapon, then either that's an inherent weak spot or I'm building such a huge/thick ship with mazes of large conveyors that it will be a turtle with a detection radius of light-years that's impossible to not successfully lock on to from far away.

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Engineering is all about tradeoffs, and so I think combat in an engineering game should be really clear about the axes of combat effectiveness and their tradeoffs against each other, as can then be manifested in ship designs/engineering. Ideally the min/max equations of those tradeoffs would encourage "giving up" on some of these axes to excel at others, creating variety of ship roles:

  1. This is exactly right and Given the new grid system you can jam a lot more into smaller framed ships and that allows for more engineering to be had. Things like layered armor on larger ships need not rely on making the ship massive just to add a 1m plate of heavy around certain components . Now you can freely make internal and external armor layering as a baseline example of a barebones change that has massive implications.


- Stealth / Detection - Being stealthy should have to take away from firepower, speed, defense, and/or detection. Ideally through understandable and realistic systems like mass, power usage, thermals and radar cross-section (size). Similarly, strong detection capabilities shouldn't be "free" and should weigh against stealth and/or the other attributes (power requirements, lots of big antennas that take up weapon/armor space on outside of ship, and active vs passive detection all help with this)

A. I think in my main write up i handled this with my section on signature and emissions and if you take this idea and spread it across all of the blocks account for gameplay balance that's exactly what the outcome would be

- Evasion / Chasing - Speed tanking should be effective at least against heavier damage potential weapons at range, and maybe more for small fighters to be effective. Giant ships with more weapons and armor should struggle to catch small ones, at least if both are designed for combat use.

  1. So this is tricky with the speed limiter in space engineers being low, you can definitely create a ship that has high twr so you can orbit at max speed at a short distance but using weapons becomes tricky. On another hand you could potentially implement an artificial limit on ships like a mass vs thrust = top speed type deal if you really wanted to but I personally like the more 6 degrees of freedom that space engineers give us and honestly the thrust balance right now seems to be pretty good.

- Damage Potential - high damage potential weapons should both be harder to hit with (accuracy, for missiles ability to jam/shoot, for lasers ability to mitigate with special armor, whatever), and probably also force a tradeoff through size, mass, ammo size/amount, or power requirements to reduce other ship capabilities. This makes super high damage weapons suited for larger/closer/slower/less-stealthy targets.

  1. tradeoff through size, mass, ammo size/amount, or power requirements to reduce other ship capabilities. Now that we can but large weapons on smaller grids they will need to balance all weapons by power requirements.

- Accuracy - makes weapons more or less effective against far targets and speed tankers, projectile speed is a component of accuracy.

A,Certain weapons should be more or less accurate in exchange for damage,power requirements, and range (https://images.steamusercontent.com/ugc/2012580859652919847/D9056B2D361010426D4297A5AED2CD17038AAC6D/ )- VS

(https://images.steamusercontent.com/ugc/530638296089447779/45D790B726FDE87DC85F34FE890AA6DCDE7ADE7E )


Countermeasure immunity/effectiveness - Ability for large and even slow ships to play defensively by stopping or greatly reducing certain high damage-potential attacks, at some cost. Point defense and flares are examples of this. If certain types of jamming/countermeasures relate to ship attributes, it can help small/light ships be harder to target and hit with high-damage weapons (ex. flare/jamming more effective if defending ship signature is much smaller)- Armor - should make ships worse at chase/evasion, require less exposed magazines for powerful weapons to reduce weakpoints, decrease stealthiness, etc.

  1. MAYBE.

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There are also other possible balance mechanics to consider, such as giving fixed weapons a short delay before firing to impede accuracy (railguns), the use of a heat-system, and the hitpoints of a weapon making it more or less susceptible to being disabled by return fire.

A. i LOVE THIS imagine you have a large signature build up before a railgun fires.

"Players like to min-max, and it wouldn't be the first time I've seen someone use a whole battery of smaller guns in place of one larger one because they fit in the same space and the smaller ones were collectively better."

For sure, this seems like an obvious problem in the systems design. These tradeoff equations don't need to be linear, on the same axis or between axes.

A. AND we Will see more of this moving forward especially with the new grid system.

"The mass/surface area of armor would already do this... who puts the ammo magazine on the exterior of a ship?"


I feel like you're assuming I'm advocating for explicit bonuses/maluses, the best ones are those built into the systems. For this example, if for large caliber weapons I need sufficiently large conduits or conveyors from power/magazine -> weapon, then either that's an inherent weak spot or I'm building such a huge/thick ship with mazes of large conveyors that it will be a turtle with a detection radius of light-years that's impossible to not successfully lock on to from far away.


A. the conveyor size and power requirements will be the biggest thing stopping most people from overusing large turrets on small craft. you can hand load weapons and if you have a good enough crew keeping one or two large weapons fed in a sub optimal sized ship is possible (i use this to an extent on my corvette with the "PDC" HARDPOINTS.) and id assume we see more of this as well. alot of this predicates on armor power requirements and conveyor size

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"I feel like you're assuming I'm advocating for explicit bonuses/maluses,"

-Kind of, my apologies if you are not. It can be hard to get a proper grasp of someone's level of understanding and intent on a message board (or in general) without having interacted with them enough previously to determine such.


"...equations don't need to be linear..."

- Agreed, though care will need to be taken to ensure an appropriate curve is used to avoid overly constraining designs, and additional rules may be prudent... Personaly the more I think on it the more I suspect that if we are to get in to proper E-war then we should find a method of limiting it to smaller ships. E-war is a massive force-multiplier and having someone with an already bigger ship than yours that can now also fubar all your turrets at the push of a button would not be good for general player moral.


"...stopping most people from overusing large turrets on small craft..."

-I would sincerely doubt people trying to fit huge guns on tiny ships will be a significant problem. We are more likely to see issues stemming from people mathing out that a battery of tiny weapons is superior to a large one of the same volume.

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If structural integrity was a thing in vanilla SE, would there be the possibility of using it to reduce gun spam?

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I would think the opposite actually because you have to get through like a durability bar I would want to put more weapons so that that bar goes faster

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