...or have I simply been watching too many naval history lectures on YouTube? Combat in Empyrion boils down down to two factors; how long can each ship endure the fight, and how much firepower can they each deliver to shorten that time for their opponent. Firepower comes from weapons. Fight endurance comes from armor, shields, maneuverability, and redundancy. All ships (and bases) fall along a fairly linear progression from simple minigun HVs to giant CV battleships. A ship in a given spot on this line will be able to prey upon lesser ones with near impunity. By and large, ships cannot effectively punch upwards. In the last quarter of the real 19th century, the development of the self-propelled torpedo allowed smaller ships, submersibles, and even boats to threaten the ironclad capital ships of the day. Torpedoes were much larger and more expensive than artillery shells, but carrying a few of them at least meant that smaller vessels would have something to say in response if a larger one attacked. The impact of small torpedo boats that might rapidly swarm and sink a large ship even led to the development of a new class of ship to fend them off called the torpedo boat destroyer, later shorted to just destroyer. Nothing like this weapon exists in Empyrion, but if it did, here's what I imagine it would look like. An Empyrion torpedo would be a large fixed weapon in the shape of, obviously, a torpedo about three blocks long. Instead of using stored ammo, the block would destroy itself as the weapon was fired. The weapon in flight would be a large slow homing projectile, perhaps as slow as 110 m/s in space and 65m/s on planets. The block would probably be removed by salvaging itself with zero percent efficiency. If destroyed by battle damage, the torpedo block's high BlastRadius and BlastDamage would cause great damage to the ship carrying it. Torpedo blocks would be very heavy, require a great deal of resources, and be reasonably slow to manufacture. Both large and small block size type would be available. Like other fixed weapons, torpedoes must not be obstructed to fire. Selecting which torpedoes to fire at once would be done by toggling them on and off in the control panel, just as you do with other weapons. The firepower of a torpedo would be immense. A single hit would probably be enough to knock down the health of a tier two shield by half. Reloading a torpedo would be done just like replacing any other destroyed block. It could easily be accomplished by hand once the ship has stopped and its shields were down. Range would maximal to compensate for their projectile slow speed. Torpedoes would be aimed in the same manner as homing rockets. I can think of several use cases inspired by history. Mainline combat CVs could use torpedoes as an expendable resource to use at a critical moment. Specialized torpedo CVs could use them as a risky and expensive standoff bombardment weapon. SVs with torpedoes would be able to function as true bomber craft, traveling to their target, delivering their payloads, and escaping. Even HVs could use torpedoes as large surface-to-surface missiles for cracking open heavily defended bases. Counter play would come from the cumbersome and dangerous nature of torpedoes. They would only have about fifty or so health and explode massively if destroyed by weapons fire, so they would have to be kept either well protected in armored tubes or well away from the carrying craft's main body, lest their (possibly chain) detonation take down the entire ship. Their great resource cost, mass, and CPU impact would limit the number a player would be able to bring to bear at once. Because they're so slow, most alert pilots would be able to dodge or outrun a torpedo. SV torpedo bombers could be countered by antiaircraft rocket turret destroyers in support of more vulnerable ships. They're feeble enough, but those are my predictions. I think a torpedo weapon like this is a good idea that could add a lot of depth to vessel combat if governed by the right restrictions. Please speak up with your own thoughts, especially if you noticed something I didn't.
I like the idea, but I don't think it would go with futuristic space ships. What you are really describing is a large slow rocket. What would stop someone from fitting 10 to their SV? Not keen on the idea of the 'torpedo' block being destroyed. I don't fancy running away out of the range of the enemy guns, then get out of my ship and then fit another block. By the time I get back the shields may be back up to full. Maybe have a new item that shoots the torpedos/rockets. This then takes about 1 min to reload. As they don't have many spare block ID's to do this I can't see it happening.
I had a few discussions with some other players long time ago about an alternative to the actual space combat meta relying on auto-turrets DPS and proximity, with capital ships moving like little agile fighters. This space combat meta looked ridiculous, boring and absolutely non-immersive. We can easily see that with players on Youtube commenting their ongoing fights with their shiny new turrets-laden CV like they're commenting a boxing round : they are not involved in the action as they would be if weaponry required proper maneuvering and tactics, with failure to do so resulting in quick defeat. First let's get something straight : as soon as anything was changed to address that cheesy and boring meta, many PvP players and server owners flooded the forums with complaints. Many have now abandoned the game, we all saw the numbers go down, mostly when CPU came is as an intermediary step to change this space combat meta. Players come to a new game, get accustomed to a playstyle, and stick to what is successful to them, and trying to change anything at that point is always met with lots of negativity. They have no patience nor objectivity to try to fix balance, they pull the blanket on their one-sided view of combat, calling every "different" combat technique and idea an "exploit" just because they were defeated by it and refused to change their methods, etc. If CPU had been done with a specific objective in mind, it was far from clear what was expected from players apart needing to grind a lot more to get to the same, boring end-game space combat meta. Also as @Spoon mentioned, there are no more IDs available so that is also a big problem. Ideas I discussed some time ago revolved around some kind of main "spinal gun" like a huge railgun running the length of a capital ship, with longer range (2 to 3x) than all other weapons, so ships would at least have to "aim" to shoot a target, instead of just driving to proximity and letting the AI turrets do all the work. AI turrets would still be useful as point defenses against small/ medium fighters and boarding parties, but they would be no match for the main gun. This is already achievable with the custom configs, as we could mod one of the 2 CV "fixed" weapons so it uses a specific projectile with adjusted speed, damage, range and slow rate of fire. The idea of torpedoes carried with SVs would surely lead to abuses as players could simply strap thrusters on a core and go deliver the bombs at a few inches from their targets with the added SV speed an maneuverability. I would prefer a unique, decisive CV-exclusive weapon that can still be countered because of range allowing to move away (no guided projectile) of by putting decoys in the way. In any way, if you are really interested in trying something like this and you are not familiar with the config files, let me know and I will gladly help you, as this is something I intended to do anyway at some point for my own custom game regarding space combat. Of course I will not modify the actual AI's capacities as the NPC ships were not designed with this in mind, but for small multiplayer parties it would be fun. Such "spinal" weapons could be overpowered vs the PvE opponents, but these are already over the top and force undue grind to beat, so I couldn't care less to balance things favorably for NPCs... hahaha.
Two things: 1. No more IDs??? Then when we suggest new items, are we doing so in hope of something else being deleted? 2. Love the spinal gun idea. Currently, my Achilles Class CVs have a bank of 5 pulse lasers in the nose with additional pulse lasers, along with rocket launchers, mounted in wings or side pods. This provides a massive frontal assault under my direct control. It would be great if we had the ability to collectively center and fire the turrets in salvo fashion, but that may not be possible with EGS game mechanics.
More fixed weapons would certainly be nice. We have 30mm rounds. We have fixed rotary weapons. Yet my CV still lacks a battery of GAU-8's. Balancing torpedoes to keep them from dominating the meta is my foremost thought. They would be a far more expensive munition for their damage than any other turret or fixed weapon. A high CPU cost will help if you're playing with CPU, as will high mass if you're playing with mass & volume. The maximum range of torpedoes would be on the high end, but not so much that they could be used without risk from long range turrets. The safest use would be to get in range, fire the salvo, and immediately evade. This is fine for a stationary or unaware target, but you would have to get much closer to hit an active one. Notice that speed I suggested as well. It's fast enough to catch a CV at close range or an HV in the open, but an SV can flatly outrun it without boosting. Most importantly, torpedoes must have an unobstructed path forward like other fixed weapons, yet are very fragile and will cause great damage to the ship carrying them if destroyed by enemy fire. Attempting to evade incoming fire while carrying a mass of torpedoes unshielded and unarmored would be suicidal. These are still fixed weapons, after all, and thus can be targeted specifically by enemy turrets. The destruction of one torpedo would set off the others off, probably near obliterating the ship. To be carried safely, torpedoes would have to buried deep in armored launch tubes and protected by shields. This would be very difficult to achieve on H/SVs, and constitute a major structural feature of CVs. Farr help you if you leave a flight of SVs on the ground or flight deck with their torpedoes loaded during an air raid. I'm envisioning three main uses for torpedoes as ship armaments. The first is a secondary weapon for a combat CV. A destroyer or small cruiser might carry just two, while a larger battleship might carry as many as eight. They would be special weapons, the reserve one-shot damage spike you use to take down a shield, or a Hail-Mary gambit to cripple a superior opponent. The second use would be as primary weapons for torpedo-specialized CVs. You would have to use the control panel and toggle torpedoes on or off to select the size of your salvo, so they wouldn't be very good primary weapons in a stand-up brawl. Torpedo CVs would provide a standoff strike capability, like a missile submarine or a bomber armed with cruise missiles in a rotary launcher. They can be effective, but they can't carry the battle alone. The third use would be on SVs and HVs. The viability of SVs as weapons has been a problem for some time, and HV tanks suffer from most of there power coming from AI-controlled turrets that players merely chauffeur around. Torpedoes would give these platforms a chance to do real damage, especially against shielded targets like drone bases. This might sound like cheese, but I would argue it's more honorable than digging under a drone base with a survival tool and bringing down the shield with demolition charges.
There is no honour in war mate. We don't walk across battlefields all in a line anymore. We use that we have to our advantage. Is there honour in using cruise missile against people who cant defend against them or use night vision against people who don't have any? Digging under POI's is a way of taking them down. It gives us a choice, which it good for gameplay.
@Track Driver : no more IDs so no more new devices or even scripts, if these are also considered as "objects" by the Unity engine (according to the documentation), until (and "if") they migrate everything into a new system or database. Taelyn mentioned that some items are not used anymore in the config files, and that we can use their ID numbers for custom items. This is what Vermillion used to make his custom items in his Reforged Galaxy. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I have a problem with the way shields are setup in the game. In most (if not all) other games I played, when enemies have something like a shield or any kind of "regenerating" system for armor/ shield/ health, there is always some kind of trick for players to shut that advantage down to resume combat on more "equal" or "conventional" grounds. Some bosses with "health regen" will require, for example, to shoot at various objects in the environement to take out this "health regen". In the Star Wars series, the Star Destroyers have their shield generators on top of the superstructure, like 2 big balls mounted on pillars, and if players take the risk to approach enough with a small ship they can destroy the generators, then their tiny little lasers can start chipping away atthe Star Destroyer's health pool. In some other cases, this requires some kind of "boarding party" to go inside the structure and manually shut down the shields so the allies outside can then attack the vessel/ base. In Empyrion, the way many POIs and ships are made, there are no such things : generators are hidden and even a tiny door benefits from the global shield's health pool. IMO that is not fun nor engaging. It may be fun for the POI / vessel designer to see players struggling and raging against their "invincible constructs" but that is just a cheap way to design game challenges. So first thing I would do prior to designing some kind of torpedo/ ultimate gun would be to make sure that players can still bring shields down in another, more conventional way not requiring to sacrifice the best ship in the galaxy just for that preliminary step. Presently, apart from going into creative to pinpoint any "weakness" a fortress or Invincible CV might have, it is a game of brute force, die and respawn, for too many players. So I think that finding a remedy to this should be the preliminary step taken before resorting to making more weapons.
Coincidentally, I also had a notion that maybe shields should only absorb a percentage of incoming damage commiserate with their current strength. Maybe the absorption percentage would round down to the nearest ten and update every three seconds or so. I still think torpedoes are a desirable idea. Existing fixed and turret-mounted weapons are all qualitatively the same. Swapping out the 15mm turrets on a CV for plasma isn't going to change very much how the CV operates or fights. It's like the differences in a submachine gun, an assault rifle, and a light machine gun. You can know full well how different they are, but in a video game, they're used in the exact same way to achieve the exact same goals. They might as well be the same weapon. I think torpedoes could be a metaphorical grenade launcher to break up this paradigm.
Grenades launcher... dammit. Now that you wrote it, I have an urge to try something. Back after some checks, please stay with us for more breaking news.
Ok. Did some tests. Why, but WHY was I expecting anything else than what I already knew ? In the game we have 2 kinds of "projectiles", with various visual effects for each (some are simply the same with different parameters, like colors for tracers or size of the "rocket fire trail", etc). So we have "physical projectiles" like lasers and rockets (artillery and flak also fall in the "rocket" category) and we have "virtual projectiles" that have no model nor representation in game, but just a "hit" effect : these virtual projectiles do not "travel" through the game space like lasers and rockets do, they are simply what we call "hitscan" tricks, which can be summed up with a firing effect, maybe a tracers which is unrelated to any kind of real model causing it, and a hit effect on surfaces and damage applied. But for the "physical projectiles" I expected some relatively simple physics to drive the trajectories. What I found was rather jarring, but it makes sense when we realize that the same "physics" operate behind the scenes for ships. I just thought that a playfield's gravity would be somewhat meaningful in some way, since physical projectiles have a " isBallistic : true/ false" parameter that may affect range or something along those logical lines ... Nope. So I had a handheld rocket launcher throw a really really slow rocket, made the rocket " isBallistic : true " and reduced its range to 20 meters, thinking the thing would fly in a somewhat "ballistic" trajectory with a smooth curve, being affected by gravity and eventually falling down at some distance past the rocket's max range. What I got instead was a rocket going in a straight line where I was aiming (45 degrees up) at constant, low speed, then making a sharp turn to dive at the same speed towards the ground. Well so long for " ballistics " and "gravity". Of course it's a rocket, so it kept showing its nice fire trail while hurling towards the ground just a few meters from me... So that's about as far as our hopes can get regarding "physics" in this game. Gravity and objects behave pretty much "normally" in the default Unity engine's physics system, so I am very puzzled at what was done in this game to end up with such results. And of course, we have not 1 single object in this game to show the effect of gravity. All physical projectiles follow the "rocket" model, and bullets/ 30mm and rifle ammo are simply nonexistent. There are also no objects that we can push, a box or barrel or anything, no inertia, no bounciness. Star Destroyers are stopped instantly by a tiny floating nugget of stone in the void of space. Here, a screenshot of the rocket at its max range, changing direction at same top speed towards the ground. Because gravity, of course... And bang ! This could be useful to get enemies hiding behing walls or obstacles, but... enemies don't even do that. So too bad for genade launchers. By the way those screenshots are from different tries, because the speed at which the rocket changes direction and goes towards the ground is too high. Because gravity, sure. I also tested the "homing rockets" and here's what I think : the same cheap system was used for both normal and homing rockets, with "ballistic" simply meaning "aim at gravity direction when max range is reached" while the "homing" version is not ballistic but uses the same sharp direction change if the target is still close by. I honestly never got the chance to verify this, as enemies don't try to avoid the rocket and just stare at it homing on them. I'm almost pretty sure they even recycled this "homing (false ballistics) behavior" for the purple blob of "homing spit" that the big alien bugs used to throw at the player... Now what were we talking about... ? Ah ! Yes. Torpedoes... .
I say if your going to add torpedoes, don't make them a block that gets used up after use. Instead balance them out by having them not be OP. Besides WW2 type torpedoes that destroy a ship in a few hits don't make sense in a far future setting. Instead think of them as something more like in Star Trek or Star Wars where they are nothing more than fast glowing plasma orbs. They could then due extra damage to shields, but not do much damage to hulls. Have them do splash damage and be effective against infantry though. They would then be launched from a special turret called a torpedo tube and use specialized ammo like any other turret. The difference would be that the torpedo tube can't rotate like a regular turret as it is just a cylindrical tube. So it would be fixed and require you to maneuver in order to line up your shot. The torpedo tubes themselves would come in a small variant for SVs and HVs, and a large variant for CVs. Torpedo tube ammo for the small tube is called proton torpedoes. Large tube ammo is called photon torpedoes.
The main idea is to have a weapon that is specialized and limited, but still powerful and useful. Forcing the weapon to essentially be its own "ammo" instead of drawing from normal ammunition containers means it can't be reloaded in combat. You'll only have a few shots before they're gone, and this is assuming you setup different torpedo groups in your control panel. Otherwise, you'll only get one salvo. This contrasts with fixed rocket launchers and guns, which can be reloaded and used continuously. One of the main reasons for having torpedoes in the age of battleships was how they allowed smaller ships to threaten larger ones. A battlecruiser descending on a convoy certainly has the advantage, but she still has worry about a lucky escort's torpedo knocking a out some of her machinery and crippling her. You might recall a certainly battleship Bismark meeting her fate not because of sudden overwhelming firepower, but because a jammed rudder inflicted by a Swordfish torpedo bomber. It's not about leveling the field. It's a about being able to get in a blow above your weight class. The reason I draw inspiration from the Second World War is because CVs are more similar in function to those ships than to modern day ones. We don't use cruise missiles or fighter groups to attack targets. We use batteries of independently-controlled turrets instead. It's the same well Lucas drew from for Star Wars' space battles, except he could assume there would be other pilots to fly his space fighters.
Well the problem with making them giant blocks that detach from the ship and do insane damage is this. While it may seem like this would help out smaller ships your idea would actually help larger ships dominate even more. A larger ship would have greater surface area, which would mean you could slap more of these powerful torpedoes on before battle. If a smaller ship can only fit one on its tiny hull, then it would only have one opportunity to take out the larger ship while the larger ship could have upwards of five opportunities.
Sure it could, if you've got the resources to build that many, and the ship has enough free CPU to mount them, and you can protect them, and you can get close enough to fire more than one shot without defensive fire taking down your shields and destroying your externally-mounted torpedoes before you can launch them. Remember, these aren't fast rockets you can spam in a melee. They're slow, heavy projectiles that have to be employed thoughtfully and deliberately. Each one is a fixed weapon that can only fire once, so you'll have to fiddle with the control panel to switch specific torpedoes on and off (probably using signals) in the middle of combat if you want to fire more than once. They're very likely to be simply outran if you try launching them against an aware target as soon as you're in range. A larger battlecruiser-type CV would be able to use its torpedoes to overwhelm a smaller CV at close range, but this already happens with turret-armed ships. With torpedoes, the smaller CV might at least get some significant damage in before going down. Even so, I can imagine the giant porcupines people would come up with. I'm fairly certain players would soon find that such ships instantly explode the second the shields run out in a melee. While properly designed large torpedo ships would be quite useful, they would be vulnerable both to smaller and more agile turret-armed CVs and interceptor SVs. The safer option would be to keep a few torpedoes at the end of a long empty shaft in a mass of armor, and use them at opportune moments. As far as torpedo SVs go, they're not going to have any more hope of solo destroying a CV or BA outright than even aircraft of today has against ships or ground targets. It would take group of them to pose a mortal threat. An HV going against a POI would have an easier time since it can launch its torpedoes as soon as it's in range, but turrets and fixed weapons will still be needed for picking off the POI's turrets and fending off ground troops.
Really? You hoped for someone to have an understanding of some basic high school math or even the ability to read and comprehend a wiki page?
I hoped that no one had dare to mess with Unity's default physics and that gravity would still be a thing. My daughter had a 1 week "crash course" with Unity last year (high school), and she made a small game with balls that bounce and roll around when pushed by the camera. This shows that Unity has a very decent default "physics" engine (and materials) to start with, and I would have thought that building from there could only be "better"... No wonder ships float in the air when turned off. I'm always inclined to give chances and think that there is a logical reason for things to be the way they are, but that is at the very root of the simulation, and it's completely flawed... If "isBallistic" is enabled, Rockets should just be made to have force applied until X range is reached, then let the physics engine do its job, with a cute animation for the fire tails. Right now "ballistics" is just a trick derived from the "seeker missile" gizmo. I could say the same for Structural Integrity. When a building collapses, all these blocks falling around the player could have mass (and not bounce around like rubber balls) and crush the careless players. Not even asking for a realistic "building collapse" but at least using what we already have (bunch of randomized blocks falling and jumping) the blocks could be given simple properties at that moment, and have them turn all to dust and broken parts when the animation is finished. Now we have 2 completely "isolated" states : blocks are real and solid, OR blocks are completely virtual and massless/ not solid. Not only this would be more immersive, but it would also modify gameplay, as players migh think twice before trying to salvage everything mindlessly. Then we need dodge roll to avoid the falling blocks. Then we can have torpedoes. ^^
Eleon already figured out homing rockets. They're a perfectly suitable template. Slow them down a bit, and they'd be fine as torpedoes in flight. As an alternative to torpedo blocks salvaging themselves, it might work better for them to downgrade instead. This means they would take up two block IDs, but it might simplify the simulation and physics. Torpedoes themselves would go from being weapons to components, and the weapon would be a hardpoint.
Whats wrong with a regular larger rocket launcher weapon with a slow reload? Why complicate it with pointless manual labour?
It's to make torpedoes operate differently from other weapons. Specifically, an individual torpedo could only practically be fired once in combat. Using torpedoes instead of the equivalent cost in conventional fixed guns trades away a larger volume of sustained damage for a single large spike. Questions about how best to mount, use, and defeat torpedoes would be up to pilots and shipbuilders to decide for themselves. I expect a lot of interesting answers would be invented. If torpedoes operated like every other weapon, they would be employed like every other weapon and need to be balanced in the same manner as every other weapon. They wouldn't change anything or add anything new. Even a long reload time launcher would just mean a lot of kiting between salvos.
Sir, it looks like you've played too much Engineers ?! It is in "Space Engineers" there are special scripts that can control homing weapons, including TORPEDS (!) Believe me - in Imperion - torpedoes will be EXTRAORDINARY! Because your proposal - "shooting torpedoes AT MAXIMUM RANGE" = this is the lot of "Engineers", but not "Imperion" (!!!) The imperion has an FAIR FIGHT - approached - attacked, or challenged ... fought, and that's enough! You can't mix games as closely as Engineers and Imperion (!) Partially - it IS POSSIBLE to borrow some features from other games ... but only partially! so as not to turn one game into another game (!)
