It works very well. Granted, I usually have a quicker to move SV when taking on a base, but I tell you, the homing portion of it works extremlely well. Took me completely by surprise. I didn't have much time to play around with the laser turrets. But from what I saw before I got ejected from my SV was that the laser turrets seemed to fire more rapidly. The bolts also flew faster. I didn't get a bead on range though.
No, the problem is NOT that the AI has longer range turrets, even the homing capabilities of some of their turrets are NOT the problem, as they can be dodged. The problems right now are: 1) The player can't even see what is hitting him, so the draw distance have to be increased to at least 1000m (max range+10-20%) 2) The player needs to rethink and relearn how to engage in POI-attacks. It's now a looong time the player had easy peasy crap vessels with less than 20m/s² lateral acceleration and no armor and could be the king of the hill of all AI POIs. This has to GO! 3) Eleon must fix the targeting priorities ASAP. Line-Of-Sight needs to be implemented! 4) Repair-2-Blueprint needs to be implemented (yes, 8.0 ;-) 5) @EleonGameStudios needs to either update or at least add some better combat focused vessels to the provided blueprint selection. Of course players will moan 'cause with the provided blueprints they can't fight these bastions anymore, and not all players do go to the Workshop trying to find better vessels there! 6) Lagshots (propably only on MP/Servers) needs to be fixed. We got that a few times now in my faction on Farmland-Server! But that's a tough one to be sure. Right! And yes, Custom POIs needs to be called back ;-) Is this a bad thing?? NO! Because now the VANILLA versions are of Danger already not the heavy modified ones firstly!!! (I am in the making of a special way more difficult Coop-Scenario where I too had increased Drone spawns (still a joke, I hope they come next!) and added lots of Defenses on various POIs. I'm glad I can roll back many of these changes now!) Haha, yes.... @Hummel-o-War I admit, you (Eleon) changed the loot (values) of POIs into less amount and less valued ones (into crap, let's get to the point), because of the Easyness these POIs were formerly. NOW as they got a much needed buff, I hope, the loot will not only increase to former level but even increase further. It needs to be an achievement to not only deactivate a POI but also fully raid one. It needs to be a full-play-session-achievement! Former I could deactivate and raid ALL POIs of ANY planet on ONE EVENING-PLAY-SESSION. Then I settled down on that planet to get my now absolutely secured and silent and peaceful mining operation done. After I stripped any ressources from that planet, the next day that is, I moved on to the next one. I was a PLANET-EATER. And it felt good. Yes it does. But that wasn't right. --- Okay, let's be a bit more productive here. POIs. With 40++ turrets are not the norm, let's test these with 4 or 8 turret. THESE are the maximum the Vanilla game does provide and THIS has to be the target of the damage/range buff @EleonGameStudios tries to achieve. 40m/s² lateral acceleration is good. Very GOOD!! But still very very small armor around if I see that right. NO you don't need a brick that automatically get hit! Hover-TANKs will and should be that, because there you can't dodge any shot incoming (for bigger vessels it's near impossible to come over 17/18m/s² lateral acceleration, and 7+ are already a good value for that). (but as I already have said, our own turrets need to be adjusted for that task, as they now are mostly useless after some time (targeting sentries in base/below surface, without switching to more open threats!) People need to learn, not the sexiest funniest ship without armor and without any meaningful acceleration is the tool to crack POIs now. They will be still good for scouting around, looting civil buildings, even Drones as of yet (still I have hopes these will be heavily buffed too!), but NOT for these heavy armored and armed (as it should be) alien fortresses!! This is a heavily NEEDED change in this game! Also, there is NO absolute need - as of yet - to have to raid alien POIs. If you are a peaceful player, you do NOT NEED to raid them! It will be a bit longer that you get some things, perhaps have to take a few more steps (like warp capable SV), spending time at the traders etc. but it is actual absolutely possible to play and WIN this game (literally... yes, there is no "win" in an open-ended-open-world-game) without ever having to raid even one armed Alien POI! So, please don't hyperbole, just because it isn't easy-peesy anymore to conquer ALIEN FORTRESSES in moving soapboxes!! Get better Vessels, look for 20m/s² and up, look for some armor in front, with only the needed weapons, and you can win that fight! Yes you will get damage, you will propably get some blocks shot out, and I hope @EleonGameStudios will update the loot tables again to make that worthwhile! And practice practice practice!!
@Hummel-o-War & Devs did make one BIG mistake with this, for most (standard) players - they changed EVERYTHING as once! "Bigger Range, Bigger Damage, Bigger Speed" (and than that semi-guided laser bolts ) - I think that they could skip (for now) high-speeding of 'Alien lasers', speed should stay the same (maybe a bit faster than before), so that people could get to know that damage is now serious. Playfields are not bigger, so some important balance is lost - like in space where SV have range of 500-600m and Alien POI 800-900 shooting now super fast projectiles, and you can even see your targets... It looks like that all lighter-class SVs that we have need to have complete overhaul (or even turn to non-combat transport/scout role), because dodging enemy shots to get close to hit is borderline impossible - here I have to note that I only tested a little bit last night on MP Farmland server attacking one custom version of Down of Galaxy scenario space station, same one that I successfully took over & loot night before. I will adapt, some other players will also - but is it possible that vast majority of, as they call them, more 'casual' players will be angry & frustrated with this sudden complete change (without option to select level of 'danger & damage') I play longer MP games from time to time (on PvE/PvP), and there you can see in seconds how powerful actually are 'player turrets' (BA/SV, and even HV) and how weak are 'alien turrets'. You can't even scout or 'drive-by' other player base on some PvP planet, couple of hits you don't even see hits you and you are missing half of your hard-steel SV, the same one you use to bring down 'hard core' alien POI fortress zooming around receiving some damage. @spanj video is not good example in general, it is hard & heavy big custom POI surrounded by several Capital ships - and he is in heavy fighter-bomber type! It is a nice illustration, but it is a bit extreme situation We are here talking more about vanila game & vanila POIs, and we have there some of the big-ish ones with just 2 turrets.
@Space Beagle where is that POI on the Server, perhaps I have later some time to have a test run in my modified Mark 5 against it...
It is over Beli, inside asteroid field - it wasnt really hard before, but now I will spawn some 'heavy guns' for future gaming I was using my current standard light combat scout design aka 'my light fighter' with 4 rocket pods in nose (& 4 gatlings for drones), that was more than enough for all POIs on server I encountered - I even took more than half of turrets on that big and tall 'Alien Outpost' made from Admin Stations model zooming around (then one zirax turret shot did get inside and took out generator & fuel tanks, so I quit that run & never return in my travels). This thing was sufficient, not any more - now it is a time for heavier stuff I used on harder server
Other game dynamics have been affected by these changes. In SP on Lucia moon Zirax invasion scenario, I just got cold c**cked with one shot at 750 metres by a fortress which wasn't even registering as a threat . Obviously in early game armour isn't available, so damage risk takes on a different perspective. It's not about trying to attack a POI either. Eg re range - you now need approx 1300m (1500m on Lucia moon) to sneak between two POIs in open ground just to do basic exploration early game without getting one shot - good luck doing anything on a bike or HV. Now much larger areas are off limits to resource gathering. Not just a simple additional couple of hundred metres either. In many scenarios, even default, bases are clustered in such a way that you now can't get into huge swathes of territory. In Conquer scenario there are hundreds of bases, each base is covered by several other bases, but I anticipate that scenario might be almost unplayable now because you will come under fire from many more bases simultaneously. In fact you may not be able to find a spot to build a base. Makes it hard for the scenario developer. That is an extreme case, but to a lesser extent most scenarios will be affected by this. I think on the Lucia moon (Zirax invasion) where the range was around 750m my access to resources dropped from 80% to 50% of planet surface.
Hi, While this is related to weapon changes made in 7.6, it is not directly related to the projectile speed, but I thought this thread would be appropriate. So I see you have increased the max stack size of Plasma rounds for SV/HV from 200 to 500 (great!) and the number of rounds crafted at once from 20 to 100 (great!). What I have noticed today while making all the SV/HV ammos is Railgun bullets still only craft 10 at a time. If you could increase this too 100 at a time like the rest of the energy weapons that would be really great as my railgun stacks were WAAAAY slower to produce than all the rest of the ammo.
Except this wasn't unarmored out of laziness or for the sake of style. It was lightly armored to maintain it's speed. It was DESIGNED to be a lightly armored high-speed bomber that survived through evasion instead of soaking damage. What little armor it had did exactly what it was meant to do: allow the SV to soak the occasional hit that DID connect. The difference is that in that update 'occasional' hit became 'every second' hit, because 40m/s may be 'very good' but not good enough to actually use as a survival mechanism. Now, the biggest problem was the homing plasma (which could also clip through buildings), and it seems they're removing that in the experimental branch, so that might not be a problem much longer. I don't think you really understand the situation though. You can go ahead and link these 'better' ships, but I'm pretty sure my tech is better. I built them to outclass the stuff people were raving about on the steam workshop at the time. My ships didn't represent low-grade ships, they were highly tuned very specialized and meticulously-tailored to excel at what they do, and what they do is evade. This update basically nerfed mobility-based vessels in favor of armor, which means that, yes, a floating brick is the best tool. And guess what? Sitting there in a floating brick is not hard. It costs resources, but it's not challenging. You know what is challenging? Watching 8+ oncoming shots and figuring out flight patterns to dodge around them all without getting hit. This update didn't make POIs more challenging, it just made them more resource-intensive. It encouraged tanking and taking damage instead of evading damage, and thus encourages bricky vessels that can soak damage over high-skill vessels that demand sharp piloting skills. And yes, I beat that POI the second time around after the turrets all respawned and recovered most of my previous SV. And I proceeded to take out the following 5-6 POIs that were also on the planet using my high-mobility HV. The question was never one of 'not' winning, it was a question of the cost associated with it.
Just try one of my DroneHunters. More Armor, more lateral Accel. Mark 5, 100t, lateral 51m/s². Link is in Sig. Don't tell me what Performance is ;-) Could disable a few POIs without shotout blocks, but yes, got a few damages still, as I couldn't dodge all sadly. But no, I didn't wanted to criticize your ship, sorry, when it seemed like that. On the contrary, that was indeed meant as a commendation/plaudit, as your ship is way more manoeverable than 90% on the workshop. Seems you have misunderstood my post(s).
I'll stick to my 46ms-omnidirectional over 51ms lateral only. 10% more breaking-acceleration on one axis isn't worth losing 50% breaking/acceleration on all axis in my opinion. And those ships wouldn't have solved the problem anyways. If I have to recycle the ship after each fight due to the damage it sustained, then what was the point? It takes too long to manually replace all the lost blocks, and the ships look hideous afterwards if you don't take the time to color/texture them. Like I said in the original complaint, if this had come out WITH the repair-to-blueprint feature in 8.0, it would have been fine. Even if there's a small resource sink to a lost engine here, lost RCS there, if it's not taking a ton of time to replace the ship, it's a more manageable expense.
I didn't criticized your aceeleration values, when then only the very low armor you had (left). Any Accel above 20 is a good Accel. But/And as anyone has his own preferences, I wound go more into this discussion ;-) The changes are rolled back, and propably make it back in 8 or even 9 with additional changes like Repair-2-Blueprint and other things.
Well, it sounds like the homing plasma was just a test anyways. Hopefully they just release a new POI weapon with homing qualities. Weapon balance should be such that whether your ship is fast and lightly armored, or slow and heavily armored, there are always perks and drawbacks. For example, it would make sense that the red lasers are so fast that even highly mobile ships can't dodge them, but they CAN dodge the plasma cannons and avoid severe damage, whereas a slower more heavily armored ship can't evade the plasma reliably, but can also take a few direct hits without suffering crippling damage. Homing weapons are another matter, though. Those should probably be in the middle, where their tracking ability can be juked by a highly mobile ship, but moderately-mobile 20-30 MS hybrids with larger chassis and more armor will have a very hard time dodging them, but can afford to take a hit or two. So if a 'heavy' is less than 20ms but very heavily armored, it can't really evade any of the turrets. If it's a 'medium' is 20-30ms with some armor, it can dodge green plasma reliably, but not red laser or homing missiles reliably. If it's a 'light' 35ms+ it can dodge green plasma and missiles, but can't reliably dodge red lasers. So there's always a threat, and there's always a damage race involved, but all 3 builds have their pros and cons.
The weapon changes got rolled back? My server must not have them yet. I have a space POI shooting at me at about 1.5 km. This was startling, but a nice challenge... until I discovered my SV turrets won't even shoot at it. I had the admin come in, in God mode and confirm: My turrets were only shooting at drones, and when I had only mounted guns/turrets selected, shot at ... nothing. I'll check versions and see if we are patch behind.
Yesterday a took on a couple of POIs in a previously unvisited playfield to test the changes. I'm not a great builder or flyer, but my main concern was not the damage, targeting or homing - it was the lack of optics in a vehicle. POIs shoot from 500+ meters, at that distance turrets are just small patches of pixels. I found myself constantly leaning to the screen to see their location, and that is on 1920*1080 20'' LCD. Earlier it was easier to scout for turrets as one could go in, look at them while dodging and then move out without much damage. I ended up stopping the SV outside the POI's range, going out and looking at POI through the assault rifle scope! If the drawing distance increases in version 8.* even to 2x, turrets would be a single pixel each. So what if I can shoot a salvo for 5 kilometers, if I can't reliably point my gun at my target? The same for drones and sentries - minigun range is 400 m, drone model is loaded at 300. Sentries are loaded at 100 m and shoot for 150, so supressing them with a SV is raining lead at their muzzle flashes! We need image magnification in closed cockpits and we need it, like, yesterday. It could be implemented as a small frame in the field of view with x10 picture (like Mechwarrior did it) or in any other sensible way.
I think from the perspective of relative strength of firepower, it makes more sense now. Heavy weapons on a fixed structure SHOULD have the most damage and range. But the damage is way too high, across the board. Short fights are NOT fun, especially with the ridiculous lagfest that this game is in multiplayer. Nobody should be dead before they realize what is shooting at them, unless they have no armor. But guess what? Armor on small ships is basically pointless now, and the different classes of armor are even more pointless. It all gets blown off in one hit, so why bother? CVs with 3-layer combat steel? Those last about 20 seconds. You want to HVs to be like tanks and be able to attack BAs? Nope. You'll never get close enough to a well-armed BA for your turrets to shoot before getting blown to bits. Sneak in range with cover and poke your guns to trade some fire? Oops, the BA sent a full volley and blew your turrets off (along with half of your vehicle), and they were too lagged or otherwise malfunctioning to get a shot off. Ammo stack size increases? Pointless for ships because you'll be turretless and/or de-cored long before you can use it. Repair bay? It was a great addition for removing dents. But now after combat you're lucky if you have enough of a ship left to be able to drive/fly to the pad. Repair to blueprint will be fantastic, but rendering the current flavor near useless is not good. And CVs are still useless in combat. Weapons that don't fire on planets when the BA equivalent do? Stupid. Supposed to be good for attacking BA in space? Great, but the last time I saw another player BA in space was never. Partly because you can't do anything with HVs in space, and partly because the BA that do exist are usually hidden in deep space. Want to do a coordinated attack with multiple players for the tactical advantage, and because you need to bring as many guns as you can against the megafortress that is multiple BAs side-by-side all fully turreted? Nope, one volley for each of you and it's over. So, don't get me wrong. Attacking a BA *should* be hard. But it should NOT be "spend all day mining iron to build armored ships, then have them all wrecked in 10 seconds". Major battles need to be long and drawn out. There need to be opportunities for players to make tactical and strategic decisions, including withdrawal from combat when things are going poorly. Cut the damage (and cost of ammo) by a factor of 5 across the board, and you might be in the right ballpark.
Exactly. Short fights are not very fun. And the damage is too high, across the board. Though, while BA weapons should have the most damage, I think CV weapons should have at least as much range, if not greater. The turrets on a CV are just as big as a BA turrets. And fixed guns on a CV are bigger than any BA turrets I've seen. Besides, turrets should probably have less range than fixed guns, considering that they have to rotate and considering the extra volume and weight dedicated to turning them. I haven't experienced CV combat, yet. But 3-layers of combat steel... that sounds scary! Also, consider that one of the loading screens showns an image of a beefy-looking HV with several turrets with a caption that suggests players build their HVs like tanks. That screen and caption seems misleading now... Sneaking up on an enemy base and picking off turrets with stealth and/or greater range is exactly the kind of combat I'd prefer. Unfortunately... I'd imagine another reason players tend build bases on planets or moons is for defensive reasons. Why build in space where a base can be hit from all 6 directions when one can build on the ground and take advantage of the terrain? One could even build everything but the turrets and entrance underground, making it extremely defensible. Also, there is much more opportunities to gather resources on a planet. Aside from gathering plant resources, ore deposits and POIs are close by. In space, one is limited to resource asteroids and those are far too spaced apart and rare to amount to much. (Around Akua, I found maybe 5 or 6 in total and those are quickly mined out.) If a player were to build in space on a server, like you said, they'd hide them deep in space in the middle of nowhere to make them hard to find. But that places the base far away from any resource asteroids. Consider, too, that Autominer Drones will only work on a planet or moon. We can't place them on an asteroid. I never really understood that part. They made CV weapons unusable on planets because... balance reasons? They had to do this to give a better reason for players to use HVs and SVs instead of CVs? Yep. Cutting the damage (and ammo cost) by a factor of about 5 would significantly drag out the length of combat, make it feel far more epic (we'd have to work for it) and give much more opportunity for strategic thought.
I can already cheese my way to disarming a POI using a class 1 SV with two rocket launchers - just swaying left and right works incredibly well. Kited a Refinery from the broadside, all 4 green cannons were shooting. Took ~6 rockets (3 hits) to blast each - I'd die from pure boredom if it would be 30 rockets, as you suggest. Seriously, 15 direct hits for one turret? With 5x less ammo cost it would be 6 rockets again, and just how would you shoot 6 rockets for 30 times?
I mostly agree, but the problem is that if someone in a CV attacks your base while you are away (or even if you are home but don't have a battle CV), they can just sit outside your turret range and pick them off one at a time. That used to be possible with HV artillery, and it was bad. All of the additional reasons you listed for why space BAs are rare are spot on. It used to be a liability to build on ground because someone could tunnel up beneath you. Now with anti-grief and turrets nerfed underground and weapons doing almost no damage to dirt, you can build buried bases that are effectively invulnerable. That's a whole other problem that needs to be fixed somehow. Yes, lots of hits from an SV to take a BA. That's the point of having a progression in ship types. If you take a dinky little SV, and go up against a non-trivial POI, that should be a difficult and costly endeavor. There should be a wider range of POI difficulties - not just more alien turrets by quantity, but more dangerous ones as well - and you should need a tank HV or a CV to have a good chance at the hard ones. The rewards should scale accordingly. Also, that turrets have more HP than solid blocks of steel does not compute. If weapons did less damage, then turrets could be reduced in HP slightly because they wouldn't all get blown off in one volley. Then, after a battle has progressed for a while, you might be left with dented ships with few guns. You might have to attempt battle repairs, or withdraw and make another attempt. That's how it should be - not the "boom everything explodes instant death no fun" version of combat that we have now. Then you can also look at maybe adjusting SV damage if it is still too difficult to attack POIs. Lastly, you don't shoot your rocket launcher 30 times and use 6 rockets, because that would be stupid. You use 30 rockets, and they cost the same amount of materials and time to produce in your factory as 6 rockets did previously. I thought that would have been the obvious interpretation of "cost of ammo".
