Even in vanilla space engineers there are welders to solve the construction problem for torpedos. In this it would just be a pain in the arse.
I'm pretty sure any weapon balance problems that exist in SE have no bearing on Empyrion. Yes, you could launch torpedoes at maximum range. You can use any weapon at maximum range. I said torpedo ranges would be maximal, not dominant. BA turrets would still outrange them. CVs at such range could easily fly away a bit to outdistance them. SVs would flat outrun them. HVs would simply duck behind a rock or tree. Torpedoes wouldn't be like the self sufficient turrets we're used to massing for firepower. They're far more limited weapons that have to be used tactfully to be effective.
I feel like this last paragraph defeats the whole thread's purpose... Why would we need torpedoes then ? Why not just a "Big Gun" that outranges/ outclasses all others ? At least this can be used by a lone player vs faction, or in singleplayer vs AI. The way you describe torpedoes make them very hard to be efficient without having some support around, which is not an option in singleplayer mode or for lone players against factions on servers.
But what your describing is just a large powerful non-homing missile based off of the pre-existing missiles in game. Not really that different other than the fact it's a disposable block that's highly inefficient and a one time use compared to other turrets. I say do something that hasn't been tried in Empyrion before like beam weapons. Lasers that flow out of the turret in a continuous stream and require lots of energy. They would have a long recharge rate between firing and if used improperly can overload your generators. They could do a lot of damage but can only keep the stream going for so long before the generators become overloaded. So you would have to shut down the laser beam turret and wait for the cooldown recharge timer to pass before firing the laser back up.
The idea is to have torpedoes be a supplement to current weapons, but still be balanced. The torpedoes I imagine aren't meant to dominate the meta. They're meant to close gaps in it. Changes (both additive and subtractive) to a game's systems should create new viable options. A new weapon that makes all the others obsolete would have the opposite effect. Right now, the answer to overcoming any new challenge is always to either build a bigger ship or find a new exploit. I'm hoping torpedoes can split the difference. Take your average drone base. Most players will tunnel under it and take down its shields with demo charges, then clear any offending turrets with demo charges and rockets. They won't even use a vessel because it would cost resources to repair and death is free. Even if they still want to use a vessel, it takes a great deal of resources to construct and arm an HV or SV capable of overcoming a drone base before it's crippled. That means a great deal of mining must be done for every base you hope to destroy. In essence, defeating a drone base without cheesing is a matter of time spent mining, not skill. Now imagine you could wreck that shield by lobbing a volley of torpedoes at it right at the start. Instead of zipping around in a turret brick hoping for the shield to go down before your repair bill gets too high, you can pay the cost in torpedoes up front and start hammering on the turrets. You have a chance to win with piloting skill and clever ship design instead of resorting to cheesy exploits or a lunchpailing resource grind. But, such a weapon could still be too powerful. Perhaps optronics can be an example. A full set of optronic matrices takes hours to construct from scratch. Maybe a build time of a half hour or so for CV torps and ten minutes for H/SV torps would be a good limitation.
That's not true if your a good pilot But nevertheless many people minimize and maximize their HVs and SVs for better maneuverability when it comes to taking down POIs. It's only in PVP that everything becomes a giant bullet sponge with as many turrets as it can have slapped on. This is because under PVP conditions players put as many layers as armor as they can thus nullifying any advantage maneuverability would have. POIs on the other hand are built with a piñata mentality in mind, they are meant to be winnable but not too winnable. PVP mentality is more like "Me stronk! Me no want to lose! Me needs more dakka!!!"
Exploiting weak turret aim falls under cheesing for me. The Attack Ship Shuffle is not a dance I enjoy. Whenever I see a stream or video of an HV brick jittering back and forth while the turrets have all the interesting conversation amongst themselves, I groan. I prefer to attack from behind terrain in an HV or make bombing runs from varied angles. I cannot emphasize enough how much more fun it is to fly an SV even with a janky Steam controller setup than with the standard mouse and keyboard. These days I often resort to just using a CV against most POIs. It's not much fun, but at least it's less work. If torpedoes be an advantage we can build through normal gameplay, maybe we'll have to rely less on advantages from weakness in the game itself.
Except where is the fun in torpedoing a POI in one shot? At least strafing back and forth keeps you on your toes. POIs are stationary which means they'll always get hit by the torpedo, unlike a vehicle.
I think that before resorting to new weapon types we could simply adjust the actual content. If some shields are too tough/ weak we can adjust their strength/ recharge rates, if some POIs are too hard we can lower their efficiency, etc. This can already be done with custom configuration, and we can already experiment with balance concepts. The drone bases were meant to be the toughest POI on a playfield because they serve as "anchor" for base attacks and other events, so players are not expected to win easily against them anyway. By the way I know many players don't use the tunneling tactics and prefer the frontal approach. Personally I mod the weapons and almost everything to make the game less grindy and more focused on skills than "tanking damage until victory". I have no shame at all giving players the advantage against AI, but I understand that the game was made like it is now to stretch its content as much as possible so players don't reach end game capacity too fast. There are a great lot of players who have jobs and a life outside the game that don't want to spend most of their time drilling ores and looking at constructors slowly making stuff, so I mod my game to make it easier to jump into action and get some results, and also less grindy to repair and restock. I don't mind difficulty in games, but mining and crafting are not "survival" nor an enjoyable way to spend my free time. Even with perfectly balanced torpedoes or some ultimate weapon, too many aspects of the game are just too time consuming for the gratification they yield. First time we craft something, cool, new stuff, but this "fun" dies fast when getting in the "Big Battles" game. Just throw a good questline in there, and the mining/ crafting is only a hindrance to progress in a timely fashion in a story. Now that we have alternatives (trading, mission rewards) we can have a balanced mix of activities to get what we need to "play the game" and explore without having to spend too much time doing boring stuff.
Exploiting the weakness of the enemy is a very good tactic that is still used today. Even back in the medieval times they dug under the walls of castles, to collapse them. Using U boats to attack ships in WW2 was also an exploit, as they are harder to see. It's only natural to take the path of least resistance in war. In this game, in some of the POI's you can choose which way to take it down. This makes good game play. Unlike some of the POI's that are like 'corridor shooters' which are boring and I used to leave alone. You may call it 'cheesy' and there will be people who will agree. I just liked the options of deciding which way I can take it down. As long as Empyrion and 'POI makers' keep these options in then it suits everyone.
The primary skills used in Empyrion are piloting, infantry combat, and structure design. On top of these are meta skills like planning, observation, and comprehension, but these aren't specific to the game. To be a cohesive experience, a game's content needs to push players to become proficient at primary skills like these. The more players explore and master a game's primary skills, the more satisfying the experience will be. So here's the thing. Undermining and breaking turret aiming aren't skillful. They're not something you can be good at or creative with. There aren't any interesting decisions to be made or chances to improve. You just perform the action and get the result. It's like driving to the grocery store. You either did it right or you didn't. You either dug the hole right or you didn't. You either shuffled right or you didn't. These thoughts are the lens I'm picturing torpedoes through. Safely equipping a ship with them will take skillful design. Effectively using them in combat will take skillful piloting. Having a decent supply of them will take some planning. Like I said, torpedoes are meant to increase the number of viable options. Even if one does still decide to undermine a POI, at least it's a choice they got to make for themselves instead of a simple matter of course. Imagine hitting a POI specifically to look for torpedoes to loot, like epic weapons for vessels. Besides, I don't think torpedoes would be any worse than what we can already do to POIs with impunity using an artillery firebase BA supported by a CV.
I think my issue is in the "delivery" method of these torpedos. A large ship will be easy to spot, and easy to evade a salvo from. A small ship dedicated to this weapon may not survive the barrage of incoming while trying to get in close to release it. So I feel a new "stealth" mechanic should be put in. I was thinking the other day about it and thought it could behave, in some ways, like CPU. In Vanilla, each block on a ship is worth a specific CPU amount. Would seem to me each block could be given a "signature rating". The higher the signature, the easier a ship is to spot. A device could then be added, similar to CPU Extenders that work in the other way that reduces this signature. This way, people could build purpose built "stealth" torpedo boats that can sneak in close to large capital ships, drop their payload, and then run. I know this is a pie in the sky dream...they would have to completely revamp the way the detector mechanic works from just showing everything within a certain distance to pinging each individual POI/ship.
I disagree. The programmers could have if they wanted to have all the AI turrets have an auto lock aim ability that never misses the player and can aim through terrain/blocks. They didn't and instead chose to be fair to the player by allowing AI turrets to occasionally miss. So this isn't cheesing but rather an intentional feature implemented for the sake of balance. Even in most other shooter games they don't make the enemy npcs have 100% aimbot efficiency, because otherwise you would be unable to win. All skillful actions can ultimately be boiled down to either you did it right or not. It's the variety that makes the difference. This torpedo on the other hand just doesn't seem to be that efficient to be a viable skill that anyone would use to begin with. It's unwieldy yet if somehow used properly, it's OPness is capable of annihilating a POI in one hit and thus capable of also destroying the loot you would get (or worse prevent you from salvaging the POIs remains).
I think one better way to make shields more fun to tackle would be to have them a bit weaker, but full recharge very quickly, with just enough of a cooldown time when at zero to allow to do some damage before shields get full charge again. This way, when enough damage has been done, if the generators are exposed after a while, shields can be definitively taken out. Here we're mostly discussing a ship vs stationary base scenario, when referring to the tunnel digging method. But that leaves all ship-vs-ship combat out of the discussion. My problem with torpedoes is that it's mostly a viable option in multiplayer, under certain circumstances, but not when a player is alone. It also means that shields stay the way they are, and using torpedoes are the only option against them apart from flying bricks to tank incoming shots. I feel like the requirements for torpedoes would only tend to promote thick armored "carriers" and this would not change the CV-CV combat meta at all. Unless shield generators are already accessible to hits, either taking them down in one shot with torpedoes (and having them recharge anyway) or in a longer delay with sustained "weaker" firepower, there is not much difference in the end, since the generators can be buried deep inside.
I don't see much skill in the turret shuffle. AI turrets simply don't have the capacity to correct the way a human would. They continually attempt to lead their shots against you, and are continually foiled by vector changes. I've done the same thing by barrel rolling away from space drones in unarmed shuttles. Even homing rockets have trouble keeping up. To this day, I have never had an SV shot out from under me by turrets or drones. To a player, though, anticipating such a simple evasion pattern is trivial. I don't imagine turrets ever could or should be effective enough to make the same corrections, though. I'd rather open up a new option than shut down an existing one. I'm not suggesting torpedoes would be nukes that annihilate a target. Something like 1500 damage in a three block radius for CV torps and 700 at a one block radius for the small ones feels right. It's enough to wreck a specific section if you aim carefully and get a target lock. I do wonder what changes are incoming for shields, if any. In their present form, they're supremely effective as defense against smaller adversaries, but only a short reprieve against equal and larger ones. They've had the effect of ensuring there's no way of even scratching a more powerful structure in a stand up fight. I'm assuming this is an unintended effect. I'd really like to see shields go from absorbing all damage to only a taking off a percentage updated every couple seconds based on remaining shield HP. If shields don't end up changing, and the only way to bring one down is brute force over finesse, maybe torpedoes can at least be a brute force solution that requires finesse to employ.
Maybe you should try the Reforged scenario from the workshop. They've updated the AI and have changed the way SVs work to make them not be as effective in strafing but rather emphasize attack runs. SVs in Reforged function less like gunships and more like close ground support fighters when it comes to taking out POIs.
I didn't care for RG. Its changes to CPU, thrusters, and armor mass were incompatible with my CV designs. If Vermillion wants to make a version that reverts those changes, I'd give it a shot. I did have quite a fun time fighting RG's drones with my SV interceptors.
1500 damage is not much : artillery does 1400 something, so torpedoes would need much more, especially if you want to bring shields down with few of them. I did some tests in my mini empty space scenario. I modded the SV railguns to have the CV artillery ammo, which was modded to yield enormous damage ( around 140 000). Amount is not important, it just needs to be a factor of targetted "shields" to establish all values correctly. I added "weapon degradation" to the railgun, and reduced its usage to 3 shots. I could probably lower it to 1, but for now it shows we can impose a limit. After 3 shots, the gun refuses to shoot, but if I exit the cockpit and enter back in it "resets" the railgun's health and I can fire 3 shots again. The guns can not be "repaired" to circumvent this, but surely we can crank the reload time a lot so exiting-entering the cockpit will be useless. Then I tested the speed of the projectile. First I made it very low, like 20 ( I guess it's meters/ sec) and I could fly in circles around the rocket while it was travelling towards its target, a POI with the AI disabled so I can observe the tests peacefully. Both the railgun and the rockets had a range of 2000, so it took a while for the rocket to reach destination. If I fire at max range of 2000, the rocket disappears before arriving... So I cranked its speed a bit, and at 50 it reached destination. But that is still too slow for an average CV that could easily outrun the rocket. I then modified the range to 3 km, spawned a large platform, and raised the rocket speed to 200. The 40 x 40 blocks (80 meters) platform looked small from 3 km away, but at 200 the rocket still took enough time to allow some degree of escape possibility (if target had been mobile) and not enough time for the rocket to despawn. It poked a nice little 3 x 3 x 2 blocks deep hole in the platform (it's 10 blocks thick). What would be cool now would be to have some way to scale up the rocket's flare and trail so it can be clearly seen from afar. Having a larger blast radius and a big bright explosion would also be more satisfying, of course. We should have a visual clue that a ship or POI has some shields on, from a good distance.
