v2.2.0 Changes Discussion Thread

[Droll]

Wow, the NPR design changes look great! I agree with the other poster that said this is sounding more and more like 3. 0.

On the topic of spinal railguns, maybe they could trade number of shots for a better range modifier? Maybe it could be +1 RM and -1 shots for the base tech, and then +2RM and -2 shots for advanced spinal railguns.  No idea if that would be balanced but it would be somewhat unique.  You could use this mod on a "3-shot" high caliber railgun to get a single shot spinal weapon that would be kind of like a Halo MAC.

The problem with this is that we already have a trade-off for reducing railgun shots. You can reduce the no. of shots to reduce the size and I feel like this would conflict with that.

[Arwyn]

Spinal railguns would be a nice addition, I kind of miss the old 'crowbars' from Leviathan.

Have you even installed the game and launched it even once before writing into this forum?

Yes Marski, been here for years, and before that I was hanging out with folks on Starfire Assistant. Dozens of games played. In context, I was commenting on the post above about having spinal railguns, and that continued with Steve saying he hasnt found a way to do that that he liked.

Did you intent your post to sound the way it did, or perhaps it was just a bad day?

[Marski]

Spinal railguns would be a nice addition, I kind of miss the old 'crowbars' from Leviathan.

Have you even installed the game and launched it even once before writing into this forum?

Yes Marski, been here for years, and before that I was hanging out with folks on Starfire Assistant. Dozens of games played. In context, I was commenting on the post above about having spinal railguns, and that continued with Steve saying he hasnt found a way to do that that he liked.

Did you intent your post to sound the way it did, or perhaps it was just a bad day?

Your post was ridiculous since it's been possible to just put a railgun on a ship for the longest time and in all practicality it is "spinal" railgun. No offense intended but I just had to ask.

[StarshipCactus]

Dang, the NPR ship change sounds amazing. How did the changes get programmed so fast? 

Steve is an elite level programmer, he probably codes with two keyboards and four screens and has the best gaming chair.

[Destragon]

Your post was ridiculous since it's been possible to just put a railgun on a ship for the longest time and in all practicality it is "spinal" railgun. No offense intended but I just had to ask.

It's very weird to be singling out Arwyn, when he wasn't the first one to talk about spinal railguns and Steve himself said he was looking for ways to implement them in this thread.

However, you bring up a good point that the current implementation of spinal weapons doesn't really make them unique enough.
Currently spinal weapons are basically just slightly larger variations of normal weapons with the unique limitation that you can only put one of them on a ship.
That means the current spinal weapons are fixed size. I think it would be much more thematic for a spinal weapon to be a custom size depending on the size of the ship they are built into, in contrast to normal fixed size weapons. So you would just research a generic spinal mount version of a particular laser, for example, and then its stats would only be determined once you actually put it on a ship, cause the stats would be modified by the total size of the ship. That would mean a spinal weapon would be custom built for each class that they are used on, which makes more sense to me than them being the same size no matter what ship you put them on.

[Andrew]

Spinal railguns would be a nice addition, I kind of miss the old 'crowbars' from Leviathan.

Have you even installed the game and launched it even once before writing into this forum?

Yes Marski, been here for years, and before that I was hanging out with folks on Starfire Assistant. Dozens of games played. In context, I was commenting on the post above about having spinal railguns, and that continued with Steve saying he hasnt found a way to do that that he liked.

Did you intent your post to sound the way it did, or perhaps it was just a bad day?

Your post was ridiculous since it's been possible to just put a railgun on a ship for the longest time and in all practicality it is "spinal" railgun. No offense intended but I just had to ask.

Leviathen for those who are not aware of the details of the game is an exellent example to use. The armour and interior damage model is very similar to that of Aurora , and the Spinal KE Weapons in it have a different effect to that of spinal weapons in Aurora, in that the scale of the weapon and the damage dealt is proportionally much larger a single hit from a spinal weapon of a battleship would tend to kill a destroyer in one shot. And I don't think I can fit a spinal weapon of that scale to a ship in Aurora , particularly not a railgun but would love to see an example

If I wanted to model Leviathan style spinal mounts in Aurora at the moment the closest is probably a renamed particle lance for its ability to pierce heavy armour with a single shot

[SpaceMarine]

Spinal railguns would be a nice addition, I kind of miss the old 'crowbars' from Leviathan.

Have you even installed the game and launched it even once before writing into this forum?

Yes Marski, been here for years, and before that I was hanging out with folks on Starfire Assistant. Dozens of games played. In context, I was commenting on the post above about having spinal railguns, and that continued with Steve saying he hasnt found a way to do that that he liked.

Did you intent your post to sound the way it did, or perhaps it was just a bad day?

Your post was ridiculous since it's been possible to just put a railgun on a ship for the longest time and in all practicality it is "spinal" railgun. No offense intended but I just had to ask.

Marski can you do me a favour? please change your tone in your posts its coming off as quite combative and plainly argumentative in a situation that does not warrant it, the other person may be uninformed or they may not be thats not for me to say but I do not appreciate using that tone with someone who is obviously not being malicious or saying anything wrong, keep it civil.

[Destragon]

Leviathen for those who are not aware of the details of the game is an exellent example to use. The armour and interior damage model is very similar to that of Aurora ...

Is that a board or a video game? Leviathan is way too common of a name to be able to find anything on Google.

[Arwyn]

Leviathen for those who are not aware of the details of the game is an exellent example to use. The armour and interior damage model is very similar to that of Aurora ...

Is that a board or a video game? Leviathan is way too common of a name to be able to find anything on Google.

Leviathan was a board game from FASA in the late 1980's. It was part of a set of integrated board games and an RPG that had a harder sci fi feel than FASA's Battletech universe. The original game release was their fighter combat boardgame, Interceptor, followed by a tank warfare game, Centurion, and then the captial ship game, Leviathan. There was also a theatre level game, Prefect that was more of a traditional stategic boardgame. The associated RPG was Legionare. The whole series was part of the Renegade Legion universe.

[nuclearslurpee]

However, you bring up a good point that the current implementation of spinal weapons doesn't really make them unique enough.
Currently spinal weapons are basically just slightly larger variations of normal weapons with the unique limitation that you can only put one of them on a ship.
That means the current spinal weapons are fixed size. I think it would be much more thematic for a spinal weapon to be a custom size depending on the size of the ship they are built into, in contrast to normal fixed size weapons. So you would just research a generic spinal mount version of a particular laser, for example, and then its stats would only be determined once you actually put it on a ship, cause the stats would be modified by the total size of the ship. That would mean a spinal weapon would be custom built for each class that they are used on, which makes more sense to me than them being the same size no matter what ship you put them on.

There is a bit of a soft conflict when it comes to spinal weapons, because on one hand the current size for spinal weapons really is not "spinal"... on my 30,000-ton battleship a 600-ton laser cannon is hardly "spinal". On the other hand, to scale up the weapon size to something which is properly "spinal" if we follow the existing scaling would mean an absolutely ridiculous amount of damage from a single weapon which would probably break the game mechanics and cause OHKOs on even fairly large ships unless they had a lot of shields (armor would be not much help anymore).

Basically, the current implementation doesn't make a lot of sense, but a more realistic implementation would probably break the game.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Well ships and the design model of the game don't bother about surface areas and whether components and armour goes into what space on the ship and what shape a ship has and what pros and cons that would have on damage absorption, armour distribution, sensor equipment, engines, internal components versus exterior components and the interaction between it all. The game just figure every ship is a perfect sphere for armour coverage but for components it just allow you to do whatever.

This is generally why I try to stay away from extreme ship configurations and try to build ships that feels like they are balanced in a relatively natural way. try to imagine to some degree how much external space versus internal space components need to function properly. So... the more armour the less external space I generally have available. No hard facts, just gut feeling engineering.

[Panopticon]

There is a bit of a soft conflict when it comes to spinal weapons, because on one hand the current size for spinal weapons really is not "spinal"... on my 30,000-ton battleship a 600-ton laser cannon is hardly "spinal". On the other hand, to scale up the weapon size to something which is properly "spinal" if we follow the existing scaling would mean an absolutely ridiculous amount of damage from a single weapon which would probably break the game mechanics and cause OHKOs on even fairly large ships unless they had a lot of shields (armor would be not much help anymore).

Basically, the current implementation doesn't make a lot of sense, but a more realistic implementation would probably break the game.

I guess I don't see that as a problem, giant gun needs a dramatic effect. And it isn't like there aren't countermeasures to a single high damage shot with a long recharge time, distance, numbers, an even bigger ship, etc.

Why even spend the resources on a giant gun if it doesn't give you giant results?

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I have Leviathan, Centurion and two copies of Interceptor on my shelves. That is the origin of the Aurora armour model

[Carthar]

Do the missile changes make 'beam only' play less viable?   

AMM spam will be much more scary with these changes.   Maintenance supply use will be insane for a PD fleet designed to counter AMM spam.

[Snoman314]

Do the missile changes make 'beam only' play less viable?   

AMM spam will be much more scary with these changes.   Maintenance supply use will be insane for a PD fleet designed to counter AMM spam.

Interesting. Do you might pointing to which changes give you that impression?

Between the improvement to the PD target allocation algorithm, and the missile changes only really affecting larger missiles, not to mention the addition of missile decoys for ships, I felt like AMM spam was going to much less of a nuisance going forward. All depends on playtesting of course.