Gunships

[LauriFB]

Gunship loop is closing in, so I'd like to explain how they are intended to work in the future, as well as some changes to current ship weapons. This is our goal, naturally we don't know how it turns out but we will work towards this.

Gunship's role in the battlefield

Gunships are similar to tanks, which can sustain a lot of damage while having decent firepower. Gunships are typically crewed by multiple people, as the ship's firepower requires crew. Without enough crew a gunship turns into an easy target.

Gunships most likely have a reconstruction device inside to bring back their dead crewmates and thus improving the survivability of the ship. They most likely also have means to repair their ship after battle, and they likely also loot other wrecks to improve their repair capabilities.

Gunship weapons

The main weapons for gunships are personal tripod-mounted weapons, which are a bit smaller weapons than current ship weapons, but almost as efficient. The main difference is that those weapons are directly controlled, i.e. the accuracy and ease of use with those weapons is superior to any current solutions, bringing the overall efficiency most likely much higher than current ship weapons. The tripod is separate from the weapon itself, and while setupping a tripod takes time, attaching a weapon doesn't. This means gunships most likely have fixed tripods at the gunner areas, and the gunners can swap weapons and positions on the fly, further increasing the efficiency. Some tripod-weapons can also be connected to the ship network to increase cooling, add electricity or provide ammunition for the weapon.

Gunship defenses

Since gunships are most likely max size, max weight ships their movement doesn't include much twisting or turning, but rather crew will move inside the ship when needed. They just need to outlast the enemy, not dodge bullets. The already implemented drifting changes are part of that: only light-weight ships are capable of fast turns.

The vital parts of a gunship are most likely very well protected, and the rest can be repaired after the battle. With a reconstruction device they can bring back not just their own crew but also crewmembers of the fleet they accompany. The crew firing accurately back will mean a hard time for a single fighter or a small fighter squadron attacking a properly designed gunship.

Considered changes to existing things

We will explore a method to encourage multi-crew ships. We'll come back to this once tripods are being tested.

Edit: some changes are required, but we don't need to commit to a certain change just yet. Let's test the tripods first and then think about what is needed and what not.

 

[Senkii]

Nice
Loving this, very much look forward to it ^^

 

[TGess]

Big dislike

 

[Waselon]

Why do you remove the feature from players that actually use it? Please let us keep weapon turrets.

 

[Destravous]

Stationary mounted weapons will remain the same. Current ship weapons mounted to cradles or turning devices will be changed to be station-only weapons. This means that if you want any turning weapons in your ship you need to use tripod weapons for that purpose.

Wait what, this is only for player controlled turrets right? I should still be able to rotate the ship weapons on a turning device controlled with yolol, because removing that feature removes the ability to program weapons to converge at a specific distance, or the ability to rotate and use weapon as a self destruct. I had an entire ship planned around the fun things you can do with turntable mounted weapons.
Mounted weapons on hinges/turntables is like half the utility of being able to move things at all on ships.

 

[NikofrankoV]

Removing proper ship turret's is a baffling decision. It removes the whole point of having a large vessel. Why have a big ship if you can stick 4 tripods on a hypevan.
Large ships are already dead functionality speaking. This change will surely finish them off

Upd
Not to mention it sucks the fun out of them.

Upd.

Alright, i give it some more thought and the more thought i give it the worse the idea seems.
First of all, I am 100% for the idea of tripods, they definitely have their place and would be a very welcome addition to the game. But they are not at all a replacement for larger turrets and will be the final nail in the coffin of large ships.

Here is my reasoning.
1. Cool factor
Simple as that, this is a game, and people like to have fun. Taking away controllable turrets is a huge downgrade to large ship gameplay. Even while being absolutely pointless, cradled turrets are very fun and controlling multiple turrets with a single cradle is an integral mechanic that was prominently shown in game trailers now, when entering the game people will find out that they have been cheated from a very interesting game mechanic in favor of a simple CoD "turret mission" gameplay.

2. The new Centurio
Remember the big orange ship in one of the trailers? That's Centurio. Now imagine that, but with all turrets replaced with 2x tripods. What kind of Endgame ship is that? With this change End-game vessel will be an armored cube with 100 tripods and 50 respawn capsules. Obviously that is fixable by restricting that gameplay with limits, but then large ships loos their point whatsoever. What should largest starbase spaceships look like? Because with this change they will look like angry low damage hedgehogs rather than Battleships. Sting up close and... well, not much more to be honest.

3. Engineering
We all know that engineering ships is a huge part of starbase gameplay. Removing cradled weapons primarily strips a lot of engineering gameplay. As a ship builder, this is borderline game-killing for me. Why bother and make both cool looking, practical and armored ships when all you need is a platform for a trypod? This update will strip gun Yolol, SSC Turret setup and turret engineering gameplay, replacing it with a "plop it down on a hypevan and lets go" type of deal.

4. Mouse controls
All this can be avoided if cradles could be controlled with a mouse. Or at very least with some sort of "Turret MFC" that applies instantaneous ship control logic to turrets. The problem of turrets is not that they are strong, weak, or buggy, it's that they are absolutely IMPOSSIBLE to control! Instead of stripping this feature away, something should be done to improve control ability of cradles A gyroscopic stabilizer, mouse controls, "Turret MFC" you pick! I would much rather see "magic mouse control turrets" ala Space Engineers than to see 100 tripod ships in-game.

5. Why not a fighter?
What's the point of dedicating a whole member of you faction to a tripod when you can give him a fighter? Faction fighting in Starbase heavily relies on manpower, and you would have to be insane to put 5 people on one ship instead of having 5 fighters for the same price. The only point is to have respawns, but that is not affected by the turrets/tripods issue. Why would someone choose to go for a tripod instead of a cheap fighter? And even if fighters are still too expensive, choosing betewwn a fighter gameplay and tripod gunner gameplay? cmon
With turrets you at least controlled 4+ actual ship guns, and even if you were not hitting anything, you had firepower. Now you have just a bigger infantry gun. A fighter is simply better in every regard, but most importantly, it is much better in people/guns. You can bring 8 autocanons on a fighter, while as a gunner you will now be stick with a single barrel per person.

Final words.
So far all decisions from FB seemed very logical and straight forward. But this is either rushed, or the worst worded post that you guys put out so far. Because taking away ship turrets is Straight up game-killing for some people, me included, it eliminates a huge swath of gameplay for ship builders and a portion of the WW2 anti-air gunner fantasy, it makes the game far less complex, while complexity is exactly why we love it. In any case, I really hope you guys reconsider this decision, there must be better ways of changing turret gamepley then just deleting the whole loop

 

[SubwayKiwi]

this is literally the large ship killer.

 

[Waselon]

How would you deal with small maneuverable chairs with 50 tripods? Another restrictions?

 

[Kodey]

Yeah not sure how to feel about this, the tripods are an awesome weapon, but getting rid of the current ship turrets? I don’t like the idea of that.

I like tripods, but I love cradles

 

[Zaff]

Big dislike

All, or just part of this?

I'm positive to gunship buffs, negative to turret removal:

Gunships and turrets are atm big slow joke that any cheap fighter can harass. I personally would enjoy changes that promote the case where seeing a giant gunship was actually something scary and threatening. The demand for multiple crew members in a single ship also encourages community interaction, and even opens up the opportunity of hiring gunners who cannot afford risking a whole ship of their own. Sounds fun.

However I'm not so sure the removal of current gun turrets is the way to go about that.

Current ship weapons mounted to cradles or turning devices will be changed to be station-only weapons. This means that if you want any turning weapons in your ship you need to use tripod weapons for that purpose.

How is this implemented? Straight up game logic saying "you can place anything on the turntable as long as it's not categorized as weapon"? What about mining lasers? What if someone wants to make a fighter which can aim when flying backwards, rotating weapons 180 degrees? It might be very impractical, but that's on them.

If tripods are superior for turning weapons, they will naturally be used by ship designers without needing to remove the "lesser option". It's imo better to have multiple options to do a similar thing, with unique advantages, like how we have both triangle and box thrusters.

And if the tripods require less space and infrastructure than the current turrets, that does the opposite of encouraging big ships. Then why not apply the "direct control" option to current turret tech? Or if not directly, add in a "direct control" device, like a "FCU/MFC" for mouse-to-current-turret? There would still be room for the smaller and cheaper tripods as anti-infantry purposes or for quickly accessible and agile gunports for "part time gunners". Generally sounds like small ships can just as easily get the same turret advantages as the big ship.

 

[Mr. Extinct]

I'd love to see the Tripods!
So much more possibilies when designing ships.

Technicals galore!

 

[Mochro]

I fully Agree and support this change, Solo Fully controlled and "aim wherever" ships ruin PvP and ship experience, It also does not improve "Multi crew ships" which is a huge selling point of this game.

People will now need to come up with unique ideas to accommodate the Multi crew combat systems and the new weapon changes, I fully support this change and want to see further changes

 

[Destravous]

Then why not apply the "direct control" option to current turret tech? Or if not directly, add in a "direct control" device, like a "FCU/MFC" for mouse-to-current-turret?

I think the issue is if you have a player from Australia controlling the ship, and a player from America controlling the turret, you have huge latency issues. Its impossible for the player controlling the turret to have smooth aim, the player flying the ship and the weapons to be accurate in that scenario. Not without having weapon projectiles apearing from thin air from other players perspective anyway.

Its not really a trivial problem to solve unfortunately.

 

[GamingPidgeon]

I can't see where this change has come from, Gunships are not OP and I don't think they will become OP with mouse aim. And this is just my opinion but it comes from one who has spent hours in training with other members of my faction using gunships. Besides Removing features as a form of "Balancing" is IMO a silly idea because it actively detracts from an engineering standpoint which is a big draw for the game. Another thing is that the game's marketing shows large gunships duking it out with turrets so you'll need to address that if you don't want players getting upset when the only thing they can use with their friends is a small tripod; Large gunships was also the main reason for me coming to SB so seeing it removed would make it so hard to continue playing the game.

And lastly, I don't want to make any accusations but this smells like a decision that wasn't made with any feedback from the community or with experience.

 

[Destravous]

And lastly, I don't want to make any accusations but this smells like a decision that wasn't made with any feedback from the community or with experience.

Pretty sure this post was supposed to be testing the waters; no final decision has actually been made yet.

 

[TGess]

Why cant we just have this for turrets to sit inside them with mouse aim...

 

[[QS] Combustible]

Hm, what I don’t like about this is that the tripods feel too mobile and small to be the primary armament for the largest ships in the game. It depends on what the variants are like, but to achieve that feel we would need something that only holds 1 or 2 ship weapon sized guns that is more of a permanent emplacement, this looks like an infantry gun no matter how strong it is.

 

[LauriFB]

There is a fundamental problem with moving stuff with more moving parts (ie. for example cradle turrets): mass, movement of parts, physics and voxels do not like each other. Starbase is also p2p MMO, which adds yet more problems to the mix. This is seen in either parts ripping off, or parts lagging/overturning. We have exhausted our means to fight the impossible, and there is no more reasonable updates to do with turret cradles without losing some feature from them. You may have a functional cradle when flying solo, but the second there's more crew the problems start to pile up.

Tripods aim to bring bring multicrew gunships a viable part of the game.

Fighters are also not made completely redundant here, most of them see no change at all.

Edit: I have changed the need for changes to be something non-specific, but the technical issues described here are still existing issue.

 

[Waselon]

Now you can control multiple turrets with one person, with tripods you will be forced to 1 gun per person. If anything, this would make gunships less viable.

Cant you just apply whatever tech you developed, to current turrets? Or, like, tripod doesn't have any mass, voxels and moving parts?

Also, i you already have an "experimental" turret design that works just fine with multiple people around.

 

[Kodey]

Just a quick question from me.
In the Starbase universe, is the tripod gun we’re seeing classified as a hmg or lmg? Because let’s say that it’s an lmg, that’s cool! But will we get a hmg tripod? And let’s say that it’s a hmg? That’s pathetic.