THE space combat solution v.2 (making large ships viable while respecting the core mechanics too) In depth presentation.

[Aha]

Starbase is a brilliant game and it has the potential to be a very successful game too.
Starbase caters to a wide audience, people who like engineering, combat elements of both actual trigger pulling and tactics. People who like to engage in diplomacy, economics, and intelligence. The game caters to both "doers" and "thinkers", problem-solving by raw power and also by intellect.
Starbase caters to a wide audience, or does it?
Unfortunately, it suffers from a great fault that is the experience of space combat. Or does it!?
The space combat is fantastic, you have ships flying all around engaging with each other in dog fights using piloting skills, hits are satisfying, it's engaging! Truly is, as a single player and as a multiplayer as well. Is it enough though for a massively multiplayer environment?
Starbase deserves to show a much deeper and diverse space combat mechanic than what it does now with its current thematic.
Starbase should cater for all those people who would like to see actual fleets with viable different ship classes, for people who are looking for meanings to improve their chances with engineering and don't necessarily face at ALL cases the blatant statement: you need crew.
Yes, having crew is a core gameplay mechanic of Starbase and must be respected. However it isn't the only core gameplay, engineering is also core gameplay, very deeply so.
What I'm offering here is a balancing between the two game mechanics, while fully respecting the game as is. Opening the game for a larger audience while respecting those who like the game as is.
Starbase relies heavily on a healthy player base, catering for a larger audience helps this, maybe I could go as far and say the future of the game depends on it.
The concept offers a great deal of diversity in space combat while also keeping the dog fight element viable and necessary to succeed. My idea doesn't even push it aside, not at all, it's the opposite!

A fluid rock paper scissor style ship class system.
- Elimination of hard meta ship design, opening the game up to its full potential.
- Different sizes of ships from space bikes to battleships, all viable, catering to a large audience.
- Fleet engineering, very deep tactics, rich meaning for ranks, squadrons, and individual combat roles.
- All the above while respecting and keeping the core elements of the game as still most important qualities to have to succeed, crew and skill.

So how is this wonder achieved?

This proposal is the second, perfected edition of a suggestion i submitted -THE space combat solution: radiation based "auto-turrets"-
I failed to properly express my idea and some things changed as well.
If you didn't like it because as I presented it wasn't anything exciting or you are simply a hater of auto-turrets, then I would like to point your attention of interest to your state of mind.
If you already made up your mind, then reading this suggestion will be equivalent to going to the cinema and watching another movie on your mobile meanwhile.
Why be there then? Why read this suggestion if your mind is closed? It wouldn't make sense, would be a waste of time.

I would like to save you from this waste, so how about giving the idea a chance, be curious to the chance that there might be a satisfying solution.


I would like to ask a question regardless of my suggestion, answer it for yourself.
Would you like Starbase's space combat to be improved?


Here is a fantasy of mine, I hope you'll like it...

- The radiation based auto-turret -

The auto-turret that is not overpowered and doesn't replace crew and skill. Let me show you how!​

- How it works -

In the picture above, the red and blue ships possess auto-turrets. The red ship serves as a target only though.
The white ships are fighters.
Fighters can NOT have auto-turrets because if you put one onto your ship, you are so heavy, radiative, and power dependant that you are just not a fighter anymore.
This is a core feature, no auto turret for fighters forced by design. More about this later.

I visualized radiation by those red radiation marks around the ships as well as numbers within them represent their relative radiation level.
The lower your radiation is, the closer you can get without auto-turrets being able to target you. And even if they target you, their relative inaccuracy is greatly abusable. More about this soon.
The happy ship with 0 (very low) radiation level is what you are looking for as a troop transporter to board large battleships and stations.


Here is another visualization.

Again, the numbers in the fighters represent their relative radiation level.
The numbers in the circles represent the radiation level your target is required to have to be able to be targeted at that range level.
Generally, the more basic your ship is, the less vulnerable it is against auto-turrets. But there is more to that.
Auto-turrets suffer from reasonable inaccuracy, they are most effective against large targets and that leads us to:



- Accuracy -
Accuracy too depends on radiation.
Now we must understand that radiation engulfs a ship as it emits it as visualized in this picture.

Here we can see a Heavy Fighter with a lot of radiation and a Light Fighter with much less.

For demonstration purposes, we replace the above image with this:

Same thing.

This next picture will demonstrate how accuracy changes at different radiation-range levels.

The black circles around the targets represent the fact that the target is being targeted and with what accuracy.
As the target gets closer and closer to the auto turret, the radiation levels engulfing the target get more and more detectable and that causes a great deal of inaccuracy.
As you can see, this effect creates diversity in "how to fighter". You can be the Light Fighter ace, who knows how close he can get and use his stealth to get advantage. Or you can be the absolute madman, the Top Gun, who despite being very targetable, knows his ship well and takes advantage of the close-range inaccuracy and dodges auto-turret fire to deliver great destruction with precision that his advanced fighter is capable of.
Again, a reminder that the concept favors -manual- fighter gameplay a lot, it enriches it! Skills to master!



- The turret -
...concept
The base of the auto-turret snaps onto the sides of the regular turret where normally weapons are mounted. It locks the snapping point so the sides are not able to turn anymore, only the inside of the turret turns.

The base is heavy and strong as on this where you can attach and customize the auto-turret modules and those are heavy too. They are:

- Core unit (green)
- Sign amplifier (upgrade) (red)
- Sign filter (upgrade) (blue)

-The Core unit is the core (surprise surprise) of the auto turret. This does all the detecting and targeting. It gives the standard range and accuracy.

-The sign amplifier increases the range of detection by amplifying the detected radiation signs, however, this means a great loss of accuracy, as it does amplify all the radiation around the target too.
Effect illustrated on the picture. Black circles are the original values and purple circles are the modified values. Notice that now you are targeting the furthest ships but overall accuracy worsened.

-The sign filter does the opposite of the amplifier, it increases the accuracy by filtering relatively weak signals but as a result, it decreases detection range as well.
Effect illustrated on the picture. Black circles are the original values and purple circles are the modified values once again. Notice that your accuracy increased but the light fighter got filtered out completely while the heavy fighter also gets closer without being targeted.

Notice that there is a relative sweet spot range that is the furthest away detected target. It is very hard if not impossible to keep the perfect distance for your auto-turrets to perform best against agile fighters. And anyway since it is the furthest range we are talking about, the easier it is for fighters to dodge even this accurate targeting.
Again a reminder, how it is by the design of the concept that fighters are still very viable and respected.
It needs great SKILL to use auto-turrets to their potential as well.
On the other hand, the larger the ships get, the easier it is to use the auto-turrets effectively against each other.

Important notice!
As I demonstrated the upgrade modules, they appear to cancel each other out but that is NOT how I intend them to function.

To what extent do they increase/decrease is up to the developers to balance.
Concept and just a concept:
The amplifier increases the range by 50% and decreases accuracy by 25%.
The filter does the opposite, increases the accuracy by 50% and decreases the range by 25%.
Having one of both installed gives a 25-25 percent increase in both range and accuracy rather than canceling each other out. (don't mind the math, you get the idea )
All module devices are very power-hungry, radiation-emitting, heavy, and expensive. Upgrading your auto turret costs you.

Then, you wanna armor it all around as these are very expensive stuff and they are natural targets to other players, and anyway you want them to function as long as possible during combat.

All that weight could make the turret turn somewhat slower. (balancing factor)
Remember, for every single extra turret you install, you get a LOT of weight, radiation, and expensive repair bills if damaged, for every...single...turret!


It must be that you can NOT synchronize regular turrets copying an auto turret for obvious balancing reasons!
Reason concept:
The device is sensitive and once the core unit is placed down on a turret it disables various interaction/data extraction possibilities, like no turret turning data, and whatever else is required to prevent using one auto turret and just connect any number of standard turrets to it via yolol!
Its radiation also disturbs any immediate surrounding range finders.

Surely the developers can come up with better solutions for this matter.



- Rock, paper, scissors -

Now let's talk about space combat depth. What is better than a good rock-paper-scissors?
One thing is: a rock-paper-scissors that is greatly changeable with crew and skill!
No hard meta ships. So many play styles to master. Rely on the team to cover the fields you can not or don't want to!
Now we are talking about the true potential of Starbase to even push EVE aside eventually.
Diverse space combat with ship classes paired with the already awesome dog fights. And then even "ground" combat!!!? Talk about the best space game!

This I call the wheel of effectivity, it's so effective!

As you can see I highlighted 6 stations or classes if you like plus the Frigate. The frigate is a guest class here and serves the function of explaining the wheel of effectivity. It is also to show that there are obviously infinite sizes/classes of ships in between each class hence the circular presentation.

First of all the outer circle serves a very important function that is simply making the wheel look better. XD (design mistake)
The green area is the Effectiveness meter. It shows how effective is the Frigate (in this case) against the other classes generally. The thicker the green is along the curve of the wheel the more effective it is. The frigate is somewhat effective against itself (brown line) very effective against Destroyers and Corvettes (red and orange lines), but not so much against Heavy Fighters anymore (yellow line), indicated by the length of these lines (thickness of the green curve)
The lines in the wheel are the "Class indicator lines" They are there to help to identify the ship classes within the wheel as they are pointing towards their respective classes (to their pictures rather than the names)

With the help of the wheel, I will demonstrate the general rock-paper-scissors effect that the whole concept creates.
We gonna examine each class. It's merely an outline, I couldn't know the exact ways especially as it all comes down to how the developers implement the whole thing and balancing and a lot of other factors like crew.

Anyway let's hop into a Light Fighter first, shall we?
(continues on the first comment)

 

[Aha]

The Light Fighter

The Light Fighter is one of the most basic ships. Very agile, stealth but weak in terms of durability and firepower. All these combined give its relative low but a wide range of effectiveness. Obviously, true potential comes with greater numbers rather than a single player with this class.
You as a Light Fighter can easily harass any large ship as they are hard to miss and their auto-turrets are very unlikely to see you unless you go way too close to them. If you are good, you can even out maneuver and effectively combat those pesky auto turreted, still quick and agile corvettes. Even gunners in manned turrets will have a hard time finding hits on you because of your very small size.
Your low firepower will make you work hard for results tho.


The Heavy Fighter

The Heavy Fighter is what you know as the current meta. This ship class is very interesting and if you are an ace, maybe most rewarding. The dog fight king! You as a Heavy Fighter will hunt down anything smaller or less advanced than you. You are almost if not just as agile as the Light Fighters because you care less about stealth, so your great number of thrusters will make you fly. Your superior armament will quickly eliminate those stealthier fighters, no hiding from you!
Now notice that narrow effective range on large ships. This is where your skill matters the most. In the wheel of effectivity, this range is very fluid. You can be absolute garbage and fail to auto-turrets, because -oh boy- they do see you! However as already mentioned above, you can learn to be the most spectacular air show performer and be very effective against large ships, you still outmaneuver them! Let me repeat the part from the Accuracy section: (...) Or you can be the absolute madman, the Top Gun, who despite being very targetable, knows his ship well and takes advantage of the close-range inaccuracy and dodges auto-turret fire to deliver great destruction with precision that his advanced fighter is capable of.


The Corvette

The Corvette a.k.a the pesky corvette is the ultimate Fighter terminator. Corvetterminator!, Cor-vetter-minotaur, Corr... Uh-um, sry. I was saying, the Corvette is the beginning of medium category ships with 1 or 2 auto-turrets. Stealth is thrown out the window with such glass shattering that every turret in the universe heard it. You cant dream of effectively harassing any large ships anymore, too big, too heavy, too much radiation, you aren't a fighter anymore... but you still try to be.
You still have to maneuver, you are still quick, you still rely heavily on your main weapons, but you have the glorious auto turret that will be a nightmare to every Heavy Fighters as you will smash it into their face without regret. If you are an ace, even Light Fighters have to watch out. They shouldn't mistake you for large ships as you can still potentially grind them down with your heavy main armament, and if you got them close into auto turret range, they are dead no matter what.
Take a crew with you, 2 extra gunners, and you aren't terminator, you are sky-net itself.


The Destroyer

The destroyer is no joke... it won't dog fight but it doesn't need to and it's quicker than you'd think.
Its several auto-turrets will eat any corvettes and heavy fighters alive, and the gunners will help with that too and with everything else as well. Good luck boarding this ship. Good cargo capacity makes it last long without refueling/restock. Can get away from heated situations. This is the ship that you have to respect the most because it's strong, lasting, and relatively quick. This is the class that you avoid as a smaller class no matter what unless you are Tom Cruise.
This is where crew really starts to matter a lot. You can still somewhat solo but you won't be that lasting as your cargos will be full with grain(s) of salt. You lie about your squadron license so Faction-dad gives you an auto-ferrari and you think skill comes with it anyway. But you are wrong, and you soon find yourself realizing that you should have stuck with your Corvette.
The destroyer is the perfect ship for a small group of friends who would rather navigate a larger ship than piloting fighters.


The Cruiser

From this point, it is difficult to describe the roles of the classes as they can go in many different and different ways. Crew roles can vary in numerous ways. So the "It's merely an outline, I couldn't know the exact ways..." I said earlier applies here even more.
With that said...

The Cruiser is the first true big ship. Its role is completely different than the earlier classes. The Cruiser is big enough to house few fighters or a troop transport shuttle to lay siege on other big ships or space stations. Obviously, it heavily relies on a good crew. You are a juicy boarding target, as you generally have less crew than a battleship. Light Fighters also love to harass you from afar as you are impossible to miss. Even the ace Heavy Fighters will like targeting you to show off their skills.
You won't see this ship alone often. It doesn't do too much chasing. Instead, it orients itself into the area of interest to give support wherever it is needed. Sure as a Cruiser you can hunt down those smaller auto-turret classes if they are busy not paying attention to you. Your auto turret armament will destroy anything and everything that you approach - and with that, you can and your job is to CC (crowd control). You do that simply by your presence by forcing the enemy heavy fighter-corvette-destroyer range of classes to abandon the area you enter. With that, you provide a safe retreat for your fleet's fighters, troop transports, and such.
You should pay attention to your fellow fleet members and your crew more than looking outside to seek targets. As a Cruiser pilot, you can expect orders frequently from the fleet commander who might be standing next to you or you are the fleet commander yourself.

The Battleship

The Battleship is the largest class and it is the ultimate siege weapon. Its role is similar to the Cruiser's, but upon that there are much more. The battleship is large enough to house several fighters and troop transport shuttles, even in relatively large hangar bays rather than just carrying them on its hull. A trained crew is most essential as you wouldn't want to lose this expensive asset to some trigger-finger squad or disposable fighters. Engineers who know the ship very well are most effective here to constantly repair things, help gunners reload, and general troubleshooting. If you spent all that faction money, you better be sure it isn't just a huge expensive practice target, but an effective power giant.
You rarely see this ship outside of stations as it needs great amounts of resources -both material and manpower- to effectively fly.
If you are a large company or a faction and you are to help your allies in a siege where the military mobile space station (military capital ship) isn't yours -because you don't have one or its busy or still charging up to jump-, then the Battleship is your military mobile space station, the base where you refuel/restock, quick fix returning damaged fighters - also patch up corvettes and destroyers, organize your operations from, and ultimately assault the enemy military "capital ship".
So if you do see one going, better follow it from a great distance because it is most probably on a mission to produce ore clouds gas giants. Or would it be without crew because it's simply transferring to another space station, then maybe time to sell the information of its where being to a pirate organization.

Bonus Class:
The "invisible" class.

Troop transport shuttles, exotic ship "eating" parasite -what not- contraptions.
They are completely stealthy to auto-turrets. Most of these are transporting troops to board a ship or a station.


Secret Class:
The Players.

Endos are machines and are capable to fly by themselves, so technically you are a spaceship!
This class is the most powerful, most essential, and most valuable in any fleet or anywhere.
A single one could potentially bring down any ship with an as basic weapon as a rifle.

​

Bonus suggestion.
The radar turret.
Using the same turret base, the radiation radar that is already planned to be could be used with the same upgrade modules.
This turret wouldn't shoot at targets but rather create a 3D map of scanned objects that could be displayed on a holo-table/deck, making an interactable live 3D picture of the surrounding area. The bigger the radiation of a scanned object, the larger icon it would produce. Transponder signals could be used to differentiate between ally and enemy signals. (That must be with the auto-turrets anyway)
You could even program the holo-table/deck and give certain radiation sizes certain object looking, maybe even upload simplified blueprints, or the device itself simplifies it to save performance.
The fleet commander could use this to issue commands, even selectively order specific ships he sees. There could be rank groups uploaded as well, so you just select a squadron then the target enemy ship on the holo-table/deck A screen, even a transparent one could be used in ships that would receive the order, possibly highlighting the target in some ways.
This kind of turret could be a top priority for fighters to destroy on large ships in order to drastically reduce the enemy fleet's efficiency.



- Conclusion -

A fluid rock paper scissors style ship class system.
- Elimination of hard meta ship design, opening the game up to its full potential.
- Different sizes of ships from space bikes to battleships, all viable, catering to a large audience.
- Fleet engineering, very deep tactics, rich meaning for ranks, squadrons, and individual combat roles
- All the above while respecting and keeping the core elements of the game as still the most important qualities to have to succeed: crew and skill.


If you dislike the concept please, I beg you! Before you judge anything out of instant pulse and write a rant, read the whole idea again! It is necessary that you have as clear of a picture of the concept as possible in order to make a good judgment. You already forgot half of it as I and everyone else would unless you are that beautiful autist who remembers everything. If that is too much, just read the conclusion again at least. Then go do something else, think about it if you feel like it, come back later, read it all again so you cant blunder for sure, and then make a comment! Notice how intelligent and strong your argument will be! Hey, you might even change your mind, who knows.

On the other hand, if you do like the idea and you would like it to be implemented in the game, make sure to give your support. If you are a guest on the forum, it would be my absolute honor, if you registered because of this suggestion so you could show your support.
I would like to invite the developers to give some guidance on how could the concept fit better into the game.
I would be also happy to receive ideas from everyone to improve it!
Then with all that, make a possible Version 3. of our project.

Starbase is a brilliant game and it has the potential to be a very successful game too.
The space combat is fantastic, you have ships flying all around engaging with each other in dog fights using piloting skills, hits are satisfying, it's engaging! Truly is, as a single player and as a multiplayer as well.
Is it enough though for a massively multiplayer environment?

I believe Starbase deserves to show a much deeper and diverse space combat mechanic to bring this beautiful game to its full potential.


Awesome people who helped me refine this suggestion so far:
@ChaosRifle


Imagine piloting a battleship and a warning light in front of you starts blinking signing that a fighter requests take off. You push a button that stabilizes the ship so it's floating at a constant speed without turning, in the hangar the green light lights up signing that it is safe to take off and the fighter disconnects and launches.
Imagine that you push the "all fighters take off" order button and you see your team of fighters leaving your ship soon after.
And you as the fighter pilot, ready to go, waiting to be launched in a semi-heavy stealth fighter, uncertain of what is going on outside other than the explosions and ratatat you hear, all you know is you have to protect the troop transport shuttle no matter what that is right next to you waiting with pumped up foot soldiers inside ready to kick ass. Your faction's most important station is under siege by a very powerful faction. You traveled an hour within the battleship and you can just hope that you aren't too late...
You look out from your cockpit and see your squadron leader's ship - a light corvette. You casually examine its single auto turret while you are trying to remember all those faction training about squadron formations and such. And then suddenly the caution lights light up, you receive the order to get ready, you start up your systems clear your mind, and shortly after the hangar door is opening. You concentrate, the whole operation depends on your squadron's success to escort the troops to the target station that is almost lost already to invaders as it is reported. Finally, you launch, fourth to leave the hangar bay and you hardly believe what you see.
Gigantic fleet battle, turret fire everywhere! You see in the distance the terrifying enemy Capital Ship standing menacingly. You notice that your host battleship is severely damaged, it took a great sacrifice to transport you safely this far and now numerous enemy ships are heading your way, they know what is going on. Fast heavy fighters are already closing in as your squad leader orders everyone to carry on as he heroically stays behind to intercept the enemy fighters with his corvette. After 30 seconds you see that the troop transport will arrive safely for sure, so you turn around and start dogfighting...

 

[ChaosRifle]

I really like the basic concept, though some details need work:

The cruiser section needs rewording(specificall the last two sentences are the worst offenders), it was hard to understand. I also dont quite understand how it performs crowd control, I would expect that to be a destroyer/corvette thing if the cruiser is best at taking down auto-turret class ships. The wording needs work I think, but my understanding is they counter destroyers/corvettes who in turn counter fighters.

The battleship needs some refining, as if memory serves correctly FrozenByte have stated (in the seige mechanic video (maybe military capital ship??)) that you can attack a station with multiple capital ships - preventing a seige from ending - thus you would send in a capital ship to help your allies not a battleship (though prefferably both). Depending on how military capital ships work out, battleships or fighters would be what takes military capital ships out in seige I guess?

This I call the wheel of effectivity, it's so effective!

I still dont know what the wheel is trying to show, it needs a legend of some sort. Does more green = better? worse? Where is the origin to measure from: is it the center or the far side? Why is the line not uniform for one of the segemts of the hexigon and instead wavy: wouldn't a squared up line be more effective in showing how effective a thing is? Why are the triangles between the ship classes, not in line with them: is it showing the scaling between classes? I don't understand what the line pointing at a class is meant to represent.
My best understanding of this wheel is that each ship has its own wheel of what it works on, fluidly, based on its weight/radiation/guns, and the curved lines show varried weight as the class gets heavier in the fluid system? I really don't understand this wheel, and most of those educated guess' came from reading the text associated with them. A chart should explain the text, not the other way around.


Thank you for having the background grey on most of your images, instead of eye-blinding white. I appreciated that touch. Thank you for the effort put into this post as well, I hope others will see the value of a system like this, and appreciate the work you put in to this.

 

[Christopher420]

My best understanding of this wheel is that each ship has its own wheel of what it works on, fluidly, based on its weight/radiation/guns, and the curved lines show varried weight as the class gets heavier in the fluid system?

I think that the green curved lines shows how effective the ship is against the others. The more big the green area is, the more powerful it is against this type of ship. Did i get it right @Aha ?

For example: The big battleship is mostly efficient vs cruisers and then destroyers and kind of itself (vs other battleships). After that it gets less and less efficient and stands no chance vs most corvettes, heavy fighters and smaller fighters.
Thats my understanding.

Bonus suggestion.
The radar turret.

i like this suggestion. I can imagine sitting in my spaceship as a pilot and having a transparent radar on my ,,windshield´´ (even without the wind)

 

[Skelatim]

I like the radiation detection mechanic and like your suggestions about the meta but I feel like the detection and the turret should be separated, since yolol can be used to control normal turntables, more (or lager) detectors could just be needed to manage more targets and it would need friend foe detector, since (almost) all ships give radiation.

ps the yolol delay would meant they would have a hard time hitting fighters anyway, I feel like the extra balancing are probably unnecessary besides making the sensors costly to run

 

[Aha]

@ChaosRifle thank you for your input. You painfully pointed some parts I knew myself I was lazy or weak at. I mean this in a positive way.
So let me address them:

The cruiser section needs rewording(specificall the last two sentences are the worst offenders), it was hard to understand.

I rephrased the last 2 sentences, I see that they were a bit odd. Not sure about the rest, I'm open to suggestions.

I also dont quite understand how it performs crowd control

I added the line to the Cruiser: "...and your job is to CC (crowd control). You do that by simply simply by your presence by forcing the enemy heavy fighter-corvette-destroyer range of classes to abandon the area you enter. With that, you provide a safe retreat for your fleet's fighters troop transports and such." Edit: that typo discovered, fixed.
Is that satisfactory?

The battleship needs some refining, as if memory serves correctly FrozenByte have stated (in the seige mechanic video (maybe military capital ship??)) that you can attack a station with multiple capital ships - preventing a seige from ending - thus you would send in a capital ship to help your allies not a battleship (though prefferably both). Depending on how military capital ships work out, battleships or fighters would be what takes military capital ships out in seige I guess?

I might be totally wrong here but I think your overall problem with both the Cruiser and Battleship comes from the same reason as to why I was struggling with these classes myself.
They are hard to interpret because they are too big to easily generalize them, you might have different imaginations about them and it wouldn't be wrong. I added a line mentioning this right after the Cruiser's wheel. Anyway, in regard to what you said, I added these lines to the Battleship: "...(military capital ship) isn't yours -because you don't have one or its busy or still charging up to jump-, then the Battleship is your..."
and "operations from, and ultimately assault the enemy military capital ship."

I still dont know what the wheel is trying to show, it needs a legend of some sort.

Now this is a big one, I was lazy and you caught me, and I'm happy you did.
Replaced the introduction picture of the wheel, added explanation, and the best of all, in the process I included my usually favorite class the Frigate. It's like an easter egg. This is a serious improvement and my gratitude shall be shown right before the end story.

 

[Aha]

I like the radiation detection mechanic and like your suggestions about the meta but I feel like the detection and the turret should be separated, since yolol can be used to control normal turntables, more (or lager) detectors could just be needed to manage more targets and it would need friend foe detector, since (almost) all ships give radiation.

ps the yolol delay would meant they would have a hard time hitting fighters anyway, I feel like the extra balancing are probably unnecessary besides making the sensors costly to run

My original idea was a separate huge device, im still open to that version, but here is the thing:
With a separate device, you could yolol any amount of turrets and that leads to great imbalances, even with the yolol delay, you can just spam 999 turrets and that would be ugly. I could be totally missing something about what you say. If you are interested enough to be invested, make your version of it, if you arent confident about it we could even discuss and perfect it in private first!

 

[ChaosRifle]

I rephrased the last 2 sentences, I see that they were a bit odd. Not sure about the rest, I'm open to suggestions.

Looks good now!

I added the line to the Cruiser: "...and your job is to CC (crowd control). You do that by simply your presence by forcing the enemy heavy fighter-corvette-destroyer range of classes to abandon the area you enter. With that you provide a safe retreat for your fleet's fighters troop transports and such."
Is that satisfactory?

Figured as much.

As for the wheel, much better now that it has documentation, thanks!

 

[Aha]

@Christopher420 You got it almost perfectly right!
One thing:

After that it gets less and less efficient and stands no chance vs most corvettes, heavy fighters and smaller fighters.

"stands no chance" doesn't really fit. The green effectiveness meter is focusing more on being the attacker. Your effectiveness against corvettes are that low because you'll never catch them. But if they were to attack you -stupidly- you'd tear them apart, hence from the Corvette's perspective, you see on it's wheel a straight cut right at the Battleship.
This is actually a good thing to point out so thanks!

 

[XenoCow]

I think that this idea is reasonable and could be implemented. However, I don't see why someone would want to put the auto-turrets on his or her ship when they make that ship an easier target for auto-turrets, have half as much (with normal turrets, not tripods) firepower, and cannot engage all targets.

It seems to me that any pilot/crew that is faced with the decision of whether to take a large ship with many auto turrets or a smaller one with none should rationally pick the smaller ship as they will be using their resources more effectively and not becoming a bigger target than necessary.

For example. Imagine I have four other players in my crew.

• We could have a cruiser with two endoed guns and 8 auto-turrets and two endos for repairs and reloads (severely under-crewed in the event of damage being taken or boarding).
• We could step down a level to a destroyer and halve our auto-turrets but maintain the same crew allocations (Better performance as less damage is attracted, fewer guns to reload, and harder to board). It wouldn't make sense to have such a large ship with just endoed guns since any larger ships could easily disarm it.
• Next we could step down again and have a corvette with one or two auto-turrets and 2-3 endoed turrets. (Much better usage of crew as there is very little area to cover for repairing and few guns to reload). However, if we remove the auto-turrets, now our radiation signature is greatly decreased and we get more maneuverability, both offense and defense have improved from removing the auto-turret(s).
• Alternatively we could all take some sort of fighters and be a menace to deal with but can't fight for long due to fuel and ammo limitations.

I think these could be added but would not be very fun to use as you can fight better by scaling down until you match the size ship that can be fully manual. Maybe just being able to have auto-turrets is fun enough to compensate for that, but I don't think that would be the case for me.

 

[Aha]

@XenoCow Nice! Ultimately, you described the rock-paper-scissors effect, there is no best class. I'm happy!

You started at the Cruiser, I will come from the opposite direction.
Now, a Corvette is still very maneuverable therefore with practice you can learn to be effective, and keep the right distances with your auto turret and once you have softened your target enough, you can close in for the finishing move. Yes, I wrote: "It is very hard if not impossible to keep the perfect distance for your auto-turrets to perform best against agile fighters." However, that applies more and more to the bigger and bigger ships as they aren't the ones to decide the distance compared to fighters/smaller ships in general.

However, if we remove the auto-turrets, now our radiation signature is greatly decreased and we get more maneuverability, both offense and defense have improved from removing the auto-turret(s).

So, I have to disagree here. I would say you just exchanged attributes, but not necessarily improved both offense and defense, especially offense.
Defense, sure against larger ships, but you are still very radiative being a corvette. Auto-turrets still see you at somewhat closer range. You are basically a super heavy fighter at this point, and inferior to the same crewed but auto-turreted corvettes.
As a corvette, you don't care about the extra radiation against your main targets - the non-auto turreted smaller fighters. Your auto turret can be very effective if you have the skill to use it properly. You have to learn to accurately guess the (radiation) size of your enemy so you can use your auto turret to its full potential. It is designed deliberately to be skill dependant. "The auto-turret that is not overpowered and doesn't replace crew and skill."
You could customize your single auto-turret to be very short-range but accurate. You can use this to your advantage because all you have to do is get close to your targets, don't care about aiming too much, the short ranged but good accuracy auto-turret will work for you.
"but you have the glorious auto turret that will be a nightmare to every Heavy Fighters as you will smash it into their face without regret."
Of course, you still have to get close, no ultimate best. Trade some more maneuverability and "smallness" in for another auto turret, that has a long range setting and you can both be effective short and long range.
The more auto-turrets you have the better you can balance and diversify your ranges, and accuracy.
Even if your auto-turret just shoots inaccurately-inefficiently to some random target, it still provides a constant danger and annoyance of being under fire.
At the end, it is still an aiming turret without an endo, and if used right, I totally believe it is worth the negatives. I think it would be fun to master the positioning and configuring in order to maximize its effectiveness!
The possibilities and play styles are endless.
I hope that makes sense!

So unless I'm wrong about all the above the rest of the larger classes are naturally coming to prey on the corvette and some still on the heavy fighters.
As ships get bigger, the skill requirement shrinks since their natural preys are also getting bigger and slower. On the other hand crew dependency grows.
A destroyer's lack of maneuverability is compensated with the extra auto-turret fire and the fact -as you included in your comment- that it has enough supplies to go on:

Alternatively we could all take some sort of fighters and be a menace to deal with but can't fight for long due to fuel and ammo limitations.

It seems to me that any pilot/crew that is faced with the decision of whether to take a large ship with many auto turrets or a smaller one with none should rationally pick the smaller ship as they will be using their resources more effectively and not becoming a bigger target than necessary.

Despite all the things I said you still aren't wrong here. This is truer the smaller the scale of the fight/battle is. As a fight/battle gets bigger, larger ships are becoming efficient more and more as they simply get roles to do.
When you wanna board an enemy station, you need your troop transports and fighters, you wanna protect them from enemy heavy fighters, so you use heavy fighers-corvettes- and even destroyers. You want to protect your fighters against enemy corvettes and destroyers so you use cruisers and battleships.
Ultimately it is always more efficient to go smaller, however, when a Battleship appears, you gonna disappear with your destroyer, won't you?
And then people -a LOT of people- will simply want to go big cus they dream of a Star Destroyer or something.



Let me know if this makes sense and/or if I overlooked an issue.

 

[XenoCow]

I would say you just exchanged attributes, but not necessarily improved both offense and defense, especially offense. Defense, sure against larger ships, but you are still very radiative being a corvette.

I consider maneuverability to be both offensive and defensive. Being able to turn to properly position main guns or align turrets makes those weapons deal more damage.

and inferior to the same crewed but auto-turreted corvettes.

I don't see how auto-turrets add much to the combat effectiveness when you only have one. Two weapons (what can fit on the auto-turret) could take several minutes (maybe 15-ish) to destroy a heavy fighter even if every shot hit. That is if it could be kept within range the whole time. I think being lighter by virtue of not having the turret would make aiming the main guns easier enough that the slight extra damage output lost would be well made up for.

As a corvette, you don't care about the extra radiation against your main targets - the non-auto turreted smaller fighters.

I think that I would, I expect that many other players would too. Given the choice between marginal increased DPS and a significant drop in survivability (from increased turn rate and smaller radiation signature), it seems unwise to opt for the auto-turret.

And then people -a LOT of people- will simply want to go big cus they dream of a Star Destroyer or something.

I think this is the only reason that anyone would use the auto-turrets. To have a massive ship with less crew than it should have. That's cool if you like that, but you'd have to watch out for crew optimized ships.


Overall, I would like to see larger ships effective too! I think that weapon systems that favor being smaller than your target antithetical to that goal. The radiation system makes it easier to survive the smaller you are since turrets have a harder time tracking you. Larger ships would likely just get swarmed by a few fighters just out of effective range and be toast, even with support if the fighters are disciplined.

The current problem in the game is that large ships get chewed up by fighters. Systems that allow large ships a better chance against smaller ships will be what makes them viable, not the other way around.

 

[Aha]

I consider maneuverability to be both offensive and defensive. Being able to turn to properly position main guns or align turrets makes those weapons deal more damage.

Yes, that is right, that's why I said "you exchanged" attributes, rather than do an improvement. My disagreement is on the improving part, you improved maneuverability but you got rid of a turret that if you mastered to position yourself effectively will do precise shots, doing precise calculation rather than eyeballing and guessing your target's distance and speed. The dogfight in Starbase is no different from what you experience in Space Engineers if you use fixed weapons -as for finding hits-. It is easier to find yourself a relatively optimal distance than eyeball aim at the targets, having to calculate yourself their trajectory. The "slight extra damage output lost" is nowhere near "slight" it is more usually "massive"
In fact, having the auto turret shooting at your target, you can copy its aiming (the trajectory of the bullets) with your main weapons. That is so significant that this alone worth losing even double the maneuverability and survivability than what you actually lose. Just like in SE, this is how your rate of hit with your eyeballing main weapons rises from about 10%-20% to 50%-60%-ish.

As a corvette, you don't care about the extra radiation against your main targets - the non-auto turreted smaller fighters.

I think that I would, I expect that many other players would too. Given the choice between marginal increased DPS and a significant drop in survivability (from increased turn rate and smaller radiation signature), it seems unwise to opt for the auto-turret.

That is right again. I think this is relative tho. You and many people would care indeed, because -I assume- you would be looking for a ship that works best not just against its natural preys but reasonably effective against its natural predators as well.
However when you are planning to be solely a fighter hunter then you care much less about survivability against other auto-turrets. As I can see, the favorite ship for pirates will be a Heavy Corvette.
In the end, I think what you are talking about ultimately shows the diversity of the concept, that you aren't forced to go for the auto-turret to be effective. There is a smoother transition towards auto-turreted ships rather than, "you have reached this particular size of a ship, you must have auto turret". I like that!
Also, i think exactly here is that "gap" we were arguing about on the other thread.

Systems that allow large ships a better chance against smaller ships will be what makes them viable, not the other way around.

The radiation based auto turrets are still relatively effective against fighters, especially if you mix your configurations with range and accuracy.
Large, like really large ships, are large already, having auto turrets won't make them larger, but will give protection that isn't overpowered. Therefore as you said, "but you'd have to watch out for crew optimized ships" ...crew is still important! -as intended.
The auto-turrets are there to enhance your effectiveness on the large ships as extra rain of bullets against anything else. And as for having only 1-2, yes, it isn't necessarily better, it's up to your skills and your preferred playstyle!

 

[ChaosRifle]

The current problem in the game is that large ships get chewed up by fighters.

I do wonder how combat effective a large ship can ever be with manual turrets in their current form as FrozenByte are intending them. Speaking from a standpoint of SC PVP, large ships have zero chance against fighters unless they have BS shields that out-regen the DPS the fighter can put down. The reason they stand no chance is because fighters will circle the larger ship, making the turrets go from gimbal lock to gimbal lock. The lack of perfect situational awareness means more time to aquire the target, then point the guns at the target, and account for human reaction times for each step. In that time the fighter is out of your gimbal lock again(and we are talking about 180 degree lock-to-lock here on a HH for example). The handoff of the target to the next player gunner is too slow to inform the next gunner where to be looking in advance, and they will need to do this all the steps the last gunner did - again. A single small fighter can keep a fully crewed 6 turret vehicle helpless, and eventually kill it - purely because gimbal lock is an easilly exploitable weakness when you have independant thinking gunners. Compounding this issue is small fighters have high enough jerk and acceleration that they can be impossible to lead the shots at distance against a good pilot anyways, so the large ship doesn't have a real range advantage either.

The 'easiest' solution in this case is to slave guns to a third person (or hull surface shpere on the near side of the ship to emulate first person) camera to automatically point at his camera's direction. This removes the time to aquire a target entering gimbal range, however at the cost of having a gunner not using his gun when his primary is out of his gimbal range, when he could be firing at a secondary. Better gunner situational awareness of the general battlefield would still be important once the battle becomes more than 1vs1.

I do not have experience in StarBase combat yet, though my group would love to start picking it apart and building counters to existing meta. The above comparrison has the caveat that in SC fighter acceleration is able to reach 20G, and ~14G is what it takes to become near impossible to hit with a good pilot. Certain maneuvers (like flying in a helix towards your target, because humans are bad at circles and the lead indicator is useless then) can aid in making lower accelerations harder (but not impossible) to hit too. I do not see any way currently (or on the StarBase planned features lists) a large ship in StarBase can counter a fighter other than being so large that anything vital becomes microscopic relative to the rest of the ship, and thus is durable (and combat repairable) by proxy.

Currently the future of large ships without changes looks to be ground-pound against static (or mostly static) targets like stations/capital ships or infantry and have no way to defend themselves from fighters other than launch fighters to intercept them.

 

[Lionard Freezer]

@Aha If i got this right, If you have a ship thats medium size, outside of any autoturret target point (Basicly almost out of render distance)(simply too little rad to detect even when fireing thanks to plating or smth) and has just a shitton of... lets say railguns (something to snipe with). Now you attack a ship with autoturrets. It cant see you, it cant hit you, it cant move much since its heavy thanks to the autoturrets and the big reactor for the energy consumption. You find the reactor and blow it up...
Would this work like this?
Btw, I still dont see where you add engineering to autoturrets if you cant use YOLOL with it. You even said it as a big point, then never mentioned it again.
Also another point... (not sure if it was mentioned bevore, didnt see it tho)
If you have autoturrets and a friend has autoturrets... You shoot eachother since you cant controll the autoturrets with yolol. So you can never play with other ships.
What do you say to this?

 

[MoonSet416]

Honestly why make large ships good combat vessels in the first place? They are better than smaller ones at pretty much every other task. And it's not like there won't be large ships in combat if we keep the current weapons either. You still need ships to resupply/repair fighters, do salvage, respawn and carry troops+their gear, as well as smaller vessels that need carrying such as boarding crafts. So large ships will always be there in combat, just maybe not in a pure combat role. Making large ships also good at combat would actually just throw off the balance more than it corrects it by letting large ships become necessary for every game loop. There's also the fact that a few key mechanics and devices are still yet to be implemented, so large ships are not up to their full potential. I would at least wait until those things come in.

 

[Aha]

@Aha If i got this right, If you have a ship thats medium size, outside of any autoturret target point (Basicly almost out of render distance)(simply too little rad to detect even when fireing thanks to plating or smth) and has just a shitton of... lets say railguns (something to snipe with). Now you attack a ship with autoturrets. It cant see you, it cant hit you, it cant move much since its heavy thanks to the autoturrets and the big reactor for the energy consumption. You find the reactor and blow it up...
Would this work like this?

Well, yes and no, it is relative. It is a good question and I think the answer/solution to it is that if you are too big of a ship that you can be sniped like that then you better have some fighters to dispatch or escorting corvettes, destroyers. Alternatively, have 1 or 2 auto-turrets spammed with amplifier modules only, so the auto-turrets pick up the sniper. In the end, it comes down to testing and balancing everything of this concept.
I kinda imagined the concept like at some point, maybe between the corvette and destroyer, from that point, there is no hiding from auto-turrets unless you really really slow yourself down with an absurd amount of plating that at this point your ship is a meme ship.
So if you have this tons of railguns ship you talk about, then it could be as slow as the big ship you are sniping.

Btw, I still dont see where you add engineering to autoturrets if you cant use YOLOL with it. You even said it as a big point, then never mentioned it again.

Also a good point. My engineering argument comes more like in the meaning, that you should have machines doing your job at least a little bit, like having means of aiming assist, in this case the radiation based auto turrets.
On the other hand you could yolol the auto turrets! Just certain values not, only to prevent the aiming copy onto other regular turrets. Everything else, like power management, or ordering it to turn to it's default position (that you could set up internally), and idk whatever.

If you have autoturrets and a friend has autoturrets... You shoot eachother since you cant controll the autoturrets with yolol. So you can never play with other ships.

Well, yea, I "kinda" forgot it, and only mentioned it in the Bonus suggestion. I guess I should give it more attention. Good point.

Transponder signals could be used to differentiate between ally and enemy signals. (That must be with the auto-turrets anyway)

 

[Lionard Freezer]

Here is what i hate about these posts:
You contradict yourself or with how its implemented in the game rn, which probably comes from the case that you arent knowleged enought to use yolol (I also dont know that much about it since i aswell arent playing the game rn so other people correct me if im wrong). This isnt necessarily a bad thing, as its an ea game and as such many things are still subject to change.
Btw the idea from bevore would work especially against miners, and all that are either moving in a straight line or not that fast.
You could take the value where one turret is aiming at and just post that to another, you dont need to see where those values come from. If you cant access that, you cant change where your turret is aming at. As such it would either shoot allys or aim at them but not shoot (if shooting is manual and only aiming is automated with autoturrets). Which would again disable a turret that should be shooting an enemy. As such its really really really unreliable unless its a 1v1, and as far as i have understood your idea, autoturrets arent as good as manual at 1v1s.
I wouldnt mind it much if autoturrets cant differentient between friend or foe, as with that you would once again open a new branch of combat. Especialy for miners that are realativly heavy, slow and usualy only have a pilot, autoturrets would be a great additon to keep you safe. At the same time you have to be careful that you dont just shoot other miners or friendly ships. As such autoturrets would have to be controlled and would no longer perfectly replace a player while still powerful enought to not be useless and not needed.

 

[Aha]

You contradict yourself or with how its implemented in the game rn, which probably comes from the case that you arent knowlaged enought to use yolol (I also dont know that much about it since i aswell arent playing the game rn so other people correct me if im wrong). This isnt necessarily a bad thing, as its an ea game and as such many things are still subject to change.

I do have an understanding of yolol as I have been educating myself about it, at least I have enough understanding to not contradict myself as you imply.
You simply order by the code to read/modify values from stuff.

You could take the value where one turret is aiming at and just post that to another, you dont need to see where those values come from.

Now if the yolol chip or anything cant read -for whatever smart reasons- or can but a forced fake value (distorted because of the strong radiation of the auto-turret devices or something), then there is no taking the value and posting it to another. For the same reason, I mentioned the disturbing of the range finder, as that would be a going around, by simply scanning the movement of the turret by a range finder and then use the values from that similarly like this guy uses not range finders but tractor beams to make an auto-miner orient itself:

If you cant access that, you cant change where your turret is aming at. As such it would either shoot allys or aim at them but not shoot (if shooting is manual and only aiming is automated with autoturrets). Which would again disable a turret that should be shooting an enemy. As such its really really really unreliable unless its a 1v1, and as far as i have understood your idea, autoturrets arent that good at 1v1s.

You don't need to access and change anything, the core unit does the calculations.
The ally ore foe is solved through transponder signals. When you are in a fleet, you could and obviously should be able to set it so if the radiation signal that the auto turret detects has an ally transponder signal with it, then it should be ignored.
(The auto-turrets are not bad at 1v1.
They are more skill dependant if you have only a few of them.)

And this actually comes with it perfectly:

I wouldnt mind it much if autoturrets cant differentient bettween friend or foe, as with that you would once again open a new branch of combat. Especialy for miners that are realativly heavy, slow and usualy only have a pilot, autoturrets would be a great additon to keep you safe. At the same time you have to be carefull that you dont just shoot other miners or friendly ships. As such autoturrets would have to be controlled and would no longer perfectly replace a player while still powerful enought to not be useless and not needed.

You could also set your auto turret to ignore anything that sends a transponder signal or a specified transponder signal. That would force people to show themselves otherwise be at the risk of being fired at. Or, as you say, just be responsible with your turret.

As I said you could still code it for stuff, it isn't an everything or nothing extreme. Only those things should be blocked smartly that are necessary to prevent cloning an auto turret through yolol.

 

[Lionard Freezer]

@Aha If you want to directly remove core mechaniks then just say so directly.
The way you describe them, you cant control autoturrets at all, as such they shoot into your own ship, through allys if an enemy is behind it, etc.
This has already been seen as possible in other SB Videos if some people cant comprehend yolol.