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General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: Kestrellius on September 03, 2017, 03:51:34 pm

Title: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: Kestrellius on September 03, 2017, 03:51:34 pm
i hate them i hate them i hate them

Okay, look. You can have a weapon that's impossible to dodge. (Although in my opinion you really shouldn't; I'm against hitscan in general.) You can have a weapon that ignores shields and immediately ****s up all your subsystems. You can even have a weapon that knocks you around.

But YOU CAN'T HAVE A WEAPON THAT DOES ALL THREE OF THOSE THINGS AT THE SAME TIME.

The worst part of it is that I can't even blame the mission designer, because I'm playtesting one of my own ****ing missions. And the only way to reduce the annoyance would be to just remove the AF beams entirely, and that would probably make the mission trivially easy. Plus I hate making direct changes like that.

Blargh.
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: Spoon on September 03, 2017, 06:28:04 pm
(http://i.imgur.com/QD4TUjO.gif)
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: Axem on September 03, 2017, 06:36:33 pm
AAA Beams are pretty annoying. One thing you can do to mitigate their annoyingness a bit is switch your hostile beams to AAAh instead of AAAfs. AAAhs are meant to be used by hostile ships and have lower accuracy values (compared to AAAf (friendly)).
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: General Battuta on September 03, 2017, 06:52:58 pm
Instead of a die roll they should target a point in space you'll be in (say) a few milliseconds and if you're flying erratically they'd miss.
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: rubixcube on September 03, 2017, 07:01:15 pm

You could always tweak the weapons tables to give them a mass value of zero.

Instead of a die roll they should target a point in space you'll be in (say) a few milliseconds and if you're flying erratically they'd miss.

Is that how the beam miss values work? So if the miss value is 3 the beam has a 1/3 chance of hitting?
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: Mongoose on September 03, 2017, 07:33:01 pm
Avoid the beam and you won't get hit, pilot!

...wait.
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: Kestrellius on September 03, 2017, 08:10:53 pm
Instead of a die roll they should target a point in space you'll be in (say) a few milliseconds and if you're flying erratically they'd miss.

Yeah, I've thought about this. It'd be almost a bit like the telegraphed-attack thing that shows up in some games -- you see the turret light up, and if you get out of the way quickly enough, it misses.
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: General Battuta on September 03, 2017, 11:32:32 pm

You could always tweak the weapons tables to give them a mass value of zero.

Instead of a die roll they should target a point in space you'll be in (say) a few milliseconds and if you're flying erratically they'd miss.

Is that how the beam miss values work? So if the miss value is 3 the beam has a 1/3 chance of hitting?

Uh, not sure I'm following you.
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: Neptune on September 04, 2017, 07:30:57 am
I believe Dimensional Eclipse has beams that don't pierce shields (and probably a bajillion other mods as well, but it's the first that comes to mind).

I'm not sure what continuity you're working with, but you can always change all of those aspects. You can create an anti-fighter beam that shoots with inherent inaccuracy (although i'm unsure if the specific anti-fighter beam that shoots 3 pulses type takes the $Fof flag), the beam doesn't have to pierce shields, and you can lower the beamwhack. (And you could always set the subsystem damage of the beam to zero, as well, if you're just worried about that.)

Personally I love anti-fighter beams precisely because I am in favour of anything with more beams.
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: Spoon on September 04, 2017, 07:47:01 am
FS2 AAA beams were the primary reason why I opted to not have beams pierce shields, in WoD.
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: Trivial Psychic on September 04, 2017, 08:56:47 am
I believe that there was a time in FSO history when beam-piercing was accidentally disabled and people noticed that when they got hit by AAA it destroyed their shields in that vector.  That may have been when shield piercing became optional.
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: Kie99 on September 04, 2017, 09:14:48 am
While we're criticising beam mechanics it always seems a bit silly to me how beams go from being sniper like at 1500 metres but totally ineffectual at 1501 metres.  Would it be possible to have beams degrade in accuracy/damage over distance rather than going from 100% to zero?
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: Spoon on September 04, 2017, 09:18:16 am
While we're criticising beam mechanics it always seems a bit silly to me how beams go from being sniper like at 1500 metres but totally ineffectual at 1501 metres.  Would it be possible to have beams degrade in accuracy/damage over distance rather than going from 100% to zero?
 That is possible (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Weapons.tbl#.24BeamInfo:)
+Attenuation:
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: rubixcube on September 04, 2017, 07:59:36 pm

You could always tweak the weapons tables to give them a mass value of zero.

Instead of a die roll they should target a point in space you'll be in (say) a few milliseconds and if you're flying erratically they'd miss.

Is that how the beam miss values work? So if the miss value is 3 the beam has a 1/3 chance of hitting?

Uh, not sure I'm following you.

The beams have a property called miss factor, the higher it is, the more innaccurate the beam is. But I was always curious what exactly it meant; how does a miss factor of 100 compare with a miss factor of 2 for instance?
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: AdmiralRalwood on September 05, 2017, 12:45:08 pm
The beams have a property called miss factor, the higher it is, the more innaccurate the beam is. But I was always curious what exactly it meant; how does a miss factor of 100 compare with a miss factor of 2 for instance?
The beam code picks a random float between 0.0f and 1.0f + miss factor * accuracy, where accuracy is supplied by the beam_fire_info struct and is usually 1.0f but sometimes is an extremely tiny value (used for beam-fire and similar situations). This random value is then multiplied by 1.0f - (the strength of the weapons subsystem) so that ships with heavily damaged weapons systems are more inaccurate. Finally, this value is multiplied by the radius of the target ship to determine how much to move the beam's aim point away from a straight line to the target (implementation-wise, it actually picks a random point on a circle with a radius equal to the aim value multiplied by the radius of the target object). So, a miss factor of 2 means that the beam has a 1 in 3 chance of firing within the radius of the target, and a miss factor of 0 doesn't guarantee a hit as long as the target isn't perfectly spherical (and maybe not even then because beams don't always target the dead center of the target object). If you want a beam to always hit dead on whatever it aims at, you should actually give it a miss factor of -1 (and then you'll experience the somewhat humorous fact that beam-fire becomes less accurate for that beam, not more).
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: Kestrellius on September 05, 2017, 04:34:12 pm
Is beam-fire a different thing from fire-beam?
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: General Battuta on September 05, 2017, 04:40:05 pm
Wait what the ****! Weapons subsys damage alters beam accuracy?
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: Grizzly on September 05, 2017, 04:57:50 pm
Wait what the ****! Weapons subsys damage alters beam accuracy?

... Wait what, you did not know this?
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: Kestrellius on September 05, 2017, 05:03:12 pm
Even I knew that. Well, sort of. I knew that destroying the weapons subsystem reduced turret accuracy. I didn't know it scaled with health.
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: AdmiralRalwood on September 05, 2017, 05:09:31 pm
Is beam-fire a different thing from fire-beam?
No, sorry, it's just called OP_BEAM_FIRE in the code so I always get it backwards.
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: Grizzly on September 05, 2017, 06:38:42 pm
Even I knew that. Well, sort of. I knew that destroying the weapons subsystem reduced turret accuracy. I didn't know it scaled with health.

That's a fair point actually.
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: General Battuta on September 07, 2017, 01:28:50 pm
Wait what the ****! Weapons subsys damage alters beam accuracy?

... Wait what, you did not know this?

Even I knew that. Well, sort of. I knew that destroying the weapons subsystem reduced turret accuracy. I didn't know it scaled with health.

I'd always been under the impression it only affected blob turrets, not flak or AAA, and was therefore pretty useless.
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: FrikgFeek on September 10, 2017, 01:15:36 am
I actually like AAA beams as a concept, and they can be implemented well. Warships having reliable and undodgeable antifighter damage makes them a lot more threatening. Flak is very effective but its range is too short and blobs are utterly useless for anything but shooting down bombs.

Of course, AAA beams often just become annoying when mission design doesn't really account for them, and this happens a lot in early retail missions. But when they're used correctly they can make the player feel less like a superhero as he's given clear "no-go" zones where he's actually not supposed to go(as opposed to retail where you're expected to charge into those no-go zones).

War in Heaven is a good example of this, when you're expected to assault warships you're given tools like the Gattler or Archer to disarm AAA beams from long range and when you're supposed to stay away from them and let your own capships handle them you're deliberately not given those tools(or sometimes the beams are just uparmoured). This conveys the combined arms feeling of space warfare much better than retail where you're basically wandering around shooting things down while ~stuff happens in the background.

AAA beams are also the only thing really keeping super manoeuvrable fighters like the Serapis(or the Atalanta from BP) in check. Turn-rate is almost always the one stat to rule them all in arcade flight sims, and shield-piercing undodgeable damage gives those fighters at least one weakness. Having them target like every other weapon would make those quick turning fighters even more OP as they'd be able to easily dodge AAA beams while they're also dodging everything else. Dodging non-hitscan weapons in freespace is very easy if your fighter turns quickly enough.


So if you're having problems with AAA beams in your own mission try giving the player some tools to deal with those beams from a distance or make it very clear that they're not supposed to go near a warship with those beams and let a friendly capship handle it.
You could also script a system where friendly gunboats use long-range missiles to disarm the AAA beams, kinda like the gunship strike in Post Meridian except you're targeting AAA beams instead of Herc wings.
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: Kestrellius on September 10, 2017, 01:59:13 am
AAA beams are also the only thing really keeping super manoeuvrable fighters like the Serapis(or the Atalanta from BP) in check. Turn-rate is almost always the one stat to rule them all in arcade flight sims, and shield-piercing undodgeable damage gives those fighters at least one weakness. Having them target like every other weapon would make those quick turning fighters even more OP as they'd be able to easily dodge AAA beams while they're also dodging everything else. Dodging non-hitscan weapons in freespace is very easy if your fighter turns quickly enough.

Hm...Really? Personally I've always found heavy fighters to be by far the most effective type, and I say this as someone who overwhelmingly prefers flying the most agile things I can get my hands on. It sort of feels like past a certain point, turn-rate doesn't actually matter very much -- if you're in an Ursa, obviously that's an issue, but IIRC a Herc II can dogfight a Dragon about as well as a Serapis can, because the AI isn't smart enough to stay in your blind spot.

Of course there is the survivability advantage, though. I just don't think about that as often. Seriously, though, I really would not call agile fighters in FreeSpace overpowered. They tend to pay for their agility with basically everything else.
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: FrikgFeek on September 10, 2017, 02:04:28 am
Heavy fighters are only good on the lower difficulties because the AI gets a huge turnrate penalty. On insane, where the AI isn't handicapped there's no way you can dogfight a Dragon in a Herc II, even with droopy retail AI.
The Herc IIs 360 rotation times are 3.8, 4.2, 3.8 while the Dragon's are 2.5, 2.0, 2.0. For pitch, the most used axis, the Dragon is more than twice as agile as the Herc II. It will literally fly circles around you without the difficulty turnrate penalties. If you also give the dragons custom FuryAI not even a Perseus will be able to handle a wing of them on its own.


Also, on the higher difficulties the AI loses firerate penalties while the player loses shield regeneration bonuses and damage protection. This all leads to a huge increase in damage to the point where even heavy fighters with higher health and shield numbers get obliterated in 2-3 seconds so health hardly matters. Dodging all damage in an agile fighter is leagues better than trying to tank it in a Herc.
For actual numbers, you'll take 65% damage on medium and hostile AI takes a 1.75 fire delay penalty. This combined means that the player will take 37% of the DPS they would be taking on insane, and you also have 50% shield recharge boost. You'll live about 3 times longer while just tanking damage on medium compared to insane.
Because of how overpowered Tempests are primary gunpoints are less important. No matter if you have 4 or 8 primary guns you're still limited to 2 tempests per shot so your overall killing power isn't doubled. And because anything can load up a ton of tempests carrying capacity becomes less important.

This means that on insane health, shields, primary gunpoints, secondary capacity all become much less relevant while turnrate becomes much more relevant due to reliance on damage avoidance rather than tanking.
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: Kestrellius on September 10, 2017, 02:12:57 am
Well, yeah. Dragons are a nightmare no matter what you're flying, because they're practically impossible to hit and they don't die when you shoot them. Maybe I should test a one-on-one with a Dragon set to Insane, though.

Really, I guess the issue is that most of the time in FS you're not dogfighting. You're doing other stuff where agility barely matters at all. It extends to user-made campaigns, too -- I liked Shadow Genesis, but seriously, the gameplay in that campaign is like 75% debeaming warships.
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: FrikgFeek on September 10, 2017, 02:20:15 am
Like 80% of retail is just killing fighters or bombers. And most user-made campaigns focus on that too, even if it doesn't take most of the playtime it's definitely what gets you killed the most. Trebbing beams far outside their range requires being in the right place before those beams tear apart your ships but the most important stat there is just linear speed. Health, shields, primary gunpoints, or secondary capacity very rarely matters, especially if you're allowed to rearm.

EDIT: Here's a good example from War in Heaven on why shields and health are a bit useless on insane.

It takes a nyx equipped with balors 1.44 seconds to 100-0 a Kent(from full shields, full health to 0 shields, 0 health) with only primaries. It takes that same nyx 2.46 seconds to 100-0 a Uriel. This is assuming the player manages their shields perfectly. Getting an extra second to live in no way makes up for the huge turnrate and target profile disadvantage.

On medium, it takes that nyx 4.2 seconds to kill the Kent and ~6.9 seconds to kill the Uriel. 2.7 extra seconds matters a lot more and the nyx will be much less manoeuvrable on the lower difficulty, giving the player a lot more time to turn the situation around. You're not going to just stand there getting shot for 7 seconds straight.

On insane, the Nyx is is also much more likely to spam tornadoes and tempests as much as it can, giving the player even less time to live if he ever lets the nyx get behind him.
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: Mongoose on September 10, 2017, 03:28:26 am
Now I remember why I almost always played on Easy. :p
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: Kestrellius on September 10, 2017, 02:58:33 pm
Yeah, I've played on Insane...some, but not a lot. I was doing a run of FS2 on it a while back, but lost interest after attempting Bearbaiting twenty times. Normally I play somewhere between Easy and Hard.
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: X3N0-Life-Form on September 12, 2017, 07:47:56 am
I actually like AAA beams as a concept, ...
This post sums up my feelings nicely. AAA are frustrating to deal with, and that's pretty much their point. Retail FS2 is, ironically, firmly on lower end of AAA beam handling, as it often doesn't provide the player with proper tools to deal with them when they need to (although, as a general rule, retail gets a bit iffy when it comes to balance).

Was it necessary to make them this powerful ? Not sure, I think they would have worked fine one of their 3 effects off to another turret type. Do I think they are overpowered ? Not sure either, however they are the only turret type you have to respect on every difficulty level.


RE : heavy fighters & difficulty levels

As you increase the difficulty level, a lot of thing changes in the tactical environment, strike crafts start filling much more specific niches.

Perseus basically becomes the go-to fighter as it's viable in pretty much every situation, even if it's not great at some of them. It's a good dogfighter that's small and fast enough to avoid taking full damage from flak guns.

Heavy fighter are great when defending or attacking warships, where they can use their increased loadout to lob tons of missiles at hostile warships and/or pelt them with sustained maxim fire, or use your thicker skin to aggro hostile fighters and draw them into friendly capship killzones. On the other hand, dogfighting the more agile fighters is going to be frustrating at best, and you get murderized by flak guns.

If you look at the other extreme, super agile fighters like the Serapis or Loki get extremely deadly in dogfight situation, whereas flying them just wasn't worth it in medium. On insane they're pretty much the only ones that stand a chance against Dragons.

Also, bombers are death traps. Fortunately, there's only 3 missions in which you have to fly them - Slaying Ravana, The King's Gambit, and Bearbaiting (The Sicilian Defense allows you to fly a fighter).

Mister-eight-gun-boom-boom is still good, but you absolutely need to use the ETS to be really effective with it.
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: Mito [PL] on September 12, 2017, 02:24:41 pm
Whenever I was using the Erynies in a prolonged combat, I've tried to make sure that I have at least one primary bank filled with a Subach HL-7 (medium difficulty). While it isn't a fantastic weapon overall, it is quite powerful when you have 4/8 gunpoints with it. And it allows you for a long combat with a pretty big part of your energy redirected to engines/shields.
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: FrikgFeek on September 12, 2017, 02:27:56 pm
if you're ever using the Erinyes you should probably just equip it with double PromS as that at least gives it considerable alpha power. Basically every other loadout is just a waste of gunpoints, HL-7s do crap DPS and kaysers drain energy too quickly.
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: Spoon on September 12, 2017, 04:22:56 pm
I thought for a moment "But doesn't the Kayser do more damage than the PromS?", so I opened up the retail weapons.tbl...

Prometheus S: "Medium Energy Usage
Level 5 Hull Damage
Level 4 Shield Damage"

Damage: 30
Armor factor: 0.9
Shield factor: 1.0
Firewait: 0.35
Velocity: 750 (lifetime 2, so 1500 range)
Energy consumed: 1.0

DPS: 85
Energy consumption rate: 2.85


UD-8 Kayser: "Special Issue
Level 6 Hull Damage
Level 5 Shield Damage"

Damage: 28
Armor factor: 1.0
Shield factor: 0.9
Firewait: 0.25
Velocity: 650 (lifetime 1.5, so 975 range)
Energy consumed: 1.2

DPS: 112
Energy consumption rate: 4.8


Well, it has a higher dps due to its higher fire rate... But that's kind of a moot point if it sucks your energy reserves dry in 5 seconds.
Another illusion shattered.
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: Mito [PL] on September 12, 2017, 04:42:00 pm
How does Subach compare there?

So it seems like Prom S is the best FS2 weapon around since it has only marginally less DPS in exchange for nearly half the energy consumption and 50% more range (I'd say it's important, addidtional range of this thing can even serve as a good tool for beam cannon/AAA disarming).
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: Spoon on September 12, 2017, 04:50:49 pm
Subach compares poorly

Subach HL-7: "Standard Issue
Level 3 Hull Damage
Level 2 Shield Damage"

Damage: 15
Armor factor: 0.9
Shield factor: 0.7
Firewait: 0.2
Velocity: 450 (lifetime 2, so 900 range)
Energy consumed: 0.2

DPS: 67.5 vs hull, 52.5 vs shield
Energy consumption rate: 1


Hell, even to the Avenger it compares poorly
TW-15 Avenger Cannon: "Special Issue
Projectile Weapon
Low Shield Damage"

Damage: 16
Armor factor: 1.25
Shield factor: 0.85
Firewait: 0.25
Velocity: 525 (lifetime 1.9, so 1000 range)
Energy consumed: 0.3

DPS: 100 vs hull, 54.4 vs shield
Energy consumption rate: 1.2
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: niffiwan on September 12, 2017, 05:49:11 pm
Hey - just use the comparison tables from the wiki ;)

http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Weapon_Comparison_(FS2)
http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Weapon_Comparison_(FS1)
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: Droid803 on September 12, 2017, 05:49:59 pm
I love antifighter beams!
They're BEAMS!
And they KILL THINGS! Most importantly, THEY KILL YOU!
They create some no-fly pockets and rewards knowledge of blindspots/safe approach vectors. Both of which are quite nice from both a design and tactical perspective should you choose to make use of it!
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: Grizzly on September 13, 2017, 03:33:05 am
Anti-fighter beams don't stand a chance against that glorious 2km range of the Rockeye.
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: Spoon on September 13, 2017, 04:30:44 am
Hey - just use the comparison tables from the wiki ;)

http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Weapon_Comparison_(FS2)
http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Weapon_Comparison_(FS1)
I was going to say "that's a really neat table, never knew it existed!" but then I checked the history on the FS2 version and see I supposedly made an edit back in 2010. So clearly I did know at some point. Truely astounding.
Still a neat table though.

I love antifighter beams!
They're BEAMS!
And they KILL THINGS! Most importantly, THEY KILL YOU!
They create some no-fly pockets and rewards knowledge of blindspots/safe approach vectors. Both of which are quite nice from both a design and tactical perspective should you choose to make use of it!
Retail does not make good use of it though. Turrets don't check their own hulls when firing, and antifighter beam turrets are not visually distinct from other turrets. It's really hard to tell what a safe approach vector is.
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: Kestrellius on September 13, 2017, 03:06:14 pm
Anti-fighter beams don't stand a chance against that glorious 2km range of the Rockeye.

In the mission I was testing when I started the thread, the player does have Rockeyes, and they're very very useful. But I was trying to make sure the player could play the mission without knowing exactly where all the AF turrets were. Also part of the problem was that I was using the Seth, which has ridiculously vulnerable subsystems. So half the time an AAA beam would be a one-hit mission-kill, because it'd take out something like sensors or comms and it'd be quicker to restart than to try to rearm.
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: Cobra on September 28, 2017, 06:00:22 pm
Wait what the ****! Weapons subsys damage alters beam accuracy?

... Wait what, you did not know this?

Even I knew that. Well, sort of. I knew that destroying the weapons subsystem reduced turret accuracy. I didn't know it scaled with health.

I'd always been under the impression it only affected blob turrets, not flak or AAA, and was therefore pretty useless.

In my experience killing the weapons subsystem did absolutely nothing. Bombs were always shot down just as easily despite the game telling me what would occur otherwise. Even in FS1.

Beams are supposed to be annoying as ****, though. It'd be nice if friendly AI didn't happily fly headfirst into a beam, but there you go. I'm fairly certain it was intended that some modicum of strategy was to be used in dealing with turrets. It was never exactly highlighted like it was in Blue Planet, especially War in Heaven, but to me disabling turrets to create a pocket is just the natural thing to do.
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: potterman28wxcv on September 29, 2017, 03:49:54 am
Wait what the ****! Weapons subsys damage alters beam accuracy?

... Wait what, you did not know this?

Even I knew that. Well, sort of. I knew that destroying the weapons subsystem reduced turret accuracy. I didn't know it scaled with health.

I'd always been under the impression it only affected blob turrets, not flak or AAA, and was therefore pretty useless.

In my experience killing the weapons subsystem did absolutely nothing. Bombs were always shot down just as easily despite the game telling me what would occur otherwise. Even in FS1.

Beams are supposed to be annoying as ****, though. It'd be nice if friendly AI didn't happily fly headfirst into a beam, but there you go. I'm fairly certain it was intended that some modicum of strategy was to be used in dealing with turrets. It was never exactly highlighted like it was in Blue Planet, especially War in Heaven, but to me disabling turrets to create a pocket is just the natural thing to do.
In the last mission of FS1 in Insane, you really have to destroy Lucifer's weapon subsystem yourself or those bombers have absolutely no chance of making it alive.
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: General Battuta on September 29, 2017, 08:52:35 am
That's true but it doesn't have beams or flak.
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: X3N0-Life-Form on September 30, 2017, 08:24:47 am
That's true, but his point was in response to Cobra's assertion that, in his experience, destroying the weapons' subsystem did nothing, which is blatantly not true and easily verifiable.

RE:beam & flak accuracy & weapons subsystem:
I'm pretty sure flak is affected by the status of Weapons - it's just less noticable due to the flak's natural scatering & AOE.

As for beam weapons, I've never paid too much attention to be honest, usually I go for the beams themselves before going for the Weapons.

EDIT - Actually you know what ? I haven't fired up FSO in like 4-5 months, I might as well just whip up some mission to verify how this all works.
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: X3N0-Life-Form on September 30, 2017, 09:21:13 am
OK, after some testing, flak & blobs are ostensibly affected by the status of the weapons' subsystem.

Beams are also affected, but in a somewhat different way :
- Even with a destroyed subsystem, they still have a chance to hit their target
- When the dice says they miss their target, how much the beam if off target depends the weapons' subsystem's health, much like projectile weapons
- It feels like the beam is more likely to hit when weapons are at full health, although it could simply be that the beam "misses" close enough to the target that the beam hits it anyway

tldr; All turret types are affected by the weapons subsystem's status, but beams get an extra dice roll.


Also, this is completely unrelated, but I apparently need to appologize to the SNTC folks :/
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: FrikgFeek on September 30, 2017, 09:40:59 am
The effect the weapons subsystem has on antifighter beams isn't all that relevant because a slight reduction in their miss probability doesn't matter until the law of large numbers takes effect. You still have to respect them as if they have a 100% hit chance unless you want half your health and a few subsystems gone in one shot. Gambling the whole mission on a 40% chance isn't that much different from gambling it on a 55% chance.

And that's why I like them. They're one of the very few things a good player has to respect. You can launch yourself into a massive furball and get out alive with enough fancy flying, but AAA beams will always remain a threat, no matter how good you are at FS.
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: Kestrellius on October 12, 2017, 12:28:11 am
You can launch yourself into a massive furball and get out alive with enough fancy flying [...]

i refer you to your signature
Title: Re: i hate antifighter beams
Post by: Asteroth on November 05, 2017, 01:46:31 am
I've always had this opinion, and I think the way it's handled in nuJAD's endless arcade mode (forget the name off the top of my head) is pretty close to ideal. They fire based on your current heading, something like a second in the the future, with a very obvious tell-tale audio cue to alert the player of danger.