Author Topic: A WoD dev blog  (Read 422774 times)

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Beams bigger then the ship its self!

 

Offline -Norbert-

  • 211
Looks stupid.

Just put a BFGreen or BFRed on a transporter in FRED and  see for yourself.

 

Offline yuezhi

  • no u
  • 29
  • ¿¡you dare defy the commodore‽
I think we can jury rig an ursa
ϟIn Neo-Terra we Trustϟ
ϟGreat Tin Can Run (Download
☭Gods and Conquerors  - mission design, tech descriptions, sounds; currently 5% Book of Invasions(reserved)☭


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Offline Spoon

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  • 212
  • ヾ(´︶`♡)ノ
Impractical weapons

Some times weapons look neat on paper but turn out to be highly impractical in actual gameplay. One such weapon is the CSA Emerald Splinter.
This secondary weapon is a single missile that before it reaches its target explodes in a torrent of laser fire spread in a cone. A shotgun in a missile so to say. The first objectives of this weapon were to:
1. Look cool
2. Provide a BP-esque slammer style weapon in function. (Anti fighter/bomber wing formation)

However, it soon proved to be too ineffective at taking down a whole wing, after all, laser bolts dont track or explode! So the purpose was changed to be a short range missile with big damage instead. Buuut this didnt really work out either because missile in close range in freespace have a large tendency to just completely miss. So the missile was changed to a medium range head on type of missile instead. But the damage remained inconsistent to a fault. Even tightening the cone did not do much to alleviate the problem. On paper the maximum damage this missile could do should be enough to one shot kill the weakest of Nordera fighters. However ingame the damage ranged from 10-40% hull damage. An unacceptable low amount. Most of the damage was just wasted into the vastness of space and tightening the cone even more would nullify the flavor of the missile.
So I was once again considering of upping its damage value, but then it struck me. What would happen if this missile strikes something that is larger and can actually do its full damage consistently. Targets like capitalships.

A short test later revealed that this weapon was now outperforming almost every dedicated anti capital ship secondary out there! Woops.



And as such I've made the hard decision to let the Emerald Splinter go. I'm sorry man, it just wasn't working out between us.
Urutorahappī!!

[02:42] <@Axem> spoon somethings wrong
[02:42] <@Axem> critically wrong
[02:42] <@Axem> im happy with these missions now
[02:44] <@Axem> well
[02:44] <@Axem> with 2 of them

 

Offline Lorric

  • 212
Damn the Cyrvans and their overpowered weapons! :lol:

 

Offline Dragon

  • Citation needed
  • 212
  • The sky is the limit.
Yeah, that's the usual problem with scatter weapons. Have you thought of deploying this as an anti-ship weapon? :) It'd be rather cool, don't you think? Just think of potential, a weapon that could de-fang a capship in one shot and heavily damage it. Of course, it'd have to be quite bulky to balance out it's power, too.

  

Offline General Battuta

  • Poe's Law In Action
  • 214
  • i wonder when my postcount will exceed my iq
He did, check the end of the post.

 

Offline AdmiralRalwood

  • 211
  • The Cthulhu programmer himself!
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Shades of Honorverse laserheads...
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Codethulhu GitHub wgah'nagl fhtagn.

schrödinbug (noun) - a bug that manifests itself in running software after a programmer notices that the code should never have worked in the first place.

When you gaze long into BMPMAN, BMPMAN also gazes into you.

"I am one of the best FREDders on Earth" -General Battuta

<Aesaar> literary criticism is vladimir putin

<MageKing17> "There's probably a reason the code is the way it is" is a very dangerous line of thought. :P
<MageKing17> Because the "reason" often turns out to be "nobody noticed it was wrong".
(the very next day)
<MageKing17> this ****ing code did it to me again
<MageKing17> "That doesn't really make sense to me, but I'll assume it was being done for a reason."
<MageKing17> **** ME
<MageKing17> THE REASON IS PEOPLE ARE STUPID
<MageKing17> ESPECIALLY ME

<MageKing17> God damn, I do not understand how this is breaking.
<MageKing17> Everything points to "this should work fine", and yet it's clearly not working.
<MjnMixael> 2 hours later... "God damn, how did this ever work at all?!"
(...)
<MageKing17> so
<MageKing17> more than two hours
<MageKing17> but once again we have reached the inevitable conclusion
<MageKing17> How did this code ever work in the first place!?

<@The_E> Welcome to OpenGL, where standards compliance is optional, and error reporting inconsistent

<MageKing17> It was all working perfectly until I actually tried it on an actual mission.

<IronWorks> I am useful for FSO stuff again. This is a red-letter day!
* z64555 erases "Thursday" and rewrites it in red ink

<MageKing17> TIL the entire homing code is held up by shoestrings and duct tape, basically.

 

Offline Dragon

  • Citation needed
  • 212
  • The sky is the limit.
He did, check the end of the post.
No, at the end of the post there's just a realization similar to what we had with Slammer - that capship damage is excessive, especially for a rather poor anti-fighter weapon. What I'm suggesting is balancing it for good capship damage, without bothering with anti-fighter aspect at all. That would be quite novel, actually.

 

Offline General Battuta

  • Poe's Law In Action
  • 214
  • i wonder when my postcount will exceed my iq
Oh, I gotcha. Yeah, I think that'd be rather cool. We're testing out something similar in BP, though most of the submunitions released are decoys.

 

Offline yuezhi

  • no u
  • 29
  • ¿¡you dare defy the commodore‽
Is this kind of weapon common in anime?
ϟIn Neo-Terra we Trustϟ
ϟGreat Tin Can Run (Download
☭Gods and Conquerors  - mission design, tech descriptions, sounds; currently 5% Book of Invasions(reserved)☭


░░░░░░███████ ]▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄        ︻╦╤─   Bob is building an army.
    ▂▄▅█████████▅▄▃▂          ☻/         This tank & Bob are against Google+
Il███████████████████].       /▌          Copy and Paste this all over
  ◥⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙◤...     / \          Youtube if you are with us!

 

Offline General Battuta

  • Poe's Law In Action
  • 214
  • i wonder when my postcount will exceed my iq
It's common in real life - many air to air missiles release steel rods (instead of laser beams) when they detonate.

 

Offline Flak

  • 28
  • 123
It is actually more common for MLRS and cluster missiles in real life. It is made like that just to increase the blast radius. Of course it is usually dumb submunitions like Infyrno. Homing submunitions probably is still awesome but impractical.

 

Offline Lorric

  • 212
after all, laser bolts dont track
Tell that to the Fura'ngle! :pimp:

 

Offline Flak

  • 28
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Technically, laser moves at the speed of light. It don't need tracking at all. All the Fura'ngle need is aimbot attached to them.

 
Yeah, well, real life weapon designers don't have to worry about balance. If someone were to construct a weapon that's good at taking out fighters and great at punching ship hulls they wouldn't have to worry about it invalidating other weapons that have been previously designed or being generally overpowered and giving 1 side a huge advantage(That's actually the point of designing new weapons).

P.S. I'm not very learned in FSO design, but wouldn't it be possible to make the missile do increased damage within a more narrow cone and have secondary projectiles doing less damage in a wider cone?
[19:31] <MatthTheGeek> you all high up on your mointain looking down at everyone who doesn't beam everything on insane blindfolded

 

Offline Enioch

  • 210
  • Alternative History Word Writer
Uh...Spoon? Armor.tbl. Just make the gun do less damage to capital ship armor/increased damage to strikecraft.

*Super-enioch flies away*
'Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent'  -Salvor Hardin, "Foundation"

So don't take a hammer to your computer. ;-)

 

Offline Flak

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It is still pretty 'realistic' by the way, though that don't look like laser at all, it look more like shards of superheated plasma.

 

Offline General Battuta

  • Poe's Law In Action
  • 214
  • i wonder when my postcount will exceed my iq
Uh...Spoon? Armor.tbl. Just make the gun do less damage to capital ship armor/increased damage to strikecraft.

*Super-enioch flies away*

Yeah, this is how the Slammer works, but given that Spoon is a master of armor.tbl he probably already considered this option.

 

Offline Dragon

  • Citation needed
  • 212
  • The sky is the limit.
Not to mention Slammer has homing. This weapon doesn't, rendering it near-useless against fighters, no matter it's power. It makes more sense to try it out as an anti-ship weapon, then it'd only need nerfing the damage.