Missile balance and point defense thread.

So the way I see it point defense is not currently functional and missiles need a good hard pass over with the balancing wand.

I made a platform of 20 gatling turrets, and fired missiles at them, not a single missile was shot down, and this was one missile at a time, in a combat situation it would be more then one.

This means that larger ships will always take far more expensive and time consuming to repair damage then they are worth having even in small engagements.

Compound the fact that I believe missiles need to be split into groups such as rockets, light missiles and torpedos, with only the latter being able to do any real damage to large ship heavy armor, and you see how the game could be better off.

Rockets: what we have now, cheap, fast, but a far lower yield, good for a keep terror weapon against weak targets or ambushes.

Light missiles: A mid size weapon, not so cheap, slower then rockets by far, with tracking and a medium yield. Perfect for fighter to fighter combat but ineffective against large ship armor and only mildly effective against common exposed components such as turrets and engines.

Torpedos: Slow, expensive but packs the punch needed to make a real impression on a large ship, perfect for blasting a hole in something big but useless in fighter to fighter combat and to expensive to use on weak enemies, and far to big to carry large numbers on a fast attack craft.

Add in some ECM or jammers for fighters and you see how it all balances out.
This should prolong combat and make building large ships worth it, the longer you play, the more you do, the safer and more powerful on the server you will be.

 

Current 200mm missiles are what's used on the modern day MLRS, one hit naturally does heavy damage. Light missiles should be smaller than what we have now, like 57mm or 70mm hydra rockets, but more of them could be carried.

 

That makes sense from a realistic point of view, but I feel we can't focus on reality to such and extent we forget about gameplay, we need some balancing work here.
There is a great deal that needs attention to make the game not just cool, but playable both in single player and multi-player. The time taken to build and the time taken to destroy the same thing are very at odds, it's better to invest in smaller creations as of a minimalist design then it is to make something large and effective, because the resource loss would be far to much otherwise.

Combat in the game is stunted by the fact that it is to easy to apply damage and takes to long to rebuild or repair, leaving people unwilling to play in any competitive way, or to risk any sort of damage at all with possible future AI or the existing random hostile ships that float by.
We need to extend combat time, increase the tactical mechanics of the game, and overall reduce the tedium that combat would bring. This is about game balance, not realism, we need to respect reality to an extent but to much of one thing will make a game unbalanced.

I understand the current military weapons and how unrealistic my above posts is, but at some point you have to call it, and use classic game mechanics to level the playing field, otherwise we all know it will make people unhappy and they will post there feelings in a angry and hash manner.
The three tier system I suggested, I believes solves this issues, after that it's all numbers and polish.

 

If you think changing rockets will help then you've obviously not seen ramming or projectile attacks

Try my ship and see if you still think changing rockets will help

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=346294162&searchtext=

 

Simple rocks are dangerous espessially against large stations, but not universal - hard to recharge, to target mobile targets, affected by gravity, high spread and can be affected by 'floating objects limit'/cleanup scripts.

I agree with lostami that we need working point defense and missile balancing. But I imagine it in a bit different way.
For example PD can be implemented as alternate type of rounds (completely universal weapons will be disbalancing). Missiles should be all of one size as well, but be separated into PD type (for example they blow up near enemy missiles and disable bunch of them simultaneously, same might work against rocks), unguided type (what we have now) and homing type (lower damage, homing, higher range). Also presence of homing missiles means that small ships will require some kind of counter (or decoy) for missiles.

 

What we have now is a MRLS-sized, light missile-yield, basically a short range WWII Katyusha rocket. Low end boomstuff, really.

 

I've always felt damage is way over the top in Space Engineers, missiles especially and doubly so when they are low power requirements, AI controlled turrets.

We modders can actually make most of what you describe on the missile front, but of course there are no agreed standards to work to. Even between the build crowds there doesn't seem to be much of an agreement... many survival players asking for modded weapons etc see only the materials costs as the balancing issue, whereas the creative crowd think little of the materials but rather size etc.

The big problem is in fact Point Defence as the original poster said. I spend a LONG time trying to come up with a decent PD system but to no effect. My plan was to make an extremely high projectile speed and rate of fire at the expense of damage (i.e. it would do very little to players or ships). The problem is even with a huge projectile speed, the turrets are lucky if they hit 1 in 4 from good angles. The tracking time is part of the problem which might possibly be changable now that they've added rotation speed modding to turrets.

To really come up with a proper PD system I think we'd need a few things...

- Extremely fast reaction times on the PD Turret to start shooting in good time
- Turrets to have Space Invaders training (shoot where it's going to be not where it is!)
- Missile hitpoints rather than just safe/destroyed - this would allow for heavier missiles to still stand a chance
- Ability to have turrets hard-coded to only fire at missiles, nothing else

But to be fair on missile users there needs to be some holes in the system too, which are actually easy enough to introduce...

- Reload times after a magazine is expended to provide 'holes' in the flak screen
- Limited angles so a vessel will often have blind spots (this is now possible!)

 

You can't be serious about current missiles dong too much damage, you just need some heavy armor. Light armror in game is only there for structural support. The've only got the thickness of a car door panel.

 

Gatlings may be less effective against missiles, but first of all, were they powered? Were they set to be an enemy? otherwise they won't fire on missiles.

Past that, i think that gatlings are currently way OP, they can destroy a fighter instantly and drill a tiny hole straight thru a cockpit, gatlings should not be able to prioritise parts unless they can be seen.

+1 for the new missile idea tho

 

I agree, the defense turrets are simply NOT EFFECTIVE.

The missile turrets are acceptable I think, from the perspective of slinging high damage at large+slow targets. They need to be better at leading the target.

The gatlings are just not getting it done. They NEED to be better at leading the target. They are not effective point defense, the bullets travel too slowly, easily run out of ammo by just dancing around in front of it for a while. And if you sling an armored torp bomb, they don't do enough damage to stop it. (assuming it's going slowly enough that they hit it).

There's a million threads on here asking for laser point defense. Something that is 100% accurate, powerful enough to take down missiles, and does not run out of ammo. And I agree with every one of them. Approaching something which has laser defense SHOULD require an armored craft.

Let the lasers worry about the fast+agile things, rockets for incoming armor, and gatlings as the in-between moderate damage deterrent.

 

I see a big issue with defense, because this is the game-breaking point for long term multiplayer persistent game. You can not protect (or at least make an effort toward protecting) your stuff when your offline.

I also wrote about this issue in my suggestions on multiplayer: https://forums.keenswh.com/post/multiplayer-game-flow-evolution-7271423

But modding the space suit speed would also help enourmosly to be able to defend the base. Limit the acceleration rate to much lower value when getting above 10-15 m/s.. so you cant just roam around with space suits at max speed so easily and you cant dodge the gattlings. This would be an incentive to at least try to build a ship to attack a base. And then we can talk about defense balances and defense systems to counter all kinds of exploits, decoy ships, ramming ships etc.

And for meaningful defense systems I try to brainstorm something: We need some kind of area denial system to make protective zones around bases. Especially against space suits and smaller targets. I know force fields and shield are a no go for spe, because that would look odd in the design. But again, there are technologies even accessible in real life which use some kind of energy beam (not laser) to paint an area. So I would imagine something, like a microwave or IR projector which can target a volume and not just a beam, and anything entering into the field of projection would get damage. And closer to the source of energy the bigger the damage. The base system could look like a reflector lamp with automated targeting mechanism. And when it senses something it targets and paint it with energy. (but it is not a laser BEAM! It has a few degrees of dispersion, so it behaves like normal light and can catch stuff which is not in the center point of the reticule as well)

 

the best defense is simply to be very hidden, far away from the others. and set up an outer perimeter defense.

 

Ok, but then whats the point of the game? You can also play then offline in creative, and I guarantee that noone will ever find you. Thats the best defense. Or you can even exit space engineers and turn off the pc... thats extra safe

 

The last MP server I was on was before the explore update. The asteroid belt was definitely a suicidal place to leave anything.. I found some satisfaction in remaining hidden, only sending out things to gather ore and returning. Sometimes raiding someone else's stuff that I found. 2 clans did have a melee but they seem few and far between.

 

I think that #1 MP servers need a reason to exist, because currently you can get everything you need from a single asteroid and never have contact with more than one or two players. MP servers first of all, need better optimising, second, a space station or colony that will destroy you if you attack it, with landing and takeoff permissions, third, they REALLY really need to make the ores more scarce, no trading going on anywhere I've played(But I don't MP much cause I have a sucky comp), fourth, there has to be a better system of connecting to servers than now, it takes like ten minutes min to download a map, It downloads everything at once, I think it should be a chunk LOS based system.



Sorry if I got too off topic

 

Are gats actually that bad at stopping missiles? Between decoys and large numbers of gats for small ship surface area I rarely take missile damage when tangling with modded cargo ships with large missile turret compliments.

I think a bigger problem is that with 800 meter of range, and high camera zoom it's possible to sit at 850 m and safely pick off turrets with gattling guns on fighters without any real concern.

 

That is true, but back to the most important parts, The fact that gats are extremely accurate against fighters, but miss most missiles. My heavy armour fighter has had its cockpit shot out, I looked at the wreck, and the hole was barely big enough to see, let alone fire several shots thru. Turrets need a range extension, and a accuracy nerf. What kind of gunner on a battleship or a helicopter can punch a hole in a tin can from a half kilometre, hmm?

 

Okay that was sort of rude the way you put that.
But regardless, I am very serious, I have seen what a rocket does to heavy armor, not to mention how fast you can fire them, and how easily you can hit a large target with them, add to the mix that point defense is basically none existent

Currently it is my opinion, that they are to powerful against large ship heavy armor, I believe they should have some effect on light armor of large ships but not much or at all on large ship heavy armor.

Balancing has to be done with material costs, time to produce, effectiveness, and purpose.
The current missiles are cheap, fast, high yield, all purpose and indestructible, leaving no method of defense and an overwhelming ability to punch right through any target regardless of it's size or armor.
While heavy armor does hold out better, it is not by much, leading to low combat times with large ships being shredded with relative impunity by small craft, and with no reasonable or effective counter, as all weapons have the same max range of 800 this means you can duck in, fire and duck out before the first enemy munitions even get close to you, but your missile is already on the way and there is no stopping it.
This thread is about balance, not realism. As of right now though, combat times are short, missiles are king, and defense means hid, build small, don't engage in combat at all.

 

Yes, Missiles are extremely cheap, Fire way too fast, and yet turrets can't hit them but they can punch out the cockpit of a ship from under 3 blocks of light armour, they shouldn't even be able to know where the cockpit is!

 

I dont find missiles to be op at all. They are fairly expensive and arent nearly as devastating to a ship as space nuke containers. Realistically, big ships shouldnt be on the front lines unless you are expecting to lose them. Thats what fighters are for. Theres a reason our aircraft carriers hang back.

 

I ask you this, what server have you played on where you have enough people with you, on your team, at a time, that you can support a fighter wing in combat? Gatlings easily mow down stone storage containers of death, Plus, all you ever seem to need is all on ONE asteroid, No supply and demand system at all.

 

Moving or holding still your ship is a target Scorpion, you say to keep them off the front line, in a third dimensional combat area like space, there is no front line they will simply go where it is docked and shoot it with missiles there. Your stations point defense systems will be just as ineffective as your ships and it will end the same way.
Honestly it's frustrating to see so many people who don't see this issue the same way as I do, especially when to me it all seems so clear, and easily understood.
But that is why we are human after all, and while I can respect others have opinions it does not mean I agree with any of them. Same goes for your view of my opinion I suppose.

 

Ummm, you can easily make an ore bomb that is immune to gattling turrets for long enough to deliver the payload.

 

I have. Just two fighters are pretty deadly when used correctly. You wont be decimating entire capital ships, but if your plan is to cause damage and get out, its pretty simple. Damage means your enemy is spending time and resource repairing things instead of building up a larger fleet.

On the storage container nuke problem, a tactic we have often used is to fly two missiles in tight formation. The first missile is a heavy armor missile full of decoy blocks, the second is the nuke. The turrets aim at the decoy, buying enough time to get the nuke in.

It isnt about moving vs holding a ship. You could be off doing doughnuts in space for all I care, just dont transmit your location for the entire universe to see. I play in a 100x100km world and can honestly say that I have spent countless hours scouting and havent found ANYTHING. And I am scouting in an intelligent fashion (putting up GPS coords for areas searched). Keep your big ships back when on the offensive unless you want to lose a lot of hardware and keep those antennas off
EDIT: sorry, should have mentioned... our world has around 10 active players.

 

I'm sorry but I disagree, you telling me that the best way to deal with the balance issues is to simply hide or avoid combat, where my entire topic is about once combat begins, it always tilts overwhelmingly in the missiles favor.
Yes you can hide or stay away from combat, but that does not deal with the issues I am trying to bring to the front of this discussion, I am saying they do to much damage to easily and to quickly with no counter or defense against them. There not balanced, and this leads to people avoiding larger creations, avoiding combat, and avoiding each other.
A large ship should be able to take far more of a beating, it should be worth the effort to create, and it should not be able to be overwhelmed so easily, defense has been skipped over in the balancing, in favor of just being able to destroy things.
In a game where everything is in favor of the attacker there will not be any balance, people will simply build crude simple damage boats, it makes the engineering aspect of the game pointless, cockpit, weapons reactors, done, simply have more fire power and you win, and even if you lose it costs you far less then the person who put time into there creation. Large ships are nothing but time sinks and target practice.
There is no engagement where a large ship would be worth all the damage it would take.
holding back a massive capital ship because your worried a fighter or two can overwhelm it's defenses, and do massive amounts of damage before you swat them or they pull away to get more missiles is damaging to the whole mechanic of combat.
A fly should not be able to hurt an elephant, this is a game, we can't ignore the issues by hiding in deep space and refusing to use the very things we build because a gnat is more dangerous then a lion.

 

Meh. Don't agree with this at all. If anything well designed capships can absorb too much damage from 200mm missiles and heavy guns.

Heavy armor skeleton with Spaced heavy armor sections interlaced between light armor makes a ship hull more or less invulnerable to 200mm missile bombardment. Most of the damage is going to be to steel components, which are trivially cheap and superficial.

As long as the important guts are outside of the rocket blast volume it takes a huge number of missiles to punch through spaced armor. Large gattling gun arrays are actually better for cutting into hulls, and doubly better for sniping off turrets and important bits.

I have several heavy fighter designs that can shrug off multiple 200mm hits without catastrophic damage because they use space pods to detonate the missiles away from anything important.

In SE, volume and distribution are your best protection and that means using heavy armor strategically to protect the bits close in, and using light armor to buy you volume.

I've never see one of these so called "flimsy" capital ships built by anyone, frigate size gunboats aside. If anything most players design their own torpedoes and ore bombs precisely because missiles are just too damn weak against cap-ships.

 

The answer is actually pretty simple. In game missiles, though currently reported as 200mm are functionally a lot similar to smaller rockets as someone mentioned. An easier solution to the PD dilemma and the rocket range dilemma is to add balanced cannon to the game, with respectable ranges. Explosive rockets in-game seem silly to me anyway since it'd be more effective to load those 200mm up with propellant and mass to make the most effective kinetic penetrator possible. But again the whole rocket and PD debate is moot if cannon are introduced, for several reasons.
A: The cannon rounds don't carry propellant, all of their velocity is achieved up front and so would be more effective at range. (speed of projectile)
B: PD is worthless against cannon as the PD could not impart a velocity change which could appreciably deflect a cannon round due to the difference in mass.
C: the rockets are objects, with physics in game, a cannon round would not need physics, a simple ray trace would suffice (adjusted for time to target), saving on processing in large engagements and allowing the projectile to have an in-game range limited only by the loaded distance. This could quite likely add emergent gameplay by pushing large ship engagements to beyond LOS ranges.

Rockets would then be relegated to a supporting weapon system for chewing up lightly armored targets or exploiting gaps in enemy defenses as the cannon took over as the primary weapon system. An explosive rocket makes sense in that role.

There are several excellent cannon mods on the workshop now to include Keen's own Sniper mod. I trust that sooner or later Keen will refine and balance several of them for inclusion into the vanilla game.

 

I think you are misreading me. I'm not saying to avoid combat at all. I'm suggesting you keep your carriers and capital ships out of combat whenever possible. I dont put heavy armor on any of my fighters because I am expecting to lose them. I keep them light nimble, and cheap. If you want to get into capital ship combat you should consider adding a LOT more heavy armor. This game isnt Star Wars with the handwavium bubble shields, ships in combat will be taking damage IMMEDIATELY.

As I stated earlier, pvp in survival mode is about mitigating losses and applying tactical combat strategies. You wouldnt send in an aircraft carrier to an enemy port to bombard it. Instead, you would keep the carrier somewhere safe while the fighters or light ships do their job.

Check out the Ticonderoga(CV-14) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Ticonderoga_(CV-14) or the USS Laffey https://www.patriotspoint.org/news_events/uss-laffey-attacked-65-years-ago-today/

 

I think, that this is going to be unbalanced no matter how we cut it, cut the missile strength, and they are useless, increase the turret tracking speed, and fighters are guaranteed dead, increase turret targeting on missiles only, then few will ever get thru, increase armour strength, would null designs all over the workshop.
There will always be an unbalanced part to everything but particle physics

 

Funny tidbit: there was a special on a US destroyer making gunruns at an obsolete hull that was being scuttled. They made a pass with their CIWS and had to do it by hand targeting because the automatics couldn't figure out how to shoot properly at something as big as a ship and started bugging out.

Just make gattlings and other PD-oriented turrets spread really bad against ships and (possibly also, but to a lesser extent) fighters while having an extremely small spread radius against rockets and missiles.

I'd also like to see a "bullet drop" on gattling-style weapons instead of your typical "hit everything but the senter of the target" approach because those bullets are being flung out of a spinning barrel array and are themselves most likely spun by rifling, actually the bullet spin wouldn't matter since there's no atmo to impart rotational drift on the round, BUT those spinning barrels are going to create a fair bit of drift- futhermore, I'd like to see gatts push towards ~100 RPM like they're supposed to, all we have right now are fancy-dancy machine guns (then again, barrel heating in a vacuum would drive fire rates lower).