Breaching the Core Full Mod Discussion

[Hammish]

Tossing up a link to BTC 0.9.1.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vejqnrbpfc4cg2e/btc091.zip

Experimental build, runs on VE 0.9.6.  New trail effects (about half-done now, I'm having fun with these.  The rapid-fire weapons and the gauss rifle in particular look kinda cool IMO), new weapon behavior (LRMs now take time to arm and accelerate, some balance tweaking done), and a bit of a showing of the new skill trees!  (Just the combat tree is in for now, the piloting, engineering and social trees will be coming soon.)  I'll be tinkering with the costs and such over the next week or so as well, but at least folk can see the graphics and general gist right now. 

Also, if you make a character using the Cheater profile, you can try out the Dionysus gunship far more easily now.  It's a bit OP for a new character but it might be fun to test and I think the look came out nicely for now.  (Soon the model will be updated to take the missile racks off)  Also also, pay no attention to the capital-class weaponry skill, that's... top secret clearance.  (Fourth weapon class coming soon, suitable for the largest hulls or specific refits, always a spinal mount)

[Lurler]

Can you post some screenshots?

[Hammish]

Here's the Dionysus Gunship with the under-wing guns.


New tech tree for Combat, slowly evolving.  The icons are currently boring, the spice for them is forthcoming (I just wanted to push the release, call me impatient.)


New Gauss shot with trail.  I'd like to add more of a distortion effect but it feels right for now.  Very solid, like a heavy sniper shot in space.


Energy torpedo.  It pulses, man, LIKE A LIVING THING.  Or just a cheap rip-off of a photon torp.

Also, BTC0.92 should be uploaded later today, a nasty bug preventing conversations from starting was pointed out to me almost instantly and I needed to track down the cause.  All fixed now in new version, should be backward-compatible with BTC0.91.  To make up for my gross oversight it I'll toss in the work I've been doing on the Artemis (Fang) and Poseidon (Crab). 

[Lurler]

Wow, that's some massive changes! I also really like the way you've done ship equipment. Do you mind if we steal the idea?

[Hammish]

By all means.   I'd even offer up my layered base graphic files, but I did mine in a lower resolution from the default icons to maintain text look, if you mean the inventory icons.

[Hammish]

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wi0fqygguhhnpnn/btc092.zip

Link for BTC 0.92, will also update the front page.  Should be fully stable now that VE updated to a stable build as well.  Anyone who tries it, feel free to leave feedback on whatcha think (within the limited scope of what I'm trying to show off, heh.)  And above all else... enjoy being a space hobo.

[Hecter94]

Those "Spinal Mount" superweapons are scaring me a little, they seem terrifying.

[Hammish]

They'll have definite drawbacks, though.  Spinal mount means it has no twist arc, so you have to align the hull, and most of the ships (all but one) able to mount it will be by nature quite slow.  I also plan to have them with a long windup and very long cooldown, at least 60 seconds minus skills, and they will have severe ammo limitations.

The one exception to this will be the Capital refit version of the Fang hull; it's fairly slow for a ship of it's size/frailty but it will have the ability to mount a single spinal mount weapon that looks like it's built into the hull.  No backup weapons, either, so bring friends to protect you.

In short, as the name suggests, they won't be menacing smaller stuff but designed for siege warfare.

[Hecter94]

They'll have definite drawbacks, though.  Spinal mount means it has no twist arc, so you have to align the hull, and most of the ships (all but one) able to mount it will be by nature quite slow.  I also plan to have them with a long windup and very long cooldown, at least 60 seconds minus skills, and they will have severe ammo limitations.

The one exception to this will be the Capital refit version of the Fang hull; it's fairly slow for a ship of it's size/frailty but it will have the ability to mount a single spinal mount weapon that looks like it's built into the hull.  No backup weapons, either, so bring friends to protect you.

In short, as the name suggests, they won't be menacing smaller stuff but designed for siege warfare.

I know you wouldn't make them OP, but they still seem somewhat menacing. I imagine getting hit with one would be pretty painful.
What purpose do you seem them as serving by the way? Since most ships in the game should be fast enough to dodge them, are they primarily for use against structures?

That seems like a pretty narrow avenue of usefulness.

[Hammish]

Like any size upgrade in the mod, (medium to large, for example), they offer a higher alpha strike in exchange for overall usability.  I can be something of a history buff and to me it's like comparing WW2 stuff, with a German 88mm HV against a Russian 122mm, or an American 105mm as the 'middle of the road'; the 88 in general made a smaller hole but it could be reloaded more quickly, had a very high muzzle velocity and was very accurate.  The 122 was wildly inaccurate at longer ranges but very, very scary if the enemy knew it had a round ready.

In actual VE terms, yes, the major use would be against structures (which are starting to appear more now in the base game) and possibly against some of the larger cruiser hulls.  The Hammer, as an example, isn't exactly known for being able to get out of the way of things quickly.   By the same token, you really have to bring out the big guns with the high alpha to deal with the larger ships, because of the way armor functions in the game as a flat damage reduction; even in VE vanilla a Hammer hull can reach around 32 armor with just skills, if I remember the math right.  A MG would never be able to hurt them, and even rotary-20 would be reduced to 8 damage a shot.  (You could load 4x rotary-20s and literally empty the entire clip for each into a Hammer... and you wouldn't have the ammunition to kill it if you landed every single shot, heh.)

That said, ships like the Fang capital version won't really have a use outside of multiplayer, where you could have a buddy watching over you.  They really will be that narrowly-defined and specialized.  Which is probably why they aren't a super-high priority for me.

[Hecter94]

I suppose once the game gets a bit more fleshed out and we start seeing the multiplayer aspect being used more often, the usefulness of them would continue to rise.

As far as the history buff goes, I'd compare it more to the Sherman, which could either mount a 76mm main gun.
Fairly good reload, accurate and decent damage....or the 105mm Howitzer, which was inaccurate, slow to reload or massively powerful.
Or the Hetzer, which could either mount an 88 or a 155, same deal.

Buuuuut since VE doesn't really have many targets that can really stand up to the level of damage the base lvl3 guns can dish out, I was simply curious what exactly were it's targets.

[Hammish]

Ah, that's part of the equation I forgot to mention as well, I suppose.  Survivability is a bit higher in BTC as well; ships have a bit more hull and a bit more innate armor at higher marks on ships, and the DPS increase from gun size is substantially less.

For example, the base Hammer (as the beefy ship) in vanilla is 6000 hull at 15 armor; in BTC with my 'planned out' spreadsheet it starts at 8000/16 and if you upgrade it to experimental it becomes 12000/32.  For weapons in vanilla, the general math seemed to be 100%/200%/300% DPS.  In BTC the current guideline I'm using is 100%/150%/225% on overall DPS, but the larger guns tend to have a lot more damage in exchange for a lot slower reloads.

Example of my burst rifle thingy:
Small: 3x shots at 48 damage each, 0.8s reload, 180 DPS
Medium: 6x shots at 72 each, 1.6s reload, 270 DPS
Large: 9x shots at 144 each, 3.2s reload, 337.50 DPS

By comparison, the Rotary AC in mine keeps a 0.1s reload at all tiers, but the damage just goes from 20 to 30 to 45.  It's 450 DPS at large size, but at the same time utterly useless against anything with thick armor.

And yes, standard AP-loading guns versus HE howis is another exceptional metaphor.   Though, you know, now I kinda want to make a Crocodile... if I could figure out how to explain away Space Flamethrowers.

[Hecter94]

Ah, that's part of the equation I forgot to mention as well, I suppose.  Survivability is a bit higher in BTC as well; ships have a bit more hull and a bit more innate armor at higher marks on ships, and the DPS increase from gun size is substantially less.

For example, the base Hammer (as the beefy ship) in vanilla is 6000 hull at 15 armor; in BTC with my 'planned out' spreadsheet it starts at 8000/16 and if you upgrade it to experimental it becomes 12000/32.  For weapons in vanilla, the general math seemed to be 100%/200%/300% DPS.  In BTC the current guideline I'm using is 100%/150%/225% on overall DPS, but the larger guns tend to have a lot more damage in exchange for a lot slower reloads.

Example of my burst rifle thingy:
Small: 3x shots at 48 damage each, 0.8s reload, 180 DPS
Medium: 6x shots at 72 each, 1.6s reload, 270 DPS
Large: 9x shots at 144 each, 3.2s reload, 337.50 DPS

By comparison, the Rotary AC in mine keeps a 0.1s reload at all tiers, but the damage just goes from 20 to 30 to 45.  It's 450 DPS at large size, but at the same time utterly useless against anything with thick armor.

Oh, I never noticed that.
Likely because I primarily use missile weapons, which....given their high damage and low fire rate seem to not be affected by armor as much as ballistic weapons.
Of course, I imagine high alpha guns like the spinal mounted ones would be affected even less.

And yes, standard AP-loading guns versus HE howis is another exceptional metaphor.   Though, you know, now I kinda want to make a Crocodile... if I could figure out how to explain away Space Flamethrowers.

An illegally modified plasma gun with the magnetic field restrictions removed?
Causing the high density plasma to simply spew out of the front of the ship without being contained in a magnetic field?

"An experimental version of the plasma cannon that has had the safety magnetic field removed, this all but eliminates the lengthy charge time of the plasma cannon and causes the high-density plasma to simply eject from the muzzle of the weapon in a large arc in front of the ship, causing massive damage to anything unfortunate to be caught within it. The downside is the exceptionally low range as the plasma quickly disperses to a non-lethal level. The unique flame effect from the weapon has earned it the nickname "Flamethrower" as it resembles a primitive human weapon of the same name"

[Hammish]

... Yeah, okay, I might make a space flamethrower now.

And yes, the higher the raw damage of a given shot, the less effective the armor is since it's a flat per-damage reduction.  Or in the case of beam weapons, I -think- it's reduction per second, so a laser that did 60 damage over one second would hit for 40 over a second versus 20 armor.  I like that it provides an interesting trade-off for the multi-shot weapons, though.  Even missile ones, like the MLRS, where you get less damage vs. armor (at least slightly) in exchange for being harder to shoot down/dodge in general.  (You don't have to tag most missile weapons for long with a beam laser, but it's harder to zap 3-9 rockets headed in than one big missile)

But yeah, cracking high armor would be a big use.  The only really effect defense against it would be A) Don't get hit, B) Wait for them to shoot it and warp forward out of the blast, or C) Mount one of the low-absorb insane-strength shields in the mod (integrity field).  They only absorb 20-50% of incoming damage so a lot will get through but they have an almost unbreachable total strength, and so act as almost a percentage-based armor instead of a shield that acts as a buffer before the hull takes full damage.  The actual math that I have in right now has four varieties:  500 max shield but it absorbs 100%, 1000 max shield but it only absorbs 80% (20% blowthrough), 10,000 max shield but only 20% absorb (80% blowthrough) or the Adaptive Shield that has a very low strength, high power draw, but is still 100% absorb and regenerates constantly even while being hit.  (The last one is designed to be an endgame tech and a damned good fighter/frig shield, able to absorb a hit here and there as you dodge fire and maintain strength without requiring full disengagement.

[Hammish]

Screenshot of the new Piloting tree:



First tree is the 'engines' tree, focuses on one of three paths: equipment unlocks, maneuvering, or raw/cruise speed and 'specials'.  The second tree is the new hull tree; the weight classes are corvettes (previously the frigates), frigates (mid-size) and cruisers (the slow beasts like before).  Each has a basic, advanced and elite category to them with basic and advanced more or less corresponding to the old 'light/heavy' split.  Ergo, for the variants I did on the Banshee hull:

Athena C - No requirements since it's the civilian version.
Athena Mk I - Basic Corvettes
Athena Mk IIB or Mk IIE - Advanced Corvettes
Athena X Experimental - Elite Corvettes.

High performance ships like the bomber (Fang) and gunship have no civilian model, so they simply start out requiring Advanced Corvettes.
It should also be noted that when I release BTC 0.95, there will only be 3 frigates (miner, the multi-purpose Orca refit, and the tanky-as-hell Crab refit) and only one cruiser.  Still, frigates open at level 5 and cruisers at 10, so people wanting to fly larger boats won't have to wait nearly as long in the scheme of things, though as one might expect the cruiser you can fly at level 10 isn't on the same level as a Hammer or Deathbringer in vanilla.

This also provides for a natural level of hull unlock progress.  Level 1 is basic corvs, 5 is basic frigs, 10 is basic cruisers, 15 is adv corvs, 20 is adv frigs, 25 is adv cruisers, 30 is elite corvs, 35 is elite frigs, 40 is elite cruisers.