"Volume of weapon fire" - set as a different type of weapon?

[swizzlewizzle]

So i've noticed that for ships with weapon systems, currently, each weapon system is given a strength portion (defining it's per "shot" damage?) and then it fires it's weapon based on the SFX that are attached.

In this way, if I gave a ship 500x the strength of exactly the same ship (aka, a super Mk2 for example), the ship will still fire the exact same SFX... same number of shots per second, same visual look.. but the shots will be 500x stronger.

Of course, this doesn't really make sense, considering you would imagine a weapon 500x stronger than another would have visual effects much larger/more powerful, or would be shooting a TON more projectiles.

So... is it planned to deal with this in some way in the future?

Otherwise, is the correct way to model stronger weapons, or larger weapon batteries, to make an entirely different weapon system for each # of batteries, weapon strength?

Ex. 5x laser gun, 20x laser gun, 100x laser gun.. 3 different weapon systems called "laser gun" but each with different visuals?

I think this also overlaps with my previous question about multiple points on a ship for firing... if you had 40x fire points on a ship, for example (to visually show that the ship has a large battery of turrets), you would want your "40x laser" weapon to have a ton of projectiles so that the whole battery looks like it's firing.

What are your thoughts on how this should be properly done?

[keith.lamothe]

If you want different visuals you can copy the EntitySystem definition and modify it appropriately (which may involve similarly copying the WeaponType definition, and maybe the Shot's GameEntity definition).


FYI, the strength portion is supposed to be a number between 0 and 1, and if you add up the portions for all the systems under a specific entity the total should be exactly 1.

To get the strength "assigned" to a specific system on a specific ship you multiply the system's portion by the strength per ship of that type.

strength per ship = strength per cap / ships per cap
strength per cap = the global balance_strength_per_cap constant (200) * entity's balance_strength_multiplier (usually 1) * mark level

So for Mk1 fighters: 200 * 1 * 1 / 200 = 1 strength per fighter

A ship's HP is basically strength * the global balance_strength_per_cap constant (100), modified by its durability class. For instance, a fighter has MildTank durability, which multiplies hp by 1.2 and dps by 0.9.

A ship's DPS is basically strength * the global balance_strength_per_cap constant (100) / the global balance_seconds_per_fight constant (30), modified potentially by a ton of things on the entity and the system. Balance-wise basically all a ship's "better than normal" attributes are "paid for" by decreased dps, and all the "worse than normal" attributes are compensated by increased dps.

Then to get the actual damage-per-strength you multiply dps by seconds-per-shot (which itself is the product of a few different things, but you get the idea).

[BadgerBadger]

I think swizzle was asking about the balance_strength_multiplier as "Strength"

[x4000]

From a visual standpoint, you'd want to make new visuals that show more shots as part of a "compound shot."  Otherwise the performance will really tank.  Basically this is going to be having it look like 5 shots in a group are headed toward a target , for instance, rather than one.

Frankly I don't know that even that will work out all that well, but it's certainly possible to do using the modding system as it currently stands.  With things like this we have really strict limits on what is feasible when considering the scale of battles that people are going to be seeing.  Over time those limits will inevitably relax as technology improves and certain inefficiencies in how we have to talk to the unity render pipeline right now go away, but on the sim side, despite that being multithreaded, I think it's also good to be a bit careful about just how many shots are coming out.

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In general I think you're looking to make this game as cinematic as possible, from the thrust of a lot of your various comments over the last while.  And I definitely don't have any beef with that -- that's been a goal of mine, too.  But just bear in mind that we're always favoring gameplay and performance over  cinematics, given the nature of this game, and so we'll never be able to hit the visuals of some of the crazy space battles of smaller games.  Even the "giant" space battles of some of the other large space games are a lot smaller than ours, particularly in the area of automated AI, among other things.  We're pushing the envelope as much as we can in a variety of areas, but there are certain places where we're just going to hit a wall.  The request in this thread smells like it MIGHT be one of those areas, but you won't know until you try.

[BadgerBadger]

One thing that could be considered is to just make the projectile lines "a bit larger/thicker" depending on the amount of damage the shot does.

[x4000]

We could definitely do something like that, although I'm wanting to experiment with some alternative ways of drawing the shots anyhow.  Potentially with the alternative drawing methods we'll see more interesting options open up.

[swizzlewizzle]

Gotcha all sounds good. One of the ways you really noticed the power of golems in aiw1 for example was how many bullets they spewed our. Similarly I think the same needs to be done here for super large ships

[keith.lamothe]

Gotcha all sounds good. One of the ways you really noticed the power of golems in aiw1 for example was how many bullets they spewed our. Similarly I think the same needs to be done here for super large ships

That's all possible here, they just have to have variant systems. That allows them to vary by more than just visuals.

[x4000]

Oh yeah, that's also something that is really a matter of "tuning to taste."  For the really massive and infrequent stuff like golems and spire, having them have a bazillion systems with various types of shots would work perfectly fine in the current system and look great and not overwhelm the CPU or GPU.  It's not something every ship can do, but for certain centerpieces that absolutely can be a thing.

[swizzlewizzle]

Gotcha all sounds good. One of the ways you really noticed the power of golems in aiw1 for example was how many bullets they spewed our. Similarly I think the same needs to be done here for super large ships

That's all possible here, they just have to have variant systems. That allows them to vary by more than just visuals.

Keith by variant systems you mean a separate weapon definition right?

[x4000]

I think that's what he meant, but also I'm pretty sure that having multiple systems would be desirable in this case.

[keith.lamothe]

Keith by variant systems you mean a separate weapon definition right?

Some changes you can achieve through just a new EntitySystem entry. Other things would require an additional new WeaponType entry. And some things would require a new GameEntity entry for the shot itself.

None of which takes much time in the xml, though perhaps we differ on the definition of "much"