Will it be possible to hit enemy targets behind the shield capship by using 'mark as friend' on the capship?

Really like the weapon impact momentum idea, particularly if you introduce several new weapons (and AI) with large momentum effects.

Would also be nice to have some items/tweaks that affect the momentum part of the shot.

I don't even know what to think about this..
i can see f2ps with slave fleets shooting the fuck outta people
i can see slave fleets being destroyed by MF picks in secs
I can see pure death of any slaves without a healer
I can see protector drones being too uber
idk about this change..
I think the dodging of bullets will be fun

I am just waiting for these changes and see what'll happen ~.~

No, my point about them is because previously in a crowded dg you could focus on your one target to keep the charging projectiles away from. When you have 8BGs crossing over you it will be physically impossible to give your thoraxes enough space to charge.

To refer to a few issues in previous posts.



Not true. I'm one of those DMs that drops drones and attracts the agro, flying around dodging the projectiles and lasers (as best I can, suns ftw) and allowing my drones to DPS effectively. While the change doesn't effect the cost of my setup directly, if my drones get hit/destroyed more often, I will have to spend what little money I make on more drones.

As well, if the code that makes it so that drones can only be used if they are equal in tech level or lower than the tech level of your ship, I will ABSOLUTELY have to change my setup. For one, I would have to spend 5+b on a semi-decent aug setup, not to mention the now 3b PC for a Pax that I got in Trade the other day.

Add to that the fact that (as I mentioned before) I make very little money, this will be nearly impossible for me to dish out, especially if I can only use tech 12 drones (I'm using a Pax Celestica, tyvm) to kill things for drops and money that I would sell/use to buy the Pax and the augs.[/quote]




This coming from the guy that says he stopped playing because the game is too easy.

Why only hostile? If you're gonna do this, go whole hog and make the projectiles hit anything that crosses thier path, hostile or friendly. Otherwise it just doesn't make sense...

Can we get more terrain in DGs and such then? Planets and roids to dodge behind?

Slaves, missiles, and fighters will take a big hit with this... They don't dodge, and for the most part go in a straight line at the enemy, which is the same path most projectiles go on. So they now become manueverable envelopers?

Concentrating fire is now going to be nigh impossible... Assuming you have a pack of ai that are clumped together, shooting any _one_ in particular consistantly is going to be nigh impossible... Which means your damage going to be spread around multiple targets... Which means you're fighting against 2-8 times the shield regen, vs. just the normal one previously. This is going to play absolute havoc on aggro control too... It's bad enough drones are uncontrollable and switch targets, but now they're going to be round-robining and splitting fire all over the place... which is going to make the life of a droner more difficult.

As to resists- (Directed at Hal I suppose) That doesn't sound like the way resists currently work... In fact, that sounds like resists are gonna be 1/2ed or worse all the way around from what they are now? An izer's energy resist is currently 55%, so one expects 45 damage per 100 done to him... But what you're saying is that it will be 1/(1+.55) or 64.5 damage per 100 done... The equivelant of 35.5 resist now?

Are you beefing resist augs? Otherwise, the disparity between them and Shield regen augs will just increase, making resists even more undesirable.

Are those ships that are 100% resistant to things now, going to only be 50% resistant with this change? Is there even a way to make something 100% resistant with the formula in place?

There is a difference between resistance augmenters and ship resistances/diffusers. Those bonuses provide a WYSIWYG approach, but resistance augmenters don't - mostly because of the way aug tweaking works.

I have to agree, this is a silly idea, and now your going to make it even harder for the Engineer Class (Drone Masters) like myself and others.
It costs enough to get drones, having to dodge weps fired already at you is ok, even whilst drones are out (which all DM's protect by staying close to them) which are not getting hit cause there is no agro on them during that point, but now your saying if my drones are near me, with this new thing there going to get hit from the stray weapon fire from all, this is not good and a very silly idea. I think your going to find that alot of players will quit or change class to something else. Having a open slather of weapon fire upon everything is just a dumb idea, i think you need to take this out of the game. You say that drones will regen in your ship, what is the time it takes then for the drones to regen, and how do you work out when to redeploy them, not knowing if there regened back to full shields. The other stuff your going to implement into the game sounds ok.
Just get rid of the part that lets weapon fire hit everything in its path.

Another aspect which should be mentioned:

Relative new players - who try to fight AIs in normal w0/w1/w2 gals will have often quite some 'funny' experience:

Assuming PvP rules still apply they will get often shot down as one of their bullets or lasers (from themselves, their drones, slaves,...) will hit a base (in their PvP range) (non-intentionally).
Especially funny it will be if that happens in owned gals and the player is teamed.

- I guess this is one of the designated ways to introduce new players and give intentions for PvP:
Also they will learn much earlier the concepts of "marks".

- probably this will also help against spam from AIs - as the AIs will often hit (non-intentional) team bases or slaves in that gal they'll get oblitareted by retaliation fire - which willl further encourage PvP as I'll get pretty mad when a gal shoots me down (so the bases and drones were aiming for that rag).

Actually I think in such a case - when I get shoot down in a gal by a base of another team trying to shoot an AI - both team should catch full aggro to each other - meaning any base on my team shall try to shoot anything on the other one.
As this will ofc then lead to other people from other teams getting randomly shot and therefor create full aggro onto other teams we'll have an all out war - any team against any other team (including AIs) - very shortly.

This sounds like a great fix to the lacking PvP in Starsonata.
As soon as its implemented it should lead to an all out war of any teams building bases in less than three days!
Very good in this issue is also that there is no way of alliances between teams.
Also it will finally teach players a lesson to think twice about entering a gal in which player bases exists.

See, the fucking problem is you guys are looking at this with your OLD stats.

You keep assuming that the drones will have just as shitty shields, that panthers and BGs will have just as awsome damage, that pulses will have just as powerful RoF, that all ships will be just as slow...

I could go on forever, but i will say this:

Stop...Fucking...Assuming!

Im a capship user, when i come back its going to be very different than the SS im used to.

But it reminds me so much of Escape Velocity.

What this means is that if you have shitty tracking on an excomm, and some of the bullets miss the AI that you targeted, and the ai are clumped together, than that electricity will NOT goto waste and will be used to pummel other AI aswell.

You dont see the benefits because your taking this from an old timers view, this will make it extremely different.

ohhh... yes!

I forgot about FCs -- they and their slaves are huge targets; they will get shot in every second gal for sure (Players attacking AIs, bases attacking AIs) and in case they happen to be in their PvP range the slaves will shoot back!

Oh yes - that will be definitly a lot of fun!

no more "carebeers" in this game - everyone who is moving in a ship or has a base or slaves will know - be ready all time; only built or use worthy stuff!

EDIT:
That will be so much fun - I'll be there for sure if that comes in (mainly for the show so).

Thanks for the support, I think a lot of people don't really understand that the reason this is being done now is because it is something that we wanted to do for a long time. We didn't do it because we knew that we would have to rebalance a ton of stuff to keep the game playable. But now that we have the big rebalance in progress, we are already changing the stats on everything... so we might as well do it with this in mind.

I don't know about anyone else, but one of the things that pisses me off about most MMOs is the pen and paper combat. Rather than aiming your arrow or your magic missile, you shoot it and some random dice determines if it hits based on your stats and the stats of the target. Nice graphics and animations are thrown in to make it look pretty, but on the base of it this combat is really dry, unfun and unskilled. I think the FPS type system we have in SS is really one of the biggest factors in making SS unique.

Also in response to people worrying about accidental PvP - neutral targets won't get drawn into this system, this is primarily to prevent people from flying into other players bullets and making their bases shoot at them.

I assume this is for players and not for AIs?

Ahem.

Since this is a January update and it's cleared to go in next uni, before the actual changes to augmenter stacking, how else are we supposed to look at it?

These changes probably aren't going in without the rest of the rebalance.

Hmm, i wonder...