well, if you want to differentiate the weapon systems a bit more just for immersion reasons, without instantly crashing the server, you could simply change the moment their damage is calculated.
For example:
Laser hits are appllied instantly. Its de facto a beam of light. Then it has to complete its “cycle” before being able to fire again.
Hybrid gun hits are applied at 50% of their cycle, simulating a “heating up” of the projectile, then firing and then “cooling down” the chamber or whatever.
Projectile Weapon hits are applied at the end of their cycle, simulating a “travel time” of the physical projectile
This way you had “simulated” different technologies on a very basic level. And the “tracking” values are simply lore-based. Projectile Weapons are simply more blunt and robust and can be turned around with high acceleration values while Laser Weapons would simply break (or their cystals internal structure, lenses, electronics can’t stand high acceleration whatever…) if turning too fast.
For being vulnerable to smartbombs, I would completely ignore that. First, because projectiles fired from guns are way faster than missiles or drones, so the chances for a smartbomb to actually hit in the tiny timeframe before impact when the projectile is in its range is rather low, plus most projectiles will be hard-covered shells, that can easily fly through a rather moderate damage explosion. Since there is no air-pressure in space which could alter the projectiles course, the only damage remains the direct impact on the bullets material, and that will not have any effect until the bullet actually hits. So yeah, the would be useless against projectile weapons, as they probably would be in real life if we could build them.
actually, I’m not a fan of this approach at all. I want this to be a real, noticeable gameplay effect, and playing around with cycle times and when the damage tick occurs is just cosmetic make-believe. What I want is to add a new dimension to combat in space, where projectiles can be dodged, distance and speed matters, and smaller ships have greater outplay potential against ships above their size. That is the vision of what I believe implementing actual projectiles with travel time will bring.
making projectile guns “real projectiles”… fine in theory, in the game it would probably put more strain on the server than it would add benefits
If It’s not a GPU FX, that can be turned off, that it’s real physycs and must be calculated on the server. Maybe could try a full simulation in sone Arena rooms for fun. Environmental effects could burn up your projectiles or render a Laser beam a lazor saber… and we would have mechatrons with Nintendo Power gloves hacked like it’s EVE 1984…
Then the server technicians could make the calculations of how much electricity, abdwidth, and coolant that one experiment would cost in real money, and come up with a number… maybe try a DX9 version first…
Why in Space Projectiles should have a fall-off??? I can think of Solar Winds and magnetic
forces, but we aren’t sniping the black death or the planet of the Rebel Alliance either…
At those scales you would encounter magnetic and atmospheric forces that could disintegrate a normal projectile…
Idk…
If there is some immediate benefit I don’t see…
or it it a further way to try and nerf fall-off of projectiles only…
Or it’s a way to approach environments in a more -mature way…
All that is already reflected in the damage formula (tracking, optimal, falloff…). And it actually works pretty well for the different weapon systems. Projectile Weapons already have a high loss of applied damage at long ranges (which means, you actually DO dodge lots of projectiles). On the contrary, Artillery cannons have a good range, but their chance to hit at all against a moving target is very low in comparison, so again, in a small, fast-moving ship your chances are high to take little to no damage from Artillery guns at all (if you know how to fly).
The effect you envision is proabably by far not high enough to make up for the increase in calculations you would burden on the server during fights.
For the most part, it works. And I do want to point out that in most cases, it works more or less like you’d expect. I don’t mean to come off like I absolutely hate the current implementation, it’s still enjoyable for me. But it’s not accurate. I’ve setup a scenario where the flaw in the system is evident:
In a projectile based system, this shouldn’t be happening. Small nimble ships like that shouldn’t even be grazed at these distances, but in EVE, they become even easier to hit instead. This is the underlying paradox of the current implementation.
We can not ultimately tell, until we actually had a chance to test this. But I think the potential is enormous. If we couple that with quality of life improvements to navigation, like for example holding down a button and the ship follows your cursor, then this would be so good, I think everyone would love it. You could actually fight people like you’re playing X4 or Elite Dangerous, dodging and weaving around their turret fire, trying to outmaneuver them, it would be sick. I think that longterm, it would be a massive benefit to the game.
The question we all dread of course, is the server. And honestly, how long do our developers want to be held back by ancient code and inadequate server performance? Time doesn’t stand still, and with technology advancing in every other field, CCP, or Fenris Creations as they are now known, will have to tackle these limitations at some point, because they can’t let these things hinder them forever. And besides, it already works fine with missiles, so it can’t be that much of a crushing burden on the server, can it?
A lot of this hinges on how much different do FC want Eve to be after 2 decades. We have seen considerable change in those 20+ years but how limiting is the core gameplan and gamestyle of Eve itself? How much change do players want, envision, and of course how much financially is good for FC in the long run? Both change and stagnation can be killers. Too much change and you drive away core playerbases, too much stagnation and you die by entropy and atrophy.
IMO, the real question isn’t whether your idea has merit or even whether it could be implemented, but whether it is worth it to FC, financially, for Eve’s future to change or not.
Honestly, I like the theory behind your idea, yet I stop there, believing such a sweeping change would just confuse players and disrupt the status quo too much for the benefit it would provide. Seeing as you’re taking a fully functional weapon system, one of the original 4 in-game, and drastically overhauling it to be so terribly different than anything else, potentially destroying a lot of trained skill points in most people’s skill queues in the process.
That being said, I still like your passion and arguments made on your change’s behalf.
yeah I get what you mean, totally. Your example with the Naga is just a representation of the pretty “simple” EVE targeting formula that assumes that the computing power of the “tracking system” is pretty high (actually following the movement of an opponent in realtime), but the physical limitation of the turrets “mass” makes it hard for them to follow close-by targets while they can easily “track” even small targets at long range because the turret on the ship doesn’t need to move much to follow whatever movement a ship does at this range.
I think a proper test would be to implement a new weapon system that is
very rare (some exotic faction like the Deathless, would even fit with their lore a bit)
very exclusive (only fittable on very few selected ships)
uses only 1 turret (no ungrouping possible, very few actual “projectiles” to calculate)
And then release it on the live server, monitoring how it works, how people will try to max-out its performance or even abuse the technology (and bet on it, they will try), and monitor the effects on server performance. And then over the next months of course, tweak and re-balance it until it fits somehow into the weapon and ship meta. I am pretty sure thats doable, because you can tweak the base ships hull values and boni in addtion to that of the weapon system, so there are a lot of screws to adjust.
What I won’t do is try to outright rework the existing Projectile or Hybrid weapons before I have hard data of such a test and how it would probably work out.
