I had an idea to make damage consistent with turrets like it is for missiles. Instead of having a randomized hit severity, have the severity depend on the ratio between the turrets’ tracking speed and the target’s angular velocity. The higher the ratio, the higher the damage. Damage ranges would be the same, from 0.5x to 3.0x. When the ratio is 1, 0.5x damage is applied, and up to 3.0x for ratios climbing to 5.
Obviously the numbers can be manipulated depending on what the devs would think fair, but this would take a lot of randomness out of the equation and reduce server loads.
It would fundamentally change the way turrets work, which would be absolutely horrible. Long-range damage would effectively drop off a cliff. This would also affect drones. Nope.
Second how well do you actually understand how turrets work?
I’m also going to have to ask that question to @Arthur_Aihaken because if he’s taking the rng out of it and only having it rely on tracking long range wouldn’t fall off a cliff. For example artillery would be doing more damage when used appropriately even beyond first falloff than it is now. ~3x the dps actually.
Now i want to make sure i understand this because you say you want it to be like missiles. If i took you literally i would assume that means they can’t miss at all but i don’t think that’s what you’re saying. Rather i imagine what you mean is if trans =< required tracking you do 3x damage and as you get further away from that you do gradually reduced damage.
Problem is unlike missiles you can get perfect tracking on any ship no matter how small it is or how big your weapons are.
For turrets no matter how small a target is if it’s going slow enough relative to you, you can get perfect tracking.
With missiles if your explosion radios is too big you won’t apply even if the target is holding still.
Why? The “randomness” probably isn’t as much “random” as you think it is. Good pilots can drastically increase their effective damage output by maneuvering clever. The main difference between people who perform badly with turrets and those who perform well with turrets isn’t some RNG, it’s skill.
Game basically rolls a d100 for the most part the higher the number the more damage you deal. However the worse your tracking is the more high numbers count as a miss. This means with poor tracking you can only get low damage rolls and misses with 1 exception. So as an example if the tracking formula says you have a 50% chance to hit any number between 51 and 100 counts as a miss and you can only hit with the lower damaging numbers between 2 and 50 or 3x with a 1
Because If it rolls a 1 you get 3x damage. This means if someone is well under your guns you still have a 1% chance to hit than and when you do you’ll deal 3x damage. So you always have at least 3% of your dps on average.
So if you’re flying perfectly but rngesus says it’s not your day you could just get nothing but grazing. This is why artillery can be so frustrating as you don’t fire a high enough volume to average out meaning your real dps can vary wildly between fights.
Now this was overly simplified the actual calculation used a multi decimal long number between 1 and 0 but yeah.
True fact: You actually have a higher chance of scoring critical (3x) damage the further you go beyond falloff. Your chance of hitting in general goes down, though.
You have the same chance of getting a x3 no matter how far away you are. You simply have a higher likelihood thar any shot that hits is a critical.
For instance when you’re completely out of range or when you have perfect tracking you have a 1% per shot to land a x3. But when you’re beyond max range 100% of so your his will be x3
Wow I didn’t think this idea would be so enraging, I’ll address all of the concerns at once.
Damage falloff can still be a thing, as it makes sense because particles in space will create friction. I have observed that the total randomness of turrets’ damage makes them overall worse than missiles, and making the damage application dependent on tracking would help a lot.
Turrets would still be able to miss, as they do more often than I think they would, if the target is moving faster than the turrets can track. That’s fine, just maneuver so that the angular velocity drops. Also if a target isn’t moving while in combat, it makes sense that incoming attacks would do more damage as it is easier to aim for more sensitive areas and the target deserves it for not moving. If the damage multiplier is a concern, reduce the max multiplier to like 1.5x or 2x.
Not only would this help all turrets, it could help to pacify all those who complain about ship classes like Marauders that can’t move while doing their thing.
This change, with tweaks of course, would make turrets more consistent and worth using and wouldn’t give snipers an unfair advantage.
Um, no complaints on my end… Right now there’s a difference between running drones, turrets and missiles - and I think an overhaul to turrets (as you suggest) would have far-reaching consequences.
I think I don’t undrstand your argument. You acknowledge that reducing your angular velocity improves turret’s hit rate. Therefore your argument appears to be to improve damage when your target is outside of your weapons capabilities?