Slowhands wrote:
I'm reading your conversation with wikipedia open...

lol me too, I might actually learn something listening to these two Nerdalia ambassadors

well teh cranial capacity on those Horatians... I'm jus sayin



Nerds much?



as long as they don't say "WE COME FROM FRANCE WE COME FROM FRANCE"

Note the new camouflage capabilities of the Sophon ships (chameleon icon) and the short circuit (lightning icon) which seems to be a melee weapon.



http://i.imgur.com/UAsu9.jpg

Raptor wrote:
In Melee we can be sure that at least 2 types of weapons can be fired: http://i.imgur.com/Dnn3w.jpg In this case missiles and kinetic weapons. I think we haven't seen a screenshot of beam weapons being used yet.

It depends on the variety within the weapon types rather than the number of weapon types. One missile configuration may be very different from another.

If its one type of defense against one type of weapon as you imply it will make it easy to balance yet strategically interesting as weapon/shield-ratios has to be taken into account.



A question that arise for me is if there is a way to analyse the opponents ships... to learn what type of weaponry they use and what type of shields.

Alderbranch wrote:
If its one type of defense against one type of weapon as you imply it will make it easy to balance yet strategically interesting as weapon/shield-ratios has to be taken into account.

I'm 99% sure it's like that. The icons of the weapons/defenses seem to confirm that.

Alderbranch wrote:


A question that arise for me is if there is a way to analyse the opponents ships... to learn what type of weaponry they use and what type of shields.

Yes, having intel on the enemy fleet allow you to use better strategy. How is it collected though, could be some intel techs, espionage, special purpose ship sensors...

Also something very important is where do we see some weapon stats? Is there a separate page that gives more info and stats on weapons and other ship systems?

Raptor wrote:
Also something very important is where do we see some weapon stats? Is there a separate page that gives more info and stats on weapons and other ship systems?

My rapid guess would be the ship configuration-screen as implied by the shipcustomisation shot.



The Firepower seems to be the MP of the enitre ship which is compriced of the defence and offense.

Not that the symbol on the weapons are the same as for MP and Defense-modules.

The tonnage has to be the corresponding number on each part until is just to add modules until its full.

So a Large ship has 400 tons.



Normal armor seems to add HP only. There is no description on Support besides costing tonnage nor on the engines.





The armor and weaponry seems to scale quite fast too.

What I wonder is, if the shields will be a small module, which is always there(and you have to choose between kinetic or beam shield), or if you will have to sacrifice another module to implement shields (Like in SotS). And how the techs will be.. if beam and kinetic will be somehow connected or completely different tech tress.

Alderbranch wrote:
My rapid guess would be the ship configuration-screen as implied by the shipcustomisation shot.



The Firepower seems to be the MP of the enitre ship which is compriced of the defence and offense.

Not that the symbol on the weapons are the same as for MP and Defense-modules.

The tonnage has to be the corresponding number on each part until is just to add modules until its full.

So a Large ship has 400 tons.



Normal armor seems to add HP only. There is no description on Support besides costing tonnage nor on the engines.





The armor and weaponry seems to scale quite fast too.

Yes, we are looking at a Large ship customized with no specialization, i.e. it has equal amounts of mounted weapons of each type (6x beams, kinetic, missile) and the same goes for defenses. I suspect that unless there is some way to see enemy ship stats in detail, you would only know their MP (military power) before battle. Different weapon types of particular tier have the same MP rating (6 Entropy missiles=1260 MP, and 6 Gluon Disruptors=1260 MP). Therefore it would be of utmost importance to know what kind of weapons and defenses the enemy is using, beating him with ships with less MP would be easy if you have customized your ships in a way to effectively counter both his defenses and weapons. Starting to understand how it works, I hope the AI will be capable of customizing the defenses and weapons of his ships following the same logic, and not sticking to one type of weapon/defense throughout the whole game.

The way I read it, it sounds like the weapons/defense system will be more of a rock/paper/systems style. One defense counters one weapon, but not the others.



Will the defenses counter the associated weapon completely, or will it just create a modifier to reduce damage from said weapon?



Actually, all of this gives me ideas.



Each defense counters each different weapon as theorized above. The defense won't completely nullify the weapon, however it will only reduce the weapon's effectiveness by some amount, let's say 50% for the sake of my explanation. A ship may have multiple defensive modules installed on their ships.



To counter a ship having all the defensive modules and gaining a defensive bonus against any weapon (which would be lame), each ship should have a defensive capacity, and the bonus received from the defensive modules should be proportional to that capacity.



Here's what I mean:

Suppose a ship can have up to 4 defensive modules. If you stocked 4 of the anti-kinetic weapon defense, you'd get the full bonus of 50% reduction. Or you could stock 2 anti-kinetic weapon defenses, 1 anti-beam defense, and 1 anti-missile defense. Since half of the modules are reserves for anti-kinetic weapons, you'd receive half of the modifier (25% instead of 50%). The anti-beam and anti-missile defenses would receive a quarter of their modifier since a quarter of the modules are reserved for them (12.5% instead of 50%). Does this make sense?



Perhaps there could also be a defense that provides a damage reduction modifier for all the weapons, but not nearly as much as the dedicated counterpart.



I suppose as technology increases and newer and better modules are made available, the damage modifier would increase.

It does make sense that the defenses shouldn't stop 100% of the damage of the weapons they counter. Otherwise this would make certain encounters end with no loses at all which would be funny to say the least It's more plausible that defenses only reduce the weapon damage, or stop a percentage of all the projectiles/missiles fired at them. On the exact amount of damage modifiers though we need a dev to come by and enlighten us. I would imagine it would require some fine tuning to balance all the upgraded and lower/higher tier weapons and defenses. I'm interested to find out how unique racial systems fit in the picture.



Edit: two new concepts, weapon disruption and perfect targeting, check out this screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/IjQHg.jpg

Would there be weapon mounts for direct fire weapons? so that basic weapon can traverse very well, heavy mount can move slowly but has longer range bigger damage, spinal can traverse several degrees without turning the entire ship but can do massive damage at even longer range

ObiMark wrote:
Would there be weapon mounts for direct fire weapons? so that basic weapon can traverse very well, heavy mount can move slowly but has longer range bigger damage, spinal can traverse several degrees without turning the entire ship but can do massive damage at even longer range

Since combat is made in different in several phases with no direct involvement (see the FAQ) so we know nothing of damage nor range of weapons. I mean if only one of three types of weapons fire per sequence then its gonna get very predictable.

chuckle...



my gut tells me this team hasn't spent this much energy on this game to fall back on an overly simplistic combat model. I'm content to wait and see



Just as long as I can find alternative 'sneaky' and thereby unpredictable combat models (with MP anyway) I'm a happy campy. SP just let the ship hit the fan!

Alderbranch wrote:
I mean if only one of three types of weapons fire per sequence then its gonna get very predictable.

In Melee we can be sure that at least 2 types of weapons can be fired: http://i.imgur.com/Dnn3w.jpg In this case missiles and kinetic weapons. I think we haven't seen a screenshot of beam weapons being used yet.

What do we know about the weapons in ES? Pretty much everything we know is what this image shows:



Ship Customization



and now there are two new images that have something to do with weapons and defense:



Horatio Battle

Military View Screen



Also in the trailer 3 kinds of weapons and 2 types of defense were shown: yellow and green projectiles, guided missiles, blue shield with hexagonal pattern (probably the ablative wave shield), another type of shield/field that's lit in green when blocking projectiles (unless that's an effect from the exploding green projectiles). "Green" projectiles, "yellow" projectiles, this sounds terrible, can we have some names associated with the weapons shown so far, please.



So analyzing the images what can we learn? There seem to be 3 types of weapons: beams, kinetic weapons (kinetic penetrators), missiles. And there are 3 types of defenses to counter the above mentioned weapons: shields, armor, flaks/fields



Weapons:

The Gluon disruptor is a beam weapon.

Entropy missile. Is it a unique UE missile?

Hull-eating missile, unique to the Cravers.

The AGN slugs are a kinetic weapon.

...



Defenses:

The "Deflect" category seems to be the anti-kinetic-weapons armor. The High isotope plating falls into this category.

The Ablative wave shield is an anti-beam-weapons defense.

The A-Entropic fields seem to be flak defenses. Flaks are the anti-missile defense.

...





The new Horatio Battle image show some blue plasma-like projectiles, that we've never seen before. Are these their unique kinetic weapons?

Boygor wrote:
It depends on the variety within the weapon types rather than the number of weapon types. One missile configuration may be very different from another.

Yes this could be the case. This would add variety, although if we are talking realism, it would be logical to have short-range/long-range missiles while the kinetic weapons and beams are much less affected by range in space. The missiles have to carry fuel to maneuver, thus short range missiles can definitely be different than long range ones, both in size and design. A kinetic projectile works the same way at short and at long ranges. Since it is unguided it is the same if you fire it at 100 m or at 10000 m it travels with the same speed all the way. Hitting a target at long range with an unguided munition can be hard though, if the target is agile enough it can easily avoid it. That's why I guess missiles would be most effective in the Long range phase, while kinetic weapons and beams would excel in Melee.

Raptor wrote:
Yes this could be the case. This would add variety, although if we are talking realism, it would be logical to have short-range/long-range missiles while the kinetic weapons and beams are much less affected by range in space. The missiles have to carry fuel to maneuver, thus short range missiles can definitely be different than long range ones, both in size and design. A kinetic projectile works the same way at short and at long ranges. Since it is unguided it is the same if you fire it at 100 m or at 10000 m it travels with the same speed all the way. Hitting a target at long range with an unguided munition can be hard though, if the target is agile enough it can easily avoid it. That's why I guess missiles would be most effective in the Long range phase, while kinetic weapons and beams would excel in Melee.

This sounds about right. I wonder if the longer range weapons will be less effective from a damage perspective otherwise it's a no-brainer what I'll be going for!



I imagine beam weapons will travel at light speed although their effects will dilute/ dissipate over distance?

Boygor wrote:


I imagine beam weapons will travel at light speed although their effects will dilute/ dissipate over distance?

Exactly. They do eventually dissipate in space but for the battle distances we are talking about in ES this dissipation would be negligible if any. For the balance's sake though such effect could be modeled in ES so beam weapons could be less damaging and easier to shield from in Long Range phase.



Edit: skamaks confirmed earlier today a Craver-unique weapon, hull eating missiles. Sounds pretty badass

Boygor wrote:
This sounds about right. I wonder if the longer range weapons will be less effective from a damage perspective otherwise it's a no-brainer what I'll be going for!



I imagine beam weapons will travel at light speed although their effects will dilute/ dissipate over distance?

I still dont know why beam-weapons have to travel at the speed of light. Think of a Tachyon-based weapon.

Raptor wrote:
Exactly. They do eventually dissipate in space but for the battle distances we are talking about in ES this dissipation would be negligible if any. For the balance's sake though such effect could be modeled in ES so beam weapons could be less damaging and easier to shield from in Long Range phase.

What says that beam weapons have to be laserbased? I mean it could be supercharged electrons which indeed there is a uncertainty too (Heisenberg's uncertainty principle) and hence can dissipate.