If you're trying to shoot a flea with 7 shotguns you can't expect every single pellet to hit it.

it's a frigate. even acounting for then being 18 levels lower, it's like hitting a shoe box from a H3 hummer. It's tiny, but I could practically run it over instead of trying to hit it with 7 shotguns.

Can't I just fire a single weapon out of 5 and only use 1 energy if it does the same damage as all my weapons firing? Refund my energy
I am sure my mathematician on board my ship can do the calculation from the data supplied by my spy probes... (or should I say my on-board computers)

Been thinking about this one a bit and the current changes negate and nullify the need to have a defense stat at all...

Defense is the ability to outmaneuver someone/something because hulls let you absorb more impact and shields absorb the damage outright. Yes size should impact 'defense' but it shouldn't affect 'offense' in any way.

If I have a star destroyer with mega-super-duper awesome alloy X x 5 installed in it and I'm going against a scout ship with a Light graviton sheer weapon (about the best they can put on it), then the damage from that weapon wouldn't even scratch the paint on my hull. Sure he can outmaneuver my weapons 90% of the time, but the 10% when my black hole generator hits should outright disintegrate the tiny ship because of lack of a good 'alloy' on their hull. Sure they can add hull via artifact, but that is negated by the argument that ship size is the primary combat stat NOT the weapons or defense that the ship has.

Defense stats determine the ability of a captain to pilot the lesser vehicle moreso than the size of the vehicle. If a rookie pilot is behind the cockpit of the MF, then he is not even going to be able to use the superior agility of the ship to save himself. The MF doesn't sting like a star destroyer either, because it is small.

A more logical change is this based on the above:

The absorption of the hull (not damage to the hull outright like now but rather determined by the 'alloy' on the hull and the number of that piece) Tech 1 alloy = minus 1 to damage outright Tech 10 alloy x 5 would be a outright reduction of damage of 50. Think of it like this. If I shoot a BB gun at a piece of Titanium there is a 99.9999% chance that I won't even scratch the surface. A tech 5 weapon versus a tech 10 armor x5 would do NOTHING.

The defense of a ship should determine the ability to 'miss' a target outright. This should be determined by three factors, the skill of the pilot, the speed of the ship (size) and the number of guns fired at the target. Base defense of a ship = 0% + 5% for every 100 points of defense +/- 5% per difference in ship size (up to 40% max from this alone) with a cap of 95% evasion (defense). The number of shots fired should determine the number of 'rolls' you get to hit the player (similar to old DND where a natural '20' or top '5%' always hits regardless because it reflects a perfect hit). If shields are active, then reduce the 'full hit from shields'. If shields are gone or too low, then the damage of any weapon that hits should be reduced by the 'alloy' type on the ship as per above, and the remainder of the damage should come straight out of the hull number. If the hull is reduced to 0, then the ship is disabled, if not, then the ship survives.

Now the factor of attack skill, weapon type and ship class comes into play. Attack skill should add a outright +5% to the 'tohit' of a player (up to 40% max). The difference between the big ship's ship class and small ship's ship class should give a +5% to hit per size difference (up to 50%) (a star destroyer would be next to impossible to miss). The weapon class of weapons should get a inherit 3% per tier (mass driver (3%), laser (6%), ion (9%) etc 'tohit' accuracy boost).

Weapons that hit would do 'full damage' minus the alloy reduction irregardless of ship size.

NET CHANGE if everything is implemented: A lot of small ships would be a lot harder to hit (evasion like the MF), but they wouldn't/couldn't outgun a Star Destroyer in anyway/shape or form.

NET CHANGE 2: in the event that the Star Destroyer gets a lucky hit on at least one of its guns (which it can have up to 13 with all current weapons equipped), then it would blow the little fish out of the water (like hitting a gnat with a nuclear weapon).

NET CHANGE 3: A combat could be put into rounds. Each round of combat would fire each gun.

Ship 1 (big one) fires Laser cannon and rolls a 19 and misses.
Ship 2 (scout) fires a Laser cannon and rolls a 5 and hits! (for 18 damage from shields or 18 from hull minus alloy type)
Ship 1 (big one) fires Ion cannon and rolls a 1 and misses (weapon subsystem damaged from poor usage).
Ship 2 (scout) fires a Laser cannon and rolls a 2 and hits! (for 18 damage ...)
Ship 1 (big one) fires Black Hole generator and rolls a 20 (perfect hit!) and hits. (for 500 damage from shields or hull minus alloy absorption) -- enemy ship is disabled.

Possible outcome: Ship 1 rolls 10, 19, 18, 17, 16 (doesn't ever hit because of the size of the enemy)
Possible outcome: Ship 1 rolls 20 and kills the little gnat outright due to superior aiming skills and a good roll.

Most battles the big ship wouldn't even ever hit since he has a 12 '1 in 20 chances' to hit.
Most battles the little ship would hit every time and would deplete the big ship's shields over time, but would not be able to penetrate the hull because they don't have the firepower.

Net Result 3: big ships would leave little ships alone and little ships wouldn't even bother with big ships. I picture a shuttle craft going against a borg cube. The cube would just ignore the shuttle craft and move on because it is irrelavent.

All of this could also be applied to 'planet' attacks as well.

Each planetary structure that adds attack or defense could act as a mini-ship and would have to be 'destroyed' before the invader could land troops (each structure could have a certain number of the population occupying/running it and would have its own hull strength and base to hit based on the tier of the facility (tier 1 = 95% chance to hit 'any' ship, tier 7 = 5% chance to hit a small ship but still 100% chance to hit a tier 20 ship) and damage based on the tier of the facility. Each facility could attack 1 time per invasion attempt, but the ship attacking could only attack 1 facility for each weapon on their ship. After all defenses are disabled (they could be repaired by the player if the player has enough population to run them), then tier 1-10 ships would have the option to invade like normal and tier 11+ ships would have the ability to do planetary assault (open all weapons on full for damage to planet population/structures to 'soften' it up) then invade.

adding an idea of armor piercing for cannons, (at a 1:3 ratio because you can have more cannons than armor) also, have damage reduction/armor peircing deal percentage damage, like 7 peircing and 9 reduction = -2% damage, and 9 peircing and 7 reduction = +2% damage

so, as an example combining both ideas:
ship 1: seven Heavy Graviton Shearers, one Spacial Thrusters mark 3, one inertial dampeners mark 3, one Alblative Wipple Plating
ship 2: one graviton shearer, one phase cannon, one Spacial Thrusters, 3 Merged Microgel Armors
deck ratio is 280:127, so about 45% base chance for ship 1 to hit ship 2 and taking the remainder for the inverse, 55% base chance for ship 2 to hit ship 1

ship 1:
hit ratio +147% (7th teir weapons, 7 of them, 3% per teir)
armor peircing 49
dodge ratio +27% (a 4th teir and a 5th teir, 3% per teir)
damage reduction 6 (one 2nd teir, 3 per)

ship 2:
hit ratio +39% (one 7th teir and one 6th teir)
armor peircing 13
dodge ratio +21% (one 7th teir)
damage reduction 36 (three 4th teir, 3 per)

final: (asuming max 95% and min 5% to hit, max 50% and min -50% for damage)
ship 1 to ship 2: 95% hit chance, +13% damage multiplier
ship 2 to ship 1: 67% hit chance, +7% damage multiplier

Make sense?

I-I cast magic missile at the darkness!

rather then revamping the game why not just this
1: Have the people on your battle screen be based off ship strength.
2: Have people with alot of decks realize they now need more hull and act accordingly.

since most of known space is made of darkness, (making the darkness infinately larger than your ship) under current battle system it is quite likely to destroy all of space with 1 round using nothing but magic missle. and since magic missle always hits, then you just ended the universe as we know it.
(and as another note, how about a new module teir level that is borderline magic? people have said that technology at an unfathomable level mimics the effects of magic)


the problem is that damage is now inverse to rank, as the strength behind higher ranks has very much been based off of decks. making a lv 20 able to kill a lv 50 without using artifacts or help. And that is not balanced.

How much hull do these rank 50s have though? I was being pwned by low rank NPCs untill i put a bit of research/decks into hull and now they barely scratch me. So far it just seems people havnt got enough hull.

because in a fight between the higher level and the lower level, in which neither have hull modules, the lower level wins.

How is this a problem? Dan specifically said that higher ranks need to get more hulls to compensate for their high amount of decks. And if you do this everything is fine. Dont tell the doctor hes doing something wrong when you wont take the medicine.

I don't question the doctor's medicine, I question the disease.

The disease is higher ranks now taking too much damage, the prescription is more hull. People dont seem to be doing this as I have and are now saying Dan's fix made things worse. I have done it and it works. Now rather then creating a whole new system that will have of its own plethora of problems why not just have people try out what Dan has told them will fix the problem? And after giving it a fair go (by fair go I mean researching hull appropriate to your rank and equipping it) and see how it works out.

Or is that just too hard for some people?

I now know I have the hull and shields that I need for my level, I just need to get more def on my ship (next step)

So I am adjusting already.

When I was fighting the Zolazin(and the other NPCs) I had 5x Durtanium Alloy but I was still spending hunderds of thousands on hull repairs, I only repaired when I was disabled.

Though remember hull, shields, and def are a unit. Need all up to do well. I have tested this twice vs the two NPCs I have locked (showed up before the timer update). I did like six points to it and I was delt 150 damage. Once I am done building up my def ill see how much damage I take, but at least my shields can take a hit that big.

But a hammer is bigger than a nail head. You aren't trying to hit a nailhead with a laser, you are trying to hit an object at least the size of a two story house with a laser. Explain to me how you only hit with half a laser beam?

You only have one laser?

well, considering one deck in real life is about 9 feet(3 yards)x50 that is 150 yards or 450 ft, these things are the size of 45 story buildings. I dont think that a hammer and nailis a good comparison, more like a bullet and a house.

So you mean to say that you have a giant laser cannons on your ship that shoots an infinitely small laser to the point in which the can not be split in 2 (Impossible BTW), and you coudn't possibly miss when firing from halfway across the galaxy?

Lasers are not confined to being small, they can be of any size that you can make a device that can emit the correct electromagnetic radiation or refract a small laser to make it larger. They could easily be the size of a car. Lasers have 3D dimensions, though Z is ignored in this case due to being irrelevant. It still has Y and X dimensions, and thusly it cannot be infinitely small, it can graze a target, and only half of it can hit.

Hell heres some pics of how this could happen (and yes I understand that the ship and your laser might not look like that or have those size ratios, its an example)

The blue square is your target the red grid is your laser, see how only about 1/4th of your laser hits?


Green square is your laser, grey rectangle in the enemy ship, red square is the part of the laser that hit. see how its only 1/4th?

If you dont get it at this point too bad. I no longer care, your opinion on this is irrelevant to me until you can find a new argument.