General Suggestion for ED dev team to consider: Torpedoes in Elite Dangerous of 2022 as a whole. Where they are, and what to do with them next.
- Thread starter Insane4un
- Start date
Timothy Zhan wrote a series called The Conqueror's Saga. One of the sub-plots involved discovering/bringing on-line a super-weapon called Circe. The weapon was a humanity state-secret that was used in the last great war to utterly obliterate a fleet of heavily shielded ships. Turns out the attacking fleet took a solar flare up the back side and all the heavy shielding nicely contained the radiation that surged up through their drive systems. End result: A lot of dead aliens, a PR victory, and no superweapon to fight the next great threat.
I really like these ideas. The shot speed and damage definitely need to go up, as, like you said, ships have only gotten better protected and faster.
If we look at the origins of the modern "torpedo" idea we end up at the late nineteenth and early twentieth century naval combat, with torpedo boats and aircraft capable of delivering crippling damage to far larger ships, whereas previously this was impossible. In some ways this is reflected in Elite, with point defence being ineffective and requiring the use of larger weaponry to dispatch. Usually meaning larger ships are more vulnerable.
Effective use of torpedo boats revolutionized naval warfare by requiring faster ships, more capable of dealing with both aircraft and small torpedo boats, to act as a screen for the larger battleships and dreadnaughts that defined the era. This is where the term destroyer gets its name, shortened from "torpedo boat destroyer." While torpedo boats themselves were initially quite "broken," the advent of destroyers and a change in fleet tactics meant that the role of torpedo delivery shifted mainly to aircraft and submarines.
If we continue applying the historical changes in naval combat to Elite, he with the biggest guns and most armor wins right now in Elite and in the dreadnaught era. With a couple more "improvements" to Elite's torpedos on top of yours, I think we could replicate certain aspects of the destroyer era of naval warfare. I will list the changes here and then explain why.
• 411 explosive damage per torpedo
• Larger minimum turning circle
• Change from arming time to arming distance
• Dumb-fire torpedo with minimal arming distance but no self-damage reduction
• SLF loadouts with one dumb-fire torpedo
• Reverberating Cascade experimental effects for most modules, drives, FSD like you said, life support, power distributer, fuel scoops, sensors, etc.
• Thermal damage conversion experimental effect
We could think of small ships as torpedo-boats/subs and SLF's as aircraft. With that in mind, a well-equipped torpedo ship build should be able to severely cripple, but not outright destroy, an unwise large ship. 411 damage is about the same as the total damage of a stock size 1 seeker missile rack against a 70 armor hardness target. If it eats up a hard point, it should be made worthwhile, but still low enough to avoid one-shotting an unaware medium. A larger turning circle would allow most small and medium ships to avoid a torpedo and give time to either disengage or turn and shoot it down. Your suggested speed change would allow most ships, even large, the option to turn and supercruise. Arming distance would mostly be a quality of life change, as distance is displayed on the hud and time to to target is not. A dumb fire option, although mostly to prevent the SLF option from being OP, could prove useful to the "point blank" crowd. The risk of getting caught in the blast and receiving the experimental effect, either from being too close on impact or outrunning your shot and then not pulling away, provides a skill floor and again limits use to large targets. An array of cascade experimental effects allows a sufficiently strapped torpedo barge to turn a meta shield tank to a blind and crippled lump. Although now the race is on to see if the barge has enough dps to kill it before it repairs enough to run or fight. (Maybe reboot/repair to recover from torpedo volley becomes meta?)
Quite a convincing historical analogue. Yeeting from a distance is unlikely to succeed as torps already give ample hud warning (lookouts). Medium and small ships are difficult to pin down with such a sluggish projectile. Dumb firing at close range risks ones own ship seemingly as much as the enemies. Deviating from the history comparison, when used in my idea of their intended role, as a small ship attacking a large ship, a game of chicken is born. Once torps are locked on, does the large ship charge ahead and try to shrug off the unknown module damage, maybe trying to kill the small before they hit? Or, does he turn off his shields and eat the hull damage? Furthermore, if cycling shields becomes the meta, do torpedo goons start using penetrators? Do bi-weaves become popular?
If we look at the origins of the modern "torpedo" idea we end up at the late nineteenth and early twentieth century naval combat, with torpedo boats and aircraft capable of delivering crippling damage to far larger ships, whereas previously this was impossible. In some ways this is reflected in Elite, with point defence being ineffective and requiring the use of larger weaponry to dispatch. Usually meaning larger ships are more vulnerable.
Effective use of torpedo boats revolutionized naval warfare by requiring faster ships, more capable of dealing with both aircraft and small torpedo boats, to act as a screen for the larger battleships and dreadnaughts that defined the era. This is where the term destroyer gets its name, shortened from "torpedo boat destroyer." While torpedo boats themselves were initially quite "broken," the advent of destroyers and a change in fleet tactics meant that the role of torpedo delivery shifted mainly to aircraft and submarines.
If we continue applying the historical changes in naval combat to Elite, he with the biggest guns and most armor wins right now in Elite and in the dreadnaught era. With a couple more "improvements" to Elite's torpedos on top of yours, I think we could replicate certain aspects of the destroyer era of naval warfare. I will list the changes here and then explain why.
• 411 explosive damage per torpedo
• Larger minimum turning circle
• Change from arming time to arming distance
• Dumb-fire torpedo with minimal arming distance but no self-damage reduction
• SLF loadouts with one dumb-fire torpedo
• Reverberating Cascade experimental effects for most modules, drives, FSD like you said, life support, power distributer, fuel scoops, sensors, etc.
• Thermal damage conversion experimental effect
We could think of small ships as torpedo-boats/subs and SLF's as aircraft. With that in mind, a well-equipped torpedo ship build should be able to severely cripple, but not outright destroy, an unwise large ship. 411 damage is about the same as the total damage of a stock size 1 seeker missile rack against a 70 armor hardness target. If it eats up a hard point, it should be made worthwhile, but still low enough to avoid one-shotting an unaware medium. A larger turning circle would allow most small and medium ships to avoid a torpedo and give time to either disengage or turn and shoot it down. Your suggested speed change would allow most ships, even large, the option to turn and supercruise. Arming distance would mostly be a quality of life change, as distance is displayed on the hud and time to to target is not. A dumb fire option, although mostly to prevent the SLF option from being OP, could prove useful to the "point blank" crowd. The risk of getting caught in the blast and receiving the experimental effect, either from being too close on impact or outrunning your shot and then not pulling away, provides a skill floor and again limits use to large targets. An array of cascade experimental effects allows a sufficiently strapped torpedo barge to turn a meta shield tank to a blind and crippled lump. Although now the race is on to see if the barge has enough dps to kill it before it repairs enough to run or fight. (Maybe reboot/repair to recover from torpedo volley becomes meta?)
Quite a convincing historical analogue. Yeeting from a distance is unlikely to succeed as torps already give ample hud warning (lookouts). Medium and small ships are difficult to pin down with such a sluggish projectile. Dumb firing at close range risks ones own ship seemingly as much as the enemies. Deviating from the history comparison, when used in my idea of their intended role, as a small ship attacking a large ship, a game of chicken is born. Once torps are locked on, does the large ship charge ahead and try to shrug off the unknown module damage, maybe trying to kill the small before they hit? Or, does he turn off his shields and eat the hull damage? Furthermore, if cycling shields becomes the meta, do torpedo goons start using penetrators? Do bi-weaves become popular?
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More gimmicks like "reverbrating cascade" is one of the last things this game needs. Addressing hitpoint inflation should be done by addressing the sources of said inflation, not by creating an inherently flawed rock-paper-scissors game.
Additionally, bi-weaves are already the most popular shield. Not because of broken regen, but because sustained active regen is key for doing combat, which owing to the sheer long quantity-and-not-quality nature of the combat grind (or the hitpoint attrition slugfest of CZs), means passive sustain is king.
Goons in PvP trying to abuse unsuspecting players already do use torps, because of the existing gimmicks. Bi-weaves would not be anywhere near an effective remedy to cascade effects.
How would you address the source of hitpoint inflation? A flat nerf to armor? A nerf to SCB's? I suppose that's a solution, but not one to the torpedo problem, as all weapons would become more effective overnight, once again leaving torps behind. Gimmicks like cascade are why the game is interesting to play. You could restrict everyone to just beam lasers but the game would become stale really fast. All fights would look exactly the same, with whoever runs out of heat sinks and SCB's first losing.
I must've been gone for longer than I thought. Bi-weaves are meta now? I've personally never seen a bi-weave outside of npc's.
While it's true I've seen a select few goons use torpedoes, they are only marginally effective against, like you said, unsuspecting players. Assuming an intelligent and aware adversary, torpedoes pose very little risk in today's game. A ganker will always kill the unsuspecting, regardless of what weapons are meta, so we shouldn't base balancing on such a poor example.
One of the things I didn't mention is that either the effect of module reinforcement or the passthrough damage of cascade should be buffed or nerfed respectively. Requiring more torpedoes to kill someone who has prepped for it. For example a corvette with sturdy class B thrusters and lots of reinforcement should be immune to all but the most excessive of thruster-cascade using torpedo builds.
Another thing I completely forgot to mention is the deletion or charge of large torpedo hard points. They provide too many torpedoes for my change ideas. An alteration to one or two larger and even slower torpedoes on a turret mount would be a neat idea. Only really useful against the truly ungainly ships, or as a mechanic for anti-capital ship gameplay would be cool.
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Torpedoes should be much faster, have more ammunition, and do far more damage than they do currently. The problem is some CMDRs want to play WW2 planes in space, and some want to play Battleships in space. Since the former won the argument during the design stage sensible turreted and seeking weapons are verboten.
We have Feedback Cascade. You just have to be good with Rails
I agree that Reverberating is fine in its current implementation, mainly because they're pretty hilariously effective if you can get someone, which even if rare, is more common than most of the people previously in this thread seem to think.
Every semi-decent PvE ship should have a biweave. For PvP they're still relegated to hull tank purgatory because of our lord and savior the Prismatic.
This is less true than you'd expect. Torpedoes are remarkably effective mainly because they're persistent, and if the other person is preoccupied (such as with evading someone else), or even have short lapses in focus (especially in slower ships like the Python), they might get hit by them. Point is for all of the people saying they're terrible, I'm interested in how many of you guys have actually evaded torps before.
I dont think Thruster-cascade should exist for a variety of reasons, including the fact that it would basically make any FSD-cascade effect you guys suggest redundant/useless, not to mention eliminating mobility completely is a generally stupid/dangerous idea.
I don't think that large slot torpedoes are a problem, given that it basically just changes which ships are favored hardpoint-wise, in such a way that isn't substantively changed by going back to only small-medium slot torpedoes.
Yeah I think they tried Newtonian Physics in space combat and it sucked big time.........
They are already quite effective against capital ships.
With the new AX torps we may see a role refinement wrt usecases.
Heck, fdev may even decide to update them for the new feature that is otw.
If it were me? By directly reducing the effectiveness of the direct sources of hitpoint inflation - HRP stacking, shield booster stacking, SCB stacking, shield SRP stacking, and Engineering.
The combat game in Elite, once upon a time, was fair and balanced. Combat was not an attritional slugfest. Individual kills felt like they meant something. You had to be tactical and thoughtful about what weapons you use, the damage types involved, and be active about distributor pip management to achieve damage.
Nowadays you can just engineer everything such that none of these are significant considerations. The fact that the "AFK type 10" even exists is a testament to this. The gap between an unprepared vanilla ship and a fully kitted one is literally exponential, and you can still find everyday posts from new players wondering how their ships are getting instantly deleted by other players. Part of that is because they aren't taking advantage of hitpoint inflation, which as a new player naturally they can't be aware of in the first place.
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I strongly disagree with the sentiment that gimmicks are interesting or fun to play with. My experience in games across the past 20+ years has been the exact opposite. Games are interesting when you have equally viable & interesting options to choose from. They are not interesting when the outcome is predetermined because you took the scissors to someone else's paper. Nothing about your actual gameplay or ability or choice or agency as a players matters in the face of that. That is, strictly speaking, un-interesting.
Expecting players to just deal with it by 'getting gud' and playing around one-sided gimmicks is unreasonable, and untenable from a game design perspective.
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Torpedos were made irrelevant because of hitpoint inflation. A low-ammo-count weapon will never be relevant in the face of hitpoint inflation. To be honest, I don't think a low-ammo count weapon can really work as an equally-viable-and-interesting option, because by nature that demands being a binary-outcome, hit-or-miss, 'glass cannon' type of weapon that inherently either will be totally unfair or totally ineffective with no room in between. I would aim to redesign torpedos from the ground up, perhaps taking some inspiration from Master of Orion 2 where torpedos are slower-firing but infinite-ammo versions of missiles that also can't be shot down by normal means.
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Bi-weaves have been the only way to boost active regen rate (well, that and engineering specials) for a very long time, they've been the go-to for PvE combat as a result since before Engineering first appeared.
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It is already the case that module protection & engineering can increase the number of cascade torpedos required to have the desired effect. The effect they have on fully prepared & engineered ships is not the problem.
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For me torpedo should be fast, high yeld, cost effective non-guided weapon. Just think of it as a missile without guidance system, friend or foe recognition and even no propulsion system on it's own or one propelling it to high speed in one direction only.
Both torpedoes and missiles should be serious threat to majority of the ships. Get hit by either of those would mean being in serious troubles.
WWII style dogfight should be 2nd phase of combat... after surviving initial missile/torpedo vs point defense exchange on both sides.
I'm avoiding combat whenever I can and I did it in the past just to unlock engineer access and since then it stagnates at the same rank for years now.
Both torpedoes and missiles should be serious threat to majority of the ships. Get hit by either of those would mean being in serious troubles.
WWII style dogfight should be 2nd phase of combat... after surviving initial missile/torpedo vs point defense exchange on both sides.
I'm avoiding combat whenever I can and I did it in the past just to unlock engineer access and since then it stagnates at the same rank for years now.
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I know this thread has been necro'd, but since it's active again and no one has pointed this out in two years:
The original velocity was a fixed 400m/s, which was fast enough to keep up with anything besides the Viper, Cobra, Courier, FDL, and Clipper pre-Engineer.
Speed was changed much later (to launch velocity quickly decaying to 250m/s) at the same time they were given an arming delay. I believe this was to make reverberating cascade torpedoes harder to land, otherwise they could tie up a CMDR for a full minute (or is it two minutes?), which was quite overpowered.
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I thought the current issue was that these would need to exceed 500m/s or it's handing a distinct advantage to the Cutter, which would still outrun them while other big ships couldn't (my trade Cutter hits 506 m/s, so potentially you might be looking at something that could worry an FdL). At that point they're rivaling missiles for speed.
Or give the torps high damage, high top speed (idk, 600, 700, maybe even 1000m/s) and extremely long range (lock-on limited only by sensor range, would chase the target for minutes after launch), but low and non-linear acceleration, low turn rate and make them explode at full yield with decent AoE when shot down? Might be a nightmare to get just right, but when done just right could threaten all ships equally (including the launching one) while giving equal opportunities to counter them.
In X3 there were "doomsday missiles" that had really long range, were relatively fast (faster medium ships could keep pace with them, but could not outrun) and could blow a whole wing of ships out of the sky, but could be shot down with ship weapons and would explode at full yield and AoE when shot taking out the launching ship if timed right. These were fun to fight with and against.
In X3 there were "doomsday missiles" that had really long range, were relatively fast (faster medium ships could keep pace with them, but could not outrun) and could blow a whole wing of ships out of the sky, but could be shot down with ship weapons and would explode at full yield and AoE when shot taking out the launching ship if timed right. These were fun to fight with and against.
Not tried it, but heard the only scenario where a torpedo boat is useful for PvE is for single target assassinations.
A big ship full of torps all with reverb and PP targetted can kill just about any NPC (maybe a small laser or something to ensure you make the PP go boom).
A big ship full of torps all with reverb and PP targetted can kill just about any NPC (maybe a small laser or something to ensure you make the PP go boom).
What I think is that most ppl imagine torpedo being similar to real ones which are used in submarine combat (slow, guided, explosive) and that is what we have in game. I do not feel like there is a place for such old fashioned torpedo in ED combat but that combat is also old fashioned WWII style. I feel it should be something else, maybe simmilar to rail gun where You have to charge it up then release (plasma charge?). Instead of being slow it should be fast, non-guided (so flying in stright line), fixed type armament and also VERY power hungry- it should make pilot feel a crisis when charging it up (more and more heat) and also target feeling crisis when seeing it comming fast.
The problem with this is that torpedoes are only slow in absolute terms in comparison to airborne missiles in terms of speed relative to target speed the difference is much smaller, torpedoes are fast enough to overhaul most if not all realistic targets certainly at close range and probably even with the engines turned down for extended range.
I have different idea of SF space combat (might be the influence of many military SF books, I had a pleasure to read). Guided torpedo is simply large missile and I would like it being more unique, something that hits hard, travels fast but requires considerable amount of time to charge up.
Combat in ED is really simplistic, weapons are made with players in mind so they have MANY flaws and limitations future weapons wouldn't have (slow projectiles, low range) which make me not interested in space combat at all. I'm only writing this because there was a point in game where I had to do combat to unlock engineer(s). I have tried many weapons and I found rail gun quite interesting but also flawed (it should charge up when I press fire button and release projectile when that button is being released not after fixed time) while torpedoes not useful at all for me.
Combat in ED is really simplistic, weapons are made with players in mind so they have MANY flaws and limitations future weapons wouldn't have (slow projectiles, low range) which make me not interested in space combat at all. I'm only writing this because there was a point in game where I had to do combat to unlock engineer(s). I have tried many weapons and I found rail gun quite interesting but also flawed (it should charge up when I press fire button and release projectile when that button is being released not after fixed time) while torpedoes not useful at all for me.