Reduction to gimbal tracking on larger weapons (and other tracking related changes)

[Funny]

Let's face it: having dual gimballed huge weapons on corvettes are a bit too overpowered right now. Gimballed weapons have always had the problem that they could track targets a bit too easily, but with engineers the large weapons have become even more insane when used as gimbals. Well, gimbals are far from perfect: at range their actual damage against smaller ships is significantly lower than pure numbers would suggest due to the jitter, but close up they still absolutely decimate them.
What I'd suggest to solve that is to reduce the maximum tracking speed for gimballed weapons somehwat as weapon sizes go up, but mainly (and disproportionately) on the huge weapons. The maximum tracking angle should also go down on the larger weapons. This should, in theory, not make the huge gimbals the go-to choice for any encounter, but rather have them be focused on targeting larger ships. It's not like the large ships will be vulnerable against the smaller ships now, though they won't be able to basically insta-kill them when they get in their sights.

My next suggestion may be a bit out there, but I'd really like to see CQC style 'fixed' weapons as an outfit option. I do not, however, want their only difference to be their damage output. While their damage should be slightly higher than similar gimballed weapons, each cqc-style weapon should have a different advantage as well. Maybe reload speed, capacitor drain, a different firing mechanism, a different weapon entirely - as long as they're different in an interesting way they'd be valuable additions to the game.

 

[metatheurgist]

Large weapons already have slower tracking speeds.

 

[Nero Tacitus]

I had a similar thought recently, though I stole the idea from Stellaris. It gives ships a dodge value, and weapons an accuracy value. Simple math, dodge - accuracy = hit chance. The smaller the ship, the larger the dodge value; the larger the weapon, the lower the accuracy value. Coupled with armor values that remove a static amount of damage, it means there's a negative correlation between the size of the weapon, and its DPS vs smaller craft, but a positive correlation between weapon size and DPS vs larger craft.

Thought it could be a nice addition to the game, however I then realised that the current design kind of already has a system for smaller ships to dodge larger gimbal mounts; maneuverability and chaff. A decent Vulture isn't going to be spending a great deal of its time infront of a Corvette, and when it does, chaff completely gimps gimballed tracking, not to mention Dispersal Field mods. While I still wouldn't mind seeing such a system trialled by FDev, I think it's a pretty massive change to expect anytime soon.

Large weapons already have slower tracking speeds.

Source? Not saying it isn't true, it's just the first I've ever heard of it and would be interested in reading up on it.

 

[Captain Willard]

REALLY? ye want to debuff a ship? If it's to powerful get a smaller ship. I always have a good laff, peeps that say npc's are to easy. If ye not dieing in res or cz's get a smaller ship. Lets balance an annie, carries more cargo than it mass, more gunz than a combat ship, out jumps dedicated explorer ships, The annie should really be just a step above a python. Never gonna happen.

 

[Bdragon4]

Gimballed weapons are far from the best in the game. The most powerful weapons are all Fixed Mount (Plasma Accelerators, Rail Guns, Missiles, etc). For smaller ships, they have maneuverability and chaff to save them. Good piloting is also required, of course.

My next suggestion may be a bit out there, but I'd really like to see CQC style 'fixed' weapons as an outfit option. I do not, however, want their only difference to be their damage output. While their damage should be slightly higher than similar gimballed weapons, each cqc-style weapon should have a different advantage as well. Maybe reload speed, capacitor drain, a different firing mechanism, a different weapon entirely - as long as they're different in an interesting way they'd be valuable additions to the game.

I'm confused because this is basically already in the game. There are Fixed variants of all of the hardpoints in the game and you can give them added effects through Engineering. The only CQC weapon that isn't available is the Plasma Repeater, probably because it would be OP in larger numbers. But you can get a similar effect by using Fixed Multi-Cannons and engineering them to taste. Also, Fixed hardpoints tend to deal more damage than their Gimballed counterparts.

 

[metatheurgist]

Source? Not saying it isn't true, it's just the first I've ever heard of it and would be interested in reading up on it.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...lly-accurate?p=2513118&viewfull=1#post2513118

 

[Funny]

REALLY? ye want to debuff a ship? If it's to powerful get a smaller ship. I always have a good laff, peeps that say npc's are to easy. If ye not dieing in res or cz's get a smaller ship. Lets balance an annie, carries more cargo than it mass, more gunz than a combat ship, out jumps dedicated explorer ships, The annie should really be just a step above a python. Never gonna happen.

I wouldn't think of it as a debuff, exactly. I just don't feel that the huge weapons should be able to stay on target as long as they do right now.

I didn't know that the larger weapons had slower tracking speeds, but the angle is still the same which is the main thing that needs to change.

We don't have cqc-style weapons in the game yet for our ships; their lock-on mechanism is way different to anything else, and is a lot of fun to use.