Meltdown Update Preview

[light stratus]

Which trl isn't directly hitting

[vocal trout]

most of the time youd want to shoot where the armor is weakest

[light stratus]

Nah trl let's you cut right through the thickest armour straight to essential systems

It's faster than maneuvering

[vocal trout]

yeah… you made the weakpoint

[light stratus]

#1370799036591898837 message

You can see it I practice here

Toughest part of the enemy ship with the most armour and space to go through

No problemo

[vocal trout]

this is what im alluding to

[near flax]

if possible could i get a graph of current preview drag vs stable drag vs old preview drag

[light stratus]

You can probably get the equation for drag in the game and use demos to graph it

Oh there it is

[vocal trout]

sometimes it helps to be a grimiore

[near flax]

i assume 1 = 1m/s?

[light stratus]

Is blue current?

[vocal trout]

blue is stable yes

[vocal trout]

uhh last time ive done any math with this its smth like thrust/weight ratio

id ask some people about what kui rambled about but im afraid they all dont play cosmoteer anymore

this should be correct until the (surprisingly eqn dependent) stutter limit

[rough dock]

This is already working pretty well even without crew assigned properly. I think we can still do better though.

[coarse plaza]

I seem to be doing something wrong. But I haven't a clue what.

The tooltip says this ship:

• dissipates 8.8k heat/s
• generates 8k heat/s

yet when I run the thrusters at 100% throttle for a while the start to burn up regardless. Adding heat exchangers seemed to increase the time before this happens. But I can't stop it entirely.

is there some sort of limit to how much heat the pipes or engine room can transfer? I've been trying a few things but can't seem to figure out whats causing this.

[dark lily]

My best guess is that as the engines ramp up they generate more and more heat, or the generating heat tooltip doesn't factor in the engine room heat addition

It's possible the shields could be the source if they are overclocked, because they directly convert damage into heat in a way that easily overloads systems

Additionally you have no heat storages to work as buffers

[hollow gull]

if there is no thermal battery, then the modules are the thermal batteries

so any spikes in heat generation (especially OC shields), will lead to components heating up

heat exchangers should help since the pipes only move heat as it is generated, and cannot cool down the modules

[coarse plaza]

oooh oke, I see. Thanks!

[next urchin]

It doesn't factor in the engine rooms

[coarse plaza]

Yeah, despite adding a heat-sink: the thrusters still light on fire.

Even though the heat sink gets emptied faster than it gets filled

Its like the engine room isn't transferring the heat at all

[dark lily]

Is the engine room overclocked?

[tame comet]

ERs cannot transfer heat unless overclocked, in which itll transfer double the heat

[coarse plaza]

Oh my god

I am an idiot

[dark lily]

Don't worry; this is useful info! It shows that maybe the engine room should have a clearer visual indicator on whether or not it's overclocked

[coarse plaza]

Ah good, then I didn't completely waste everybody's time XD

Welp, thanks for the help lads!

[fallow spade]

I mean, everything should have a clear visual indicator that tells you whether it is overclocked.

[light stratus]

for weapons, their behaviour distinctly changes and for thrusters they change flame colour and size

ER doesn't have either a distinct visible behaviour change or any animation to it

maybe change the ER colour to be more greenish, ala boost thrusters/overclocked thrusters in general?

[woven aurora]

Would be neat if parts of it shifted or reoriented upon being overclocked.

So that it would look like the machinery is doing something different

[tulip nebula]

Changes the whole part entirely

[granite sapphire]

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/546333653605679104/1380607057551556628/White_Dwarf_mk2.ship.png?ex=68447e04&is=68432c84&hm=c764513bbc631d320d08dd6fa5cd5e101d034030715abd499be1e7847d2f39f1&
devs, what are ur thoughts on designs like this?

btw, still just mentioning how genuinely absurdly overpowered octb is. i think reducing the force buff to 25% or greatly increasing its heat requirements is a must

the gimmick pulse is great but why does it essentially give u half an extra tb for barely more than the heat generation of a single radiator

including way better surface area efficiency and layout concentration which was one of the things that made tbr design hard

[woven aurora]

When double-clicking radiators, all are selected rather than just one "side". not sure if it's intentional or not but it is inconsistent with other parts.

[vocal trout]

is there a use to disabling specifically only one side of radiators?

[woven aurora]

Not specifically, just seems inconsistent with most parts

[plucky fossil]

it could just give 2 more beams (on the sidr, so it's a +40% and much more spread out) or something like that

increase the beam spread in total even more

[light stratus]

Increasing heat generation to power tcms but not so much that you meltdown?n

[lusty zealot]

that's something we've been thinking of in the council yeah

[rough dock]

If only there were some sort of fat cell with glitchy mitochondria that I could use to keep my missiles warm.

[frigid flax]

Damn meltdown has been out for almost a month now

[granite sapphire]

any eta for oc ions being fixed? i cant really run them in this state

[granite sapphire]

tbh i think octb pull is also too strong and that wouldnt change much but ur still also cutting it by 10% ig

[next urchin]

Probably early next week

[prisma dock]

What is the problem with them?

[bitter steppe]

The damage got doubled in addition to the tick rate

just a small mistake adjusting to the speed changes

[lusty zealot]

not exactly, it's that the damage was doubled (intended change) but the lightning tick rate, which is based on the game's tick rate, was unintentionally doubled as part of the halfspeed changes' reversion (as the gametick rate was doubled but the devs didn't realize OCion lightning tick rate was based on it)

[bitter steppe]

isn't that basically what I said?

[frigid flax]

Aw man my ship deleter only deletes ship because of a bug :(

[icy eagle]

pic?

[frigid flax]

#sotd-submissions message

[lusty zealot]

sorta but i clarified further

the way you phrased it reads to me more like the damage being doubled wasn't the intended one

[lusty gulch]

funny thing, pipe corridors are rounded, normal one just have an edge.

could we get a MaxPipes variable similar to Doors?

why does the heat system flicker on battery pickup? and a bit after? is the simulation for it hardcapped or something?

or is it the batteries being regenerated?

[lusty zealot]

?

[lusty gulch]

storage doing morse codes...

[lusty zealot]

OC reactors only produce heat when actively producing power, they don't when they're full of batteries

[lusty gulch]

so they procude heat on pickup. bcs they start generating instantly.

but why in general does it flicker.

[lusty zealot]

pretty much yeah

[lusty zealot]

unsure

[vocal trout]

does it work based on distance priority?

very much a celeste question

[next urchin]

Heat goes in and is split more or less equally

Radiators then pull the heat back out when they tick

[vocal trout]

when they tick
which is… not instantaneous i take it?

[next urchin]

Every 0.5s

[prisma dock]

What would you guys think, if OC Ions were changed so that instead of doing the (somewhat weird) lightning thing, they instead function normally but without any combination loss?

Wouldn't that be much more interesting possibility wise?

[tranquil wedge]

I think that would make for really boring prism setups

Like the thing new players do would be optimal

[prisma dock]

Less complex prism setups but requiring complex heat setups. That's fair.

[eternal ibex]

The heat setup for a long straight line of emitters can hardly be called “complicated”

[prisma dock]

Cmon, you know that when you combine that with all other heat piping of your entire ship and you have to calculate how many Radiators you'll need on average + how many Thermal Batteries you'll need for possible heat spikes, it can get sufficiently complex.

[eternal ibex]

Not really

It's a line

[prisma dock]

You're ignoring what I just said

[prisma dock]

Also, you played the game for years and are a pro. Think about it form the perspective of the 98% other players who are not.

[eternal ibex]

it's a freaking line

this is why combination falloff exists

[prisma dock]

Are you really going to say no to an idea, just because it doesn't tingle your advanced need for complexity? And more importantly, how do current lightning OC ions satisfy that need for complexity right now? I find that current OC Ions don't really make me think that much. So you should not mind it from that perspective.

[prisma dock]

I know...

Anyway. Here's the post in the ideas and feedback section. Please think about it carefully, before you vote.
#1380851648192057436 message

[light stratus]

like no?

OC weapons don't change their usage at all

they don't change their form factor either aside from piping

[prisma dock]

It IS a line. Yes. I have never said it isn't. BUT that would only be with 0 combination loss and when you look at the actual suggestion I made in the ideas and feedback section, I advocate for REDUCED (not zero) combination loss.

[light stratus]

what change is HOW they attack

OC ions fulfill an aoe attack rather than a single target attack

[prisma dock]

Don't be deliberately slow pls. Are you REALLY going to argue that OC TBs don't open up significantly different possibilities from regular TBs?????

My god

[light stratus]

(the problem of which is that TRL is doing the same but is a support weapon instead of primary)

[light stratus]

yeah... with their "attack"

not exactly analogous since TB is the only pure support weapon in the game

[prisma dock]

And the question is: Is that really that interesting, or could we maybe have OCing them do something somewhat more interesting.

[prisma dock]

Deck cannons

[light stratus]

DCs don't change much due to increased stun

again, its mostly the attack that changes significantly

[eternal ibex]

that's not really true, many OCs entirely change how a weapon plays (DCs are actually one of the best examples because of how much extra range and bullet speed they have)

OC ions are worse at precison aiming and making a hole in armor but have more total DPS that is better at removing armor

[light stratus]

i mean usage (as in attacking) not the attack itself

[prisma dock]

And now you're arguing that 190 meters = 380 meters

[light stratus]

like uhh, OC LC and OC SC you chuck in a ship and the logi is pretty much the same

OC DC logi is similar too

[prisma dock]

Why do people in this community always have to be so forcefully contrarian??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

[light stratus]

the combination for ions is logistical, not an attack

its completely fine that it has the same binary addition logic

pretty much all OC weapons have the same usage (as in: logistics) to their base weapons, except for piping

[prisma dock]

Yes, that is a decently interesting change. But might it not be somewhat more interesting, if we could use OC Ions to create different Ion Cores?

[prisma dock]

So what? I'm not talking about LCs and SCs. I'm talking about that there are weapons where OCing them changes them significantly. And that is good because that is interesting. And I'm just suggesting a way to make yet another weapon interesting in that manner.

[woeful abyss]

well, different does not means it's interesting
the way I see it is that either falloff is significant enough that design don't change or is insignificant enough that a line of prism is the only way cores are designed

[light stratus]

the attack has been changed significantly enough

you already have to change ion cores to attach piping

[prisma dock]

What matters is that you USE them differently. Whether their logistics changes or the situation you use them in changes. If any of that changes significantly and thus opens up more options for players to use the ship part, then that's good.

[light stratus]

uhh yeah? OC ion and normal ion are used differently due to having different attacks

done

[woeful abyss]

a way that would change design could be no falloff overclocked prisms that constrains the beams direction
let say the output vector is the sum of input vectors

[light stratus]

changing the interaction of OC ions and combinations is logistical

and I mean you wanna complain about changing usage go after OC CG lol, all it does is uncap the fire rate and it's not even hard to pipe

[prisma dock]

This is reductive and probably not true. (probably because it would mean the logic the devs have applied so far is flawed, as I will explain)
The same has been said about OCing in general. That changing the cost of Radiators and Thermal Batteries doesn't mean much, because either OCing is worth it cost-wise, or it isn't. Yet, the devs see changing the pricing of heat parts a relevant lever for how prevalent OCing should be. They specifically said that, making them more costly will make players decide more which parts to OC and which parts to leave as they are. I'm sure you can see the parallels to your argument in our current discussion.

[sharp root]

you are encouraged to make different ion cores, in the sense you run a smaller core for the same damage output
radiators are extremely expensive and their heat logistics are a mess in of itself, and you are encouraged to run cores that are about 2/3rds the size of regular ion cores with wildly different logistics due to heat piping

[prisma dock]

Not very.
You're not to be taken seriously. Needlessly contrarian.

[light stratus]

im actually playing the game 🤷‍♂️

[woeful abyss]

you are right, it's actually not an all or nothing case and the devs seek to force the players in the intermediate state
but what is the intermediate state of ion core combination ?

By the way
Although I disagree about the benefit of this suggestion I appreciate that you too care about the game enough to make suggestions

[prisma dock]

Yes, that is how I'm currently using OC Ions. For example, my old Ion Kites always used to have prety low dmg for their cost. I was able to increase their dmg output without increasing the core size by using OC Ions. That's fine. Like I said, I'm ok with how OC Ion function currently. I just wanted to make a suggestion that might potentially make them more interesting than what we have.

(ignore the omni core for this argument)

[light stratus]

you increase damage output but lose directionality of said damage. Dealing more damage, but over a wider area

DPS isn't everything

[vocal trout]

this would explain the flicker lol

[light stratus]

(in truth this is kinda the problem with CGs. Directional damage with extremely high DPS. best of both, and why ions suck in comparison)

[prisma dock]

The intermediate state for Ions would be that, if OC Ions reduce combination dmg loss (but don't nullify it), then you can get away with less outlets and thus smaller barrels, but you probably will still not want to combine 6 beams into a single prisms.

[vocal trout]

id rather have the challenge of wiring my prisms extremely densely than making lines that would make a credit card jealous

[woeful abyss]

maybe, if that achieved throught balancing
we might be a bit early for that thought

[vocal trout]

because from what i can see it may be more economical to wire say 5-6 ions into 2 prisms instead of 3 in general :p

[prisma dock]

Yes. As I said, that is decently interesting. I'm just trying to explore, if there could be something more interesting. I have played with OC Ions a lot in the past few weeks. And I love me some complex cores (like the refined omni-core above). But I have found that OC Ions, while offering more damage and in theory making different damage patterns, don't actually make me think that much. Or at least they don't make me think very differently about Ions. Yes, OC Ions are much better vs shields. Yes, OC Ions tend to be worse against armor (but only barely because in a fight you often can't completely focus your dmg anyway). But all in all it's just not really that interesting. And changing how OC Ions interact with the very nature of Ion Cores would be a lot more interesting to me.

[light stratus]

for n ion beams, you need n/2 + n/4 + n/8 .... ion prisms (basically n amount of ion prisms)
Changing the amount you can add rapidly decreases the cost of OC ions to the point that there might be NO REASON to run normal ions

[prisma dock]

You have not actually looked at the suggestion, have you? I'm arguing for reduced combination loss (not zero). So it#s not gonna be lines.
#1380851648192057436 message

[woeful abyss]

Also I haven't read your suggestion properly I am against removing the lightning damage type no matter what
having a new damage type promise to be more interesting that any design adjusment coming from slightly more efficient beams

[vocal trout]

i never implied zero - im just stating that there are times where 3:1 and 6:3:1 ion combinations already come close to beating out 2:1 ion combinations in damage per credit
im just raising the concern that its possible that decreasing the falloff damage would signficantly increase this margin

[light stratus]

well yeah the cost of thinking is frontloaded into design?

which for OC is in cooling systems

i dont get your point at all

OC ion does more damage, with aoe, and distinguishes itself from normal ion by requiring piping and cooling systems

you can't just chuck ions directly next to an LR

[vocal trout]

now if its economical to put all ion power into one prism... that could make a super death beam indeed but what other benefits may it have?

id rather have the lightning chain count depend on how many you combine into a single prism (if it doesnt already)

[prisma dock]

Then what was this phrase "would make a credit card blush" (or whatever it was). That implies you fear people will just make lines. Yet this fear doesn't apply to my suggestion.

[prisma dock]

Ok fine. Maybe we can have both - the lightning and the reduced combination loss (though that's maybe a bit much)

(but also maybe its not too much - balancing would have to be used of course)

[prisma dock]

That is not a meaningful change and relatively easily overcome. I have explained very thoroughly why OC Ions are in practice just not very different from regular ions. They are different, but not very.

[light stratus]

whats this for an idea - OC ions act like they do currently for the first prism, then from there it's an ion storm arc rather than the normal ion arc that automatically goes to the next prism and has no falloff when doing so, but will split between ALL prisms it can see

Finally, your cores will be different! You will now have to handle ion prism LINE OF SIGHT if you want to combine OC ions

there

you're welcome

[light stratus]

cool is that a problem? OC CGs are like one pipe, 2 batteries and a button toggle

orders of magnitude "similar" to base CG

[prisma dock]

Again. I have not said that current OC Ions are "a problem". I am making a suggestion that might be even more interesting.

[vocal trout]

the combination multiplier per beam is currently 0.75^(n - 1) where n is the rank of the ion from least to most powerful
if you raise the mantissa to 0.80 then the falloff would be much less significant

in the ion line setup instead of having a repeating 56% multiplier from the previous row this becomes a 64% multiplier and a difference like this makes it so that the beam can grow larger until the loss of power is greater than 1.8 ions (which means the ion line would have a max theoretical output of 5 ions which is way more rewarding than 4 - it also increases faster)

funnily enough if you increase it to 90% the combination loss is so small that it might as well be 0 because the only mutliplier is only slightly less than half (47%) for the 8th least powerful ion

sorry for the mathdump lol i just dont find 3:1 ions interesting over harnessing power of an ion storm

[eternal ibex]

blueprint/icon for TCMs still implies there are 3 missiles per launcher when they only have 2

[vocal trout]

hop on gimp and figma rn

[prisma dock]

Let's look at what would happen to a heavy combination core if it was 0,8 instead of 0,75. Currently, 8 Ions combined into 1 outlet does 100 * 1,75 * 1,75 * 1,75 = ~535,94% dmg of a single Ion Emitter. If combination loss was 0,8 the same setup would do 583,2% dmg. That's not that much less and you'd still want to limit the amount of combinations you do.
Now, if it was the case that OC ions decrease combination loss multiplier to 0,9 then this 8 ion setup would do 100 * 1,9 * 1,9 * 1,9 = 685,9% dmg. That is noticably more dmg than 535,94%, but you still wouldn't necessarily want to go further and combine 16 Ions down to 1 outlet.
And with 3:1 combinations it would be similar, would it not?

[vocal trout]

lemme look up if there are statements by walt about why theres a combination falloff

[prisma dock]

I would guess to make building Ion cores more interesting by introducing restrictions. But please share what you find.

[vocal trout]

surprisngly hard to find statements (perhapse its a response to a question in #ask-walt im looking for) but i find myself at the very start of #ships with… this

[vocal trout]

^^

https://forum.cosmoteer.net/d/9279-cosmoteer-release-candidate-0-14-10-rc1-ion-beam-prisms/16 as well

it used to be based on the number of prisms (hmmm perhaps this could factor into your suggestion)

the common thread is indeed to make it interesting and challenging

[prisma dock]

So yeah, basically to make building cores more interesting. So, if overclocking reduced the combination loss factor from the normal x0,75 to x0,85 (or maybe even x0,9), that would make building cores less complex. But it would require you to use the complex heat systems we now have. Would that not be fine?

[vocal trout]

this would make ions scale far better but consume more surface area - terms ive last seen used only in old-game-balance

for me this still doesnt really feel interesting in the shooting aspect because (as previously stated) OC variants tend to either change how a weapon is used or bring a new mechanic into play - chain lightning does both of these things

[prisma dock]

(How far we've come since classic...)
I think it'd be best to keep the 2:1 combination standard, but make it much less restrictive. Meaning that OC Ions would make it viable to combine 8 beams down to 8:4:2:1 and I'm talking about competitively viable (not just for career). That way you would keep the interesting complexity of min maxing your cores, but you would get to make ships with really small barrels, like having an Ion Rammer that has only 3 outlets (for 24 ions) instead of the often seen 12 or so.

And, I want to say this too but separately, if we allow ourselves to think outside the box (scary I know), would it really be so bad, if the balancing was made such that the dreaded "credit-card" ion cores were viable? Sure, it's simple, it's easy to make,... but is that really reason enough to not do it? Might any potential extra archetypes not be worth this optional reduction in complexity?

And we could just keep the lightning too

(just maybe tone down the very high dmg a bit to account for the increased dmg when combining)

[vocal trout]

your argument in the first statement is solid but the numbers have to be just right so i wont really complain about that

as for this second statement it depends on how its made more viable - if instead of a reduction of complexity it was a design choice to combine in such a way then it works - kind of what i had in mind with #1370799036591898837 message

[prisma dock]

With that latter suggestion the final image of ions would be the following:
You can overclock your ions to shift them from "a highly focused but somewhat low dmg beam that requires a complex ion core setup" to "a moderate aoe dmg pattern creating beam that has higher dmg and needs less prism complexity but comes with an expensive heat tax that requires more surface area in your back or on your sides".

[vocal trout]

there we go

[hard orbit]

Crew sometimes appear to carry partially filled batteries from an over clocked large reactor. Is this supposed to happen or is it a bug?

Crew also like doing twirls when running down a long moving walkway when there are lots of other crew going in the same direction (turning around and staying in the same cell instead of continuing down the walkway). This seems to suggest the crew pathing is updating too slow any they think crew that have already moved forward are in their way.

[vocal trout]

proof of crew operating on a brsin vomposed of molasses

[light stratus]

crew are very stupid, this is why you need to micromanage them

[vague aurora]

Ohh I remember a classic era bug with partially filled 3x batteries.

[jaunty gyro]

Not sure if this has been mentioned but currently the thermal beam is available to build in career but there are no blueprints for any of the other components for sale, making it not great to use. My friend and I were stress testing thermal stuff in a career game but then hit that wall lol.

[glass stump]

Im reading up on your suggestion right now and am surprised that you would still prefer to keep 2:1 being the most optimal way of combining ions. I feel like If the goal of your suggestion is to make the ion core building process for OC ions different from the normal one, then making it so 3:1 combining is the most optimal way, would open the doors for the most creative innovations.
Your final suggestion sounds like the goal would be to incentivise having less outlets to make barrels slimmer which is weird given that pure Ion ships already have thin barrels that are only two blocks wide for 7ish outlets.

Actually it's double surprising to me because you never even build barrels for Ion ships in the first place., all your builds have free moving outlets except maybe your first AI tournament submission.

[light stratus]

I'm pretty sure all thermal stuff is unlocked from the get go

Thermal resonance lance has it's own page for modules

[jaunty gyro]

In creative yes but not in career. Only the lance itself is unlocked (by default, actually) but the actual modules to power it up are just missing entirely.

I imagine career is not the focus atm but it would be nice to test all this stuff out in the kind of unexpected situations you run into in career mode.

[prisma dock]

You're correct that your suggestion would incentive more creativity and I might prefer it, but I let myself be bullied into moderation for what I dare suggest for fear of people shutting their minds even more than they alreaddy do.

It's true that I don't build many spinal Ion Cores (that I post), but my ships often do have fewer outlets than is typical for the size.

[prisma dock]

But even if 2:1 would remain the optimum, reducing the combination dmg loss factor by 20% (0,75 -> 0,9 for two beams; 0,56 -> 0,672 for three beams and so on) would benefit non-2:1 combinations too

[light stratus]

huh

I am able to make a blueprint that has lance modules

maybe its just that they aren't displaying lance modules and you gotta use blueprints to make ships with them atm

[jaunty gyro]

Huh, that is one workaround I suppose

[granite sapphire]

no? theyre all unlocked and available for free

[granite sapphire]

no you can just build them in career

[jaunty gyro]

They were not, last time I checked (which to be fair was over a week ago)

[granite sapphire]

id assume jat got confused because you can only see the pumps in the part list by selecting the lance turret

[granite sapphire]

they were always available

i used them in career

you have to select the lance turret in the menu which opens a submenu of part lists that shows the pumps

imo not particularly intuitive and doesnt make sense but i assume its to reduce clutter

[jaunty gyro]

Huh, so it is.

Yeah that is definitely not very intuitive at all.

[light stratus]

ahh figured that was the problem

[torpid harbor]

There’s a bug, I’ll send savefile and more context in a few hours when I’m back at desk

but basically, OC toggling becomes glitched if we do a ton of copypasting in blueprint mode; sometimes OC would refuse to turn on, and I don’t quite know the reason why. I was making a railgun ship and I build exclusively in blueprint mode until I think the whole ship’s ready for a v1 debut

[remote charm]

yeah ive experienced that as well

[torpid harbor]

plaus has solution (edit: workaround*)

good stuffs

[tranquil wedge]

Huh I thought I saw this already being reported but I cant find a post. Ill quickly do it I guess

[narrow owl]

can we also make batteries held by crew more yellow ? it's weird how green they are

[languid basin]

If I have my thrusters set up like this and the leftmost thruster fires, will the heat be evacuated via the connected radiator or will it be routed through the overclocked ER?

[sharp root]

it will prioritize direct ocnnections before dumping through the ER

so in this case itll max out the radiator, and if there is still heat to be dumped, itll go through the ER

[languid basin]

Noted. Thank you for your assistance.

[sharp root]

this behavior is mostly just due to the ER multiplying any heat it receives by 2 before dumping it into whatever pipe its connected to (heat taxes basically)

[mild gazelle]

I figured I might as well give my feedback, I liked the "floaty" feeling of the drag in the previous build. Going back to more drag creates a lot more ramming and less orbiting, which is way less fun imo.

[near flax]

iirc theres two numbers that decide drag, a base number and an exponent, i think the base number determines how tight vs floaty drag feels

i would like to see a that base number somewhere inbetween this build and the prev build

iirc its linear per speed or something like that

i remember someone at some point made a graph of stable vs current preview vs old preview

but ive spent like 10 minutes looking and i cant find it

[light stratus]

pipes take priority over ER

it goes pipes > ER > exchanger

[fathom torrent]

What’s the password thingy for meltdown?

[twilit matrix]

previewpreview, I think.

It's pinned as well.

[mild gazelle]

I personally would like it even floatier than the preview build

floaty = fun piloting

[fathom torrent]

Thanks!

[vocal trout]

the exponent makes it snappier at high speeds

[near flax]

i thought exponent was top speed

[torpid harbor]

if there’s 2 exchangers, which one’s prioritized (maybe depending on distance to exchanger) or do they take away heat equally?

[lusty zealot]

i think it's basically just rng

don't quote me on that though

[light stratus]

walt has stated that the game is deterministic, so it's probably not rng

but I wouldn't know what determines the priority

[lusty zealot]

the game is deterministic but also has RNG elements

iirc it essentially prepares a list of random numbers and then runs through them one by 1 whenever something 'random' needs to happen

[light stratus]

wait so like how doom does it?

[lusty zealot]

-# (not quite that, but it gets the point across as an example)

[lusty zealot]

i believe it's a reasonably common thing for games to do

especially ones which have a replay function that works by essentially just copying what happens in the game (like cosmoteer's .recs)

Forts is another example of a game that does that

[light stratus]

doom had a set rng lookup table, meaning the rng was always the same for the game
Games usually use psuedorandom rng, where the rng is handled by the cpu in some way

like using time signatures

instead of game engine

and done in real time

[lusty zealot]

yeah i'm pretty sure cosmoteer uses the second method to generate the 'lookup table' per game

[vocal trout]

drag is a function of deceleration from velocity if im going to be honest with you - the exponent just determines how much it cascades once speed exceeds the base value

[tranquil wedge]

I also like floaty. One of the big issues with that currently is that the ai cant handle floaty that well

[grim gyro]

nooooo

[narrow owl]

meh. I hate when stuff feels unresponsive. Like on a floatyness scale from melee to brawl, I like ultimate.

Also the floatyness thing, while in combat it's debatable if it's good or not, but it hinders everything else in career. Also, new career players with already bad thrust arrangements might find it even harder to dodge nukes

[grim gyro]

yeah slow unresponsive ships are the last thing i want

[regal sand]

Pipe on Engine Room get priority, so the increase is the 100% of engine. Heat Exchanger no longer seem to suck the heat out of ER unless there are no pipes leading to it

That's different if the ER get out of fuel, though, reason why HE are useful to put on ER (-> thurst won't get out of Oc automatically)

[upbeat sequoia]

Yes, i have been setting up like this too. Stick a Radiator next to the OC'ed Huge truster to cancel out the heat. Huge thruster = 1100 heat gen same as Rad = 1100 heat removed. Looks like a good setup.
If you go via the Engine room the heat is doubled so you then need two Rads to combat the heat.

The only thing i don't understand in what the OC'ed engine room bonus of 'Power Distribution efficiency 'is.

[light stratus]

i was not talking about that

i knew it was pipe > er > exchanger

but the priority between different exchangers is a different story

[regal sand]

It share amongst HE within range according to the number of cells they cover. HE who cover the same number of cells seem to share equally between each-others.

[vocal trout]

if the part is fully covered at least

[regal sand]

No, even partial coverage do suck the heat. Just not as fast (it suck only a few tiles worth of heat at a time), so it tend to not be fast enough to prevent fire

[vocal trout]

i suppose it also depends on the heat source

[regal sand]

Which heat source do you think partial coverage won't allow to suck heat?

Because I've yet to see any case where heat isn't sucked at all from even 1 tile of coverage

tested further, a 1 tile coverage on TB only allow to drain enough to reach 2 bars of heat on the battery. If my assumption is correct, that mean that each tiles have heat in them, and that you can only suck the heat from tiles within reach. So if you cover 3 cells out of 4, you can only suck up to 75% of the heat within the module

[eternal ibex]

even with half(?) their intended fire rate, overclocked small lasers are insane

i do appreciate that they require hypercoils to use through the radiator cost of venting their heat, but they offer so much concentrated, undodgeable, unflakable firepower that it simply feels unfair

also - why do small laser turrets have -5 penetration resistance? that's more than disruptors have (-3), the same as heavy lasers, and more than standard cannons (-4)

[regal sand]

Penetration is per cell traversed. Laser turret only get penetration resistance for the turrets, while canons have penetration resistance for the whole thing. Traversing a laser from one side to another require "only" 6m of penetration, while traversing a small canon from the top of the dome or the side require 9m of penetration.
I think traversing only partially (like from the side of the dome or at an angle that make the shot traverse less distance within the module) require less penetration and diagonally require more, but don't quote me on that because I'm not certain at 100%.

[eternal ibex]

It's just hilarious to me that standard cannon shots that land on the turret just stop because standard cannons only have 5 meters of pen (1st and 2nd shots in the gif), but if the shot goes slightly to the side and misses the turret hitbox, it will hit the non-resisting part of the hitbox (3rd shot), which is really weird and it's pretty much RNG whether or not it happens

The difference between a turret hit and a main hitbox hit is pretty huge too, in my gif it immediately caused 2 fires when it missed the turret (lol)

I was testing the new turret penetration resistance with an unshielded small laser ship in career and kept dying to cannons for seemingly no reason, this was the cause

[regal sand]

Ah, yes that happen. There is a small gap between LB, HB and disruptors

[eternal ibex]

I'm aware, I'm saying that the turret having so much penetration resistance makes this effect a lot more obnoxious when it happens, since the -5 meters of pen resist gives a false sense of security

[regal sand]

maybe it could be possible to ask so close the gap by making the turrets slightly fatter

[eternal ibex]

Imagine being a new player that has seen cannons bounce off the turrets, and then they randomly die to a single shot that threads the needle between the turrets

That's gotta be pretty frustrating

[regal sand]

but the problem is that making the turrets bigger also mean that turrets intervene with each-other's line of fire more

and if there is no pen resistance on turrets, there would be problem too for diagonal designs and when taking fire at an angle

[eternal ibex]

My suggestion is to reduce the turret penetration resistance to be the same as disruptors (-3) so standard cannon shots always pen instead, no hitbox changes are necessary, and is a small nerf to an existing OP weapon that does not need the help it currently has

[plucky fossil]

the game still does have rng, it just makes it the same way every time from a set starting point

[plucky fossil]

it uses a lot of things, not just time

[regal sand]

Are they really that OP? 7 of them aren't enough to penetrate a single Oc Small Shield supplied by 2 crew from a capacitor/small reactor though

[eternal ibex]

the entire early game of career does not exist when you have small lasers and some backwards thrust

and if you add a shield you're unkillable

[regal sand]

that's also true with heavy blasters, ions or Oc Rails (not normal Rails because of ships with Flack and Large Shields). Plus Oc is supposed to be a mid-to-late game tech

[eternal ibex]

but small lasers require 0 hypercoils and their OC isn't even necessary to be OP

regular small lasers are busted as an early game weapon because of their range

[regal sand]

basic laser blasters aren't OP though

range is strong (no matter the stage of the game), but fast opponents can still catch you up, and there are clouds

[vocal trout]

being faster is still an option

[regal sand]

and if the opponent have a shield (and there are some that have it in the early game), LB sudently become weak

[eternal ibex]

they very much are, the faster thing isn't a problem because they are very lightweight and crew efficient to supply
clouds aren't even an issue because you can just autofire them to bypass the range restriction

[regal sand]

Anything is OP at this stage in the hand of an experienced player. You could even argue that mining lasers are better when you have shielding at early stage as it allow you to destroy the reactors of your opponents without making it explode, allowing for better early game income from saved processors & enriched uranium

[eternal ibex]

I don't disagree there, but small lasers are a lot easier to use than mining lasers - it's not difficult to figure out that kiting works in this game and small lasers practically encourage it with their design

[regal sand]

kiting work in all games where you can have both range advantage and mobility advantage, and dealing damage without recieving any in return is always a strong option

more importantly, this conversation is out of the subject of the Meltdown Update

[eternal ibex]

I'm bringing these things up to show that they are OP already and their OC is broken

[regal sand]

I guess even at 2 shots/s their damage is still of 800/s, but Oc Small Canons get much higher alpha with projectiles that are hardly countered by even flack (against 2 flacks, 3 Oc SC go completely through most of the time even at ~75% of their range)

[light stratus]

huh i wrote off small lasers

[eternal ibex]

small lasers are so funny

[prisma dock]

I have encountered a problem I don't understand:
Each side of this ship should produce about 16160 heat per second in total. (Reactor 2400h/s + Inner thrusters 2200h/s [out thrusters have their own dissipation] + 2 Large Shields 160h/s + TRL 600h/s + Pumps 800h/s + Capacitors 2000h/s [for now I'm not counting the 50 heat per delivered battery, but I can't imagine they produce more heat than the HTs & TRLs which are both not firing in this image] + Ions 8000h/s) Yet, even when I'm not thrusting and I only fire the Ions, these 16 Radiators cannot radiate all of the heat away. Am I missing something? Or is there maybe some part that the devs forgot to adjust the stats for when they reversed the speed change?

[tranquil wedge]

can you send the ship please?

[prisma dock]

Thx for taking a look. Ignore the severe flickering for now. I'm just testing the heat atm.

[tranquil wedge]

the game says you produce more than 16k per side

[prisma dock]

But I shouldn't. Right? Reactor 2400h/s + Inner thrusters 2200h/s [out thrusters have their own dissipation] + 2 Large Shields 160h/s + TRL 600h/s + Pumps 800h/s + Capacitors 2000h/s [for now I'm not counting the 50 heat per delivered battery, but I can't imagine they produce more heat than the HTs & TRLs which are both not firing in this image] + Ions 8000h/s

[tranquil wedge]

hm

[prisma dock]

You think I should report this as a bug?

[regal sand]

20 radiators = 22.000 heat/s evacuated
16 Ion = 16.000
6 Capacitors = 3.000 → 19.000
4 Shields = 320 → 19.320
Add to that 118.52 per power drawn from Large Reactors & 50 per power put in Oc Capacitors

this is not a bug

[tranquil wedge]

Oh I discovered something that really is a bug

[eternal ibex]

you have 16 total radiators for dissipation not 16 per side?

[regal sand]

yep

I haven't even started to count the heat management required for the TRL and Oc Engines & thrusts

[prisma dock]

Wait, am I really this blind and forgot to actually add the 8 extra radiators per side?

Omg

I need 16 per side

big oof

[regal sand]

there are 20

[eternal ibex]

Happens to us all

[eternal ibex]

four of them are directly attached to the outer thrusters, not connected to the central network

[regal sand]

they evacuate part of the heat from Huge Thrusters, so they'll be fully efficient in the end

[eternal ibex]

yep, but yaddah was burning without any of the thrusters in consideration so i didn't count them

[hollow gull]

are OC mining lasers working as intended?

[regal sand]

well, in the end he forgot to add radiators on each sides, so whatever

[hollow gull]

they seem to be really, really strong

[regal sand]

To my understanding yes, and yes, they deal a tad of damage through shields (I asked if it was a bug, didn't get any response)

[hollow gull]

that's awesome

[regal sand]

They don't deal much damage through the shield though (~125/s). Also, there is the same problem of damage dispersion as Oc Ions. You also need to remember that some of the damage is lost due to the area damage

And considering how much energy (and for Oc heat) they generate per second, it's not that good. Just enough to make pure mining ship more capable of defending themselves

[prisma dock]

What did you discover?

[tranquil wedge]

As I tried to turn off your thrust oc: https://discord.com/channels/314103695568666625/1381301757937717289

[mild gazelle]

Floaty doesnt mean you accelerate slower, it just means you decelerate slowed

So in a way your ship is faster

[narrow owl]

the drag equation works both ways

and no it didn't make you faster

[mild gazelle]

...if you have less drag you accelerate faster

With more drag you have more force pushing you to be moving and turning at 0 speed, making the ship more annoying to control

[narrow owl]

The drag equation in cosmoteer is exponential, meaning at low speed you have little drag and at high speed you got BIG drag

it's basically not fixed drag

[mild gazelle]

Btw for the rts control, you can get it to work a bit better for different speed if you change some of the constants for the ai control, I assume walt knows this though

[mild gazelle]

I know. In the previous update there was even less drag at lower speeds and more at higher speeds. In my opinion, the game played a lot better with that drag equation.

[narrow owl]

Nah, the drag at low speed was unchanged, only at high speeds there was more

[narrow owl]

There shouldn't be simulation differences between direct control and rts

[mild gazelle]

...then why was it a lot easier to orbit in the previous build

I can't go back to the previous build but I can assure you that low end drag was lower

[mild gazelle]

What do you mean by this

[narrow owl]

constants, like physical constants right ?

[mild gazelle]

I meant the constants that determine when the ship breaks and accelerates

Like at what distance and speed and ext

Its exposed in the game files

So when I made zero drag mod I changed those to make rts work better

[narrow owl]

if low end drag was lower then slow ships before would have been faster, which I didn't notice and can very easily be verified with the speedometer

[narrow owl]

ah you meant that
I guess that could be a formula yeah, using current speed and distance to determine when to brake, instead of a fixed value

[mild gazelle]

This is in combination with OC thrust, so it's cheaper to get more thrust now

So it might not have actually made slow ships faster, just ships with the same investment in thrust faster, I'm not sure

[narrow owl]

Well I did notice the community made small ships were usually faster because of OC thrust

But for my tournament, I made myself a non oc ship and it wasn't faster, it's fairly slow

Maybe it was easier to orbit because targets didn't rotate as fast instead ?

[mild gazelle]

Is there a way to look at old builds?

[bitter steppe]

The problem is that the driftiness is a combination of adjusted values, not just a single number or formula.
Max speed, acceleration, rotational speed, and drag all play a part in it

[bitter steppe]

Not for these test builds unless it was specifically split off to a separate preview branch

[tacit peak]

tbh

having to rethink every ship design I have is gonna suck wehn the update drops

[main blaze]

sorry, this message is a few days old, but I think it's the crew task limit. They start ignoring tasks if there's too many at the same time in a ship

it happens in big ships and it's noticeable in smaller ones when there's something that requires a lot of jobs at the same time (i've noticed it in missile orbiters, missile factories require a lot of people to work non stop)

[quasi meteor]

they ignore tasks when there's too many?

interesting

[eager gyro]

The limit is around 2000 crew, you can technically go higher but around +500 more they start taking a long time

[main blaze]

I think there's a queue of tasks and it can get filled up and the game doesnt store more tasks, probably for performance reasons

[main blaze]

oh the limit is much lower than 2k tasks

iirc it's around 100 and something

less than 200

[eager gyro]

No like the amount of crew on the ship before they start losing brain cells

[main blaze]

that depends on what's happening on the ship

I notice it in 1.5M pvp ships that have less than 200 crew usually

[vocal trout]

around 150

[eternal ibex]

In elim PvP even tiny delays are noticeable, for anything less than hyper-optimized modules it doesn't really matter

The point where well-established modules with margins for sustain start to break is around 500-600 crew in my experience

[frigid flax]

thats funny

made another ship deleter

700k

bound to be nerfed when ion oc gets fixed

this will be a cabal ship when i paint it

[granite sapphire]

things im waiting on:
-ocls nerf
-ocdc nerf
-octb nerf
-cg oc rework
ask me on ideas for any of these if ur lost devs

[lusty zealot]

for OCLS the main idea's been to increase heat generated from damage, and we've been thinking of increasing the spread/beam width on OCTB (to make it less good at the focus required for flips)

not sure what to do for OCDC nerf and OCCG rework, though given the general popularity of the idea OCCG being some sort of shotgun would make sense

[quasi meteor]

the acronyms are killing me

OCLS = large shield
OCDC = deck cannon
OCTB = tractor beam
OCGC = chaingun

I thiunk I just about got it

[lusty zealot]

yep

the OC prefix just means overclock

[tranquil wedge]

All of those have been proposed in the council at least

[vague haven]

Dang 10k messages under 1 month

[prisma dock]

OCTBQIA+ 🏳️‍🌈
😉

[mild gazelle]

No trl nerfed? I feel that if you're nerfing shields you gotta nerf trls too

Honestly idk if there needs to be too many changes, it seems like we're at a petty good balance rn

[grizzled sentinel]

no oc ions nerf?

[granite sapphire]

i dont think so? if we reduce shield effective hp trls effectiveness and importance will also proportionally decrease

imo at the very least the stuff i mentioned needs to be changed to have a healthy/playable meta bc theyre all causing major issues

ocls is absurdly strong and essentially enables ships that are effectively unkillable until their thermal stores are full. not fun to play vs and strips agency from enemies

ocdc is similarly stupid strong and incentivizes poor building due to not only being roof mounted but also now very long ranged resulting in very uninteresting alpha dc brick builds being their most powerful form

octb is absolutely absurd. 50% more force for a bit more than 1 radiator of heat is insanity especially considering how much easier being allowed to have less tb makes logistics

cg oc is clearly disappointing. it does literally nothing for your damage potential and just lets you do your damage a bit quicker and no other benefit, and this in of itself is barely even a benefit. its not even worth ocing imo.

[plucky fossil]

it's worth oc if it's convenient

i think

[mild gazelle]

Rn, trls strip shields stupid fast. If we make shields weaker, shields get stripped ever stupider faster

I think oc tbs should do produce a lot more heat

[mild gazelle]

very uninteresting alpha dc brick builds
Is this what you mean?

these guys are very much not alpha

[granite sapphire]

not alpha, but i wouldnt say its a particularly interesting ship

[mild gazelle]

yeahhhh

its winrate is too high

[granite sapphire]

good ship thi

tho

i can attest

[torpid harbor]

to tack onto OCTB debate, it costs dummy high amounts of heat to run OC engine parts, even more so when we use OC engine room. essentially the heat production is 4x high because the ER doubles heat production, and TB can counter all that with a lot more thermal and logistical efficiency. The infrastructure needed to move fast is far more complicated than the infrastructure needed to push/pull things fast.

maybe by even an order of magnitude, considering how TB can be places right next to the reactor

placed*

[livid thunder]

the wall

[cerulean hound]

"sir, 87% of the ships in this game are just guns bolted together"

[coarse plaza]

Welp, it took a while. But I finally made a not complete shite ship with the update.

Behold: The lasfire MK1-2

I'm quite happy with it so far. But i'm open to suggestions for improvements.

[hard orbit]

Seems like you have a lot of reactors and it doesn't look like it should need that much power.

[pale python]

i still havent gotten around doing effectsscale on all the damage and etc numbers on my mods

[upbeat sequoia]

Overclocked capacitors on a small shield? Does it work?
OC capacitors have battery size of 3 remember.

[upbeat sequoia]

Other than testign the power usage, i think the ship look great btw

[languid basin]

OCDCs are horrific, they've a higher range than base railgun, and has 90% of its speed, a PD turret barely has about 0.4 seconds to intercept it and that's not taking into account shot inaccuracy and time it takes for it to even point at the shell.

You'd need 3x PDs just to shoot down a single OCDC shell assuming all shots land and all turrets are firing the moment it enters range. Of course I understand the point of PD/Flak is that it's only meant to reduce incoming blows but that doesn't really matter when your enemy has 6x OCDCs behind 6x layers of armor

[tame comet]

ocdcs only downside is it has half* dps. it gians almost every other stat

[languid basin]

Not even, even though the fire rate is halved it's still got a 60% boost to damage.

[coarse plaza]

This is definitely the biggest weakness of the build. But with all the heat-pipes I struggled to make efficient pathing for the reactor. So I eventually relented and added multiple medium/small reactors

[coarse plaza]

It seemed to work quite well. The battery size isn’t a major hinderance since OC capacitors also get a bunch of extra capacity. And the resulting shields can take a lot of punishment. At leas; until we throw EMP into the mix.

But at that point the 3-battery size is also preferred for a quicker recharge.

All that being said: I haven’t done a whole lot of testing with standard capacitors.

[hollow gull]

why are the lasers doing nothing to the shield in the 3rd gif

in second gif, even a singular laser is draining the same shield

it seems to be really inconsistent

sometimes the mining lasers obliterate the other ship, sometimes they don't go through a singular small shield

I even focused all of the lasers on a singular shield at the end and they didn't even drain the shield??

but a minute ago the lasers wiped the shields near instantly and killed the ship in about 4 seconds flat

wait

is this a damage falloff thing?

[tacit peak]

how would the game be balanced with multipule ships when radaitors gotta be used for heat based ships?

[vague aurora]

Little suggestion — for chaingun, I think it could be cool if overclock increased the turret speed, by ''loosening the bolts'' of the turret or something, and maybe also buffing the shell?

Feel like the overclock isn't really playing with chaingun's preexisting gimmicks well enough.

I really liked more ''free'' chaingun orbiter ships that had very loose and quickly rotating chainguns (which existed in the chaingun preview build), but then they nerfed it by cutting CG turret speed in half.

[prisma dock]

More rotation speed would be a cool gimmick. But even if that isn't added on top, I already like the "infinite" fire rate.

[tacit peak]

are you sure itd be good if we just make it a + on its stats

[prisma dock]

super long CGs are fun

[prisma dock]

You mean the turret rotation idea from Nick? I don't think that would be an op thing to add.

[tacit peak]

not op

just boring?

[prisma dock]

why?

[tacit peak]

just adding better stats

[prisma dock]

Currently OC CGs have potentially infinite fire rate. That's pretty cool already and not just a "stat buff". It has design implications. Adding more turret rotation on top of that would just make it even more creatively cooler.

[tacit peak]

idk, I liked how they did the OC of the TB

how they make it completely diffrent

[prisma dock]

Having a single CG where you might otherwise have 4 separate ones instead is also pretty different.

[tacit peak]

thats not diffrent though

though i geuss not everything can be diffrent like that though

[prisma dock]

It is. It implies a very different ship layout. It means you can save cost and space enabling you to pair it up with other weapons that you would not want to before and so on.

[tacit peak]

the TB entirely changes the use of the module

that s what I meant with diffrent

[prisma dock]

Yes. That is the best kind of different. But the way OC CGs are different from CGs is also cool enough. And, as you rightly mentioned, there's also the question of how different can they even make something like a Chaingun conceptually. I feel like adding more turret rotation would make it more different in the sense that you're referring to - a new use, here as an option for orbiters.

[tacit peak]

yeahh, Personally I dont think every single thing should be overclockable for that verry reason that not everything can be changed like that but then again its however walt makes the update.

overclocking stuff like thrusters andlasers makes sense I suppose but its just kinda weird for stuff like scanners and etc

[remote charm]

its still practically limited

due to magazine shell replacement speed eventually being overcome

past 80~ mags it messes up

[prisma dock]

Wait, do you mean to say it can be reloaded while shooting??? I must've missed or forgotten that.

[remote charm]

no

[prisma dock]

OCing Sensor Arrays is very unique, since it's only the way to extend your sensors even further.

[tacit peak]

oh no, extending sensors.

Idk, verry boring way of making them better

[remote charm]

past that range the chaingun will no longer reliably consume ammo in a linear fashion

so it stops shooting while some mags still have ammo in them

[prisma dock]

Ok ,then what do you mean by it getting messed up past 8 mags? The rate at which each mag is reloaded is constant, no matter how long the CG (assuming you have the same number of crew per mag and the same distance for each crew member to cover while reloading)

[tacit peak]

letting them send out bursts of energy from the sensor too other sensors too temporarily set the ship back too normal sensor range or smth would be WAY cooler.

[remote charm]

i mean the movement of the shells down the chaingun while it is firing

not anything to do with crew

[tacit peak]

funny way of bullying kites

[prisma dock]

Not flashy, but unique. I like it decently enough.

Can't think of anything better really

[tacit peak]

or just send them to something lower than normal range for like

5 to 10 seconds

[prisma dock]

wtf???

How?

[tacit peak]

but only affecting other ships with a sensor on it would make it quite intresting

[remote charm]

ill get a gif

[prisma dock]

I thought the animation of the shells moving through the mags was purely visial. I didn't think the individual shells actually had a speed at which they are moved forward.

[tacit peak]

actually

imma make that a suggest

[prisma dock]

But that's not useful at all...

[tacit peak]

anti kite

also disorientating

[prisma dock]

If you are anti-kite, then you have to be a kite yourself, otherwise they will still see you since you're, you know, chasing after them and trying to close the gap...

That would severely limit the use of OC Sensors to just one archetype.

[prisma dock]

not really. I don't care about my sensor range, as long as my opponent is within it.

[tacit peak]

thats the point, if the enemy ship is in your sensor rnage

if it isnt

your gonna have issues

[tacit peak]

speeeen

[prisma dock]

But again, that would have to mean they are a kite themselves. Otherwise they will be within normal sensor range. And that means OC Sensors would only ever be useful for kites. That's bad. And that's not to even speak of what happens when both kites use OC Sensors. That's just annoying.

[prisma dock]

Wait, it just JAMS ITSELF???? xD

[remote charm]

yes

[prisma dock]

ok... I semi-like that, even though I think it should be easy to fix code wise, right?

[remote charm]

well it existing makes oc chainguns fire rate cap removal useless

or at least not as useful as it could be

[prisma dock]

Yeah. But, well, not completely useless. A 70 mag CG is still quite the cost saving compared to having multiple CGs with the same number of mags.

[remote charm]

just a little disappointing for those that took it literally

[prisma dock]

yes. I think they should fix that.

[prisma dock]

Do the devs know about this?

[tacit peak]

im saying that itd be below normal vision range too force up close and personal fights if enemies also use sensors

[remote charm]

i think i posted about it here before

idk if it got noticed

[tacit peak]

also brb imma eat reallll quick

[prisma dock]

Ah ok. Must've misread that. Ok, so you essentially want OC sensors to blind the enemy for a time when activated, kinda like OC TBs?

That might be interesting.

[tacit peak]

If its like that it allows you to either force enemies to get closer to keep dmging or survive the attack while waiting for their sensors to work again

it also allows you to do strategies that ussually takes blind enemies

(stealthy ideas)

cause the enemy can only really see you as a red blip

[prisma dock]

Made an official bug report. Hope it gets noticed this time.
#1382062552183341056 message

[jaunty gyro]

Hey, so would anyone be able to explain how thermal lances work as you add more? Does a system with two lances have to divide all the same heat in half? Is damage output better if fewer lances are having to share the same amount of amplification/dilation?

[light stratus]

Wait I'm not the only one having this issue? And it's a bug!?

[light stratus]

Lance modules evenly divide their buffs between attached lances

[remote charm]

i assume so

[light stratus]

Lances do not fire heat

They produce heat

[remote charm]

if it was a feature it would be really disappointing

[light stratus]

No way is it a feature

[jaunty gyro]

Yes I know, it's just a simpler way of saying amplification and dilation every time.

[crimson osprey]

Send me the ship file in question?

[jaunty gyro]

Wuh oh.... Yeah that would explain it certainly.

[crimson osprey]

thx

[light stratus]

It's also happened to me so I don't think it's specific

[crimson osprey]

How did you come to that determination?

[light stratus]

It's how everyone has described it

And it makes the most sense

[crimson osprey]

Well, it's not how it works

[light stratus]

So then power draw of the modules increases?

[crimson osprey]

Pumps increase 1-1 for the first~~ pump~~ TRL and have a diminishing return for each additional pumps. It's pretty steep though while the drain increases quickly, so generally going over 2 starts to get less than optimal. Going over 4 is never worth it

[light stratus]

So it's like combining ion beams then

[crimson osprey]

Sorry I meant first TRL

[jaunty gyro]

So is it better to have more lances or more pumps/modules?

Well, obviously the number isn't 1 to 1 since you can stack way more modules, but you know what I mean.

[crimson osprey]

Going over 4 TRLs is never worth it. Pumps also have a diminishing return, but you need a TON of pumps for that to really become relevant

[remote charm]

this is assuming the entire thermal system is connected right

[jaunty gyro]

Yeah so far I've mostly done single, big connected systems

[crimson osprey]

Yes, this is per system

[remote charm]

thanks

[crimson osprey]

Multiple systems become a better option at very high pump amounts, but most people won't build things big enough for that to become relevant

General rules for building TRLs: For debuffing shields, use 1 TRL + as many dilation pumps as possible. For debuffing armor, 1-2 TRLs plus mostly dilations with some amps. For main weapon melting, 2-4 TRLs with as many amps as possible and a few dilations

Never go over four TRLs on the same systems without a very good reason

[jaunty gyro]

Seems like in general it's better to go for higher dilation than amplification?

[glass stump]

That's hilarious, but is that jamming intentionally? Have the devs said anything in the spirit of “it's not a bug, it's a feature”?

[crimson osprey]

That depends on your goal with the weapon. Debuffing favors dilations, although amps still matter. Killing with TRL alone requires mostly amps

[prisma dock]

Guys, since we had a somewhat controversial discussion over the ugliness of heat pipes, how they ruin or at least clash often with ship paint and how to fix it...
I've found what particularly annoys me about the heat pipes and maybe this can be useful for solving the issue.

Look at these circled areas. (Note - this is not the final look of the ship, but just a demonstration to highlight the problem) They look fine as long as the heat pipes are dim without any heat flowing through. They barely mess with the illusion of depth at all. But look at how effectively they nullify the depth-illusion once the heat flows through them. That is because, while the dim pipes had their textures "under" the paint decals, the heated pipe glow actually lays itself "over" the decals and it makes everything look flat.

If we can find a way to change this while still keeping pipes relatively visible to indicate what is happening to the ship's heat system, then I feel like the largest chunk of the reason why heat pipes are ugly will be solved.

(left is unheated, right is heated)

Here's a gif, so you can see the change and how it destroys depth gradually as it heats up.

[glass stump]

Has someone written a comprehensive article (in the wiki or something)? Would be interesting to know.
I still don't understand what the TRL debuff on shields actually does besides heating it up very slowly.
I also heard once that multiple TRL in one system increase the energy consumptions of the pumps, but that sounds like bs given that the tooltips have set amounts of energy usage, right?

[remote charm]

you could just paint around them, no? as people do with reactors and control rooms for instance

[crimson osprey]

So part of why there isn't an article floating around (other than it being very new) is that everything in the preview is still subject to change. TRLs are very likely the most nuanced and complicated weapon in the game and people are understandably confused, but until things are a little more solid, there may not be a comprehensive document. When one does exist, the math probably won't be present since that is likely to make things harder rather than easier to understand

[jaunty gyro]

Probably quite difficult given they have to criss cross large areas of a ship

[remote charm]

yeah not that it's easy

[prisma dock]

Oh no, not this argument again. Reactors and Control Rooms, or Barracks don't run all over your ship into every or at least many corners. You can thus neatly incorporate these single spots of breaking up in the paint into your paintstyle. But heat pipes go everywhere and they are thus much harder to incorporate - rather they limit you way more than any other ship part with texture.

[glass stump]

without starting that argument again haha. sure painting around them can work out but imagine everyone head to paint around every walkway because of a very obscuring rooftop texture. ^^

[glass stump]

maybe changing the opaqueness of the glowing pipes would already change a lot. that would be nice since the devs would not even have to make a new, less opressive rooftop texture. whoever made the current one definetly cooked. they do look cool, its just a shame that they conflict so much with the painting process.

[prisma dock]

Also, I feel like with this insight into what in particular is the problem, we might be able to come up with a solution, rather than discussion endlessly how annoying the problem actually is. Can you maybe think of something we could do to the glow in order to make it behave like the dim version of the pipes, while still "glowing"?

[prisma dock]

Yes. I've heard that these textures we have now are not even the final "good" version we will get once the dedicated graphics people of the team get to finalize the textures. If that's the case I must say that the current pipes look relatively good for what they are. If what you say about opaqueness can be done, then that would be a huge step forward.

[glass stump]

Yeah, I guessed that being the reason for it. So, if you don't mind, any chance of explaining the shield-draining debuff to me?
What does Shield damage power cost even mean exactly? 😅

Does it mean if an Ion laser that also hits the shield, that would deal the equivalent of one battery as damage, it does that much damage + 1,3%*16,5% per dialation pump?

or am I way off?

[crimson osprey]

Shields are coded to provide an amount of HP per energy. So a small shield for instance has 15,000 HP and 6 batteries. 15,000/6 = 2,500 HP per battery. TRL shield debuff lower the amount of HP shields have per battery. So a big TRL debuff could cut that in half for 1,250 HP per battery, making shields not only have half the HP but also making them significantly less energy efficient

[glass stump]

I see and since the debuff does not stack it would make more sense to have one strongly dilated TRL vs multiple small ones.

[glass stump]

Is cutting the effective maximum shield hp in half just an example, or is that a hard cap for the debuff for balancing reasons? Because if my math is correct, you already reach 50% with just 5 dilation pumps + base stat and would in theory reach 100% with 11 pumps already, but of course, the latter is not reflected in the game (for good reasons).

[crimson osprey]

I’m not sure on the math, but it definitely doesn’t seem possible to cut a shield’s hp by 100% which would essentially nullify it. It is possible to go over my example of a 50% reduction though and the results can be pretty gnarly

[glass stump]

Yeah, I can imagine it being pretty gnarly. Just a small setup of mine already reaches 1/3, which is honestly way more than I expected. I assume somewhere around 50% must be a soft cap with diminishing returns, and there is definitely a hard cap before reaching 100%. Otherwise, a huge TRL could make it so a single small laser shot could 1-shot a large shield.
I might test this out later

[jaunty gyro]

Anyone feel that large and/or huge radiators may be necessary? You have to devote a truly absurd amount of outer hull space to radiators as ships get larger.

[narrow blade]

thermal canister missiles fuming rn

[jaunty gyro]

They are a decent way to get rid of heat yeah but it's not super sustainable

[crimson osprey]

You also don't have to overclock absolutely everything

[bitter steppe]

But what if I wanna?

[regal wharf]

Then suffer the consequences

[narrow blade]

it would be fun for some overclocks to need heat to function

like. large cannons would heat up shells as a overclock but take like 300 heat per shot

so they would just be a less efficient tcm

[paper hemlock]

I liked the idea of diamond factories using heat

[narrow blade]

wouldnt compressing a massive amount of carbon... make heat???

[delicate moss]

I made a suggestion about the material (non ammo) factories making heat

https://discord.com/channels/314103695568666625/1372489886405230644

I still really hope this happens, but my standpoint was more about balance than realism, since material factories are already obscenely strong in career

[frigid flax]

cosmoteer gore

what happened to the old oc small laser

got replaced?

[glass stump]

I ran some tests, and surprisingly, I couldn't find a hard cap. Just extremely diminishing returns. With 120 dilation pumps and 90 amp pumps, a shield’s effective HP is reduced by about 97%, which means a large shield that normally has 45,000 HP drops to just 1,286 HP, and can be downed with three laser blaster projectiles that otherwise wouldn’t even drain a single battery.

[frigid flax]

Wait if I place heat collectors near a oc engine room will the heat collectors get heat from the thrusters or from the 100%+ extra heat engine room?

[glass stump]

it will get the heat from the ER, not from the thrusters. so you pay double tax

[frigid flax]

aw man

[near flax]

unsure if this is known but TRLs dont factor into the heat calculation

[frigid flax]

agile fella

[regal sand]

Sensor’s range increase is fine for me, and I wouldn’t dismiss it as a simple stat boost, notably for 4 reasons:
→ it allow to see a whole asteroid field, allowing a single probe ship to let your mining ship to queue up every interesting asteroids inside it
→ it allow to see further than the maximal weapon range of even railguns and EMP
→ it allow to see at ion maximal range within gaseous clouds
→ it allow to prevent unfavourable engagement inside electron cloud (where radar isn’t working)
When a stat increase have consequences that are so varied and numerous, both in and out of combat, it cannot be simply dismissed as a boring stat boost.
It also make ideas like that of a non-combat ship accompanying your fleet in combat far more viable and interesting tactically. Even a small, fast but unprotected probe ship (potentially with a hyperdrive beacon?) can now give vision and intel for your fleet (more than merely their position) without fearing receiving a rail shot or EMP in the face (which would doom it in both cases).

[regal sand]

Jamming with Oc Chainguns can be prevented by simply putting mags in both sides. However, even then it has a cap in how fast it can shoot, and in both case it seem to me that it is related to restrictions due to animation. It’s quite common.
Oc Chainguns with mags in both sides cap at around 0.3s to empty one mag on each side, so around 106 bullets/s. At that threshold, the CG animation seem to be unable to keep up with consumption, resulting in a weapon that shoot slower than intended.

[light stratus]

I had mags on both sides, but yeah the jamming happens when one side runs out

[languid basin]

It's not a bug it's a feature 👍

[light stratus]

I paid for infinite fire rate, I'm going to get my infinite fire rate

[light stratus]

is there a bug with OC TB and OC DCs?

dealing way way less damage than I think they should

this is the damage done by OC TB boosted OC DC volley

this is the damage from a normal OC DC volley

just seems like it loses most of the penetration or something?

idk im not really testing well enough to tell a difference, just that OC TB OC DC doesn't feel like its doing all that much

https://cdn.steamusercontent.com/ugc/12427849730414962276/F374C807900BE4AD853E6A4F1FABECD434718623/

so uhh

[narrow owl]

Hold on I know that ship

[light stratus]

imagine this but with the 10% fire chance and not 3%

[light stratus]

its a nice wide target ;)

[tulip nebula]

I have an idea for buffing sensors array but it's kinda complicated...

[paper hemlock]

Type away

[tulip nebula]

Okie, give me a moment

So uhh, basically what I have in mind is making oc sensor array change how the ship receives ping and increases visibility range

I was thinking like... instead of "circle of visibility" widens, there's going to be a "cone" spinning around + the default visibility range, as the "cone of visibility" spins around, so is the sensors of pings is, the ping pops up and disappear quickly as the sensor spins around, for me, I think the range increase 50% more than normal SA but unlike normal SA, the ship has no 360° visibility

Man, im bad at English

[eternal ibex]

I can’t wait to be on 8x and get the enemy spotted ping every 0.5 seconds

[paper hemlock]

https://tenor.com/view/radar-love-search-gif-20027720

Like this?

[tulip nebula]

YES

Sonar

[paper hemlock]

https://tenor.com/view/nerd-emoji-nerd-meme-radar-gif-26497624

[tulip nebula]

It only updates the ping when the cone crosses

[paper hemlock]

lol

[tulip nebula]

Lol

[tulip nebula]

So uhh, yea, good for scout, snipers with support, bad at intense combat

[vocal trout]

me when i have 5 scout ships at 8x

[light stratus]

issue with this is performance, ships are rendered at a certain radius around your own and unloaded outside of that. its why when you are at stations the game lags so bad, so many ships loaded at once, while a bit away from stations the lag isnt so bad

[paper hemlock]

I wouldn’t think so, I’m not sure how the game computes where stuff is but I’d imagine it knows most ships positions and just changes said position instead of fully loading the ship

[cerulean prairie]

@everyone New Meltdown Update preview! As always, thanks so much for your testing and feedback!

Balance:

• Tractor Beam (Overclocked):
  • Increased beam ‘spread’ arc (5d→20d)
  • Increased force (60KN→70KN)
  • Increased heat generation (1,400→2,200)

Other:

• Fixed Overclocked Ion Beam DPS being double the intended value
• Fixed Overclocked Small Laser firing slower than intended
• Fixed Nuke first stage linear velocity damping being unintentionally high
• Improved Part Network system
  • Reworked NetworkPort components to create routes to/from network components referenced by RouteEndpoint and RouteSource instead of registering their own nodes
  • Improved Part Network resource operation performance with large numbers of producers, consumers, and storages (eg. OC parts, Radiators, and Thermal Batteries)
• Fixed expanding explosions not affecting ships split on their previous tick
• Updated TCM Launcher art
• Replaced TCM Factory art
• Replaced Overclocked Heavy Laser hit VFX

[light stratus]

YAY I CAN NOW OC TB NUKE HARDER

[plucky fossil]

finally factory art update

[tacit peak]

Mhh

not bad I supose

[light stratus]

(and also OC TB nuke at all)

[delicate moss]

yippie!!

[tacit peak]

then again

nerfing the ION beam oc

good

I appreciate that

[light stratus]

well, its still 2x what it was two patches ago before speed changes

[delicate moss]

I still really hope the ship part factories emit heat someday

TCM factory looking good :) I'm curious though, is it going to get a unique roof texture? atm it's the same as the HE one

Actually wait nvm, there is a difference, it's just subtle

[plucky fossil]

a bit sad that it plays and builds so similarly to he misse

[cerulean prairie]

Only so many ways to make factories different.

[mild gazelle]

I can confirm oc tbs are much weaker to flip now lol

[pale python]

yea

[remote charm]

improved part network performance 😍

[plucky fossil]

the flight being so similar doesn't hep either

[pale python]

i like it

[vague aurora]

2 main pipes instead of 3 nice touch because heat missiles can be fit 2 in a launcher.

Though I think it's far too similarly looking.

[delicate moss]

wait wtf that's genius

[vague aurora]

One way to make them unique from HEs is I think heat missile should use copper and sulphur instead of iron and sulphur — Copper is more conductive, thus correlates to heat better, plus unique recipe from any other.

[paper hemlock]

They do?

[vague aurora]

.,.,

Ohhh nevermind

[coarse plaza]

lol

[vague aurora]

They got changed?

[delicate moss]

honestly though idm how the factory roof textures look. They all look extremely similar to each other - but tbh, it could be cool if the roof textures all got updates to make them unique. Imagine if the EMP missile plasma ball stuck out the roof? How about the nuke core of a nuke factory? CPU lights for the CPU factory?

[vague aurora]

Because previously they were iron and sulphur

,_,

When will we get cash money missiles, they should be built out of gold and sulphur

[delicate moss]

Bedazzle your opponent in glitter and vastly increase the chance of surrender

[coarse plaza]

Missiles that increase the % of resources you get from destroyed parts

[vague aurora]

Lol.

Sucker cannons.

[coarse plaza]

Would work especially well on missiles since they tend to hit expensive but exposed enemy parts...

I'm writing this down.

if ever this coding thing works out it sounds like a funny mod

[quasi meteor]

I want a missile made of solid gold that doesn't explode at all, but just pierces straight through them with sheer kinetic energy

[sharp root]

rod from god

[coarse plaza]

Golden rod from god

[eternal ibex]

small laser fix ohhhhh boyyyyyyy

career is so fucking dead

[coarse plaza]

It looks cool as fuck.

We can actually have star wars looking battles now lol

[eternal ibex]

doubled fire rate with 0 counterbalancing

[delicate moss]

I love the OC small laser, minibeam go pew

[eternal ibex]

https://tenor.com/view/rico-yum-nice-gif-2509497699000111500

[coarse plaza]

Pew pew

Now we just need a green colour

[eternal ibex]

i cannot wait to make a feedback post about small laser overclock being OP again

[delicate moss]

please god colored ion beams please please please

[coarse plaza]

lol was it that bad?

[eternal ibex]

It was already OP with the firing rate it had while bugged

Now that the bug is fixed, its dps is quite simply doubled

The concentrated dps they can provide in mass is downright unfair especially since they are hitscan

[paper hemlock]

How much heat do they generate per shot?

[coarse plaza]

90

So a single radiator can deal with 12 <-- ignore that. Its dumb

[paper hemlock]

I don’t think you calculated that right

I can’t calculate it rn cuz I don’t know how many shots it has per second

[eternal ibex]

If they fire one shot every second that’s true, but they fire 4 per second

So one radiator can handle 3

90 * 4 = 360/s * 3 = 1080/s <1100/s dissipation

[coarse plaza]

Ooh right. MB

[eternal ibex]

It’s worth noting that using heat exchangers to extract the heat will change the maximum number one radiator can handle from 3 to 2

[coarse plaza]

Yeah... Haven't yet found a use for heat exchangers funnily enough

[dark lily]

In a lobby yesterday they were seriously struggling to do meaningful damage to opponents in my experience

Even if their precision can make them a good choice for career, that's still a large investment in heat logistics

[eternal ibex]

Try now with literally doubled DPS

[eternal ibex]

Exchangers are really useful for draining heat from parts without creating weaknesses in your ship or needing to make difficult pipe connections that would interfere with crew supply lines

Also, when fighting the thermal resonance lance, exchangers can drain the heat it applies on your ship and allow you to vent it out

[sharp root]

particularly for shields

as TRL will apply heat directly to the shield generator and that can end poorly very quickly if you don't cover those with exchangers

[coarse plaza]

I figured. But the needed proximity to a heat-pipe + the limited absorption has made me always prefer heat pipes themselves so far.

[vague aurora]

My game randomly closed whilst playing pvp
and it gave me this log file

:<

[mild gazelle]

plaus is making a new post

everyone in the game crashed

[coarse plaza]

RIP

[sharp root]

usually piping heat directly with pipes is better, but heat exchangers can also pull the heat status effect out of blocks, which direct piping cannot do

[vague aurora]

OHH wow

ALL 8 people in the game?

Insane.

[mild gazelle]

apparently

[vague aurora]

Well my game frequently just implodes and self destructs so I thought it was a me issue.

My pc is afterall turning 13 years.

:

:>

[sharp root]

this has quite a few uses, such as defending shields and armor, but also adding redundancy, as if your system overheat briefly some heat status effect will be applied to your ship's overclocked parts, and heat exchangers can make the difference between those parts surviving or burning down

[near flax]

heres my log file

[vague aurora]

'' 'Zero' cannot be greater than -1615200000''
Real one 😔

[sharp root]

I wonder if its some underflow nonsense

or overflow

[unkempt hazel]

prob

[modern socket]

I also received a crash while testing a ship of mine against a built-in in creative.

[light stratus]

Faster Than Light weaponry ;)

[prisma dock]

I have made a suggestion thread to make heat pipes clash less with paint while still preserving the communicative aspect of their graphics. What do you say?
#1382494314705321995 message

[rough dock]

I think thermal canister missiles should use iron instead of copper because iron has a higher specific heat capacity.

[lusty zealot]

they used to do that, it's too similar to HE missiles

[rough dock]

Yeah. I know they used to. Obviously it was thematically correct in the first place.

[lusty zealot]

copper is known as a good heat conductor, which makes sense to me given TCM launchers also serve as pipes and they'd need to have piping to whatever the heat storage bit is

[granite sapphire]

what do they use now? sulfur plus copper?

[lusty zealot]

yep

[granite sapphire]

why not copper plus iron

why do they need sulfur? for propellant?

[lusty zealot]

bc that's what EMPs use

[rough dock]

It takes more joules of energy to change the temperature of iron than copper, therefore you could sequester more energy in the iron than the copper before it reaches an unmanageable temperature. Plus, iron is a far more abundant element in the universe.

[plucky fossil]

copper is better because it is the utility metal

[rough dock]

I think people are just mindlessly riding the copper hype train without really thinking about it.

The thermal cannister missile is an ejectable thermal battery. You want it to be cheap and to hold a ton of energy.

[tranquil cape]

could simply make it diagonal

[lusty zealot]

consider: this game is not exactly the epitome of realism

[eternal ibex]

Both mines and HE missiles use iron/sulfur to be made, and copper really isn't that bad to obtain unless you are using all of it to create coils/hypercoils

[rough dock]

Look, I can suspend my disbalief around a spacefaring civilization not inventing wires. That is totally passable. However, I draw the line at making thermal canister missiles out of copper.

[granite sapphire]

wires clearly exist. what else are coils?

[rough dock]

The coils are springs.

[next urchin]

The specific heat capacity of sulfur is almost double that of iron

[granite sapphire]

wires arent used in tranferring power because the power consumption of parts is far too great

[tame comet]

-# emps are also kinda something even their factories so copper being used to make thermal missiles are nice too

[rough dock]

Maybe the batteries just have huge compressed springs in them, and we transport all power as potential energy.

[lusty zealot]

canonically moving walkways do operate off clockwork

according to walt

[rough dock]

The reactors could just be big spring scrunchers.

[near flax]

it could have a thermometer in the art like the TRL

[lusty zealot]

having the pipes between the outer bits and the middle bits have heat gauges would look nice

[cerulean prairie]

@everyone A new meltdown preview hotfix is available that should fix a bug that was causing a variety of crashes.

[narrow blade]

ok

[lusty zealot]

yipeee

[sharp root]

noob box lives on :3c

[granite sapphire]

why in the world did we INCREASE octbs force

like i get the theory of there being more beams but

[tranquil wedge]

To make it pull and push insteadof flip

I support the idea but the numbers seem to be off atm

[granite sapphire]

the push and pull was equally unbalanced

[granite sapphire]

too strong or too weak

[tranquil wedge]

I dont think so

It has always been very weak

[granite sapphire]

with oc tb pull felt like an inescapable vortex. i dont think its particularly fair, especially because strong pull will directly feed into stronger flips

[tranquil wedge]

For an investment of 8 oc tb forcing the enemy to stay close is very fair

[next urchin]

Because it went from a 5 degree spread to 4x that. Double the spread of normal TB with +75% force

[dark lily]

It may still be possible for people to pull off flips with only 20 degrees instead of just 5 🤔

[next urchin]

Probably, but you'd be doing so at either point blank range or with only a few of the beams hitting, I'd suspect

[dark lily]

Well the thing is that because of the force it's much easier to drag your opponents into range and you need fewer beams hitting, of course

[granite sapphire]

i suppose we'll test it. not hopeful

[tranquil wedge]

Yea it is. I played a tbr yesterday and it was very broken

[dark lily]

It's really trivial to change the 20 to a 30 or a 40 or 50, there's no need to be negative

[granite sapphire]

i just enjoyed that for a small period of time tb rail wasnt oppressively strong as it always was. i dont think oc tb even needs any sort of buff to the base beam personally, and if it gets one it should be quite modest since it already gets an entirely unique function in the pulse

[lusty zealot]

i don't think it needed the extra buff to beam strength yeah, keep it at +50% at most imo

[next urchin]

Valid

[torpid yoke]

not to be an idiot but what's tb?

[light stratus]

Tractor Beam

[torpid yoke]

oh duh

what if the oc didnt affect the power but the turret speed instead? seems like a fairly reasonable tradeoff imo

that should prob go in suggestions my bad

[lusty zealot]

the turret traverse speed's already very quick

[light stratus]

imo I think OCTB should completely turn off the TB function and keep the burst

[granite sapphire]

i feel like its a bit absurd that octb got a lateral stat rework when it was one of the most overpowered if not most overpowered overclock in meltdown

[light stratus]

eh

its extremely powerful but as long as the cost is high

[granite sapphire]

it isnt though

[light stratus]

it doesn't deal any damage

[granite sapphire]

well obviously :/

[regal sand]

It can. With friendly fire especially, but even without you can launch forcibly mines or canon shots at humongous ranges & speed (precision isn't the best though)

[light stratus]

that isn't OC TB dealing damage

that's OC TB launching something else that deals damage

which is equivalent to normal TB usage, where you forcibly reposition enemy ships into favourable to shoot locations

[granite sapphire]

it's too good at it.

[next urchin]

is a 4x increase in spread, a 57% increase in heat, and a 16.6% increase in force really 'lateral', though?

[pearl mango]

i think heat missiles should be replaced by heat mines tbh

mines have less use scenarios so adding it as a way to dump out a lot of heat would make mines more interesting imo

what does TB stand for btw

[light stratus]

tractor beam

[pearl mango]

ah ty

didnt know that was overclockable

[vague aurora]

It got an update mid-prerelease.

[stuck roost]

How come nuke got range?

[tacit peak]

mhh?

[tacit peak]

Sure but heat missiles also lets people be more creative than just not having the,m

[grim gyro]

nukes have nuke range extension when dumb-fired now

[stuck roost]

ig

oh look! problems.

[stuck roost]

Overload being stuck in a loop and redshirt getting often lost between doors before operating tractorbeams last seat

@next urchin should I ping you to get your attention on these kinds of bugs?

[next urchin]

#1019741923893858305

Do they both reproduce when loading the saves?

[stuck roost]

Yes ma'am

[tacit peak]

https://tenor.com/view/ppmeltdown-twitch-pp-pepe-meltdown-gif-19468715

more meltdown bugs

[vocal trout]

lol

[opal parrot]

Just downloaded the meltdown preview. What is the 2nd weapon mentioned in the original post of this thread? I see the Thermal Lance but no other offensive weapon.

[eager gyro]

thermal canister missiles,

its in the missile launcher options

[opal parrot]

Interesting, thanks

[pale python]

i'm not sure what
RouteSource
RouteEndpoint is about

outbound routes should connect from... mmm

i think i get it

[pale python]

huh heat got updated too

[cerulean prairie]

@everyone Another small Meltdown preview patch is now available. Thanks for testing!

Balance:

• Radiator: Added Command Point usage (5)
• Tractor Beam (Overclocked): Reduced force to previous value (70KN→60KN)

Other:

• Fixed Part Network resource inputs not updating their available capacity when resources are removed

[surreal pelican]

Aw damn

[pale python]

radiator change is interesting

[surreal pelican]

Command point use is gona be a pain

[pale python]

wrong order now

[mellow barn]

How does that even happen

[remote charm]

makes sense though

[pale python]

in order of pinned

[mellow barn]

oh so Walt didn't pin the same one I did, I see

[regal plume]

oh my
radiator command points

[cerulean prairie]

I realized I forgot to pin yesterday's hotfix right as you pinned this one.

[regal plume]

that is going to change things!

[hollow gull]

5 😭

[regal plume]

that's big

[pale python]

1 Standard thruster

[near flax]

im not sure if i agree with radiator command point usage but ill play around with it and form my opinions
my current concern is that it pushes people further in the direction of TCMs

[delicate moss]

Radiators using command points is painful but tbh a nice way to add to the cost of overclocks, I approve

[mild gazelle]

Almost everyone playing pvp now just uses radiators anyways

[delicate moss]

Other ship systems like PD also need to be "commanded" too so it makes sense. Radiator is more than a hunk of metal

[olive thistle]

hmmmmm interesting

what about radiators makes it so busted that it constantly needs nerfs?

[mild gazelle]

It's more making non-oc things worth it it seems

Making it be more of a question on whether you oc everything

[mild gazelle]

Do you have a tb rail? It's interesting that you're so against them when I haven't seen you play one

[jaunty gyro]

Jesus, 5?

[mild gazelle]

I think with the new tb oc changes it's probably better to run non OC TB rail 😦

[mild gazelle]

Yeaaah I think its a lot too

[thin slate]

i still think a hybrid of both would be better than a non oc

[narrow owl]

5 cp for 1 radiator ??????

damn

[jaunty gyro]

Kinda funny knowing when my friend and I log back in our ships will all be immediately bricked lol

[mild gazelle]

I mean if I'm only using OC for a bit, it's not hard to have the TB oc

I just think investing in the thermal setup is not worth

Some of the objectives of this update was that you don't micro between OC and non OC, no?

If it's optimal to do that, then that's against some of the previously stated goals

[mild gazelle]

I'll go hybrid

[eager gyro]

the funny thing with radators now useing 5 points, is that it only afected like 3 ships of mine

[tacit peak]

HELL YEAH

[coarse plaza]

Oh boy. Command point requirment is gonne be a pain in the ass

[tacit peak]

its a good thing though

[coarse plaza]

I guess it makes sense from a balancing perspective

[tacit peak]

letsbe real

this is a good thing

[coarse plaza]

Probably

[tacit peak]

no more small

ships

having the most op stuff

[coarse plaza]

I just don't like command points in general :p

[tacit peak]

their like

the middle of all balancing

along side power

[coarse plaza]

Yeah, I understand that its overall important and good for the game. But that doesn't mean I have to like it :p

[torpid harbor]

would thermal capacitors also need command points? it serves a similar but riskier role

kinda feels like points between flux and vent in Starsector

[torpid harbor]

that being said, I’d hate to have more than 3 points since it’s a passive structure and doesn’t offer anything beyond burst storage. Plus capacitors don’t take command points either, and I’d never want it to either

maybe 1 point is a fair thing since power (and storage) has indirect command point usage through crew

[paper hemlock]

Power Capacitors don’t use CP, why would Thermal Batteries

[torpid harbor]

capacitors need manpower, and thermal vents kinda use 5 CP now

thermal capacitors can be spammed in lieu of vents

spatial cost sure, but it’s a workaround

then again, the spatial cost is pretty heavy considering that the design needs to accommodate its funky dimensions, we can leave as-is just fine too

[hard orbit]

Being able to daisy chain thermal capacitors to reduce the number of pipes you need is one of the funnier cost saving things with thermal systems.

[last breach]

i feel attacked for some reason

[eternal ibex]

5 command points for 1 radiator? i'm a fan

or rather, a radiator

[torpid harbor]

the added side bonus is tens of seconds of added thermal uptime, which in an exchange can be everything

[torpid yoke]

good heavens i am going to need to fix a lot of ships

[thin slate]

i meant having 4 out of 8 tbs oc on a ship not switching modes

[torpid harbor]

I think radiator costs kinda balances things slightly, and gives non-OC components a slight bit more fighting chance (by way of overall OC nerf). At least in the competitive scene where every credit has its use. Now people would have to consider hybridizing more to stretch the usage, or to have quantized amounts of OC usage (ie constrained by a certain amount of radiator usage per bridge)

also is an indirect OCTB boost cuz it’s low radiator usage

[torpid yoke]

i think it's ultimately a good decision, or at least a step in the right direction, because i've hit a point where i have no reason not to oc basically everything, which is almost certainly Not what walt wants

[torpid harbor]

yeah I certainly don’t want to obsolete all of previous ships, since they’re super well built and had balance related improvements for years at this point. Plus I don’t want to obsolete my fleet either, the retrofits are something I don’t even wanna think about

non-OC should have its place

[mild gazelle]

Hm, I don't see why that would work well/better. Could you explain further?

[thin slate]

in theory u should still get good pull strenght from the normal tbs while benefiting also from the increased pushed strenght of the oc ones. Will bascially make bump flipping easier

[torpid harbor]

feels like fast twitch slow twitch muscle combinations at this point

[twilit matrix]

Oh, wow. Command point usage on radiators is really going to punish smaller ships.

[grim gyro]

Please just make radiators more expensive if you want a nerf all my ships are now broken 😭

[dark lily]

Me looking at a dozen of my ships that were at exactly 0 remaining command points:

[narrow owl]

Me earlier that day : I need more engine power, should I overclock my engines ?

Cost : 10K, 5cp
Cost of a cockpit : 10k, -50cp

When my goal was to save on the 10k price of a second cockpit

[grim gyro]

Oh right your built-ins are screwed as well

[narrow owl]

There's no built-ins with radiators yet ?

[lusty zealot]

built-ins-to-be

saris is working on the new faction

[narrow owl]

Oh yeah

I hope we get sneak peeks

[dark lily]

There's been a few if you look around

[bitter steppe]

I think this ship might be cooked

[grim gyro]

i really hope walt goes back on this

[bitter steppe]

Unlikely, radiators were only 1 command point before, they needed some kind of increased cost
at least its not something crazy like requiring an operator

[delicate moss]

I disagree, in campaign you are limited by crew, not resources

[tacit peak]

Id like there to be some diffrent cooling like water cooling

having to manage steam and water could be fun

[grim gyro]

i would much prefer just making them more resource expensive

[bitter steppe]

Doing that would increase the cost... again.

[delicate moss]

so even if OC parts are more expensive they would still remain a potent career cheesing device, which OC systems have been since this beta started. Giving it a command point cost is a great way to reduce career cheese and again leans into the whole "it shouldn't be just better" thing.

[grim gyro]

it would cost more either way, just less of a pain for players with existing designs this way

either way 5 command points seems pretty high

[delicate moss]

Once you get all of the ship part factories career is basically over due to your industrial prowess so I'm glad the radiator is getting more expensive in another dimension that's not crew

eh, an ion beam is 4 command points. 1 radiator basically sustains 1 beam and the lightning effect is worth the command pts

I would rather run 1 lightning ion for 9 command pts than 2 non lightning ions for 8 command pts, and this is probably extendable to other parts too

Also capital ships are going to get bigger command centers which I really love lol

[bitter steppe]

Okay but... the fact that I was able to run this ship off 5 cockpits (or could have just done one CR ) was insane. Rather than increase the command points on pumps (to nerf TRLs) the intent was to add more cost to Radiators, without simply raising the price again, to offset the value they provide to all parts through enabling overclocking.

basically the point was overclocking is very strong and provides more value from whatever its attached to by enabling overclocks

the fact that this 1.5mil ship now costs 384 command points instead of 250 is completely rreasonable considering the command points an average 1.5mil ship generally uses

[delicate moss]

Leaning into the thematics again, imagine if you had to drive to work. Now imagine your car has some bonus, like a better AC, faster acceleration, etc, but now you also need to watch a brand new extra meter for overheating. Watching that meter for overheating will strain you more and will result in you being overwhelmed sooner. The same probably goes for command room operators too - they want to be monitoring the heat systems at all times

[grim gyro]

yeah i understand the direction its going and it seems fair but its just such a pain :(

[bitter steppe]

Alas, I've had to completely redesign ships so many times now due to cost changes or complete mechanical reworks. That was before it even made it to the public preview, which is still subject to changes

[jaunty gyro]

why not like, 2 or 3 command points rather than jumping all the way to 5? For a lot of ships that's like a sudden and instant 100+ CP deficit

[delicate moss]

I think it's fair tbh, you just need to build more command rooms

[narrow owl]

damn they sneaky

[narrow owl]

Give pumps +1 cp cost and radiators -2 ?

[bitter steppe]

Rather than increase the command points on pumps (to nerf TRLs) the intent was to add more cost to Radiators, without simply raising the price again, to offset the value they provide to all parts through enabling overclocking

[eager gyro]

i had like -200 on one ship i think

[narrow owl]

Yeah but it wouldn't even nerf thermal lance if we tweaked +1 pump -2 rads because all the cp that get added cuz of the pumps gets removed by the rad cp reduction.

I feel 5 cp is too harsh for every other thing that uses heat. I think it's good to have cp on rads, but not that much

[bitter steppe]

The point was to avoid affecting TRLs, the ship I used as an example only happened to use it. The command point increase was specifically aimed at radiators and increasing their cost

[next urchin]

1 radiator generally provides more than 5 CP worth of value in OC performance

[narrow owl]

I think TRL deserve to be affected a bit though, they cheaper that a chaingun, provide invaluable utility and scale without needing more cr

[next urchin]

Consider large thrusters, which are 4 CP and doubled in effectiveness by OC. You can OC two large thrusters with 1 radiator

Even with a 5 CP cost, you're positive 3 CP in terms of efficiency

[narrow owl]

but do they provide 50cp in performance ? because a cockpit is 10k and 1 crew, currently in the AI tournament I'm holding my ship doesn't use any overclock and I'm still first despite using pre-nerf prices of 8k/rad.

Of course I'm not suggesting 1 rad to provide 50cp of equivalent value.

But I don't think they should be nerfed because they make stuff more cp efficient, as they already cost the same as a cockpit.

[tame comet]

chaingun is its own problem imo

[narrow owl]

true x3

[tame comet]

theres a lot happening with the chaingun

[last breach]

etegrnuim egbf vunih egbrf uionsuinsgbf dsgbfd luisbgf lb ljkmgsimou lsgerbamniu sreoiglissrlngbsrnegorsgn9ursgtio so weird question: what if second type of ammo

and then hajve that ammo be related to overclocking

[bitter steppe]

that would defeat the purpose of overclock being something you can toggle on most part

[last breach]

[narrow owl]

Currently radiators and ocing only serves to either save on crew by using less operators, or actually use the weapon overclock for it's gimmick, which may only be good because said gimmick is busted

8 blasters > 4 ocblasters + 1 rad and it's cheaper in cost and cp

if you balance it because ocION however then it makes total sense