The Problem With Weapon Ranges

[Aeonic]

Most of the weapons in this game are so darn long range that I keep shooting and blowing up friendly things that I can't even see on my radar. Then I go exploring and find friendly stations that are shooting at me. This is especially true with black market stations that are hypersensitive about being fired upon, but also for standard commonwealth stations, especially later in the game. I really don't understand why all the weapons need to have such a ridiculously long range that you can shoot off radar anyway. All it does is encourage long-range bombardment which isn't any fun.

[Prophet]

I agree, I was having a fantastic game a short while ago, when a single stray shot picked off a darn freighter while I was dogfighting some enemies. I saw the dreaded "Pirates!" flash on screen which told me that my game was pretty much over.

[Wurmish]

So are you proposing ALL weapons get a range nerf? Or just select ones that fire out of radar view?

[schilcote]

Being able to shoot things outside your radar range is pretty bad. The only possible result of something like that is misery.

[Atarlost]

I don't know what's up with you guys, but I use exteme long range weapons pretty much exclusively without any trouble.

Just like a real gun. Know your target. Know what's behind your target.

And I for one am against reducing the ranges. I use those ranges to the limit. Reducing ranges selectively nerfs the long range weapons and reducing ranges across the board makes the shorter ones too short ranged to use with the current graphics scale and ship speed.

The only solution I can get behind is changing the scale on the long range scanner.

[OddBob]

If you find this happening a little too much for your taste, there are several weapons designed for short range combat you can use around stations (I admit, there could certainly stand to be more).


However, there is a way this kind of situation can be avoided without any mucking about with weapon ranges. I like that there are options for long range combat, and I like that there are options for short range combat, and making either less viable, or one more viable than the other is a step backwards.

It's simple: allow a small amount of damage to be inflicted on stations before they flip the heck out. Say, ten to twenty percent? Beyond that you are either actually trying to destroy or assist in the destruction of the station or you are criminally negligent anyway. Most if not all friendly stations regenerate health at a pretty decent clip - just like most ships won't care if you hit their shields, why shouldn't a station afford you a few wayward shots?

With regards to making the old "damage the station to 99% and then let enemies finish it off" scheme even easier if players are allowing a free head start, it usually requires either no input from you anyway (ranx and ferians will gladly wreck stations all by themselves) or the player has to put in a significant amount of the damage themselves, certainly passing the 10% threshold and incurring the wrath of the station.

This would also solve the (much bigger) problem of your ICX firing at some random howizter shell 2000 miles away and hitting friendly stations.

Alternate solutions involve fines that let you dock again, or no dock penalty but steadily increasing prices based on how much damage you did.

[Aeonic]

In other words, you damage a station, you pay for the damage or you're not welcome there. Sounds fine to me. Although personally I still would like to have weapon ranges in general shortened so they're at least somewhere within radar.

[Aury]

That 'pirate!' thing really needs to be changed

[Wurmish]

I personally like the sound of increasing the long range scanner range. Maybe up to 120 or 150 LS? Assuming I remember the ranges and units correctly?

Furthermore, perhaps either I'm blind or maybe put down the weapon speed and range in the statistics somewhere? I'm sure it could be crammed in there somewhere.

[Aeonic]

This probably wouldn't be such an issue if there were ways to upgrade your scanner range.

[Fossaman]

I wouldn't want to upgrade my scanner range unless it also upgraded the amount of screen real-estate it took up. It would be annoying to have teeny tiny ship and station symbols.

[Wurmish]

You mean keep the scaling the same? I think that shouldn't be TOO hard... I would hope

A permanent scanner upgrade, like a ROM, would be cool. Maybe 2 of them, the second one being not necessary (first one to say 125 with longest range being 120 IIRC, second to 150), and the second one being a Quantum CPU cubey thing.

[schilcote]

Heh, I was going to state two ideas, and Aeonic beat me to both.

I was thinking we could have a way to go up to the station and say "Sorry I accidentally hit you, I think this should cover it". It'd be a lot better than losing access to a relatively important station...

I'd also like to be able to upgrade the range of my scanner.

Oh, and that reminds me of a "bug" that I'm not sure anyone ever noticed. When you fly by a station with your map up, it doesn't get added to the map even when you go back to normal view and bring up your map again. Flying by the station without the map up charts it just fine.

[Atarlost]

I've been spreadsheeting weapons and 120 is not the max range after all.

Top range (excluding quantumspshere, which I don't know because I'm not suer how acceleration works exactly) is 288 for the Kytryn launcher and the Ares warhammer nuke. Micronuke has a range of 216. Cnidocyst has a range of 180. Gotha 10 has a range of 168 and Gotha 400 has a range of a "mere" 156. No ammoless weapon exceeds 120 ls though and only the micronuke cannon and the cnydocist cannon do so without taking the launcher slot.

Scan range of up to 300 is therefore theoretically useful, but 200 is probably adequate for using the reasonably available weapons. I think it's currently 100. 125 will handle all the ammoless weapons and 175 will handle all the Commonwealth weapons.

[Wurmish]

I admit I wasn't counting launcher weapons, and I'm going to guess the Quantumsphere range is approximately 250 ls based on how far away I have to be to stop getting shots fired (sitting and waiting and dodging a bit is FUN...)