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[SuicideJunkie]

Even the most disposable ships need to have a good cost:benefit ratio.

Perhaps it is the transition from relying on luck and numbers to survive, vs relying on sheer hitpoints and full defence coverage that is the tricky bit

My starfury design acts like the latter when facing fighters and other small craft, but is more like the former when facing warships.

[SuicideJunkie]

Ed has pointed out that the price of the Armored Iris is not consistent with the other armor.
An Armored Iris will be changing from $45 to $100 in cost during the next mod update.  Already-built irises will remain valued at $45 for score and scrapping purposes.

I am also considering bumping the energy output of solar panels from 15e to 25e.
This will put them on par with a small to medium reactor in terms of E/turn/ton, and E/turn/$.  The main disadvantage of solar panels remains their huge surface area; they will provide about 1E/turn/hex whereas reactors provide ten times that power density.

[Girlinhat]

This seems acceptable.

Also, I noticed on the "Barrage" vessel in the current match, a shot passed through his heavy laser (which itself is a small opening in the shield wall) and the shot passed through the Capacitor 0 and actually became more powerful, changing from 1 damage passing to 2 damage passing.  Is this intentional, and if so, how does this work?

[SuicideJunkie]

Yeah.
The capacitors have -25% opacity, and a -1000% damage factor or so.

Thus there is a 1 in 4 chance of a 1dmg particle interacting with the capacitor.  When it hits, the capacitor absorbs -1 damage from the particle, 1 - (-1) brings the particle to 2dmg as it moves on, and the capacitor suffers -1 * -1000% = 10 hp damage.

Capacitors thus amplify incoming damage and hurt the rest of your ship badly.

They also amplify outgoing damage, but are very much not cost-effective in that role.
You could, for example, have a line of capacitors in front of a heavy laser, and amp the beam up from 10 to 20 dmg.  It would punch through even a full strength hex shield, but you could only fire once every 10 turns to avoid burning out your caps, instead of twice every turn.

[SuicideJunkie]

New version of the GUI is available:
 - Physics now understands mass changes as hexes vanish when disabled.
 - Connector hexes no longer turn white if you disable/enable certain components.

Mod changes:
As above, upgraded solar panels and armored irises apply to anything constructed starting now.

[Girlinhat]

I'd like to make a suggestion on the solar panels - remove the two hexes closest to the base, making it able to put a solar panel furled under a 1-wide gunport.

[SuicideJunkie]

That sounds pretty practical.  I don't want to reduce the space taken, so I'll just shift the side hexes up one.
Everybody has the panels pointing towards space so far, so it won't hurt designs.

[SuicideJunkie]

More mod updates:
 - Solar panel tweak #2 as above
 - Docking ports 1 and 2 are now smaller and much more practical.  Not quite as small as GiH wanted, but 6 tiles for the class 1 port is much more reasonable than the monstrosity it was before
They are still compatible with the old docking ports.

There's also a physics update for the ship designer:
 - Moment of inertia on the new solar panels was wrong.
 - Connectivity will choose the fragment with the most components to be the primary hull.

[alamoes]

I read the entire thread, made a ship, see file below, and want to test it against myself to see how its weapons hold up to killing a ship of it's caliber.  I have made myself a game, and set up the empire file and plr file in a 1 player pbw match.  I'm sure it is in there, but I did read the entire thing already.  Anyways, where do I go to get the .gam file?  Supposedly it is what allows me to save the game. 

Here is the ship

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It is supposed to be my Command Ship for my fleet to base operations around.  I still need to make a good star base/fabricator, but this is my first test.   You can see that I like deflectors. 

[Draxis]

Once the game is started, you can download the current state with the "Download Turn" button on the game's page; however, I'm not sure how to actually set up the game.

I can tell you now that those weapons aren't that strong though.  For reference, those on the front arc will do about 90 damage per turn, while Girlinhat's current warship LF1 (which is ludicrously overarmed), gets about 240 damage per turn - and she could almost afford 3 of them for the price of that ship.  My gunship (somewhat underarmed) only does about 30 damage per turn, and I could get about 6-7 for that price, but LF1 makes some major sacrafices to get that kind of firepower. 

Now, your ship is certainly well-protected, but it has such low speed and armament that it wouldn't matter much, as missiles or fairly strong but smaller ships could defeat it in battle.  That's the same mistake I made in the last game; my ship was extremely tough but had such awful firepower it didn't even touch anyone's hull.

I would recommend to use smaller ships as often as possible, as they are just as cost-effective unless they have reactors on them, but much easier to build and to make fast.  Armor is inferior to shields except for the price; disruptors are useless.  The best way to learn, though, is to play a game and experiment.  With that in mind, are there any other new players who would be interested in starting a game?

[SuicideJunkie]

I read the entire thread, made a ship, see file below, and want to test it against myself to see how its weapons hold up to killing a ship of it's caliber.  I have made myself a game, and set up the empire file and plr file in a 1 player pbw match.  I'm sure it is in there, but I did read the entire thing already.  Anyways, where do I go to get the .gam file?  Supposedly it is what allows me to save the game. 

Your game is set to manual, so it will not spin any turns for you to see.
I've set it to ALPU so it will roll as soon as you upload a PLR.

You should be able to add more ships to a game in progress to shoot at if you upload a new admin plr.
Just use the buildInitPlr, and then rename it to have the current turn in the name as PBW says it expects.

[Girlinhat]

Once the game is started, you can download the current state with the "Download Turn" button on the game's page; however, I'm not sure how to actually set up the game.

I can tell you now that those weapons aren't that strong though.  For reference, those on the front arc will do about 90 damage per turn, while Girlinhat's current warship LF1 (which is ludicrously overarmed), gets about 240 damage per turn - and she could almost afford 3 of them for the price of that ship.  My gunship (somewhat underarmed) only does about 30 damage per turn, and I could get about 6-7 for that price, but LF1 makes some major sacrafices to get that kind of firepower. 

Now, your ship is certainly well-protected, but it has such low speed and armament that it wouldn't matter much, as missiles or fairly strong but smaller ships could defeat it in battle.  That's the same mistake I made in the last game; my ship was extremely tough but had such awful firepower it didn't even touch anyone's hull.

I would recommend to use smaller ships as often as possible, as they are just as cost-effective unless they have reactors on them, but much easier to build and to make fast.  Armor is inferior to shields except for the price; disruptors are useless.  The best way to learn, though, is to play a game and experiment.  With that in mind, are there any other new players who would be interested in starting a game?

The single biggest design realization I've had, is turn rate above all else.  Your most important asset in space is going to be your turn rate.  If your ship ends up looking like a drifting ball turret, that's better than having a high-thrust fighter with low turn rate.  With the above ship having a turn rate of .3 I'd simply get one of my gunships behind its ass and rail fire over the poorly protected backside.

I've found my ideal design style to be quite like the Littlefox One (which is a scaled down Fennec).  Center structure, with two struts, engines on each strut tip.  The core weapons should be center-mounted and fit within the span of 2 shield hexes - any wider starts to demand more complicated defensive measures.  If the design has a reactor, then the wing struts sweep back to cradle it, while if it's purely battery then the struts sweep forward to minimize the cross section from flank attacks.  Turbolasers are quite clearly my preferred weapon, though I'd put some thought into utilizing the Charge Disruptor.  I'll have to look at a few ideas...

[alamoes]

Well, thancs for the help.  But seriously, I know my design is terrible, I just want a design to test.  After I play the game, I'll invest time into building specialized ships.  Like a Missile boat.  And a drone launch bay.  And before all of that, a star base to construct everything with. 

Edit: Oh yeah, Girlinhat, one of my ships is going to "Like the star fox bosses"  Able to do a 180 in one turn, just like some of your ships. 

Edit 2: Okay, new testing data suggests that I need more maneuverability, and stronger guns.  That means I'm making a better version of this ship very easily, but first a fighter.  Also, after the few turns of fire I could sustain, (I quickly passed my ships, and I can't turn)  I've found that my shields do block shots when overlapped. 

I made a Heavy Fighter.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I tried to make it maneuverable, but I also tried to make it last a while out in the field.  I'm making a light version now.  Oh and yes, I know my guns are sticking out of the shields. 

[Girlinhat]

For fighters, one thing you really want is 6-axis thrust.  Being able to strafe is a fantastic ability for missiles and fighters, as well as assist large ships in docking.  Even having a single small thruster and .01 side thrust, that's enough to nudge yourself into docking position and speed.

[SuicideJunkie]

Particularly with fighters that will have all their guns on the front, you will want to be able to circle-strafe and retreat from warships while staying out of your allies' fire lanes as everybody buzzes around.

Without strafe thrust you'll have to plan and commit to your docking manoeuver many turns out in order to match position and speed on all three axes.
With B5 Starfury style thruster pods, you can just scream in from any random fractional angle and then stop on a dime