This game....
Good god it is destroying my time. I got into it after watching Robbaz' Pilkington Fleet series.
I haven't even started the campaign yet and I've put in 40+ hours already just designing vehicles in preparation for it.
I'm not much for Minecraft games but this has just enough SCIENCE in it to make me overlook its blockiness. Plus watching fragmentation rounds go tearing through a ship at .01x speed never gets old.
I figure I've got 3 or 4 more vehicles to make until I'm ready to start the campaign. Already have several classes of ship from littoral up to dreadnoughts already built. Kind of holding off to build my WTF Super Cruiser, Aircraft carrier and other silly stuff until I've actually played a little bit. And there's tanks to make now, too.
Question if anyone knows: how do you make downward firing or dead-drop release missiles/torpedoes/bombs? Tried two different configurations, one with them lying horizontal and the other with them pointing down vertically. I could get the downward facing ones to fire using Manual Control if I pointed my view at the sea floor. But the AI wouldn't fire them at targets on the water line, regardless of laser designation or sonar. And the forward facing ones I couldn't get to fire at all. I'd set the Azimuth and Elevation restrictions for them both to point straight down but they never quite seemed to work. I've seen other people do this in videos but haven't found a good tutorial.
Basically, similarly to how airplanes drop unguided bombs, I'd like my ship to drop unguided torpedoes that just fall out of the rack and then the guidance and thrusters kick on a second or two later once it's clear of the ship.
Second question: do Laser Emitters pay attention to the Local Weapon Controller's firing restrictions? Seems like at the range I want to fire, my Laser Emitters work and paint targets, and under the range they just kind of stop paying attention to anything.
Lastly: I read above about someone testing against the Marauder. I've also been using it as my litmus test for a ship's combat potential and....I have yet to build a ship that can take a hit from that cannon. Even my 40,000 material dreadnought with a triple thick hull gets instantly opened up by it, and it usually punches out a huge chunk of the hull regardless of where it hits. Frags turrets immediately too. I've watched a fair amount of the mid to late game as well, and I honestly think that gun is way, way OP for the level the game implies it's at.
All in all, I love this game. It's got all the mechanics and and design joy of like, Battletech for me, with the added bonus of being visually creative too. Fights that aren't a complete curbstomping are actually interestingly dynamic because, in the case of the Marauder, a single shell can change the battle dramatically 1v1, and it's fun to watch how it unfolds.
On the other hand, it's a little deflating to see a huge expensive ship you spent 6 hours building and perfecting get hulled in the first shot from an enemy ship.