HWS 8.X Pre Announcement | New HWS Config / EWS | Economy 3.0 Trade commodities and much more

That is what I expected and am really happy to see such a detailed response! It took me 3 weeks to create this config — thank you so much for not feeling I have wasted that time!

Eh, yes, sorry. I changed it internally now but didn’t apply it yet to the EXP server because I am waiting for the next EXP patch to come out. It will change some turret behavior :wink:

:thinking: that is so weird… Railguns are THE device killer! Strange… I will test it again but basically almost all devices are smelting by Railguns… and no, I didn’t test it with the HWS Garage ship Expusition :wink:

So overall it’s fine, you think? EWS works as advertised in google docs and damages are ok?

Hmm… yeah… either I nerf the homing speed so it requires skill to dodge or I nerf the splash / damage I guess.

Thanks, will check.

Ups, added them now.

Thanks for testing so far!

@everyone The EXP 2 got released:
https://empyriononline.com/threads/alpha-experimental-8-5-anniversary-update-part-ii.43336/

A new change is not a minor thing actually:

Added MaxCount to turret groups (MaxCount is now applied to the whole group and not the single block)

This is a first step to make CV fights more dynamic and fun. You either can place 10 pulse turrets or 10 plasma turrets… or 5 of each? :thinking:
Combined with EWS this will create a lot more depth and skill based PvP I think :smiley:

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I like the turret group count limits. Reminds me of an old server I player on where they limited you to 50 turrets of your choosing, so you could make a CV slaughtering plasma/artillery platform or a missile slinging instant death sentence for SVs if you wanted. Most people kept some type of balance.

I don’t think the HV artillery needs changed. most SVs won’t be killed instantly by it unless they take an unlucky hit on their weakest point, and they fire slow enough, aren’t that difficult to dodge, and tanks melt quickly enough. I don’t know how effective the plasma are yet but from what I’ve seen it looks like an SV can do significant damage to an HV but the HV will most likely win the fight, and will probably still have all of it’s weapons intact and be able to fight off another SV attack.
HV artillery vs BA is very powerful, not only for drilling through the armor into the base but to destroy the turrets because of structural integrity. It’s very easy to hit just under the turret and cause it to fall with only 1 or 2 hits from artillery if manually targeted, this could be an interesting dynamic for using muti-person vehicles if that’s intended. It wasn’t that effective when letting the turret fire automatically targeting the turret itself, but still did splash and destroy the blocks under the BA turrets eventually causing it to fall before actually destroying the turret.
More testing with BA later today

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Update on HV rocket turrets and plasma turrets:
Rockets and plasma shots don’t seem to explode on impact at close range (less than about 100m), only do damage on impact. When I moved my target out to about 200m they started exploding and doing their splash damage.
Rocket turrets destroy a shutter and damage those around it, but doesn’t penetrate beyond that.
Plasma destroys shutters in a 3x3 area also with no penetration. 100 damage to hardened steel on impact with a generous splash area of lesser damage.
These numbers are using a single turret so groups will of course appear to do much more damage and penetrate more deeply into the enemy ship.

Thanks for more feedback!

Indeed this was the first version of it. I kinda liked the pre alpha tactic that HV Artillery had a higher range than any Base turret but are out of your render range. So you must had a second passenger to scope with a Sniper or so to let you know the direction + angle. But don’t know if it’s reproducible with all that DSL stuff etc. at the moment.

That is actually a bug I reported some weeks ago. It has something to do with the bounding box + camera.
If you are in third person and press ALT and rotate the camera to the front, shooting at “you” basically, it works…

Will check that.

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CV/BA tests:
Pulse laser turrets don’t seem to be very good for anything in CV/CV combat. They may be a threat to an SV attacking a CV since they seem to perform about the same as the SV pulse laser.
CV Pulse lasers are pretty good for shooting turrets off an enemy CV, but trying to penetrate the armor is better served by other weapons. They melt SVs if you can hit them.
CV rocket launchers were a little disappointing. Even having 8 of them, they didn’t do as much damage to combat steel armor as I expected, only blowing out a couple blocks and damaging those around it with little penetration. They are quite strong against an SV
Plasma turrets are very strong. It will blow a hole in hardened steel or combat steel and heavily damage the blocks around the hole, they also only take a few hits to destroy turrets. You don’t want to get hit by one in an SV either, it’s not a death sentence but it doesn’t feel good, they’re easily dodged.
Artillery turrets are about the same as plasma, being very good against armor and turrets both.
Flak turrets seem to do moderate damage to everything, not being great at anything, but multiple hits can do serious damage to an SV.
Minigun and Cannon turrets are next to worthless unless your enemy is on foot.

The CV flak turrets appear to be a different armor type than the others. They take massive damage from SV plasma where other turrets do not.

BA plasma turrets put big holes in combat steel armor.
BA Artillery will also put a big hole in your CV.
BA rockets will put another hole of similar size in your shiny new CV.
BA flak is about the same as CV flak, fairly effective against everything, but not spectacular.
BA pulse lasers are a threat to SV but not really that dangerous to a CV.
BA minigun and cannons I didn’t test but I’ll just assume follow the same theme of uselessness they have until now.

Maybe with the damage potential of BA weapons we’ll be able to see viable space stations, but I still think the maneuverability of CVs will make them superior in combat and able to overcome a BA easily even with these weapons.

SV vs CV:
Railguns only do about 2,000 damage to turrets, making them not very useful given the hp of CV turrets. Plasma does less damage but will kill them faster due to it’s higher rate of fire.
Plasma, rockets, and homing missiles do great damage to CV armor. A solid hit will penetrate a layer of combat steel.
Pulse lasers aren’t very good against a CV.
Gatling guns… yeah

SV vs BA(armored concrete)

pulse lasers are not very useful against a BA block or turret.
Railguns do about 2,000 damage to a turret, which is very low compared to BA turret hp. They don’t damage blocks.
Plasma isn’t very effective against the turrets but it does decent damage to the blocks. Though it will take sustained fire to do real damage to a base with SV plasma.
Rockets did good damage to armored concrete, with a good splash area also. Damaged turrets but not much.
Homing rockets did ok damage also, but unguided rockets did better.
Gatling guns… you might be able to kill the guy with a gatling gun when he comes out to repair after you shoot his base with a rocket.

There is really no reason to use CV flak turret vs CV rocket turret now that they are in the same group. Everyone will use 10 rockets and 0 flak. The flaks weren’t useless on their own, but they aren’t nearly as useful as the rockets. The same is true for the pulse laser turrets and plasma. The laser turrets do offer better protection from SV attacks, but if the CV is armed with 10 rocket turrets, that will offer plenty of deterrent for SVs. The plasma is so superior for CV battles that I couldn’t see anyone choosing to use pulse laser turrets over extra plasma turrets.

CV battles tend to be at max speed. 10 pulse turrets will certainly register more hits than plasmas under such conditions. Have you accounted for that in your above assessment?

while this is generally true, a single hit with a plasma turret will do literally hundreds of times the damage of a laser turret now, and the lasers don’t even fire very fast. Plasma turret rate of fire has been increase greatly also, they are still not very hard to dodge but they will land a hit once in a while. It might be useful to use the laser turrets to target only the exposed enemy turrets and try to strip the enemy CV of it’s weapons, which will still take many hits, but laser turrets are very weak against armor.

Yes, i think that n64211319 tested the conditions only under static target. Today i tried SV vs SV on experimental server and i thinked that in a real battle is very very difficult to hit the same point twice. You need to consider lag and obiuvsly the pvp experience of players. I assure you that is not so easy to hit me :slight_smile:
I will test when my friends come online pvp cv vs cv. And i already imagine the results as Daddystu predicted :stuck_out_tongue:

@RexXxuS, will the alpha 8.3(or 8.5 as eleon calls it) wipe affect EB levels and other hws features that usually reset with a wipe? sorry, if that´s been answered already.

I tested against static targets and moving targets. Taking into account lag and ship collisions also. In space SV vs SV feels really good, on planets it’s not bad either until you get a lag stutter at which point you can drill somebody. But If Rex is changing the shutters to absorb a few more shots then that should help with that. You’ll probably still be screwed if you hit the ground or run out of fuel, or run into the massive lag walls on certain planets due to player created bases even for a few seconds. You’ll be dead or severely damaged before you can recover or hit p and refuel
For CVs the battles lasted longer than I was expecting originally given the damage that the weapons do to static targets, but that is due to them being easy to dodge. If the CVs collide even slightly it allows for major damage to be done in a very short time. There is also certain combat tactics and maneuvering that allows more consistent hitting (still not great) that I will not give away.

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Alien blocks are gotten for example from ninja mission, one of the boxes that has all kinds of blocks in it.
4 every run.

@RexXxuS

For further testing:
we found out that splash in MP is currently broken…

BA Rockets, Flak, Plasma Turrets etc. do no splash damage. Only in Singleplayer. Must be fixed before Monday.

Shutter windows have less triangles like you said in announcements before or wont be implemented? Thank you for you time

Windows = devices.
Shutter Window = triangles.

Factor: https://empyrion-homeworld.net/tools/emp-class-calculator

i was referencing to this :slight_smile:

"Each weapon got a purpose and if you actually care about it, you can get very quick and fun results.
But even if not — you can still rely on the Homing Missles (also depending on the lag situation).
Keep in mind that even though Macro usage will be common and is allowed, it isn’t that effective if used wrong. I think in the end someone with 100% skill can beat everyone effectively, marco or not.
Last but not least the Shutter Windows have less Triangles and it gives PvP buildes now a new level of depth for their builds"

Ah right, it depends on the example… some blocks have more than 12 triangles.
Shutter Window = 12 Triangles.

It’s partially wrong, depending on what block you use and how you built them (white space or not)

The meaning was just: make good decisions. Either have a “shield” for your ship and sacrifice a class or not.

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A shutter is equivalent to a flat wall block for triangles. It won’t up your class size much to place them on the outside of your ship but creating an internal layer adds the effect of internal surface area which contributes to your triangle count and drastically increases class size. It’s no worse than using pyramid blocks inside your ship though and at least offers real protection other than being a potential protection from lag-shots, and also provides some protection from lag-shots.

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