Possible exploit\weapons research suggestion

[AstroGimp01]

Last night I was ambushed in my Carrack by a Gladius and a Mole. While I was occupied manuevering to keep the Gladius from being able to touch down on the top deck the Mole attacked me with the primary mining laser and disabled the engines in I believe less than 30 seconds. It appeared that the damage completely bypassed the shields and immediately overheated the local systems and did severe physical damage to the spaceframe itself. I was unable to use primary engines and had no ability to escape, in well under a minute. I was under constant attack for about 5 minutes before I gave up and logged out, and claimed the ship.

My theory is that CIG made an assumption about energy absorption rates for rock to support mining and in order for mining lasers to function as they wanted the result is they have several orders of magnitude more energy\second than any weapon system currently in game.

If this is CIG's intent then clearly we should all abandon any regular ballistic or energy weapon and fit mining lasers - this was a presumably solo'ed Mole that singlehandedly disabled\destroyed a Carrack, which I believe to be a nonsensical result.

I certainly made several mistakes that contributed to the loss of my vessel which I fully own up to but my position is that a mining vessel should not be able to sneak up on or attack a military vessel like Carrack and be able to effectively disable it in less than 30 seconds.

Kudos to the wannabe Capt. Jackhole Sparrow space pie rats who thought of it. Pretty clever strategy but I cannot believe that is how things are intended to work - it makes no sense to have any weapons if a mining laser is so effective (in part I think due to the constant beam).

I would like to better understand the mechanics of how this attack was so successful and see what counters, if any, are possible - do we have any Mole operators willing to help do some testing? I suspect this is an unintended consequence of the physics they created for mining that is being exploited - if we gather some data I'll make a bug report.

'Gimp

 

[Vavrik]

We've known about that since the Prospector was introduced. Yes, the mining laser is a powerful weapon, but it consumes a lot of power. The balance is, the ship firing the laser is incredibly vulnerable to return fire (or... overcharging a rock you're trying to mine) So, yes the Prospector and MOLE can mine your ship, but if you shoot a spitball at them you can end the encounter before they can do damage. If you're alone in your Carrack, you cannot defend so get the hell out of dodge if you can, or do what you did or let them do it for you.

 

[Zookajoe]

The range on the mining lasers is also extremely short, like 300 meters I think at most. Just move out of its range.

 

[Radegast74]

The Carrack has one real defense: RUN! It is very fast, can do up to 1235 m/s, which is about as fast as the Gladius and other fighters. If you start running, you should be able to get enough distance to then quantum away...otherwise, you will be doomed if you try to fight it out with other ships, at least right now.

 

[Carlos Spicyweiner]

Yes, lots of ways to avoid a bad outcome, but I still want to see this, I volunteer my mole!

 

[vahadar]

Last night I was ambushed in my Carrack by a Gladius and a Mole. While I was occupied manuevering to keep the Gladius from being able to touch down on the top deck the Mole attacked me with the primary mining laser and disabled the engines in I believe less than 30 seconds. It appeared that the damage completely bypassed the shields and immediately overheated the local systems and did severe physical damage to the spaceframe itself. I was unable to use primary engines and had no ability to escape, in well under a minute. I was under constant attack for about 5 minutes before I gave up and logged out, and claimed the ship.

...

Awwww that is very smart... Mmm i see a lot of potential here for carebears ;)

 

[Cugino83]

Well as much as unpleasent can be to been taken down by a mining laser it has a logic: mining rock is a hard work, so the tool used has to powerful, I guess that a mine excavator with tungstene hammer can easily shread a tank armor too...

the trade off is that veicle mounting those mining equipment are not mean to be in a fight, so they are generally slow and papaer thin and also need bo be very close ho harm a ship with a mining tool (you know, rock doesn't run while you mine them...), so should be easy to avoid their damage.

Sure, if this is combined with an EMP attack that thake out engine that is a problem, but it will be even for other things, like a bunch of ship pounding a Javellin with EMP while 2-3 Relaimer team took it apart...

I suppose those are simply danger we should expect to facing when proper pirate gameplay will be live, so better know them now then after.

 

[Phil]

lmao, no way a Mole just messed up a Carrack!! This is kind of funny! The one thing I love about MMO's and players, they will always find some F'd up way to make something it wasn't intended on doing, do just that, someone turned a boring ass mining laser into a ship killer and a decent sized ship at that!

All kidding aside, I totally agree, the shields should affect a mining laser, it shouldn't bypass that, if it did I am not sure, if it didn't bypass the shields and it burned through the shields and the hull and disabled the ship that quickly then yikes! That's some power, again this is a rare scenario, one because its alpha and when the game goes live most people wont be running a solo Carrack because well friends and AI, two the Carrack has a snub and there is really no way a Mole should be able to sneak up on an exploration vessel with the sensors this thing is going to have, between the early warning and snub fighter the mole wouldn't get that close even with a single Gladius escort the snub and Carrack armament with AI or live people at the turrets would be enough of a discouragement imo.

This is alpha, people are running large ships solo this stuff is bound to happen I wouldn't see this as an issue in a live game, but that doesn't mean the whole laser thing melting shields and hull in less than 30 seconds doesn't need to be looked at.

 

[Black Sunder]

[Orion Combat Mining Vision Intensifies]

 

[Vavrik]

lmao, no way a Mole just messed up a Carrack!! This is kind of funny! The one thing I love about MMO's and players, they will always find some F'd up way to make something it wasn't intended on doing, do just that, someone turned a boring ass mining laser into a ship killer and a decent sized ship at that!

All kidding aside, I totally agree, the shields should affect a mining laser, it shouldn't bypass that, if it did I am not sure, if it didn't bypass the shields and it burned through the shields and the hull and disabled the ship that quickly then yikes! That's some power, again this is a rare scenario, one because its alpha and when the game goes live most people wont be running a solo Carrack because well friends and AI, two the Carrack has a snub and there is really no way a Mole should be able to sneak up on an exploration vessel with the sensors this thing is going to have, between the early warning and snub fighter the mole wouldn't get that close even with a single Gladius escort the snub and Carrack armament with AI or live people at the turrets would be enough of a discouragement imo.

This is alpha, people are running large ships solo this stuff is bound to happen I wouldn't see this as an issue in a live game, but that doesn't mean the whole laser thing melting shields and hull in less than 30 seconds doesn't need to be looked at.

If a MOLE can turn a rock into plasma, then why can't it turn a ship made of the same material that was in the rock into plasma? Got shields? Sure, but they have limits and can be overcome if you have enough energy. So I have no problem with a MOLE, with 3 of the most powerful lasers in the game at short range doing that to my Carrack... which has plenty of firepower to take care of the MOLE if the Carrack pilot isn't flying alone.

There has been some balance to this since 3.2 when the mining lasers were implemented in the game. It took my Prospector about 5 seconds back then to blow up a Hornet that tried to attack me on approach to P.O. The pilot of that ship wasn't that good. He was waaay too close, and missed anyway. I turned the mining laser on out of frustration, and was probably as surprised as he was when he blew up. We had that capability since then. The balance is, the mining ships are made of glass in comparison to a fighter or virtually any other ship. So...to defend against the mining laser, move... the mining laser moves slow. And shoot back! Your attacker is only something like 300 meters away, and it's not a fast ship.

 

[Cugino83]

I'll add that the Prospector fly worst then an Aurora: that thing is a real flying brick.
Don't know about the Mole, but I suspect is the same kind of flavor...

 

[AstroGimp01]

Like I said, I knew I was tempting fate soloing the Carrack but had been having fun and didn't expect to be out long enough to see if any TESTies wanted to come along (a mistake I will not make again).

I suspect the whole thing is related to some physics assumptions built into mining but I can't accept that a mining laser would either bypass or essentially immediately overwhelm shields and overheat the engines, on a 9.7 million pound, 400 foot long, hardened, armored, military spec exploration vessel, in so little time - I was literally unable to exceed 50-60 M/S as soon as I realized I was being fired on and was quickly unable to accelerate at all using main engines and was limited with thrusters and taking direct physical damage to the spaceframe.

I have shoulda'd all over myself with respect to the mistakes I made that allowed the situation to develop as well as not taking the Mole out with a self-destruct, but outside of certain missing aspects of the sensors\situational awareness that a ship like Carrack should provide, the underlying issue IMO remains that there is something fundamentally wrong with the power output of mining vessels compared to their powerplant and other systems, as compared to combat or larger vessels.

 

[Shadow Reaper]

Though it sounds terrible the way you described it, a Warlock could have done that in far less time and with less investment. In fact an Aurora carrying a Tumbril Cyclone with a TroMag Burst Generator could do that in 1/30 the time.