Fractal Softworks Forum

Starsector => Suggestions => Topic started by: Grievous69 on January 31, 2020, 04:37:08 AM

Title: More ballistic anti fighter options
Post by: Grievous69 on January 31, 2020, 04:37:08 AM
Currently there's a ton of weapons that are accidentaly good vs fighters as in it's not their intended purpose (lots of energy weapons for example) but it's hard to put something good on a ship with no energy mounts. You have machine guns which are super low range, flak cannons which don't do *** vs anything with a shield, thumper which doesn't even deserve to be called a weapon and Devastator. Ignoring the problems of the Devastator, it's on a freaking large mount. The only ship where I sometimes use those to prevent being overwhelmed with annoying little flies is on a Conquest, everywhere else it's a waste of a large slot (and flux). HVD kinda can kill fighters when they're coming straight to the ship but it's way too slow and not reliable so I would hardly call that anti fighter.

Kinda related, there's no medium missile weapon that's good vs fighters, yet every second ship has medium missile slots.
Title: Re: More ballistic anti fighter options
Post by: Plantissue on January 31, 2020, 05:32:52 AM
If you mean fighters as in the fighter-type fighters I don't really find that is the case. Even Vulcan Cannons seem to do well enough and they have the lowest range of all the weapons. Flak Cannon and Dual Flak Cannon seem to do well enough as well to me. Railguns and Light Assault Guns do well as anti-fighter options. I've seen Maulers deal with fighters unexpectedly well which was a bit of a suprise. I'm not opposed to dedicated anti-fighter weapons though they will have to be carefully designed as not to be excellent anti missile weapons as well. And any anti-fighter weapon will tend to automatically become an excellent anti-frigate weapon.
Title: Re: More ballistic anti fighter options
Post by: Grievous69 on January 31, 2020, 05:42:17 AM
I mean fighters as in all fightercraft (this naming problem really happens a lot tbh) and I'm not saying it should have a PD tag, because that's a completely different role. I just want something precise, common and good for swating fightercraft. Vulcan cannon has *** range and isn't really accurate, railgun is a *** to find and I really want to be shooting with them at ships and not little fighters. I guess LAG is decent but it's costly in terms of flux.
Title: Re: More ballistic anti fighter options
Post by: Perq on January 31, 2020, 06:00:26 AM
I feel like fighters with shield have those for that very reason - most PD weapons are bad against armor/shields. Giving "another option to fight fightercrafts" will simply make them worse, and as you mentioned there are quite some weapons that are decent to both shield and hull.

Adding too many too specialized weapons is not great idea, neither. Started playing with mods a little bit, and honestly I find most of the weapon additions to be pointless, for the most part.
Title: Re: More ballistic anti fighter options
Post by: Plantissue on January 31, 2020, 06:07:47 AM
I mean fighters as in all fightercraft (this naming problem really happens a lot tbh) and I'm not saying it should have a PD tag, because that's a completely different role. I just want something precise, common and good for swating fightercraft. Vulcan cannon has *** range and isn't really accurate, railgun is a *** to find and I really want to be shooting with them at ships and not little fighters. I guess LAG is decent but it's costly in terms of flux.

Give us an example of what you want to see as a ballistic mount. Range, dps, accuracy, speed, damage type, that sort of thing. Can you design it so it will be only antifighter without being overlydeleterious towards frigates? I suppose a smaller devastator cannon might be able to do it.

Anyways, I'm only being specific about the defining fighters because some other guy was playing silly word games in another thread, where fighters meant all fighters, interceptors, bombers, missiles, exclusively of each other and all together all at the same time. However I see that by the time you are playing around with capitals with large ballistic mounts, often bombers die during their "bombing run" from being outranged and running to the projectiles of those large ballistic mounts, and ballistic PD weapons are effective enough at destroying most of the released bomb/missile/torpedo of the bombers. As for fighter/interceptor type fighters, they seem to die reasonably well to the ballistic weapons I posted previously. My general observation is that the bigger the shiphull, the less problem fighters are perhaps because as you hinted at, they can afford the flux cost.
Title: Re: More ballistic anti fighter options
Post by: Serenitis on January 31, 2020, 06:22:34 AM
I suppose a smaller devastator cannon might be able to do it.

Modify the current 'mortar' weapons to have a small area of effect and proximity fuse, so they become bargain bin HE flak cannons.
(Leave everything else about them alone though.)

Title: Re: More ballistic anti fighter options
Post by: Plantissue on January 31, 2020, 06:41:12 AM
I suppose a smaller devastator cannon might be able to do it.

Modify the current 'mortar' weapons to have a small area of effect and proximity fuse, so they become bargain bin HE flak cannons.
(Leave everything else about them alone though.)
My intention was to ask him to describe the weapon he want to see, not asking him to create the weapon itself. Though taking that as an example, would that really be a better anti-fighter weapon than a Light Assault Gun? And would such a weapon not just be better than the mortars?
Title: Re: More ballistic anti fighter options
Post by: Grievous69 on January 31, 2020, 06:43:59 AM
Give us an example of what you want to see as a ballistic mount. Range, dps, accuracy, speed, damage type, that sort of thing. Can you design it so it will be only antifighter without being overlydeleterious towards frigates? I suppose a smaller devastator cannon might be able to do it.
Lol, I'm neither a dev nor a modder so how the hell would I make a balanced weapon. Without giving exact stats I was thinking of something like a Vulcan with increased range and accuracy but lower DPS. Dmg per shot would still remain low so it isn't a threat to bigger targets and I suppose frag damage is the way to go.
Title: Re: More ballistic anti fighter options
Post by: bobucles on January 31, 2020, 08:34:15 AM
An AoE type energy weapon, except it deals soft flux damage. Most ships are well protected against soft flux, and the AoE nature will rip through swarming fleets. If the weapon fires a large enough burst salvo, even shielded fighters will have difficulty covering all their sides.
Title: Re: More ballistic anti fighter options
Post by: Plantissue on January 31, 2020, 10:31:15 AM
You don't need to be a modder or developer to suggest or balance a weapon or anything else for that matter, otherwise, we might as well delete the entire suggestions thread. Being a modder or being Alex isn't an indicator of being able to balance a weapon anyways. We can all suggest weapons and how to balance them to a specific balance wish.

Taking Greivous69's thoughts, I think that range isn't a neccessary component of being antifighter. Vulcans do well enough against weaker missiles and fighters that execute the surround over a ship pattern. Though it will not be able to attack a bomber. However that suggestion is closer to a beam weapon other than that it deals hard flux. Long range, high accuracy, low DPS. Could be useful, but takes away from the unique role of the beams as long range pressure, depending on the increase in range you have in mind. Do you have a rough ballpark for those values or the size of the mount? If you wanted it to be a medium mount, you've practically described the Thumper.

Taking bobuncles thoughts, I feel like that a soft flux AoE energy damage is straying too much into energy weapon territory. But the focus on AoE, raises a question if that AoE effect is desirable in itself. Should the AoE be sufficient to be discriminate and to ideally be able to counter large groupings of fighters, whether they are the interceptor types or bomber types. Should it be priced at a certain level where it would be ineffective against a single fighter left from a single wing, or have a similar level of performance to a similar weapon against that single fighter that is left? Would soft flux be desirable? Would that not create tipping point situations, or is it desirable that the anti-fighter weapon still needs a supporting weapon to deal with fighters?

Taking those two examples, there is the question of both damage type. What would be the most desirable damage type against fighters? Fighters have a wide variety in defences, though they do have minimal armour, with the highest value being the Warthog of 200. Which could be somewhat resistant to fragmentation damage depending on dps and shot damage. Or should concern be over mainly those fighters that have shields? In which case Kinetic should be preferable. Afterall once armour is depleted, most weapons behave similarily. Should the weapon be able to damage large amount of fighters as once at the detriment of being able to target a fighter singly? What exactly is the weapon intended to fight against? To design a weapon to counter Talon, or to counter sparks would have different approaches.

How should an anti-fighter weapon be designed? Any anti-fighter weapon can be used against frigates, especially with Safety Overrides hullmod. If that's a concern, the HE damage should hopefully alleviate that as a concern. Should an anti-fighter weapon also be a PD weapon? So as to be able to shoot down a bomber's payload? Nothing can stop sabots. The flak weapons shoots down masses of Piranha's bomb and Khopesh's missiles rather handily.
Title: Re: More ballistic anti fighter options
Post by: Sagitta on January 31, 2020, 10:35:12 AM
Maybe something like the Teltrite Impactor? It´s very accurate, deals kinetic damage and has a range of 500. Obviously not great against Broadsword and such but the range also allows it to counter the Sabot sometimes. It´s from Tahlan Shipworks.

A medium mount version of the Swarmer would also be nice. Maybe with a bit more powerful missiles.
Title: Re: More ballistic anti fighter options
Post by: Goumindong on January 31, 2020, 02:51:16 PM
All of the Light Needler (heavy is a bit overkill) and Heavy Machine gun are good for fighters with shields(though i would prefer if the HMG did NOT have the PD tag). And the Assault Chaingun and Light Assault Gun are good for fighters without shields.

The AC is a beast especially right now because of its hilarious DPS. The Light Needler fulfills all of the desired requirements for anti-fighter work. Its accurate, has a fast projectile, has good range, and does a large amount of damage all at once to remove threats as soon as they pop up. It even has better than 1 to 1 flux/damage and isn't PD tagged so it won't get distracted by missiles.

IPDAI negates a lot of the problems that vulcans and LMGs have against fighters by bumping them up to perfect target leading. The main weakness of these weapons is that they don't have the range to target fighters when they're making their initial approach. As a result they do not target fighters until those fighters are circling. Fighters are fast but they don't have erratic patterns so they will be chewed up by high turn rate light weapons that have IPDAI to fix their target leading issues(IPDAI will also reduce the effect of missiles distracting small turrets by killing the missiles faster)
Title: Re: More ballistic anti fighter options
Post by: Daynen on January 31, 2020, 05:20:37 PM
There's a similar thread going on somewhere about this.  My two cents are simply that flaks and devastators suck because their detonation ranges are usually WAY off their target and it feels like 90% of their ordnance misses.
Title: Re: More ballistic anti fighter options
Post by: Plantissue on February 01, 2020, 03:48:06 AM
Both of the flak guns hits missiles and fighters perfectly fine.
Title: Re: More ballistic anti fighter options
Post by: xenoargh on February 01, 2020, 11:42:54 AM
I put a specific anti-fighter missile into Rebal, because I actually agree with the OP; there aren't really good choices available that wouldn't become seriously overpowered if they were made better vs. fighters.  The missile has a moderate range, high speed and tracking and a fairly decent reload.  It's junk vs. anything with real armor, but it's great against fighters.  I think that's a niche that could be filled.