OK, I feel pretty confident this is now a reasonable system, after a few more adjustments.
You can download a test of the rebalanced weapons here. Raw CSV format for now, I'll build a mod for this later.
Changes made:
1. TTK's factor in balance needed some tweaking, to get it better in line with DPS / Flux. This fixed some issues with certain weapons that have very high rates of fire (LMG, Vulcan, Chaingun) that felt like they weren't quite right. It took a couple of passes to get it to feel about right, in terms of preserving a similar-to-Vanilla feel to Flux tradeoffs.
2. I tweaked the value of range a bit more, using 800 as the basis point; this slanted the Small weapons to be a bit more efficient than Medium and Large.
3. Soft Flux from EMP damage is now accounted for properly, like Beam damage.
4. I refactored how I look at the TTK in relation to Armor a bit.
I think that now it's mainly just adding in a fudge-factor for "worth" for special modded weapons that go way outside the box and it's about ready to be used as a tool.
I think that people will find that the results are pretty clearly better now. While the values are different in a few important cases and a few specific weapons are suddenly better / worse after adjustments, none of them feel useless and there aren't all the big, obvious holes in the weapons that there used to be.
If people find that the weapons are feeling too efficient, the best fix is to punish weapons for TTK or range; these are our best control factors. But they're kind of blunt objects and I honestly feel like these values are about right now.
Change Examples
KineticsHeavy Machine Guns actually have a point, rather than just being "me, too++" slightly-scaled-up but way-less-efficient LMGs.; they're able to switch-hit and serve both as heavy PD and as Kinetic assault weapons.
Light Needlers remain great shield-killers, but aren't the over-powered, ultra-efficient weapons they once were, so the Light Autocannons are considerably more attractive as slow-burn Kinetics with higher-per-round armor killing power. They're both "good", they both still have different roles; but Light Needlers aren't a huge upgrade that you literally won't ever skip once they're available.
Heavy Needlers are feeling better. Choosing them used to be a no-brainer except for a few squirrel cases (Light Needlers were so much more efficient that it rarely made sense to use Heavies if you were minmaxing) but it no longer is; Heavy Needlers get more range and considerably more burst damage, but you have to pay the Flux costs; they have a place that works for them that's pretty obvious.
Arbalests aren't terrifically-inefficient guns; they and the Heavy AC each have pretty obvious niches and are complementary, and neither one is overshadowed by the Light Needler or Railgun.
High ExplosiveThe
Light Mortar is no longer an inefficient joke-gun.
The
Heavy Mauler is no longer the obvious choice in Medium HE. It still kites just fine, but the
Chaingun is now efficient-enough that it's a real choice; do you want kiting kills or do you want a 1-2 Kinetic / HE punch for efficient killing?
FragmentationThe
Vulcan lost some DPS / Flux but it got into a better range-band.
The
Flak / Dual Flak are probably in need of my last "adjustment" variable; they're sensibly-priced (i.e., very efficient) when considered without their AoE. I don't think that matters very much, though; they were always quite efficient for their use-case.
The Thumper remains somewhat-questionable, but in theory, it should now be a fairly-decent pressure weapon as well as a shredder of fighters.
EnergyIn general, this whole category got improved, which is totally proper now that so many ships can choose between Ballistics and Energy weapons. I've also decided, somewhat arbitrarily, to declare that these weapons are all "Blasters", to keep them from being confused with Beams by newbies.
The
IR Pulse Blaster and
Pulse Blaster remain good, solid workhorse guns, but they're no longer weirdly gimped vs. their Kinetic rivals and they're more efficient.
The
Mjolnir is a weird case; it's efficient but I think that it's priced correctly now for its giant price of 24 OPs. I wasn't convinced until I tested it out a bit.
The
Auto Pulse makes good sense as a pressure gun; it's a firehose of pure power that will kill your Flux reserves but can destroy a ship in seconds.
The
Mining Blaster,
Antimatter Blaster and
Heavy Blaster all have their own niches that are sensible. The Mining Blaster, in particular, was in need of some love, as it's been terrible for ages and largely ignored by serious players. It's now in a niche spot where it's at 600 range and fits between the Heavy Blaster and Antimatter Blaster in terms of per-shot damage. The Antimatter Blaster no longer has ammo limits, a relic value that was left in the Vanilla CSV for <reasons?>.
BeamsBeam changes are probably the most-controversial aspects of this rebalance, because it's one of the few areas where I made significant alterations to Vanilla's core concepts in a few spots.
I've said, repeatedly, that the
PD Laser and
Mining Laser need to be differentiated in the game design; they're way too "samey" for my tastes. Mining Lasers are now burst-beams like Phase Lances; high DPS, short bursts, high Flux per burst. They're reasonable PD and can serve as assault weapons. This gives them a vastly-different sense of role.
The
PD Laser and
LRPD Laser are both very well-differentiated now. LRPD no longer feels somewhat-superfluous; it's OK-ish at its prime job, if sub-par vs. fighters. The PD Laser is quite efficient but remains short-ranged, but slightly longer-ranged than the Ballistic equivalents.
The
Tac Laser remains a decent workhorse "support" weapon that feels like it's actually support. Range was reduced to 800 to differentiate it from the Medium mount weapons but leave it with a longer base range than Small Ballistics. This gave it a bit more efficiency, so that it's trading Soft Flux at a considerable advantage, which feels about right now.
The
Phase Lance is almost unchanged. It's still a short-ranged, high-cost death-dealer.
The
Graviton Beam is more efficient, making it an excellent support weapon even before Captain bonuses. I like how it changed, because it and the Tac Laser now have distinct roles, rather than feeling rather "me-too".
Guardians finally make sense, as a jack-of-all-trades large upgrade to
Heavy Burst PD. It's efficient now, and that means that while it's still not an assault weapon, it's death to unshielded Fighters and it's very good PD against heavier ordinance. I'd actually consider buying one now, if it wasn't Large.
The
HIL is not a great deal different than Vanilla's current balance. It trades Flux a bit better now, but it's still basically a HE-damage razor you can chop armor with if Shields fail.
The vaunted
Tachyon Lance is still a bit disappointing after re-balancing it. Then again, it isn't amazing in Vanilla with its current range, either. It's still a big burst-DPS gun that can be pretty deadly vs. unshielded targets or targets that have high Flux. Kind of tempted to crank it up in some way, to eat more Flux but actually kill things.
