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[TrashMan]

Did some calculation in order to better balance my own custom ships, and I figure this statistics might be interesting.

AVERAGE VALUES (non-comabt ships were not taken into the sample)

CAPITAL
13285,71 Hull   1157,14 Armor   15000 FluxCap   764,28 FluxDiss   878,57 Crew

CRUISER
8000   Hull         966,66 Armor    8472,22 FluxCap   495 FluxDiss   244,44 Crew


DESTROYER
4583,33 Hull   491,66 Armor     4483,33 FluxCap   268,33 FluxDiss   95 Crew


FRIGATE
1556,25 Hull   259,37 Armor         2543,75 FluxCap   173,75 FluxDiss   31,875 Crew

[vagrant]

I'd be interested in speed and acceleration averages, as well as cargo, fuel and fuel/ly. Shield type and shield arc would lend interesting (if not very useful) data too i'd think.

Z-scoring the data in each column and summing them could give us a sort of general performance index for ships too. Though, the index would more be an indication of how much above or below average a given ship is against it's class, it couldn't tell the whole story when it comes to balance.

[xenoargh]

Averaging such a small, noisy data-set will largely lead to GIGO, unfortunately.

What's important?

1.  Does the ship have an inherent advantage to movement or firing range over others in the class, or both? 

If yes, then it should have weaker Hull / Armor to compensate, or some other important nerf.  Ships in this group include the Wolf, Medusa, etc.

Movement speed is a god-stat when combined with all the range advantages players will inevitably stack on their Captains and ships.  Kiting is the way of efficiency in most cases.
 The Paragon, for example, has a higher-than-average range, to compensate for its very slow speed, relatively-weak armor for its class, and huge target profile.

2.  Does the ship have an unusually-large number of weapon slots aiming on the primary arc, usually forward?  The Enforcer can be slow, have poor shielding and generally be "meh" because it's extremely well-armed for a ship of its class, and has many Medium slots that can all hit the frontal arc, giving it greater ranged firepower than others in the same class.

Unfortunately, Vanilla's weapons aren't balanced terribly well against each other, so this tends to be a little messy, rather than clean-cut.  Ballistic weapons are superior, simply because of the long-range Kinetic and HE options available in most size classes, whereas Energy weapons tend to get shafted on range, making them far less competitive.

3.  Does the ship have a mechanic or System that allows it to avoid damage entirely?  This would cover Phase Cloak ships and the Hyperion, which are all designed around that motif, as well as ships like the Scarab that can deal huge amounts of damage while dodging incoming shots with its Temporal Shell.  Any ships with this motif need to be nerfed in some way to compensate; the Hyperion doesn't last long, CR-wise, the Phase Cloak ships have other issues.

4.  Does the ship have a specialty function that gives it greater alpha damage than normal?  This covers the Gryphon, but it's also the idea behind the Astral, to some degree.  This used to be the idea behind ships with High Energy Focus, but over time that System has lost a lot of its effective punch, for whatever reasons.

[MesoTroniK]

Unfortunately, Vanilla's weapons aren't balanced terribly well against each other, so this tends to be a little messy, rather than clean-cut.  Ballistic weapons are superior, simply because of the long-range Kinetic and HE options available in most size classes, whereas Energy weapons tend to get shafted on range, making them far less competitive.

High tech ships are superior platforms, and their strengths segue with the design of energy weapons which are supposed to be worse than ballistic on average.

[AxleMC131]

These "average values" might be a lot more interesting if you averaged each of the three tech levels (High-tech/Midline/Low-tech) separately. Within the tech levels there are doctrinal similarities in that sort of thing, but across the entire game not so much.

[Flying Birdy]

Unfortunately, Vanilla's weapons aren't balanced terribly well against each other, so this tends to be a little messy, rather than clean-cut.  Ballistic weapons are superior, simply because of the long-range Kinetic and HE options available in most size classes, whereas Energy weapons tend to get shafted on range, making them far less competitive.

High tech ships are superior platforms, and their strengths segue with the design of energy weapons which are supposed to be worse than ballistic on average.

Also the high per shot damage of energy weapons (heavy blaster, plasma cannon) make them actually not as inefficient as one would expect against armor. Energy weapons is just completely awful against shields when compared to kinetic.

[Sooner535]

Yeah I've noticed the energy weapons as well, if I used 4 flak cannons I can win duels against ships with 4+ lasers and/or blasters, which is kinda crazy since flak is supposed to be PD lol

[Megas]

There are four kinds of energy weapons:  beams, EMP, pulse lasers, and blasters (including plasma cannon).  Only blasters have excellent stopping power, but they are horribly flux-inefficient (such that most AI ships have trouble using them).  Beams and EMP have their uses (PD, Hound-and-Buffalo-killer, lockdown) regardless of user, but the pulse lasers and blasters are no match against a good kinetic.  Blasters have great DPS, but flux inefficiency is a killer.  Pulse lasers, slightly inefficient for what they do, cannot keep up with kinetics unless the energy user has elevated flux stats.

Most high-tech ships can compensate for energy weapon underperformance by their hull's properties, but midline ships have no such luck.  For midline ships, only energy weapons that are useful are beams and EMP.  Other "assault" energy weapons are terrible - mediocre to poor efficiency and poor shot range.  Maybe the Mjolnir-wannabe called heavy blaster is good for a ship with only one mount (like Heron), but otherwise, ballistics are better.

The greatest advantage energy weapons used to have was unlimited ammo, but that advantage was taken away several versions ago.

Although, during that one version with clips for ballistics, I preferred energy weapons due to having superior and more reliable DPS, despite typical energy weapon weaknesses.

Energy weapons should become more flux efficient, enough to be a viable alternative to ballistics for ships that can use both (mostly midline ships).  High-tech ships would need to be tweaked for sure.

[Althaea]

Someone throw colourfully creative nicknames my way if I'm mistaken, but I think Alex commented on exactly that within the last couple of weeks? Something about making energy weapons more flux efficient while also weakening the flux stats of high-tech ships (while maybe buffing their shields, or reducing the dissipation but keeping a high capacity?) to keep the current balance but make energy weapons themselves somewhat more competitive?

edit: I went snooping but didn't find such a post within the last month or so of Alex' posting history. More likely I'm thinking of a post someone made in a thread next to one of his, but that's as much effort as I'll expend on this search.

[cjuicy]

Let's not forget that there used to be an incremental boost to energy damage at higher flux levels. IIRC it boosted up to an extra 50% flux.

[xenoargh]

Someone throw colourfully creative nicknames my way if I'm mistaken, but I think Alex commented on exactly that within the last couple of weeks? Something about making energy weapons more flux efficient while also weakening the flux stats of high-tech ships (while maybe buffing their shields, or reducing the dissipation but keeping a high capacity?) to keep the current balance but make energy weapons themselves somewhat more competitive?

If that's the plan, it won't work, without further-buffing the High Tech ships' advantages (typically, range or move speed).  When Energy weapons were balanced vs. their HE / Kinetic contemporaries in Rebal Mod, they still felt pretty weak because of Energy's lack of efficiency vs. Shields; I've been considering a small buff to them for the last couple of months past the buff they got when rebalanced to parity vs. everything else... and High Tech ships did not become massively OP.  It certainly helped Midline out, though...

[Megas]

Let's not forget that there used to be an incremental boost to energy damage at higher flux levels. IIRC it boosted up to an extra 50% flux.

But most energy weapons that were not EMP had their DPS were raised by about 25% to compensate.  Pulse Lasers got more than 25% and became worth using.  Few got less, including Mining Blaster, which got hurt.

[Flying Birdy]

Let's not forget that there used to be an incremental boost to energy damage at higher flux levels. IIRC it boosted up to an extra 50% flux.

But most energy weapons that were not EMP had their DPS were raised by about 25% to compensate.  Pulse Lasers got more than 25% and became worth using.  Few got less, including Mining Blaster, which got hurt.

Mining blaster and heavy blaster are still just as efficient as something like assault chaingun against armor though (further buffs would make them insanely good as anti-armor). They have really high per-shot, making them by definition more efficient as anti-armor weapons.

Basically, heavy blaster and mining blaster looks awful due to their flux efficiency but are actually in reality quite strong as anti-capital/cruiser weapons. Mining + heavy blasters + plasma cannons are actually the HE of energy weapons.

For example, against 1000 armor targets

Heavy Blaster initially hits the armor at 50% reduction (500/1000=0.5). Its flux-damage ratio is 250/720=34.7

Mining blaster initially hits the armor at 30% reduction (700/1000=0.7). Its flux-damage ratio is actually 245/600=0.4083

Chaingun initially hits armor at 88% reduction (60*2/1000). Its flux to damage ratio is 48/400=0.12

Mauler initially hits armor at 60% reduction (400/1000). Its flux to damage ratio is 80/225=0.355

[Tartiflette]

Easy solution to make energy weapons more competitive VS ballistic: they just need to be more damaging at shorter range of impact. If the listed damage was what you deal at max range but they dealt +33% when hitting a target directly next to the muzzle, they would get a nasty kick. And it would both play to the strength of mid/high tech ships since they are more mobile, and de-incentivize kiting strategies.

[Megas]

@ Flying Birdy:  Got to win the flux war and get through shields first.  Anti-armor is irrelevant if blocked by shields.  Shields is still a primary defense despite AI dropping shields a bit more in 0.8.x.  Also, armor is mostly ignorable if all that the damage goes to hull if shot hits unarmored spots.

Mining Blaster DPS is barely higher than Pulse Laser (armor penetration aside) and has worse range.

The only time Mining Blaster is useful today is on Hyperion, which only has flux stats to comfortably fire either dual Heavy Blaster or dual Mining Blaster once.