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[Megas]

* Harpoons are too easy to stop unless target is helpless or has no defenses.  Also, too few ammo.  They are decent against helpless targets, though.
* Sabots are good.  They are only overpowered if spammed.  Not a problem with smalls, but can be with mediums or Longbows.
* Swarmers for ships do not have enough ammo.  Since fighters themselves are unlimited, Swarmers should regenerate or be unlimited to counter fighters, if its role remains primarily anti-fighter.
* Annihilators are great primarily as a chaff screen (used by Enforcers and Onslaughts) to block incoming fire.  If it actually hurts something, that is a bonus.
* Small Hammers are decent cheap filler.  Hammer Barrage has too few ammo.
* Single shot Reapers are good (especially when used by Afflictor).  Bigger ones are playership weapon only as AI hoards them too much.
* Atropos is too similar to Harpoon.  Slightly better speed, durability, damage, but has arming delay and much worse range.  One-shot is way too overpriced at 2 OP.  Clearly redesigned for Daggers.
* Salamanders are okay if there at least two.  They do not mess with AI as well as a wing of fighters, and fighters can kill.  Salamanders barely scratch things.  For bigger ships, Converted Hangar and wing of fighters (even Talons) is superior to two (maybe more) Salamanders.
* Proximity mines would be okay if they were cheap and/or regenerating.  As they are, they cost too much OP (more than other medium missiles) and there is not enough ammo.  Flash wings can use them decently, though.
* Pilums used to destroy things.  Now, they are too slow and too easily shot down.  Maybe a dedicated Pilum spam fleet can make it work, but casual use is not viable.
* Hurricane is simply extra-large Harpoon.  Currently, it is a playership only weapon because AI wastes them like no tomorrow, and there is not much ammo.  MIRVs are also somewhat vulnerable.  Not bad for the likes of Conquest flagship, but it is overshadowed by Locusts.
* Squalls seems to be a support weapon.  Not bad, but not great either.
* Locusts are great.  Cheap for large missiles, reliable (excellent tracking and hard to stop, unlike MIRVs) often destroys frigates outright if the whole burst hits, and best of all... lots of ammo.  It also does serious damage to bigger ships that lost armor.

[xenoargh]

I can't believe that the "standard" modded Hurricane has been nerfed past Vanilla stats, lol.  It's not that dangerous.

I think the Locust is under-loved for what it does; if it didn't run out of ammo, it'd be great.  It's a sweet Fighter counter; that's what it actually does well.  Pretty useless otherwise except as a Flux-sucking distraction.

Swarmers should regenerate, period.

Agreed on spamming of Sabots.

Pilums don't even work on a dedicated fleet any more.  They're simply too slow.  Add 100 to their speed and maybe.

Agreed that Salamanders are only worthwhile on Destroyer-, and even then, they're questionable.  Probably the best answer is stronger EMP, not damage; they're just not quite scary enough and I usually just use them to waste AI Flux.

Atropos needs about double its current range to have a niche that's interesting.

Locusts are great for the same reason Sabots are great; they're a lose-lose weapon if they get through PD.  

Reapers are probably about the only missile where I can sympathize with the arguments for ammo limits, largely because of the single-shot models that cost nothing.  That sounds like a solvable problem; make them regenerate really slowly, make them cost a bit more (say, 5).  I don't fear a single Reaper; if I lose a ship to one, that's my fault for lousy fleet design or poor deployment, it's not because they're terribly scary.

Proximity Mines feel balanced for fighters, but not for ships.

Hammers... I feel like two Hammers ought to be as cheap as one Reaper, but less accurate (fun idea, put guidance into them, but make it bad on purpose).  Barrage should be a really random, roll-the-dice moment, where sometimes 10 land on a Cruiser and wipe it out, sometimes they all miss, sometimes you accidentally take out one of your own.  I think they should be a weapon you'd see a desperate Pirate making use of- cheap, lethal, but utterly unreliable.

I don't mind the Annihilators but I honestly think they should get lower bursts regen; then they're spam-cannons during an entire fight.  I would even give up some of their damage to simply have them be a reliable shot-absorber, rather than a weapon that the AI tends to run out of within the first minute of engagement.




I really don't like the whole, "retreat and get your missiles refilled" mechanic, btw.  

I watched Nemo's latest YouTube stuff and watched that tactic get used multiple times and ugh, that's ugly.  

I realize it's just using the game's rules and that's cool, I'm not saying that it makes you a bad player... but it feels ridiculous; if you can't regen in combat, you shouldn't magically regen by running away for a short period, either.  I don't really want to play the game that way; if I can't win in a single fight, I shouldn't gain major abilities by retreating, it should just weaken me further and make my engagement choices harder.

[DatonKallandor]

Plus the only reason some of the missiles are even remotely "good" is because most PD is a waste of a slot because missiles are limited and most PD isn't even good at it's job much less outside of it's job. You don't waste a slot on something that's only good at shooting down missiles (unless it's Flak which is insanely good at shooting missiles, and is still a good weapon outside of that) when you could just put a real gun in that slot and shield-tank the missiles instead.

With unlimited missiles, PD is suddenly a viable option that remains relevant throughout the entire fight, which naturally makes missiles less potent, despite the regen (not that properly balanced regen makes missiles stronger - their damage spike density should stay the same or get lowered anyway).

[Igncom1]

most PD isn't even good at it's job much less outside of it's job.

Strongly disagree.

PD weapons are fantastic support weapons, machine-guns in particular make for fantastic close assault weapons.

[Midnight Kitsune]

most PD isn't even good at it's job much less outside of it's job.

Strongly disagree.

PD weapons are fantastic support weapons, machine-guns in particular make for fantastic close assault weapons.

Let's not forget fighters being unlimited now as well

[Megas]

As I wrote before, ships generally do not have flux stats to support assault weapons in every mount and fired at once.  They will get flux locked fast if they try.  Using flux-efficient and/or shorter-ranged PD is not a weakness.  Most ships are not so OP starved to support some PD weaponry for general-purpose use.  This is a reason why LR PD laser is a fine alternative to tactical laser if flux use is a problem.

* Single LMG is not as good as Vulcan at PD, but it is good anti-shield.  Alright for mixing with Vulcans if OP budget is very tight.
* Vulcans are the best close range PD available for small mounts.  They also shred most unarmored ships.
* Dual LMG is an assault weapon for Safety Override ships, much like chaingun and HMG.  Less effective than Vulcan at PD yet costs as much or more.
* HMG is primarily a close-range assault weapon, despite being tagged as PD.  It is much worse at PD than flak.
* Flaks are great, enough said.
* Devastator (for non-SO ships) is what you use to supplement flak if you cannot get enough to stop Squalls or other extreme missile or fighter saturation.
* Mining Laser is nearly useless for being weak and nearly as slow as Tactical Laser.  If it was faster, it might have a use.
* PD laser is filler.  Effective enough for ships that can mount several (and cannot use ballistics).
* LR PD is a general-purpose weapon.  Basically a tactical laser with somewhat less damage and range for speed, builtin PD, and cheaper flux use.  Good for Falcon and Eagle.  LR PD is preventive PD, stop things (like Sabots and Salamanders) before they become a threat.  At close range, it stinks.
* Burst PD is effective, but too rare and costs too much OP.  Might be worth the OP if it had as much range as LR PD, but it is mainly an energy Vulcan that costs twice the OP.
* Guardian PD seems suboptimal for the two ships that can use it.  Not bad per se, but Odyssey desperately needs shot range from the heavy (and it has lots of small mounts for PD), and Paragon can be more destructive with other weapons.

[xenoargh]

Yeah, the HMG, lol.  

Problem is, if it was effective PD, it'd be devastating as a Kinetic assault weapon.

The problems here, game-design-wise, are straightforward:

1.  Direct-fire PD that has to hit a target needs to be quite efficient (because so many shots get wasted) and have reasonable range, or hit practically every shot.  It also has to do enough damage to the primary target type- missiles- to justify being installed.  All this, without being vastly overpowered against ships (and to a lesser extent, fighters).

Vulcans barely fit this description, and they're the most-efficient Flux-using weapons in the game.

The big issue here is that PD's not aiming at a standard-sized target moving slowly; it's firing at something that zips along and can suddenly alter course.  

Direct-fire PD might simply need faster-moving shots and tighter accuracy to counter this properly, so that they're generally more efficient hitters of fast-moving things, albeit short-ranged.  I've never really tested what happens if you give shots quarter-second time-to-target speeds; I presume that's still all right for anything that's using a per-frame raytest for collisions, though.

2.  Flak's widely understood to be the efficient PD, and that's because it wastes so few shots.  Shouldn't there be solutions like this at all levels of weaponry?

Flak's role, as the AOE PD, is important in terms of understanding why Midline / Low Tech is relatively impressive; not only is High Tech gimped by inefficient Energy weapons, but it's also severely hurt on PD.  

It's also one of the reasons why Destroyers, especially Enforcers, have been so attractive for serious minmaxing; they have enough Medium slots to give up at least one to Flak or Dual Flak, depending on what you want them to do.  There's no real equivalent in Cruisers, as the Dominator doesn't have the same thematic layout and there aren't any Midline Cruisers in Vanilla that can mount much Flak.  The Onslaught can, however, and is largely a survivable design when Flaks are put in the right places.  I rarely bother putting LMGs onto Onslaughts; anything that gets through the Flaks should get addressed by Vulcans; there's no case where that isn't the right answer.

One experiment that might be worth trying is to simply remove Flak altogether, if we're not going to have credible versions for Frigates and the heavier ships.  I think it would fundamentally improve how we see PD in the game.

3.  The LMGs are strange weapons, stat-wise; they're one of the weapons that actually got nerfed a lot (almost 40% DPS downgrade) when I built things out to par in my balance experiments, because they're actually quite overpowered if examined.  This is why they're attractive; despite their short range, they're actually quite amazing Flux-traders if you can get into their range band.  They were eminently abusable before the huge range nerf in late-game happened; now they're primarily good only until midgame for a few SO builds, imo.

I don't think they're really balanced, but fixing them is difficult, because, as PD, they're just underperforming Vulcans.  Perhaps I'll try what I outlined in #1 above with my nerfs in place, see if it gets them somewhere useful as actual PD.

4.  I still think the right answer with Mining Lasers is to make them behave like a short-ranged Burst PD.  Then they're different and not just the worst PD in the entire game, in terms of effectiveness and efficient use of OPs.

5.  Burst PD's three tiers (it's passing strange that that is one of the few weapon types in the entire game to be represented with three proper tiers) are all too weak to do their job.  Either their range needs to be better, they need to have faster regeneration of their "banks", they need to do more damage, or some combination of the above.  

The Guardian, in particular, is a weapon without a role; frankly, if it was put into Medium, it'd see more real use with a few squirrel cases, like protecting carriers.  Large Energy is so under-represented in the game that it's simply always going to absorb offensive options, unless the defensive option is staggeringly effective.

[Megas]

@ xenoargh:  With old skills, IR Pulse Lasers and Railguns were passable PD (with IPDAI hullmod) if the ship had Ordnance Expert 5 and high Gunnery Implants.  IR Pulse Lasers were useful for high-tech ships because they had much better stopping power than beams despite being a bit unreliable.  IPDAI Railguns was decent for a fringe Sunder loadout that wanted some PD when wailing on shields was not necessary.  Now, without double speed from Ordnance Expert, less OP available, and hard-to-get IPDAI, IPDAI is kind of useless on anything other than Tactical Laser.

Much faster shot speed is useful for missile defense (and make it harder for player to twitch dodge shots from an enemy).  The current perk that raises shot speed by 25% is a joke - a junk perk.  Even when it was 100%, that was mostly useful for missile defense, and only when combined with additional autofire accuracy from Gunnery Implants.

The Onslaught can, however, and is largely a survivable design when Flaks are put in the right places.  I rarely bother putting LMGs onto Onslaughts; anything that gets through the Flaks should get addressed by Vulcans; there's no case where that isn't the right answer.

Legion can do this too, and it is an effective defense as long as it does not get attacked from behind.  Sure, it gives up missiles, but that is not a problem.

[xenoargh]

@Megas: I completely agree with your points.  I liked the squirrel-case IPDAI builds, too, but yeah, they're not workable atm.  The builds for PD in general (the extra damage vs. missile / fighter) aren't terrible, but because Captains can't attain Level 40, I rarely push them there.



I tried out the speed-of-shot theory.  Works out.

LMGs, with a shot-speed of 1600, only 15 damage, costing 15 Flux per shot, with an min/max spread value of 15 (i.e, quite a lot of missing at range), 400 base range, were reasonably-effective PD without being egregiously-efficient assault weapons.  The speed makes enough difference for this type of intercept (provided that they're using RAY).

A pair of them on a Lasher with ITU and a level-zero Captain can be expected to take down three out of four Harpoons in a group before impact, for example.  Without ITU, they're only getting two of them at best.

They also felt considerably less like ultra-efficient short-range assault weapons, because they don't have a staggering 8:1 relationship with DPS : Flux.

It's always cute when something matches what my math says so neatly, lol.

[DatonKallandor]

One experiment that might be worth trying is to simply remove Flak altogether, if we're not going to have credible versions for Frigates and the heavier ships.  I think it would fundamentally improve how we see PD in the game.

Pretty good analysis of the issues. Making PD good without making it too good in non-PD roles is hard with the design as it stands. The Reliant is probably a good model (in terms of shot and turn speed, without massive DPS).

On the topic of just how insane Flak is, it would still be amazing PD if it had a hard cap of only killing one missile per shot. That's how incredible proximity fuses and enough damage per shot to reliably kill a missile is.

[Thaago]

Flak is amazing, but I think the instinct to give frigates an equivalent is the wrong way to go - thats the path of making everything the same. Frigates don't need flak because they are fast enough to dodge most missiles. The effect is the same, but its a much more dynamic balance.

That said, I really hate how I need to dedicate a minimum of 3 small slots and 12 OP to energy PD to have a hope of stopping a single Harpoon on something like a Medusa or Aurora. LRPD are ok because at least you can have overlapping fire zones between ships, but base PD lasers are truly terrible, and Heavy Burst pd is so far behind flak that its laughable.

[xenoargh]

I'm OK with Frigates dodging missiles, so long as they can dodge.  The problem with that motif is a fair number of them aren't actually all that good at dodging and have to either use direct-fire PD, shield tank or die.  I've never been a big fan of the idea that missiles should be great hard counters for Frigates, but it's largely tuned all right.  





I completely agree that the tuning of Energy PD is terrible for the most part.

I just revised my stuff for Burst PD; seems my last formula didn't quite provide for burst ratios correctly, and was over-valuing their TTK.

So... after revision, if we're using OP's as par, with my current weight for range values, etc....

Burst PD, at 600 range, could have a base damage of 200/second, cost 61 Flux/second, and fire bursts lasting 0.2, with 0.2 delay, no bank.  

That means it's really doing just 40 a shot, but costs only 12.2 to fire; this is fairly efficient and it's what we'd expect given the other ratios, range band, etc.  

A Burst PD gets 2.5 shots / second, so it's only going to get about 4 hits in, for 160 damage, before a typical missile hits the ship, unless the ship's back-pedaling at maximum speed.  So, that kills one Harpoon (150 hitpoints) or two Annihilator / Swarmers (50 each), with maybe one shot to engage another one, but might turn into kills on 2 missiles when backing up.

This makes it more efficient, Flux-wise, with where the PD Laser ended up, and with slightly more range, but you get that efficiency at a significantly higher OP cost.  

To make the Burst PD more effective, the option there is to either bump range to allow more engagement time, or bump damage up but lose some Flux efficiency.  I'll probably go for the latter; I figure if you're mounting a 7-OP weapon, you're probably OK with it costing more Flux, so long as it does its job reliably.  2 hits to kill a Harpoon sounds about right, so we're talking 250 base damage for 95 Flux, which is reasonable (these numbers sound outrageous, but bear in mind that the weapon's not in continual contact, suffers the SS 1.5X hard nerf against Beams, etc.).

Heavy Burst PD is now at 400 base damage; not quite enough to kill a Harpoon in one hit, but two every time.  800 range, so that it's in its own range band; 205 Flux; it's not as efficient because of the range.

Guardian's the only one where I can't justify it and I'm not sure it can be fixed.  For 22 OPs, you get a 900-range burst-PD weapon that does 500 base damage (i.e., 100 per hit) at 180 Flux.  It's very efficient, even at the range, but the cost in OPs is outrageous for what it does.  

I still think the right answer is to put Guardian into Medium, lower the OP cost to 15, give it the range and make it less efficient.  The numbers on that:  15 OPs, 500 base damage for 265 Flux, 900 range.  It still won't kill Harpoons in one shot at that point, but it will kill Hammers in 4 shots and Reapers in 5-6, so it's probably worth using.  

I'm tempted to boost the base damage a little higher than that, so that it's capable of dealing with Squalls and two incoming Reapers; if it could do that and was Medium, I'd probably actually consider using it on High Tech ships.  

So, what does that look like?

750 base damage (i.e., 150 per pulse, or enough to kill a Harpoon in one shot) for 595 Flux, or 119 per pulse.  That's pretty high Flux output- it's massive overkill for killing, say, Annihilators, and will be a waste of Flux then.  

But four shots to kill a Reaper sounds about right; unless the Reaper's launched at point-blank, the Guardian would kill one of them at least, which would be 476 Flux down the drain to avoid taking 2000 Hard Flux (in the best-case scenario).  That sounds pretty reasonable, even if often even that much firepower wouldn't suffice because of time-on-target issues.

So there ya go, folks; burst-PD numbers that actually make some sense.  None of these numbers turn these weapons into amazing assault guns, either; they're still Beams, with the penalty against Armor damage, Soft Flux against Shields, etc., which is all factored in.

[xenoargh]

That actually worked pretty well, in testing.

PD Burst, without the arbitrary "bank" limitation, did the job it was meant to do; it killed light missiles just fine.  One cannot stop a Harpoon swarm, but having one on a Wolf on the spinal mount is no longer a total waste of OPs.

Heavy Burst was efficient at protecting a Tempest without Extended Shields from getting immolated by random passing fighters and other medium-weight hazards.  The biggest advantage it had was that, at 800 range, it could do something that Flak can't- stop Sabots occasionally.  I would venture that one of them is garbage against a Sabot Pod, but that's the whole point of Sabot Pods.

Guardian, as a medium, 15 OP weapon with enough teeth to provide reasonable protection, was competitive with Flak because of the longer engagement range.  Finally, there's something in Energy that is reasonably effective vs. missile strikes and a few fighters.

The biggest change I saw was that, not only were High Tech considerably better-able to handle missiles, they also handled fighters better.  They weren't invulnerable to fighters, mind you, they just had some kind of sensible answer besides, "more Tac / LRPDL". 

Fighters presented an interesting case, because the shielded ones were able to laugh at the Burst PD, but the Heavy and Guardian passed the tipping-point and were able to generate kills.

Now, did this make High Tech really OP?  Nope, at least not over here, with the rest of the weapons at OP parity; Low Tech still has a distinctive bunch of advantages and this change made High Tech better, but within the flavor; these changes make Burst PD largely lame against swarms of cheap, no-Flux missiles and they don't do a thing about the basic Energy-vs-Kinetic issues that have made Low Tech pretty attractive.  But it sure helped High Tech regain some of their feel as the faction that doesn't tank so much as not take damage.



Oh, and that change to the way burst-damage was calculated meant that the Tachyon Lance gained enough bite to justify itself, sometimes.  I get that people think it's OK on a Paragon, but everything's good on a Paragon and usually the HIL's a better choice if you're not going Plasma Cannon.

But this worked out.  I actually found it useful on a Sunder for the first time since... gosh, 0.4 or something, back at the beginning of time when Sunders were OK with that because TL's had huuuuuuuge ranges, lol. 

Stats on that: 1200 range, 1500/500 base damage, 935 Flux/second, 1 second burst, 4 second cooldown. 

It's still not all that great; it won't crack anything but the lightest shields worth a darn because Soft Flux and it still takes two pulses to do much to an Enforcer's armor (and it takes 4 or so to crack the heavies, which takes a lot of doing in a Sunder, as you can't hit shields)... but it at least had enough punch against armor while doing its EMP magic and enough efficiency to be worth using. 

I'd use one on an Odyssey build, now, I think.  Two on target is enough Soft Flux to matter, vs. little stuff that can't lose 3000 in 4 seconds, and that would hit hard enough to kill Enforcers and make Eagles actively worried.

[Megas]

Oh, and that change to the way burst-damage was calculated meant that the Tachyon Lance gained enough bite to justify itself, sometimes.  I get that people think it's OK on a Paragon, but everything's good on a Paragon and usually the HIL's a better choice if you're not going Plasma Cannon.

Please elaborate Tachyon Lance vs. HIL.  I tried both (on Sunder and Paragon), and Tachyon Lance outperformed HIL every time.  Burst damage plus shield pierce is great.  I even tried HIL and Ion Beam combo, but they do not kill as quickly as Tachyon Lance alone.

So far, HIL is poor-man's damage half of Tachyon Lance.  HIL is what gets used if player has not found enough Tachyon Lance (and Tachyon Lance is very rare).

Tachyon Lance is good only for ships that can provide enough kinetic damage, which Sunder and Paragon can do.  Odyssey might via fighters (but it needs its 0.8 shields back to not lose flux war as soon as it gets shot at).

[xenoargh]

HIL's HE damage usually means that, if you're taking opportunistic pot-shots at un-shielded areas of a target, it's not toooooo horrible now.  Problem is that it's so situational as a weapon that it's rarely a great idea, but hey, when you suck at aiming a Plasma Cannon or desperately need 1000+ range in a High Tech ship, or are tooling around in a modded ship that can stack Medium Kinetic and Large Energy...

I agree that it's completely underwhelming otherwise; the one Beam you'd think would have a genuine assault role underperforms in every way.  People tend to ooh and ah about it now, though, because it actually does something useful if you wave it at unshielded targets.