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[Goumindong]

Agreed on the flux budget being nowhere near enough to power all those small weapon slots, on some ships, and still have enough to take some level of incoming fire.  But is that an actual problem though?

On the flip side:  those weapon slots are merely "potential places to mount weapons if you want" and represent design freedom rather than a problem.  I find it "realistic" that shipbuilders go for a generic flux dissipation rate, and then more-than-the optimal-number of weapon slots.

New weapons are coming out faster than any shipwright could keep up with.  I.e. the flux budget is something decided upon when the "keel is laid down and the ship building has begun".  Meanwhile, the new micro-lance-gatling-laser is released, etc.

There is no obligation, even if I have the flux budget to put weapons in every slot, to actually do that.  Maybe I think this ship build is going to have all front-facing dps weapons only and ignore flank dps weapons.  And perhaps only mount a medium flak weapon to cover the flanks and devote the rest to a huge flux capacity pool.

So back to:  can the energy DPS weapons I could mount be competitive with ballistics?  I really don't agree until the large mount realm.  In the large mount domain, there are energy weapons I will take over any ballistic weapon.

Well. Way more slots than they can efficiently fire in ways that they tend to need to be able to fire them. High tech ships and especially high deployment point high tech ships tend to have better effective dissipation(Total Dissipation - Shield Cost)*. The Medusa (12 Deployment Points) has 280 effective dissipation(400/120) compared to the Hammerhead (10 Deployment Points, up from 8 as of last patch?) which has 200 (300/100). The Aurora has 375 (800/425) compared to the Eagles 315 and the Dominators 225.

The Scarab has 90 (150/60) compared to the Lashers 84 (140/56). The Hyperion only has 112(280/168)... which is at least still an advantage. And it does have a huge capacity (5100 compared to the Lashers 2100 and the Scarabs 2000). But it also costs the same to field as a Falcon [210, 350/140 with 7,000 cap plus its a cruiser so can fit more dissipation) and twice as much in maintenance. The one small High Tech ship that doesn't seem to have much problems with quality is the tempest but this isn't because its fit with medium mounts... Its because it has 180(225/45) effective dissipation, 180 speed, and HEF. It utterly destroys the sim lasher with only two IR pulse fit (Ok the terminators and their 2 extra help, but its entirely not necessary)

In general the game is about putting your dissipation into their capacity. And the fleet that does that the best is the fleet that wins. Such. Ships that have higher effective dissipation and capacity tend to be better (unless something prevents them from or enables them to utilize their dissipation better**) and as a result higher deployment point warships need more dissipation in order to compete.

So while ships that primarily feature medium or large mounts are just fine. This largely has to do with the fact that they don't have poor flux budgets rather than the mounts themselves being particularly better. If you put large and Medium energy turrets on an Onslaught it wouldn't help the ship much. Because its sitting on 360 Effective dissipation (600/240) compared to the Odysseys 750.

*They also tend to have higher raw shield costs as well so they benefit more from stabilized shields.

**As an example, the Brawler has 120 effective dissipation(200/80), but its only got fixed mounts and its got a weak active ability. This makes it hard for it to put damage down compared to the "relatively weaker" lasher unless the target is quite large. The TT brawler fixes these active ability issue but still has terrible mount coverage. (It also has much better armor and so is more effective at taking out the sim Lasher than a Scarab is for twice the deployment points)

So back to:  can the energy DPS weapons I could mount be competitive with ballistics?  I really don't agree until the large mount realm.  In the large mount domain, there are energy weapons I will take over any ballistic weapon.

See the thing is that they can and they are. IR Pulse does 152 damage for 152 flux... LAG does 160 damage for 160 flux. LDAC does 143 damage for 143 flux. IR pulse is really really good at killing small ships... so long as you can fire them. A wolf with 2 IR pulse and only 2 IR pulse can take down a sim lasher. It has a tough time of it but its only running 30 of 55 deployment points fit as such and it can't make use of its active ability all that well.

This is right in line with the large and medium energy comparisons to their counterparts. Medium Energy weapons are some of the best in the game with Phase Lances and Heavy Blasters, Ion Beams, and Pulse Lasers. Sure the medium PD is a bit underwhelming but its OK for ballistics to be good at some things. And Ion Pulsers are a bit too specialized in an area I don't use as the alternative is just killing something with a Heavy Blaster.

[Nia Tahl]

So I guess I'll chime in, too, on the one thing that really bothers me. It is obviously the mine strike and that goes for both the Doom and HT Fortresses. While I can accept that the Doom does indeed need a powerful system, the mine strike in its current form is simply terrible to play against and effectively impossible to play around.

With the way the system functions, it punishes you for the things you should be doing in combat. If you try to retreat to vent flux, possibly using something like maneuvering jets, you can just suddenly find yourself with a pile of mines right behind you with no chance to ever stop in time to avoid the damage or even meaningfully mitigate it. You just get an instant flameout and half your ship HP gone if you have a front shield and if you have an omni shield, you have to expose yourself to enemy fire if you try to shield the damage, which most likely won't work well anyhow since the mines detonate well before the shield has expanded enough to actually protect you from the mines.

It is just quite simply not an enjoyable experience to play against mine strikes. They are non-interactive, cheaty and completely ignore the rules of combat that. Normal mines like on the lowtech and midline stations are completely fine, though. Sure, they can spawn in annoying places, but never in quantities that equate to basically instant death because *** you.

Frankly, I hate the mine strike system to the point I'm tempted to just outright remove it from my game cause it is the single most fun killing thing in the game right now.

[TaLaR]

No phase ship fights a fair fight.
Frigates can bypass shields by simply being fast enough.
Harbinger can disable shields, though not much after that since weapon slot nerf.
Doom can use mines as multi-directional attack to bypass shields.

I'm mostly okay with it, except 2 things:
- Mines are too deadly to fast ships, worst case you have no time to react. Initial timeout, like Reapers have, would help here.
- Defensive systems 3 makes player-piloted phase ships almost unusable against Doom due to faster phase clock (can't wait him out like I would do normally). But you want to have DS3 because it's good against anything non-phase.

[SCC]

I think weapons like the ACG could stand to have their fire rates upped rather than their damage increased; makes them more useful against fighters, a niche the game needs, and the current penetration is kind of ridiculous. I'd go for 60/40 damage/flux at 0.1 refire rate.

Agreed entirely!

Frankly right now the Assault Chaingun is brokenly overpowered. Increasing its rate of fire and changing flux and damage stats to roughly what Soren said as a start point at the least would help it swat fighters which indeed is a role the game needs. While also buffing it against ships but to a lesser degree than the change it got. Make a dakka weapon more dakka, not more alpha! Heh

I was somewhat surprised by shot damage buff. I would rather expect better flux efficiency alone (seeing how one chaingun is already triple the DPS of heavy mauler and double that of heavy mortar) or in conjunction with rate of fire increase. Though, now that I checked it, it seems that ACG already doesn't receive full buff from AAF already...

No phase ship fights a fair fight.
Frigates can bypass shields by simply being fast enough.
Harbinger can disable shields, though not much after that since weapon slot nerf.
Doom can use mines as multi-directional attack to bypass shields.

Not completely fair, but also not completely unfair. Frigates have to show up to do damage and become vulnerable. Harbringer creates an only temporary window of opportunity and any other ship can still attack it. Doom can just attack you from behind while being invulnerable, and there's nothing you can do to stop it, you have to wait until Doom makes its own mistake.

[Megas]

No phase ship fights a fair fight.
Frigates can bypass shields by simply being fast enough.
Harbinger can disable shields, though not much after that since weapon slot nerf.
Doom can use mines as multi-directional attack to bypass shields.

Not completely fair, but also not completely unfair. Frigates have to show up to do damage and become vulnerable. Harbringer creates an only temporary window of opportunity and any other ship can still attack it. Doom can just attack you from behind while being invulnerable, and there's nothing you can do to stop it, you have to wait until Doom makes its own mistake.

Phase frigates and Harbinger are generally not very threatening, despite their annoyance, when piloted by AI - they are too cowardly and run out of peak performance quickly.  Player on the other hand is much nastier with them.  Afflictor is the Reaper murder machine.  It was the Reaper murder machine in 0.9a, but Reaper Harbinger was more convenient.  With that gone, I am back to chaining Afflictors to do what Harbinger used to do - murder big ships and battlestations quickly.  Now that Harbinger is stuck with AM Blasters (or Phase Lances), AM Blaster duty gets delegated to Harbinger, while Afflictor gets assigned to Reaper duty.

As for Doom and mines...

Against some opponents who are ill-equipped to deal with mines, mines alone would be sufficient.  (Such targets also tend to be helpless against fighter swarm.)  Against enemies that can snuff mines soon after they spawn, Doom needs more than mines alone and either needs to brawl up-close where it will get shot (no more than 700 shot range) or rely on help from other ships to pin the enemy.  This is when armor skills really help on Doom, and I build one officer specifically for a Doom.  Doom will take hits if forced to brawl or otherwise decloak within firing range of the enemy.

I am not opposed for mines taking a second or two to arm, but beyond that they are not that unfair.  It may force the player to fight differently than normal.  Instead of letting your AI ships do as they please, they may need to be controlled more than usual.  Players who normally deathball (to mitigate some other problem) or hang back for mass fighter spam may not notice Doom and mines that much.  Also, I wonder if zombie industrial specialists even care about unfair casualties if they are built to shrug them off and recover and abuse clunkers.  (I have not tried a dedicated zombie character yet.)

I would find mines from Star Fortress more annoying than from Doom, since Star Fortress can spam more (at least high-tech can), and can back them up with much more firepower than Doom can put out.  Only thing is there is almost no need to fight them (when the main reason to attack a planet is raiding for blueprints, which bypasses the station), although mine friendly fire from your Star Fortress can be a problem.

When it comes to mines, I am more annoyed with friendly-fire problems caused by the occasional careless placement of mines by allied AI.

P.S.  When I bring my Doom to fight endgame battles, it is usually the first ship to run out of peak performance, even with Officer with Combat Endurance (and no Defensive Systems to accelerate peak performance drain), and the first I need to retreat, especially with phase ships' faster CR decay.

[Goumindong]

I would 100% fight against AI dooms than AI harbingers/afflictors.

[eidolad]

After considering Megas' analysis on my not-very-well-considered "small dps balance pronouncement that ballistics wins statement" and then a game restart and spending quality time with small energy and small ballistics DPS weapons in small ships in a very chaotic Nexerelin random map start...I withdraw my previous comment.

Especially when I realize that I've been commenting in a thread about vanilla and I've been playing a ton of modded games. OOPS.

Pretty much accuracy is the primary balancing factor for me in favor for small energy weapons as a general rule, especially in the small ship domain.

My current ship is using a single Light Autocannon and a single Light Mortar in fixed mounts (the light assault gun is too power hungry for my current ship and I've given my better ship to my new AI Captain)...I find I really miss energy turrets as I zoom around challenging myself to keep both weapons on a small targets that are shooting back at me.  Any turreted energy weapons, pretty please.

I'm not sure I'm going to change my mind about medium weapons...though the Hammerhead with its massed forward medium ballistics has most of my vanilla piloting hours...

[Megas]

Has anyone used Warthogs lately (by choice)?  Ever since they downsized, I have avoided placing them in my fleets not because they are too weak on their own, but they are simply too slow to catch enemies, and if they do catch something, they do not do enough damage before the enemy escapes.

Warthogs can do some decent damage if the enemy cannot escape, but their slow speed makes avoiding them trivial even for cruiser-sized targets.  Because of that, their time-to-kill is often slower than cheaper fighters that are weaker but faster and cheaper.

[Igncom1]

Has anyone used Warthogs lately (by choice)?  Ever since they downsized, I have avoided placing them in my fleets not because they are too weak on their own, but they are simply too slow to catch enemies, and if they do catch something, they do not do enough damage before the enemy escapes.

Warthogs can do some decent damage if the enemy cannot escape, but their slow speed makes avoiding them trivial even for cruiser-sized targets.  Because of that, their time-to-kill is often slower than cheaper fighters that are weaker but faster and cheaper.

I have and I LOVE them. They are fantastic gunships for assaulting capitals/stations and are perfect beefy fodder for my bombers. They are my go to fighter of choice what with their heavy armour and flares.

I leave the shield cracking to longbows or just brute force through with massed HE bombers.

Lovely beefy craft in my opinion.

[Megas]

I have and I LOVE them. They are fantastic gunships for assaulting capitals/stations and are perfect beefy fodder for my bombers. They are my go to fighter of choice what with their heavy armour and flares.

I leave the shield cracking to longbows or just brute force through with massed HE bombers.

Lovely beefy craft in my opinion.

It seems if I want tanky fodder, Boardswords or Claws would be more useful.  Tanky, faster, and costs less OP to use.  Warthogs used to be good, too good, at tanking and wrecking the enemy if it can get sucked into Warthogs.  Now, Warthogs seem to have their offense balanced for their cost (if they had the speed to keep up with the enemy like other fighters), but are incapable of harming the enemy much due to said enemy cowering away from them with relative ease.  I would be fine with current Warthogs if they had more base top speed.  For their speed, either I grab some bombers instead if I need power, or cheaper fighters if I need a wall.

[Igncom1]

I have and I LOVE them. They are fantastic gunships for assaulting capitals/stations and are perfect beefy fodder for my bombers. They are my go to fighter of choice what with their heavy armour and flares.

I leave the shield cracking to longbows or just brute force through with massed HE bombers.

Lovely beefy craft in my opinion.

It seems if I want tanky fodder, Boardswords or Claws would be more useful.  Tanky, faster, and costs less OP to use.  Warthogs used to be good, too good, at tanking and wrecking the enemy if it can get sucked into Warthogs.  Now, Warthogs seem to have their offense balanced for their cost (if they had the speed to keep up with the enemy like other fighters), but are incapable of harming the enemy much due to said enemy cowering away from them with relative ease.  I would be fine with current Warthogs if they had more base top speed.  For their speed, either I grab some bombers instead if I need power, or cheaper fighters if I need a wall.

I suppose that's their curse. Being fighter-bombers of a sort they are easily replaced by either for more specialized duties.

Personally I find that if I want a fighters job I'll use an interceptor like the wasp, and if I need something annihilated I'll use a cobra. But when I want a little but of both in a package that might as well be immune to fragmentation damage, the warthog is my prime choice for the role.

Not to say I'm right of course, but they are very nice against non-fast targets when your bomber carrying astral is busy. I've been putting them on my legions or other non-bomber carriers where I don't want the expendable wasps. Any they can catch is easily harassed for threat of their mortars.

I'd highly reccormend them, as many of the cheaper fighters while probably more cost effective often lack the pure raw power of the warthog. But probably also stack with them REALLY well. Claws + Warthogs sound like a killer combo.

[SCC]

I don't really use Warthogs. If I want PD screen, I go for Broadswords. If I want frigates dead, I go for interceptors. If I want anything bigger dead, I go for bombers. Thunders and Xyphos have some uses, but Gladiuses and Warthogs, not so much.

[Megas]

I really want to like Warthogs, but they do not have the speed to catch their enemies, and no longer have the raw power to compensate for their sluggishness during the times they can catch the enemy.  If Warthogs were as fast as other heavy fighters, they would be more useful.  Wing Commander 1 is practically a must for them.

[Goumindong]

I'm not sure I'm going to change my mind about medium weapons...though the Hammerhead with its massed forward medium ballistics has most of my vanilla piloting hours...

The Shrike is a bit weak in a destroyer slugfest but there are still a lot of really good fits that should show you the power of medium energy. 1 x Pulse laser plus 1 x amb with 2 burst PD in the rear. Or 2-3 IR pulse with a phase lance. Or 3 IR pulse and Heavy Blaster and SO. (OP depending)(i like a typhoon in the large slot because its easy to get behind bigger ships but a sabot isnt enough to help you brawling vs bigger ships shields)

If you can find a Medusa you can run 2 pulse lasers or 1/1 pulse/heavy blaster without SO or 2 HB with SO. The 2 Heavy Blaster SO Medusa is hilariously good.

[Morgan Rue]

No phase ship fights a fair fight.
Frigates can bypass shields by simply being fast enough.
Harbinger can disable shields, though not much after that since weapon slot nerf.
Doom can use mines as multi-directional attack to bypass shields.

I'm mostly okay with it, except 2 things:
- Mines are too deadly to fast ships, worst case you have no time to react. Initial timeout, like Reapers have, would help here.
- Defensive systems 3 makes player-piloted phase ships almost unusable against Doom due to faster phase clock (can't wait him out like I would do normally). But you want to have DS3 because it's good against anything non-phase.

Phase frigates are very fair. The AI is not very good with phase frigates though. Every other phase ship system requires you to be being shot at for it to matter. The Doom's system does not.
Fair as in they don't cheat, not fair as in they "fight fair" and straight up.