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[SCC]

Phase Lance with more range would be hideously overpowered... Due to the massive burst and being effectively histcan. This would be especially harmful to frigates, and don't most of them become effectively obsolete during a game run fast enough already? This is also in reply to later Phase Lance comments though I don't think I should go and quote a whole bunch of posts heh.

Phase Lance is more armour-piercing than burst, simply because it does soft flux damage. You can't rely on it too much, unless you significantly dwarf your opponent. However, when paired with ballistics, it's easy to specialise it. Same can be said about Tachyon Lance, with the exception that there's no destroyer-sized Tempest.
If we don't upgrade Phase Lance, then the other option is to obsolete it with this theoretical medium tactical laser, with exceptions being Tempest and Medusa, which I want to avoid, since we already have mining blaster. Or we just drop the medium beam option.

[intrinsic_parity]

If you're firing above your own flux you're losing the flux war against someone who isn't unless the shield damage efficiency of the weapon is better than the inverse of their shield efficiency. 

This isn't really true either. You gain flux from your weapons at a rate of (weapon flux - dissipation), so if that difference is less than the dps*shield efficiency, you're building up flux in the enemy faster than your own (due to your weapons). Even if the weapon is inefficient, you can offset this with dissipation. For instance a weapon with 200 dps and 300 flux/sec has a 1.5 efficiency, but if my ship has 200 dissipation and the enemy ship has 1.0 shields, I am building up 100 flux/sec in my own ship and 200 in his in spite of the fact that 1.5>1.

This is the only reasons why energy weapons are viable vs kinetics: because the ships that can mount them have very high dissipations and capacities. Additionally, even if you are building up flux faster in your own ship, you will still win the flux war if you have sufficiently more capacity. Capacity is less dependable though because if you get a random spike of flux from elsewhere, you may suddenly switch to losing the flux war and you can't recover easily since you're actually gaining flux faster.

Ultimately they are also shooting you, so the equation is really (e. dps * f. shield eff. + f. (wpn flux - diss)) < (f. dps * e. shield eff. + e. (wpn. flux - diss)) where e and f are enemy and friendly. If that equation is satisfied, you're winning the flux war. High dps definitely helps in that case as long as you're not increasing your own weapon flux too much.

[Thaago]

I've just been using phase lances on some falcons in a stream - 2 on an SO variant with HMG's up front, 2 on a regular ITU variant with dual autocannons. No advanced optics.

In both cases I was very happy with the performance. For the SO its shortened range anyways and the ship has the flux to spam them. For the regular, they are used as finishers and anti-fighter/frigate "go away" weapons: the AI naturally uses them correctly most of the time because of the range gap. Not always, but often. I'm not going to complain if they are buffed, but honestly I'm happy with them on both variants. As has been often stated, its a soft flux anti-armor/hull weapon so not great against shields* unless the target is overwhelmed, but there are plenty of ships that can use them effectively in that role.

(Why Phase Lances instead of a heavy blaster or two? Partly because of not having heavy blasters around when doing the initial fit, but also because against small ships, heavy blaster shots miss. A lot. Phase lances have the same armor penetration as heavy blasters, but much better flux efficiency and accuracy. I'm fighting pirate swarms at the moment, and watching dual phase lances clear wings of fighters and pop frigates is great fun.)

If you're firing above your own flux you're losing the flux war against someone who isn't unless the shield damage efficiency of the weapon is better than the inverse of their shield efficiency. 

This isn't really true either. You gain flux from your weapons at a rate of (weapon flux - dissipation), so if that difference is less than the dps*shield efficiency, you're building up flux in the enemy faster than your own (due to your weapons). Even if the weapon is inefficient, you can offset this with dissipation. For instance a weapon with 200 dps and 300 flux/sec has a 1.5 efficiency, but if my ship has 200 dissipation and the enemy ship has 1.0 shields, I am building up 100 flux/sec in my own ship and 200 in his in spite of the fact that 1.5>1.

This is the only reasons why energy weapons are viable vs kinetics: because the ships that can mount them have very high dissipations and capacities. Additionally, even if you are building up flux faster in your own ship, you will still win the flux war if you have sufficiently more capacity. Capacity is less dependable though because if you get a random spike of flux from elsewhere, you may suddenly switch to losing the flux war and you can't recover easily since you're actually gaining flux faster.

Ultimately they are also shooting you, so the equation is really (e. dps * f. shield eff. + f. (wpn flux - diss)) < (f. dps * e. shield eff. + e. (wpn. flux - diss)) where e and f are enemy and friendly. If that equation is satisfied, you're winning the flux war. High dps definitely helps in that case as long as you're not increasing your own weapon flux too much.

I think this is what Goumindoing meant by saying "... firing above your own flux..." as in the portion of your own flux higher than your own dissipation, but your example and formula is mostly correct for constantly firing weapons (add in an absolute value on weapon flux - dissipation, as the hard flux can't be dissipated with shields up). As a further complication though: weapons don't always constantly fire, but instead have some duty cycle based on the situation, and that duty cycle factor is multiplied by both dps and weapon flux, but not dissipation, and is between 0 and 1.

In effect, the weapon flux wants to run higher even that what the situation above implies: when you can't shoot (or can shoot less than your dissipation) but the enemy's shields are up, you do not want to be stuck with a flux bar pinned to the hard flux limit. Instead, you want to be dissipating soft flux you've already pumped into the enemy as hard flux, and the perfect ratio is the average duty cycle. (This situation can happen by maneuvering, both on the part of the enemy or yourself, or by ion damage, or weapons being disabled, etc. Retreating to a range where you and the enemy can't hit each other, but you BOTH are still required to keep its shields up because of the threat, is an example of duty cycle manipulation: having the ability to do so means that you can run even MORE flux hot.) (Of course retreating to a range where the enemy has to keep shields up and you don't is just winning.)

[Amoebka]

This isn't really true either. You gain flux from your weapons at a rate of (weapon flux - dissipation), so if that difference is less than the dps*shield efficiency, you're building up flux in the enemy faster than your own (due to your weapons). Even if the weapon is inefficient, you can offset this with dissipation. For instance a weapon with 200 dps and 300 flux/sec has a 1.5 efficiency, but if my ship has 200 dissipation and the enemy ship has 1.0 shields, I am building up 100 flux/sec in my own ship and 200 in his in spite of the fact that 1.5>1.

Well, that's only true for weapons that deal hard flux, i.e. not phase lance. Beams build up soft flux that the enemy dissipates at their own dissipation rate with shields up. So you aren't building up 200 flux in their ship, you are building up (200-their dissipation after shield upkeep).

[Megas]

That isn't how it works. If you're firing above your own flux you're losing the flux war against someone who isn't unless the shield damage efficiency of the weapon is better than the inverse of their shield efficiency.  The inefficiency of the heavy blaster is made up by the fact that its minimum damage versus armor number occurs at 2883 armor. Which means that at 500 armor its 37.5% efficient while the pulse laser against 500 armor is 15.1% efficient. That against a 500 armor target a heavy blaster takes 2 shots to strip it(for a total duration of 1 to 2 seconds) and consumes 1440 flux in the process(and does hull damage on top) while a pulse laser takes 19 shots to strip for a total duration of 6 to 6.3 seconds and consumes 2090 flux. And because a hammerhead has 500 armor.

On paper, it looks bad, but it practice, sometimes heavy blaster is more effective than pulse laser at winning the flux war (against inferior or equal opponents), then finishing off the enemy after the war is won, because of the higher DPS (and better anti-armor).  I tried both, and often, Heavy Blaster is more effective overall, especially if the ship can only squeeze so much on its mounts.  Also, what intrinsic_parity said.

Ultimately they are also shooting you, so the equation is really (e. dps * f. shield eff. + f. (wpn flux - diss)) < (f. dps * e. shield eff. + e. (wpn. flux - diss)) where e and f are enemy and friendly. If that equation is satisfied, you're winning the flux war. High dps definitely helps in that case as long as you're not increasing your own weapon flux too much.

This is a large reason why Heavy Blaster can be better than the more efficient Pulse Laser or (for some ships) the most efficient IR Pulse Laser.  Energy weapon ranges are terrible!  The ships using them WILL get shot back, and WILL take hard flux on shields from the enemy.  Higher DPS can mitigate this because the enemy has less time to fire back before losing the flux war.

Not all enemies are single behemoths that take more than your flux bar to beat.  Sometimes, it is a group, and taking out one isolated enemy quickly with superior DPS is nice.

Phase Lance with more range would be hideously overpowered... Due to the massive burst and being effectively histcan. This would be especially harmful to frigates, and don't most of them become effectively obsolete during a game run fast enough already? This is also in reply to later Phase Lance comments though I don't think I should go and quote a whole bunch of posts heh.

Even with Advanced Optics, Phase Lance is decently useful at best and a bit underwhelming at worst.  Usually, I need hard flux support from other weapons to make it good.  If anything, I feel like I pay too much OP for 800 range Phase Lance.  600 is so short than I usually take Pulse Laser over Phase Lance because the former does hard flux and the latter does not.  Rarely is the burst more useful than hard flux.

For IR Pulse Laser, you mentioned same overall DPS, but you were not clear if you meant over a short period of time or sustained.  Same overall DPS over say... three seconds would mean lower sustained DPS due to the initial burst spiking DPS over the first second or so.

As for spiking flux for IPDAI like TaLaR points out, I do not know what to make of that without trying it out.  If it increases effective accuracy of PD because of "more dakka", then it may offset the flux spike.  Likely users of IPDAI IRPL are large ships (Aurora, capitals), who are more able to take the flux spike.

As for double tac laser overpowered?  Are you kidding me?!  Even the test results shown by your videos seem a bit on the slow side, but acceptable for the job they do, which is a long-range finisher after shields are defeated.  Tactical laser spam is not overpowered against the enemy (beams are slow at killing PD threats like those fighters and frigates, or stripping armor of big ships), and I seriously doubt one that is roughly double (somewhat less DPS, but better anti-armor) is too, if on a medium mount.  If it was, I would not be clamoring for a long-range simple damage medium beam effective against non-shield defenses.  (Could be new weapon, or could be phase lance or burst heavy laser getting at least 800 range.)  I guess a double beam would be overpowered if it was in a small mount, but this is a valuable medium mount.  Tactical laser in medium mount is underpowered, but it is the best option for long-range non-shield damage.

[Igncom1]

Say what you will about the AM blaster, it's still very funny to put on midline ships.

Nothing like a centurion wielding the power of a god!

Or a strike eagle for annihilating heavy targets!

[Morrokain]

Damage boost from flux is will be in the next release

I certainly hope not. I really don't like that mechanic. I feel like its just a band aid fix to energy weapons that actually makes them counter-intuitive. It also promotes razor-edge piloting of high tech ships that the player can utilize to make those ships feel overpowered while the AI is rarely effective with it. It pretty much happens on accident if it is, but usually flux damage boost either isn't a factor one way or the other or causes an overload that results in the likely death of an expensive fleet asset when in the AI's hands.

That mechanic will make energy weapon balance worse, not better, imho.

At the very least I would like a way to disable this: the point where the projectile spawns glows in increasing intensity as flux values get higher... last time that mechanic was in place there was no way to get rid of it and it basically means I will have to remove energy weapons from my mod altogether. It gets so big it covers the whole weapon sprite.

[Alex]

At the very least I would like a way to disable this: the point where the projectile spawns glows in increasing intensity as flux values get higher... last time that mechanic was in place there was no way to get rid of it and it basically means I will have to remove energy weapons from my mod altogether. It gets so big it covers the whole weapon sprite.

It's back but it's skill-driven - i.e. there's a skill you can pick that will enable it for the ship piloted by a person with the skill.

You can change the size of the glow by specifying:

specialWeaponGlowWidth
specialWeaponGlowHeight

In your .wpn files.

[Wyvern]

We had completely different experiences with that - I found the high flux bonus to make sense, and be highly useful for the AI, and especially useful for boosting energy PD to a point where it's effective.

But never fear: it's coming back in the form of a high-tier combat skill; you can easily skip it if you don't like it.

[TaLaR]

We had completely different experiences with that - I found the high flux bonus to make sense, and be highly useful for the AI, and especially useful for boosting energy PD to a point where it's effective.

Yep, AI is nowhere near as good at close combat venting as player and is typically sitting with significant amount of hard flux. High flux bonus makes not vent-spamming an actual choice, rather than a mistake.

[Morrokain]

^ Ah good to know!

As a player chosen skill (will AI officers get access to this, btw?) it makes a lot more sense to me. And its truly great that I can now control the glow size!

@Wyvern @TaLar:

I do see what you two are saying. I guess the point I was making wasn't that the AI didn't benefit at all, but that the optimal strategy of the mechanic (staying at 70-90% flux) was something dangerous to the AI and only really maximized in the player's hands. The AI likely benefits mostly by accident, and that can sometimes be dangerous design to support. For reference to why the AI will likely have problems, see:

https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=16439.0

and Alex's reply:

Thank you, made a note to take a look when I get a chance!

Just as a general note, a lot of this stuff is beyond what the AI can reasonably do - it has to deal with general cases; getting too specific often results in improved behavior for that one case and considerably worse behavior for things that kind of look like it but are crucially different in some what the AI doesn't pick up on. Still, definitely some things here to look at.

High flux boosting damage isn't a general case- it is a specific case. The AI has to constantly be in tune with its flux levels and make all its fight/flight decisions based around that trade-off, or not in tune at all and just ignore the mechanic completely. Either case causes AI vs player balance problems if all energy weapons are balanced around this (I understand now that they won't be, but that was my initial fear). The decision to flee becomes much more complicated in situations like:

Spoiler

80% Flux - Salvo of weapons that would finish the enemy carrier with an eliminate command on it would bring flux to 95%.
Normally, the AI only has to consider whether nearby threats (or the carrier itself) has enough potential firepower to cause an overload. Retreating and venting may be the right call in that situation for a ballistic ship. But an energy ship with flux boosting damage would ideally not want to make the same decision without also considering the damage loss from venting. Maybe after the vent the salvo would no longer be enough to break the shields and finish off the carrier. Maybe incoming missiles now can't be stopped by PD and so shields or armor take damage, etc. It's a much more complex decision for the AI at all times and I think it would be difficult to get it right in every situation.

[close]

So for PD, for instance, I would rather that performance be based on the weapon itself rather than a general mechanic the AI probably won't be able to handle in all cases.

On venting- just because the AI isn't good at close range venting and so has higher flux levels doesn't make the mechanic exploitable for the AI compared to the player. That is mostly an accident of other problems the AI is having inadvertently benefiting it in this case. It actually creates a dependency on poor behavior to operate effectively and discourages solving the "root issue" since that dependency causes other adjustments to become necessary if it is ever improved upon. 

[Alex]

will AI officers get access to this, btw?

It's available for officers, yeah; I can see it being very useful, depending on how a ship is built. It's in the same tier as Gunnery Implants, btw.

[Morrokain]

^ Player officers yes. They have control over their loadouts. Random AI officers for faction fleets? Err, maybe not so much, but I think there are ways to control what skills they get in the faction file so it shouldn't really make a difference.

[intrinsic_parity]

If you're firing above your own flux you're losing the flux war against someone who isn't unless the shield damage efficiency of the weapon is better than the inverse of their shield efficiency. 

...
Ultimately they are also shooting you, so the equation is really (e. dps * f. shield eff. + f. (wpn flux - diss)) < (f. dps * e. shield eff. + e. (wpn. flux - diss)) where e and f are enemy and friendly. If that equation is satisfied, you're winning the flux war. High dps definitely helps in that case as long as you're not increasing your own weapon flux too much.

I think this is what Goumindoing meant by saying "... firing above your own flux..." as in the portion of your own flux higher than your own dissipation, but your example and formula is mostly correct for constantly firing weapons (add in an absolute value on weapon flux - dissipation, as the hard flux can't be dissipated with shields up). As a further complication though: weapons don't always constantly fire, but instead have some duty cycle based on the situation, and that duty cycle factor is multiplied by both dps and weapon flux, but not dissipation, and is between 0 and 1.

Yeah I brought it up because weapon efficiency doesn't directly contribute to the inequality, and you can easily devise scenarios where bad weapon efficiency is still winning the flux battle.

Also, absolute value would be wrong, that would imply that when weapon flux<dissipation your flux increases by the difference between them, essentially meaning your excess dissipation was increasing your flux which is obviously never the case. What you would really need to account mathematically for the fact that hard flux can't be dissipated is a switching function, something like:

Switch = 1 if (soft flux > 0) || (shields are down & total flux > 0)
Switch = 0 if (soft flux == 0 & shields are up) || (total flux == 0)
and then the term in the inequality would be Switch*(weapon flux - dissipation)

but that's too much to type out.... (crap I just did it)

To deal with weapons turning on and off, I would probably make all the variables functions of time with weapon flux as the sum of all weapons currently firing and dps as the dps of weapons currently hitting shields. Then you would be either winning or losing at any given time. You could try to average it with cycles too, but that would only ever be an approximation. I think as a pilot you're more thinking about the current situation and if you're losing, how can you alter your current actions to change the balance, rather than averaged cycles and stuff. It would be interesting to look at cycles, but I'm not sure how you could come up with a general approximation like that, since the actual periodicity won't be regular. 

In effect, the weapon flux wants to run higher even that what the situation above implies: when you can't shoot (or can shoot less than your dissipation) but the enemy's shields are up, you do not want to be stuck with a flux bar pinned to the hard flux limit. Instead, you want to be dissipating soft flux you've already pumped into the enemy as hard flux, and the perfect ratio is the average duty cycle. (This situation can happen by maneuvering, both on the part of the enemy or yourself, or by ion damage, or weapons being disabled, etc. Retreating to a range where you and the enemy can't hit each other, but you BOTH are still required to keep its shields up because of the threat, is an example of duty cycle manipulation: having the ability to do so means that you can run even MORE flux hot.) (Of course retreating to a range where the enemy has to keep shields up and you don't is just winning.)

If I understand what you are saying here then I agree. I think you're saying that you're happy to drive your own flux up firing weapons if it means your drive the enemies hard flux up because you can back off and dissipate soft flux while maintaining enough of a threat that the enemy doesn't vent, thus gaining an advantage in the flux war even if you lose the flux battle (gain flux faster while firing weapons) so to speak. That's a way you can win the flux war, bit to sort of depends on your ability to prevent the enemy from dropping shields or venting. I guess torpedos and missiles actually do this quite well just by existing on you ship. It's an interesting idea that I've seen in other ability based PvP games as well: the threat of doing something is often more valuable than actually doing it because you force the enemy to always be prepared for your ability. I don't know if the AI actually works that way though.

[Goumindong]

Yeah I brought it up because weapon efficiency doesn't directly contribute to the inequality, and you can easily devise scenarios where bad weapon efficiency is still winning the flux battle.

It does. E.G. suppose you have 1500 cap, 100 dissipation, are firing two weapons, one that is 1 to 1 for 100 dps and one that is .5 to 1 for 100 dps but does it in 500 damage chunks. Suppose your enemy has 1000 cap and is firing at dissipation and has .8 shields.

The rate at which you flux him out is 1000/(100x.8 ) and the rate at which he fluxes you out in similar. If you add flux over your dissipation then youre adding soft flux and trading for hard flux. Which is fine if they arent firing back or you need to hit armor.  But otherwise you would add 500x.8/1000=40% flux to his capacitors while adding 1000/1500 = 66% flux to your own.

It should be obvious that, if your flux is going uo at a faster percentage than theirs as a result of you firing the gun then firing the weapon contributes to you losing the flux war. And as you can see, both the weapon and shield efficiency matter in that calculation

Now, You might still win the flux war when shooting that weapon over flux. But if you do you are going to win the flux war with a higher total flux than if you had not fired it

Edit:
This extrapolates pretty easily into other understandings.

1) Better efficiency of weapons lets you win the flux war better/faster. You should tend to fire as efficient as you can up to your max dissipation. This happens regardless of the quality of shields the enemy has.
2) Weapon efficiency doesn't matter once you've punched through shields. Go ahead and flux dump
3) AI ships cannot partake in this behavior so make sure they're filled to the brim with efficient weapons up to their dissipation(or dissipation-shield) and let them finish with ammo based weapons OR
4) AI ships cannot partake in this behavior and so prefer shorter range anti-armor weapons compared to their anti-shield weapons (so as to keep the inefficient weapons from firing into shields)

And then you can say "but what ships that cannot fire their entire flux dissipation" and my response to that is "what ships"?


An example of point 4. If you're going to fit an Aurora you might consider 2 pulse lasers and 1 HB or 1 Pulse laser, 3 IR pulse, and 2 HB. If you do this, make sure the pulse lasers/IR pulse are in the forward most mounts so that they fire first and most often