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Author Topic: The most imba weapon?  (Read 4342 times)

Paragon Bane

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The most imba weapon?
« on: July 02, 2020, 10:59:01 PM »

What is the most imba weapon in vanilla in your opinion?
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Grievous69

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Re: The most imba weapon?
« Reply #1 on: July 02, 2020, 11:17:11 PM »

Honestly there are a few weapons that I'd call really imbalanced, and even those that are have pretty obvious downsides.

- Assault Chaingun comes to mind but it's a weapon that's only good on some SO ships. Also it's effectiveness drops off in late game, then it's mostly used for frigate and fighter swatting.

- Sabots, well are Sabots. I kinda hate this missile not gonna lie. It's almost essential on some high-tech ships, and on anything that has burst HE damage, it's basically a wall hack for shields. Sabots put Squalls to shame, a large missile weapon! Yes I get that they have limited ammo, the whole point of missiles is to turn the tides of battle on a whim but they're limited. But look at any other missile, they all have counters. Only counter to Sabots is a crazy amount of LRPD lasers. Sabots doing EMP damage when you drop shields would be the same as Harpoons doing bonus damage to shields when you try to avoid hull damage.

I guess imbalanced could also mean weapons that perform worse than the average so I'll name a few that are obviously weak.

- Thumper I guess is the one of those weapons that are intentionally bad so the early game enemies could be easier. I really don't know what else is it useful for.

- Devastator could be a bit better for a large weapon. I still use these on Conquests' right side, but that's only because it costs 10 OP because of the built-in hullmod. It's not too bad vs fighters but it's both a bit slow and unreliable.

- Mining laser speaks for itself.
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AxleMC131

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Re: The most imba weapon?
« Reply #2 on: July 03, 2020, 03:33:19 AM »


- Thumper I guess is the one of those weapons that are intentionally bad so the early game enemies could be easier. I really don't know what else is it useful for.


Have to disagree on your reasoning for the Thumper being bad. The Thumper is actually AMAZING, but it's extremely niche: it deals extreme amounts of damage to exposed hull, and nothing else. It's decent at fighter suppression, and is quite flux efficient (as frag weapons tend to be), and its burst damage output is not to be sniffed at - really it's a finisher, not a main damage dealer. While it's definitely a budget option that can be seen as a "bad weapon" for general purpose, I strongly recommend giving the Thumper a second chance - if used well it can really pack a punch in a ship's loadout.
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Grievous69

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Re: The most imba weapon?
« Reply #3 on: July 03, 2020, 03:54:25 AM »


- Thumper I guess is the one of those weapons that are intentionally bad so the early game enemies could be easier. I really don't know what else is it useful for.


Have to disagree on your reasoning for the Thumper being bad. The Thumper is actually AMAZING, but it's extremely niche: it deals extreme amounts of damage to exposed hull, and nothing else. It's decent at fighter suppression, and is quite flux efficient (as frag weapons tend to be), and its burst damage output is not to be sniffed at - really it's a finisher, not a main damage dealer. While it's definitely a budget option that can be seen as a "bad weapon" for general purpose, I strongly recommend giving the Thumper a second chance - if used well it can really pack a punch in a ship's loadout.
It's not really a budget option when it's 9 OP! Heavy Mortar is 7 btw. And most importantly, it uses valuable medium slots. Even before the armor changes it was quite sad, now when the minimum armor is a thing it's even worse. Being semi decent when you destroy the target's shields, wreck armor completely so your shots actually hit the parts with no armor (it's not super precise) and you still have enough flux on a low tech ship is not niche, it's outright crap. And I don't even get the fighter thing. Which fighter do you think it can suppress? Wasps maybe, Talons? I've just tried it out and it fails miserably at that role. Most of the shots don't even connect, and when they do they just tickle. You need multiple bursts to destroy a single fighter...

Testing was done on an Enforcer because that's the closest situation where I would put a Thumper. In reality I would never waste 9 OP for it.

I'm sorry but I just can't see the ''it's just a matter of playstyle'' thing, it is super bad for 9 OP. It had enough chances from me already, even before the armor changes.
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Megas

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Re: The most imba weapon?
« Reply #4 on: July 03, 2020, 05:59:45 AM »

Pilums.  All that a dedicated pilum spam can do is make the enemy cower more and kill a ship or two before the Pilums run out (and take a long time to regenerate).  Meanwhile, a dedicated Spark fleet can solo one or more Ordos with Radiants fleets, depending on skill power.  (Unskilled can handle one, min-max skill power can handle several more.)

Re: Thumper.  It is passable early in the game, but gets overshadowed quickly when player finds better weapons.  It has an advantage of fast shot speed compared to slow Arbalest and Mortars players will likely have that early in the game.

I like Devastator on Onslaught for anti-frigate and anti-destroyer.
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SCC

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Re: The most imba weapon?
« Reply #5 on: July 03, 2020, 11:13:43 AM »

Mining blaster is terrible, only a choice if you don't have anything better. Mining laser is even worse, because even nothing is better!
Thumper... On one hand, it's not terrible, but on the other, you basically need to have too many mounts and not enough flux to be using it, which happens basically only on Onslaughts.

Mondaymonkey

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Re: The most imba weapon?
« Reply #6 on: July 03, 2020, 11:41:03 AM »

Quote
Mining blaster is terrible,

It's not that terrible. It's a middle energy armor cracker. Yeah, phase lance and heavy blaster could be better, but phase lance is soft flux and heavy blaster is rare in early game.
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Megas

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Re: The most imba weapon?
« Reply #7 on: July 03, 2020, 12:33:47 PM »

Mining blaster is the best weapon Apogee can use to solo one section pirate bases until plasma cannon (or maybe heavy blaster) is found.  Autopulse does not have enough ammo or armor penetration against the sheer bulk of a pirate base before it is reduced to a more flux efficient pulse laser.  Upgrading from pilums (which are useless) to locusts is higher priority than upgrading the mining blaster.  That said, mining blaster eventually becomes obsolete.  (It would not if Hyperion was any good, but it is not today in the age of capital spam and long endgame fights.)

Also, mining blaster is the best alpha Hyperion can use.
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Linnis

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Re: The most imba weapon?
« Reply #8 on: July 03, 2020, 03:39:13 PM »

no to mining blaster because it takes so much effort.

Sabot and needle yes. Maybe if the AI was better not using shields vs them...
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: The most imba weapon?
« Reply #9 on: July 03, 2020, 03:39:59 PM »

Thumper is pretty bad. Min armor really kills any hull dps advantage it had. 25 effective damage against armor means the damage reduction really hurts it. Even destroyer grade armor (hammerhead has 500 armor so minimum armor at 5% is 25) will get a ~50% reduction in damage. Cruiser and capital grade armor will make it flux inefficient (dmg reduction from min armor is ~70% or more), even against stripped armor. I think the heavy mortar might actually be better against hull (both dps and efficiency) against most cruisers and capitals but the heavy mortar is also good against armor. I'm pretty sure enemy skills make this much much worse as well.

Note, I could be wrong about how min armor works, but I think the damage reduction is calculated based on the anti-armor damage and then applied to to the hull damage (hull dmg * armor dmg / (armor + armor dmg)). Someone correct me if I am wrong.
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Wyvern

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Re: The most imba weapon?
« Reply #10 on: July 03, 2020, 03:59:48 PM »

I'd say the most imbalanced vanilla weapon is the Heavy Blaster.  It's an extreme outlier for its slot size and type - essentially a large weapon that fits into a medium slot - and that distorts any attempt to mod in ships that can mount medium energy weapons, since you have to always stop and ask yourself "Okay, but is this reasonable if someone sticks a heavy blaster on it?".  All too frequently, the answer is "No."

This is not to say that the heavy blaster is overpowered, mind you.  But imbalanced?  Oh so very much.
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FooF

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Re: The most imba weapon?
« Reply #11 on: July 03, 2020, 07:16:36 PM »

I don't consider the Heavy Blaster imbalanced: its flux cost is insane and very few ships can sustain it for long. It is powerful but you're paying an exorbitant amount of flux for it. For it to be imbalanced would mean that the pros vastly outweigh the cons, and that is not the case.

The Plasma Cannon, on the other hand, is a Heavy Blaster on steroids with better range, equal armor penetrating power, and much higher efficiency. It's only 15% more expensive flux-wise than the Heavy Blaster but it's 50% more powerful. It's only downside is its 30 OP cost and rarity. In terms of flux profile, it's relatively efficient for something that hits so insanely hard. Yet, I still don't think it's "imbalanced" because its still hard to sustain and the cost is so high.

The Assault Chaingun is really the only outlier, to me. When it was 400 DPS for 400 flux, it was powerful but expensive. Now that it's 600 DPS, it's brutally efficient. Its downside is its range but once it gets into range, it murders armor. I used to use the ACG as an example of "bad against armor" because it's damage/shot was so low but since it got bumped up 50%, it outshines even true armor busters. Yet, at the same time, I'm glad that the weapon exists because it does give knife-fighting some teeth. Personally, I'd prefer the ACG go back down to 400 DPS but just reduce the flux cost to 267 flux/sec. Same efficiency ratio but the DPS wouldn't be as insane.
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Wyvern

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Re: The most imba weapon?
« Reply #12 on: July 03, 2020, 07:27:00 PM »

For it to be imbalanced would mean that the pros vastly outweigh the cons, and that is not the case.
You're using a different definition - and that's why I clarified my statement to add that I don't think the Heavy Blaster is overpowered.

It is, however, an extreme outlier that is very difficult to balance around; a weapon whose mere existence can cause an otherwise reasonable ship hull to be overpowered.
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Megas

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Re: The most imba weapon?
« Reply #13 on: July 03, 2020, 07:30:58 PM »

High-tech sort of needs Heavy Blaster if it is the best it can use.  Midline cannot afford to use it and usually have better things to use.
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: The most imba weapon?
« Reply #14 on: July 03, 2020, 08:02:23 PM »

I don't think the heavy blaster is unbalanced at all. If a ship has the dissipation to use a heavy blaster, it could easily use multiple other weapons to get much higher dps and efficiency. HB is a clear downgrade from large energy weapons so if you have a large slot, you are building around those weapons (probably plasma cannon) and probably leaving mediums to PD or support beams, and if ships have access to ballistics, then HE/KE weapons are way way more efficient. Usually the answer to 'what would happen if someone stuck a HB here' is 'the ship will flux out and die very quickly'. It seems hard to make a ship where the answer is 'totally broken things' unless the ship can do totally broken things with other weapons as well.

I'm definitely not a modder so I could be completely wrong, but it really doesn't seem that egregious to me. Big weapons are only good if you have the dissipation to back them up, so HB is really limited in terms of what ships can practically support its immense flux cost. It seems like you'd have to go out of your way to make a ship with tons of dissipation and only medium/small energy before HB would seem broken. Even the aurora, which seemingly has tons of dissipation and limited mounts, really doesn't want more than 1 or 2 HB and is happy to use other medium energy weapons.
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