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[Morrokain]

Energy torpedoes could definitely work and so could a kinetic annihilator. All good points.

Going back to what DatonKallandor said, is it really bad for the kinetic torpedo to be a ship killer as well - considering its really short range? It is, after all a torpedo and has pretty limited ammo. By design it should be a pretty devastating missile.

Off the top of my head, I guess a problem could be that the AI would just try to lower shields and tank it most of the time and so it would be abuse-able that way - even if technically sub-optimal to use it on armor/hull? Sabots are the same way though - and have higher range.

I don't think a kinetic torpedo would be that bad, actually.

(Side note: Can someone let me know how you set a torpedo to not deal damage to fighters and is the AI aware of this/won't use it against them? The AI wastes atropos torpedoes against fighters too often in my mod - even though it has a strike tag. I assume this is because I also have to add DO_NOT_CONSERVE because they regenerate and otherwise the AI hordes them a little too much - reducing their efficiency. Kind of a catch 22 situation I'm going through there.)

[Megas]

If a kinetic torpedo does enough damage, then as long as it can reliably hit the target like Sabot or Locusts, then it will always be good as an anti-everything missile, at least for the playership.

I used Sabots primarily as a more reliable Harpoon back when it was a single 750 damage slug.  Harpoons were useful for instant point-blank strikes that Sabots cannot do.

[Mondaymonkey]

Sabot here, sabot there....

Oh, gosh... If it wouldn't basically only small/middle kinetic option, I would never use that stinker!

Each time I hear "sabot", it makes me vomit. Especially when common thought is "it is OP and essential to high-tech builds..."

^$%& NO!

It's not OP! You just spam it in every hole you can, then use it for devastating alpha, kill a couple of foes that way and... have to retreat, right? Any spam is stupid, the only thing, that makes sabot-alpha strategy available - it does not consume flux and can be unleashed fast. That it. You basically spend all you potential in first 15 seconds of battle, instead of tempered using it over a long time. So, yeah, they can look OP, without being it actually. If there was any restriction, like "you can't launch sabots from different mounts faster 1/per second", there would be a different type of whining: how terrible sabots are...

And it's not essential. I use whole variety of loadouts, including high-tech, with no or minimal sabots and they kind of work. Sabots just trade long engagements capability for alpha. That ain't that bad, cos' more chances that ship will do fast damage before destroyed, but if you focus on a long fights and survivability, you will find sabots just useless in builds. Probably the only variant that really depend on sabots - is SO. But for all of SO fans I have a news: there whole non-SO world, and it is wider, than SO. Less exciting, but not less effective.

So, yeah, having an kinetic annihilator/kinetic torpedo/energy torpedo would be great. Hate the sabots!

[Morrokain]

If a kinetic torpedo does enough damage, then as long as it can reliably hit the target like Sabot or Locusts, then it will always be good as an anti-everything missile, at least for the playership.

I used Sabots primarily as a more reliable Harpoon back when it was a single 750 damage slug.  Harpoons were useful for instant point-blank strikes that Sabots cannot do.

To be honest, I kind of look at this like the Mark IX. It is technically an anti-shield optimal weapon, but it deals decent damage to armored targets too. The counter balance to the high flux cost of that weapon is how I view the low ammunition trade off of the proposed kinetic weapon.

Maybe if the ammo was 6 it would feel less of an all-solution missile? Or at least less powerful as a whole? Eh, idk.

[DatonKallandor]

It's not OP! You just spam it in every hole you can, then use it for devastating alpha, kill a couple of foes that way and... have to retreat, right? Any spam is stupid, the only thing, that makes sabot-alpha strategy available - it does not consume flux and can be unleashed fast. That it. You basically spend all you potential in first 15 seconds of battle, instead of tempered using it over a long time. So, yeah, they can look OP, without being it actually. If there was any restriction, like "you can't launch sabots from different mounts faster 1/per second", there would be a different type of whining: how terrible sabots are...

I've made a mod with drastically reduced fire rates for missiles and sabots are still the only sensible option for a lot of builds, especially high tech with a lot of energy mounts. The fact that they have alpha isn't what makes them strong (essentially all missiles have crazy alpha in vanilla).

There's a reason the pirate shrike is better than the regular one, and it's because it's got a single ballistic mount where the regular doesn't - that's how starved for kinetic high tech ships are, and that's why, in the absence of ballistic options, missile slots turn into sabot slots for them.

[Megas]

High-tech ships without ballistics or Sabots will either stalemate or take too much time to wear down targets.  One-on-one, high-tech ship has a hard time winning flux wars against equal weight targets without either Sabots or overwhelming flux advantage (latter needs to leave most mounts empty to get max flux and shield stats).  If a duel suddenly turns into two or three against one, then the attacking high-tech ship cannot win the flux war and has little choice but run until the enemy runs out of CR first (except high-tech has the worst CR without Hardened Subsystems).  I guess high-tech can be used to run down and kill small fry, but they cost too much for that purpose, and only the player can pilot them competently.  (I rather pilot a killer capital and rollover enemies effortlessly than hit-and-run with a small overpriced-for-its-size glass cannon.)

Energy is either primarily anti-armor (blasters/plasma), pure mediocre (pulse lasers), or PD-in-disguise (IR Pulse Lasers/Phase Lance).  Energy weapons stink at anti-shield, and ships that cannot use ballistics need either Sabots or caps/vents/shield discounts at the cost of every weapon except one or two main guns.

[Morrokain]

What do we think about something like a "Graviton Pulser" kind of weapon for the energy line? So a fast firing, moderate flux/OP, low rarity energy weapon that deals kinetic damage? One of the things that makes me not want to use high-tech ships with universal mounts is that ballistic weapons clash with the overall color scheme for me. (I know, I know I'm picky )

(Also Onslaughts and Legions are really cool designs aesthetically imo.)

[DatonKallandor]

I have thought about turning ion cannons and ion pulsers into kinetic weapons as a quick test.

I think an optimal experiment would be to either make EMP damage deal x% damage to shields globally - this requires the most tinkering with otherwise unrelated weapons.
or
make Ion Cannons and Ion Pulsers deal extra damage to shields - the simplest option, but also the least intuitive. This is a first step on a slipper slope to every weapon having it's own weapon specific effects though and that'd be a problem.

[Grievous69]

I have thought about turning ion cannons and ion pulsers into kinetic weapons as a quick test.

I think an optimal experiment would be to either make EMP damage deal x% damage to shields globally - this requires the most tinkering with otherwise unrelated weapons.
or
make Ion Cannons and Ion Pulsers deal extra damage to shields - the simplest option, but also the least intuitive. This is a first step on a slipper slope to every weapon having it's own weapon specific effects though and that'd be a problem.

Not gonna lie I'm not a fan of either of these ideas, I'll explain why a bit later.

@Morrokain
As much as I'd like such a weapon, I think having a projectile energy weapon that deals kinetic damage goes against the whole premise of energy weapons. So far only exceptions are beams. Before I was thinking about an energy shotgun, something with very low dmg/shot but very good efficiency, but I could see it getting abused on smaller ships. BUT, now that we'll probably have weapons with scripted effects as someone already mentioned it in this thread, I think the best solution would be just a pure energy damage weapon that deals bonus damage when it hits shields. And that's it, it would still have the feel of an energy weapon, wouldn't be broken vs smaller ships and would potentially help with the non-ballistic problem.

@Mondaymonkey
Not sure if there was a typo but SO builds are the ones that don't need Sabots. The whole point of SO high tech ships is going all in on flux stats and then putting Heavy Blasters or Antimatter Blasters. Outside SO builds where you don't have Sabots, the ships will either take a year to get through something and eventually get swarmed, or just overflux themselves with non-efficient energy weapons and die.

Just as you said it yourself, builds without Sabots ''kind of work''. Basically being punch down ships only useful for hunting pirates and similar foes.

[Megas]

@Mondaymonkey
Not sure if there was a typo but SO builds are the ones that don't need Sabots. The whole point of SO high tech ships is going all in on flux stats and then putting Heavy Blasters or Antimatter Blasters. Outside SO builds where you don't have Sabots, the ships will either take a year to get through something and eventually get swarmed, or just overflux themselves with non-efficient energy weapons and die.

Just as you said it yourself, builds without Sabots ''kind of work''. Basically being punch down ships only useful for hunting pirates and similar foes.

Not only that, but the non-SO and non-Sabot loadouts that have only one or two main guns and everything else in max caps/vents/flux-and-shield hullmods to achieve sufficient flux advantage (without losing too much PPT and shot range) like two blaster only Aurora or two plasma cannon Odyssey with nearly every other mount empty (aside from minimal PD) look very stupid.  It is about as bad as unarmed carriers.

[Goumindong]

Damage: 1500


I think the damage is reasonable for an unguided torpedo with the same speed as Reapers. You could drop shields to take a hit but not multiple times or with exposed hull so it's not too easy to counter (other than just dodge it). Small version would have 2 ammo. Thoughts?

You could indeed not drop shields to take the hit; 750 is a larger hit strength than any non-explosive weapon in the game. Any ship that can reliably land these more or less has perfect killing potential so long as they last. If you only got 1 per small launcher maybe it would work but that might be too weak because tanking it on shields and backing off could be too easy.

Any kinetic weapon kind of has to have is base damage low due to how armor penetration works so any kinetic missile that is going to really work against shields, and not also be hilarious against armor must spread the damage around.

The only way i could see this type of change working is if you

1) make a kinetic type anhillator... like the squall on the small and medium size and do some heavy balancing
2) replace the squall with the current sabot.
3) Maybe keep the small "Sabot (1)" missiles.

[Grievous69]

You could indeed not drop shields to take the hit; 750 is a larger hit strength than any non-explosive weapon in the game. Any ship that can reliably land these more or less has perfect killing potential so long as they last. If you only got 1 per small launcher maybe it would work but that might be too weak because tanking it on shields and backing off could be too easy.

Any kinetic weapon kind of has to have is base damage low due to how armor penetration works so any kinetic missile that is going to really work against shields, and not also be hilarious against armor must spread the damage around.

The only way i could see this type of change working is if you

1) make a kinetic type anhillator... like the squall on the small and medium size and do some heavy balancing
2) replace the squall with the current sabot.
3) Maybe keep the small "Sabot (1)" missiles.

Mate you get I'm talking about an unguided torpedo with limited ammo? I don't get the comparison with other kinetic weapons. But why do you think the damage needs to be spread? Then you're just stuck with a weapon that's super easy to shield flicker. You'd just end up with worse Sabots lol. And you can't seriously call something like this ''perfect killing potential'' when Sabots exist in the same universe.

The more I write about this subject the more I wish Sabots were just deleted from the game. And instead we get something anti-shield that's not cancer, then maybe we could move on and have normal loadouts.

[Goumindong]

You could indeed not drop shields to take the hit; 750 is a larger hit strength than any non-explosive weapon in the game. Any ship that can reliably land these more or less has perfect killing potential so long as they last. If you only got 1 per small launcher maybe it would work but that might be too weak because tanking it on shields and backing off could be too easy.

Any kinetic weapon kind of has to have is base damage low due to how armor penetration works so any kinetic missile that is going to really work against shields, and not also be hilarious against armor must spread the damage around.

The only way i could see this type of change working is if you

1) make a kinetic type anhillator... like the squall on the small and medium size and do some heavy balancing
2) replace the squall with the current sabot.
3) Maybe keep the small "Sabot (1)" missiles.

Mate you get I'm talking about an unguided torpedo with limited ammo? I don't get the comparison with other kinetic weapons. But why do you think the damage needs to be spread? Then you're just stuck with a weapon that's super easy to shield flicker. You'd just end up with worse Sabots lol. And you can't seriously call something like this ''perfect killing potential'' when Sabots exist in the same universe.

The more I write about this subject the more I wish Sabots were just deleted from the game. And instead we get something anti-shield that's not cancer, then maybe we could move on and have normal loadouts.

Because how much ammo matters and because its not terribly hard to acquire more ammo. 750 damage vs armor is still exceptionally strong given that you cannot effectively tank it on your shields. A Sabot does 2k vs shields. But only 5 x 100 vs armor. And its spread out. Vs 500 armor the Sabot is hitting into 80% damage reduction. It will likely to 20 damage to 5 different armor parcels. Your missile is hitting only 40%. It will effectively strip a 500 armor target in one hit (takes it to 50, which is only double the min armor value).


A reaper is 2 OP for 2000 explosive damage. Are you going to have 2 OP for 1500 kinetic? Or 2 OP for 3000 kinetic? What do you think is going to happen when something is running 4(or more) of these with expanded missile racks? You either have enough PD to shoot everything down or you die. You cannot do that with sabots. Even though you can overload somethings shields you still need to crack its armor(and keep it from venting and getting its shields back up).

[Grievous69]

Reaper does 4k damage mind you, that's a big difference, seeing how it still does 2k shield damage. A weapon that isn't even supposed to hit shields in the first place. Even if we set aside how expensive the Missile racks are, 6 Sabots will still be far better than 4 of these torps. They're gonna suffer vs nimbler ships while Sabots are good vs everything. Even mass Sabots will chew through anything alone without help.

Btw you forgot the most important thing in your mathematical explanation, EMP damage. It really doesn't matter much that Sabots on paper don't do much damage to armor when the target probably can't fire anything in the next 5 seconds.