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Author Topic: Beam Weapons  (Read 41706 times)

Megas

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Re: Beam Weapons
« Reply #75 on: June 23, 2013, 07:33:05 PM »

Jazwana's idea seems promising.

Another idea:  A hullmod (say Focused Beams) that is expensive (at least as much as Augmented Engines/Unstable Injector) but lets beams deal a portion of their damage (somewhere between 20% and 50%) as hard flux.  The hullmod also has a drawback (less range, higher flux cost, or something) and cannot be used in conjunction with Advanced Optics (so player cannot kite everything short of an Onslaught).
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ciago92

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Re: Beam Weapons
« Reply #76 on: June 24, 2013, 04:50:32 PM »

I don't know if this suggestion has been made yet- only read through the last few pages, but here is a possible idea that could balance out the problems with using beams to kite while still giving them killing power.  What if beams did full DPS throughout their range, but scaled from 100% hard flux at zero range to 100% soft flux at max range?  (or maybe something like 50% soft at 20% max range and lower to 100% soft at 80% max range and higher).  You could even put in a slight color or gamma gradient over the beam's range so there is visual feedback on whether you are in the soft or hard flux range bands. 

Thus - if you try to kite with your superior range you're only doing soft flux, but if you want to abuse your manly tri-tac shields you can fly in close for some hard flux damage, but risk the return fire.

+1
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NITROtbomb

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Re: Beam Weapons
« Reply #77 on: June 24, 2013, 10:37:50 PM »

1+ ^
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Reshy

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Re: Beam Weapons
« Reply #78 on: June 24, 2013, 10:50:21 PM »

Ignoring shield efficiency would make beams weaker against ships with worse than 1.0 efficiency.

You mean all 7 ships, 5 of which are civilian/carriers?  Please.
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Silver Silence

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Re: Beam Weapons
« Reply #79 on: June 24, 2013, 11:12:56 PM »

I don't know if this suggestion has been made yet- only read through the last few pages, but here is a possible idea that could balance out the problems with using beams to kite while still giving them killing power.  What if beams did full DPS throughout their range, but scaled from 100% hard flux at zero range to 100% soft flux at max range?  (or maybe something like 50% soft at 20% max range and lower to 100% soft at 80% max range and higher).  You could even put in a slight color or gamma gradient over the beam's range so there is visual feedback on whether you are in the soft or hard flux range bands. 

Thus - if you try to kite with your superior range you're only doing soft flux, but if you want to abuse your manly tri-tac shields you can fly in close for some hard flux damage, but risk the return fire.


Here, have my +1.
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Gothars

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Re: Beam Weapons
« Reply #80 on: June 25, 2013, 01:04:45 AM »

I like the idea too, but please don't "+1" or "upvote" if you've got nothing to add to the discussion. This is neither reddit nor facebook.

If you like an idea, how about pointing out what exactly is good about it, how it would interact with other mechanics and how it might change your play-stile? Or even better, find flaws in it and try to think of a solution?
That way you might even actually give the idea a better chance of being implemented.
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Silver Silence

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Re: Beam Weapons
« Reply #81 on: June 25, 2013, 01:21:51 AM »

Ok then, how about the part where 100 vents on a Paragon with the skill to dissipate shield flux becomes incredibly efficient with beams and can stay cool as a cucumber even while facehugging an Onslaught, meanwhile the Paragon beamship with it's shiny new hardflux-building HILs can drive the Onslaught up to the max, keep it there and either face overloads or face hull damage while also unable to return fire due to the hardflux built up by said HILs? Meanwhile, the beamship Paragon with 100 vents is cooling off it's flux that's been built up by the Onslaught's autocannon barrage. Add Hardened Shielding, a Frontal Emitter and stabilize dem shields and you have yourself a nigh-on indestructable Paragon that can face many a Onslaught. Going to potentially have an issue with so many ships in your face? Activate your Iron Curtain and power up the Fortress Shield and continue to enjoy shield dissipation while now taking a tenth of the damage and let the Onslaughts do your job for you and max themselves out.

TTS Adamantium, reporting for duty.
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Megas

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Re: Beam Weapons
« Reply #82 on: June 25, 2013, 08:24:44 AM »

Quote from: Reshy
You mean all 7 ships, 5 of which are civilian/carriers?  Please.
The point is ignoring shield efficiency hurts beams against the few combat ships that have bad shields.  Enforcers and Condors are relatively common opponents, especially early in the game; not to mention the Enforcer is a nice early flagship and one of the best ships that can kite in the game for its FP cost.  The Conquest is a rare opponent, but beams ignoring shield efficiency would be a defensive buff to the player who pilots a Conquest flagship.

Ignoring shield efficiency also does not help against ships with 1.0 efficiency shields yet still take too much time to overcome their shields, and cannot without Advanced Optics to outrange the enemy.

Quote from: Silver Silence
Ok then, how about the part...
A single Onslaught alone is no match for an optimized Paragon, beams or otherwise.  The test is when two or three Onslaughts plus smaller ships, say a couple Lashers here, a couple Enforcers there, and a wing of Broadswords or Piranhas all gang up on our lone fleet wrecking Paragon.  Again, the optimized Paragon will win.  What varies is time and damage taken.

I just played four battles with the Hegemony defense fleet, with the best perks from Combat and Technology skills.
(All beams - HIL, Graviton, Burst PD.  Has Accelerated, Hardened, Frontal, and Stabilized shields.  Has about 5 capacitors)
Beam fight #1:  Never faced more than one Onslaught at a time.  Flawless victory.  Fighting lasted about seven minutes.
Beam fight #2:  Faced all three Onslaughts at once.  Had to vent at least three times, and focus all beams at one Onslaught at a time.  Won with 60% hull left.  Fighting lasted about ten minutes.

(Plasma, Blaster, Needler, Burst PD combo.  No shield hull mods.  Has about 45 capacitors)
PBN fight #1:  Faced all three Onslaughts at once.  Used fortress shield and wait until Onslaughts stopped firing Annihilators.  Had to vent at inopportune times, and took heavy damage.  Later, I got an opening and disabled an Onslaught from full to zero in less than five seconds.  Won with 40% hull.  Fighting lasted six minutes.
PBN fight #2:  Faced first Onslaught alone, then after first volley, Onslaught #2 appeared with all guns blazing along with Lashers and Enforcers, and my fortress shield went up.  Got half engines knocked out, but wiped out each ship one or two at a time.  Faced third Onslaught solo, and was no match for me - two quick volleys at point blank and it was gone.  Won with 60% hull.  Fighting lasted five minutes.

The thing is, when beams work, say Paragon vs. any ship, or starter Wolf vs. enemy Lasher or Enforcer; they are almost always slower than non-beam energy weapons or non-fragmentation ballistics.  That is fine, given their range and flux efficiency compared to other non-beam energy weapons.  What is not fine is beams can be shut down completely.  As long the AI remains too cautious to vent, other energy weapons will always do something despite their weaknesses.

I do not want the Paragon to be the only ship that can use all beams effectively against any ship.  I like beams to be able to crush shields eventually and kill anything like every other weapon, so that any ship can do some damage with beams with a beam only setup.  They do not need to do it nearly as quickly as other weapons, but they need to.  The easiest way to assure this is to let beams deal hard flux under certain conditions.  Beams can be the slow but steady weapon while the rest are quicker.
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LazyWizard

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Re: Beam Weapons
« Reply #83 on: June 25, 2013, 09:44:14 AM »

I don't know if this suggestion has been made yet- only read through the last few pages, but here is a possible idea that could balance out the problems with using beams to kite while still giving them killing power.  What if beams did full DPS throughout their range, but scaled from 100% hard flux at zero range to 100% soft flux at max range?  (or maybe something like 50% soft at 20% max range and lower to 100% soft at 80% max range and higher).  You could even put in a slight color or gamma gradient over the beam's range so there is visual feedback on whether you are in the soft or hard flux range bands. 

Thus - if you try to kite with your superior range you're only doing soft flux, but if you want to abuse your manly tri-tac shields you can fly in close for some hard flux damage, but risk the return fire.

I liked this idea so much I decided to try it out. Here's a small test mod that gives all vanilla beams 0-100% hard flux based on distance to the target (requires LazyLib).

I've only tested it briefly, but the most noticeable effect is that the famed Disco Paragon has gone from "able to kill anything smaller than it" to "able to kill anything, period" (including taking on two Conquests and an Onslaught simultaneously). I'll try making a version using the other variant you mentioned, as I think that might be more balanced. :)
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Megas

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Re: Beam Weapons
« Reply #84 on: June 25, 2013, 10:08:24 AM »

Quote from: LazyWizard
(including taking on two Conquests and an Onslaught simultaneously).
Did you divide the beams among the enemy capitals or did you focus fire all beams on one ship at a time?  The Paragon is so powerful that it can take on three Onslaughts simultaneously without any modified hard flux beams, but needs to focus on one capital at a time.  With that said, I downloaded your mod and will like to try it when I can.
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Megas

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Re: Beam Weapons
« Reply #85 on: June 25, 2013, 10:58:29 AM »

Got a chance to try hard flux beams, in a Wolf vs. Lasher contest, and noticed a few things.
  • AI does not know how to respond to continuous beam fire once at max flux.
  • Beams dealing hard flux at maximum range even without Advanced Optics is too effective (against the majority of the campaign's ill-equipped ships).  It should only deal hard flux at much closer range, no more than half of the weapon's base range, maybe even less.
  • Beams dealing 100% hard flux as damage is too much.  However, beams dealing even 1% hard flux will work, but is very tedious if beam cannot otherwise defeat dissipation without the hard flux.

Suggestion:  Use exponential instead of linear drop-off, and have it deal soft flux only starting at 50% or even less range.  If player wants to deal hard flux with beams, make him get deep into enemy weapon range.

It would be nice if player needs to pay OP on a hullmod for this ability, and the hullmod enforces other penalties like higher flux costs and no Advanced Optics.
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Silver Silence

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Re: Beam Weapons
« Reply #86 on: June 25, 2013, 11:33:17 AM »

TBH, I wish energy weapons in general were better. Most are fairly inefficient, something to trade for "unlimited" ammo as you're only limited by your ability to keep venting flux. However, as well as being inefficient, most do not have any sort of capable range. Most energy weapons range between 5-800 SU across all sizes of mount. While on the ballistic side, we start at 600 range or so with the LAG and go all the way up to 1200 with the Gauss Cannon which smacks a raised shield for 1.4k every few seconds. Something like the Onslaught could become a kiting monster with Gauss Cannons in it's large slots and Heavy Maulers in it's forward medium slots. The GCs give it the shield cracking firepower while the Maulers rip into the armour and expose the hull for the GCs to tear apart afterwards. Not to mention that in a stroke of boredom and a blink of an eye, the Onslaught can charge forth and unload with it's TPCs. This firepower becomes even more drastic when you're skilled enough to throw a metric fuckton of vents in there alongside ITUs, damage perks, RoF perks and fast venting perks. Such an Onslaught can chew ships like those of the Neutrino Corp with their well noted 0.2 efficiency shields.
 A Paragon Beamship on the other hand, can't even tickle such Neutrino ships. Their typical passive venting speeds often equal that of the Beamship's total DPS, if not more. And that's before you throw in the efficiency. If you go the pewpew path, you need to get in their face while they bring their own custom energy weapon to bear, facing things like the Neutron Pulse Cannon which is basically the Neutrino's answer to a Heavy Mauler with similar range and damage. The Autopulse, while probably your most efficient laser cannon of the lot, is also fairly fickle. Once you're in range, your flux already halfway to the max after eating fire to get close enough, if you can't overload them, or cause enough damage as to scare them into lowering the shield and letting you disable weapons with free hits to the hull, you're pretty much done. Once the Autopulse has burned through those initial charges, it's maintained DPS is 100 or so, though still in a bursty form. Now after those Autopulses are done, you can either continue to eat fire while they do a worse job than the tiny IR laser. Or you can back off and clear your flux which also gives them a massive window to clear their own flux because while you've only just crept out of their range, they were long out of yours. The latter assumes you even have the speed to disengage in such a speedy fashion.

If such a hard-flux building mechanic were implemented, I'd say to only have it on certain beam weapons and not just a standard of all of them. The Graviton Beam, for example, the natural choice for shield suppression with it's kinetic damage could further define it's suppressive role with hard flux damage. Lore it away with some vague outlining along the lines of concentrated graviton exposure causing momentary flickers in the shield which turn causes a flux-build up as the shield fights to keep itself stable. As for the mechanic itself, I think while starting at 0% (all soft flux) is fine, but the hard flux cap should only be about 25%. Then a HIL only does, what, ~62 hard flux DPS? For one HIL against smaller ships, it's should be noticeable, and in a beamship Paragon, it shouldn't be the be-all end-all as you're dealing ~250 hard flux/s against ships. Assuming HILs had the ability, too.
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Jazwana

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Re: Beam Weapons
« Reply #87 on: June 25, 2013, 12:10:02 PM »

I'm glad to see all the enthusiastic replies :)  I absolutely agree the numbers I threw up were example only, not balanced.  I like the suggestions of pushing the hard flux range much lower and with less % of total damage, and the exponential decay rather than linear.  Not sure about ONLY graviton beam having this mechanic because then it limits ships which don't have a medium mount such as the phase frigates and Odyssey.  No sure if it should apply to burst lasers or not, probably should, discuss?

To poke holes at my own overall idea:  Giving beams any hard flux while not penalizing them is a straight-up buff, no question about it.  But it seems like most of the early posts in this thread agreed that specifically beams vs high shield efficiency is where the main problem lies.  My suggestion goes at the imbalance in a roundabout way which increases beam effectiveness across the board, not just vs high tech shields.  It only helps in the secondary case of "my ship is too small and has too few mounts to burn through the soft flux dissipation rate of the enemy ship."

Partially hard flux beams also starts the slippery slope of having all weapons 'balanced' to be exactly the same as each other without any unique mechanics to trade off against.  This is something Alex has specifically stated he doesn't want and I think we as players can all agree, if every weapon had the same range, dps, and damage type it would be a boring game.



Still not sure what the right solution is but I think we've got a bunch of good ideas between passing under (through) allied ships and applying a separate beam shield efficiency rate.    Maybe every ship should have two shield efficiency statistics; beam and projectile?  That way ships could be balanced separately and perhaps hull mods or perks could modify those statistics separately?  Tune your shield emitter to be more efficient for one at the (greater) expense of another?

Edit:  The lore, of course, being that Tri-Tach engineers have improved their shield emitters to deflect projectiles but are still having trouble making any significant improvements against continuous beams.
« Last Edit: June 25, 2013, 12:14:20 PM by Jazwana »
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Megas

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Re: Beam Weapons
« Reply #88 on: June 25, 2013, 01:07:10 PM »

I prefer all beams use the same mechanics just to keep things simple and consistent, and reduce confusion among new players.

Quote
It only helps in the secondary case of "my ship is too small and has too few mounts to burn through the soft flux dissipation rate of the enemy ship."
Meanwhile, the frigate that can arm four or so needlers, such as Afflictor or Lasher, can kite and chew through shields, armor (which does not regenerate), and hull of any ship short of a capital with ease and repeat for three or four more ships.
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Histidine

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Re: Beam Weapons
« Reply #89 on: June 25, 2013, 09:48:40 PM »

Ranged-based hard flux for beams sounds interesting.

Quote from: Reshy
You mean all 7 ships, 5 of which are civilian/carriers?  Please.
The point is ignoring shield efficiency hurts beams against the few combat ships that have bad shields.  Enforcers and Condors are relatively common opponents, especially early in the game; not to mention the Enforcer is a nice early flagship and one of the best ships that can kite in the game for its FP cost.  The Conquest is a rare opponent, but beams ignoring shield efficiency would be a defensive buff to the player who pilots a Conquest flagship.
I'd happily trade diminished effectiveness against Enforcers and Conquests for greatly increased effectiveness against almost every other ship in the game, many of which can presently do precisely the thing being complained about - completely shrug off beams:
[Shield efficiency is respected] Against a Balanced Enforcer, two Graviton Beams will generate 480 flux/s. That generates 120% of its flux dissipation and causes it to build up 160f/s (including shield upkeep cost). After 37.5 seconds, the Enforcer will overload or have to drop shields. Against a Point Defense Medusa, two Graviton Beams will generate 240f/s. That generates 48% of its flux dissipation, slowing its dissipation to 140f/s. It won't overload and can continue firing a bit without risking hull damage or an overload.

[Shield efficiency is ignored] Against a Balanced Enforcer, two Graviton Beams will generate 400f/s. This generates 100% of its flux dissipation and causes it to build up 80f/s. After 75 seconds, the Enforcer will overload or have to drop shields. Against a Close Support Medusa, two Graviton Beams will generate 400f/s. That generates 80% of its flux dissipation, causing it to build up 20f/s. After 380 seconds, the Medusa will overload or have to drop shields.
19 ships have <1 shield efficiency, of which the Valkyrie is the only true civilian. Six (Apogee, Astral, Hyperion, Medusa, Omen and Paragon) and all the shielded fighters have 0.6 efficiency.

Quote
a beam only setup
Ah, now we get to the key point.
In my opinion, a beam-only design should be no more generally useful than a kinetics-only design*, a HE ballistics-only design, a missile-only design, or for that matter a pulse-only design that uses only AM and Heavy Blasters. While you can get a design that's effective against everything by going pure Pulse Laser, it pays for being a jack of all trades by being less efficient than a mixed loadout (ballistic or energy) would be.
*currently stronger than it should be, as most ships' armor can be brute-forced even with kinetics (especially with the help of missiles)

TBH, I wish energy weapons in general were better.
Energy weapons are balanced by being mounted on (otherwise) better ships. This method has its limitations (like the fact that you pretty much never want to put energy weapons in a universal mount), but it generally works.
« Last Edit: June 25, 2013, 09:50:49 PM by Histidine »
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