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[Unfolder]

If you haven't played the new update yet, why are you saying that "we've gimped half the missiles, made the others completely OP, and energy is STILL overwhelming better than everything" hmm?

I'm extrapolating based on the previous version which is where all missiles were gimped and all ballistics were gimped compared to energy. Now ballistics are ungimped  half the missiles are ungimped/OP relative to their peers, and half are doubly worthless (as worthless as before, plus gimped relative to their newly OP peers).

I'll try the game out though to confirm my 100% correct analysis   AM very greatful to see ballistics cleanly ungimped, Space Rome wasn't built in a day

edit: You right though...I don't know that energy is still OP, I strongly suspect that it is though, based on tactical laser increased range, even without flux fry boost. We'll see!

[Megas]

Range on Phase Lance is too short!  Absolute 600, without fade-out like non-beam weapons, so that pulse laser has better range.  Phase Lance performs better than old Phase Beam, but compared to the competition (i.e, Graviton Beam, Pulse Laser, both Blasters) it is awful.  It does not even chain-EMP like ion cannon or tachyon lance.  Currently, if I want efficiency, I will take Tactical Laser or Graviton Beam instead.  If I want to do more damage, Pulse Laser or any Blaster instead.

Phase Lance needs more range (at least 700, preferably more) and/or something to make it better.

[Histidine]

I don't know how things work out in the current version where the flux damage boost has been replaced with a flat damage buff for pulse weapons and longer range for beams. But anyone seriously advancing the notion that energy weapons were much better than ballistics in previous versions gets my assessment of their credibility on balance matters sharply reduced.

[Aeson]

And to top it off, it's really stupid from a lore standpoint. Really? The astral can load dozens, hundreds, of torpedos onto fighter bombers in a fight, but the 500 *** manning the battle ship can't figure out how to load a torpedo tube on the fly? Derp derp, I guess the special eds are working on the flag ship.

For what it's worth, several of the missiles without regenerating ammunition appear to be entirely external weapon systems, although Extended Missile Racks and Missile Specialization screw with that since they don't change the apparent number of missiles on the racks. If you mount a Harpoon Missile Rack, you get a weapon icon that shows 3 externally-carried missiles; Atropos Torpedo Racks likewise create a weapon icon showing a pair of externally-carried torpedoes, and a Reaper Torpedo (Single) shows a single externally-carried torpedo. This tends to imply that the weapon systems are exactly what their names imply - external racks carrying missiles for use in the next engagement, which are not set up with convenient access through the hull and armor for reloading during battle. Loading an external rack on a fighter that lands inside your nice climate-controlled hangar bay with its convenient trolleys or whatever for moving torpedoes quickly from the ammunition storage to the fighters in a safe environment is one thing. Loading an external rack from a likely inconveniently located cargo hatch while moving across the external surface of the hull of a ship under fire, when there's also likely not a particularly easy path between the missile rack and the cargo hatch, is a very different problem. Even if your Harpoon Missile Rack has a convenient  hatch behind it (since there's clearly some kind of access there for the Salamander launchers, though it's possible that that only exists after you cut a hole in the hull armor), there's no guarantee that the reloading process would be easy; perhaps you would need to move the rack out of the way, or perhaps since the rack doesn't have a built-in reload system you need to tear it down and reassemble it, or perhaps you need to set up a temporary crane to move your missiles into position properly.

Furthermore, weapon systems which cannot be reloaded "on the fly" in the middle of battle are not stupid from a lore perspective. They have simply made a trade-off; a single Harpoon rack can get off its three missiles more rapidly than the Salamander launcher or hypothetical Harpoon launcher can get off an equivalent number of missiles. Even more extreme versions of such weapon systems have been used in reality; some WWI and WWII submarines had external torpedo tubes/drop collars which could not be reloaded until the vessel returned to port, there are several types of infantry rocket launchers which are single-use devices, and there are some types of handgun for which the reload instructions are along the lines of "ambush and kill enemy soldier, then take his gun and use that instead."

It can also be argued that this is a reflection of a safety feature. Harpoon missiles, Atropos torpedoes, and Reaper torpedoes have warheads whose explosive power is nearly (or entirely) unmatched by any other weapon, and additionally have whatever explosive power is stored in the propellant. For the sake of the ship's safety, such powerful weapons may be carried externally in an area where there is no direct access to the internal parts of the ship to minimize the danger posed by accidental detonation once the warheads are united with the fueled missiles. Sure, it increases the chances of the missiles being rendered unusable due to enemy fire in an engagement and it makes it inconvenient to reload the weapon system, but it also means that the ship probably isn't going to be completely gutted by its own torpedoes going off, it increases the chance that you can quickly and safely jettison a malfunctioning ready-to-use missile or torpedo before it explodes on or inside the ship's hull, and it makes lucky hits setting off torpedoes in tubes which penetrate the primary armor belt less concerning since there are no such tubes. The missile pods likely make use of a similar system, except with the (presumably internal) ammunition storage designed in such a way that the detonation of stored ammunition preferentially directs the force of the blast away from the ship, but having any internal doors open during battle for reloading would compromise this.

I really detest the clip based system. It sounded like an ok compromise between having the previous ammo system and no ammo at all, but in reality is worse than both. It doesn't serve any purpose but to break up engagements and interrupt your fights as you wait for ammo to trickle in. It adds an entire extra layer of complexity to ballistics that feels totally unnecessary, a step in the absolute opposite direction of what I understood the purpose of moving away from ammo in the first place was. To free up complexity for other parts of the game.

I tend to feel that the clip system is, for the most part, fine. It's no worse than regenerating ammunition that can be expended more rapidly than it regenerates, it's simply more bursty (which is arguably an advantage, particularly against shields). Some of the weapons could probably be adjusted to make more sense for what the weapon is supposed to be (e.g. the Vulcan Cannon would more sensibly have 1x1000 ammunition with 1x1000 reloaded every minute rather than 5x20 ammunition with 1x20 reloaded every few seconds).

[Megas]

I like how the Sunder feels now.  With the usual skills, it is fast and agile, not the slug it was.  Pity for the weak shield.

As for ballistic clips, I like it overall.  Yes, running out of ammo and getting stuck with half DPS is annoying, but it is better than running out of ammo for the rest of the fight.  Weapons that had low ammo before, namely HMG and Gauss cannon, are usable now.  Also, combined with other changes, I now use kinetics on Medusa, instead of mounting a 0 OP missile.

Good news, Expanded Magazines is not as mandatory (for low tech ships) and beams are cheaper.  Bad news, Hardened Subsystems feels mandatory for most ships, and the gamebreaker bugs (unlimited FMR Salamanders, HEF plus beams overload, etc.) that I hope get fixed soon.

[Thaago]

Starsector 0.65.2a - we've gimped half the missiles, made the others completely OP, and energy is STILL overwhelming better than everything, hahaha.

...

.... Balance the strike from non-strike missiles with reload time. ...

Ugg. Just... no.

The previous update made missiles more powerful - to the point where people were calling Harpoons overpowered. This update took a few missiles and gave them infinite ammo (kind of). This in no way gimped the other missiles! They are still just as powerful as before.

Now lets talk about those ammo changes. And lets ignore Fast Missile Racks. Yeah, its an exploit with Salamanders, thanks for pointing it out, it'l get fixed. So, Salamanders. Previously with a small slot you could dump a bunch into the water - up to 5 with the expanded racks - and even against an enemy with decent PD you knew at least one would get through and knock out the engines. Now however they fire just 1. Almost all point defense just laughs and shoots it down. The racks are a little better at 2, but even then most PD just takes care of it.

So, the Salamanders can give constant pressure for the whole battle, but they can no longer dump on you and ensure your engines go out in a front shielded ship (or if your armor is down back there, do a lot of damage). The upshot? BMII's and Salamander Lashers are less dangerous than before, but remain constantly pressuring.

On to Pilums. They are slower, less agile, and easier to shoot down than Harpoons - usually to the point where point defense or dodging is very effective against them. For long range support they are really good - as long as there are enough of them to make a difference. All of us who have used them in our fleets know that having 4 LRM launchers in the fleet is not twice as good as 2, but much, much better (5 times better? 10 times better?). Its all about overwhelming the enemy - if you are under the overwhelm threshold, they are only an annoyance. Over it and they are a deadly threat.

So, this update gives them infinite ammo. But wait, the infinite ammo comes back at HALF the rate of the fire speed (much, much less for FMR ships as Pilums use ammo rather than reloading as their limiter). So, once past the "old" ammo limit, each launcher is only acting as half a launcher. Which, while still useful, makes them drastically less effective.

Compared to before the update: exactly the same before the (generous) old ammo limit. After the limit: still firing, but significantly less effective. Overpowered? I really don't think so.


I'm just going to ignore energy weapons being OP, because it seems like every other thread is either "Energy weapons are the best" or "How come energy weapons suck so much?". I actually think they are, with a few minor exceptions that could use small tweaks, wonderfully balanced.

[Protonus]

Well, here's the summary for today:

"Conversation about regenerative missiles simply sparked like wildfire right after someone just spoke about Salamander/Pilum being significantly OP, despite the situation should've been the ability to regenerate Ballistic ammunition overtime in comparison to Energy weapons that started months ago."



So, I'm staying away from that conversation and instead.

What I have in mind:
"Ballistic weapons might actually become increasingly powerful overtime in comparison over Energy weapons due to the utilization of Strike-Ambush tactics, allowing Single Ships to pick-off a large fleet one-by-one through hybriding several Ballistic weapons with several Armor-piercing ballistics while retaining a relatively low amount of energy requirements that Energy weapons in general normally have a weakness in. And simply slapping an Ammo Extension to it further grants the tactic so well, normally Onslaughts can become more effective than Paragons."

But that's just me.

[Toxcity]

I like how the 0.65 updates have made most weapons viable now. Its also made weapons that were no-brainers before (heavy mauler) more balanced and specialized. I especially like the flux reduction on ballistic weapons.

Range on Phase Lance is too short!

I agree, the phase lance could use a range boost of about 100-150, especially since it isn't to good against shields.

[xenoargh]

Range on Phase Lance is too short!

Nah.  The problem is that they don't do Hard Flux.  So you charge in, and it actually does pretty efficient damage, for a beam, but wait, it's Soft Flux.  So the Graviton Beam still, er, well, it still sucks a bit, but it's a genuine support weapon, kind of.

The Tac Lasers are murderous kiting things, vs. unshielded pirates.  They're still fairly useless vs. anything with a shield, but not as useless as they used to be, because they can do support, kind of, and they're much more relevant vs. fighters.

Anyhow, on this stuff and the missiles, I feel like it's just easier to make a mod that implements this stuff and invite peeps to play it and see it, instead of just theorycrafting all day.  

This puts Hard Flux on Beams, which does not make them miraculous death devices or even massively OP, except for their range bands, and it makes all of the missiles able to regenerate ammo, including bombs, which makes the Strike weapons pleasantly relevant in long battles and makes the AI actually use them often enough to matter, as well as forcing players to think more about PD in their builds and all that jazz, which I think is an improvement.  It also makes the Annihilator actually something I'd use, as opposed to not (ever).

Bombs probably need a timer nerf atm, but meh, I am kind of busy IRL tonight.

I haven't touched damage, range, ROF, etc., etc. except where it was directly relevant to the implementation.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Unfolder]

For what it's worth, several of the missiles without regenerating ammunition appear to be entirely external weapon systems, although Extended Missile Racks and Missile Specialization screw with that since they don't change the apparent number of missiles on the racks. If you mount a Harpoon Missile Rack, you get a weapon icon that shows 3 externally-carried missiles; Atropos Torpedo Racks likewise create a weapon icon showing a pair of externally-carried torpedoes, and a Reaper Torpedo (Single) shows a single externally-carried torpedo. This tends to imply that the weapon systems are exactly what their names imply - external racks carrying missiles for use in the next engagement, which are not set up with convenient access through the hull and armor for reloading during battle. Loading an external rack on a fighter that lands inside your nice climate-controlled hangar bay with its convenient trolleys or whatever for moving torpedoes quickly from the ammunition storage to the fighters in a safe environment is one thing. Loading an external rack from a likely inconveniently located cargo hatch while moving across the external surface of the hull of a ship under fire, when there's also likely not a particularly easy path between the missile rack and the cargo hatch, is a very different problem. Even if your Harpoon Missile Rack has a convenient  hatch behind it (since there's clearly some kind of access there for the Salamander launchers, though it's possible that that only exists after you cut a hole in the hull armor), there's no guarantee that the reloading process would be easy; perhaps you would need to move the rack out of the way, or perhaps since the rack doesn't have a built-in reload system you need to tear it down and reassemble it, or perhaps you need to set up a temporary crane to move your missiles into position properly.

Furthermore, weapon systems which cannot be reloaded "on the fly" in the middle of battle are not stupid from a lore perspective. They have simply made a trade-off; a single Harpoon rack can get off its three missiles more rapidly than the Salamander launcher or hypothetical Harpoon launcher can get off an equivalent number of missiles. Even more extreme versions of such weapon systems have been used in reality; some WWI and WWII submarines had external torpedo tubes/drop collars which could not be reloaded until the vessel returned to port, there are several types of infantry rocket launchers which are single-use devices, and there are some types of handgun for which the reload instructions are along the lines of "ambush and kill enemy soldier, then take his gun and use that instead."

It can also be argued that this is a reflection of a safety feature. Harpoon missiles, Atropos torpedoes, and Reaper torpedoes have warheads whose explosive power is nearly (or entirely) unmatched by any other weapon, and additionally have whatever explosive power is stored in the propellant. For the sake of the ship's safety, such powerful weapons may be carried externally in an area where there is no direct access to the internal parts of the ship to minimize the danger posed by accidental detonation once the warheads are united with the fueled missiles. Sure, it increases the chances of the missiles being rendered unusable due to enemy fire in an engagement and it makes it inconvenient to reload the weapon system, but it also means that the ship probably isn't going to be completely gutted by its own torpedoes going off, it increases the chance that you can quickly and safely jettison a malfunctioning ready-to-use missile or torpedo before it explodes on or inside the ship's hull, and it makes lucky hits setting off torpedoes in tubes which penetrate the primary armor belt less concerning since there are no such tubes. The missile pods likely make use of a similar system, except with the (presumably internal) ammunition storage designed in such a way that the detonation of stored ammunition preferentially directs the force of the blast away from the ship, but having any internal doors open during battle for reloading would compromise this.

Yeah this is a really cool explanation in a spaceship space game with cosmic time travel through wormholes and grammitron particle lasers. I especially love the touch about the reaper torpedo's being especially volatile and dangerous, as opposed to say the shipboard singularity of theoretically infinite piliums and their constituent explosive gels and powders, all being manufactured, charged and loaded in extreme combat that kills the equipment operators, blows up and fries the internals,  and that could theoretically destroy the ships entire hull down to one hitpoint but keep this elaborate and terrifying supply chain running perfectly. You know what else is cool? How you can lose every piece of hull down to one and fully repair the ship in deep space given enough time and enough crispity crunchy deluxe fortified magic jiggawatt cubes (supplies). I would really like to see that in an aircraft carrier, torpedo it 4 or 5 times, strafe it with a GAU-8 Avenger, kill half the crew and watch the other half restore it to perfect readiness using duct tape and peanut butter OUT OF PORT

The previous update made missiles more powerful - to the point where people were calling Harpoons overpowered.

Yeah that's awesome when they all get launched by the AI and the PD zaps them or they just miss outright or just get eaten by shields and you're like  so overpowered thank God I didn't sink those 1-20 OP in worthless flux or vents or a weapon that can fire more than 3 times hahaha the enemy is so cowed I don't even need that 10% OP

[Thaago]

...

The previous update made missiles more powerful - to the point where people were calling Harpoons overpowered.

Yeah that's awesome when they all get launched by the AI and the PD zaps them or they just miss outright or just get eaten by shields and you're like  so overpowered thank God I didn't sink those 1-20 OP in worthless flux or vents or a weapon that can fire more than 3 times hahaha the enemy is so cowed I don't even need that 10% OP

Other than the boorish sarcasm, which frankly just undermines everything you say, this just tells me you really just never used them right. You fire them when the enemy is vulnerable, or you fire them in overwhelming force and get a straight up kill.  Frigates can sometimes dodge, but destroyers and up can't. People were complaining about skilled enemy Dominators evaporating a destroyer with every volley of 12 Harpoons, at 0 flux cost.

[xenoargh]

People were complaining about skilled enemy Dominators evaporating a destroyer with every volley of 12 Harpoons, at 0 flux cost.

Yup, that's a thing, if your Destroyer's Flux was high enough.  Been there, got the shirt (it's mildly radioactive though, so I don't wear it).

Not complaining, though; that's exactly what I'd expect a huge volley of anti-ship missiles to do, heh.

[Aeson]

Yeah this is a really cool explanation in a spaceship space game with cosmic time travel through wormholes and grammitron particle lasers. I especially love the touch about the reaper torpedo's being especially volatile and dangerous, as opposed to say the shipboard singularity of theoretically infinite piliums and their constituent explosive gels and powders, all being manufactured, charged and loaded in extreme combat that kills the equipment operators, blows up and fries the internals,  and that could theoretically destroy the ships entire hull down to one hitpoint but keep this elaborate and terrifying supply chain running perfectly. You know what else is cool? How you can lose every piece of hull down to one and fully repair the ship in deep space given enough time and enough crispity crunchy deluxe fortified magic jiggawatt cubes (supplies). I would really like to see that in an aircraft carrier, torpedo it 4 or 5 times, strafe it with a GAU-8 Avenger, kill half the crew and watch the other half restore it to perfect readiness using duct tape and peanut butter OUT OF PORT

1. It's a possible explanation for why it's done. Other explanations were offered. Beyond that, believe it or not, ships are just as full of singularities of Reaper Torpedoes as they are of singularities of Pilum LRMs, the only difference is they cannot reload the launchers in the middle of battle. The sizes of the infinite quantities of torpedoes and LRMs may be different, but they're still infinite quantities; you don't technically ever need to return to port to restock any type of ammunition.

2. Just because we have "cosmic time travel through wormholes and grammitron particle lasers" doesn't mean that we have ships with the ability to teleport torpedoes from inside the armor to outside of it into the launch racks which for whatever reason do not have internal reloading mechanisms.

3. My previous post was in response to your comment regarding the lore-appropriateness of the weapon systems. I see nothing in your reply which offers a particularly reasonable counterargument, aside from the comment about how dangerous an infinite source of Pila and Salamanders likely is (of course, there's also an infinite source of all the other types of ammunition, including the weapons which have limited ammunition in each fight, since you never have to restock your supplies of ammunition and can theoretically never return to port if you can manage to recover a sufficient quantity of supplies after each battle). However, the safety explanation was only one of several proffered explanations, and you seem to have ignored the others, such as the one about it being a design trade-off where the weapon system traded a reloading mechanism for the ability to launch missiles more rapidly than would be possible otherwise.

4. All of us know that Starsector contains a lot of unrealistic things. It is, after all, a space game with superluminal travel, magical shields, and no wear and tear on equipment, among other things. However, unrealistic and lore-inconsistent are not the same thing, and since your argument was along the lines of "external missile racks/pods cannot be reloaded mid-fight is inconsistent with the lore," I see no reason why pointing out parts of Starsector which are unrealistic helps to show your argument of "lore is inconsistent." Is it unrealistic that Starsector's ships can carry infinite amounts of ammunition, and expend theoretically-infinite amounts of ammunition in a single battle for certain types of weapons? Yep. Is it unrealistic that some weapon types might have made design trade-offs that prevent them from firing theoretically-infinite amounts of ammunition in a single battle? Nope. Is it inconsistent with the game's lore? I don't see it as being such. The answer to "is it better to have theoretically-infinite shots with a low rate of fire or a limited number of shots with a high rate of fire" is not always "infinitely many shots with a low rate of fire." Harpoon racks offer 60 shots per minute, as compared to the Salamander's 3; Harpoon Pods offer 27 shots per minute as compared to the Salamander Pod's 5.9. Clearly, from the perspective of the game's lore, the designers of the various Harpoon systems chose to go with a limited number of shots and a high rate of fire over the more convenient but slower system used by the Salamanders. Why? I don't know, but I tend to agree with the choice; being able to unload 3 Harpoons in 3 seconds from a Harpoon Rack is more useful for breaking heavy armor or penetrating moderate amounts of PD than being able to unload infinitely many Harpoons at the rate of one every 20 seconds is, unless you're facing very little PD, not particularly heavy armor, or have the time to wait for the missiles to regenerate.

[Protonus]

To simply put it, this is Science Fiction, not Science Fact, the developers can make excuses to make changes in their reality but it doesn't change anything in Real Life physics.

Anything can happen here and the developers are just simply gods in this place.

[CopperCoyote]

I have a minor suggestion for PD weapons: let them shoot a whole magazine's worth of bullets at an enemy ship before they hold fire. Currently they shoot a single salvo then stop and the mag regen wastes a large chunk of the bullets. Over all i really like the hold fire unless topped off behavior because missiles can hurt, but it really puts a damper on using PD weapons on auto fire against an enemy ship.