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[xenoargh]

Well balance it to be a factor then.

To be balanced, Ballistics would have to be significantly more powerful, DPS/Flux-wise.  More over, when it's "a factor" is largely dependent on play-styles; if you're a lone-wolf, one-ship-at-a-time arcade player, then ammo of any kind is a major deterrent from using Ballistics at all; if you're mega-fleet player, then it's much less important than how good the DPS/Flux efficiency is and whether you want to go Low / Mid Tech at all, past the early game.

[Lucian Greymark]

The way ammunition was for ships previously I always saw as that they had a certain amount of ammunition that they could have at the ready in battles, say a few hundred shots. After that they would either have miniature auto factories in the ships themselves that could reproduce the ammunition, or more had to be brought out of storage. What I would like to see happen, whether it will or otherwise is somewhat moot, but what I would like to see is a slight alteration to that philosophy.

In a battle I could easily imagine several different things occurring, depending on the ship's combat readiness.
1: At high combat readiness (70%+) the ship is ready for battle to the nth degree, ammunition has been brought up from the holds, weapons are already loaded, ready to go. All that needs to happen is the safety switched off and a firing solution primed. In game this would be represented by a massive store of ammunition for each gun ready and waiting (or perhaps much faster reload in a clip situation), this would obviously give any ballistic fleet an advantage, and a tangible reason, to fight at high combat readiness, potentially giving them the ability to negate the high sustainability of energy fleets. balanced by the following.

2: At medium combat readiness (40%-60%) each weapon has a much reduced ammunition store that will only be good for a short, tense engagement of maybe four minutes at most. Perhaps two hundred shots of vulcan cannon ammo, or twenty heavy mauler shells. This is to emphasis that they are running on the dregs of what they had at the end of their last engagement and are still scrambling to find more ammo. This will further prevent captains with high strike potential ballistic fleets from slaughtering a dozen other fleets at a time with minimal loss to combat readiness.

3: Finally at low combat readiness, (<40%) at which point the ship is running on vapors, barely any ammunition has been hauled out of storage and the crew is in a blind panic to find shells to protect themselves with. Barely a hundred rounds of vulcan ammo, or a scant five or ten shells of heavy mauler. The only option for a captain in this situation is to try and flee, because any fleet better prepared will be able to drain their reserves quickly.

These three options have some quite massive effects that change the way energy fleets and ballistic fleets interact, which I'm in favor of. Ballistic fleets already feel like the 'strike' fleets of the game, huge dps, powerful armour, get in and get out mentality. While energy fleets are currently more of the patience end of the tactics curve. Slow, methodical battles with a hammer blow at the end delivered by missiles or energy strike weapons like the blaster.

These changes would enhance that divide, further encouraging energy fleets into a role where they can run down ballistic fleets over a number of engagements, working them down until they can't really defend themselves, and giving ballistic fleets the incentive to hit hard and fast before returning to base to resupply to retain their advantage of more sustained fire with their heavier, mightier weapons. Perhaps even a slight shift towards this in balancing, increasing the average burst damage of ballistic weapons, and increasing the flux efficiency of energy weapons.

This is very rough and obviously needs refinement but I do hope at least someone gives this some attention and makes it a more appealing proposition, because I feel it fits the theme of the game well, and it also provides some distinction between the different styles of weapon that, at the moment, I feel they desperately need.

Of course if you disagree feel free to state why, I'd be interested to hear it.

[xenoargh]

So, uh... you want to take a thing that's already become vastly more complicated and make it even more so?  Not to mention the real difficulty in balance and the ways that this can get abused by using Harry?

I mean, I get the realistic logic of it, sure, but from a game-design POV, I don't get it; the game's already suffering from some information overload problems and choice anxiety amongst new players is a real problem. 

If the system gets much more complicated, then SS is basically going to devolve into a game that was basically just written for us veteran players, frankly.

[Lucian Greymark]

We seem to be about to have the exact same discussion on two different threads so I'm going to make my opinion plain here.

As someone who loves this game I'll say one thing: When I started playing this game, back just before the campaign mode was a thing. It felt too simple, it felt too simple when the campaign came out. It still feels too simple to this day. Starsector has the opportunity to become a deep complex 2d rpg that will be a classic for generations of gamers. What it's lacking, and slowly moving away from, is clear, unique, and engaging differences between the different styles of play, right now, in this patch, I can outfit a bunch of my ships however I like, and they'll more or less achieve/do the exact same things when I'm not micro managing them.

What I'd like to see is the game shift into a situation where simply changing the load out on ships changes the way the ai handles not only the ships themselves, but the way they engage with fleets and the way ai captains appproach engagements. Furthermore I'd like to see a situation where deciding which weapon to use on a mount is a definite and meaningful choice, instead of just an aesthetic one. For instance right now apart from the very nitty gritty of fights so close they could go either way, I see no reason to equip a needler over a conventional autocannon, it's just worse. Likewise I see no reason to use ballistic ships as a whole, with the removal of ballistic ammunition limits they fill the exact same role as energy boats loaded with strike weapons. The only difference is we trade armour for shields, and shields can be regenerated.

The only reason I'd ever take ballistic heavy ships now is for the novelty of it. Before it was a concise, and viable decision. But with the changes to missiles and ballistic weapons I may as well just take an energy boat (i.e high tech) I think they look better, and they fulfill the exact same role, and do it better.

Before the patch when energy weapons only really got into their stride after the fight had started and flux had built up a bit, and ballistic weapons were for that first engage, and hitting so hard with that first engage that nothing came back from it. Now with similar damage output, and ammunition quickly running out and forcing me to retreat from a fight I find myself having to use ballistic boats in an almost identical fashion to energy ones, quick strikes that do a little bit of damage, before backing off to let my flux, sorry, I meant ammo, regen to a usable point. No longer can I co in hard with my ballistic ships, fire a heavy salvo that overwhelms my opponent's shields, and keep firing until they, and all their buddies are dead.

It's a disappointment, and a really sad loss for the uniqueness of the game.

EDIT: Also, while I'm thinking about it, some of the best games ever made, and some of the most popular, have hugely deep game mechanics that require hundreds and hundreds of hours of play to truly master. A step away from that can only be a bad thing.

[Megas]

Disagree on "A step away from that can only be a bad thing."

I do not want to spend "hundreds of hours of play" to master a game.  I want to sit down and blow stuff up without thinking too much.  One reason I got this game is because I like the arcade-like action, and I can do it in a variety of fleet configurations, instead of only as a lone superpowered fighter in other games.

[Cycerin]

There are plenty of things an energy boat still can't do that a ballistic gunship can. Pretending otherwise is exaggeration. You can always frontload more with ballistics, simply due to the enormous power of the kinetic damage type. You can tailor a fleet more closely to fight a given enemy with ballistics, and I'd argue, get more efficiency out of the fight in return.

Expanded Magazines is still in vogue btw, the main thing that changed is that ballistics cap out sooner, but hit a soft cap rather than a hard cap. If you want to maximize your window of opportunity, go for Expanded Magazines. It's especially great on midline ships that can use Burst PD to get extra mileage out of the hullmod while also boosting the efficiency of Needlers, HVDs and other high-end weapons with low ammo.

[SafariJohn]

I think the campaign should go towards the long-term stuff, while the missions should generally focus on hop-in-and-play type action.

I believe we can please both sides. Many of us see ways that the game can become more long-term oriented, and SS+ shows that you can even go really arcade-y with its arcade mission. We can have both; they can coexist.

[Megas]

@ Cycerin:  Yes, Expanded Magazines is still useful, but now that most big ships have peak performance timers, Hardened Subsystems competes.  So far, I have traded Expanded Magazines and more for Hardened Subsystems (or other goodie I desire more) on most ships.  Before this release, I added Expanded Magazines on all low-tech/midline ships - it was one of those must-have mods for ammo ships.  Now, I use Expanded Magazines only if I have spare OP left.

@ Hartlord:  Unfortunately, ships in standard missions do not have max skills, and are no fun to play.  (I have no idea on mods)  I play campaign exclusively because that is where the good stuff is.  Missions is like Shareware Doom, with one episode and some enemies and weapons.  If you want the biggest stuff like cyberdemon and BFG, get the registered or retail version.  In Starsector's case, that means play the campaign.

[SafariJohn]

It doesn't have to be that way.

[BillyRueben]

Long Term doesn't mean it needs to be more complicated. Some of the newer players are already having issues wrapping their heads around how the economics work. You want to keep piling more rules on top of that? Not only that, but this particular "Combat ready == ammo count" rule is something that you'd only learn AFTER it was a problem, and isn't something most would know before going in to combat.

[MindsEye]

Well balance it to be a factor then.

To be balanced, Ballistics would have to be significantly more powerful, DPS/Flux-wise.  More over, when it's "a factor" is largely dependent on play-styles; if you're a lone-wolf, one-ship-at-a-time arcade player, then ammo of any kind is a major deterrent from using Ballistics at all; if you're mega-fleet player, then it's much less important than how good the DPS/Flux efficiency is and whether you want to go Low / Mid Tech at all, past the early game.

Well to balance the lone wolf playstyle use extended magazines. Make it use alot of op by transforming a large portion of your ship for ammo.Ammo could be increased 2x,3x, or whatever it takes in the form of clips to balance.So you have a 50 shot clip but you have 3 of them.It takes time to reload each clip and takes a large portion of op. This would balance it. Yes the point is to make playing with ballistics significantly different instead of the same as energy weapons. They would need different dps and different strategy and support to play.

[Toxcity]

MindsEye, your method of 'balancing' ballistics would make using low-tech/midline ships unnecessarily complicated and tedious. For example what would happen if the ship that supplies ammo got destroyed when I needed it? I would pretty much have to abandon the battle because I couldn't attack. That change would immediately cause high-tech ships to become the superior (and more fun) option (something 0.65 has help fix).

Also how would the ammo be set so that each shot counts? Would it be set up for a short battle, a medium one? If so it would make that ammo ship mandatory if you unexpectedly had a long battle, causing more trouble for low-tech/midline and more reason to use high-tech. It would also make weapons like the assault chaingun and AC series useless considering their bad accuracy.

Personally I think how it is now is a step in the right direction. While some ballistic weapons need work (PD and needlers) most are actually useful, including those that were originally worthless like the HMG and Gauss Cannon.

[Megas]

Previously, I would not use HMG and Gauss Cannon because of low ammo even with Expanded Magazines.  Now, with rechargeable ammo, Gauss Cannon is my go-to heavy weapon on a Conquest flagship (if I want to play keep-away).  For Dominator or Onslaught, I still prefer Storm Needler if I have it, or either Hellbore or HAG if not.  HAG's newfound high capacity (combined with Hellbore's vastly reduced capacity) has made it a very good weapon.

[Histidine]

I think Alex's idea here is good:

Hmm. It might make sense to go back to infinite ammo for a few ballistics (conceptually, they can just reload as fast as they fire), and only leave the clip-based mechanic on a few weapons where it makes sense as a balancing factor. That'd also meet the original goal of simplifying things somewhat.

(c.f. Autopulse Laser, Burst PD Laser/Heavy Burst Laser)

[Voiddweller]

I am totally against the whole idea of degrading performance in combat, especially if there is no ammunition limits now. While it seems logical for frigates, it is killing destroyers because many high-end frigates outperform them, and there is only one really good destroyer on vanilla game - Medusa. While destroyers are significantly more powerful, they lack essential speed to keep themselves out of dangerous situations, while many frigates can outrun missiles with ease. Performance time limits effectively cripples any wear-down tactics against large, slow fleets, where destroyers were useful.
I think ammo limits only means something for missiles and some slow-firing low-capacity ballistics. And i doubt autocannons or machineguns need any ammo count, because i never ran out of ammo using this stuff.
While totally running out of ammo can be crippling, having ammunition regenerate over time is a good idea. Though battles may become more difficult, because AI won't stop showering you with nasty seekers...