Hmm. I feel like this is assuming that "having weapons in all slots" is a good thing regardless of *why* there are weapons in all slots.Because filling up mounts with guns on ships looks good. On the other hand, mostly unarmed ships look ugly, and it feels like an insult when such loadouts are more effective than one loaded with guns. It is certainly non-intuitive.
[total damage over a fight] = DPS * health/enemy DPS
I kinda like the look of some empty mounts, now that they have covers.[total damage over a fight] = DPS * health/enemy DPS
That "health" variable is quite the oversimplifcation of positioning, dodging, tactics, shield management...well, most of the combat gameplay, really.
Because positioning, dodging, tactics, shield management et all ... and so we don't actually care when choosing how to optimize caps and vents. They do not matter
Iirc, one of the things contributing to the value of vents over capacitators is their utility during overload.
More vents decrease the amount of flux you will have after an overload (and the overload duration?), while caps increase it.
Maybe that should be reversed? If more vents were bad during an overload and more caps good, that would expand caps role as the safe, conservative alternative to even more daring, risky vents.
Iore-wise we could imagine that an overload means uncontrolled venting into the interior of the ship ( more vents mean more uncontrolled venting), while more capacitors are better able to absorb that chaotic venting.
If some mounts being empty is normal, vanilla variants should do that at least sometimes. (Although I understand autofit plugin doesn't handle empty mounts well)
Hmm. So this is developing the idea of making overfluxed loadouts / alpha strikes more potent, right? That is, making caps better goes ... somewhat hand-in-hand with making overfluxed loadouts better. Not precisely, but still.
Thing is, I don't think that improving essentially a failure case ("oops, overloaded, 50% chance you're about to be deleted by some Harpoons anyway") is going to be a super effective way to go here. It feels like it'd need to improve something the player wants to do, not something they would avoid almost entirely with perfect play. Hmm.
Well, that's not actually true, is it? See: phase ships and capacitors being comparatively a much better choice on them than on other ships, due to their ability to maneuver in and out, making high alpha strikes (and thus caps) more effective. Any ship that can choose the engagement can benefit more from capacitors over vents, with phase ships being the most extreme example (and, granted, they also need extra flux capacity to close in effectively, but that's not the only reason caps are good on them.)
I see what you're saying, yeah. Overload is still something to avoid, though - I guess this could be an ok effect on some ships (generally support that's not meant to fight - where you *already* often want caps anyway)), but for anything else, I don't think it'd make enough difference. It's still just buffing a state the ship is doing its best to avoid!
Well, that's not actually true, is it? See: phase ships and capacitors being comparatively a much better choice on them than on other ships, due to their ability to maneuver in and out, making high alpha strikes (and thus caps) more effective. Any ship that can choose the engagement can benefit more from capacitors over vents, with phase ships being the most extreme example (and, granted, they also need extra flux capacity to close in effectively, but that's not the only reason caps are good on them.)i have to disagree on this. i'm pretty fly the doom constantly (my doom fanaticism is so bad i'm getting bored of the game) and i would never take a cap over a vent on this ship and i'm over capping constantly and only 2-3 of my anti matter blaster totally worth is because thanks to the vent i can even at max flux "instantly" cloak again. even at 100 % it only take a very very short time to vent the ship.
I think my main gripe, as I harped on with the 2 new cruisers, is that some ships have slots they NEVER want a weapon in. Scarab's side slots, for example; it's bad design IMO.
Well... sure but i have a feeling we weren't talking about phase ships. But even then the vents and caps trade off works. Its just that vents allow a faster recycle time and caps allow a higher burst. Fundamentally your DPS is still hard limited by your vents in a linear fashion. The caps just let you bank it.
Same thing happens for "high mobility ships" but caps also provide immediate tank and so extend the potential engagement duration as well (as well as let you bank your flux dissipation)
As a result the effectiveness of the ship is still a function of the product of vents and caps and absent non-linear scaling as to their value you will still tend to maximize at whichever additional vent/cap has the higher percentage increase.
Keep in mind that my position was that "caps are undervalued right now in most peoples fitting paradigm". I think that so is overfluxing (so long as you've range gapped your weapons such that they provide significantly different value/purpose to where you spend the flux) but that situation would still be improved by better AI weapon management
If you'd want to be quite adventerous here, you could change that and let players develop overload into a state that's part of their tactis. Imagine you, on you max caps ship, approach a target, fire a battery of AM-blasters and max out flux, get overloaded, and now your dissipation is actually higher than it would be if your (non-existing) vents were still responsible for it. You could complement that playstile with hullmods, e.g. one that lets you fire weapons even during overload - at the cost of permanent flux capacity for the duration of the battle.
Or one that makes it so the overload acts like the EMP-effect of the Omen.
SpoilerPersonally, I have no issues with empty mounts. And you're still going to run into that in player fleets sometimes simply because they don't have weapons on hand or purchasable to fill them with. Sometimes when you buy that wolf, you've got a pulse laser and no other energy weapons for sale. It is just making a bad situation worse for no good reason.
If you increase flux stats, you'll still have some load outs without all weapon slots filled because players will push their OP into hullmods. Or simply switch to higher flux weapons and still leave some empty. As far as I can tell, one of the design goals of the ship loadout system is flexibility and trade offs. So give an Onslaught double the flux dissipation, and you will still have builds that pump a ton of OP into hullmods and perhaps leave off weapons. Especially if they pile on high flux cost weapons.
The biggest problem with this idea, is we've got huge variation in weapon OP costs and flux usage. For any sane amount of flux you put on an Onslaught, I can always put more weapons on it than flux dissipation allows. All you would be doing is moving the cutoff where empty mounts start showing up. An Onslaught equipped with three Mjolnirs and the built in two TPC hits 2400 flux/second. And that is just on the larges. Throw on high flux mediums and smalls and you can probably hit almost 7,000 flux per second. An Onslaught equipped with 3 Hellbore and 2 TPC hits 1150 flux/second. There's a 1250 flux plus 24 OP difference right there in the larges, and potentially another 4,000 flux/second in the smalls if you just fill them vulcans or something.
If you give all ships tons of flux dissipation, and suddenly the cheap, flux efficient weapons don't have a place. Why use cheap bombers on a Drover or Astral with guns/missiles when you can just use high end bombers and guns?
Unless people are proposing to flatten all weapon OP costs and flux usage, while also making them trivial in OP cost relative to hull mods, I don't see how you can avoid some player builds skipping weapons.[close]
i have to disagree on this. i'm pretty fly the doom constantly (my doom fanaticism is so bad i'm getting bored of the game) and i would never take a cap over a vent on this ship and i'm over capping constantly and only 2-3 of my anti matter blaster totally worth is because thanks to the vent i can even at max flux "instantly" cloak again. even at 100 % it only take a very very short time to vent the ship.
i care about the time it takes to vent caps don't help me here and i rarely vent when i'm even close to 100% i'm venting at 1-30 % all the time.
but i'm personally think the system is currently working pretty good.
Iirc, one of the things contributing to the value of vents over capacitators is their utility during overload.Vents are better than caps because dissipation is firepower over time. Caps are good for short or lopsided engagements, where you just swoop and win, but most of my battles are ones where there's no possible flux capacitance that would let me win. If you're going to hit the cap anyway, it's better to have more vents and perform better when the situation is unfavourable. Ships that can retreat far, far away to vent can benefit from caps somewhat, but they are rare.
More vents decrease the amount of flux you will have after an overload (and the overload duration?), while caps increase it.
I think my main gripe, as I harped on with the 2 new cruisers, is that some ships have slots they NEVER want a weapon in. Scarab's side slots, for example; it's bad design IMO.Mora and Onslaught also have some unnecessary mounts, but those are far more arguable.
I think for DPS considerations, it's also important to think about venting and vent cycles as well. You get double dissipation while venting, so it's actually better for DPS to fire more than your dissipation and vent than to fire right at dissipation forever. You bank up some flux but then dissipate it at 2x speed which does more damage than you would have firing at base dissipation the whole time.Vents make venting faster and AI more eager to do it. It's a no brainer for the player and still an attractive option for AI, though the latter more because AI is just too shy about venting.
I don't think you can prevent that kind of specialization but here's why it's "bad" for gameplay to me: the only ships in the game that utilize this tactic are player-made. Enemy fleets and the Autofit algorithm try to fill every weapon mount. A new player might wise up eventually to leaving a few mounts empty but the vast majority of use-cases he/she will see initially are fully-armed ships. It will take a lot experimentation or going onto forums like this one for someone to think outside-the-box like that. There are a few tips at start up that say "having more guns is not necessarily better" but until someone sees the actual advantage in action, it doesn't really click. Instead, trying to work within-the-box, players will do what we've always done and use smaller weapons, max vents, use higher-efficiency weapons, etc., but still try to fill as many weapon mounts as possible. Leaving slots empty will not "feel" right because the game seems to be pushing you to fill them.In my case, I fill mounts because mounts are meant to be filled, and not filling them looks... so wrong. Mostly unarmed ships (including carriers that sacrifice weapons for high-end fighters like Astral does) look dumb, and it is grating if they are both effective and more effective than a fully-armed or even mostly armed ship.
That's why I like an idea that was floated earlier in this thread and that is putting "something else" in a weapon mount. There's a ton of things you could do here, but what strikes me as very interesting is putting hullmod-like bonuses in empty weapon mounts is that if an extra auxiliary engine, some kind of local shield, extra missiles, etc. were physically on the ship, they could be disabled/destroyed mid-battle. Such a system reminds me of Homeworld 2 where the Capital ship Subsystems that allowed for building ships, hyperspace jumps, etc. were physical entities that could be targeted. But, perhaps the buffs/bonuses that these "mounted" hullmods have couldn't be achieved through traditional hullmods.The decorative satellite dish Onslaught used to have. Maybe greater sight radius (2500 is not enough for big screens) and bigger ECM bonus.
And anyway, even if you wanna players to fill all HPs, giving them penalties is bad game design. Giving them in-game problem, which can be solved by using all avaliable HPs is good one.
AFAIC leaving some mounts empty is part of the ship loadout design decision, so up to the player.I do not like it when it is optimal or better than filling in the majority of the ship's mounts. It looks so wrong, even if optimal gameplay demands leaving too many mounts empty. Hurts even more when leaving so many mounts empty was not so advantageous in previous releases.
Hmm. I feel like this is assuming that "having weapons in all slots" is a good thing regardless of *why* there are weapons in all slots. I don't think that holds up - having weapons in all slots is good if you, well, want the weapons that are there and mean to use them.I 100% think it should be a viable option to "under mount" a ship, but I also feel like it shouldn't be the go to?
Just having some random stuff there - or the cheapest possible, to be able to max out vents - or some other idea (say, not having weapons in a slot reduces armor, or w/e)... I think that'd just make a loadout feel messy, because you're putting weapons in for some reason other than actually wanting the weapons. "Put the weapons in a separate group and never fire them" could become a thing, etc.
I'm not entirely sold on the premise that "always have weapons in all slots" is good. If that were a goal, though, then I think the solution would probably involve increasing ship flux budgets (which could be troublesome to iron out balance-wise) and/or adding some very low-end, low-flux options for ... probably small and medium ballistic/energy slots. Though even if these cost 1-2 OP and generated no flux, it might be a hard sell in a lot of cases.
It seems like there is also some potential in somehow making burst damage potential "better" (which would make an over-fluxed loadout more desirable), but I haven't really thought that through, so that's mostly theoretical...
I think the first thing to help with this would be clearer feedback on flux stats. It's SO important but it's just "more numbers" on a screen that's already overwhelming with them.
Having flux dissipation right next to(not on a line below) weapon flux (both on the main screen and the weapon group screen) would help really draw eyes on the idea that comparing these two numbers is super super vital. Bonus points if you can color code the dissipation number on some % scheme (super green when it's 2 to 1 and super red when it's 1 to 2 or something). Or maybe just put the % efficiency right next to it instead (numbers easier than colors? I dunno UI is the devil and its half my job).
I will sometimes leave 2 small mounts empty on a Legion because they have small arcs, but its a fantastic ship to just load up on weapons otherwise. It has enough flux to run its large ballistics and 5 medium missiles is a fantastic punch.For my Legion, all small mounts and maybe some of the medium mounts are empty. Weapon loadouts are one among:
I think it'd be very easy to design a 0 OP "default" weapon for every slot type without breaking anything balance wise. It would probably even help to have a little more guaranteed PD, even if it's very bad PD, to aggregate together in bigger fights.
0 OP weapons do represent some flux savings (over non 0 OP weapons) in the sense that you free up OP to spend on flux related stuff like vents and hull mods. 0 OP weapons can be left not firing and only used in specific circumstances without any penalty: there's no downside to putting them on your ship (other than credit cost I suppose), even if you don't use them, which does solve the 'empty mounts' problem, albeit not necessarily in the most natural way.AI is not good at leaving weapons alone. If it has them, it will use them. (To be honest, there were times I wish I could rip out the TPCs from Onslaught because AI loves to max its flux bar by firing them with reckless abandon.)
Eh, even if a weapon was 0 OP, if costs flux to fire than it defeats the purpose of why I'm leaving the slot empty. I leave slots empty for flux reasons far more often than trying to save OP.Varies by ship for me. For carriers and phase ships, it is purely for OP reasons. (I would gladly put guns on carriers, but lack of OP after fighters prevents that, and I would put PD on Harbinger and more guns on Doom if I had more OP.) For Aurora and Odyssey, it is primarily lack of OP (to afford all among flux, hullmods, and minor weapons). For something like Onslaught, it is mostly due to lack of dissipation. For Conquest, it is a mix of three reasons: 1) not enough OP to fill all missile slots, 2) too much flux usage with medium energy weapon, and 3) energy and rear medium ballistic left empty to make sure AI stays within optimal range band with its three important guns (Mjolnir, Heavy Needler, and Mark IX).
Eh, even if a weapon was 0 OP, if costs flux to fire than it defeats the purpose of why I'm leaving the slot empty.
Eh, even if a weapon was 0 OP, if costs flux to fire than it defeats the purpose of why I'm leaving the slot empty.
The solution to that problem is in your sentence. They shouldn't cost flux to fire.
I will point out we already have a 0 OP cost/0 flux cost option. It is called the empty weapon slot and there are already "optimal builds" using it.Only problem (to me) is that zero cost option looks ugly and feels stupid when about more than half of all mounts are empty, regardless of covers. I use some of those builds (because they are optimal), but I do not like using them. Nonsense like unarmed carrier or two blaster-only Aurora.
Sorry I didn't go through all of the previous posts but I just want to say I agree it's dumb when the optimal build for a ship is to leave it almost naked and focus everything into flux and hullmods. Of course there's nothing terribly wrong with that, it just bothers me it's a thing on multiple ships.Totally agreed.
Zero cost things tend to be very hard to balance. Either they're pointless from a combat point of view (having no effect on the outcome) and essentially just a prettier weapon cover, or they are going to shift the optimal loadout even more towards a couple high end/high flux weapons and fill out everything else with 0 cost stuff, meaning the low cost and higher flux efficient weapons get skipped even more.
I will point out we already have a 0 OP cost/0 flux cost option. It is called the empty weapon slot and there are already "optimal builds" using it. This proposed option will simply make said builds even better and in fact push builds more towards that end of things (a couple high OP cost/high flux usage weapons, high OP cost fighters and nothing else). Is that what we want in the game balance space?
I find it interesting that the detractors of "naked hulls," myself included, continue to appeal to the "feel" or "look" of said ships. Do we have any out there that prefer the "feel" or "look" of these ships when leaving a bunch of mounts empty? (The question behind the question: is this a balance concern, aesthetic concern, gameplay concern, or what?)For me, it is mostly an aesthetic concern. Balance and gameplay wise, naked hulls are probably mostly fine, albeit unintuitive since variants rarely have missing (or even undergunned) mounts. Mostly because it is on par with fun minor exploits like vent spamming and burn cancelling, and Alex removed them because AI does not know how to use those exploits to even the playing field. AI rarely has variants with naked or undergunned mounts. Basically, most ships on the (enemy) NPC side are traditional lots-of-guns ships armed to the teeth.
Back to aesthetics, I just cannot stand the look or feel of the naked hulls. I want a capital ship to fire lots of guns at a bunch of little ships or at an enemy battleship. I do not want a capital ship to have one or two guns pretending to be a shmup fighter craft (like two plasma Odyssey or unarmed Astral), and being better or more optimal than a traditional lots-of-guns battleship because the latter does not have the stats (even after skill min-maxing) to support lots of guns. I already played many other space games, starting with '80s arcade games and Atarl 2600 console, for fighter craft gameplay. I got Starsector so I could pilot a big ship and mow down ships with lots of guns.
Similarly, when fighters were ships, carriers could arm themselves with guns and brawl in a pinch, much like Mules can. Now, with fighters as weapons, carriers spend most OP on good fighters and hullmods (because guns and bad fighters perform worse), and any weapons they have are either PD or missile support. Trying to brawl like a Mule is futile, except for Legion. I do not like this.
I do not give hard-flux Odyssey to AI because it plasma burns into a mob, gets surrounded, takes hits in undefended areas, and dies quickly. The only AI Odyssey I had some success with (that is, not dying early by stupidity) is a missile-and-beam heavy loadout, which is not what I want to use if I pilot it. The loadout of playership Odyssey and AI Odyssey in my fleet is completely, radically different. Thus, I generally avoid using Odyssey in my fleet. That is unlike other capitals in my fleet where I can get away with the same loadout for both my use and AI use.
If you were to make APL into a brawling gun like PC, then that defeats the point of those weapons being different.APL is unique because of its good efficiency (for energy) that it pays for with lower armor penetration and low sustained DPS. Plasma cannon has super good armor penetration that it pays for with mediocre efficiency and high flux cost. I don't think that a moderate increase in sustained DPS (I'm talking like 400-450 sustained DPS instead of 300 which is still way less than PC at 750 DPS) would move them into the same niche. You would still vastly prefer PC for anti-armor and DPS but auto pulse would help more with shield breaking which is the role it already has. It would just be a bit less of liability in extended engagements.
The difference between IR Pulse Laser and normal Pulse Laser is that the former does about equal damage to similar ballistics (it deals about as much damage as Dual Autocannon, before DAC even has kinetic bonus to shields applied to it!), whereas Pulse Laser does 50% more damage than equivalent ballistics, making up for the energy type. It's more bursty.Ballistic weapon damage multipliers and range bonuses still make pulse laser very bad in comparison. The HAC has ~33% more shield dps than pulse laser while having ~50% less flux cost and 200 extra range. Then against hull where raw DPS might be a plus, PL and IRPL still get gimped by residual armor and aren't much better than kinetics against decently armored targets (i.e. you want another weapon for hull dps in either case). Pulse laser is definitely better than IR pulse laser, but it still doesn't make up the difference between ballistics and energy. Hard flux energy weapon selection is like if your only options were the arblest (pulse laser) and assault chaingun (heavy blaster). I guess beams are sort of like HVD/Mauler builds too, but that's sort of a different thread. Basically, I think energy weapon slots lack options to brawl effectively (because of efficiency) so you kinda have to go for 'quasi SO' builds that are all in on dissipation, and those builds work best by focusing on a few weapons.
Autopulse is little more than a more flux efficient pulse laser in the biggest fights - not good enough. Autopulse is for alpha-striking weaker targets. (Against a battlestation, mining blaster is better.) There is no substitute for the plasma cannon. Plasma cannon has excellent DPS, more penetration than a pulse laser, and better efficiency than mining/heavy blasters, and more range than both (700 vs. 600).
Same idea with unarmed carrier. I could use guns and Talons, but they are suboptimal compared to unarmed carrier.
I tried additional weapons on two plasma odyssey like locusts and burst pd, but ended up not having enough OP left to go all in on flux stats to brawl very well. Locusts in big fights are a waste without Expanded Missile Racks (they do not last long enough without it, and Odyssey cannot afford EMR), and putting more than a few PD eats too much OP from caps. Odyssey with both max caps and vents (and the shield and extra flux hullmods) can fire plasma for a long time and outgun just about anything, then burn away to flee. (But to get that, Odyssey is left mostly naked aside from the two plasma and two fighters.) Odyssey with no caps cannot sustain double plasma long enough.
Were you testing with skills? 2x Plasma odyssey with dissipation skills is a pretty big difference. I don't feel like I need caps much to fire 2x plasma cannons with skills (I guess I still take hardened shields which is sort of like caps).Some, but not full combat because I had nine sunk into Industy (for Industrial Planning and Colony Management), and some others unspent because I could not decide which combat skills I want. I also had no points in Officer Management, though I wanted one for six officers.
Warships should be able to equip lots of weapons though.
I think most of the empty mount set ups on warships (particularly high tech ships) are a result of energy weapon balance and the fundamental nature of the flux mechanics. Energy weapons pretty much universally have efficiency 1:1 or worse meaning that it's actively bad to fire into shields (you build more flux in your own ship than the enemy) unless you have enough dissipation to fire without generating flux in your own ships (or very close to that point).
That reality of these mechanics naturally leads to 'empty loadouts' because you need to have enough dissipation to fire your weapons, otherwise you're hurting yourself (or treading water/not making progress in the fight).
Ballistic weapon damage multipliers and range bonuses still make pulse laser very bad in comparison. The HAC has ~33% more shield dps than pulse laser while having ~50% less flux cost and 200 extra range. Then against hull where raw DPS might be a plus, PL and IRPL still get gimped by residual armor and aren't much better than kinetics against decently armored targets (i.e. you want another weapon for hull dps in either case). Pulse laser is definitely better than IR pulse laser, but it still doesn't make up the difference between ballistics and energy. Hard flux energy weapon selection is like if your only options were the arblest (pulse laser) and assault chaingun (heavy blaster). I guess beams are sort of like HVD/Mauler builds too, but that's sort of a different thread. Basically, I think energy weapon slots lack options to brawl effectively (because of efficiency) so you kinda have to go for 'quasi SO' builds that are all in on dissipation, and those builds work best by focusing on a few weapons.Thank you for noticing that ballistic weapons and energy weapons are not, in fact, the same.
So AFAIC empty mounts are not a problem to solve, and so far, from what I have read in this conversation, I have not found any compelling reason to consider them as a problem."As far as I cnow"?
2 Pulse Lasers will have 606 DPS against shields and armour, for 666 FPS, with perfect accuracy.
HAC and Heavy Mortar will have 538 DPS against shields, 374 DPS against 100 armour, for 394 FPS. More range, less accuracy. HAC and Heavy Mauler combo would have 347 DPS against shields, 231 DPS against 100 armour, for 364 FPS. Again, more range, less accuracy.
2x Pulse lasers actually have 303 total DPS against 100 armor if you want a fair comparison. Also HAC + Mauler is 494.5 DPS to shields.Yeah, sorry, I went "eh, it's energy, it's the same" and then changed my mind to include armour damage reduction. And I probably should have caught up to HAC + Heavy Mauler combo's incorrect value faster, it's lower than just HAC alone... Either way, the idea is that comparing a single weapons against another single weapon is pointless with energy weapons.
Maybe I just prefer decent ships with good weapons rather than super powerful ships with crappy weapons. I find the latter very unsatisfying.Too bad that's basically the entire concept of high-tech ships.
The pulse laser feels like the commonly available weak weapon that needs to exist in the game, but there aren't the other good options as alternatives.Such weapons at medium size generally cost 7 or 8 OP (Arbalest, Heavy Mortar, single Flak, Pilums), but Pulse Laser costs 10 OP and is unavailable at Open Market like a mid-grade medium weapon (even if it does not feel like one). Mining Blaster is the commonly available weapon at Open Market, but has awful range and efficiency, and costs 10 OP.
Too bad that's basically the entire concept of high-tech ships.Not all are elite ships. Wolf is crappy, not enough flux stats to support even a Pulse Laser, let alone Heavy Blaster. Shrike is a cheap ship. Next release will bring the Fury. Then there is Apogee, which seems to be intended to be a high-tech Mule/Falcon blend, but ends up being overpowered for its price after it gets Plasma Cannon and Locusts.
How much does damage to Hull matter in the HAC/Mauler vs Pulse Laser match up? Pulse Laser is 606 DPS to hull, at 0.9 efficiency. Heavy Autocannon is 214 DPS to hull at 1.0 efficiency and Mauler is 133 DPS at 0.89 efficiency - for a combined 347 DPS at 0.95 efficiency....You picked the heavy mauler which is an (intentionally) low DPS 1000 range sniper. It's not surprising that you find the DPS to be lacking... The range is the reason to use that gun, not the DPS, and I think that it's a bit weak at the moment. You should really compare to the heavy mortar which is the common unspecialized ballistic HE option.
I would rather them be a bit worse and have a bit better guns. It doesn't have to completely negate the design philosophy. I just wish it was a bit less extreme so that it didn't sometimes feel like you were bashing your head against aMaybe I just prefer decent ships with good weapons rather than super powerful ships with crappy weapons. I find the latter very unsatisfying.Too bad that's basically the entire concept of high-tech ships.
The pulse laser is probably fine as a common but slightly weak weapon, but it shouldn't be the best medium energy anti shield option that high tech ships have. High tech ships have tons of great anti hull and anti armor weapons already, they don't need a mediocre one like the pulse laser, they need a decent anti shield weapon, even if that means some ships have to be slightly nerfed to not be OP. The reason I got onto this whole tangent in the first place was that I think the empty mount spam on high tech ships is (to some degree) a product of the lack of good anti-shield options. In the absence of efficient damage, you have to max vents and remain under dissipation to win the flux war leading naturally to the empty mount loadouts which simply leverage that limited dissipation in the most efficient way. At least that's my hypothesis.Which also feeds into Sabot spam. For ships like Shrike and Aurora, if it cannot get the flux stats it needs to overwhelm an enemy, then the only other option is the spam Sabots.
(As an aside, I sometimes forget that Energy was originally built around doing extra damage as flux increased. Likewise, for Ballistics having ammo. Not that I opine for the good old days but some of the principles behind the weapons have been lost along the away and those were balancing factors. Energy being short-ranged, unlimited generalists and growing more powerful as you use them is a totally different beast than specialized, long-range Ballistics that had limited use. I'm not against moving away from the original design but knowing the history helps explain why Energy and Ballistics are the way they are.)Pulse lasers were really bad back in those days. Their DPS was hideously low. (I often preferred mining blaster over pulse laser as the cheap medium option.) They got the most DPS increase after the removal of flux supercharge. However, mining blaster got shafted after the removal of flux supercharge.
I agree about the Pulse Laser, though Gravitons do exist. The next patch may add a few wrinkles. A 500-range Graviton that does 200 hard flux/sec would supersede the Pulse Laser for efficiency against shields. A lot of the Small Energy beams might become pseudo-useful in an assault role. Also, I think bonus damage for high-flux is making a return via skills. I still maintain that Small Energy is by far the worst slot to have in the game, though, and that contributes to the empty mounts problem for High-Tech.
Also, I am tempted to sack mounts on Dominator and Onslaught at times to get more OP. Since they have dissipation problems, and they cannot use Locusts, they really want Expanded Missile Racks, and that does not come cheap. No missiles Dominator and Onslaught seem like a bad idea because they seem to lack firepower without missiles.
Very good point, lots of things will need to be reevaluated in the next release.
How much does damage to Hull matter in the HAC/Mauler vs Pulse Laser match up? Pulse Laser is 606 DPS to hull, at 0.9 efficiency. Heavy Autocannon is 214 DPS to hull at 1.0 efficiency and Mauler is 133 DPS at 0.89 efficiency - for a combined 347 DPS at 0.95 efficiency....You picked the heavy mauler which is an (intentionally) low DPS 1000 range sniper. It's not surprising that you find the DPS to be lacking... The range is the reason to use that gun, not the DPS, and I think that it's a bit weak at the moment. You should really compare to the heavy mortar which is the common unspecialized ballistic HE option.
Also, raw amror/hull dps isn't really relevant, performance against actual armor values you will likely encounter is. I demonstrated in my last post that pulse laser has worse armor performance against average destroyer tier armor (500) which is the probably the most common and thus most important scenario. Pulse laser does 484 dps to hull against 500 armor, 404 dps to hull against 1000 armor. It still definitely has an advantage, but it's quite a bit smaller. Only ~40% hull dps advantage compared to HAC+Mortar across the 500-1000 armor range, as far as I can tell, so not a particularly efficient use of that extra 70% flux generation.
Also if you're trying to kill an onslaught with two medium slots, something has gone horribly wrong. You should consider performance against destroyers and maybe light cruisers.
Well, given the superiority of HAC over pulse in terms of shields, lets take that Medusa example.Minor interjection here, but high shields, low armor/hull is one of the better cases for pulse lasers. As mentioned somewhere previously in the thread, the pulse laser is probably the best anti-shield Energy weapon when it comes to medium mounts. Pulse Lasers start having problems when they have difficulty cracking armor. I'd like to see the results against an Enforcer or Venture/Dominator, which with their significantly lower speed further skew the results back towards the ballistics.
Unmodded Medusa is 10,000 effective shield points, 300 armor and 3000 hull, so pretty much worst case for the pulse laser (high shields, low hull).
Well, given the superiority of HAC over pulse in terms of shields, lets take that Medusa example.Minor interjection here, but high shields, low armor/hull is one of the better cases for pulse lasers. As mentioned somewhere previously in the thread, the pulse laser is probably the best anti-shield Energy weapon when it comes to medium mounts. Pulse Lasers start having problems when they have difficulty cracking armor. I'd like to see the results against an Enforcer or Venture/Dominator, which with their significantly lower speed further skew the results back towards the ballistics.
Unmodded Medusa is 10,000 effective shield points, 300 armor and 3000 hull, so pretty much worst case for the pulse laser (high shields, low hull).
@ Hiruma Kai
RE: accuracy, Looking at some follow up comments, you already know this but there's a ton of things that affect accuracy that are situation specific and I don't think an 'accuracy damage multiplier' really makes sense. Even just looking at accuracy experiments, if the AI behaves a bit differently and factors like range and speed change, the % hits are also going to change and I don't see how you can simplify that to a simple damage multiplier for all situations. Whatever number you pick for accuracy, it will be wrong a lot of the time and the player could easily manage range to mitigate it as well. Also, I believe that turrets have worse accuracy (could be wrong but I definitely remember hearing about it), so considering hard points vs turrets matters (I think).
@ Hiruma Kai
Also skills (gunnery implants) can improve accuracy and shot speed for ballistics that will significantly improve hit % but have very little affect on energy weapons which already do fine in that category (it's actually very surprising how much better needlers get with skills).