I made a chart~~
Noone take it TOO literally. But it's food for thought.
Connnecticut SRM frigate, 20 missiles, vs ballistic point defense weapons.
Weapon - OP Kills
Bofors Bat 12 20
Rapier Def 10 16
23mm Quad 10 10
Closein WS 10 15
42mm Adv 10 18
52mm Link 9 15
Shotgun - 8 5
40mm Flak 8 16
42mm Flak 8 13
14mm Dual 5 7
Bofors Gun 4 8
Vickers MG 3 8
23mm Gun 3 6
Not included: ammo depletion rates, behavior as part of an array, differing battlespace conditions, etc. Obviously there's a lot that affects things. For example, even the good defense systems tended to let 1-2 of the first missiles through because of the high closing rate (forward thrust + long range missile fire). That was the case for the 42mm advanced, it nailed every shot after the first group.
But I do think it illustrates the prob with the quad 23mm. Crappy is one thing, but it costs 10 OP and it has less than 50 seconds of ammunition supply to boot.
As for the regular 23mm... It's not so much its damage or anything, it's just that it cant hit the broad side of a Sword. I made some videos to show this quite literally.
http://deadlyshoe.com/games/IronTest.zipOne is of Darts, and you can see them miss all day long against a large slowly moving target. The other is of the ISA Pursuit fighters, which land most of their hits. I believe the difference comes from the ratio of the bullet speed to the fighter speed. The AI doesn't compensate well for the effect of its own movement on the bullet physics - you can see the ISA fighters whiffing when they are at certain approach angles too.
(Color values of dart video altered to show bullets more clearly.)
Microlaser is the same as 23mm gun - a very cheap energy weapon for 4 OPs. Good against single burst of low HP missiles (piranhas, hunters etc), but lacks power against anything else. Array is much better against fighters, but still its an anti-missile/torpedo weapon. Beamers are what XLE use against fighters.
I was talking about the Array. I can't repro the behavior though, now it functions normally (as opposed to flickering) when I go to record it. I guess it was a weird artifact, probably java messing up
the easy trade run in the Achiles system is honestly the only reason I play this mod more than once. Sorry but spending hours to get enough money to field more than scrap is not fun.
especially since you can't actually make money from combat anymore, and when you start you don't have enough storage space to hold more than the supplies needed to get you to the next station, so all the equipment you get as a reward from combat gets jettisoned.
balancing/improving is great and all but please be aware that balancing that might make the mid/late game more interesting can make the early game a tedious experience.
Yes it is brutal. After falling on my face a couple of times, I did a RSF mercenary start, spent all my cash on fuel and supplies, and went pirated 2-3 solo ISA traders. The real loot is trade goods and fuel, particularly stuff like exotic minerals. Supplies don't matter so much anymore. One run is enough to get you a freighter, ideally a Saiga hybrid (or something similar) to keep your speed up, which drastically increases your loot carrying ability. This was way more profitable than trying to kill pirates...
EDIT-
Ahahaha the RSF drone destroyer looks incredibly OP. I blew up 4 ISA destroyers at once in Sim. It's just not even fair. I haven't tried anything further, the game crashed and i lost my save xD. Maybe that's justplayer hands. Will experiment further.
