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Modding / too many mod weapons have EMP damage
« on: July 09, 2021, 11:08:45 PM »
this might be a hot take, but, most mod weapons seem to compulsively put EMP damage on anything that isn't a pure ballistic weapon. Look at this. This is the first mod I've opened up. I have 63 mods installed to go through. To compare; (not counting fighter weapons, dupes & redacted) vanilla has 8 emp weapons.
itstimetostop.meme
i get the compulsion. In your head you picture your modguns being powerful enough to knock an enemy's guns or engines out. The problem here is all weapons already do that. it's a function of damage, you can LAG an onslaught's engines out pretty easily -- and it doesn't have a lick of emp. You don't need emp.
Most of the time, emp should only be going on weapons who are explicitly intended to be drastically underpowered & only useful for their non-damage utility. Think about what's got EMP in vanilla; ion beam, salamanders, sabots.
What do they have in common? They aren't normal weapons. Emp weapons can generally be broken down into 3 categories.
1) weapons with awful flux-per-damage. Look at the ion beam's stats; if it didn't have emp, would you use it? No, never, so its fine that it has emp.
2) anti-shield weapons. We're talking sabots & HVD here. They have it to force the player to make a choice between losing shields or losing guns. Without it kinetic support guns become an inefficient energy gun bc the target will just drop shield & take it on the armor/hull every time. Their emp isnt there to disable weapons, its there to force you to take kinetics on the shield as intended.
3) end-game weapons so powerful that its natural weapon-disabling from damage is wasted bc it can only disable guns it hits. What I mean here is if you hit a ship & disable all the guns it hit, then increasing its damage won't increase the guns it disables -- the natural disabling ceases to scale with damage at a certain point, & emp gets added in to circumvent this soft-damage ceiling -- effectively it is simulating the spalling effect of slamming a ship with a shot so hard that even guns that weren't hit are knocked out. Like the Tachyon Lance.
Those are the 3 situations. Utility weapons that would be otherwise worthless, kinetic support weapons, and end-game weapons with huge damage alpha & low refire rates. There are exceptions allowed, but those exceptions are made notable & interesting by being the exception. A good emp weapon is not just made by the gun you put it on, but also in the guns you don't put it on.
TLDR; your ir pulse laser alternative doesn't need emp damage.
itstimetostop.meme
i get the compulsion. In your head you picture your modguns being powerful enough to knock an enemy's guns or engines out. The problem here is all weapons already do that. it's a function of damage, you can LAG an onslaught's engines out pretty easily -- and it doesn't have a lick of emp. You don't need emp.
Most of the time, emp should only be going on weapons who are explicitly intended to be drastically underpowered & only useful for their non-damage utility. Think about what's got EMP in vanilla; ion beam, salamanders, sabots.
What do they have in common? They aren't normal weapons. Emp weapons can generally be broken down into 3 categories.
1) weapons with awful flux-per-damage. Look at the ion beam's stats; if it didn't have emp, would you use it? No, never, so its fine that it has emp.
2) anti-shield weapons. We're talking sabots & HVD here. They have it to force the player to make a choice between losing shields or losing guns. Without it kinetic support guns become an inefficient energy gun bc the target will just drop shield & take it on the armor/hull every time. Their emp isnt there to disable weapons, its there to force you to take kinetics on the shield as intended.
3) end-game weapons so powerful that its natural weapon-disabling from damage is wasted bc it can only disable guns it hits. What I mean here is if you hit a ship & disable all the guns it hit, then increasing its damage won't increase the guns it disables -- the natural disabling ceases to scale with damage at a certain point, & emp gets added in to circumvent this soft-damage ceiling -- effectively it is simulating the spalling effect of slamming a ship with a shot so hard that even guns that weren't hit are knocked out. Like the Tachyon Lance.
Those are the 3 situations. Utility weapons that would be otherwise worthless, kinetic support weapons, and end-game weapons with huge damage alpha & low refire rates. There are exceptions allowed, but those exceptions are made notable & interesting by being the exception. A good emp weapon is not just made by the gun you put it on, but also in the guns you don't put it on.
TLDR; your ir pulse laser alternative doesn't need emp damage.