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[Gothars]

A shotgun like weapon could be fun. And good for beginners, small targets are easier to hit.

[Megas]

Lets say you literally took the Hephaestus Assault Gun and made a single barrel version with half the rate of fire... I mean, DPS wise it looks like it would balance right? Well, SS balance is extremely complex and is more than the sum of its parts. The reason why such a weapon is an issue is because anything that is not very well armored will get its armor stripped at a point with a single shot. Then you might think, well sure the Mauler does that too! Well, that is not a valid comparison, Mauler is expensive OP wise, and has a low rate of fire. While the theoretical HE weapon I am denouncing fills space with volleys of shots that are exceptionally dangerous to lighter ships and you cannot time or evade the shots easily like is possible with the Mauler.

I do not have a problem with a medium half HAG stripping thin armor in one shot; that means it is doing its job as an HE armor-breaker shot.  Effective does not necessarily mean overpowered.  It might be overpowered as a medium if it kept 900 range and cost less OP than Heavy Mauler.  If it has 700 or 800 range, costs about 10 OP, and DPS is comparable to Heavy AC or old assault chaingun, I would have no problem with it at all.  (Also, HE has less priority than kinetic, winning the flux war by pounding shields is much of the fight.)

The only problem I might have with a watered-down Mauler called Heavy Mortar is it may feel too similar with Heavy Mauler, much like medium kinetics aside from HVD (and HMG) feeling much the same, but that is minor.  We really need that baseline medium HE weapon worth 10 OP or less that works.

Re: Mauler
Mauler with 200 HE damage is still very good - long range, decent accuracy and DPS.  At 250 DPS, it was so good that it could plink at shields decently despite half DPS if the attacker only had one mount to use, plus blow big holes at unshielded targets.

Re: Vent spam
As for vent-spam, will cooldown vary by weapon fire rate?  If so, that would kill weapons with extremely long cooldown, such as AM blaster and Phase/Tachyon Lance.  I think trying to kill vent spam will trade a possible problem for another, such as possible UI frustration.

A shotgun like weapon could be fun. And good for beginners, small targets are easier to hit.

That would be good for a kinetic (or energy) weapon, due to shielded targets being bigger than unshielded targets.  As HE, it might be okay as specialized anti-fighter (although dual flak is brutally effective at that role despite fragmentation damage), but probably not as a basic general-purpose assault weapon.

[King Alfonzo]

A shotgun like weapon could be fun. And good for beginners, small targets are easier to hit.

That would be good for a kinetic (or energy) weapon, due to shielded targets being bigger than unshielded targets.  As HE, it might be okay as specialized anti-fighter (although dual flak is brutally effective at that role despite fragmentation damage), but probably not as a basic general-purpose assault weapon.

The Blackrock Volley gun is a short range kinetic shotgun - and it's an amazing anti-shield gun. As in, mindboggling amazing. Only downside is the overloads caused by the gun are short. Although maybe a shotgun ion cannon would make more sense...? The Ironweaver is longer range, more powerful, and is hilariously messy.

The Scy Burst Nailer and Autonailer are short range fragmentation shotguns, and they're amazing at sweeping missiles. I actually prefer autonailers over shredders and vulcans. Only moderately good vs. fighters.

The Shadowyards Scatter SPDC (sp?) is an energy shotgun and it's...an experience? It's a pulse gun, but I've found a little underpowered for my tastes.

The Templar Merced Cannon (I think?) is great, but crazily high flux costs kills it. The Fractual Shotgun is a really bizarre random energy shotgun that either murders or fails spectacularly.

I'm not sure if anyone has actually done an explosive shotgun.

[borgrel]

I'm not sure if anyone has actually done an explosive shotgun.

Grapeshot/Grape Launcher/Grape Cannon?

I realize its a missile and fragmentation damage but we're already off topic anyway (and talking about mods not vanilla so ....)

I think grapeshot is the most OP weapon in the game?
Grapeshot is an infinite ammo weapon with 0 flux, that is immune to PD because it detonates tooo far from the target and shotguns to be impossible to dodge

Demolishes an entire wing of fighters in a single hit, builds hard flux, overwhelms shields rather quickly, strips armour off an entire side of a ship ... and as soon as there is a single weak point .... blows the ship to hell (because it hits everywhere)

[Sy]

@Goumindong: i disagree with your assessment that long-ranged weapons are specifically for fighting larger targets, and short-ranged ones specifically for smaller targets. if that was the case, small ships would always win when maneuvered correctly, as they would simply be able to kite without ever getting into weapon range of their larger prey. there is no "natural range advantage" of larger ships in vanilla, beyond the range of larger weapons themselves.

when it comes to medium ballistic weapons, the current balance seems to be roughly along the lines of: the longer the range, the lower the dps. i agree that always adding new stuff just for the sake of getting new stuff is a bad idea, but we have no weapon that fits into the medium-ranged/medium-dps HE option for medium mounts at all. it's not a matter of "more more more", but of "we are lacking this specific thing".

i use ~800 range kinetic weapons quite frequently, on all ship size-classes. adding a 1000 range Heavy Mauler to that feels like paying extra for something that i don't really need, and can actually cause problems for the AI. adding a 450 range Assault Chaingun would either be ineffective, or force the ship into situations that are risky and make the range of my kinetics pointless.


as for your suggestion about changing HE damage into something entirely different: what you're describing is actually exactly what ion weapons (or any weapons with an EMP damage component) already do. EMP doesn't cause overloads, or affects flux at all. rather, it causes "direct damage to systems", disabling weapons and engines without doing any damage to armor or hull, and only very little damage to shields. any "repair systems", like the Automated Repair Unit hullmod, increase the speed at which said disabled weapons or engines are reactivated.

Re: Vent spam
As for vent-spam, will cooldown vary by weapon fire rate?  If so, that would kill weapons with extremely long cooldown, such as AM blaster and Phase/Tachyon Lance.  I think trying to kill vent spam will trade a possible problem for another, such as possible UI frustration.

i agree with MesoTroniK on getting rid of vent spam somehow, but i also agree that just adding a cooldown would either cause problems on its own, or would need complexity that would likely mean it would also needs its own, easily visible UI element to keep track of.

my idea would be to have a baseline cooldown time (possibly scaling with size-class) and increase the speed at which it ticks down based on current built-up flux. so a ship that goes from zero to almost full flux in just a couple seconds would likely not be affected by the cooldown at all, whereas one that always stays at very low flux would have to wait a while.
the flux dependency of the timer should probably not be linked to percentage of max flux, though, as that would incentivise against adding capacitors, in the same way that the old energy-weapon damage boost did.

[Megas]

Part of what makes vent-spam useful is how player can speed up venting (with max vents, Resistant Flux Conduits, and Power Grid Modulation 5), how player can kite with various ships, and hull regeneration when kiting is not possible.  (High-tech playership does not mind getting close to forge shields and do more damage if he can alpha-strike, vent-spam, take hull damage, alpha-strike some more, then retreat and regenerate damage taken.)

I like to see how Alex will brutalize skills and speed hullmods for the next release.  He wrote hull regeneration will be gone, which means I can no longer be careless trading hits then recover after enemy is dead.  Depending what Alex does, vent-spam may not be so optimal as it is now.

[Sy]

yeah, will be interesting to see how the skill revamp will turn out. i'm hoping (and guessing) that vent speed increase itself will also be reduced. i think aggressive vents in general should be risky, even at low flux, not something you just do by default.

[King Alfonzo]

But won't these changes make missiles even more OP?

[Megas]

It was hinted that Missile Specialization may be significantly weakened after the skill revamp.  Personally, I think most missiles are not worth their OP cost without high Missile Specialization, due to not enough bang (and reliability and speed) for their buck.

[Goumindong]

Well the problem with missiles is simply that powerful/uncounterable weapons wreck players (as more or less they will be attritioned out after multiple battles) as players are expected to win fights. 

[TheBawkHawk]

I was thinking, an idea might be just to create a Dual Flak clone that fires HE. Give it a decent range, and a fire rate that sits nicely between the slow Mauler and the faster Chaingun. It could work fairly well, as a happy middle ground between the two.

[Goumindong]

@sy

Larger weapons have naturally longer range and it's more of a less an impossibility that a smaller ship has a higher range even on similar sized weaponry. Plus smaller ships tend to have smaller flux, shield, and armor capacity and regen. So your supposition is not the case in any manner.