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[Psycho Society]

cool beans 

[Alex]

I could totally see there being small to medium sized conflicts (some really big battles in one system, followed by an attempted siege, followed by a temporary ceasefire treaty as both factions recover), implemented as a dynamically-generated event between factions that are very hostile to each other.
On their own, not a big difference, but maybe someone playing very very long campaigns could see a faction grow much more powerful and another faction wiped out?

This could help give the sector some feeling of there being bigger conflicts, without the issues (difficult-to-implement, hard for performance, chaotic for player to be caught in) of a full-blown war.

Yeah, that's very much the sort of thing I mean! Whether it'll happen or not, not sure, but we're on the same page here.

[Gothars]

I just noticed that the forum broke its number of visitors record two days after the patch notes were posted. The next release is gonna make some waves

Yeah, hmm. Not sure what that option might be, though, without being either "larger tac laser" or "smaller HIL". At 1000 range it's to be a beam, and, per the previous, there are somewhat less easy options for making them distinct. I suppose a fragmentation beam *might* be interesting...

A beam that supports other beams would be nice. The biggest disadvantage of beams is their all or nothing nature due to only dealing soft flux - either they overwhelm a targets dissipation and kill it safely, or they can't overwhelm the dissipation and are almost useless.
Hm. How about a medium beam that transforms some soft flux damage a target receives into hard flux damage. To balance this out, it might also produce hard flux on the ship that is firing it, so you cant fire continuously. Such a beam would be useless on its own, a slight disadvantage on a beam heavy ship against targets that ship could overwhelm anyway, and game changing if a beam ship engages a superior enemy.

[Arcagnello]

I just noticed that the forum broke its number of visitors record two days after the patch notes were posted. The next release is gonna make some waves

Yeah, hmm. Not sure what that option might be, though, without being either "larger tac laser" or "smaller HIL". At 1000 range it's to be a beam, and, per the previous, there are somewhat less easy options for making them distinct. I suppose a fragmentation beam *might* be interesting...

A beam that supports other beams would be nice. The biggest disadvantage of beams is their all or nothing nature due to only dealing soft flux - either they overwhelm a targets dissipation and kill it safely, or they can't overwhelm the dissipation and are almost useless.
Hm. How about a medium beam that transforms some soft flux damage a target receives into hard flux damage. To balance this out, it might also produce hard flux on the ship that is firing it, so you cant fire continuously. Such a beam would be useless on its own, a slight disadvantage on a beam heavy ship against targets that ship could overwhelm anyway, and game changing if a beam ship engages a superior enemy.

Oh we got a new visitor record? That's actually amazing!

As for more support/utility beams or energy weapons, there are quite a lot of mods doing just that (kind of a duh point to make honestly) and I am genuinely confused of wich weapon are vanilla and wich aren't sometimes, some of them are just that well balanced as far as my personal opinion is concerned. Here are some examples that just might give people ideas wink wink

I am widely using the Intense Neutrino Beam (From ED shipyard) on anything that can afford mounting it. It's a wierd, wierd mix between an Ion Beam/ a Combat Laser, has 1k range and is actually made for Point Defence but can double as a secondary weapon dealing fragmentation/EMP damage at a very attractive flux/damage ratio. It does require 14 Ordinance Points to install tough.

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Another really interesting mod weapon is the PEPPA gun from..ah...uh..I don't remember actually.
It's basically a low-ish flux large energy weapon with 1k fragmentation DPS spread across a barrage of projectiles that also deal EMP damage with 800u range. Just BRUTAL against small ships/unarmored targets but it barely does any damage to shields or armor.

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Last one (I swear) is the Double IR Pulse laser from Hazard Mining Incorporated. It's a flux efficient, hard flux dealing medium energy weapon for when you want to get a ship without enough kinetic damage sources to be good at pressuring the enemy. It obviously lacks a lot of the DPS of other laser weapons but it really allows ships to not sacrifice their own crewmembers' families to the AI overlords for as much flux dissipation as possible.

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[Alex]

Whoa, I missed the visitor record - that's really amazing, 1700+, wow!

(Thank you for the weapon ideas and such! Bit short on time to respond in detail, but, let's just say, duly noted - a bunch of interesting stuff here, all around.)

[Daynen]

It's almost like we're getting a sequel!

MY BODY IS READY.

[Deshara]

Thanks for explaining the reasoning, now that i think about it i never had any problem with kinetics, so i guess it just feels like the medium energy slot lacks options in the 1000 range or beam category, and while it could be fixed by slapping a medium tac laser, it could also be fixed by adding something else entirely that follows your philosophy.

Yeah, hmm. Not sure what that option might be, though, without being either "larger tac laser" or "smaller HIL". At 1000 range it's to be a beam, and, per the previous, there are somewhat less easy options for making them distinct. I suppose a fragmentation beam *might* be interesting...

you know whats missing from the game? Flux-inefficient beams, frag beams, burst-fire (NON-PD) beams, short ranged (NON-PD) beams. What if there were a medium or large, high-intensity, charge-up & then release like an anti-matter blaster, frag beam that instead of doing damage over time with sustained use that is effectively infinite when shields are down, just dumps life-ending amounts of damage (to a ship with no shields or armor) in a split second? The kind of thing you'd expect to hear a thunderclap if it weren't in a vacuum. A high-tech ship-breaking beam, made with the explicit intent of (time if not flux) efficiently blowing ships with no active forms of defense against in half. The sort of thing a military would use to emergency-decommission a military space station ahead of an overwhelming enemy advance. The kind of blade an alien space-god would use to knife-fight

[Grievous69]

The last thing High tech ships need is yet another armour breaker and hull deleter. Frag constant beam does sound nice but imo the biggest hole is a medium flux efficient projectile weapon.

@Deshara
Did you forget about the Phase lance?

[SonnaBanana]

We need a kinetic torpedo and energy missiles.
As for others in this thread, do you believe that admin skills should have elite levels like piloted ship skills?

[Deshara]

The last thing High tech ships need is yet another armour breaker and hull deleter. Frag constant beam does sound nice but imo the biggest hole is a medium flux efficient projectile weapon.

@Deshara
Did you forget about the Phase lance?

honestly i thought it was a mod weapon lol there was a small mount phase lance from some mod that was my #1 most used small mount & my brain back-filled

[Arcagnello]

The last thing High tech ships need is yet another armour breaker and hull deleter. Frag constant beam does sound nice but imo the biggest hole is a medium flux efficient projectile weapon.

@Deshara
Did you forget about the Phase lance?

honestly i thought it was a mod weapon lol there was a small mount phase lance from some mod that was my #1 most used small mount & my brain back-filled

Is it the Reflector Beam? God I love that little 8 OP monster.

Actually there is a small mod energy weapon called Light Phase lance, so you could be referring to that

P.S: If you don't know what the Reflector Beam does, it's basically a 800u range kinetic damage phase lance-type weapon that fits into a small energy mount for 8 OP and consumes something like 200 flux-second. It sounds as brutal as it actually works in game. Not generating hard flux only becomes a problem if you don't have enough of them installed 

[Thaago]

We need a kinetic torpedo and energy missiles.
...

These are really hard to balance. I don't want to say impossible, but close to it. The problem is that any kinetic with very high single shot damage (like a torpedo) is also going to be effective vs armor and hull, leaving no defensive options other than shooting them down. The reason the Sabot splits into multiple projectiles is to avoid it also deleting armor and hull (it used to be that the medium sabot pod launched 4 750 damage missiles... it was rough).

Energy is similarly hard to balance. In theory it does less than half damage to armor (no 2x bonus and half penetration combined), but in practice this matter on only the most heavily armored ships because the armor only lasts for a single hit (Example: an energy hammer (1500) does 900 damage to an Eagle (1000 armor)). Then its doing hull damage the same as an HE torpedo would, only with double the shield damage. In terms of avoiding the damage from a torpedo strike by taking the hits on the shield, its as if an Astral is launching a strike as opposed to a Mora.

[CoverdInBees]

It's also really boring to have every type of damage for every kind of weapon, even if it would all be perfectly balanced including taking into account which ships have which slots.
So plz no to some variation on all these mod weapons finding their way into the vanilla game.

[FooF]

@Thaago

Right on all accounts but I would imagine an Energy-based missile system would be a volley-type instead of large, single warheads. They might all fire at once (like 4x homing missiles) but only 250 damage each. That's 1000 hard flux to shields but not a significant threat to armor (though it would add up!). Still, it's an interesting decision to make: do I take a modest hit on shields (which has no long-term effects minus overload) or take minor hits to armor (a non-regenerating resource)? But anything more than those kind of numbers make Energy missiles difficult to mitigate: they're too dangerous to both armor and hull and your only recourse is to shoot them down.

That would be an interesting Energy missile gimmick, though: all are volley-type weapons and they all have very low HP missiles that even basic PD can shoot down easily. They're universally good when they hit but they just don't hit often. :shrug:

[SonnaBanana]

The energy missile weapon should be definitely high flux and either high damage or high ammo.
Edit: Perhaps high flux, high OP, high ammo, medium range and damage with homing.