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[Goumindong]

I made a bug report that didn't sneak into these patch notes about converted hangar (and other fighter slot adding hullmods) not using launch bay weapon slots when provided at this thread, maybe worth taking a look at? It would be appreciated by a few people. Thanks

I did see it! Ah, apologies, it's not something I really want to mess with, especially right now. It's got potential to add bugs and the use case is pretty limited - and as you note, not present in vanilla, which makes testing more of a pain, too.

Re: Storm Needler, yeah, no argument from me. It's not a weapon I'm happy with - it's just borderline "ok" - and I remember struggling with it when putting it together.

Maybe something precise and flux efficient, with a decent range (800ish?) that has pretty good burst and efficiency, but underwhelming sustained DPS. So kind of like the other needlers, but also accurate. Hmm...

Putting this here (in addition to the other thread) because it’s a pretty relevant thing.

The problem with the Storm Needler is not in the weapon itself. In order to be “good” on the current set of ships it would have to be overpowered. At 800 range and good burst and efficiency with underwhelming DPS it will be just as unused as it is today.

The problem with the storm Needler is the same problem as a Mark IX has. It’s that it’s a kinetic large ballistic.

Imagine for a second a mark X could be fit in a medium slot, would you fit them in medium slots? Probably, yes, if you had large ballistic to work with for HE. The current Mark X is a better gun than an HN almost solely due to its higher dps/op (and range).

So why don’t Mark IX get a lot of fitting in large ballistic slots? Well because a medium ballistic for kinetic and a large ballistic for HE is just generally better than a large ballistic for Kin and a medium ballistic for HE. The HE grants additional returns at the large slot due to the generally higher individual projectile dmg.

This kind of thing happens all throughout the ballistic lineup. Are LAG and Mortars bad? Not in the slightest but you stop fitting them as soon as you have medium ballistic slots because a railgun plus a heavy mortar is better than a HAC plus a LAG. You cannot make the LAG good on cruisers and destroyers with medium ballistic slots without making it OP. You could maybe make it work with non ballistic slots if non ballistic medium slots had really good ways to punch through shields (which they dont aside from sabots, which may be a bit limited for some people’s tastes)

So the storm Needler needs to be paired with slots that are not ballistic in nature. Would you use a storm Needler on a ship that had a large ballistic and a bunch of missile slots? Definitely. Would you use a storm Needler on a ship that had a large ballistic and medium or large or small energy? Absolutely. A storm Needler plus a plasma cannon is better than a HAG plus as plasma cannon. And a storm Needler plus a Heavy Blaster is better than a HAG plus a Heavy Blaster.(or graviton beam) And a storm Needler plus antimatter blasters is better than IRPulse (or antimatter blaster) and a HAG.

The fact that I can easily find configurations that make the storm Needler work indicates to me that it’s not a poor weapon in and of itself. It indicates that ships don’t exist to take advantage of it.

If you could, you would absolutely fit 4 LN on the front of an Aurora for 600 kin DPS out of 32 OP. So if you could you would absolutely fit a storm Needler for 750 min DPS out of 28 OP even more.

[Grievous69]

The fact that I can easily find configurations that make the storm Needler work indicates to me that it’s not a poor weapon in and of itself.

I agree with everything above this, it proves a very good point. But what configurations exactly? You just listed imaginary ships and said "see Storm Needler would be good here". Does that mean we need an entirely new set of ships just so one weapon can work? I find that a bit backwards and would rather have the problematic weapon be a bit less problematic on the current roster.

[braciszek]

Interesting round of changes overall. Mostly reads like a polish pass with not a lot of drastic changes. So we can wait for release with baited breath.

I think the Mark IX didn't need that buff, it was already the popular choice for cheap-flux kinetics.

That's about it.

The Mark IX buff is nice, primarily because of its spray without GI and also because large kinetics are worse than medium kinetics. Also, all medium kinetics are less flux intensive than a mark ix and often it's better to get two medium kinetics over a mark ix. Or any large kinetic for that matter.

Primarily because with kinetic weapons all that matters in terms of damage is dps. Range and efficiency is nice (and nicer in the case of the mark ix which can miss some of its spray if the target is smaller than you built a ship to fight), but large kinetics compete with large HE for that slot.

Due to how armor works, there is a lot of priority on using weapons with high damage per shot, to weaken armor further. When armor is gone, most weapons are viable against hull. For a ship designed to fight other heavy ships, which something like a dominator and a onslaught tend to do, it's very appealing to use large HE combined with medium kinetics (interesting how the HN was touched but not the HVD, as good as it is at scaring and bullying AI) supported by sabots Because you can never go wrong with sabots.
(although with something like a dominator you can have a mark ix in one mount and a hellbore in another and do work).
And you get the anti-armor punch that medium HE always feels inadequate for when fighting big boys while having enough kinetic to deal with most shields.

The Gauss is also a weird weapon but its high damage per shot does give it some use on conquests to slowly strip armor besides pressure shields despite the fact it is kinetic.

And the storm needler is hard to fit anywhere... you really don't need that much kinetic and it's not something you can tell the AI to use effectively. A lot of fitting does revolve around "can the AI even use this how i want it to".

[THEASD]

Is there any plan about adding some interface like "void tryToFire()" functions like "force clicking LMB on a single weapon" to WeaponAPI?
It's really annoying get stuck when trying to find a way to force-fire a single weapon.

[Phyroks]

Seems nice, perhaps we get to play it before summer! Been long time waiting 

Cheers! 

[Goumindong]

The fact that I can easily find configurations that make the storm Needler work indicates to me that it’s not a poor weapon in and of itself.

I agree with everything above this, it proves a very good point. But what configurations exactly? You just listed imaginary ships and said "see Storm Needler would be good here". Does that mean we need an entirely new set of ships just so one weapon can work? I find that a bit backwards and would rather have the problematic weapon be a bit less problematic on the current roster.

The point is that, on the current roster, in order for the Storm Needler to be utilized it would have to be problematic. It is not a problem at the moment. There is theoretically a point at which its 50/50 for fitting it or other weapons but the range around that point for which it would be hard to say it wasn’t balanced is going to be really thin.

Does this mean it needs an entirely new range of ships to be utilized? Well, kinda yes, though the Prometheus MK2 could maybe put one to good use it still has forward facing medium ballistic and that makes it a bit harder. But it’s limited OP means that a high DPS/OP weapon is efficient no matter where you fit it so if you’re faced with the choice of 2 med ballistic Kinetic or one large ballistic kinetic the large one will do better due to higher DPS/OP. And it’s large missile (and/or second large ballistic) give you sufficient HE for a cheap ship. (Even if this means a lot of empty slots)

[Alex]

Is there any plan about adding some interface like "void tryToFire()" functions like "force clicking LMB on a single weapon" to WeaponAPI?
It's really annoying get stuck when trying to find a way to force-fire a single weapon.

Ah, apologies - that's not very straightforward at the moment. Could be done, but not at this stage in the release cycle, the chance of creating bugs is too high. I'll keep it in mind, though.


Re: Storm Needler and HE vs kinetc, etc - some good thoughts here! Is it fair to compare Railgun + Heavy Mortar vs HAC + LAG, though? A more fair comparison would be Dual LAC + Heavy Mortar, I think, and that becomes much less clear-cut. I don't think it's so much about per-shot damage - maybe it's more about the extra range on the higher-quality small kinetics.

But then HE in general doesn't have many "premium" options like the Railgun/Needler. The old Heavy Mauler for example could combine nicely with large kinetics, and iirc it was often the go-to for many loadouts. But HE that's "too good" is more problematic than kinetics that are too good... so in that sense comparing the best-available options for each type does make sense, even if it's not an apples-to-apples comparison.

Regarding ships that *could* make good use of large kinetics, per the idea of combining them with missiles - the Legion seems like a solid candidate, because it both has a bunch of missile slots, *and* fighters which can also benefit from kinetic support. And burn drive, which can potentially let it make use of shorter-ranged weapons...

[Retry]

Why is DLAC+HM more fair for the HAC+LAG comparison than Railgun+HM?  A HAC+LAG combination is 15 OP.  DLAC+HM is only 12 OP, quite a bit lighter on the budget.  Railgun+HM is 14 OP, so it's much closer to the HAC+LAG combo (actually a bit cheaper, but close enough).

[Thaago]

Hmm, just tried Storm Needler + Hellbore + 5 Harpoons, a few vulcans, 4 khopesh, ITU + expanded missile racks, 47 vents no caps, on a Legion. Trying in the mission sim with no skills: its a pretty fantastic loadout actually. More for hunting smaller ships than large because of the range, but it is very good at bursting things down.

[Edit] Giving it Thunders instead and an automated repair unit helped a lot: its a bit of a glass cannon, so some lockdown and getting the needler back online makes a big difference.

[Alex]

Why is DLAC+HM more fair for the HAC+LAG comparison than Railgun+HM?  A HAC+LAG combination is 15 OP.  DLAC+HM is only 12 OP, quite a bit lighter on the budget.  Railgun+HM is 14 OP, so it's much closer to the HAC+LAG combo (actually a bit cheaper, but close enough).

The argument being made here is that "small kinetic + medium HE is better than small HE + medium kinetic" and using a much better - and more OP-costly - kinetic in the small slot, compared to the average-quality small HE weapon, undermines that argument. You could use DLAC + Heavy Mauler instead of Heavy Mortar, or whatever; I don't think that aspect of it matters too much. Or you can assume the rest of the OP go into vents or other good stuff to improve the ship.

Thinking a bit more, this is also possibly an argument that the Heavy Mortar is too cheap OP-wise, out-competing the LAG by so much that it's basically out of the running. Or that the LAG is too expensive.

Hmm, just tried Storm Needler + Hellbore + 5 Harpoons, a few vulcans, 4 khopesh, ITU + expanded missile racks, 47 vents no caps, on a Legion. Trying in the mission sim with no skills: its a pretty fantastic loadout actually. More for hunting smaller ships than large because of the range, but it is very good at bursting things down.

!!!

[Zelnik]

Alex...


Why not release this now and fix all these terrible problems that plague the game?


Small patches are just as good as big ones.

[intrinsic_parity]

I've put storm needler on a non-SO dominator before, but only when I have an aggressive officer with flux skills. It's fine but mark IX does just as well IMO, and that's why I was concerned about the storm needler. I've found that in its current state, it's a reasonable comparison between the two weapons for officers with flux skills (although mark IX is much safer for flux reasons) but now mark IX is getting buffed which is why I was concerned about the storm needler on the next patch. Honestly, even just reducing damage/flux and increasing range would be good IMO, and much less complicated than reworking the whole weapon.

Also, I think heavy mortar could be 1-2 OP more and lag could be 1-2 OP less pretty easily.

[Thaago]

I could see a 1 point adjustment on the lag and h mortar, but I think they are in the right ballpark.

Lags fail against heavily armored targets, but they do well against destroyers and below... if I were going to do any tweak to them it would be an accuracy upgrade. That would turn them from "ok" anti-fighter options to "really good", and decent candidates for IPDAI smalls as well.

Heavy Mortars have fantastic DPS/OP and efficiency, but they are really hardpoint only weapons given the recoil. When turret mounted they will miss a capital with sustained fire!

[KopiG]

Any guess when the patch might be coming?

[Megas]

Heavy Mortar may be fine at 8 OP.  It has good DPS and efficiency, but it is slow and inaccurate.

I usually avoid LAG because two Light Mortars are more OP and flux efficient than a single LAG, and most ships have more mounts than their dissipation can support.  The only time I can see using LAG is when I do not have enough mounts to stack lots of Light Mortars.  (I am struggling to think of such a case off the top of my head.)  Now if LAGs had better accuracy, I can see using them over Light Mortars when I need precision.

I've found that in its current state, it's a reasonable comparison between the two weapons for officers with flux skills (although mark IX is much safer for flux reasons) but now mark IX is getting buffed which is why I was concerned about the storm needler on the next patch. Honestly, even just reducing damage/flux and increasing range would be good IMO, and much less complicated than reworking the whole weapon.

I agree.