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Author Topic: Buff Hephaestus Assault Gun.  (Read 2547 times)

Thaago

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Re: Buff Hephaestus Assault Gun.
« Reply #30 on: July 06, 2022, 10:46:11 AM »

My point is even IF we had chunky end game enemies, HAG would still be a bad choice purely because of damage per shot with that flux costs. And I don't think tournaments are very representative of the real game, I followed most of them and strats that are broken there would just be mediocre in campaign.

The math doesn't really bear that out - see below.

The closest thing we have to chunky endgame enemies is large derelict bounties with Rampart spam. I sincerely hope none of you bring Hephaestus there.  :-\

It depends whether the "chunk" is from extremely heavy armor or extremely heavy hull - and currently Ramparts have very heavy hull with only moderately high armor. As I showed in the previous posts:

Hellbore is way more efficient than LAG at anti-armor, but HAG does more DPS at most reasonable armor ranges. Accuracy is an issue for both guns, but the hellbore's single shot will crack the armor all around where it hits (its a great can opener).
HAG does much more DPS vs bare hull than the Hellbore at moderately reduced efficiency. With 1000 base armor, 50 residual, HAG is operating at .83 d/f, 397 dps, while the hellbore is at .97 d/f, 242 dps. So while the Hellbore is still more efficient, there is a significant DPS gap.

HAG is better vs armor than Mjolnir except for accuracy: DPS by a small amount and efficiency by a lot (like 60% more efficient).
HAG has worse DPS than the mjolnir vs stripped hull, about 85% of it vs 1000 base armor converted into 50 residual, but better efficiency (~18% better or so at the same, eyeballing it).

So for dealing with huge chunks of hull covered in moderately heavy armor, the HAG seems like an ok tool. It sits in the middle ground between the other options: worse at cracking the armor than the Hellbore, but the DPS roughly keep up, and superior to the Mjolnir. Vs Hull it is less flux efficient than the Hellbore but a lot more DPS; more efficient than the mjolnir, but moderately less DPS.

Explain why is it cheap/efficient, I just don't see it. And Hellbore comparisons aside, look at the Devastator. Different role but it's so much better at actually doing the HE job. Before the "but it misses half of the shots" argument, don't forget it has 0.5 flux efficiency. You get a weapon that completely shuts down fighters and frigates around you as a bonus (AOE is huge), while HAG can even struggle to hit some frigates.

Is it the worst weapon in the game? Certainly not. But it doesn't deserve to be in such place (it sounds so good).

I haven't found in testing the devastator to be an effective anti-armor or anti-hull weapon outside of SO builds that compress the firing arc and have reckless personality to fly to ultra close range (in those situations its pretty good!). Its good for splashing around frigates yes, and is great at clearing out fighter wings, but in terms of dealing damage to enemy ships it consistently fails.

i really want Hephag to be useful... goddamnit... and i just don't see why people say it is rn. You know what's a better anti-armor and anti hull weapon? A high intensety laser. slightly more dps and flux but 500 hit strenght vs armor compared to the 240 of the hephag. And it costs the same OP. And doesn't have to deal with recoil and such. And it has 100 more range. Yes, it doesn't deal hardflux to shields, but why would you use hephag on shields, it'S not even remotely flux efficient. I really like the "doubled damage, halved firerate" sugesstion from SafariJohn, and if that's too strong then you could still look for something between that and the current version that is balanced

Absolutely! HILs are incredible anti-armor weapons and better anti-hull than the large ballistics too, only really losing to the plasma cannon in that role. Pinpoint accurate, good beam extend speed, and Sunders can mount them to give destroyer squads heavy anti armor ability. Soft flux vs shields so even more useless than HAGs in that role, but they are a specialist tool so its ok.

But they are a large energy mount, not a large ballistic mount, so its not a 1-1 comparison: If I could mount a HIL on an Onslaught I absolutely would, but I can't. In general energy has really good anti-hull and anti-armor abilities across all its mount sizes, but poor anti-shield, and combining large energy + and kind of long ranged ballistics is a very potent combo.
« Last Edit: July 06, 2022, 11:34:52 AM by Thaago »
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: Buff Hephaestus Assault Gun.
« Reply #31 on: July 06, 2022, 11:24:56 AM »

Plasma cannon (and cryo blaster) make everything else feel anemic against hull. Of course it's not a fair comparison due to mount types and the ships that have this mounts, but it is the frame of reference that the player has.
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Princess_of_Evil

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Re: Buff Hephaestus Assault Gun.
« Reply #32 on: July 06, 2022, 12:39:32 PM »

Oh boy yeah. Comparing ballistics to each other is one thing, but if you compare a ballistic weapon to a similar energy weapon (missiles are right out), it's just worse. Except for like two or three weapons like railguns that are just the right amount of bursty to swat out frigates.
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: Buff Hephaestus Assault Gun.
« Reply #33 on: July 06, 2022, 12:44:40 PM »

Oh boy yeah. Comparing ballistics to each other is one thing, but if you compare a ballistic weapon to a similar energy weapon (missiles are right out), it's just worse. Except for like two or three weapons like railguns that are just the right amount of bursty to swat out frigates.
Kinetics type ballistics are generally pretty good, energy weapons can't really compete in the shield damage category because efficiency is king for shield damage. It's just the HE ones that feel underwhelming because DPS and damage/shot matter a lot more for hull/armor damage.
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Princess_of_Evil

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Re: Buff Hephaestus Assault Gun.
« Reply #34 on: July 06, 2022, 01:07:01 PM »

Oh boy yeah. Comparing ballistics to each other is one thing, but if you compare a ballistic weapon to a similar energy weapon (missiles are right out), it's just worse. Except for like two or three weapons like railguns that are just the right amount of bursty to swat out frigates.
Kinetics type ballistics are generally pretty good, energy weapons can't really compete in the shield damage category because efficiency is king for shield damage. It's just the HE ones that feel underwhelming because DPS and damage/shot matter a lot more for hull/armor damage.
Energy anti-shield generally works around the efficiency issues just by disabling foe's weapons *through* their shield.
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: Buff Hephaestus Assault Gun.
« Reply #35 on: July 06, 2022, 01:46:50 PM »

Energy anti-shield generally works around the efficiency issues just by disabling foe's weapons *through* their shield.
You have to get them high on flux in the first place before empty arcs do anything, so that's not really a solution to the problem of losing the flux battle badly. Also, only a few emp energy weapons can actually arc through shields at all afaik. Ships that can only mount energy weapons generally have much higher flux stats specifically because they need them to compete with kinetic weapons. In a vacuum, kinetic weapons are clearly superior to energy weapons for shield breaking. It's not even close.
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Candesce

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Re: Buff Hephaestus Assault Gun.
« Reply #36 on: July 06, 2022, 01:58:37 PM »

Ships that can only mount energy weapons generally have much higher flux stats specifically because they need them to compete with kinetic weapons.
And enough speed that they can disengage and vent while a buddy keeps their opponent from doing the same.
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: Buff Hephaestus Assault Gun.
« Reply #37 on: July 06, 2022, 02:11:42 PM »

Ships that can only mount energy weapons generally have much higher flux stats specifically because they need them to compete with kinetic weapons.
And enough speed that they can disengage and vent while a buddy keeps their opponent from doing the same.
Sure, assuming you have numerical advantage, but the point is that energy weapons are statistically inferior against shields, and ships that rely on them have to make up for it in other ways. Any ship with a universal mount that wants shield damage will always equip a kinetic over an energy weapon.
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Thaago

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Re: Buff Hephaestus Assault Gun.
« Reply #38 on: July 06, 2022, 02:58:05 PM »

An oversimplification: the heavily armored ships can mount lots of weapons that are good against shields, and the heavily shielded ships can mount weapons that are good against armor and hull.

Its not really that cut and dry at all as there are hybrids like the midlines that can mounts both (some more effectively than others), some high tech can mounts some kinetic weapons, phase ships mount lots of energy but don't use shields, missiles laugh at everything, etc etc. But there is a hint of classic asymmetric balance thats been built and modified on over the years.
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Hatter

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Re: Buff Hephaestus Assault Gun.
« Reply #39 on: July 06, 2022, 05:00:33 PM »

Does the HAG need help? I don't know. Making it more efficient means that you really don't have a lot of recourse against it outside of moving away. Low Tech Armor Bricks can tank it for a bit but most ships are going to raise shields. Capitals with a HAG are going to be firing this fairly accurate weapon outside the weapon range of most Cruisers so if shield-tanking it becomes less costly for the Capital, it just pounds away at range until your shields fail. Again, I see it first-and-foremost as a pressure weapon that just slowly and steadily wears you down.

I've never considered the HAG as a weapon-of-choice against Capitals, nor do I think it should be. Its niche is clearly anti-Cruiser/Destroyer, where it excels due to its range and pretty decent accuracy. Hellbores are not going to be reliable against speedier targets and their on-paper efficiency against armor (while stellar) is greatly diminished by the fact that you can avoid their shots altogether fairly easily and if not, you can shield flicker indefinitely. Ships don't get hit by Hellbores so much as they fail to get out of the way.
Hellbores have the option of moving point-blank to hit smaller things or just hit something eventually. Hephaestus's have a more difficult time hitting harder. Furthermore, they're dumping an extra 230 flux into the ship for that pressure. Low Tech, ballistic ships already have poor flux stats, and I have trouble justifying the Hephaestus vs a Hellbore on them. The Conquest has both large ballistics and the flux to use them.

Shield pressure can also be maintained by EMP weapons, such as the hypervelocity driver, or smaller HE weapons (at admittedly shorter ranges). I'm still not convinced that the sheer flux cost of Hephaestusi are justified.

Hmm, maybe I've messed up my math, but Mjolnirs never do as much DPS vs armor as the Hapehestus (sic)- I plotted the ratio with the following in Wolfram Alpha:
You have not messed up your math. I forgot to multiply Hephaestus DPS for the HE damage vs armor modification and only multiplied hit strength. Same error Vanshilar pointed out. The Hephaestus will always be more efficient than the Mjolnir at anti-armor DPS. As an aside, I find Desmos's user interface easier to use for graphical functions than Wolfram.

You bring up a flux budget comparison between the Mjolnir and the Hephaestus. Would you consider a hypothetical comparison between the Hephaestus and the Hellbore? The Hephaestus has 230 more flux per second. Let's say there's a hypothetical Heavy-Mortar like weapon with 110 HE damage hits, except it has 1.0 flux efficiency and 230 DPS per second (vs the Mortar's 0.81 and 220). It would be sacrificing ~8% damage per hit vs the Hephaestus, but be combined with a Hellbore (~500% more damage / hit). This entirely hypothetical setup has part of the saturation and pressure, while still having superior damage vs heavier armor because of the Hellbore's immense hit strength.

Regarding your second post, at 1000 armor I am calculating the HAG dealing (240 / (1000 + 240) ) = 19% of original damage. Hellbore, (1500 / (1500 + 1000) = 60% damage. Roughly three times damage penetration (and therefore damage / flux) at 1000 armor. Is it possible you are somehow looking at the DPS ratio of the HAG / Hellbore, which is ~62% at 1000 armor?

The hypothetical scenario neatly illustrates my main gripe with the Hephaestus. As Vanshilar covered, it's supposed to break apart hull but has a much larger flux footprint than the Hellbore matching it's higher DPS. Putting it on a large slot as an HE option means missing out on the Hellbore's armor breaking ability. It's competitive on a slot-limited basis, but its role (relatively low damage per shot HE) can be covered by other slots. Admittedly, a heavy mortar would miss out on range (even with Ballistic Range Finder) and accuracy compared to the Hephaestus.

I wonder if a lower damage per shot with fire rate adjusted to keep the same DPS with greater efficiency would be better to cement the Hephaestus into a hull-tearing role or if that would just make it a larger assault chaingun.


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Thaago

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Re: Buff Hephaestus Assault Gun.
« Reply #40 on: July 06, 2022, 05:52:38 PM »

Oh right you are! I was looking at the wrong graph when I did that comparison, my bad. You're also right that applying the same logic that I did for Mjolnir + kinetics to a Hellbore + heavy mortar gives a total anti-hull package thats more efficient - and if I remember right I've played with a triple sabot pod dominator build that performed best when I was using a mixed Hellbore + HAG, to get both armor cracking and hull dps combined, but I suppose it could have gone with heavy mortars in the mediums... starting to run out of mounts though! Accuracy issues are there, but gunnery implants and armored weapon mounts help quite a bit.
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Princess_of_Evil

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Re: Buff Hephaestus Assault Gun.
« Reply #41 on: July 06, 2022, 11:24:00 PM »

What if AC and HAG, instead of getting different stats, had increased armor pierce? As in, they damaged armor as if they had more base damage, but still did their normal damage.
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Brainwright

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Re: Buff Hephaestus Assault Gun.
« Reply #42 on: July 08, 2022, 03:44:57 AM »

Believe it or not, I didn't realize the devastator was HE before this discussion!  Going to be using it a lot more...
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