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Author Topic: Buff the Medium Energy Slot  (Read 5698 times)

CryIsFree

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Buff the Medium Energy Slot
« on: January 05, 2023, 09:08:05 PM »

After playing this game for a reasonable amount of time and experimenting with almost every ship and weapon, I came to a conclusion that the medium energy slot is a clear loser on a otherwise very balanced arsenal available to the player, with very rare exceptions. To reinforce this idea I will present my general thoughts on all slots and some of the choices I've found to work, then elaborate on medium energy and why I think it needs some love.

Small Ballistics: Great slot. Extremely versatile, with many options for PD, short range or medium range kinetic, frag and high explosive damage. Vulcan Cannons are some of the best PD in the game, railguns are amazing kinetic pressure. Light Mortars aren't amazing IMO but they are an option if you want explosive dmg.

Medium Ballistics: Amazing. Just as versatile as small ballistics, but with more options, on top of short and medium range frag, kinetic and HE damage you also get amazing long range options. Hypervelocity Drivers and Heavy Maulers are some of the best weapons in the game for long range kinetic and HE damage respectively, Heavy Autocannons and Heavy Mortars do the same on medium range, Assault Chainguns are great for close quarters combat, Flak and Dual Flak Cannons are amazing PD, Heavy Machine Guns can be good kinetic pressure on QCQ ships with Safety Overrides.

Large Ballistics: Good. Not as versatile as the other slots, as most your options are long range, but they are still great options nonetheless. Devastator Cannons are probably the best PD weapon in the game, all the High Explosive options are good on their own rights, Gauss cannons are amazing kinetic pressure with insane range, Mjolnir cannons do decent energy damage from afar with a EMP on top.

Small Energy: Good slot. many pd options, all of which are good though I prefer the Burst PD Laser, Antimatter Blasters are amazing on QCQ ships, frigates, destroyers, cruisers, anything fast or phase can use one. Ion cannons are also good on QCQ ships, EMP is never a bad thing to have. Tactical Lasers aren't amazing IMO but if you're building a very long range ship with beam weapons, targeting core/unit and advanced optics you might as well slap some of those in for extra damage.
 
Large Energy: Amazing slot. Great mid range energy DPS options on the Plasma Cannons and Autopulse Lasers, and the amazing Tachyon Lances to poke and EMP your enemy at a distance.

Missiles need no explanation, pretty much every single missile weapon is good on their own right with very few exceptions, if any. These are the best weapons until they run out of ammo.

Which brings us to the point I'm trying to make: The Medium Energy Slot. I'd like to start off by saying the Graviton Beam and the Ion Beam are great support weapons, if not some of the best. Constant kinetic and EMP pressure is never bad. However the med energy slot lacks outstanding damage dealing options, as the Heavy Blaster is extremely flux hungry and short range, the Ion Pulser is good at very short range but the AI struggles greatly to use it because of the magazine size, Phase Lances do extremely low DPS, Pulse Lasers are just unimpressive in every possible aspect, and the energy damage type tends to struggle greatly vs armour, and the late game ships are all heavily armoured.

Furthermore, some ships seem to have been designed to rely on the medium energy slots for damage, like the Fury and the Medusa, and I often struggle to build these ships around said slots, despite of their great stats. Falcons and Eagles also feel weak since those two medium energy slots are rarely doing much other then providing a slight kinetic pressure or a weak EMP bean. The mediocrity of the Medium Energy slot also makes high tech ships often rely on missiles instead of energy weapons. The Aurora is an amazing hull, with SO and missiles it can easily take down most capitals in the game, but trying one without missiles, relying instead on energy weapons is often lackluster. The Midline and Low Tech cruisers comparable to the Aurora don't suffer from this problem, as Eradicators and Champions can easily forfeit missiles altogether to rely on Hypervelocity Drivers, Heavy Maulers or assault Chainguns for damage.

Also its important to point out that [VERY REDACTED] weapons make this slot good but they are so limited and hard to acquire I prefer to not include them in the general weaponry available.

In conclusion, my suggestion is either a stat buff to the standard damage dealing weapons in the class, which are the Heavy Blaster (preferably a range buff) and the Pulse Lasers (I dont know what to buff on this one), or even add a new weapon to bolster the strength of this slot.
« Last Edit: January 05, 2023, 09:13:21 PM by CryIsFree »
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Wyvern

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Re: Buff the Medium Energy Slot
« Reply #1 on: January 05, 2023, 09:50:15 PM »

You'll probably be pleased to know, then, that next version of the game is going to be getting two new medium energy weapons: a flux-efficient longer-range burst-damage beam weapon, and a kinetic blaster.

As for the current game: the trick to getting use out of medium energy based ships is to abuse the existence of the Heavy Blaster, a ridiculously over-statted gun that's basically a large-slot weapon crammed into an entire size down. (This doesn't help ships like the Falcon and Eagle, though, which is where new weaponry and a significantly reduced deployment cost on the Eagle come in. And it doesn't help the poor Wolf, which can't really support a Pulse Laser, nevermind the Heavy Blaster's slightly insane flux cost.)

In general, for a ship that relies on medium energy weaponry, you want one heavy blaster, and then everything else as flux-efficient a secondary armament as possible (or in some cases, outright leaving weapon slots empty). For example, with the right selection of hullmods and an aggressive officer, you can get pretty good results out of an Aurora with 1x heavy blaster, 2x pulse laser, 2x IR pulse laser, 4x ion cannon, 2x burst pd, and then maybe a sabot pod in the rear synergy slot or maybe no missiles at all. (Note that the aggressive officer and the ion cannons are important, here: getting in and shutting down enemy firepower allows this variant to stay at close range when other Aurora builds would have to back off.) In my experience, this performs better under AI control than the classic missile-heavy builds most people go with; the missile-heavy build will outperform it against the first ship or two it fights... and then it'll be low on missiles and struggle to get kills after that, while my energy-heavy variant can just keep on trucking for as long as the battle goes.
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Spacer Heater

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Re: Buff the Medium Energy Slot
« Reply #2 on: January 05, 2023, 09:54:42 PM »

I think you'll be glad to hear that at least several med energies are having changes made to them then. If you're unaware the graviton will cause the target to take additional shield damage from all sources, and the other med beams are all confirmed to "be receiving some love". Nothing specific yet.
 
In conclusion, my suggestion is either a stat buff to the standard damage dealing weapons in the class, which are the Heavy Blaster (preferably a range buff) and the Pulse Lasers (I dont know what to buff on this one), or even add a new weapon to bolster the strength of this slot.

Bad news is, I'm not aware of any confirmed changes happening to either of these though. That said, the next update seems to be massive so it's hard to imagine that one way or another, med energies or the ships that rely on them won't see a buff.

« Last Edit: January 05, 2023, 10:01:05 PM by Spacer Heater »
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Harmful Mechanic

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Re: Buff the Medium Energy Slot
« Reply #3 on: January 05, 2023, 10:37:32 PM »

And it doesn't help the poor Wolf, which can't really support a Pulse Laser, nevermind the Heavy Blaster's slightly insane flux cost.

I actually find it's the opposite; the Pulse Laser's continuous fire is much less useful than throwing a few Heavy Blaster bolts before backing off. If you have poor flux stats, it's better to fire fewer, more powerful shots.
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CryIsFree

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Re: Buff the Medium Energy Slot
« Reply #4 on: January 06, 2023, 12:00:01 AM »

Heavy Blaster, a ridiculously over-statted gun that's basically a large-slot weapon crammed into an entire size down.

I don't think the heavy blaster is that good. 500 DPS is good but 600 range isn't, and 720 flux/second is ludicrous. That's 0.69 damage per flux spent when most high end ships have less shield flux/damage then that, [REDACTED] ships all have 0.6 before Expert Field Modulation, 0.51 with it, so you're spending 1 flux to deal 0.35 hard flux on a ship that has way better stats then yours. On top of that, energy damage does very little against highly armoured targets, and all the hard fights also have high armour which largely diminishes the damage dealt to the hull. Other energy weapons don't suffer from this issue, Plasma Cannon has way better dmg/flux (0.91) stats and 100 extra range. Fast frigates can also dodge the projectile which isn't a major problem but it is something. If you wanna keep it as it is right now at least make the dmg/flux less laughable, maybe make the projectile faster too

It might be a bit extreme to always think in terms of [REDACTED] but I always build fleets to eventually fight the hardest fights so that's how I think. Heavy Blasters struggle vs the heavily armoured Hegemony fleets too so there's also that
« Last Edit: January 06, 2023, 12:20:20 AM by CryIsFree »
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Grievous69

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Re: Buff the Medium Energy Slot
« Reply #5 on: January 06, 2023, 12:15:33 AM »

When we finally get rid of SO as it is right now, we might get better medium energy weapons that are not beams.
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SCC

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Re: Buff the Medium Energy Slot
« Reply #6 on: January 06, 2023, 02:02:01 AM »

In my experience, medium energy mounts are only an issue on ships that also have other, better mount types, like Eagle or Venture. Ships designed for medium energies can use them pretty well. Hyperion or Fury might be overly expensive for what they do, but they aren't bad ships per se (they certainly were good enough to get nerfed), even if the meta is ever shifting.  Heavy Blaster and Ion Pulser combo is still very good, especially against remnants.

BCS

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Re: Buff the Medium Energy Slot
« Reply #7 on: January 06, 2023, 02:47:26 AM »

I wouldn't say medium energy is bad, I'd say that AI can't do hit and run tactics. Which makes heavy-hitting burst-fire medium energy weapons(and high tech ships that use them in general) look very lackluster in comparison, because the AI simply cannot use them effectively. Meanwhile in player hands ships like Fury or Aurora are some of the most effective in the game.
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CryIsFree

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Re: Buff the Medium Energy Slot
« Reply #8 on: January 06, 2023, 02:55:38 AM »

Meanwhile in player hands ships like Fury or Aurora are some of the most effective in the game.

Dude the Fury is NOT one of the most effective ships in the game, its actually kind of bad, dare I say the worst combat cruiser in the game after the eagle and the falcon (excluding the meme civilian and pirate/pather cruises)

Hell, it might be worse then a Falcon. Definitely worse then a Pirate Falcon
« Last Edit: January 06, 2023, 03:01:18 AM by CryIsFree »
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Amazigh

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Re: Buff the Medium Energy Slot
« Reply #9 on: January 06, 2023, 02:57:56 PM »

Dude the Fury is NOT one of the most effective ships in the game, its actually kind of bad, dare I say the worst combat cruiser in the game after the eagle and the falcon (excluding the meme civilian and pirate/pather cruises)
The fury is very good, you don't build it for long-range beam configs, you give it close range assault weapons (Heavy blaster / Sabot Pod / Ion Pulser) and rush in (which is easy with Plasma Burn) and deal massive burst damage, and you can then leverage the ships high mobility to back off if you need to.

The player will be better at doing this than the AI, but even then it can still be very potent in AI hands.

----

Back to the topic of medium energy weapons, they can be a bit situational, but overall they are good.
Graviton Beam - long range suppression, good for energy slots on ballistic focused midline ships (eg: conquest / eagle) and with the coming update they will have a nice bonus for shield damage
Heavy Blaster - The close range high aggression weapon, often requires safety overrides to use practically, but the sheer damage output makes it valuable
Heavy Burst Laser - a bit niche, i'd argue it to be the weakest of all medium energy weapons, but it's the only PD option, so it has uses.
Ion Beam - similar use case to the graviton, one of these on a conquest/eagle gives it some effective EMP disabling ability.
Ion Pulser - offers massive burst damage, and lots of EMP, while short ranged, combined with a more efficient anti-shield option it can be truly punishing.
Mining Blaster - considered by some to be a sidegrade to the heavy blaster, rather niche, but still has uses.
Phase Lance - instant-hit with rather high power against armour, very good when backed up by some kinetic weapons.
Pulse Laser - Jack of all trades, master of none, generally outclassed by one of the other options in every area, but can be useful for its "middle-of-the-road" average value.

For the ships that can mount them, there is at least one medium energy weapon that works in each slot, it's just a case of figuring out what role the ship/weapon slot needs to fill.
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BaBosa

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Re: Buff the Medium Energy Slot
« Reply #10 on: January 06, 2023, 06:13:39 PM »

The new kinetic blaster will then likely fill the hole if none of the other weapons work as it will certainly be efficient vs shields and it is described as being like the heavy blaster which is good except for it’s flux.
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Grievous69

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Re: Buff the Medium Energy Slot
« Reply #11 on: January 07, 2023, 01:06:43 AM »

In what world do Mining Blaster and Heavy Burst Laser have uses? Give me an example where you'd fit those weapons, I'm honestly curious. I see them as trap options, where you're better off just leaving the mount empty and spending OP elsewhere. I've been around for a long time yet didn't see a single person call Mining Blaster a sidegrade to Heavy Blaster.
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Serenitis

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Re: Buff the Medium Energy Slot
« Reply #12 on: January 07, 2023, 02:51:02 AM »

Nah. Mining Blaster is fine. It's the budget armour breaking option for energy guns, and it's p. good at it.
Just because it can't do everything like the Heavy can doesn't mean it's useless.

I use it quite a bit since I don't buy stuff. And, yeah, the Heavy is a better all-round weapon.
But the MB is 'good enough' to get a decent amount of use out of.
I like it on fast ships that can slide away and vent reliably. Almost any frigate can use them fairly well.

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SCC

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Re: Buff the Medium Energy Slot
« Reply #13 on: January 07, 2023, 03:44:16 AM »

Mining Blaster is the best medium energy weapon in the game, because any ship using it becomes an easier target the instant it fires the blaster.

Grievous69

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Re: Buff the Medium Energy Slot
« Reply #14 on: January 07, 2023, 04:25:36 AM »

Budget ( ) -- 1.71 flux efficiency ( )

Choose one

I still can't tell if some are just messing with us here for the sake of comedy. Like SCC said, any ship with it is an immediate target since I know it won't do anything in combat, only overload itself.
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