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[Comrade_Bobinski]

To come back to the whole small ballistics are OP thing. Maybe the game should be more restrictive about weapon slot size and not allow the fitting of undersized weapon on bigger hardpoint. This way no more BRF shenanigans on ships clearly designed to be equipped with heavy armement.  It could also hurt some other ships (harbinger or odyssey for exemple), but you could easily rebalance those around fixed size weapon slots with some flux and capacitor adjustement.

[llama]

@BaBosa
If we buff all weapons, then buff all shields, what did we do actually? Maybe screw over Shield shunt builds even more, but that's it. If anything the game has too much of a focus on shield damage, I blame the current end game for that. Then we get to discussions where soloing Radiants is suddenly a prerequisite.

I suspect BaBosa meant "decrease efficiency" literally, ie nerf shields

[Grievous69]

You're missing the point, I'm trying to explain how the hull itself imbalances things. Perhaps when I was trying Mjolnirs back then, I dind't even mount medium missiles, I just wanted to see the sheer damage output of a ship that doesn't care about flux and can use any combo of ballistics (Conquest is also that but the horrible shield is distracting and it's even more focused on missile firepower). Naturally you can make Mjolnir look good on ships that weren't meant to use it in the first place. So I was simply saying x is not neccessarily stronger in a vacuum, not challenge users to make me a build where it is better. Anyways this went too far and it's not even relevant to the main discussion.

The whole "problem" here is large ballistics being too niche or catered towards a single ship except few budget choices.

I don't think small ballistics are OP, well LDAC is currently but I digress. I was trying to show how with the game changing a bit over time, some things were left behind untouched. Not the end of the world but I feel it's worth talking about. I realize the game can't be perfectly balanced, and honestly this version is really really close (thanks Alex for listening to feedback). We got new ships, new weapons which indirectly brought some other weapons to attention (Phase Lance for example).

@llama
Oh, yeah that could be interpreted in different ways. One issue with nerfing shields is that Hardened Shields and Field Modulation get much much stronger.

[CapnHector]

You're missing the point, I'm trying to explain how the hull itself imbalances things. Perhaps when I was trying Mjolnirs back then, I dind't even mount medium missiles, I just wanted to see the sheer damage output of a ship that doesn't care about flux and can use any combo of ballistics (Conquest is also that but the horrible shield is distracting and it's even more focused on missile firepower). Naturally you can make Mjolnir look good on ships that weren't meant to use it in the first place. So I was simply saying x is not neccessarily stronger in a vacuum, not challenge users to make me a build where it is better. Anyways this went too far and it's not even relevant to the main discussion.

The whole "problem" here is large ballistics being too niche or catered towards a single ship except few budget choices.

Absolutely, we're in full agreement here, no worries Grievous. It was pretty fun to try the Mjolnir Odyssey. But yeah in the real game it is kind of hard to say whether Mjolnir is objectively strong, because it's a gun for one ship (Conquest) or maybe two (if you put it on the Invictus) and it's very strong on the Conquest but probably bad on most other ships that can mount it, so is it a good gun or not? Depends on how you define good I guess.

[Grievous69]

I almost like it more on Invictus than Conquest now. Tried couple of things but 2 MkIX, 1 Hellbore and 1 Mjolnir is something I really love on it. Invictus really wants efficients guns so it doesn't choke on flux, and EMP is lovely with the Lidar Array. So both Mjolnir and Gauss are in a weird niche place where certain setups make great use of their main advantage, while every other ships turns into an inferior version of itself. Maybe we don't touch those yet. HAG could at least stand to have 0.9 efficiency and Storm Needler is too expensive.

[BaBosa]

@BaBosa
If we buff all weapons, then buff all shields, what did we do actually? Maybe screw over Shield shunt builds even more, but that's it. If anything the game has too much of a focus on shield damage, I blame the current end game for that. Then we get to discussions where soloing Radiants is suddenly a prerequisite.

I suspect BaBosa meant "decrease efficiency" literally, ie nerf shields

Yea it is. Talking about shield efficiency changes is annoying. I meant nerf weapon and shield efficiency so the normal is once again 1 for both, once the game has stabilized more.

[Megas]

I like Gauss on Onslaught.  Its range is a bit more than TPCs, so Onslaught can snipe with Gauss and TPCs instead of TPCs only, when fighting cowardly enemies that love to hover far away from every other gun Onslaught has.  I have used it on Onslaughts with ePD and Ballistic Mastery to maximize HMG range, so it has two range bands, one for Devastators and HMGs, and another for TPCs and Gauss.

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

You really think Large Ballistic are clearly winners over Large Energy? I dunno, at this point I'm pretty torn. What weapons and on what ships really make you say "Wowie-zowie, these large ballistic weapons are sooooo good!" We already talked about Heavy Ballistic Integration and how you can't use it for balancing weapons so don't bring that up or factor it in.

I generally don't even look at OP cost of large ballistics because all capitals have a bazillion OP anyway. (Real capitals, not Atlas Mk.II or whatever)

Large ballistics are winners because they deal hard flux and kinetic damage. For example BigBrainEnergy cleary showed with Math(tm) that HAG is worse in every way than HIL. But in the actual game if you shoot HIL at an enemy ship it's going to simply shield up and easily dissipate the 250 flux/second(before shield efficiency) - you cannot do the same against HAG because if you do you're going to get overloaded so you have to eat hits. Beam weapons are "supposed" to be better on paper precisely because they can only deal soft flux that is easy to deal with on its own.

As for kinetic damage, well, all endgame enemies at the moment have very strong shields so guess what. (This is also the main problem with the HAG: it's a solution looking for a problem. When you're fitting large mounts on a capital you're going to go for kinetic damage or Mjolnirs if it's a Conquest. Explosive damage is secondary)

[CapnHector]

You really think Large Ballistic are clearly winners over Large Energy? I dunno, at this point I'm pretty torn. What weapons and on what ships really make you say "Wowie-zowie, these large ballistic weapons are sooooo good!" We already talked about Heavy Ballistic Integration and how you can't use it for balancing weapons so don't bring that up or factor it in.

I generally don't even look at OP cost of large ballistics because all capitals have a bazillion OP anyway. (Real capitals, not Atlas Mk.II or whatever)

Large ballistics are winners because they deal hard flux and kinetic damage. For example BigBrainEnergy cleary showed with Math(tm) that HAG is worse in every way than HIL. But in the actual game if you shoot HIL at an enemy ship it's going to simply shield up and easily dissipate the 250 flux/second(before shield efficiency) - you cannot do the same against HAG because if you do you're going to get overloaded so you have to eat hits. Beam weapons are "supposed" to be better on paper precisely because they can only deal soft flux that is easy to deal with on its own.

As for kinetic damage, well, all endgame enemies at the moment have very strong shields so guess what. (This is also the main problem with the HAG: it's a solution looking for a problem. When you're fitting large mounts on a capital you're going to go for kinetic damage or Mjolnirs if it's a Conquest. Explosive damage is secondary)

Dear Lawrence,

You have expressed this opinion repeatedly, so I would like you to elaborate on it since it seems many people disagree on this point. Why would you fit large kinetics and smaller he ballistics? Small kinetics and large he ballistics have good efficiency, large kinetics and small he ballistics have either bad efficiency or terrible accuracy or both, or terrible range in case of the Storm Needler. Also hit strength is better if you put he in the large slots. Or do you skip He entirely?

How do you fit an Onslaught or a Retribution?

[Megas]

Storm needler increase to 30 op, reduce refire delay by 50% (up to 1000 dps and 700 flux/second)
Not many vanilla ships want the niche it fills, but that's fine. My only real problem is the hefty cost bites into your hullmod budget which hurts survivability which is essential for this kind of close range build to work. An op reduction would suffice but it seems the design intent is for "needlers" to be premium so why not lean into that and make the storm needler a 30 op monster that fires at the same speed as its smaller cousins, but non-stop. Ok, maybe that's a bit much, but for it to stay premium it needs to offer more. Its efficiency is already as good as it's going to get and you can't change the range or hit strength because it's clearly intended to be consistent with other needlers... although if we're willing to break that rule then 800 range would also be a fine buff. The smaller needlers do get extra range from brf so its not totally unreasonable.

Storm Needler used to do more damage (and cost more flux) but the flux cost was so high that only Conquest could use it.  It also used to have perfect accuracy and significant windup before it started firing (like original Thumper) and hit strength may have been a bit higher than small/medium needlers.  Storm Needler was a killer when maximum armor reduction was less and no minimum armor.

Eventually, Storm Needler got the stats it has today so that ships aside from Conquest can use it, or at least that was the idea.

I do think Storm Needler as-is is too expensive for what it does.  It feels like a sidegrade to Mark IX, not an upgrade.

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

You have expressed this opinion repeatedly, so I would like you to elaborate on it since it seems many people disagree on this point. Why would you fit large kinetics and smaller he ballistics? Small kinetics and large he ballistics have good efficiency, large kinetics and small he ballistics have either bad efficiency or terrible accuracy or both, or terrible range in case of the Storm Needler. Also hit strength is better if you put he in the large slots. Or do you skip He entirely?

I admit to being somewhat biased towards the Conquest here.

But even on Conquest, if I were to skip Squalls, I would definitely go with 2x Gauss Cannon or even 2x Mark IX over 2x HAG. Small kinetics may have better efficiency but they also have a whole lot less DPS and that's the thing that really matters(assuming the ship can eat the flux, but since capital ships are designed to use large weapons in the first place they usually can) Besides, even the least efficient large kinetic is still more efficient against shields than the most efficient large explosive; and winning the flux battle is winning the entire battle.

Is that really an unpopular view?

As if that wasn't enough, the fact that large kinetics are... large means they do a lot of damage per shot anyway so they can usually get through armor regardless. Mark IX has ~2.5x more anti-armor DPS than the Light Assault Gun(lol) and the Gauss Cannon outperforms the Heavy Mauler. Hm, all this talk makes me want to try a Gauss Conquest again.

How do you fit an Onslaught or a Retribution?

I don't :P

Well, that's half true. My go-to Onslaught fit was HAG, 3x HAC, 2x HVD, rest basically PD. I never used it much though because AI underperforms with the Onslaught.

Retribution is a pure flagship so I don't care about it much.

[CapnHector]

Retribution is a pure flagship so I don't care about it much.

You can see my sig for a Retribution fleet that fights Ordos entirely under AI control, and also an example of the idea here. It works with 3x Devastator 9x LDAC, by contrast putting in Mark IX and Heavy Mortars and LAGs would not only significantly lower DPS but also efficiency and frankly seems a little kooky on the face of it.

The Conquest is special because it doesn't have small ballistics, but most ships with Large Ballistics also have a ton of small ballistics slots. In that circumstance it makes a lot more sense to fit large HE and small kinetics rather than the other way around. Even for Ordo fights you need HE if not using Mjolnir, taking out Radiant or even Brilliant armor with Mark IX for example is unrealistic as it will have an initial dps vs 800 armor of about 19 (100/900*348/2). I think the general consensus is fit HE in Large, since many have voiced it in this thread, but you are right that Conquest is special because you literally do not have small ballistics.

Edit to add: I keep forgetting because it's another Conquest only weapon, and didn't even think about it when I asked, but if by large kinetics you refer to Gauss and then pairing it with Heavy Mauler on the Conquest then yes that is a good use of large kinetics and I think there's no disagreement about that. However it requires both good flux stats and good mobility to be successful so there is really only that one ship it is great on.

[BaBosa]

Also the conquest has two large and medium missiles which can supply HE damage instead of the large ballistics.

[Marcoda]

Thinking about the HAC, why not up the damage instead but modify the other statistics to remain the same?

Something like this

Buff the damage to 160 with same flux cost but 3 rounds per second
Buff the damage to 200 with same flux cost but 2.5 rounds per second
Buff the damage to 250 with same flux cost but 2 rounds per second
etc

I'm sure there could be a happy medium somewhere where it's still the dps gun to the alpha gun of the hellbore while still receiving a buff

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

The Conquest is special because it doesn't have small ballistics, but most ships with Large Ballistics also have a ton of small ballistics slots.

Err, really? Onslaught has two, Dominator has one, Invictus doesn't have any. Do the three on Manticore count if you can't fully use them because of flux limitations? Retribution is the odd one out there. And nothing says you should use these for damage, I prefer solid PD on an armor tanked ship myself.

Also the conquest has two large and medium missiles which can supply HE damage instead of the large ballistics.

Not just the Conquest - Onslaught has an array of mediums, so does Dominator, Manticore has two. Getting off the large mounts for a second, Eradicator has five smalls and Enforcer has four. This is another reason why you should favour kinetics, you can outsource explosive damage to small/medium missiles, while you cannot do the same with kinetic damage because until you get to Squalls all kinetic missiles have very low endurance.