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[Nettle]

I just avoid using LAGs, I struggle to find any scenario where its beneficial to do so. A small HE with abysmall damage-per-shot value is already on an uphill battle due to how armor reduction works, the worst flux/sec ratio out of all non-[REDACTED] small weapons don't help it either.

[Killer of Fate]

@ killer of fate

300 hit strength is high-ish but not absurd. Heck, the Heavy Mortar is 220 and would fire 3x faster than the proposed weapon. Again, it’s only firing 2 rounds every 3 seconds. It can hurt armor, sure, but it’s just softening things up. The overall low DPS keeps it from doing major hull damage.

Mortars spewing rounds is interesting but the Mining Blaster and Thumper are both front loading their damage now, too. I’d be afraid that’s too much of a trend, though in a vacuum, the idea is cool. Area denial is part of a real-life mortar’s job. If you really wanted to make mortars imitate life, they should go over friendly ships as a form of indirect fire. Slow-moving but unobstructed.

Heavy mortar though is ridiculously unreliable. Its projectiles are too slow to hit frigates, and even if we are facing off against a large slow target, they will not hit the same spot repeatedly, thus causing the damage to be split up. The armor will not be easily penetrated, unless ridiculously saturated.

This is also why Heavy Mauler is so strong compared to Heavy Mortar. Not only are its projectiles fast, they can also hit the same spot multiple times, and will do so as per design. Thus allowing it to maul armored ships like Mule with ease. Whereas assault gun, heavy mortar or light mortar are going to mostly annoy it for the first duration of the engagement, hitting random spots on its armor without visible effect.

[FooF]

While I think the Light Mauler concept is good in and of itself, it also exists because the LAG is not particularly attractive in a lot of circumstances. Thaago's use-case for the LAG is similar to my own and I rarely put it on anything larger than a Destroyer.

I just don't think it needs such a high ROF. 240 shots/min suggests that it could be a decent PD weapon but the associated flux cost is terrible and even 4 rounds/sec really isn't enough to saturate an area to drop missiles. Against fighters, it's decent, but again at an exorbitant flux cost. Let's say we drop it to 3 rounds/sec (180/min) and increase the damage from 40 to 53.3 but keeping the flux/shot at 40. It's the same DPS (160) but the hit strength is 33% higher and flux costs are 25% lower (120 flux/sec). I would imagine that this would be a net positive in most use-cases and might make it slightly more intra-competitive with the Kinetic options, albeit not much. It would be slightly worse as a pseudo-PD weapon but to be frank, I'd rather it better against larger ships than smaller ones.

Edit: So I just tried the updated LAG with the above stats. It feels stronger against frigates and light armor, as expected, but I couldn't tell a real difference against anything heavier. It probably is stronger but it's contributing so little relative to bigger guns that it's imperceptible. The lessened flux cost is probably the most notable thing about it (.75 efficiency is pretty good!).

I also compared it against the hypothetical Light Mauler (I tweaked the stats of the Light Mortar). The Nu LAG was killing frigates very quickly while the Light Mauler was not. In fact, the Light Mauler felt very anemic compared to the Nu LAG. Since they both have the same range band, there was very little the Light Mauler seemed to do better since the Nu LAG was putting out 9 shots to the LM's 2. If the Light Mauler were to distinguish itself, it would probably need 800 range...which is pretty high for a small weapon.

In short, unless the Light Mauler had more range, I don't think it would fare very well relative to even the current LAG (except in the flux department). My thought is that the Nu LAG is just flat-out better in most use-cases.

[Marcoda]

One weapon I quite liked from mod packs that felt quite balanced for a medium HE weapons was the Fission howitzer from the Kadur Remnant.

Something like that would be an interesting addition to the game without bringing any problems in regards to balance IMO.

[WENth100]

I still think medium ballistics should get a new HE gun.

Have to agree, judging from the sheer amount of mods adding stop-gap options, considering how for kinetics there is the budget yet dependable Arbalest, the middle of road Heavy Autocannon, and then there's the long ranged Hypervelocity Driver. Would be nice if we have a middle of the road option for HE, something that doesn't have as much range but has more DPS, the closest we have is the Chaingun as of now and that is more of a SO weapon.

[FooF]

I still think medium ballistics should get a new HE gun.

Have to agree, judging from the sheer amount of mods adding stop-gap options, considering how for kinetics there is the budget yet dependable Arbalest, the middle of road Heavy Autocannon, and then there's the long ranged Hypervelocity Driver. Would be nice if we have a middle of the road option for HE, something that doesn't have as much range but has more DPS, the closest we have is the Chaingun as of now and that is more of a SO weapon.

We've had probably a dozen threads on this very topic and Alex has repeatedly said that a "middle-of-the-road" Medium HE encroaches on the design-goals for missiles. That is to say, cost-effective/efficient HE weapons is an intentional void. Second, the hypothetical MotR Medium HE would likely have decent range, decent hit strength, and decent accuracy. This combination has the nasty side effect of erasing Frigate-sized targets and being clearly optimal over the other Medium HE options. Currently, all Medium HE have a glaring weakness, which again, feels intentional.

Not saying it won't ever happen but we've been down this road many a time.

[Nettle]

I'm totally fine with Heavy Mauler stats myself but I would be even more content if you had 2-shot burst at slightly higher RoF. 3-round burst with long fire delay feels like it punishes misses excessively harsh.

[goduranus]

Maybe annihilator rocket pods?

[Grievous69]

Ok then let's have a medium HE that has 800 range but a glaring weakness, that's not hard to come up with. I don't even want to replace missiles with any sort of weapon. But when you get to longer ranges and higher bonuses from ITU, it gets bloody annoying when your cruisers or capitals shoot the HE weapons waaay before the kinetics strike, meaning it's a pure waste. Or when using the 700 range Heavy Mortar, it takes so long for the shots to first, get in range, and then actually hit since they're so slow. If this is intentional, then why do smalls and heavies have "normal" HE lineups?

Deleting frigates with HE shots is such a weak excuse when every single good frigate used in end game relies heavily on shields, they laugh at HE ballistics. You either overwhelm with missiles, kinetics or beams. Potential new HE middle of the road weapon (even if we exclude my proposed glaring weakness) would be the last thing you'd use to try and kill Scarabs, Tempests, Omens, Monitors, etc.

[Megas]

Ok then let's have a medium HE that has 800 range but a glaring weakness, that's not hard to come up with.

Light Assault Gun plus Ballistic Rangefinder, at least on destroyer+ ships with ballistic mounts.  Not a great option because of the OP cost and general LAG weaknesses.

There is also rolling back Assault Chaingun to its original lower DPS, 700(?) range version.  Probably worse than Heavy Mortar because of bad accuracy, efficiency, and damage per shot, and 10 OP cost.  Only things it had over Heavy Mortar were faster shot speed and rate-of-fire.

[Killer of Fate]

Maybe annihilator rocket pods?

straight up coolest weapon in the game, only beaten by the hsa graviton beam (okay, the graviton beam statement is a joke), but annihilator is pog

[Killer of Fate]

Ok then let's have a medium HE that has 800 range but a glaring weakness, that's not hard to come up with.

Light Assault Gun plus Ballistic Rangefinder, at least on destroyer+ ships with ballistic mounts.  Not a great option because of the OP cost and general LAG weaknesses.

There is also rolling back Assault Chaingun to its original lower DPS, 700(?) range version.  Probably worse than Heavy Mortar because of bad accuracy, efficiency, and damage per shot, and 10 OP cost.  Only things it had over Heavy Mortar were faster shot speed and rate-of-fire.

What if we gave heavy assault gun fragmentation damage, but gave it an even more nerfed version of the breach effect (even more nerfed than the blaster one). And also increase the damage per projectile on the chaingun so it finds it easier to kill armor up close.

No shame in doing that. Considering chaingun is already severely restricted by high op cost, big spread and very short range.

[Grievous69]

Alright here's an actual idea for the medium (and even small perhaps) HE weapon, just make it have >1.0 flux/damage. Every single vanilla ballistic HE weapon either has 1.0 efficiency or better. So if such a weapon is hypothetically so problematic, balancing it like this stops it from being too good in certain situations. You want your perfect HE counterpart to Heavy Autocannon, you'll pay with flux.

Also I forgot to echo the mini discussion about LAG, I barely use it since it's both flux hungry and not good versus armour. You usually lack OP and flux, not mounts, so where I'm forced to take a small HE, I'm going with Light Mortar. But in 99% of the cases, HE weapons of choice are either in mediums or larges; or I just rely on missiles but be sure to have kinetics with good damage/shot.

[Megas]

Alright here's an actual idea for the medium (and even small perhaps) HE weapon, just make it have >1.0 flux/damage. Every single vanilla ballistic HE weapon either has 1.0 efficiency or better. So if such a weapon is hypothetically so problematic, balancing it like this stops it from being too good in certain situations. You want your perfect HE counterpart to Heavy Autocannon, you'll pay with flux.

Mining Blaster.  It is hybrid now.  Not saying it is the best or even good option.

[WENth100]

Alright here's an actual idea for the medium (and even small perhaps) HE weapon, just make it have >1.0 flux/damage. Every single vanilla ballistic HE weapon either has 1.0 efficiency or better. So if such a weapon is hypothetically so problematic, balancing it like this stops it from being too good in certain situations. You want your perfect HE counterpart to Heavy Autocannon, you'll pay with flux.

Also I forgot to echo the mini discussion about LAG, I barely use it since it's both flux hungry and not good versus armour. You usually lack OP and flux, not mounts, so where I'm forced to take a small HE, I'm going with Light Mortar. But in 99% of the cases, HE weapons of choice are either in mediums or larges; or I just rely on missiles but be sure to have kinetics with good damage/shot.

Now I am reminded of the medium HE ballistics UAF has access to as of now. One is the budget mortar option, while it's a triple mount instead of the Heavy Mortar's double it only has 600 or so range if I remember correctly. The other 2 are essentially an HE Heavy Autocannon (Rapid) and a discount Mauler (Support). The Rapid variant is a triple barrel gun with 800 range but has lower hit strength and less than stellar efficiency (should be above 1.0 as it does generate a lot of flux), the support variant has 900 range but only slightly better hit strength and half the rate of fire.

And TBH, light assault guns are only good early on, where you only have a handful of HE weapons that is easily accessible, the light mortar is just awful, the Heavy Mortar has decent hit strength but its low accuracy and projectile speed means it will most likely miss its shots the majority of the time, as early on you will be fighting mostly small fast ships like frigates and destroyers. In the end the light assault gun ended up as the better choice early on as it's more accurate and the low hit strength matters a lot less against early game enemies that have low armor to begin with.