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[tomatopaste]

Small ballistic mounts have only one okay HE option, and one terrible budget option in the Light Assault Gun and Light Mortar respectively. Since there are a few really good kinetic options for small ballistics, wouldn't it make sense for a Light Mauler weapon to be added to the game? Especially since the name Heavy Mauler implies that there is a light version around too, something that confused me when I first started playing (see Heavy Machine Gun in shops, then seeing a Light Machine Gun downgrade, then seeing Heavy Mauler, but no Light mauler). Having a 700 range HE high hit-strength armour piercing small ballistic would open some doors for frigate loadouts too. Hope this makes sense, cheers.

[Grievous69]

As hilarious as it would be for small ballistics to have more well rounded HE options than medium ballistics, I honestly don't think it would change up things much. Kinetic damage is so valuable you will rarely spend OP on a small elite HE option that just gets outclassed by many other things with better hit strength. Missiles are a way for frigates to punch up. LDACs, Railguns and Needlers are just too important to swap out for a hypothetical Light Mauler.

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

[tomatopaste]

As hilarious as it would be for small ballistics to have more well rounded HE options than medium ballistics, I honestly don't think it would change up things much. Kinetic damage is so valuable you will rarely spend OP on a small elite HE option that just gets outclassed by many other things with better hit strength. Missiles are a way for frigates to punch up. LDACs, Railguns and Needlers are just too important to swap out for a hypothetical Light Mauler.

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

It wouldn't become more well rounded. Medium ballistics have access to the Heavy Mauler, Assault Chaingun and Heavy Mortar, and all of those are good at different things. There are virtually zero good small ballistic HE options, since the LAG has such low armour piercing. Kinetic damage is only highly valuable since there are no good armour piercing options for small ballistics.

A Light Mauler with Sabots combo would be absolutely deadly, like the way that high tech frigates can use AMBs / sabots for massive strike potential. Small low tech ships are basically forced to hope that their targets have their shields pressured enough that using an HE missile will actually connect with hull, which makes ships like the Lasher not very useful outside of dueling with other frigates and destroyers, and don't fill strike roles very comfortably. Having access to a high hit-strength HE weapon with sabots would be a massive boon to loadout diversity.

[Grievous69]

What's wrong with Light Mortars? They are basically Light Maulers but slower and less accurate, which is fixed with Gunnery Implants and Armored Weapon Mounts. 100 range up and down isn't a huge deal as it is with mediums where the difference is 300. It's not even that I wouldn't like a new weapon, I very much like new options. But I'm trying to think this through from the dev's perspective if it's worth a brand new weapon status.

[tomatopaste]

What's wrong with Light Mortars? They are basically Light Maulers but slower and less accurate, which is fixed with Gunnery Implants and Armored Weapon Mounts. 100 range up and down isn't a huge deal as it is with mediums where the difference is 300. It's not even that I wouldn't like a new weapon, I very much like new options. But I'm trying to think this through from the dev's perspective if it's worth a brand new weapon status.

Light mortar hits nothing, is dirt cheap and has a slow projectile. A Light Mauler would be in a completely different class, a comparison isn't valid.

[Amoebka]

What's wrong with Light Mortars? They are basically Light Maulers but slower and less accurate, which is fixed with Gunnery Implants and Armored Weapon Mounts. 100 range up and down isn't a huge deal as it is with mediums where the difference is 300. It's not even that I wouldn't like a new weapon, I very much like new options. But I'm trying to think this through from the dev's perspective if it's worth a brand new weapon status.

They are basically like maulers, but with slow projectiles, low accuracy, and low range. In other words, not like maulers at all. 
I would imagine the difference to be similar to arbalest/HVD. More OP for more range and fast and accurate projectile.

[SCC]

rename heavy mauler to mauler

[Megas]

I would not be too surprised if this gets added in... as an Omega weapon.

[FooF]

I actually think the OP is closer to what is realistic than any new Medium Ballistic that is HE analog of the Heavy AC. At least the Light Mauler would ostensibly have a low RoF, even if it had decent hit strength, accuracy, and range. It could also be rarer to find, being an “elite” weapon like the Railgun or Light Needler.

So actual stats might look like:

700 range
150 dmg (2-round burst)
3 sec reload (40 rds/min)
100 DPS
100 flux/sec
7 OP

Relative to the Heavy Mortar, which this would compete with, you get over 2x the DPS at greater efficiency, and of course worse accuracy. The LAG also is cheaper OP wise and has more raw DPS, though the poor hit strength hurts it a lot.

Relative to the Heavy Mauler, which some might want to downgrade to save OP, the loss of range and hit strength makes it a poorer weapon to use against heavier armor. Also the 3 round burst of the Heavy version has a much greater chance of hitting the same armor cell than the 2 round burst of the light.

Personally, I think such a weapon would make a good addition. Small Ballistic is heavily skewed toward kinetics. With Ballistic Rangefinder, these could help bigger ships too.

[Grievous69]

Well those are all fair points, although I'd like to hear what Alex thinks about this. Since somewhere in the back of my mind, I remember it being a design choice that small non-missile mounts shouldn't be oppressive and kitey (when we're talking about doing armour damage). Exception being the Antimatter Blaster but that has extremely low range.

Again, I'll never mind new weapons and ships, I just want to ask all the questions to answer "is x thing beneficial enough to add to the base game?".

[Killer of Fate]

I actually think the OP is closer to what is realistic than any new Medium Ballistic that is HE analog of the Heavy AC. At least the Light Mauler would ostensibly have a low RoF, even if it had decent hit strength, accuracy, and range. It could also be rarer to find, being an “elite” weapon like the Railgun or Light Needler.

So actual stats might look like:

700 range
150 dmg (2-round burst)
3 sec reload (40 rds/min)
100 DPS
100 flux/sec
7 OP

Relative to the Heavy Mortar, which this would compete with, you get over 2x the DPS at greater efficiency, and of course worse accuracy. The LAG also is cheaper OP wise and has more raw DPS, though the poor hit strength hurts it a lot.

Relative to the Heavy Mauler, which some might want to downgrade to save OP, the loss of range and hit strength makes it a poorer weapon to use against heavier armor. Also the 3 round burst of the Heavy version has a much greater chance of hitting the same armor cell than the 2 round burst of the light.

Personally, I think such a weapon would make a good addition. Small Ballistic is heavily skewed toward kinetics. With Ballistic Rangefinder, these could help bigger ships too.

why do you need a mauler for frigates when breach exists??? Are you trying to make it irrelevant even more...

on a more serious note...

Spoiler

I agree to some extent with General Grievous. Missiles are meant to punch up, small and medium ballistics are more kinetic oriented, cause these are meant to act as support to larger weapons. If you squint, you can even see how they're meant to act in composition with large ballistics which are mostly designed to serve really well against armor. Hellbore, Lightning Hammer, Devastator, Gauss... Even Mark IX to some extent, considering it has Arbalest's hit strength, and that weapon is quite generalist.

(ps. I mentioned Gauss. Gauss is an anti-shield weapon, but considering it has no anti-armor equivalent, really high hit strength, poor flux efficiency, it's more of a generalist gun. It's like a super Mark IX. Even less efficient, and with even bigger punch. I feel like the only true anti-shield weapon is the Storm Needler, but currently Storm Needler is  . I believe it's cause of the fact that it would be kinda stupid to give large ballistics a perfect kinetic weapon. This is because ballistics are meant to achieve kinetic damage through... Stuff like ragefinder. If Storm Needler worked well as a long range anti-shield weapon with good efficiency. It would make Railgun on a Dominator irrelevant).

What I think we need is a buffed light mortar though. Not because we need a good anti-armor weapon, breach kinda does it for smaller ships. We need a weapon to fight armored fighters. Light mortar is kind of a decent candidate, but it has trouble being more... Flexible???

The issue with it is that it misses a lot. I was thinking we should lower its firerate... But instead of it firing once, it fires 5 times. That way it can hit targets by saturation. We should also do the same for Heavy Mortar. That way, these weapons could have a funny strike aspect to them, kinda like the needler. Except instead of being high tech strike. They're freaking... Ancient Egyptian technology strike.

Also... 300 hit strength against armor??? Jesus Christ, do you know how much that is? Think of the poor shunted eradicators, centurions and vanguards. That would make them cease to exist. Well, shunted eradicators already are kinda struggling. We should rework shield shunt and remake their variants. Maybe we can give pirate eradicators anti-matter blasters?

[close]

[FooF]

Well those are all fair points, although I'd like to hear what Alex thinks about this. Since somewhere in the back of my mind, I remember it being a design choice that small non-missile mounts shouldn't be oppressive and kitey (when we're talking about doing armour damage). Exception being the Antimatter Blaster but that has extremely low range.

Again, I'll never mind new weapons and ships, I just want to ask all the questions to answer "is x thing beneficial enough to add to the base game?".

Right. That was biggest knock on a more general-use Medium HE. I think where a Light Mauler-esque weapon avoids going against that design goal is it has terrible DPS: not just for the OP cost, but in general. If you do kite with it, it’s not killing anything quickly. Likewise, it’s doing next to nothing against shields.

One use-case that immediately came to mind was the Manticore. Typically I throw 3x Railgun and some Large HE on it but if I switch that (say Mk. IX) and 3x Light Maulers, that’s a different beast than 3x LAG or Light Mortar. The flux costs would be much more manageable and you’d still have a little bite.

I think a lot of Low Tech ships could find a good use for it because of the lower flux cost but decent hit strength and accuracy. It would never be more than supplementary damage but would add up over time.

@ 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.

[Nettle]

One use-case that immediately came to mind was the Manticore.

My poor, poor Hammerhead.

[SafariJohn]

Light Mortars are fine IMO. LAG is the weapon I never really find a use for - it doesn't work as anti-fighter because it costs too much flux. A premium small HE ballistic sounds... okay, I guess?

[Thaago]

I use the LAG as a decent anti frigate/destroyer weapon - so I'll put 1 on a lasher or 1 on a Hammerhead for early game (paired with a kinetic for the HH, often 2 light kinetics in the lasher). It doesn't have the hit strength for taking on anything bigger, so if I want those ships to be taking on bigger things I'll swap it out for more kinetics and use something else for that. I think it improves killing broadswords when backed by vulcans (like if my HH has 1 LAG, 1 railgun, 2 vulcans, that performs better than 2 railguns + 2 vulcans). It also helps when being swarmed by luddic path frigates to have a little reasonably accurate HE damage.

Its not useful vs pure shield enemies like the little remnants, but its nice vs small pirates and non-high tech ships.