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[Goumindong]

This "improved" hellbore would only be a better gun if it was installed on some hypothetical spherical-cow ship that has unlimited flux reserves... and if you've got that, then you should be using the HAG instead.

Ok so. Imagine a hypothetical weapon that does 5000 DPS for 5000 flux/second. Is this weapon good, absent other factors. You seem to think “no”. But the answer is very clearly “yes”.

You see if a weapon is particularly good you don’t have to fit more things. I can fit only the 5000 DPS weapon and fill the ship with hull mods and vents and caps.

Similarly if a Hellbore does 50% more DPS you can fit fewer Hellbore and more highly efficient kinetic.

It would only not be a buff if it also cost 50% more OP (and technically 50% more slots, since those also matter)

[Wyvern]

Ok so. Imagine a hypothetical weapon that does 5000 DPS for 5000 flux/second. Is this weapon good, absent other factors. You seem to think “no”. But the answer is very clearly “yes”.

The Hellbore, unlike your hypothetical weapon, has a very specific role: it's there to crack armor. "Buffs" that make it worse at that role are not buffs. If you want a higher-cost weapon that breaks armor and has strong DPS, that's literally the HAG; use that and leave the Hellbore alone.

And besides, the answer for your hypothetical weapon is very clearly "maybe". Because those "other factors" matter quite a lot. For example, if it's a burst-fire weapon, then there's a serious risk of almost-instantly fluxing out the ship firing it - or for the mounting ship to just not have the flux pool to fire it at all. I've seen weapons like that in mods, with seemingly-amazing stats that, in actual play, just don't work well.

Or consider the Cryoflamer, which is - while its ammunition supply lasts - as close to your suggested statline as anything gets. Is it a good weapon? Yes. Is it so amazingly good that you want nothing else? Not even remotely close. A ship with a cryoflamer can kill things very quickly indeed... but can also very easily over-extend, flux itself out, and get killed by the next set of enemies right behind the ones it fried.

[Goumindong]

[The Hellbore, unlike your hypothetical weapon, has a very specific role: it's there to crack armor. "Buffs" that make it worse at that role are not buffs. If you want a higher-cost weapon that breaks armor and has strong DPS, that's literally the HAG; use that and leave the Hellbore alone.

A buff to its RoF would not make it worse at cracking armor it would make it better.

 I do not want it buffed because it’s fine and good already. I just want to recognize that that if you increase it’s RoF by 50% it would be a better weapon

[Brainwright]

Hmm.  I actually haven't used the HAG yet.  If it is really good at doing hull damage, then I have no complaints about the Hellbore.  Being forced to use thumpers with the Hellbore to actually kill things fits the whole low-tech niche of guns with a small flux per shot that can constantly fire.  My only complaint is that the thumper doesn't fit that niche very well as its volley is fairly flux intense.

[Goumindong]

HAG does 480 DPS for 440 flux to 900 range with a decent recoil profile (and pretty good recoil profile if you have skills). It has a hit strength of 240. This makes it about on par but a bit lower than a HIL for killing hull. It’s worse (but more efficient) than a Mjolnir.

But unlike an HIL it does hard flux and unlike a Mjolnir it costs 20( 10 for many ships) OP and isn’t hard to find. I wouldn’t say it’s the pre-eminent hull killer for ballistic slots. But it’s pretty good.

[snicka]

A practical counterpoint to the lack of need to buff it - not only do I not know a ship i would like it on, but more importantly i don't really recall a build posted here featuring Hellbore like ever

[Wyvern]

i don't really recall a build posted here featuring Hellbore like ever

May I suggest using the "SEARCH" button up at the top of the forum's webpage? A quick search for "hellbore" shows that the builds you don't remember are definitely there - and that simple text search won't even catch anyone posting their build in the ever-popular image-with-no-explanatory-text format.

[Grievous69]

The amount of builds posted here not containing a specific weapon doesn't mean that it's bad. Since people mostly use forums to flex their tryhard fleets which can kill x Ordos at once. So naturally all you'll be seeing are high DPS weapons and tons of missiles. You rarely see carriers posted here and that doesn't mean they're bad (except for the Astral).

Hellbore is a good choice for an Invictus build I used previous patch, and I'd still use it now. 2 Mk IXs, 1 Mjolnir and 1 Hellbore for the front armaments.

You could put it on a Manticore and actually have flux to use those small mounts that are trying really hard to get noticed.

Regular Legion is also pretty flux limited so you can go crazier with the rest of the weapons.

And that's just the ships I used lately.

[Killer of Fate]

the extreme laser focus on making fleets that are designed to just mow down ordos is kinda taking away the fun from the game at some point. Ordos form a very small and specific niche of enemies, and it's just the design that makes them ridiculously powerful by giving them access to usually superior numbers, officers and just purposeful design oversights to slightly buff them in the end. And with all these aspects, they become ridiculously powerful. But they represent only a certain aspect of the game, which is not an aspect that is vulnerable to Hellbore.

Hellbore is designed to punch heavily armoured ships, and those are common, except when they're not. So, naturally Hephaestus will appear stronger than Hellbore, because it's more viable against more nimble ships, which remnants are. If we are to really design the game this way, then we are going to end up with all weapons being designed to handle or counter shields. Which, sure... Makes sense. But then like... The hell?

Lore-wise it doesn't even make any sense for weapons to be designed this way. Remnants don't even exist in lore. Can we just stop with making them the mandatory end-game challenge? And instead focus on improving the strength of core world factions, pirates and maybe even buff derelicts? Cause I'm honestly just tired of facing off against the same 7 same ships the entirety of the freaking late game, which forms 90% of game's playtime.

[Grievous69]

I mean nobody is forcing you to fight Remnants over and over again, you can do bounties (elite mercenary bounties are fun). It's just unfortunate that most of the things you need in late game, you get most easily from Remnants, and that is xp, and AI cores if you care for them.

[Killer of Fate]

the way I saw it back in 0.97, maybe it changed with the most recent patch, is that the entirety of late game content were just expeditions, which were fairly easy. Bounties, which were fairly easy. Mercenary bounties, which were fairly easy... And then you just had Ordos, Guardians and Tessies. And the difficulty disparity between the two was like trying to climb freaking Mount Olympus, and trying like... Climb the freaking surface of the Sun. It was just stupid. And it doesn't help that like... plenty of game's mechanics that are supposed to give you those straight up buffs are based in grinding bonus xp. So, it's not even like... "Oh, it was skill that I was lacking, I should try again". Usually, it's just meta builds, s-mods, proper officer builds... And like... I guess it would probably be easier if back then I bothered doing safety overrides and piloting my own ship, instead of trying to make dumb carriers work. But whatever...

It really just feels like Starsector's world is really tiny, and relies too much on specific ultra late game challenges, and lacks plot, and lacks interesting faction interactions, and lacks interesting colonisation system, and lacks interesting enemy design... And just makes up for it with a ridiculous difficulty curve at the end. That is just kinda annoying... Or maybe I'm just burned out... Either way, I would enjoy if pirates and derelicts were made more competent. Cause killing them at the moment feels like driving over ants with a freaking Star Wars java tank.

I would also enjoy if Remnants were fleshed out a bit more, not combat-wise. But maybe they should be made into like a... Faction? With space markets??? Missions??? Characters??? I mean, they are swarms of alpha and beta cores, and these are described as being almost or above human in behaviour. And yet their only purpose in the game is for people to make long YouTube videos in which they show off their extremely viable Hyperion builds which were recently nerfed into the ground to be never seen again.

Sry, if this sounds kinda harsh as gameplay critique. I really love Starsector, just kinda... Being funny about it... I mean, I feel like Apex and Nova were amazing additions to the Starsector roster. And I do kinda like the challenge of... Watching my gigantic hordes of ships fight gigantic hordes of other ships when defending a system... Which means I should check out the new colonisation system, but I was too busy modding the game... Eh, soon... Also, I tried out the Grendel. Great *** ship. Thanks Alex...

[Grievous69]

I don't think you're talking about hard bounties like I am. Not average 250-300k bounty with capital spam. I'm talking about contact bounties where the whole fleet is composed of triple s-modded ships and quality officers. That *** is harder than fighting an Ordo (although I guess it depends what ship composition is the fleet made of).

[Killer of Fate]

I guess I should try those when I inevitably come back to the game. I did a few, but I usually got the mercenary phase ship fleets, which were extremely weak and gave a lot of money. So, I just assumed they were kind of a joke. And didn't really bother doing more of them. Which was a mistake on my part, cause I do recollect sometimes going against mercenary bounties... And had to kill like capital ships with s-mods. I guess...

I think my stupidest mistake about the game was assuming that the game's content exists in the open world. When the proper game scaling apparently from what I'm recently reading comes from contacts? Which I never really liked as a game mechanic, because it just kinda felt like fetch quests that tied you to a specific location. Taking away from the whole freedom aspect. But maybe they're cool, I dunno.


Warning: Rambling Ahead

Spoiler

Recently I found myself increasing the amount of spawning pirate and Luddic Path stations. And then started kinda making those typical pirate ships more dangerous. Cause I do enjoy just the feeling of going about a dangerous universe and bumping into a challenge on accident. Kinda also adds a horror aspect to the game.

I also am kinda planning to do that to derelicts and then merge them with remnants so that the late game content kinda feels more varied... (minus guardians, these will form typical late game derelict fleets which will only exist in form of the bounty fleets [separate complicated lore explanation])

ps. I did also changed pirate doctrine a bit...

Made them cautious and gave them Wolfpack Tactics, so that they clamp and live long enough with their CR time to actually defeat me. I also did change how quality works, as well as quantity. Which made pirates appear more numerous and with higher quality ships... And I also changed their ships doctrine...

Basically did a lot of stuff so that the game starts being interesting difficulty-wise from the very first moment. But it does create the issue of "a new player might just walk out of Corvus and instantly die". So, there is going to be a whole separate dimension of designing the game around that fact so the player just doesn't walk out and die instantly. Mostly connected to the selection of starting fleets.

[close]

But eh, that's modded content, who cares...

[Draba]

The Hellbore, unlike your hypothetical weapon, has a very specific role: it's there to crack armor. "Buffs" that make it worse at that role are not buffs. If you want a higher-cost weapon that breaks armor and has strong DPS, that's literally the HAG; use that and leave the Hellbore alone.

I think versions before residual armor reduction was added distort your perception here.
Don't think there is a single setup possible where Hellbore getting more DPS and changing the rest of the mounts accordingly isn't stronger.
Can't really get more efficient hull DPS than 1:1 HE with 1500 hit strength against things Hellbore can hit in the first place.
Genuinely curious what ship/fleet could you even think of where 50% DPS buff is a nerf.

Being forced to use thumpers with the Hellbore to actually kill things fits the whole low-tech niche of guns with a small flux per shot that can constantly fire.  My only complaint is that the thumper doesn't fit that niche very well as its volley is fairly flux intense.

Yeah, Gigacannons are something of a high tech parallel but they can be paired with lots of autolances that reliably murder hull.
That setup has problems with the shortish gigacannon range and not having enough shield damage in return (Executor can pull it off with HAC, but HIL is basically always better).

Light mortar (150 penetration means it is an armor cracker, even if in a small slot) is 75 DPS, Heavy Mauler is 120, Hellbore is 250. That's completely reasonable. Mk IX has 350 in a large slot compared to a heavy autocannon's 214, so even the slot progression of M->L is fine for the hellbore.

1 thing I think would be reasonable is boosting projectile speed.
Between all the mobility systems, CR boost, CM, +15%/+10 helmsmanship and escort package the 500 is a massive drawback.
Relatively low DPS/mount, high inaccuracy, extremely slow turret traverse are already big downsides making it a specialist weapon.
Watching it fumble around in battles is painful even with (mandatory) elite ballistics, preferred taking maulers/heph over it even before heph buffs for that reason.
Going to 600-700 would make it less frustrating to use (Heph is 800, Mjolnir/Mauler 900).

[Megas]

Try +100% speed from an old pre-0.8a release.