Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Üstad]

When we use alternating guns ie: ion pulser, let us disable the blinking range aim thingy and make them appear combined like 'linked' weapons. It's an eyesore and it'd be nice QoL to fix that.

[Nettle]

Or just dim currently unused arcs if alternating within a weapon group.

[prav]

A cleaner range/arc overlay would be nice in general. Usually I don't even care about the arc at all, just how far the guns can reach.

[THE SHAMBLER]

I also hope for some more medium energy and ballistics next patch, I have no problems because I always play moded campaigns but the vannilla mediums do leave a lot to be desired, especially the energy mediums.

Wait really? I think medium energy weapons have the most variety than every other gun slot, excluding missiles. There's a weapon for every role and niche, something I cannot say about small and large energies. Smalls are basically all PD with 2 support options and one crazy damage melee weapon. Larges are again half beams, 2 projectile weapons (one working with charges, one sustained) and a Gigacannon which I was so excited for, only to see it's a useless weapon for almost all vanilla ships. I really wish it also had charges so you could at least improve the DPS with s-mod Expanded Mags. Or at least we could have a high tech ships with more large mounts than it needs, to promote Gigacannon and Paladin. But unfortunately high tech ships are either limited with medium mounts, or have good enough flux stats to not care about low power large guns.

Medium ballistics are good enough, community just wants another HE option.

For Ballistics yes I would like to see some more HE but for the medium energy maybe I'm just not as experienced with energy since I have been using mostly low tech since starfarer total biscuit era.

[Killer of Fate]

ballistic now has mining blaster, heavy mortar and heavy mauler... Though all of these weapons are kinda specific in functioning. Though that is the intended concept, cause ballistic weapons are meant to be incompetent, but then ridiculously potent in specific scenarios. With the amount of scenarios increasing on their comparative op cost.

Also both ballistic and energy excluding large are meant to be bad anti-armour (oversimplified a bit) in general. With them having to be supplanted with missiles to do anything. Reapers, Atropos, Breach, Annihilators. Mauler is the only exception to this rule, but it's still not perfect against ultra ridiculous armour. Like that of a Dominator.

This philosophy of being supported with missiles to function extends to also high hit strength weapons. Like you need sabot to make the heavy blaster work on a Shrike for e.g.

[Thaago]

In addition to the Heavy Blaster, the Phase Lance is also decent anti-armor because it has the same hit strength (500) even after the beam factor of 1/2.

All the energies have effective anti-armor options, considering the AM Blaster for smalls and the High Intensity Laser (and tachyon lance and even kind of plasma cannon) for larges.

[Killer of Fate]

yeah, but both phase lance and heavy blaster are kinda close range. And heavy blaster overfluxes a small-sized ship and phase lance just does no damage to shields. The point is that high tech weapons tend to reinforce themselves with sabot, cause they are about burst, and hate shields. And kinetic weapons reinforce themselves with something hard-hitting, cause they are about long-term warfare and hate armour, because something something zerg rushing.

Not having a valid anti-armour option and instead being forced to use ones that are kinda nerfed feels like the intended part of the game. Though, honestly I don't even remember what we were talking about, so I might sound really stupid.

Heavy Blaster in general is somewhat of a finisher or at least meant to utilise flux gains of a superior vessel to effectively punch down or at least punch without retaliation. And Phase Lance feels somewhat midline in approach, as it has relatively ineffective output, but it is extremely effective at performing its specific job. This is kinda confusing...

theory crafting

Spoiler

Phase Lance feels like a midline weapon. Putting a Phase Lance on a Shrike or a Fury with their limited mounts would be a joke. Which to me feels like it subverts the whole point of energy weapons. Energy weapons being universal jack-of-all-trades weapons that have such a straightforward way of approaching damage dealing that the only way they can fail is when the user themselves sucks. Which is why officers are so important to their functioning.

But with heavy blaster, pulse laser, phase lance. These weapons don't function like that. All three of those are just kinda low risk crap, reminiscent of medium ballistic weapons. With increase in flux efficiency and acceptance of these weapons being specialised and not generalist in purpose. We remove weapons viable for high tech ships that have a small amount of mounts. Because these kind of ships (Shrike, Wolf, Aurora, Fury) can't just equip synergistic weapons. Because the only kind of synergy they can have is meant to be synergy with missiles. But that kind of synergy isn't effective enough to cover all the non-generalist weapons blind spots.

[close]

[Goumindong]

Given that overfluxing is ideal phase Lance is not zero damage to shields unless the enemy both has higher flux capacity than you and is undergunned.

An enemy could stop firing its guns in order to make up some flux if they have better than .8 shields… but probably want to be shooting kinetic at you anyway.

Which is to say this is only an issue if you have lower flux dissipation than them in net over your entire engaging group. Which is to say that you’re losing that engagement almost regardless of your weapons dealing hard or soft flux.

The only time “beams do soft flux” matters is when an enemy is too far away to engage themselves (and thus cannot shoot back and so can dedicate its own dissipation to reducing your damage. But this generally isn’t an issue for 600 range beams.

Like, I think it’s far more likely that phase lances are over than undertuned.  Their only disadvantage is that they have how DPS/OP. But like… it’s not actually that low. And it’s easy to supplement with other weapons on most ships.

Edit: this is also why it’s so hard to make HSA work. You need a situation where 10% more dmg is better than the range advantage and it rarely is.

Edit: maybe this insight allows us to “fix” HSA. Instead of HSA giving beams a range reduction maybe only have the damage bonus and hard flux bonus apply under a certain range.

Like… you know how weapons have a falloff. It takes a bit of time for the projectile to disappear and so the weapon will do some, but less, damage past it’s max range and this damage is done as soft flux (used to be really easy to see with the Plasma cannon because it had such a huge falloff).

If HSA converted the “outside range” to “beam falloff” instead of nothing then HSA wouldn’t be a tradeoff like it is and would just make beams a bit better at close range. This range would generally be under the optimal range for similarly sized weapons* and so would keep the standard dichotomy intact.

*except tactical lasers but I am not sure HSA would make them worthwhile even with this

[Killer of Fate]

HSA is actually really powerful, it's just that any ship that could equip it and benefit from it with the price it has isn't designed for long-term combat, but mostly burst nonsense. And those that are about long combat, are usually long ranged, because they're glass cannons.

Sunder, Fury, Shrike, Wolf are too squishy to fight for periods of time long enough to make the HSA deal annoying damage. By the time they get in range, they need to have most of the enemy shields removed by just spamming everything at their disposal. Sabots, blasters, PCLs, ambs. Having 3 tactical lasers and a graviton pointed at enemy is a waste of time. Considering a ship like the Shrike needs all these op points. Also, ships that use energy weapons usually don't have that many op points, with few exceptions. Like the Paragon. If you equip them with all the weapons, you have space for like one interesting hullmod. And if you choose to make that one interesting hullmod high scatter array, you are screwed. You have options like hardened shields, unstable injector or whatever... And yet you choose a hullmod that is somewhat of a debuff in plenty of cases. Especially considering your ship is meant to be burst focused with beams only being functional as a long range support role with other things stacked on top.

HSA is functional on an Odyssey I think. With Tachyon Lances HSA being somewhat strong. It's also quite functional if you are piloting a Sunder yourself and using a Tachyon Lance with HSA. You can play around using other ships as cover. And dealing huge amounts of damage. Especially considering Energy Weapon Mastery rewards being at really close ranges. And stacks multiplicatively with HSA. A built in HSA, Energy Weapon Master, and a bunch of other stuff can make a Sunder be able to freaking turn off Enforcers in one burst. But the AI is just too stupid to handle that kind of behaviour or simply too squishy. And unable to utilise cover of other ships to play around that fact.

Coming back to the Phase Lance. Truth be told 0.8 is the standard shield of like midline ships. With the exception of Conquest or Sunder which are going to be firing at you from the other side of the engagement. Usually with a lot of kinetic weapons that are going to drain your shield extensively by the time you reach them. Sort of. However, most late game enemies have shield efficiency below that of 0.6, so using a phase lance against them still sort of doesn't pay off. But the point of phase lance isn't to pay off when shooting at shields. But to blow up tough armour or finish off wounded targets.

Another aspect you need to know is that plenty of ships in the game tend to spend less flux than they can vent. I mean... It's just kinda autofit nonsense. And default fit nonsense too... Though that is just a theory of mine. I just assume that happens, cause it's an overlooked aspect in some builds. So firing at them with a beam weapon is going to be not so efficient, as they won't be over-fluxed often.

[Goumindong]

I don’t think really anything you wrote there is true.

HSA gives +10% dmg for 4/8/10/20 OP.

That isn’t a lot of DPS increase for that amount. It does make beams more efficient but this is marginal considering you lose capacity or other additional weapons as a result.

Like. Sure you could equip a Tach Lance and HSA on a Sunder…  but that is 33 OP. You could fit a Plasma Cannon. Or advanced Optics. You could have this tachyon Lance hit 1800 range. But instead you want 10% more damage? And 40% less range?

When you’re already doing enough soft flux damage to overload the enemy?

It is far better to just not fit that mod.

And sure you can fit it to an Odyssey. You can fit 11 tactical lasers and 2 tachyon lances and HSA and then you have spent 114 OP for 1618 DPS!  Or for 60 OP you could have two Plasma cannon for 1500 DPS.

Like. The tactical laser/tachyon Lance Osyssey isn’t bad… but it doesn’t need HSA in order to operate. You volley most small things regardless of hard flux. And HSA significantly hampers it’s ability to be effective against many targets.

Another aspect you need to know is that plenty of ships in the game tend to spend less flux than they can vent. I mean... It's just kinda autofit nonsense. And default fit nonsense too... Though that is just a theory of mine. I just assume that happens, cause it's an overlooked aspect in some builds. So firing at them with a beam weapon is going to be not so efficient, as they won't be over-fluxed often

The only ships firing less than they can vent are ships you don’t care about.