In the
New Weapon Ideas thread, (yet) another 800 range HE weapon was proposed. The community's desire for this weapon has gone unabated for literally years and despite repeated proposals for a weapon that fits this niche, one still hasn't appeared from the ether.
Background: Why Not?Those of us who have been around awhile know that the lack of this 800 range HE option has, thus far, been intentional. To quote Alex:
Another point to consider here is that 1) most ships have the option to mount some kind of missile weapon, and 2) many missile weapons fill the anti-armor role, moreso than e.g. the anti-shield role. So there's ... not really something I'd call a "gap" here, since there are some good options - but coverage is somewhat lighter because there's overlap elsewhere. The more of a wide range of HE options you provide for a ballistic slot, the more that devalues some of the missile options.
(And HE pairing with a Gauss... I mean, the Gauss doesn't need anti-armor help to begin with, and it's also kind of meant to be in its own class range-wise, so...)
A lot of 'true high end HE weapons' are recipes for making frigates utterly nonviable. That makes them kind of a questionable balance proposition; some of the more creative midrange HE weapons in mods (the Blackrock Sunfire PDE is one of my favorites) are designed the way they are to keep them from becoming vicious frigate-murderers.
And, yeah, that! The old Heavy Mauler was a bit too good at that, too, but something like the Heavy AC but HE would also be brutal.
In other words, Missiles fill the "gap" left by a generalist HE option not named the Hephaestus Assault Gun (which only gets by because it's a Large slot that few ships have). There's also another issue with another Medium HE option: role overlap. Most ideas that I have seen for a 800 range HE obsoletes an existing weapon, or comes close to it. The trickiest part of this is finding a niche that complements the current Medium HE options without overshadowing them: a "good at everything" weapon becomes optimal.
Click if you want read my design goals
My inspiration for this weapon came from an 90's movie: The Pentagon Wars. In it the Bradly Fighting Vehicle has a clear initial vision but due to design-by-committee, feature creep, and dueling egos/priorities, what was supposed to be a troop transport turns into a "do everything" vehicle that excels at nothing and doesn't even carry very many troops. The weapon I am proposing for the 800 HE role takes a page from that philosophy. It's as if some weapon engineers took a look at the existing Medium HE weapons (and also looked a little outside) and tried to make a one-size-fits-all weapon that, on paper, looks really good but in practice falls very short of being a great weapon. Perhaps this is a Lion's Guard weapon.
So, what does the Heavy Mauler have? Good range, fairly accurate, decent damage/shot. Check. Let's make sure this is 800 range, accurate, and though we can't have the same damage/shot, let's get close. What does the Heavy Mortar have? It's cheap with good sustained fire. Let's have some of that, too. The Assault Chaingun: man, if it had better range, it'd be incredible! Let's make this thing go full auto! etc. etc. etc.
What you end up getting is a slow-firing weapon that is clearly inferior to the Heavy Mauler for armor cracking, a weapon that doesn't have the sustained damage or is as brutally efficient as Heavy Mortar, can't compete with the Assault Chaingun for raw damage at any range, and feels more like a poor-man's HAG with severe limitations. Basically, you get a gun that is less than the sum of its parts and has a unique Achilles' Heel that the designers completely overlooked...
(Ignore the placeholder Assault Chaingun sprite)
If you read my design goals, you'll see that I tried to mix-and-match some of the key features of the current Medium HE lineup to create a Frankenstein gun that excels at nothing and is individually worse at any given niche of its HE brethren. That said, it's not intentionally awful.
It features a "full-auto" mode that is activated when shields are down (it uses the "USE_LESS_VS_SHIELDS" tag). At full bore, it fires 3 times a second with roughly half the accuracy of the HAG: not great, not terrible (it's markedly better than the HAC). However, it has a tiny magazine, and 1 round/sec recharge. At baseline, it fires 14 times before it reverts to the sustained damage number. That means the 400 DPS on paper is only for brief moments but it does allow for some burst damage.
Most of the time, it will operate like an inferior pre-burst Heavy Mauler. 1 round/sec, accurate, but only 133 damage/shot and with 200 less range. In this mode, it is clearly worse than both the Heavy Mortar in both sustained damage and in flux efficiency and inferior to the Mauler due to it's lack of damage/shot and ability to put multiple shots on a single point. It also can't compete with the Assault Chaingun at all due to the low magazine size. What it
can do, is outdamage the Heavy Mauler for short bursts, put more rounds on target than the Heavy Mortar, shoot further than the ACG, and act like a poor-man's HAG for about 3 seconds at a time.
One
key feature that makes it lose some of its luster is that it can't take advantage of Accelerated Ammo Feeder. Because it is a charge-based weapon, AAF doesn't increase its reload speed. That makes this weapon somewhat lackluster on something like a Hammerhead or Eradicator. It can increase its usefulness via Expanded Magazines (and especially S-modding it), but that still doesn't help the AAF ships all that much. This is intentional because despite this being a fairly generalist weapon, it has clear weaknesses. What this (hopefully) avoids is making any existing Medium HE option obsolete or feel lacking in some way. I also don't see this thing erasing Frigates because it just doesn't have great sustained damage.
Because of these obvious drawbacks, it does seem somewhat fitting for this to be a Lion's Guard weapon, though I could make an argument that it's not quite
that bad.
PlaytestingIf you want to play around with this, I've included the stat line for the weapons_data file. Input the values over the Assault Chaingun line and give it a whirl. Personally, I find it in a no-mans land of lackluster, which is exactly where it needs to be. It pairs with the HAC pretty well (and isn't a flux hog) but its damage leaves a lot to be desired, even when it can use its burst.
Weapon Data
name Assault Chaingun
id chaingun
tier 1
rarity
base value 1000
range 800
damage/second
damage/shot 133.33
emp
impact 5
turn rate 20
OPs 10
ammo 10
ammo/sec 1
reload size
type HIGH_EXPLOSIVE
energy/shot 133.33
energy/second
chargeup 0
chargedown 0.3333
burst size 1
burst delay
min spread 0
max spread 10
spread/shot 3
spread decay/sec 10
beam speed
proj speed 800
launch speed
flight time
proj hitpoints 30
autofireAccBonus
extraArcForAI
hints USE_LESS_VS_SHIELDS
tags he15, SR, lowtech_bp, midline_bp, merc, ind
groupTag
tech/manufacturer
for weapon tooltip>>
primaryRoleStr Anti Armor
speedStr
trackingStr
turnRateStr
accuracyStr
customPrimary
customPrimaryHL
customAncillary
customAncillaryHL
noDPSInTooltip
number 4.5
Feedback welcome.
