How about antimatters? While i can understand the reasoning, since battles usually were over long before ammo became a concern most times and didn't present much of a choice.. i can't see why it still can't be kept as a possible creator for some cool events at the end of a big battle. In some setups, ammo was an actual thing you had to take into consideration. Not a lot, sure but i understand you used it as you do peak effectiveness now which leads me to:
AM blasters still keep ammo, imo it's one of the cases where ammo is meaningful.
As to the "cool events", that makes sense, but I think critical malfunctions in weapons etc take the place of that for extra-long battle, as you're basically saying.
Again, don't know how i feel about beams, mostly since the AI can fail horribly when dealing with them, but if it can be worked around, i think this will finally set beams apart.
Yeah, that might be a concern and something to iterate.
What am I missing here?
It's a bit hard to put into words, I'll try. I think the difference between energy and ballistic weapon is not only about their core mechanics (damage specialization/effect) but also about how you feel while you use them.
Even when ammo count is not a practical issue most of the time, when I'm using ballistic the limited ammo is always in the back of my mind, making me want to act tactical and efficient. On the other hand energy weapons give me sense of freedom, suggesting that I have limitless attempts to engage my opponent as long as I don't mess up my defense. Same with high flux damage bonus, while you're right in that it is very rarely intentionally used, it works as a consolation when I have high flux.
So, these little "side mechanics", while having little practical influence on the gameplay, attribute to the different feel of weapon classes over-proportionally. It's all just in the players' head... but that's the place you're aiming at anyway, isn't it?
Ah, I see - yeah, that makes perfect sense. I actually tried something similar with missiles (i.e. regenerating ammo across the board) and it totally destroyed the feel of missiles, for similar reasons. (And so was rolled back for everything but the 3 mentioned.) I do think with
most missiles that limited ammo is a defining characteristic, though, so it has much more of an impact there.
It does make me wonder whether giving ballistic weapons absurdly high ammo (Needler levels or above) purely for flavor might be worthwhile, although it'd also be misleading, as in presenting a stat that's actually meaningless. I mean, high enough ammo that the CR timer would always run out first, except for capitals.
Another option on the table was giving capital ships built-in hullmods that give unlimited ballistic ammo... different ways of approaching the same problem, really.
Another question: How are the flux stats on the balli weapons going to be balanced now that they have unlimited ammo? (The theroy being that low flux but limited ammo vs unlimited ammo and high flux)
That wasn't the theory
Limited ammo doesn't work as a short-term balancing factor at all, the way flux does. The balance is a combination of damage type, flux cost, range, and the general flux stats of the types of ships that have the relevant mount types. Adjusting/removing ammo limits doesn't factor in here.
The exception are things like missiles, where ammo matters short-term.
