Sabots need to do some damage to armor or hull. Currently, with the spray Sabot, almost any ship can drop shields and tank a Sabot spray for insignificant damage. With the old 750 sabot, a hit to hull (or even armor if thin enough) will hurt, if the ship drops shields.
Yes. True.
Good. Sabots are the specialist anti-shield missiles. They're support weapons. They shouldn't be punching holes in armor, just like a launch of harpoons shouldn't be breaking shields.
What they should be doing - and the spray version does just fine - is forcing the enemy to choose between a huge chunk of hard flux from the sabot, and armor-tanking whatever other weapons you've got lined up. A hammerhead with sabots and heavy maulers should be a really dangerous beast.
The problem, though, is that shields regenerate. If you've got a target with its shields down, it makes sense to pop a harpoon into it, regardless of how much armor it has left, because armor doesn't regenerate. Sabots, by contrast, are much more situational; because of the limited ammunition, it only makes sense to use sabots when the target is relatively high on flux. Which means you have to build up hard flux using other weapons. Which means that ought-to-be-dangerous hammerhead I mentioned in the previous paragraph has to build up hard flux using maulers. Imagine, by contrast, if you had to chew through most of a target's armor with needlers before it was worth firing a harpoon.
Yeah, I get what you're saying. It's just... they're supposed to be shield-breakers. Can't really do that without also giving them a chance to cause overloads - i.e. fast enough that the AI can't always react. And once you have something like that, regen doesn't feel right.
That doesn't really relate to one-shot vs spray, though. That's more of an aesthetic/subjective choice for me - it just feels better to use, and matches the weapon art. It's also a bit of a buff, sort of like ammo regen would be for the spray version. Similar end result, I think, in terms of usefulness.
Which brings us to this. I disagree on them needing to be fast enough that the AI can't always react; they just need to be used in conjunction with good anti-armor weaponry (maulers, blasters, etc). The interesting part isn't going "bang, haha, you're overloaded and couldn't do anything about it", the interesting part is forcing a target to choose between armor hits from other weapons versus the hard flux of the sabot.
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That all said, I am
not in favor of regenerating sabots that do their damage in a single chunk. If it's an effective anti-armor weapon ontop of the degree to which it can threaten shields, then it should have limited ammunition just like harpoons. But I also feel that that's kindof diluting the uniqueness of the weapon.*
(Hm... maybe add a second anti-shield missile option? Something that uses the spray sabot mechanics, has regenerating ammunition, and - if needed for balance - maybe even make it do soft flux instead of hard flux? "Graviton Burst Missile" or somesuch? Is a thing to think about...)
*Edit: Specifically, the issue is, "what is the operational difference between a harpoon and a sabot?" - and the answer once this goes through is "none". They'll both be limited ammo weapons that you only want to fire at a target that's on the edge of overloading, to force them to choose between overloading and taking a good chunk of armor damage. The sabot is harder to shoot down, but does less damage to armor; which one you use depends more on what sort of PD you expect to face than on whether you're trying to specialize in anti-shield or anti-armor.