Mb is deeply unbalanced

[MacThule]

Pouring over the weapons charts I find myself completely failing to understand the thinking behind the Mb combo in this game. It doesn't make any sense. Neither on the basis of either 1) a balanced game-play perspective, nor 2) any real life, common sense or sci-fi parallel.

• #1 of 16 in Range (top 1%)
• #2 of 8 in Speed (top 25%)
• #4 of 16 in Damage (top 25%)

• It ranks #2 in power drain (despite being clearly #1 in value, over slow, short-range, easily PDd Mp).

From a game-play balance perspective, I seriously cannot image that ANY weapon that comes in #1 in any core statistic should also come in #2 in another area and place highly (top 25%) in a 3rd unless the developer actually WANTS it to be the primary weapon for every ship in the game. If for some reason such an all-round super weapon must exist, why in the realms of reason would it be anything but the absolute #1 most expensive weapon system in terms of both power and rarity of resources used to craft? Anyone ever struggle to gather enough blocks to install an insane Mb nuke the way we do to get enough advanced armor or shields?

With the incredible buffs the new thrust system has given missiles, we are already quickly returning to the dark days of the "USS Mb Spammer" as the only ship worth flying in terms of DPS economy, leaving other weapon systems as mere curiosities and red herrings to distract new engineers. As it was before. Excepting only that Mb spammers might as well spam Mc as well - not because targets have a very good chance of shooting down the lightning fast Mb, but just to make sure...

 

[AtraUnam]

With AI on any decent difficulty setting PD has a very good chance of shooting down missile/beam, sure you can offset this with multiple outputs but the increased power cost from multiple outputs would quickly eat up the DPS economy you mention.

 

[Jaaskinal]

^
That, and missiles have really bad damage potential if you build your ship decently. Most good looking ships already have a profile that limits the raytracing blast effect of missiles, and if you build for function, spaced armor does even worse things to missiles.

 

[Master_Artificer]

I think we should nerf it just in case

 

[Kilim]

The main problem with the current weapons system is the fact that dps is the same accross the board. What people will naturally do in that kind of system is to use the weaopns that are most likely to hit, like cannon+cannon, beam+cannon, missile+beam

and not damage pulse master or missile+damage pulse for example. Why risk missing the dps when you can just use an alternate weapon that is more likely to hit that will generate the same dps for same power and blocks?

 

[Lecic]

Missiles have poor overall block damage and can be shot down. You can't assume M/B is the best based on the math alone.

 

[Master_Artificer]

Missiles have poor overall block damage and can be shot down. You can't assume M/B is the best based on the math alone.

Don't you bring extensive testing and background knowledge INTO THIS!!!

 

[Andir]

How is it #2 in speed? Beams are instant and cannons are damned fast. You are telling me that a 100% Missile/Beam is faster than a cannon?

 

[Lecic]

How is it #2 in speed? Beams are instant and cannons are damned fast. You are telling me that a 100% Missile/Beam is faster than a cannon?

Yeah, this is true. Cannons have 10x server max, and Cannon/Beam is even faster. Missile/Beam is only something like 4.5x server max.

 

[Ithirahad]

I think we should nerf it just in case

I say we nerf it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. :P

...Nah, not really... In my experience M/B is slightly overpowered at best. Not really worth poking it.

 

[Keptick]

You mentioned that the thrust mechanic change buffed missiles a lot. Isn't the speed dependent on the base server speed? Afaik that didn't change...

 

[NeonSturm]

The main problem with the current weapons system is the fact that dps is the same accross the board. What people will naturally do in that kind of system is to use the weaopns that are most likely to hit, like cannon+cannon, beam+cannon, missile+beam

and not damage pulse master or missile+damage pulse for example. Why risk missing the dps when you can just use an alternate weapon that is more likely to hit that will generate the same dps for same power and blocks?

It's natural to choose reliability.

You only use unreliable things if they are

1. needed from time to time
   
2. otherwise good to have, but as secondary resort
3. special outfit for some task
4. or just in case the enemy didn't think about a counter and it's super-effective in this case
   • in this case you force the opponent to debuff the ratio of reliable systems.

I want to go away from all this hard-counter and good-or-bad choices and let player choose for Aesthetic reasons.

Whether it's good or bad should depend on how it's designed, not how it looks.

Against bigger equal or smaller targets (but buffs biggest+smallest ships over medium which need all 3).
Against slower, equal or faster targets, again penalizes the middle.​