Can you elaborate on that a bit? What options are you seeing?
The reason I ask is because:
- Range is now determined by weapon type and not secondary effect. Sniper cannons and long range beams are no longer possible.
- Penetration is now determined by weapon type and not secondary effect. Effective machine guns and armor piercing cannons are no longer possible.
- Damage pulse was the weapon of choice to use for warhead torpedoes due to it s near-ramming range of >50 meters.
- Cannon recoil makes cannons a potential liability in combat.
- They broke missile tracking.
- No shotguns.
- Removing push effect but leaving push pulse removes the possibility for some very interested builds.
There are some good things about weapons 3.0 (acid effect is an interesting twist) but you have to admit we've lost quite a bit of the good stuff.
Range: This actually now falls to the server admin to decide. I can't remember if it was actually stated in any of the updates, but when I was chatting with Shema he seemed to indicate that wile the default weapons ranges may change later on, he has pretty much left it up to the server admin to set the weapons ranges to where they want them in the configs. And to be honest these settings are very easy, I have been playing with them for years. For example I could set normal cannon ranges to 10k then set 100% C+B to 15k and 100% C+C to 5k.
Penetration: So the way I understand it and part of the problem Shema has been having with 3.o is that penetration is determined by your weapons power and the way you set up the weapons output area. The way I gather this is supposed to work is you build your weapon and then (at lest for cannon and possibly beam) you would decide the output size. If for example you have an output of 1 then you will have the highest penetration possible for that weapon as all damage is focused at one point. Now if you built the output bigger say 3x3 the overall hole you are going to make will now be bigger but you will loose some penetration efficiency. The problem Shema seams to be having is that the system is calculating the output size not by the block you set as the output point and the blocks surrounding it, but by the weapons group as a hole. This means that if your output point is 3x3 but your overall weapons group comes out to 9x9 and however long, your area of effect will be 9x9 and not 3x3 like you wanted.
Effective machine guns and armor piercing cannons are no longer possible: I am not sure what you mean by this. In my builds I have found cannons to be quite effective against armor and I have had no problem making anti-ship turrets capable of penetrating reasonable amounts of armor. I have also had no problem making fighters with C+C weapons capable of shredding other fighter using advance armor, granted not in one hit but it still dose not take long to start braking blocks. And there is no way to put enough armor on a ship capable of stopping a spinal mounted cannon. Not unless you are going to put 50 meters of advance armor over the hole thing and even then that will only stop the smaller ones.
Damage Pulse: I tried doing that the last time AI broke and would not ram things, It didn't work so I gave up on it.
Cannon Recoil: This has been turned down so much that It is only noticeable on bigger guns and even then only the slight jump up, as by default your ship moving backwards from gun recoil is now gone. Also this is again all configurable in the game configs as Shema has stated he is done trying to pleas every one. You don't like it you can change it, at lest on your signal player. And if you can't find a server that dose things the way you want, well that just means it is not as important to those willing to pay for a server.
Missile Tracking: Yes it is buggy, but to be fair it has been this way for some time. One update will brake it then one will fix it then another will brake it. I am sure it will all get sorted out in the end.
No Shotgun: This is just my opinion but I found that thing to be of little to no use anyway
Removing push effect but leaving push pulse removes the possibility for some very interested builds: This may be, but I never spent much time working with this mechanic so I wouldn't know.