Weapons Diversity

[Spartan-228]

Now I know that the weapons are somewhat diverse already.
We have cannons, beams, missiles, Pulse, and a host of support weapons. Then there are the weapons effects.

But There are only a few combinations that are effective.
Cannon weapons are most effective wen pared with cannons.
beams are practically useless unless it is pared with cannons. And missiles are best pared with beams or other missiles.

Now I could also go on to effects, but I am sure we all know stop is over powered, piercings effectiveness is debatable, and overdrive is useless as it dose not add anymore damage to a weapon that any of the other effects.

So what can be done to allow people to build the weapons they want and still have effective and balanced weapons?

My personal views is that we need to either nurf some things, buff some things, or add new abilities to existing things.
For example, cannons+cannons should get weaker the bigger they get. This ways fighters can have decent guns, but capital ships will have a harder time building the buzz saw of doom.
Beams should naturally have a higher fire rate then other weapons, but should be weaker in their unmodified state.
Missiles are for the most part good, but there are a few things that could be tweaked. First long range missiles should be very fast but have pore maneuverability. Wile short range missiles are slower, but have very good maneuverability. And then the really slow powerful missiles should have okay maneuverability and have a range in between the short range and long range.

Also we ether need new weapons or a way to modify the current ones.
Many people have expressed there desire for essentially super weapons. Now currently super weapons are very impractical. An example being missiles. A super missile that has a blast radius of 50 and dose 1.5 million damage will use incredible amounts of power. However 50 missiles doing 2500 damage and unmodified blast radius use far less power and do way more damage to their target
Also when someone builds a spinal mounted beam or cannon, they want it to leave a reasonable sized hole in their target. Not a small one block sized hole, or a odd looking shotgun effect.
This could easily be fixed by letting players adjust the size of the cannon round and the beam's beam. This of curse should mean that the bigger you make them the slower their fire rate and the more power they use.

Now these are just some of my ideas and I know many others have theirs as well.
I don't know how every one else feels, but I like our current weapons set up. I just think it has not been taken as far as it can go and it could use more balancing.

 

[Lancake]

There are only a few useless combo's out there and that's mostly because they are not fully implemented yet, the others have their own area where they shine at therefore I kinda have to disagree with you on most parts.
The only part I agree with is that the stop effect is overpowered and that more balancing is required.

The balance is far from perfect, I can name a few things that are not intended but will give you an advantage at things...but I will not since those are exploits. Most (if not all) of that is known and calbiri is constantly rebalancing stuff.

 

[Comr4de]

Cannon weapons are most effective wen pared with cannons.
beams are practically useless unless it is pared with cannons. And missiles are best pared with beams or other missiles.

This is so untrue you can't even believe. Just because a weapon doesn't fit your playstyle doesn't mean it is completely useless to others.

 

[FunnyBunny14]

This is so untrue you can't even believe. Just because a weapon doesn't fit your playstyle doesn't mean it is completely useless to others.

True. Beams with cannons aren't even useless. If you make sure they do 400 damage per shot they can slice through advanced hull like butter. And combine that with explosive and you have a massive chainsaw.

 

[Spartan-228]

True. Beams with cannons aren't even useless. If you make sure they do 400 damage per shot they can slice through advanced hull like butter. And combine that with explosive and you have a massive chainsaw.

I never said beams we useless. I said beams+cannon was the only way beams were useful.

The reason i say this is because beams without cannons don't stay active long enough to use all there damage. You could have a beam that dose 30000 damage that is pared with another beam for range and punch through, but the beam will only stay on long enough to cut through three blocks. That is a lot of wasted damage. And i have tried other combos, but again it never stays on long enough to make full effect of its effects.

 

[FunnyBunny14]

Ah, I misread. Yes, you are right. Beams with anything other than cannons are useless. Except maybe with missiles. Close range with punch through or piercing would mean massive damage against blocks.

 

[jayman38]

I have the following opinions on weapons:

1. Generally, weapon speed should be buffed. Weapons should be able to fire approximately once per second. Naturally, the damage will be reduced per shot to match average dps. (E.g. a 3-second shot at 15 damage will change to a 1-second shot at 5 damage.)

2. Effects should reach 100% effectiveness at only 50% block count of the core system. This will encourage specialty weapons. With the current system, it's generally easier to simply add more blocks to the core weapon system and increase its damage. You might want to create exceptions. For example, punch-through and stop effects should probably remain at 100% effect for 100% block count match.

3. Missiles should gain one extra hp every ... I dunno... 2000 damage or so. So that would mean that a 2 million damage missile would have 1001 hp, so a point defense system will have to do that much damage to destroy the missile. I don't have a lot of experience with missile weapon systems, so I'll leave it up to someone else to figure out a good ratio for damage to hp.

4. (This is new, directly related to the OP). I love the idea of dropping effectiveness of slave and support systems with more blocks. Maybe drop the damage addition of slave blocks by one every... I dunno.... 200 blocks? until it reaches 0 additional points. 500 blocks of master weapon and 500 blocks of slave weapon, the damage output is currently 5000 dps. With this change, the damage would drop to approximately 4600 dps. Once the weapon system reached 1000 blocks of master weapon and 1000 blocks of slave weapon system, any additional blocks would only add the damage of the master weapon system. For example, while a 1000/1000 master/slave weapon would produce 8000 dps, a 2000/2000 master/slave weapon would only produce 13,000 dps, and a 3000/3000 master/slave weapon would only produce 18,000 dps.

I also think that the weapon systems will get more fun when particles are applied.

 

[TheOmega]

I think you should be able to link at least 2 effects, but at half the power. Some just seem like they would work well together, instead of just being a choice between them. OR maybe a rank 2 CPU that can have 2 supports and 2 effects, and supports and effects stack. Same with rank 3, with an insane cost of resources or money. Maybe you couldn't even buy some of the super weapon CPU's ((I'm calling them that now) because the shops don't supply super weapons to the average consumer or something. Expanding on that, maybe rank 2 weapon blocks?

 

[Comr4de]

The reason i say this is because beams without cannons don't stay active long enough to use all there damage. You could have a beam that dose 30000 damage that is pared with another beam for range and punch through, but the beam will only stay on long enough to cut through three blocks. That is a lot of wasted damage. And i have tried other combos, but again it never stays on long enough to make full effect of its effects.

Not if you're trying to break shields. Have you ever considered that weapons are designed to be specialized?

 

[Proxima_Centauri]

There's several thousand possible combinations and I'd say that about 50 or so are effective enough to be considered very useful. However every weapon combo seems to have well balanced pros and cons. For example, missile+damage pulse+overdrive is REALLY effective a massacring shields, but it eats an utterly insane amount of power. By contrast, missile+damage pulse+explosive has nearly the same explosive radius, but does less damage against shields and requires 6 times less power per block.

I think that Calbiri or whomever worked on the weapons did a really good job of balancing them.

 

[jstenholt]

I just wanted to pop into this thread and remind everybody that the weapon system is a work in progress, and nothing suggested here has fallen outside of the current balancing issues that are being worked on.

 

[Mariux]

There's several thousand possible combinations and I'd say that about 50 or so are effective enough to be considered very useful. However every weapon combo seems to have well balanced pros and cons. For example, missile+damage pulse+overdrive is REALLY effective a massacring shields, but it eats an utterly insane amount of power. By contrast, missile+damage pulse+explosive has nearly the same explosive radius, but does less damage against shields and requires 6 times less power per block.

I think that Calbiri or whomever worked on the weapons did a really good job of balancing them.

I think that using overdrive effect is a bit of a waste, because while it does, in fact, give 2x the firepower, it makes the ship consume 4x power, making it more effective to just put some more weapon blocks instead of much more powerblocks. Although with an efficient powergen setup it might be of some use, but only on smaller ships

 

[NeonSturm]

I see overdrive as a good concept to balance out hit&run weapons which do just enough damage to penetrate the shield and leave some small permanent damage before you run to recharge.

Also you can use overdrive to switch between weapon ranges.
* Long-range may consume 100% of free power, but you stay out of range of another player.
* Medium-range are your main guns and energy-efficient. They may use 1000% power generation and deplete storage.
* Short-range point-defense against missiles consume 10% of power at max and are very inefficient for power, but you wanted a smaller turret size for better rotation speed or targeting or whatever.


I think there should be few difference between 2 beam-beam and 3 cannons. Just the effect.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

I never said beams we useless. I said beams+cannon was the only way beams were useful.

The reason i say this is because beams without cannons don't stay active long enough to use all there damage. You could have a beam that dose 30000 damage that is pared with another beam for range and punch through, but the beam will only stay on long enough to cut through three blocks. That is a lot of wasted damage. And i have tried other combos, but again it never stays on long enough to make full effect of its effects.

Over powered weapons have always been a concern when designing weapon systems. You counter this by splitting up the number of outputs, of course doing so causes you to consume more power the more projectiles you have.

 

[Lecic]

I think that using overdrive effect is a bit of a waste, because while it does, in fact, give 2x the firepower, it makes the ship consume 4x power, making it more effective to just put some more weapon blocks instead of much more powerblocks. Although with an efficient powergen setup it might be of some use, but only on smaller ships

Unless something has changed recently and I didn't read about it, overdrive triples damage for sextupled power consumption.

 

[NeonSturm]

Unless something has changed recently and I didn't read about it, overdrive triples damage for sextupled power consumption.

Does it sex-tuple damage if you have slaves increasing the block-count for damage?
After all effect % is based on master, not slave^

I imagine 1 block for master, 1000 for slave, 1 for OD effect.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Does it sex-tuple damage if you have slaves increasing the block-count for damage?
After all effect % is based on master, not slave^

I imagine 1 block for master, 1000 for slave, 1 for OD effect.

As far as I know slaves stop counting at 1oo%

 

[Megacrafter127]

As far as I know slaves stop counting at 1oo%

Only their effect. They still add DPS though[except beam slaves]

 

[Ithirahad]

While I find shotgun beams and shotgun cannons to currently be the only "useless" combinations (Though shotgun cannons are good at neutralizing missile swarms... I think?) I do agree that base fire rates need to be buffed a bit across the board, and the cannon secondary's effectiveness needs to be reduced a bit to compensate.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Only their effect. They still add DPS though[except beam slaves]

This is simply false. Once you hit 100% additional slaves do not add more damage/DPS.

Spoiler

These guns deal the same damage as their counterpart