A discussion on balance between alpha and DPS weapons

[Jaaskinal]

Incidentally, beams are trash against anything using standard or advanced armor - don't use them unless they're exclusively for shield killing, mate.

Beams are bae
Great hitscan on shields. Great for killing armor hp. (Not going to talk about them for blocks though because they suck at that.)

 

[Comr4de]

Yeah I was about to say, beams are great for softening up a target before the kill

 

[amimai]

you guys do realize beam/beam/explosive does 100% piercing damage rite?

that means it basically ignores all armor and turns the goodies underneath into mush...
(spaced armor will stop this )

test it out, my 11x11x11 sphere turrets do 0 damage to armor but leave a 5 block wide crater through something like 30 blocks worth of hull/systems underneath without ever breaking the skin

 

[Winterhome]

you guys do realize beam/beam/explosive does 100% piercing damage rite?

that means it basically ignores all armor and turns the goodies underneath into mush...
(spaced armor will stop this )

test it out, my 11x11x11 sphere turrets do 0 damage to armor but leave a 5 block wide crater through something like 30 blocks worth of hull/systems underneath without ever breaking the skin

what


No. It doesn't.

It hits armor and completely stops, unless the target is using basic hull and has no armor HP remaining.
Explosive effect modules on beams and cannons do *not* give a large blast radius at all, for that matter. They have a radius of one block, and it's hard coded.

Trust me on this. Every update, I personally test every single weapons combination to see what works in what ways, and I do so for at least a few hours. >_>

 

[amimai]

it only seems to effect solid structures ie. no gaps between armor and non-armor blocks but i have had 600 block beams simply ignore armor entirely in such situations and blow out everything below armor with ease (current version)

actually that looks like its just an effect cause of bugs, seem to happen half the time in any case

also explosive effect does add 1 to the blast radius so beams and cannons DO get a bonus from explosive effect (its just not very large, makes an X shape into the targets hull)

 

[Matt_Bradock]

Explosive on cannons and beams greatly decreases penetration by splitting the damage between the neighboring blocks - advanced armor absolutely nullifies explosive weapons, even if yout weaponsmenu tells you deal 2K HP damage (and you do that much to shields) with explosive, due to split splash damage, that 2K shot won't go through a single piece of advanced armor. Not to mention a multiple output explosive cannon can really lock up your client by the calculations. That's why I still use punch-through effect on cannons despite them already having it innately.

 

[amimai]

You just don't make your guns big enough... beams dont sim penetration well because of how the beam subdivides 1 shot into 5 damage bursts

That being said that is actually another advantage to beams over cannons. simply put beams and cannons will do the same amount of HP/shield/armor damage, but where a cannon will trash a proportionate amount of blocks a beam will sink all that damage directly into the ships HP preserving precious salvage!

simply put beams are more reliable for hit rate, hitscan, same DPS vs hp points, lower penetration(no over penetration), and leave you more salvageables, and less laggy.

whats not to like about beam cannonades?
from a mechanical(non-RP) perspective they are the most munchkined gun

that being said im still partial to the Swiss cheese effect large cannon/beam guns can do
and you still need like 1000/shot machine-guns to chew up the structure of a ship that you have de-armored

 

[Jaaskinal]

I'd like to try to keep things serious in this thread. It becomes slightly difficult when certain things are said. Here are some of those things.

massive 600x250x150 behemoths as your boat.

most of my ships have a silicon heart made out of weapon computers

I'm not going to argue for the viability of hull mount capital ship guns

missile/beam/explosive

beam/beam/explosive does 100% piercing damage

my 11x11x11 sphere turrets do 0 damage to armor but leave a 5 block wide crater through something like 30 blocks worth of hull/systems

You just don't make your guns big enough

600 block beams

also explosive effect does add 1 to the blast radius so beams and cannons DO get a bonus from explosive effect (its just not very large, makes an X shape into the targets hull)

Hate to rag on one guy, but whatever.