Yet another idea to re-balance pulse

[AtraUnam]

Disclamer: All numbers and formula presented in the post are purely there as examples.

Its a fairly simple idea that could make pulse a viable and interesting weapon within the meta, the main focus of the suggestion is to make pulses useful in combat without incuring the heavy performance loss usually incured by simulating large explosions; the idea can be split into a few key points:

1. Pulse no longer does any kind of block damage, ever. (This means no block calculations and no lag, simply apply X shield damage to ships inside the radius)
2. Pulse radius is now based on ship mass, as a quick example say 5 radius per 1k mass.
3. Shield damage is applied to the closest ship first with any remaining damage being passed onto the second ship and so on.

With these changes I believe pulse could become a viable weapon, particularly on large ships which would be capable of downing the shields of many smaller ships using such a weapon; friendly-fire with this weapon would have to be toggleable via the config and personally I'm not sure if it would better to have it default to on or off.

Secondary slaves would likely keep their current reloads and aproximate range modifiers, for example pulse/cannon going at once a second would be near constant but unlikely to extend very far beyond the ship itself while pulse/pulse is what you'd use if you wanted your titan to be capable of blasting an entire sector.

For the sake of completeness the new pulse would interact with tertiaries in the following ways:

• EMP: Afflicted ships suffer a shield gen outage in addition to the shield damage as long as their shields are above 10% If the target goes from 50%+ shields to 0% in a single hit then the pilot loses stearing for 1 second (This would allow for low level stunning while elimenating any chance of stunlocking)
• Explosive: 20% radius increase
• Ion: Double damage, 50% radius decrease
• Overdrive: Tripple damage, hextuple power-consumption
• Piercing: Ignores 50% of defensive ion effect
• Punch: [not sure on this one]
• Push, pull and stop: Applies the appropriate momentum effect instead of damage

Obviously all of these numbers would be configurable and probably very different, I'm sure this idea is full of holes that I missed but in my opinion the general concept is a sound way to make pulses useful without incuring a gigantic performance hit.

 

[GRHayes]

Not sure. It seems if this was implemented I probably would setup a large bank and have it pulse continually ever time possible. That way any ships coming near would loose shields and be easy prey in a hurry.

Shields would basically become ineffective if every one decided to do that. Especially bad considering cap ship battles.

Honestly, I am kind of surprised we don't see more weapons using shield and power drain and stop effect.
But then again consider the fact there isn't currently a way to guarantee another weapon system will fire on the stopped or drained craft.
If one could link turrets and weapon system easier it probably would happen.

 

[AtraUnam]

Not sure. It seems if this was implemented I probably would setup a large bank and have it pulse continually ever time possible. That way any ships coming near would loose shields and be easy prey in a hurry.

Shields would basically become ineffective if every one decided to do that. Especially bad considering cap ship battles.

Honestly, I am kind of surprised we don't see more weapons using shield and power drain and stop effect.
But then again consider the fact there isn't currently a way to guarantee another weapon system will fire on the stopped or drained craft.
If one could link turrets and weapon system easier it probably would happen.

Remember that it wouldn't do any extra damage compared to to other weapons, in fact since it can't use ion it would in fact have half the shield DPS of a missile/missile/ion on a logic clock.

 

[GRHayes]

Remember that it wouldn't do any extra damage compared to to other weapons, in fact since it can't use ion it would in fact have half the shield DPS of a missile/missile/ion on a logic clock.

Yes, but you are talking about a weapon that requires no aiming at all and can hit multiple ships at the same time. A missile can only hit one ship unless you are firing swarms. But the individual missile still has to make it to the ship.
This on the other hand would have to have a refresh time even so it still could be spammed regardless of its length of refresh and still be massively disruptive to shields. Shields go into a 1/10th recharge rate under combat conditions. One of the biggest things I currently dislike in the game. So you damage their shield they are now into combat recharge and they will most likely not get the shields up enough before you fire your next pulse. If you are someone like me you logic it and let it run. Now add that to my missiles and other weapons targetting their ship their shields become even more useless. If they are like me they did the same thing making mine useless.
Hope that clears it up.

 

[AtraUnam]

Yes, but you are talking about a weapon that requires no aiming at all and can hit multiple ships at the same time. A missile can only hit one ship unless you are firing swarms. But the individual missile still has to make it to the ship.
This on the other hand would have to have a refresh time even so it still could be spammed regardless of its length of refresh and still be massively disruptive to shields. Shields go into a 1/10th recharge rate under combat conditions. One of the biggest things I currently dislike in the game. So you damage their shield they are now into combat recharge and they will most likely not get the shields up enough before you fire your next pulse. If you are someone like me you logic it and let it run. Now add that to my missiles and other weapons targetting their ship their shields become even more useless. If they are like me they did the same thing making mine useless.
Hope that clears it up.

First of all swarmers also don't require aiming, and while it can hit multiple ships at a time it does not do full damage to every ship, if the closest ship has 6000 shields and it does 5000 damage then it will do 5000 damage to the closest ship and 0 damage to any other ships.
Secondly spamming it to force shield regen penalty is a valid concern however that concern also applies to nearly every other weapon, especially cannon/cannon.

 

[Olxinos]

It's useful, it doesn't resemble the other weapons, and it replaces the useless pulse. So why not?

Pulse no longer does any kind of block damage, ever. (This means no block calculations and no lag, simply apply X shield damage to ships inside the radius)

Punch: [not sure on this one]

You could have it deal shield damage or AHP damage (and maybe even a very small amount of SHP damage without actually destroying blocks but I'm less confident about that one... perhaps once both shields and armor are depleted? it's a bit confusing though) depending on whether the opponent still has shields or not, and have ion/punch-through decrease one to increase the other.

I'm not sure I like the idea of the radius depending on the whole ship's mass instead of the weapon total block count, it'd be less confusing if a weapon's stats depended only on the weapon blocks.

I also think the radius should have a cap so that you can't build a ginormous pulse which affects everything in the whole system (the game probably wouldn't handle that well anyway).
There could be a non-linear increase in radius (with diminishing returns) as well so that moderate pulses still have a decent size, but you have to make very big pulses to get really close the maximum radius. Something resembling maxRadius * modifiers * 10^(-1000/N) could be interesting. It looks like that:

A linear increase is easier to understand though.

 

[GRHayes]

First of all swarmers also don't require aiming, and while it can hit multiple ships at a time it does not do full damage to every ship, if the closest ship has 6000 shields and it does 5000 damage then it will do 5000 damage to the closest ship and 0 damage to any other ships.
Secondly spamming it to force shield regen penalty is a valid concern however that concern also applies to nearly every other weapon, especially cannon/cannon.

To my understanding they already have plans to implement ammo system for other weapons. Just not sure when. So spamming will be a lot less viable at some point.
I also said "not sure" in my first post rather than out right no. Primarily I think some of the stuff needs to be looked at with long term goals in mind and what the game will look like down the road. It would be just more work now if they had to change it again in the future.

I think as more features in the game open up they will find vast number of weapon system that could play greater roles.
Consider if logic is added to detect when any weapon is fired. That would mean several other weapons systems could be targeted at the same object simultaneously. Or if you had the ability to group turrets so they attacked targets together. Then you could hit a ship with shield drain stop effect, power drain... That would seem sort of over kill. However, it could also be used to prevent a ship from escaping so it can be boarded or salvaged. You cold effectively make a ship designed to capture or eat other ships.

When more features are opened up and controls people will find different means and ideas to use.

 

[AtraUnam]

I considered having punch make it do AHP or HP damage but then I realised that would make it a weapon that, autohits, ignores shields, and leaves a totally intact ship for salvage, which of course would be unimaginably overpowered.

 

[Madman198237]

The problem is that right now none of the four principle weapons systems have restrictions on the kinds of damage they deal...which means that this one operates in a substantially different and potentially confusing way.

Yes, damage pulse is useless. Perhaps this is the way to fix it. I certainly think that it seems interesting.

 

[nightrune]

To my understanding they already have plans to implement ammo system for other weapons. Just not sure when. So spamming will be a lot less viable at some point.
I also said "not sure" in my first post rather than out right no. Primarily I think some of the stuff needs to be looked at with long term goals in mind and what the game will look like down the road. It would be just more work now if they had to change it again in the future.

I think as more features in the game open up they will find vast number of weapon system that could play greater roles.
Consider if logic is added to detect when any weapon is fired. That would mean several other weapons systems could be targeted at the same object simultaneously. Or if you had the ability to group turrets so they attacked targets together. Then you could hit a ship with shield drain stop effect, power drain... That would seem sort of over kill. However, it could also be used to prevent a ship from escaping so it can be boarded or salvaged. You cold effectively make a ship designed to capture or eat other ships.

When more features are opened up and controls people will find different means and ideas to use.

When did they ever say anything about ammo?

 

[GRHayes]

When did they ever say anything about ammo?

If I knew where I read it or was sure about it I would have added a link on that part.
I probably should have worded it more accurately it was only regarding missiles. Which is why I made a comment on another thread yesterday about they could have fixed the M+M missile spamming issue if they went ahead and implemented that.

Either way it isn't in yet. Like so much else things change. Sticking with this game teaches several lessons, count on nothing, things change.

 

[Darkkon]

I personally like this idea. It actually sounds a lot like what i imagined pulse would be when i first heard about the pulse system. As far as the issues with it knocking out the shields of multiple ships, that can be balanced through its maximum possible range, total shield damage output, energy requirement, etc.

 

[NeonSturm]

Such a pulse might go into all 6 directions, but turrets can usually only fire in a half sphere (unless you rotate it around a ship axis)
This means that for every straight-line turret that cannot fire in any direction, the average efficiency deficit must be subtracted from a pulse if the pulse is not going in a specific direction (ship so big that the pulse cannot hit every side).

OK, 1/2 efficiency for being omni-directional - is that clear now?
Also: Normal weapons have a aim-time and overkill. This weapon doesn't.

I think weapon choices shouldn't be dependent on efficiency but play style and target preferences.
Scissor-Rock-Paper to increase efficiency by 50-100%.
I mean it mostly doesn't matter if you have 100% or 120% as long as the ships you meet are random in size and either a target you can skirm or one that totally defeats you anyway.