Opinions for Weapons Mod

[Kemplarian]

I've been trying to expand and balance out the weapon's system for a couple of weeks now, and I would really like to hear what people think of the basic theory behind what I'm doing. I want to have almost all of the weapon Groups fill a niche. Right now, there are a couple Groups that don't seem to have as much value as the others (Meson BLasters feel this way to me). I'm very new to this community, though I've been reading the Boards for a few weeks, so I'm sorry if this has been overdone already. If you have the time, I'd really like to hear what people think of all the weapon Groups, so that the modders out there can start to get a uniform view of what needs to be changed in this realm.


High-Energy Discharge weapons take a ton of research, but raising their tonnage and slowing their firing rate makes the later generations less effective than I hoped for. As such, I am making the WM gun a rate 2 weapon and increasing its damage slightly.

Missiles and DUCs seem well balanced for now, and certainly fill a major spot in early game conflicts.

I'm making Meson BLasters into a longer range, steady damage, but low damage weapon. Essentially, they become a sniper beam weapon of sorts.

The APB works quite well, and only needs to be tweaked at the end of a weapon's mod, to ensure that balance hasn't been changed.

Null-Space weaponry is fairly brutal, but seems to pay the price for its power decently (slow and heavy guns).

Torpedos don't seem to get much use (from some of the Posts that I've read), but their stats seem fair to me.

I've made a few weapon mount mods for Point-defense weapons, and also added a point-blank PD gun that can fire at ships and planets.

What do people think? What weapon Groups are weak? What needs to be changed or added? Even if you don't agree with my ideas, I'd really like to see what can be done.

[Lemmy]

i personally think phased polaron beams (PPB) are a bit to powerful.
maybe not too powerful but too easy to research early on in the game and the computer takes too long too research phased shields

i think it would balance the game if the low level PPB would do less damage and the research cost for the higher levels would increase faster, or maybe increase the cost even more, it already is the most expensive weapon (i think) if you look at the size and the cost of it.

about the nuul-space weapon or any of the other weapons which skips shield and armor:
do they also skip phased shield?

[Kemplarian]

Almost all of the shield skipping weapons go past Phased-shields too, except obviously for the PPB's. I forgot to mention those in my original post. I left everything about them the same, but I lowered their firing rate to 2. This left them in a very strong position against normal shields (still), but made it much harder to use them as an all purpose weapon. I agree, they were far too useful and easy to get in the default research tree.

[Lemmy]

quote:

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Originally posted by Kemplarian:
I left everything about them the same, but I lowered their firing rate to 2.

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that seems fair

[Suicide Junkie]

As for the WMGs, don't increase their power or firing rate: instead give them extended range.

In SEIII, they were that way: Big, slow, low efficiency, but they had the same range as CSMs I see them as a beam-artillery weapon, and they appear to be the only weapon that did not get its range increased from se3 to se4.

[Kemplarian]

I like the idea of increasing their range instead of the firing rate, which would certainly make them useful And different from the other weapons, but I would like to up the damage a little bit, just because of their tonnage. 70 Tons for their damage bracket seems like a lot to ask for something that is so high up in the research tree. I've found that it isn't feasible for me to research that line when there are more pressing matters (and in a good game, you don't get too much free time). When I need the high level of damage, I normally just put APBs on a larger mount--which can get you just as much damage as the normal WMG without the extra research.

SJ, do you think that the extra range would make up for these downsides by itself? Would you make a high speed ship that would strike at range, then flee (basically, a missile ship)? It makes for a heck of a picture--a battleship firing at a bunch of destroyers then running away.