Weapon Diversity & Balance

[spoon]

[quote]Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:

.... the Anti-Proton Beam is by far the most powerful weapon in the game overall

The only offensive weapons you really need are the DUC (early game), PPB (mid game) and Shield Depleters + APB (late game).

Having weapons that filled more niches would be nice. Close range uber-weapon (current one only slightly beats out APB, so isn't worth the loss in flexibility), Long range + low damage, high damage + 1/4 dam to shields).

Putting them in would require a great deal of balance testing, though...

[Ed Kolis]

Yeah... remember when SJ doubled the APB's damage but gave it quarter to shields in the PBW Version of P&N? I quickly realized that you could design a mega uber ship with just shield depleters and APB's - the shield depleters do around 4 HP/kT/round to shields while the modified APB's do something close to that to internal systems and armor! SJ promptly fixed this by increasing the rads cost of APB's to insanely high levels - something like 1200 rads for just one top-level APB!