Weapon Diversity & Balance

[Demon]

Newby here. I've tried unmodded game, Devnull & Proportions. All are fun and great games. But it seems to me that weapon balance could be improved more. There are many weapons, but most are very similar to other weapons. There is no short range, hideous damage weapon to trade range for damage. There are no super LR direct fire weapons that do good damage but are very innacurate (think artillery). Instead, there are a variety of weapons that are generally pretty similar. Mounts tweak the weapon performance in the way I've indicated, but not all that much. Am I missing something?

[Demon]

I've also noticed that shields and armor seem to improve more significantly then weapons. The pay off to go beyond DUCs seems pretty small for the investment. Shouldn't there be weapons that are 10x more powerful, to make the techs feel more like your accomplishing something?

[Slick]

DUC's are good in the beginning, but there is much more to the game than DUC's.

Phased Poloron Beams skip normal shields. Use armor or Phased shields to block.

There are several long range weapons. Anti-proton beams are one of the best. There are others like Wave Motion Guns (huge damage, slower reload time)

You are correct in the unmodded game, ship based mounts don't increase range, but they do increase damage. But, there are mounts for Weapon Platforms and Satellites that do increase range. There is also Deathstalker's Mount Mod if you want mounts coming out the wazoo.

As for short range hideous damage weapons, Ripper Beams are unparalleled for Damage/(kt * turn); which is the traditional method of judging a weapon. This method does not take into account range, though.

Keep playing and you will see that there are uses for most weapons, either by damage, size, cost, time to research, etc.

Slick.

[Suicide Junkie]

Originally posted by Demon:
I've also noticed that shields and armor seem to improve more significantly then weapons. The pay off to go beyond DUCs seems pretty small for the investment. Shouldn't there be weapons that are 10x more powerful, to make the techs feel more like your accomplishing something?

Well, with the shields and armor, you're starting from zero, so the improvement covers a much wider range
The weapons start out fairly powerful already, and when you're researching a new one, you get to use the old weapon until the new one becomes practical in battle.

[Ed Kolis]

By the way, there *is* a weapon that trades range for raw power - it's called the Ripper Beam, and that's exactly what it does to your ships should your enemy have fast enough engines to close to range! 50 damage for a 20 kT weapon... now that's a killer! (OK, so it's not *that* much better than an antiproton beam... I guess you have a point )

[Raging Deadstar]

The ripper beam is trully undervalued now, it should have a larger payload than most weapons! I think along with shield depleters it makes a great weapon on boarding ships. I remember in SE II it was a much better weapon! Ahh the old days!!

[Baron Munchausen]

One of the reasons for the lack of variety in weapons is the very large scale 'grid' used in combat. It's only about 20 squares across. If we could have a much finer grid in the combat screen we could have as greater variety of weapon ranges. Hopefully the combat system in SE V will be 'coordinate' based and allow finer variations.

Another problem is that all weapons lose accuracy at the same rate. This doesn't make sense from a realism standpoint. It should be much harder to make a hit with a DUC at long range than a particle beam like the APB. It's highly unlikely that a DU projectile could be accelerated to the speed of a particle beam - or at least it would be vastly more difficult and so reserved for a higher tech level. So there would be much more time from launch for a target at long range to move or use some counter measure to avoid the hit. Some weapons might be 'instantaneous' and not lose accuracy with range at all, for that matter. But neither of these options is possible in SE IV. If we could set the accuracy loss per unit of range individually for each weapon we could have some very interesting variations in weapon types. Another thing to hope for in SE V.

There are more damage types than are actually used in the default tech set, so people can mod some good variations if they want to. I suggested that the Acid Globule be given the 'Quarter Damage to Shields' damage type, for example, because acid is not likely to be very useful against shields. But you could then crank the damage up to much MORE than other weapons of the same class since the acid would be far more effective against physical objects than many particle beam weapons. Some of the original damage types are just not used very much, like 'skips armor and shields'. More than a few mods have given this ability to the Graviton Hellbore to make it worthwhile to research.

I've been asking for more damage types for a long time. Persistent damage that carries over from one turn to another (like the 'plasma web' from MOO 2) -- which I'd prefer to give to the Acid Globule. Levels of armor hardness and armor skipping to make a more interesting 'arms race' similar to cloaking and sensors. Even percentages of shield and armor penetration instead of 'all or nothing' like we have now. I suppose there are limits to what can be done without rewriting the SE IV combat system.

[stecal]

I was thinking that the DUC would be prime candidate for 1/4 damage to shields. It is a physical projectile instead of the usual energy weapons that are the other SE4 standards. I would think that energy beams would only affect energy shields. Explosive warheads and missiles would possibly be another 1/4 damage vs shields too.

I have found over time, since I invariably seem to run out of minerals, that some "useless" weapons like APB, Torps, ripper beams, and quantums are quite efficient in that they cost very few minerals & low rad to build, reducing build cost, construction time, & maintenance. I usually have an entire range of "E" class economy ships that I can upgrade later.

[Q]

Baron I find your ideas excellent and hope MM listens to you!
I recently discovered something you probably knew already for a long time but for me it was new: the time distortion bomb says "4x damage to the shields plus normal damage". This is not completely correct. It will do either damage to the shields or normal damage. Example: you hit a ship with remaining 40 shield points with a time distortion bomb that does 60kT normal damage (large mount). First the remaining 40 shield points are destroyed (equals 10kT of normal damage impact) then there will be a damage of only 50kT to the ship.
Therefore the new damage type of quarter/half damage to the shields get really very interesting in my opinion for mods like you propose.

[Fyron]

I have found over time, since I invariably seem to run out of minerals, that some "useless" weapons like APB, Torps, ripper beams, and quantums are quite efficient in that they cost very few minerals & low rad to build, reducing build cost, construction time, & maintenance. I usually have an entire range of "E" class economy ships that I can upgrade later.

Ummm.... the Anti-Proton Beam is by far the most powerful weapon in the game overall (esp. when combined with a shield depleter or two). Only a few weapons can even come close to it's power in the later game, and most of them are racial weapons. Look at damage/rate/kiloton ratios instead of just raw damage values. Very few weapons can compare to the APB. High damage per shot weapons generally do much less damage overall, and so are often over-powered by ships using APBs.