Lets talk guns

[Trifler]

ORIGINAL: ShadowB

In theory, railguns should be useful against the massive fleets of the legendary pirate clans, to throw a wrench into their frustrating hit-and-run attacks. Shield penetration could cause enough internal damage on some ships to slow them down and prevent their escape.

Regarding Rail Guns - I've experimented a little with using rail guns on fast ships (especially with the Sluken) in the early game with good results. I prefer longer ranged weapons on stations though. I plan on adding a tractor beam on my destroyers and up. Graviton beams might work well with them too since they also bypass shields, but I haven't tried them yet.

Regarding Area weapons - From what I've read here in this thread, it sounds like the main problem with Area weapons is that they don't fire if a friendly is in the blast area. I might experiment some with combining them with tractor beams on a station or using them on an ultra-short-range ship with several other ships that only have long range weapons. Unfortunately that would require manual fleet creation to work right (I've been using AI fleet creation without any difficulties). Devs, I'm curious if you've considered changing it to a "cone" type AoE weapon. Such a weapon would be far less likely to find itself unable to fire due to the proximity of friendlies.

Torpedoes vs. Missiles - I agree completely that the torpedoes should not "catch up" in range as you progress down the tech tree. I think the relationship between torpedoes and missiles at the beginning of the tech tree should be maintained throughout. The torpedoes are heavy hitter specialists, while the missiles are (should be) long range specialists. As it is now, once you move beyond the Epsilon torpedo, you can forget missiles. The missiles are useful early on because of their range, and the game takes that advantage away from them. The torpedoes even get faster movement speeds, which seems backwards as well.

Fighters - Lots of fun. Great when combined with long range weapons. Great for spaceports as well. The races that get a bonus to military ship construction size can make better use of them, or at least a lot earlier. When I go fighter heavy I usually put one fighter bay on each cruiser in addition to having a carrier design. Early on, if you don't have access to Chromium, you can still get some torpedoes by using torpedo bombers.

[Andy06r]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

ORIGINAL: ShadowB
Anyway, my experience with weapon combinations is limited at the moment: I've been using impact blasters and shockwave torpedoes as suggested by the manual guide I read, but I really want to diversify. It's a shame some weapons are simply better than others when ideally they should all be useful in different ways.

I think you should feel free to experiment, you might be pleasantly surprised. [8D]

Some weapons do better when the ship is designed around them though, but all can be used to build a strategy around.

I think folks are discouraged by how the end game weapons invalidate most of the variety. Rail guns and missiles do not have end game weapons, just basic and advanced. The bombard on railguns is neat but reactive armor counters them very badly. The titan beam invaidstes the shatterforce and many other weapons.

My ideas...

1) Rethink the placment of shatterforce 3. Why would you ever research that?
2) Add an end game missile and railgun that removes the armor penalty. Reactive armor really hurts both weapons.
3) Reduce the range or increase the damage falloff of the super torpedo. Both the torpedo and the missile have the same range, which is inconsistent with the back story given for each.

[Spidey]

ORIGINAL: Trifler

Torpedoes vs. Missiles - I agree completely that the torpedoes should not "catch up" in range as you progress down the tech tree. I think the relationship between torpedoes and missiles at the beginning of the tech tree should be maintained throughout. The torpedoes are heavy hitter specialists, while the missiles are (should be) long range specialists. As it is now, once you move beyond the Epsilon torpedo, you can forget missiles. The missiles are useful early on because of their range, and the game takes that advantage away from them. The torpedoes even get faster movement speeds, which seems backwards as well.

The problem is that if you take away torpedo range, they end up being beam weapon range, and they can't match that beam weapon DPS at all. So then you'll have to do something else to make torpedo weapons worth using.

I agree that missiles are sort of an abandoned area. They could do with some love an attention, though to be honest I'm not even sure what the difference between a space torpedo and a space missile really is.

In normal terms, a missile is a self-propelled guided airborne weapon system. A torpedo is a self-propelled underwater weapon with an explosive warhead. Take both into space and the differences seem rather minor, as both as self-propelled and guided suicide vehicles that deliver some sort of payload.

I think, if missiles gained a speed advantage and possible a better refire rate then that would help quite a bit. Missiles are wank against armor and currently their DPS is terrible as well, but make them fire faster and make the missiles fly faster and suddenly they might actually be able to overcome their disadvantages somewhat.

And then we'd be left with the problem that the AI doesn't really seem able to tell them apart, since both missiles and torps fall into the torpedo weapon category.

[Locarnus]

ORIGINAL: Andy06r

I think folks are discouraged by how the end game weapons invalidate most of the variety. Rail guns and missiles do not have end game weapons, just basic and advanced. The bombard on railguns is neat but reactive armor counters them very badly. The titan beam invaidstes the shatterforce and many other weapons.

My ideas...

1) Rethink the placment of shatterforce 3. Why would you ever research that?
2) Add an end game missile and railgun that removes the armor penalty. Reactive armor really hurts both weapons.
3) Reduce the range or increase the damage falloff of the super torpedo. Both the torpedo and the missile have the same range, which is inconsistent with the back story given for each.

You may want to check out my BalanceMod (see signature).
1 and 3 are already adressed in the mod, I will take a look at the railguns int one of the next updates.
Generally, there are no diversity killing end game weapons in the BalanceMod.

[Aeson]

1) Rethink the placment of shatterforce 3. Why would you ever research that?

To be fair, Shatterforce Laser IIIs are no worse placed than the other dead-end technologies. As a result, you'd research it for the same reasons why you'd research any other dead-end component upgrade - you're using the component in at least some of your ships, and you don't want to trigger a refit yet. You may as well ask why you'd ever research Equinox Hyperdrive IIIs or Fission Reactor IIIs or Epsilon Torpedo IIIs as ask why you'd ever research Shatterforce Laser IIIs, as none of these techs are necessary for anything else and represent an upgrade to an existing component which you could instead be replacing by researching a different tech which is similarly expensive to the tech required for the improvements to the existing component.

They could do with some love an attention, though to be honest I'm not even sure what the difference between a space torpedo and a space missile really is.

My guess, at least for Distant Worlds technology, is that a torpedo is a self-propelled guided weapon whose propellant makes a significant contribution to the weapon's power, whereas a missile is a self-propelled guided weapon whose propellant makes an insignificant contribution to its power. Alternatively, torpedoes might be a 'plasma weapon' which is dispersing or cooling as it approaches the target while missiles represent an equivalent to real-world missiles.

Other practical distinctions might be in the type of warhead, or in what types of target the weapon is designed to be used against - perhaps torpedoes are anti-capital ship weapons whereas missiles are anti-light craft weapons, or perhaps torpedo warheads are good against hull and armor whereas missiles are optimized to take down shields without severely damaging the targeted ship.

2) Add an end game missile and railgun that removes the armor penalty. Reactive armor really hurts both weapons.

Alternatively, you could treat missiles as weapons optimized for pairing with boarding pods, though in that case I'd sooner have less range and a higher rate of fire. Missiles and railguns in their present state are much less likely than most other weapons to damage the hull of the ship after the shields go down, assuming that the hull is armored, and this is an advantage if you're trying to capture ships rather than destroy them outright.

[unclean]

ORIGINAL: Trifler
Torpedoes vs. Missiles - I agree completely that the torpedoes should not "catch up" in range as you progress down the tech tree. I think the relationship between torpedoes and missiles at the beginning of the tech tree should be maintained throughout. The torpedoes are heavy hitter specialists, while the missiles are (should be) long range specialists. As it is now, once you move beyond the Epsilon torpedo, you can forget missiles. The missiles are useful early on because of their range, and the game takes that advantage away from them. The torpedoes even get faster movement speeds, which seems backwards as well.

This. Missiles really need to keep their range advantage to stay useful.

As for rails, giving them armor piercing really goes against their design. I'd like to see them get something like a depressurization or damage over time effect on successful armor/hull damage that possibly gets nastier as you go up the tech tree. It would reinforce their niche as a defensive weapon, and legitimize the AI behavior of completely freaking out when a single plate of armor goes down.

ORIGINAL: ShadowB
In theory, railguns should be useful against the massive fleets of the legendary pirate clans, to throw a wrench into their frustrating hit-and-run attacks. Shield penetration could cause enough internal damage on some ships to slow them down and prevent their escape.

I had the same thought, but in reality you have to sink a ton of research into rails for them to be effective at all against the armor you see on advanced pirates or derelicts. On the other hand you could just be killing them outright by researching beams, which are generally more effective weapons at that point anyways.

[ldog]

Considering the names of the torpedo techs, it should be pretty clear to everyone they are intended to be plasma weapons.
Missiles could be made better by giving them nuclear warheads. Of course that might make them too much better. Then there is the fact that they should be usable for planetary bombardment, but then we already have a weapon that does that (that probably hardly gets used anyway). Upping the damage (a lot) but making them vulnerable to PD might be a viable way to make them better. Or maybe what Spidey suggested. Or some combination of both ideas. I mean really, I'm not picky, give us a reason to prefer this weapon, even just in a few situations and it would be good enough.

I can see why they would be willing to tackle this, since most of us would start screaming bloody murder if they messed with the torps.

For the new people original game weapons were beams, torps, ion and area weapons (and the racials). Everything else got added in various expansions. Fighters, phasers and missiles came in I want to say RotS. I don't remember what came in Legends, assuming the rest were Shadows. So that's why beams and torps are well balanced against each other, since they were the primary armament forever they're mature. Area weapons have gotten nerfed over the ages. Ion weapons with the addition of the boarding pods seem pretty potent (at least the pirates using them against me is).

Aeson makes very good points as usual.

[Trifler]

ORIGINAL: Spidey

I agree that missiles are sort of an abandoned area. They could do with some love an attention, though to be honest I'm not even sure what the difference between a space torpedo and a space missile really is.

In normal terms, a missile is a self-propelled guided airborne weapon system. A torpedo is a self-propelled underwater weapon with an explosive warhead. Take both into space and the differences seem rather minor, as both as self-propelled and guided suicide vehicles that deliver some sort of payload.

I think, if missiles gained a speed advantage and possible a better refire rate then that would help quite a bit. Missiles are wank against armor and currently their DPS is terrible as well, but make them fire faster and make the missiles fly faster and suddenly they might actually be able to overcome their disadvantages somewhat.

It's true that there are no real life space torpedoes, but in every game I've ever played that had both torpedoes and missiles, they differed as so:

Torpedoes deal very high damage, but are slow moving, slow turning, and have a slow refire rate. Energy torpedoes (Plasma, etc.) tend to have damage falloff while physical ones usually do not. For energy torps, the damage falloff usually starts out dissipating slowly and then dissipates exponentially faster, down to zero at maximum range. Many games also allow torpedoes to be shot much more easily than missiles, although torpedoes may have more hit points. Upgrades tend to primarily focus on higher damage, although some games add an AoE. I've also seen EMP torpedoes.

Missiles on the other hand tend to be fast and maneuverable, with a good refire rate. I've never seen energy missiles, so they don't have any damage falloff. Upgrades fall into several areas, including increased damage, range, speed, improved tracking, rapid-fire launchers (fire in salvos, with no increase in delay between salvos), and MIRV missiles. Real life missiles tend to be extremely effective against armor, so I think the penalty against armor in the game should be removed.

Maximum range differences between the two vary from game to game. A number of games give torpedoes lots of range, but make them only usable against capital ships. I've also seen at least one game where torpedoes were short range "in-your-face!" weapons. Personally, I think maintaining the ratio of range differences between the two at the very beginning of the tech tree is best for Distant Worlds.