Who designed the Shatterforce laser?

[Unforeseen]

It doesn't make sense, this weapon seems to be completely useless. The only thing this weapon seems to have going for it other than being required for the Titan Beam tech is its higher range than the other equivalent energy weapons in it's tier.

The thing is...it's final tech upgrade is 6 levels into the tree, and it only gives 12 damage, 48O range, with a fire rate of 2.2 seconds. Compare this to a Enhanced torpedoes which is only 2 levels into the tree and gives you a weapon with 17 damage, 46O range, and 2.9 seconds firing, that can be upgraded further and is just a step in the line for even better torpedoes all without having to go 6 levels into your tech tree to get it.

And don't even get me started on the Phaser Lance.

[pycco]

what, i have won many games with the shatter force laser, it is over powered if anything.
its strengths come from the rapid fire not damage it's self. when you put 15 lasers on a ship they fire so fast and non stop it can over power most shield just through dps alone.

[towerbooks3192]

ORIGINAL: pycco

what, i have won many games with the shatter force laser, it is over powered if anything.
its strengths come from the rapid fire not damage it's self. when you put 15 lasers on a ship they fire so fast and non stop it can over power most shield just through dps alone.

Will be trying Shatterforce as I have been using impact assault blaster the whole time. I think I must have been placing only a few before since I avoided using those because it seems like they are really underpowered. I have been happy with Impact assault these days I never bothered using Shatterforce.

[Alphanos]

ORIGINAL: pycco
what, i have won many games with the shatter force laser, it is over powered if anything.
its strengths come from the rapid fire not damage it's self. when you put 15 lasers on a ship they fire so fast and non stop it can over power most shield just through dps alone.

This is a confusing reply. Unforeseen didn't say that the weapon can't do damage. Any weapon can do damage when you stack a ton of them on a ship. Unforeseen's point was that the Shatterforce laser at tier 6 can be compared with another weapon at tier 2. I haven't gone to inspect the stats of each weapon, but if he's right, then that's a clear balance error [;)].

[fenrislokison]

well there is also component size and energy consumption to bring in the balance.

Also, the damage loss per 100 distance.

I must confess that i usually go for impact blaster myself, but it forces me to put a lot of engines on my ships to be able to close in and do maximum damage. Lots of engines and impact blaster means maximum energy consumption which means more reactors.

In my current game, i was considering a military design based on long range weapons that don't lose damage like missiles and phasers, and put the design stance on Standoff so it'll always try to maximize distance, avoiding damage from area weapons and short range weapons like gravitic and all.
As you avoid damage, you can put less shields, and as you don't lose damage over distance, you can also put less engines to close in, and all this space can be used for more weapons.

I don't have acces to the numbers right now, but i think it could be not only a viable, but an efficient ship design. I'll try to come back later on this

[Lucian]

ORIGINAL: fenrislokison

In my current game, i was considering a military design based on long range weapons that don't lose damage like missiles and phasers, and put the design stance on Standoff so it'll always try to maximize distance, avoiding damage from area weapons and short range weapons like gravitic and all.
As you avoid damage, you can put less shields, and as you don't lose damage over distance, you can also put less engines to close in, and all this space can be used for more weapons.

I like the sound of that! I might give that design philosophy a try in my next game.

[towerbooks3192]

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Currently modified my design to try shatterforce and I currently have this (I suck at designing ships). Made 10 of these for a pirate hunting fleet. fought a large pirate port with 8k shield. 7 out of the 10 survived and one was unfortunately captured so it left me with 6. I reckon I could not do it with my old design which only has 12 assault impacts and would have required me to place tons of engines to get up close.

[Darkspire]

Currently modified my design to try shatterforce and I currently have this (I suck at designing ships). Made 10 of these for a pirate hunting fleet. fought a large pirate port with 8k shield. 7 out of the 10 survived and one was unfortunately captured so it left me with 6. I reckon I could not do it with my old design which only has 12 assault impacts and would have required me to place tons of engines to get up close.

This is from a neutral viewpoint [:)]

Up the Proton Thruster to 10
Up the Thrust Vector to 5 (turn rate 9s, needs to be at least close to 19+)
Drop 1 on the armor (5 is good and is easier to just add 5 with a click then six)
Fusion Reactors out Quantam Reactors in
Drop the reactors to 2
Drop the shields to 4
Drop the lasers by 24 to 6

If you scale the number of components from the escort upwards it makes designing a lot easier to manage. Also add energy collectors as soon as you can in a game, they help a lot in saving fuel.

Destroyers are best used in the defense of a system in small fleets of 4+, for Pirate base busting go with a fleet of 10 capital ships, lose less ships and is more efficient in eradication.

Darkspire

[towerbooks3192]

ORIGINAL: Darkspire

Currently modified my design to try shatterforce and I currently have this (I suck at designing ships). Made 10 of these for a pirate hunting fleet. fought a large pirate port with 8k shield. 7 out of the 10 survived and one was unfortunately captured so it left me with 6. I reckon I could not do it with my old design which only has 12 assault impacts and would have required me to place tons of engines to get up close.

This is from a neutral viewpoint [:)]

Up the Proton Thruster to 10
Up the Thrust Vector to 5 (turn rate 9s, needs to be at least close to 19+)
Drop 1 on the armor (5 is good and is easier to just add 5 with a click then six)
Fusion Reactors out Quantam Reactors in
Drop the reactors to 2
Drop the shields to 4
Drop the lasers by 24 to 6

If you scale the number of components from the escort upwards it makes designing a lot easier to manage. Also add energy collectors as soon as you can in a game, they help a lot in saving fuel.

Destroyers are best used in the defense of a system in small fleets of 4+, for Pirate base busting go with a fleet of 10 capital ships, lose less ships and is more efficient in eradication.

Darkspire

Cheers mate! I will do that. I just researched quantum engine and titan beams. Don't really know what to look for when it comes to vectoring engines and armours. As for blasters, I thought the more the merrier. But yeah shatterforce is really good. I might divide this current fleet then build a proper capital fleet.

[DeadlyShoe]

Range is a huge advantage; the shatterforce is mostly competing with maxos blasters and impact blasters.

the principle downside of the shatterforce is being bad against armor...

titan beams are overpowered its true

[fenrislokison]

Maybe i missed something but is there an intrinsic difference between escorts, frigates, destroyers, cruisers and capital ships?

i mean you can customize design, behaviour and everything with no limits relative to type so i always considered the different class of ships as a helpful way to sort out things but for all i know, instead of escort, frigate, destroyers, cruisers and capital ships, they could have been named class 1, class 2, class 3, etc.

Am i wrong?

[DeadlyShoe]

As far as I know the only actual coded difference other than name and design template is that escorts arn't placed into fleets by the formation AI.

Note: You can also pick whatever picture you want for a design.

[Darkspire]

ORIGINAL: fenrislokison

Maybe i missed something but is there an intrinsic difference between escorts, frigates, destroyers, cruisers and capital ships?

i mean you can customize design, behaviour and everything with no limits relative to type so i always considered the different class of ships as a helpful way to sort out things but for all i know, instead of escort, frigate, destroyers, cruisers and capital ships, they could have been named class 1, class 2, class 3, etc.

Am i wrong?

ORIGINAL: DeadlyShoe

As far as I know the only actual coded difference other than name and design template is that escorts arn't placed into fleets by the formation AI.

The AI uses different routines for the different classes when they are on auto, like escorts primarily are assigned escort duty etc.

Darkspire

[fenrislokison]

thanks, that's good to know

[Spidey]

Fusion Reactors out Quantam Reactors in
Drop the reactors to 2

Say what? His 30 shatterforces guns alone are eating just over 270 energy per second when firing. How is he going to cover that plus engine usage plus static drain with just two quantum reactors? What am I missing here?

Edit: Oh, crap, don't I feel like an illiterate moron now.

Drop the lasers by 24 to 6

But come on, how boring is it to build a ship with a pathetic six lasers on it? I've seen math books with more sparkle than that. [:)]

Edit 2:

Destroyers are best used in the defense of a system in small fleets of 4+, for Pirate base busting go with a fleet of 10 capital ships, lose less ships and is more efficient in eradication.

I disagree with this part, though. Destroyers are excellent in a groups of 8+, you just need to size them right. 350-400 for the mid-game usually does it. Size 500-550 late game. Plenty of firepower, the same staying power as a pocket battleship, small enough that they don't need 35 thrusters to move, and the group means a few stray shots from a grav gun won't be a problem at all.

[Unforeseen]

ORIGINAL: pycco

what, i have won many games with the shatter force laser, it is over powered if anything.
its strengths come from the rapid fire not damage it's self. when you put 15 lasers on a ship they fire so fast and non stop it can over power most shield just through dps alone.

I feel like your trolling here. The shatterforce is vastly the opposite of over powered. It's final upgrade is potentially weaker than a tier 2 torpedo. It is definitely not gaining much from it's fire rate, which drops considerably with its first upgrade to 2.2. The torp fires quite a bit slower than that at 2.9 but it has higher range, and considerably higher damage. Minimal damage loss and only a 1O energy increase which is not bad at all. I just don't feel like the size justifies anything here, but that's just my opinion.

With the shatterforce the way it is, it's only value is as a stepping stone to Titan Beam or to nerf a strong player that wants more of a challenge so he uses a weaker weapon. I absolutely promise i can beat any design using shatterforce lasers as its primary with a comparable tech ship using concussion missiles or energy torpedoes.

[Kantay]

I wouldn't say that the shatterforce is in any way weak, it is small in size so you can pack a lot of them on a ship, the problem is more in the way that torpedoes are OP. They have long range (and do decent damage even on max) and the closer something gets the more punch they pack. It feels like cheating against the AI when conquering their immobile bases for example, where they just don't have the range to respond and as such you can kill a base with minimal losses.
Also as short range weapons go, there is the devastator beam that you can find in ruins.

[Aeson]

As far as the topic of the original post goes, Shatterforce Lasers are really not that bad. For starters, you simply cannot just compare things by damage, range, and rate of fire.

Let's compare the Titan I, Impact Assault Blaster III, Epsilon Torpedo II, and Shatterforce Laser III:

Code: Select all

 Weapon                  Size   Damage   Range   Energy/Shot   Energy/sec   Damage Loss   Fire Interval
 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Titan I                   6      20       390       28            20.0           3           1.4
 Shatterforce III          4      12       480       20            9.1            1           2.2
 Impact III                5      22       310       38            23.8           4           1.6
 Epsilon II               15      17       460       30            10.3           3           2.9
 

A cursory examination of this chart may suggest that, compared to the other weapons presented, Shatterforce Laser IIIs suck. This, however, is not the case, especially when compared to the Epsilon Torpedo II, as in the original post. To see why, we must look at the DPS per unit size of the various weapons at valid ranges:

Code: Select all

 DPS per unit size at
 Range:                  0        100        200        300        400
 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Titan I               2.38       1.90       1.43       0.952      0
 Shatterforce III      1.36       1.25       1.14       1.02       0.909
 Impact III            2.75       2.25       1.75       1.25       0
 Epsilon II            0.391      0.322      0.253      0.184      0.115
 

This does not consider the impact on DPS per unit size due to the reactors necessary to power the weapons, but given that Shatterforce Laser IIIs have the lowest energy per shot and lowest energy per second of the four weapons considered here, including the reactors in the comparison is unlikely to make Shatterforce Laser IIIs look worse regardless of whether you choose to limit guns per reactor by reactor output or reactor storage. As can be seen in the chart, Shatterforce Laser IIIs are strictly superior to Epsilon Torpedo IIs at all ranges by a significnat margin, and additionally require less energy than the torpedoes do. Somewhere in the 200-300 range block, the performance of Shatterforce Laser IIIs becomes reasonably close to that of the Titan Beam I and Impact Assault Blaster III, and in fact surpasses the performance of the Titan Beam I at ranges in excess of 300 range units. Naturally, both the Epsilon Torpedo II and the Shatterforce Laser III outperform the Titan Beam I and Impact Assault Blaster III at ranges in excess of 400 range units, but then that should be expected since the latter two weapons cannot engage at that range.

When comparing weapons, it is not the damage, range, and rate of fire which is important in determining which weapons are better - these things factor into the problem, yes, but you must also consider how many can fit into a given amount of space, and how the weapons impact reactor requirements, and how this impacts the other aspects of a design. If we have a hypothetical reactor that can support 10 of either the Shatterforce Laser III or Epsilon Torpedo II, which would you rather mount? 10 Shatterforce Lasers are only 40 size units, whereas 10 Epsilon Torpedoes are 150 size units, so I'd go for the Shatterforce Lasers as, in all likelihood, I can fit two groups of 10 Shatterforce Lasers and the hypothetical reactor into less space than I can fit the hypothetical reactor and 10 Epsilon Torpedoes plus enough fuel cells to at least make up the difference in combat time. For that matter, if the hypothetical reactor is the Fusion Reactor (size 15), I can fit in 30 Shatterforce Lasers and 3 Fusion Reactors (30*4 + 3*15 = 120 + 45 = 165) into the same space that I can fit 10 Epsilon Torpedoes and 1 Fusion Reactor (10*15 + 1*15 = 150 + 15 = 165). Do you see the problem with comparing these weapons without considering anything other than their damage, rate of fire, and range?

It should also be noted that if the limiting factor on the number of guns we can carry is reactor output, then you can carry roughly twice as many Shatterforce Laser IIIs as either Impact Assault Blaster IIIs or Titan Beam Is.

[pycco]

ORIGINAL: Unforeseen

ORIGINAL: pycco

what, i have won many games with the shatter force laser, it is over powered if anything.
its strengths come from the rapid fire not damage it's self. when you put 15 lasers on a ship they fire so fast and non stop it can over power most shield just through dps alone.

I feel like your trolling here. The shatterforce is vastly the opposite of over powered. It's final upgrade is potentially weaker than a tier 2 torpedo. It is definitely not gaining much from it's fire rate, which drops considerably with its first upgrade to 2.2. The torp fires quite a bit slower than that at 2.9 but it has higher range, and considerably higher damage. Minimal damage loss and only a 1O energy increase which is not bad at all. I just don't feel like the size justifies anything here, but that's just my opinion.

With the shatterforce the way it is, it's only value is as a stepping stone to Titan Beam or to nerf a strong player that wants more of a challenge so he uses a weaker weapon. I absolutely promise i can beat any design using shatterforce lasers as its primary with a comparable tech ship using concussion missiles or energy torpedoes.

wish we could see but there is no mp, im not trolling they are very strong the dps alone is crazy. with bigger ships when you are able to put 30+ they kill most ships in a few seconds 1v1 let alone in fleet of 20+. the range and "low" energy cost allow for more weapons and defensive capability's. the torpedoe and missile boats are really good to though, try a few ships with the shatterforce lasers same amounts and build but replace the torpedoes and missiles with shatter force. they will out dps the missile/torpedo boats. btw torpedoes are very strong and i use them on the designs with the shatter force for the extra raw power, as a secondary weapons and for the range on stronger enemy's. of course by the end game i have titan beams, they are a great for the mid game though there resource cost is also a reason i use them.

ORIGINAL: Alphanos

ORIGINAL: pycco

This is a confusing reply. Unforeseen didn't say that the weapon can't do damage. Any weapon can do damage when you stack a ton of them on a ship. Unforeseen's point was that the Shatterforce laser at tier 6 can be compared with another weapon at tier 2. I haven't gone to inspect the stats of each weapon, but if he's right, then that's a clear balance error [;)].

i was disagreeing with his interpretation of them being under-powered for a t6 weapon. each weapon has its pros and cons. its is very difficult to say this is op this is to weak when we have the ability to design are own ships and can test them against them each-other. i only can give my perspective based one what i have seen/experienced.

[Spidey]

Unforeseen, would you please stop throwing out random fluff and actually start reading stuff? You're comparing guns straight up without accounting for size at all and that is a rubbish way to do it.

Make two ship designs of a given size. Equip one with those T2 torps. Equip another with shatterforce lasers. Use the same number of size units on weapons. Which ship does more damage? Yes? Can you say it?

That being said, there's about no chance I'd ever tech to shatter 3. It's a dead end tech that leads nowhere and it costs about half a mil less research (on normal research cost) to go through HP Blasters, Sync'd Energy Output, and Advanced Beams and end up with Titan Beams than it does to get to Shatter 3s. This is a general problem with the non-ultimate T6 techs. In my opinion, they're just about never worth it.