Balance between weapons

[Poseidal]

Concerning the balance between weapon types, which weapons do you think are:

Just Right
Could be a little better (seems mostly fine, but damage isn't efficient as the price or weapon type would suggest)
Has flaws (e.g. ammo too low or expensive for practical use, not practical to hit with)

Are there any that need to be re-thought through? Any that are fun but ineffective?

Another question is, are there variation between the classes? Are some more effective in one class than another? Oddities like burst lasers missing from class 2 entirely?

 

[Warbrand]

I ran many different loadouts, that semmed logical for me by the weapon concepts and found out, that the basic lasers and Multican are working best. In my opinion:

Cannons has too variable and too low damage to work with them.

Railguns are no real threat anymore and with only 30 shots they are nerfed quite too far.

Plasmas worked quite ok, but are really useful only at large Targets and mounted in bigger ships (Asp up)


Frag Cans have massive damage but only at extreme close range at very large targets. So nothing for a normal layout.

Weapons should have their main field of use, but should also be working on other targets especially when flawed or extreme expensive.

If cheap weapons do better, nobody will use the exotic stuff, ant that would be a pity!

 

[Morbad]

All weapons balanced enough (meaning there is some reason to use them for some task), except for two:
- Frag Cannon are garbage, and turreted Frag Cannon are the biggest joke in the game. Half the time these are used against me I mistake them for chaff...that's how ineffective they are. Can't hit anything further away than 200m, and can't do any real damage unless you are so close you should probably be trying to ram them instead.
- Mines. They are kinda amusing to drop over a pad that an NPC is trying to land on, but practical utility is extremely niche. Sometimes they work if you are being chased, but even minor lateral movement or a PDT can easily foil them.

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

Railguns could use at least twice the ammo they have now, cannons need a faster projectile speed and possibly increase the clip size to 8 and multi's need the cost of ammo reduced. That should bring everything in line nicely.
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Edit: Except for frag cannons. They're a bit of a hopeless cause in their current form....

 

[Ghost1]

how about some more weapons.

 

[Dissentient]

Pretty much all weapons other than burst/beam/pulse lasers and multicannons need a buff to be viable. Maybe missiles are fine, but I've never used them.

 

[Morbad]

Pretty much all weapons other than Burst/Beam/Burst lasers and multicannons need a buff to be viable.

They're all viable (except frag cannon), unless you shoehorn them into roles they aren't suited for.

 

[Poseidal]

They're all viable (except frag cannon), unless you shoehorn them into roles they aren't suited for.

The payoff becomes not worth it though. I'm not even sure fixed cannon does more sustained damage than a gimbaled multi let alone if you miss a shot, specially with the !ow projectile speed.

Railguns 30 ammo isn't a lot to play with, and the costs are an insult to injury. Also, I feel there might be hit detection issues or the damage varies on angle or location of hit.

 

[Morbad]

Railguns 30 ammo isn't a lot to play with, and the costs are an insult to injury.

Railguns have the best penetration in the game and are generally best used as dedicated module killers. They aren't a general purpose weapon (though the high alpha damage is useful even without targeting modules), especially for novices. I sure as hell don't have enough practice with them to put them to good use, but for those that do, there is nothing better in their niche.

 

[Poseidal]

The problem is, that's your entire ship if they take up your class 2s on the smaller vessels. Having to go to the high-tech station to swap out your entire weapon is not good quality of life. Neither of those things (ammo cost and capacity) affect how you use it or the niche.

 

[Morbad]

Neither of those things (ammo cost and capacity) affect how you use it or the niche.

I disagree. They discourage people from wasting shots on low bounty NPCs or ships that are easily killed. Save them for taking out PP/FSD/Drives on Python and Anaconda, or other CMDRs.

They are also a deterrent. I've left war zone conflicts when I saw opposing CMDRs with railguns because most of the people who mounts them are either totally clueless or really good, and discretion is the better part of valor.

 

[Poseidal]

You could do that with one or the other; why does it have to be both? Even with half the cost per shot, they would be expensive (comparatively).

Larger targets (even hitting subsystems) are easier than small ones with them anyway, and there's such a thing as driving something too niche.

For railguns, it's mainly QOL problems, the performance (apart from randomly not doing any damage on a hit, or much reduced than normal)*. Things like Cannon have the problem of it's niche basically being outdone by the Multicannon.

*or is the damage based on how full your capacitor is? higher capacitor = higher damage, or dependent on placement (regardless of subsystem targeting)

 

[Morbad]

higher capacitor = higher damage, or dependent on placement (regardless of subsystem targeting)

I'm not entirely certain if more pips in WEP increases damage or not.

It is possible to accidentally hit a module, in which case a large chunk of that damage will go to the module and not the hull. This could be what you are seeing, unless you are seeing it on shields. On shield, the number of pips has a dramatic effect on damage, and some NPCs (and obviously players) can play with their pip settings competently. A shot to shields set to two pips does something like ~2.7 times as much damage to the shields as the same shot to the same shield on the same ship set to four pips.

 

[Poseidal]

That might be it. Is that confirmed about shield pips? 2.7 times for going from 2->4 pips seems a bit much - it makes the Eagle shield apparently as big as the Asp shield according to this.