About a month ago, AXI posted a google document, listing their many requests and perceived flaws with Thargoid combat, as well as the weapons and statistics surrounding it.
You can view the document at the following link, but I thought it would be good to discuss some specific aspects of this document, as well as the flaws in their viewpoints and biases, in a public place visible to others.
docs.google.com
Summary: Dramatically reduce raw damage, increase Armor Peircing to 120 to 240.
Firstly, this change has clearly been proposed to prevent Gibbing, a behavior that AXI hates. Unfortunately, they hate it with no reason beyond 'it's not playing the game right'.
Secondly, and worse, in my opinion, it 'solves' the issue of thargoid hardness by ignoring it entirely. At this point, why even bother having hardness at all?
Shard Cannons are clearly meant to be shield breakers, NOT for hulls or hearts.
The problem with Shard Cannons has nothing to do with AP or even their raw DPS. It's the fact that the most effective method of using them is by literally shoving the nose of your ship inside the thargoid and mashing left click. This means that buffing them in one way makes them overpowered at this extremely close range, but leaves them still ineffective at longer ranges.
The solution to this, in my opinion, has nothing to do with shard cannons at all, and everything to do with actions involving touching Thargoids. Ramming them is almost universally an overpowered technique, whether it by for gibbing, breaking their shields via ramming damage, or just getting up close and personal to get a guaranteed shot.
To solve this, I'd like to propose that all thargoids get a permanent close-range caustic cloud, quickly stacking multiple stacks of caustic damage just like after they die. Touch a thargoid at your peril.
Unfortunately, the proposed changes to Plasma Chargers(dramatically increasing their damage and armor piercing), while fixing the obvious problems of poor damage, once again does so by simply ignoring the existence of Armor Hardness.
I'd like to propose an alternative. Rather than outright increase their armor piercing across the board, change the charge mechanic so charging also increases armor piercing. Armor piercing would start at 1, and would charge up over the next 3 seconds to 300.
This would require players to adjust their charge times based on the thargoid in question. Rather than just always charging it up fully, players would charge up for Cyclopses for about 1 second, basilisks for about 1.4 seconds, Medusas for 1.7 seconds, and Hydras for 2.4 seconds. Charging up too little would result in reduced DPS; charging up too much would also result in reduced DPS.
Rather than ignoring armor hardness, this makes it an integral aspect of combat. Simultaneously, it makes the unique aspect of the guardian plasma chargers(their unique ability to actually charge incrementally) an integral aspect of their use.
Summary: Reduce breach damage on Advanced Missile Racks by 75%, increase breach damage on AX missile racks to 5.
Once again, this is a case of a weapon that is quite powerful at close ranges(although I don't believe it's overpowered, as AXI says), but much more difficult to use at longer ranges. Missiles are the slowest-moving projectiles in the game; if you though hitting with guardian plasmas was hard, try hitting with a fixed missile rack beyond point-blank range.
Unfortunately, nobody in AXI has actually tried using them while fighting thargoids in the traditional manner(cold orbiting). In fact, most AXI members I've spoken to have never used them at all.
To solve the problem of close-range overpoweredness, I'd like to propose first, the aforementioned caustic cloud, and second, that missiles be given a short arming time, preventing them from detonating until they've traveled at least ~500m. This mandates they be used at reasonable distances and not at point-blank range.
Nerfing them as extensively as AXI has proposed would do the opposite, making them useless anywhere BUT at point-blank range, and essentially useless even there.
Summary: Increase Caustic Resistance to 10% across the board, triple energy cost on Guardian Hull Reinforcements.
Unfortunately, I don't believe AXI have done the math here. Giving meta-alloys 10% resistance would make them outright superior to class 1-3 hull reinforcements on the majority of ships, and essentially identical to class 4's; after a single engineered hull reinforcement, they'll become superior universally. At the same time, the lower absolute hull will result in faster repair times AND lower module damage and more efficient AFMU usage.
If the goal is making standard hull reinforcements obsolete, they'll accomplish it, but otherwise, it's a bad move. Meta Alloys are certainly flawed at present, but buffing them so massively is a bad move.
Similar problems exist with the proposed Guardian Hull Reinforcement changes, albeit with the added flaw of making them unavailable to a large percentage of ships. Guardian Hull Reinforcements are already a viable choice in many circumstances; primarily when in lower slots, true, but also in cases of significant hull stacking.
If guardian hull reinforcements needed a buff, it should be small; no more than 1-2%, and most likely it should be scaled; IE, give each class above class 1 an additional 0.4% resistance to caustic damage.
Meta Alloys, being functionally identical to Guardian Hull Reinforcements other than being weaker and without power draw, need some other function to become competitive. Perhaps an increased resistance to stacks of caustic damage on your ship, or even actively neutralizing them, even if slowly. This would be very helpful to players who might lack the ability to quickly overheat themselves, especially shielded players.
Summary: AXI believes Guardian SLFs are useless. Changes: Make Guardian SLFs immune to phasing damage/have significantly more hull, give them two banks of heat sinks.
This is the most profound and annoying persistent myth perpetuated by AXI. Fighters are not useless.
Firstly, the outright incorrect; guardian fighters do NOT die instantly to the interceptors. In fact, interceptors outright will not target them. This is okay, because interceptors would quickly take them down, rendering them useless. This does, however, leave interceptors unfairly vulnerable to SLFs, which otherwise would never die.
This is where the swarms come in. Swarms DO attack SLFs, and quickly take them down. This is what AXI pilots have seen. This, however, is not a flaw, but a necessity, and even an advantage, in the right circumstances. Swarms will persistently pursue fighters, even out to great ranges. This gives human pilots the ability to bait and distract the swarm for prolonged periods of time. When piloted by an NPC, by contrast, the swarm will very quickly kill the fighter. This, too, is okay; most AX SLFs have relatively small ammo pools. If the fighter doesn't die, the player will be forced to manually turn off their fighter bay to destroy it, as slowing down to let it dock is almost always going to be impossible.
Once the swarm is destroyed, another SLF can be deployed, and it quickly proves its value; in my testing, the Gauss SLF was able to, on its own, piloted by an NPC, exert the heart of a Cyclops in under 20 seconds, and the heart of a Basilisk in approximately one minute. It couldn't exert a Medusa, but it did essentially counteract its regeneration, and it more than halved the regeneration on a Hydra.
This is a very balanced amount of damage for what is essentially a fifth hardpoint, something normally never available. Not only that, but a fifth hardpoint requiring no ammo, heat management, or distributor power. Buffing them as AXI have proposed would vastly boost their DPS and make the gauss fighters extremely powerful, far beyond necessity.
The other two fighters, however, do suffer from a lack of utility. This is, in large part, due to the fact that they miss so regularly. The Shard Cannon fighter would be more than worth it if it were able to use its significant DPS to take down shields faster and do burst damage to help exert hearts - if it could hit. However, it cannot do so. The plasma cannon fighter is even worse in this regard.
Rather than giving them heat sinks, I'd like to propose that the Plasma Repeater fighter be given a small Flak Cannon. Being the only guardian fighter with unlimited ammo, it needs the opportunity to take advantage of its potential longer deployment time; being able to take down swarms on its own would be a huge benefit.
The Shard Cannon fighter simply needs higher projectile velocity and greater range, to help it hit its targets more regularly. In tandem with this, giving it a Shutdown Field Neutralizer would also be a nice perk.
The Gauss Cannon fighter does not need changes, other than fixing the bug where it only fires one out of three gauss cannons at a time.
The one universal change that fighters DO need is an immunity or heavy resistance to the caustic clouds on thargoid death, especially the ones from Scouts. These are often invisible and quickly destroy any fighter, so they're not a good or engaging mechanic.
You can view the document at the following link, but I thought it would be good to discuss some specific aspects of this document, as well as the flaws in their viewpoints and biases, in a public place visible to others.
Memorandum on Anti-Xeno weapons rebalancing
docs.google.com
Guardian Shard Cannons
Summary: Dramatically reduce raw damage, increase Armor Peircing to 120 to 240.
Firstly, this change has clearly been proposed to prevent Gibbing, a behavior that AXI hates. Unfortunately, they hate it with no reason beyond 'it's not playing the game right'.
Secondly, and worse, in my opinion, it 'solves' the issue of thargoid hardness by ignoring it entirely. At this point, why even bother having hardness at all?
Shard Cannons are clearly meant to be shield breakers, NOT for hulls or hearts.
The problem with Shard Cannons has nothing to do with AP or even their raw DPS. It's the fact that the most effective method of using them is by literally shoving the nose of your ship inside the thargoid and mashing left click. This means that buffing them in one way makes them overpowered at this extremely close range, but leaves them still ineffective at longer ranges.
The solution to this, in my opinion, has nothing to do with shard cannons at all, and everything to do with actions involving touching Thargoids. Ramming them is almost universally an overpowered technique, whether it by for gibbing, breaking their shields via ramming damage, or just getting up close and personal to get a guaranteed shot.
To solve this, I'd like to propose that all thargoids get a permanent close-range caustic cloud, quickly stacking multiple stacks of caustic damage just like after they die. Touch a thargoid at your peril.
Guardian Plasma Chargers
Summary: Boost their damage and armor piercing massively.Unfortunately, the proposed changes to Plasma Chargers(dramatically increasing their damage and armor piercing), while fixing the obvious problems of poor damage, once again does so by simply ignoring the existence of Armor Hardness.
I'd like to propose an alternative. Rather than outright increase their armor piercing across the board, change the charge mechanic so charging also increases armor piercing. Armor piercing would start at 1, and would charge up over the next 3 seconds to 300.
This would require players to adjust their charge times based on the thargoid in question. Rather than just always charging it up fully, players would charge up for Cyclopses for about 1 second, basilisks for about 1.4 seconds, Medusas for 1.7 seconds, and Hydras for 2.4 seconds. Charging up too little would result in reduced DPS; charging up too much would also result in reduced DPS.
Rather than ignoring armor hardness, this makes it an integral aspect of combat. Simultaneously, it makes the unique aspect of the guardian plasma chargers(their unique ability to actually charge incrementally) an integral aspect of their use.
AX Missile Racks & Advanced Missile Racks
Summary: Reduce breach damage on Advanced Missile Racks by 75%, increase breach damage on AX missile racks to 5.
Once again, this is a case of a weapon that is quite powerful at close ranges(although I don't believe it's overpowered, as AXI says), but much more difficult to use at longer ranges. Missiles are the slowest-moving projectiles in the game; if you though hitting with guardian plasmas was hard, try hitting with a fixed missile rack beyond point-blank range.
Unfortunately, nobody in AXI has actually tried using them while fighting thargoids in the traditional manner(cold orbiting). In fact, most AXI members I've spoken to have never used them at all.
To solve the problem of close-range overpoweredness, I'd like to propose first, the aforementioned caustic cloud, and second, that missiles be given a short arming time, preventing them from detonating until they've traveled at least ~500m. This mandates they be used at reasonable distances and not at point-blank range.
Nerfing them as extensively as AXI has proposed would do the opposite, making them useless anywhere BUT at point-blank range, and essentially useless even there.
Hull Reinforcements
Summary: Increase Caustic Resistance to 10% across the board, triple energy cost on Guardian Hull Reinforcements.
Unfortunately, I don't believe AXI have done the math here. Giving meta-alloys 10% resistance would make them outright superior to class 1-3 hull reinforcements on the majority of ships, and essentially identical to class 4's; after a single engineered hull reinforcement, they'll become superior universally. At the same time, the lower absolute hull will result in faster repair times AND lower module damage and more efficient AFMU usage.
If the goal is making standard hull reinforcements obsolete, they'll accomplish it, but otherwise, it's a bad move. Meta Alloys are certainly flawed at present, but buffing them so massively is a bad move.
Similar problems exist with the proposed Guardian Hull Reinforcement changes, albeit with the added flaw of making them unavailable to a large percentage of ships. Guardian Hull Reinforcements are already a viable choice in many circumstances; primarily when in lower slots, true, but also in cases of significant hull stacking.
If guardian hull reinforcements needed a buff, it should be small; no more than 1-2%, and most likely it should be scaled; IE, give each class above class 1 an additional 0.4% resistance to caustic damage.
Meta Alloys, being functionally identical to Guardian Hull Reinforcements other than being weaker and without power draw, need some other function to become competitive. Perhaps an increased resistance to stacks of caustic damage on your ship, or even actively neutralizing them, even if slowly. This would be very helpful to players who might lack the ability to quickly overheat themselves, especially shielded players.
Ship Launched Fighters
Summary: AXI believes Guardian SLFs are useless. Changes: Make Guardian SLFs immune to phasing damage/have significantly more hull, give them two banks of heat sinks.
This is the most profound and annoying persistent myth perpetuated by AXI. Fighters are not useless.
Firstly, the outright incorrect; guardian fighters do NOT die instantly to the interceptors. In fact, interceptors outright will not target them. This is okay, because interceptors would quickly take them down, rendering them useless. This does, however, leave interceptors unfairly vulnerable to SLFs, which otherwise would never die.
This is where the swarms come in. Swarms DO attack SLFs, and quickly take them down. This is what AXI pilots have seen. This, however, is not a flaw, but a necessity, and even an advantage, in the right circumstances. Swarms will persistently pursue fighters, even out to great ranges. This gives human pilots the ability to bait and distract the swarm for prolonged periods of time. When piloted by an NPC, by contrast, the swarm will very quickly kill the fighter. This, too, is okay; most AX SLFs have relatively small ammo pools. If the fighter doesn't die, the player will be forced to manually turn off their fighter bay to destroy it, as slowing down to let it dock is almost always going to be impossible.
Once the swarm is destroyed, another SLF can be deployed, and it quickly proves its value; in my testing, the Gauss SLF was able to, on its own, piloted by an NPC, exert the heart of a Cyclops in under 20 seconds, and the heart of a Basilisk in approximately one minute. It couldn't exert a Medusa, but it did essentially counteract its regeneration, and it more than halved the regeneration on a Hydra.
This is a very balanced amount of damage for what is essentially a fifth hardpoint, something normally never available. Not only that, but a fifth hardpoint requiring no ammo, heat management, or distributor power. Buffing them as AXI have proposed would vastly boost their DPS and make the gauss fighters extremely powerful, far beyond necessity.
The other two fighters, however, do suffer from a lack of utility. This is, in large part, due to the fact that they miss so regularly. The Shard Cannon fighter would be more than worth it if it were able to use its significant DPS to take down shields faster and do burst damage to help exert hearts - if it could hit. However, it cannot do so. The plasma cannon fighter is even worse in this regard.
Rather than giving them heat sinks, I'd like to propose that the Plasma Repeater fighter be given a small Flak Cannon. Being the only guardian fighter with unlimited ammo, it needs the opportunity to take advantage of its potential longer deployment time; being able to take down swarms on its own would be a huge benefit.
The Shard Cannon fighter simply needs higher projectile velocity and greater range, to help it hit its targets more regularly. In tandem with this, giving it a Shutdown Field Neutralizer would also be a nice perk.
The Gauss Cannon fighter does not need changes, other than fixing the bug where it only fires one out of three gauss cannons at a time.
The one universal change that fighters DO need is an immunity or heavy resistance to the caustic clouds on thargoid death, especially the ones from Scouts. These are often invisible and quickly destroy any fighter, so they're not a good or engaging mechanic.
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