All 3 laser types, and railguns are in desperate need of a better damage falloff start stat. Even against npcs you aren't going to be able to stay within 500M of a target for long, and against pvp you will be at ranges where you are getting less than 66% of the total damage due to falloff 90% of the time. As a result, the only mod you commonly see on any of these weapons in pvp is longrange as it removes the falloff. If you doubled the laser's max range, they would still be half of that of projectile weapons (except beams and rails which would be 1200M and 1500M vs 2000M) but they would have a long enough effective range (ie where you are still doing all or most of the damage) to support modding them with something other than longrange.
Double the damage falloff of laser weapons and increase railgun falloff to 1500M
- Thread starter Darty
- Start date
FWIW, I often choose focused over long range for non-beam lasers. Not only does it greatly increase piercing, it increases the falloff and the maximum range (the latter by a surprising amount). Here's the thing about increasing the max range - the falloff is liner from the start of falloff to that max range, meaning that if falloff starts at 1000 meters and max range is over 5000 meters, you're still doing close to max damage at 2000 meters.
Also, I find long range relatively useless unless you're using fixed lasers (due to gimbal jitter), and the fixed beam is my weapon of choice for 'sniping'.
Also, I find long range relatively useless unless you're using fixed lasers (due to gimbal jitter), and the fixed beam is my weapon of choice for 'sniping'.
I concurr.
Whilst I love LR/SRB rails, and am unlikely to use any other mods, they could do with a base effectiveness change like you suggest.
Lasers DEFINATLY need them.
Good post as both these changes would add a little more diversity to most weapon loadouts.
Whilst I love LR/SRB rails, and am unlikely to use any other mods, they could do with a base effectiveness change like you suggest.
Lasers DEFINATLY need them.
Good post as both these changes would add a little more diversity to most weapon loadouts.
Yeah, it's weird that projectiles have so many bonuses. I can't even synth 'special lenses' to boost my laser damage. 
Or alternatively, make Long Range only increase falloff proportionately, so if you double the range, you double the falloff range - rather than LR1 being sufficient to get maximum damage out at 3.6km
I never understood damage falloffs in the vacuum of space. Range limits I can see as a weapon's inability to lock on a target further away (though this should mean that max range is greater when targeting larger ships hotter ships vs smaller colder ships). Lasers don't diverge in ED (the beam is always the same width) and bullets don't lose momentum. It's just a gamey game thing.
Does'nt solve the conundrum of that beig basically th only viable choice for them though :/
+1
The damage falloff for Beams is one of the bigger reasons why I rarely use them coupled with their high PP Drain and Cost, I'd be happy if the falloff was pushed to atleast 1,000 metres, only real reason I use them is they make for pretty cool turrets on a C1 Hard Point and sound nice, other than that, Shield Regen for my Wingmates.
The damage falloff for Beams is one of the bigger reasons why I rarely use them coupled with their high PP Drain and Cost, I'd be happy if the falloff was pushed to atleast 1,000 metres, only real reason I use them is they make for pretty cool turrets on a C1 Hard Point and sound nice, other than that, Shield Regen for my Wingmates.
I've been running G5 efficient beams on my Vulture and I'm able to fire them all day long. I can usually stay within 1200 of my target, and the damage buff G5E gives me offsets the dropoff at that range. Add the thermal vent SE, and I'm scrapping ice off my cockpit in the middle of combat, no heatsinks needed!
Anthing works under PvE circumstances because NPC's often have default resistence values. IE -20% Thermal resistance which is a flat damage buff to a laser all but negating the falloff damage.
Player built vessels often have 50% resistence vaues. Massively increasing how relevant the falloff reductions play out.
Alternatively, it would be nice to see the damage falloff depend on the size class of the weapon, with larger models having greater effective ranges. Small lasers could keep the same effective range as currently, with medium lasers having 750m, large having 1000m and huge lasers benefitting from a 1500m effective range. This would help give larger weapons a bit more of a niche than simply being better against high hull hardness targets as they can also be used for fire support outside the effective ranges of smaller weapons.
Not to mention player engagement ranges are often much large than npc ranges due to dirty drives 5 and jousting.
Most griefers I encounter like to be "in my face" so they can land their PAs and maximize their frags, but I suppose YMMV. All I know is that I held my own in 1v1 PvP, my Vulture with my G5 efficient beams vs a griefer's FDL, until his three buddies showed up and then I was just another USS to harvest mats from LOL.
FWIW, I'm not opposed to the OP's request. I'm just saying that one doesn't have to restrict themselves to the meta to play the game we have today.
Staying within 500m of most NPCs with most ships is not terribly difficult, and range control as well as trigger discipline are important aspects of combat in general, both PvE and PvP.
Railguns are the last weapons that need any sort of augmentation to any of their statistics.
Personally, I think current engagement ranges are generally too great and that LR mods have generally been a detriment to engrossing combat gameplay. I'd rather have fallout added to LR mods, or LR mods removed, than increase the base falloff distance of any weapons.
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I'm primarily a PvE guy, and for a long time I thought LR weapons was "where it's at". Recently I had a change of heart and sold off many of these weapons. These days I'm more apt to go with short range blasters (especially on projectile weapons like MCs and cannons), focused, or efficient depending on the build. However LR is still my first choice for the size 4 fixed beam on my Conda, as sometimes I do like to "reach out and touch someone" from a distance (and fixed is the way to hit anything past a certain range IMO).
I'm talking about pvp so pve is irrelevant.
Nice assertion, however I think differently considering rails are usually used as a secondary weapon, and never used with any mod other than LR. This change wouldn't make LR rails any better so even if the current LR rail meta was super op or something nothing would change about that. This would just give SR, high cap, light weight and sturdy rails a chance to be viable.
LR mods are hardly responsible for long engagement distances, its dirty drives and the PA jousting meta combined with drifting ships that results in it. Moreover, my suggestion would actually decrease the number of lr mods out there and encourage players to fight at shorter distances because it would make mods like efficient much more viable over lr, meaning that someone using beams or rails or pulse/burst lasers would end up needing to actually do range control instead of just relying on the 6000m damage falloff range to let them to 100% damage all the time.
You said it was difficult to control distance against NPCs; I was disagreeing with that assertion.
It is certainly difficult to stay close to an experienced CMDR who isn't also trying to do the same, but I don't consider difficulty an argument for making distance control less important.
I certainly agree that higher velocities make distance control more difficult.
However, higher fall off distances and greater projectile velocities provided by LR and focused mods significantly contribute to making longer engagement ranges viable.
I see a fair number of lightweight (cuts distributor draw, and makes them faster to repair with an AFMU) and SR rails used in PvP, even if LR dominates. However, high cap is largely rendered meaningless (except on hammers) by synthesis, while sturdy would remain largely pointless, even for hybrid vessels.
I agree that extending the base fall off distance would somewhat encourage other mods to be used, though LR would still be predominant with rails, because it would still have four times the fall off distance. I just don't agree this would be the best way to do this, or that it would generally result in shorter range engagements.
Making it harder to leverage these weapons at longer range, via removal or toning down LR mods, and/or removing that microgimbal effect, would also encourage other mods and shorter range engagements, without inflation...as would removing legacy BPs and decreasing the magnitude of the effects of drive mods.
Ultimately, bumping the damage drop-off distance of weapons that are currently limited by them is just going to further validate and entrench problematic mechanisms. No doubt Frontier is much more inclined to favor inflationary solutions than nerfs, and that's yet another reason why I have trouble advocating them; it's the wrong direction for combat to go, IMO.