Cheers! Much obliged
Engineered AX Weapons for Everyone!
- Thread starter muhhy
- Start date
Happy to helpCheers! Much obliged
Avoid the modified Gauss though, these look tempting but are useless.
The plasmas are nice since they do similar damage as regular Gauss, but with more ammo and less heat. Good for medium ships / cold orbiters.
The shards are awesome since these pack a punch! If you wanna go angry at a 'goid then they are a good pick. Needs a large ship / shield tank with LOTS of heatsinks though.
I wouldn't call them worse. They're different. They have slightly higher theoretical damage output, but are harder to use. Plus, they have autofire, so they remove some of the incentive to use macros, which is good.
The AX crowd calls them worse, which is what matters.
The other modified weapons improve on multiple aspects of their regular counterparts, justifying the added grind. The modified Gauss just waste time and effort.
Nah, the AX crowd is pretty split on them. They are a sidegrade for sure, but they aren't really better or worse, just, different. It's a give and take, what you get is a little bit lower heat spike and power drop spike, but in return the take is that it's a bit harder to use with lesser range and having to hit all 4 shots. However another give is that you have a chance of partial damage if you hit some of the shots but not all, whereas with the normal gauss if you miss, you miss completely. So for certain ship builds the little bit of heat spike advantage can be useful, and in some build the regular ones would be better.
So if it's a sidegrade, and the others are an upgrade, what's the justification for the added grind for the Gauss?
![[VR] Orodruin](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/237/237188.jpg?1614840532){kind=avatar}
They do not have a higher theoretical max output. Within optimal range for both, the modified gauss are slightly worse on damage output.
Making them better than regular gauss would imply a power creep with additional grind on top. That if anything would be horrible game design.
At some point I made the suggestion to increase damage output by 20% but change optimal range to 1.4 km and max range to 2 km. That would have made them higher potential but more difficult to use, meaning they would not be good for entry level AX and therefore not imply more grind in the entry barrier, yet still offer an extra oomph for more experienced AX pilots.
Look at the stats now. You get virtually identical damage, and you lose a healthy amount of range. The lower thermal load is per shot, not per burst, so it's not like they're much colder than the standard gauss, and if they are, it's negligible. You might get a little more ammo overall, but you also have to maintain better time on target to get the most of them.
It's like regular rails vs Imperial hammers. Hammers can theoretically do a bit more damage, but only if you have superb accuracy.
I know they were super broken when they were doing a gajillion damage, but when they were 'half-broken', they did just a little too much damage to be balanced. Somewhere between their current state, and the 'half-broken' damage would be great. Slightly more than standard, but like hammers, rewarding only if you are accurate enough to make use of them.
Nah. I would definitely call them worse in general. There are very few situations when the heat spiking cannot be avoided through staggering and the damage loss is significant at the ranges most pilots will be capable of sustaining.
There is the standard and premium ammo bug, but that’s clearly a bug so exploiting it is a bit dubious.
See my suggestion in post #67 ...
4x the damage was still waaaay too much.
I feel we're in agreement here - what you describe would be closer to an actual upgrade. The same "higher potential but more challenging to use" point could be made for the modified shards (though not as extreme as in your suggestion) respective heat per shot.
I was talking more about the autofire. Assuming the player isn't cheating with macros, of course, but those really shouldn't be considered anyway.
The shards and PCs are different though. Their base versions see no use at all (apart from shards in some speedrunning applications) so the modified versions really needed to be upgrades in order to be alternatives to regular gauss. That was pretty successful though. Regular gauss still tend to rule the scene but you see shards and PCs being much more competitive and actually being used.
I'm still a bit disappointed that they basically just turned the modified plasmas and shards into Gauss 2.0, by massively boosting their projectile speed and narrowing the spread.
At least the plasmas still integrate the charge mechanic meaningfully. Shards, though...what's the point in a shotgun that doesn't really spread out? I wish they'd have just made it so shards could damage the swarm. That way ships with limited hardpoints could take shard cannons instead of gauss and kill both the swarm and the interceptor.
At least the plasmas still integrate the charge mechanic meaningfully. Shards, though...what's the point in a shotgun that doesn't really spread out? I wish they'd have just made it so shards could damage the swarm. That way ships with limited hardpoints could take shard cannons instead of gauss and kill both the swarm and the interceptor.
Weapons other than flak can already damage the swarm. It is just very unlikely to hit. I have seen Thargons shot down by gauss fire. Of course, that is very very inefficient. However, making shards meaningfully damage the swarm would require significantly more development time than making a copy of regular shards and tweaking the numbers. This needs to be considered when making suggestions as it strongly affects the likelihood of a suggestion being implemented.
I don’t mind not being able to damage the swarm in ... hardpoint challenged ... ships though. Generally, people flying those ships in AX are going to be doing it for the challenge or memes anyway and be familiar enough with fight mechanics to make attack runs with an active swarm.
Well, the idea would be that it would sacrifice raw damage output against the thargoid in exchange for versatility.
In my ideal world, Gauss = Good balance of DPS and ease of use, Plasma = better stats than Gauss, but much harder to use, and Shards = Slightly harder to use, slightly worse, but more versatile.
Instead, we've basically got Gauss = Good, Shards = Basically Gauss except maybe slightly better, and Plasmas = Gauss except more damage and less heart damage but generally better.
All that said, I can confirm that thargons don't currently take damage from shards. I put two medium shards on my python, triggered the swarm so it went into its 'run away before shooting missiles' phase, and then I just sat behind it unloading into it. I unloaded ~50 shots into it, with many confirmed hits(both sound effect and visual effect), and the thargon number didn't decrease at all.
Returned home back to permit locked home base Mbooni to get resupplied.
The other mining mega ship should have sent supplies back to base as well now that the Hudson funded lacky take over bid failed to get the salvation mega ship... salvation should have resourcces to release the missing size 3/large guardian upgrades in time as he gained a new mega ship after the conflict... lol...
Last edited:
What do you mean by autofire?
Normal ones you have to click every time you want to fire, and if you click too soon, you have to try again. The modified ones, you can just hold the trigger down, and it will keep firing indefinitely, at the perfect fire rate.
Because human reflexes are what they are, this means that the standard ones will always lose a certain percentage.