But please be careful as the other guardian weapons are improved.
I won't lie, Guardian Weapons have been in a bad state for years now. Only gauss was practical for most purposes, with shard cannons and plasma chargers mostly without any use at all(besides gibbing, which hardly counts).
But on a basic level, they had some good aspects. Shard Cannons, for example, did much better shield damage, had better DPE, and lower heat. In return for this, they had much shorter range and were harder to hit with. However, they didn't reward you enough for the increased difficulty of using them; for all intents and purposes, their maximum effective range was about 1000m, which often left the player within the range of the lightning. Combined with the wide spread making it difficult to hit hearts consistently, and the low armor piercing making the damage sub-par, they just couldn't keep up with gauss.
The engineered shard cannon significantly narrowed the spread, increased the armor piercing, and increased the projectile speed. The bullets move nearly instantly and do better damage than gauss, and with the tight spread, dancing around the lightning is no longer necessary. In exchange, it has much higher distro drain and much higher heat generation.
The net result is basically just...gauss, but better. Most of the individuality of the shard cannon is removed, while most of the previous benefits are removed, leaving it with similar heat, range, distro drain, damage, etc, just slightly better in about every way.
Ideally I'd like to see the weaknesses of the two weapons preserved, but the strengths accentuated to make them good.
Shard Cannons, for example, might have their spread tightened and projectile speed and armor piercing boosted, but their range reduced to around 1300, forcing the player near to lightning range. Even better, let them damage thargon swarms if that's possible, so you can use them for multiple purposes, damaging the thargoid AND dealing with the swarm.
Plasma Cannons, by contrast, might just get a significant boost to their Armor Piercing, perhaps all the way to something like 170 or 200, allowing them to do nearly full damage to even hydras. They'll still be terrible at killing hearts, not to mention more difficult to hit with and with poor DPE, but they'll be much better against the higher tiers of thargoids.
The important thing is, don't just make thargoid combat easier; make it more interesting, by giving the other weapons useful(but not op) niches.
I won't lie, Guardian Weapons have been in a bad state for years now. Only gauss was practical for most purposes, with shard cannons and plasma chargers mostly without any use at all(besides gibbing, which hardly counts).
But on a basic level, they had some good aspects. Shard Cannons, for example, did much better shield damage, had better DPE, and lower heat. In return for this, they had much shorter range and were harder to hit with. However, they didn't reward you enough for the increased difficulty of using them; for all intents and purposes, their maximum effective range was about 1000m, which often left the player within the range of the lightning. Combined with the wide spread making it difficult to hit hearts consistently, and the low armor piercing making the damage sub-par, they just couldn't keep up with gauss.
The engineered shard cannon significantly narrowed the spread, increased the armor piercing, and increased the projectile speed. The bullets move nearly instantly and do better damage than gauss, and with the tight spread, dancing around the lightning is no longer necessary. In exchange, it has much higher distro drain and much higher heat generation.
The net result is basically just...gauss, but better. Most of the individuality of the shard cannon is removed, while most of the previous benefits are removed, leaving it with similar heat, range, distro drain, damage, etc, just slightly better in about every way.
What I would like to see.
Ideally I'd like to see the weaknesses of the two weapons preserved, but the strengths accentuated to make them good.
Shard Cannons, for example, might have their spread tightened and projectile speed and armor piercing boosted, but their range reduced to around 1300, forcing the player near to lightning range. Even better, let them damage thargon swarms if that's possible, so you can use them for multiple purposes, damaging the thargoid AND dealing with the swarm.
Plasma Cannons, by contrast, might just get a significant boost to their Armor Piercing, perhaps all the way to something like 170 or 200, allowing them to do nearly full damage to even hydras. They'll still be terrible at killing hearts, not to mention more difficult to hit with and with poor DPE, but they'll be much better against the higher tiers of thargoids.
The important thing is, don't just make thargoid combat easier; make it more interesting, by giving the other weapons useful(but not op) niches.