Shield Piercing and Armor Ignore

[Delta_V]

I've been wondering: why do these two upgrades always appear on the same weapons?

 

Slug Railguns, Heavy Lasers, and Burst Lasers all get access to both shield piercing and armor ignore upgrades (although Burst Lasers have to choose between the two). The primary alternatives to these weapons, Plasma Railguns, Quad Lasers, and Light Lasers, don't get access to either. Wouldn't it make sense to spread these abilities out, so one weapon gets armor ignore while the other gets shield piercing?

 

While Heavy Lasers have several drawbacks compared to other options which keep them from being the hands-down best choice, Slug Railguns and Burst Lasers are both considered far superior to their alternatives. And here's the thing: you could make an argument for using them over the alternatives even if they didn't have these upgrades.

 

Slug Railguns do slightly less damage overall than Plasma Railguns, but they do that damage up front. This means that they might not kill as many targets in a single shot, but the ones you do kill are dead *now*, rather than several seconds from now. If you've got a Scout bearing down on you, letting them live for a couple extra seconds may give them enough time to kill you before they die. For that reason, even if Slugs didn't have shield pierce and armor ignore, there would still be a reason to use them over Plasma. With those upgrades, Slugs become the superior option hands-down.

 

Likewise, Burst Lasers have a sharper drop off in damage and accuracy with range than Light Lasers, which have the same max range and fill the same general role (not considering Quads at the moment, because they are longer range and fill a different role), but they do their damage in discrete bursts rather than in a continuous stream. So Light Lasers will be more effective at mid-range, but Burst Lasers will do more damage in the short windows you get in a close range dogfight, like you find around satellites. Just like the railguns, without the shield pierce and armor ignore upgrades, there would still be a reason to use Burst Lasers over Light Lasers. With those upgrades, they become the obvious choice.

 

 

So, with that said, would it make sense to move one of either the shield pierce or armor ignore upgrades from the weapons that have access to both and give it to the weapons that have neither? So for instance, remove the Armor Ignore from Slug Railguns and give it to Plasma Railguns instead?

Edited January 4, 2014 by Delta_V

[Armonddd]

As you said, slug and burst have other reasons why they're the superior weapons. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that they're superior weapons regardless of shield piercing and ignoring armor - I'd use them even if those options didn't exist in the game at all. Damage now is better than damage later, so slug is better than plasma, and burst lasers are simply better designed for the close range dogfighting that makes up the majority of important combat.

 

Heavy lasers are interesting. They're only good because they get both shield piercing and ignore armor, but because they get those two, they're pretty fearsome. It makes them an excellent weapon on the Rycer and Gladiator, where you get a second laser to work around their disadvantages.

 

I would like to see the relative power difference between the various lasers and railguns brought down. In the case of railguns, I'm not going to say much because this isn't a "gunships are good/gunships need all the nerfs" thread, but I will say that there isn't really a choice when it comes to slug vs plasma - slug is just so much better than plasma that I don't see a point in plasma existing. In order to remove this illusion of choice, either slug needs a nerf or plasma needs a buff.

 

When it comes to lasers, I think burst lasers are in an ok, if not perfect, place. They have high potential power - if you're close to the guy, you will wreck his **** - but also require a fair amount of skill - you have to get close to the guy without dying and without him getting out of your sights. You could argue that the rewards for that kind of skill are too high, but again, that's not what this thread is about. My point is that the design behind burst cannons is inherently good, even if the numbers could arguably be tweaked. My favorite tweak, if any, would be to change the range breakpoints from 500m-3000m-4000m to 500m-2000m/2500m-4000m.

 

Heavy lasers have the very unfortunate downside of not being very flexible. They're good in mid- and long(ish)-range combat, and they're good against targets with high shields and low hull, but that's about it. Once the enemy closes to point blank range, heavy lasers become very hard to hit with and are not nearly as rewarding on hit as burst lasers are (their increased fire rate is not always an advantage due to the fewer shot opportunities you get at close range).

 

It's worth pointing out that having a wide firing arc is not a complete answer to the disadvantages of burst and heavy lasers, because the geometry of close range combat requires significantly increased player skill and dexterity to line up a shot. I'd even go so far as to say that the difficulty of the shot increases exponentially with how erratically the target moves, regardless of what arc they move within. Obstructions such as satellites and asteroids add to the complications.

 

All that said, I think that quad, light, and ion cannons could all use a buff. I feel like rapid fire lasers are in a fairly good place - they're close range lasers that (kind of) compete with burst lasers and generally lose in raw killing power, but win at team support and racking up assists - but the other three could use work. I don't think it would be appropriate to simply add shield piercing and armor ignoring properties, however. Both of these are already really common and is pushing many players to stack evasion over shields and armor.

 

I'd like to see something unique for light and quad lasers. Quads are frankly kind of boring; they're decent damage at decent range with noticeable power draw that forces you to watch your systems and target at the same time. That last part is interesting, but the rewards are so low as to make the weapon not amazing. I'd suggest increasing their range by 1,000 meters (comparable to heavy lasers), the power draw to 25.0/s (from 23.8/s), their damage by 10% (don't freak out, keep reading), and changing the final tier of upgrades to a choice between draining weapon power and draining engine power (currently 16% hull damage/18% shield damage). This makes them very dangerous long range weapons, but also makes it even more important to manage your power and not take shots that won't hit. If the energy drain proves to be too powerful, their rate of fire can be decreased while increasing the damage and energy consumption per shot (to maintain the same damage per second and power draw per second while decreasing the power drain per second).

 

Light lasers currently compete with rapid fire lasers, but don't offer much to stand out - in fact, it's really an illusion of choice, not unlike plasma vs slug. Light lasers get +5% accuracy, but rapid fire lasers fire so much faster that they'll do much more damage over even a short amount of time against any target that isn't currently using distortion field. They do less than 1% more damage per second than rapid fire lasers, which is completely ignorable. They have a significantly smaller firing arc (28 degrees vs rapid fire's 32) and have a tiny advantage on tracking penalties (-0.80% vs -1.00%), but you should be trying to get the guy dead in front of you anyway. Beyond that, they're completely identical - even the upgrade tracks between the two are exactly the same. Light lasers need a different upgrade track - something interesting, but not power drain because of their high rate of fire. Perhaps change their range to 200m-2500m-5000m, increase their medium range damage while decreasing their long range damage, and give them a crit chance upgrade. This would make them compete with burst lasers, but instead of taking advantage of split second opportunities in dogfights or while weaving around objectives, the light lasers are better at predicting enemies popping out around obstructions (because you can maintain fire more easily thanks to the higher rate of fire, as opposed to trying to time it just right) and have the advantage of a much shorter minimum range (which is huge in close quarters turning wars). However, they're not as good at taking down a ship in the brief window of opportunity presented. The damage numbers may have to be adjusted to account for the fact that they're significantly easier to use than burst lasers (as a result of the higher rate of fire; see above).

 

Ion cannons are similar to heavy lasers in that they're extremely good at what they do... in certain situations. Running ion cannons basically requires running a very versatile killing laser in your other slot (they're only available on dual laser strikes at the moment), and while that's not necessarily a huge problem - you probably were going to run rapid fire or quad lasers in that slot anyway - they also have a much more pressing problem: competition. Ion cannons will strip a target of its shields nearly twice as fast as heavy lasers will, but the heavy lasers will also be doing large amounts of hull damage in that time. Add in an accuracy penalty, absolutely awful hull damage (which feels like a punishment for not switching lasers and re-clicking your left mouse button with perfect timing - a clunky process at best), range shorter than what a strike wants to have, and that awful loud roar they make, and you're simply not looking at a great laser. You could increase their range, but you can't increase their hull damage too much without going against the idea of an ion cannon as presented in lore. And, because of that, the power drain aspects are of limited use - once you strip their shields, you want to immediately switch to a different laser to deal the actually important damage, which means you're not getting that power drain when you most need it. All in all, ion cannons are a largely inefficient laser with rewards and optimal uses that are frankly contradictory. And they're loud. Did I mention they're loud?

 

Another thing to consider is that all of my ideas can be easily thrown off by the introduction of new game types. I'm currently thinking of balance around domination gameplay, and have no idea how these ideas would work out in deathmatch or capital vs capital gameplay.

 

(spoilers I think ion, slug, and plasma need to be completely reworked, gunships in general get too much reward for not enough risk/difficulty)

Edited January 4, 2014 by Armonddd