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Weapon Discussion: Railgun vs Massive Railgun and Phasor

 
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Weapon Discussion: Railgun vs Massive Railgun and Phasor - 11/29/2011 2:25:35 PM   
Canute0

 

Posts: 616
Joined: 4/30/2010
From: Germany
Status: offline 		What do you think about the top reseach Massive Railgun ?

I think its a piece of scrap.
The only advance are the improved range. But it still would be the Weapon with the shortest range.

Damage pet Second and Damage per Space is much better on a Improved Railgun. And i dont notice a better Shield piercing abiliy on the Massive Railgun's.

The combat results of ships with Massive railguns are much worser then their upgrade before.
The Massive Railguns need an improvment of the firerate, they should stay at the same rate like the heavy Railguns maybe with a little improvement. 1,8-1,9 sec should be ok.



Phasor:
The only advance they got, they do allways full damage at any range.
But they can miss like regular beam weapons and they are the slowest firing ones.

When you compare the Top Beam, Impro titan beam with Impro Phaser lance.
Both got similar range, and damage per shoot.
Ok the Phasor still do full damage at max. range, but look at these firerate of 4.2 sec compared to 1.4 of the titan beam. And the Armor piercing abiliy isn't that great useful since you need to break the shield first.

All Phaser need a second ability they need a 100% hit chance and special the later Phaser lance need an improvment of the Firerate of 20-40%
Post #: 1
RE: Weapon Discussion: Railgun vs Massive Railgun and ... - 11/29/2011 3:32:54 PM   
Nedrear


Posts: 702
Joined: 10/29/2011
Status: offline 		Just research something else... as a roleplayer I got no problem with these as I find explanations for their abilities. And no one says an alternative weapon of the same kind needs to be better in every aspect.

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RE: Weapon Discussion: Railgun vs Massive Railgun and ... - 11/29/2011 9:16:17 PM   
elliotg


Posts: 3597
Joined: 9/10/2007
Status: offline 		Don't forget that both Rail Guns and Phasers have unique abilities:

- Rail Guns can partially bypass shields
- Phasers do more damage than usual against armor

These factors make these weapons quite potent in my opinion. Just looking at the raw numbers isn't a good comparison. You really need to play with them in the game to get a feel for the differences.

BTW - I have come testers saying that Rail Guns are too powerful, so opinion varies on this issue

(in reply to Canute0)
Post #: 3
RE: Weapon Discussion: Railgun vs Massive Railgun and ... - 11/29/2011 10:10:50 PM   
Canute0

 

Posts: 616
Joined: 4/30/2010
From: Germany
Status: offline 		I don't say Railguns at generell arn't powerfull.
I say the Hightech Railguns (Massive) are less Powerful then the Midtech ones.

And Phaser, even with there unique ability they destroy ships much slower then Titan beams. Try it out !



(in reply to elliotg)
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RE: Weapon Discussion: Railgun vs Massive Railgun and ... - 11/29/2011 11:09:18 PM   
Nedrear


Posts: 702
Joined: 10/29/2011
Status: offline 		Ever tried combining different tech level of guns with their advantages and disadvantages or weapon types? I guess I can build a ship the same size as yours equipped with a mix of weapons which will kill every titan beam ship you will offer me as enemy.

Why? Because if you use ammo and shields to counter phaser and railgun you loose place for weapons and if you focus on one I will take the weapon which is your weak point and a secondary "clean up" weapon afterwards.

Example you build medium armor, high shielded ships:

The secondary gun will damage your shields while the railgun already starts to damage the less armor you got. If I counter your beams with enough shields you can only hope your reactor keeps up against the railgun until my shields vanishes or else your weapon will be hot air including your shields.

Do you give me a middle shielded armor behemoth I will add a big phalanx of phaser and a secondary energy dmg armament. First they will eat your shields and then take your ship armor like a hot knife butter.

Do you give me a balanced medium shield, armor destroyer full of titan beam guns? Since you got no weakness I might decide to counter with the same thing or risk all in a high shield railgun behemoth since you got still medium armor. That way I only need to live through your armor while you have to take down all shields. After that your components shield, reactor and co make boom while you still got shield energy... bad news.

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RE: Weapon Discussion: Railgun vs Massive Railgun and ... - 11/29/2011 11:36:09 PM   
Bingeling

 

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Status: offline 		My zenox used rail guns in early-ish game, and their destroyers really seemed efficient at blowing up enemy ships. Later they turned to powerful old fashioned beams, and that works too. I do have the feeling though, that railguns would blow up things faster.

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RE: Weapon Discussion: Railgun vs Massive Railgun and ... - 11/29/2011 11:41:58 PM   
Nedrear


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Status: offline 		No they dont. If you reach the armor threshold the railgun becoms ineffective and your ship gets blown away before you damage critical components. Of course the other ship still needs to repair the armor...

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RE: Weapon Discussion: Railgun vs Massive Railgun and ... - 11/30/2011 12:13:16 AM   
Erik Rutins

 

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Status: offline 		Phasers destroy unshielded ships and bases faster than anything else at the same range. Titan Beams are better in close.

Please also note for the heavy rail guns that they have a bombardment capacity. These weapons effectively take the place of bombardment weapons as well as anti-ship weapons.

Has anyone else found the largest rail guns to be ineffective?

Regards,

- Erik

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(in reply to Nedrear)
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RE: Weapon Discussion: Railgun vs Massive Railgun and ... - 11/30/2011 12:17:12 AM   
Nedrear


Posts: 702
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Status: offline 		"No Sir!"

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Post #: 9
RE: Weapon Discussion: Railgun vs Massive Railgun and ... - 11/30/2011 1:24:49 AM   
Canute0

 

Posts: 616
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Status: offline
quote:

Please also note for the heavy rail guns that they have a bombardment capacity. These weapons effectively take the place of bombardment weapons as well as anti-ship weapons.


Yep i know, but Railguns do 1M Bombard damage with a firerate of 0.85   while Massive Railguns do 2M at 3.2 sec  is that an improvement ?


quote:

I guess I can build a ship the same size as yours equipped with a mix of weapons which will kill every titan beam ship you will offer me as enemy.

Oh realy, me too. That wasn't the point.
It is the compare of these 2 highendtech Beam, and at moment it looks like the AI design favour Phasor and Railguns more then other weapons, we need to find a better balance for the "weak" AI anyway.


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Post #: 10
RE: Weapon Discussion: Railgun vs Massive Railgun and ... - 11/30/2011 1:52:20 AM   
Erik Rutins

 

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Canute
Yep i know, but Railguns do 1M Bombard damage with a firerate of 0.85   while Massive Railguns do 2M at 3.2 sec  is that an improvement ?


Are you sure about that? I'll double-check, but normal railguns shouldn't be doing bombardment damage, only the heavy rail guns and the massive rail guns.

Regards,

- Erik

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RE: Weapon Discussion: Railgun vs Massive Railgun and ... - 11/30/2011 5:47:12 PM   
bonesbro

 

Posts: 14
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Status: offline 		The problem is that some of the weapons worse as they level up, usually due to increased size or reduced firing rate.  Here's a quick chart: https://skydrive.live.com/redir.aspx?cid=51ff6dd709e0b314&resid=51FF6DD709E0B314!494&parid=51FF6DD709E0B314!135&authkey=!AGV_BqB2XLTONp0

In particular, the number I'm focusing on is damage per second per space.  The basic starting Maxos blaster does 0.81 damage per second per space.  The fourth railgun does 1.18.  The first Massive Railgun does 0.26, making it the second worse in the game behind the first Concussion Missile.

Heavy Missiles have a similar problem: the second heavy missile is still worse than the third concussion missile.  The last heavy missile is slightly better but is still way behind the other weapons.

Same problem with Phasers: the last Phaser Lance is worse than the last Phase Cannon.

Phasers are also much worse than Titan beams.  For example, the final Phaser Lance does 0.85, and the final Titan Beam does 4.14.  Only if you are sitting exactly at max range does the Titan beam ever get worse than the Phaser Lance.

(These calculations ignore falloff damage from range, which boosts missiles, phasers, and railguns a bit relative to other weapons)

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Post #: 12
RE: Weapon Discussion: Railgun vs Massive Railgun and ... - 11/30/2011 6:17:40 PM   
Nedrear


Posts: 702
Joined: 10/29/2011
Status: offline 		Slow reload can be countered by greater amounts of weapons. Less general damage might be because of a compromise for bombarding damage etc.
And never forget the special ability of phasers. Their generel damage applies ot shields, but not the ship itself. There are multiplicators involved!

Therefore think like a real live engineer where nothing comes without cost most of the time and try to compensate the disadvantages in some areas with old designs and use the new abilities to full effect by carefully choosing.

I don't know why some of you want a simple "everything is always better if it is researched" game. That is not realistic. I like as much realism as possible... including a better alignment system.
Therefore if a weapon specializes in one aspect and sacrificies other aspects in return it is not wrong, it is most times rather logical.

For example you can increase the speed of ordinary pistols with a bigger blast behind the same projectile, forcing a longer reload (using powder outside the bullet) and bigger projectiles as a whole (if the chemicals are in the projectile itself). In both cases range and damage are increased, but speed or handling might suffer. You can NOT have both.

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Post #: 13
RE: Weapon Discussion: Railgun vs Massive Railgun and ... - 11/30/2011 6:38:45 PM   
Erik Rutins

 

Posts: 37503
Joined: 3/28/2000
From: Vermont, USA
Status: offline 		Hi Bonesbro,

Thanks for the analysis. We had some discussions on this during testing as well. We tend to weight weapon range, damage reduction over range and some of these special abilities more heavily in our analysis, which start with similar numbers but ends up with different results.

The way you are looking at things purely considers efficiency per unit of space at point blank range. It's worth keeping in mind that with automated ship designs, ships of the same class can generally use stand-off tactics against each other and against bases, which makes weapon range a very important criteria as well. Weapon efficiency based on energy usage is also helpful to consider and one of the testers came up with a reasonable rule of thumb for translating energy into units of space as well.

The end result of all of that pre-release analysis was some tweaks, but we are generally fairly happy with the balance of the weapons at present (especially with the adjustment to the armor formula in 1.7.0.2) because of the weight we put on range advantages and special rules like shield and armor penetration and bombardment damage.

Also, the bombardment damage for the final rail gun is a typo. Only the heavy and massive rail guns should have bombardment damage. That will be corrected in a future update.

Regards,

- Erik


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Post #: 14
RE: Weapon Discussion: Railgun vs Massive Railgun and ... - 11/30/2011 6:43:15 PM   
bonesbro

 

Posts: 14
Joined: 2/25/2011
Status: offline 		Nedrear, you can't compensate for having worse weapons by dedicating more space to them, because I could just use all of that space on a better weapon system and be even further ahead.

Some weapon trees offer interesting choices.  For example, shatterforce vs. IAB presents an interesting choice between longer range vs. higher short range damage.  (By the way, Shatterforce 2 is a substantial downgrade over Shatterforce 1 because it shoots much slower - that should be fixed so they stay at 1.5 fire rate at all levels)  But some weapon trees offer no interesting choices at all, so you can only compare the weapons on their numbers - and for missiles and rails those numbers are not good.  Phasers probably need a little love, but not as much.

Expending my research points should produce weapons that are upgrades over the old ones, not weapons that are downgrades.  Weapon systems should be approximately balanced against one another, because when a weapon system is substantially worse than its competition then it makes for a game with fewer options, and it reduces the challenge presented by the AI when they're selecting weapons that are substantially worse than they could be.

(in reply to Nedrear)
Post #: 15
RE: Weapon Discussion: Railgun vs Massive Railgun and ... - 11/30/2011 6:48:46 PM   
bonesbro

 

Posts: 14
Joined: 2/25/2011
Status: offline 		Ok, but can you at least fix some of the issues within individual weapon lines?  That's a much simpler comparison and there are still some issues there.  For example, the firing rate decrease in Shatterforce 2 makes it a worse weapon than Shatterforce 1.  The firing rate decrease on Heavy Missiles makes them a worse weapon than Concussion missile 3.  The size increase and firing rate decrease railguns -> heavy railguns -> massive railguns makes each successive one worse than the previous type of rail.  Expending more research points should provide an increase of some sort, either in base damage or in utility (range or special abilities).

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Post #: 16
RE: Weapon Discussion: Railgun vs Massive Railgun and ... - 11/30/2011 7:03:55 PM   
Erik Rutins

 

Posts: 37503
Joined: 3/28/2000
From: Vermont, USA
Status: offline 		Hi Bonesbro,

We'll definitely take another look. However, if you consider it from the analysis I mentioned above and also factor in the effects of reactive armor (earlier tech weapons with much lower damage become much less effective as armor improves in the late game, giving the larger damage in one shot an added benefit vs. rate of fire-based dps) I think you'll find there's not really a downgrade in actual game effect. The effectiveness of each weapon against each armor type is also where the Phaser Lance gains some benefits.

Regards,

- Erik


< Message edited by Erik Rutins -- 11/30/2011 7:05:29 PM >

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Erik Rutins
CEO, Matrix Games LLC



For official support, please use our Help Desk: http://www.matrixgames.com/helpdesk/

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Post #: 17
RE: Weapon Discussion: Railgun vs Massive Railgun and ... - 11/30/2011 7:13:24 PM   
Canute0

 

Posts: 616
Joined: 4/30/2010
From: Germany
Status: offline
quote:

The size increase and firing rate decrease railguns -> heavy railguns -> massive railguns makes each successive one worse than the previous type of rail.

Even with the ability for Bombard Damage.

Btw. When you gave the Massive Raigun Bombard damage, from the logic you should give the Heavy Missiels at at last the Massive Missiels bombard damage too.

quote:

Slow reload can be countered by greater amounts of weapons.

Not realy, special at these weapon cases, slow reload got Larger weapon space too. With the same Design space it means you got lesser firepower, but a new ability to bomb planets.
Oh yeah i Vote for Pirate Planets we need to bomb now !! :-)
And not to forget Pirates need to bomb your Planets too now, since AI like to use Railguns very much.


(in reply to bonesbro)
Post #: 18
RE: Weapon Discussion: Railgun vs Massive Railgun and ... - 12/1/2011 7:35:07 AM   
bonesbro

 

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Joined: 2/25/2011
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins
We'll definitely take another look. However, if you consider it from the analysis I mentioned above and also factor in the effects of reactive armor (earlier tech weapons with much lower damage become much less effective as armor improves in the late game, giving the larger damage in one shot an added benefit vs. rate of fire-based dps) I think you'll find there's not really a downgrade in actual game effect. The effectiveness of each weapon against each armor type is also where the Phaser Lance gains some benefits.


That sounds good, and I agree that there are some benefits (like effectiveness vs. reactive armor) that aren't captured in a pure numerical comparison. However, I suggest that you try to keep the DPS numbers even so that your research investment purchases you some kind of unambiguous upgrade. I think that the interesting choices in weapons should be between different classes of weapons or different forks of tech trees and not a choice to stop upgrading a tech tree.

Perhaps, for missiles at least, Heavy Missiles should branch off of Concussion Missiles 2, with a dead end CM3 as an option. I quite like how you get a choice to branch off into a new tech area with future upgrade potential or to invest more in a dead-end to optimize your existing ships. It would be more interesting, though, if missiles had a second fork other than just Heavy Missiles. Perhaps... hmm, rockets, perhaps? Fast firing, short range, and mediocre damage-per-hit rockets would give you a good high DPS option at the cost of significant weakness against armor.

(in reply to Erik Rutins)
Post #: 19
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