Dadekster
Posts: 141
Joined: 4/18/2010
Status: offline
|
Ok, science be da*ned  This is what I'd love to see. 
LASERS-
Large > Good tracking, good range, huge power consumption, decent damage and slow fire rate. The standard for ship of the line slugfests at decent ranges and good for station take downs. Anything smaller than destroyer size and tracking suffers. This allows escorts and frigates to remain useful against capitals in swarm tactics, unless the capital devotes space to small rails/lasers which of course means it is now at a disadvantage in a capital ship duel. Lasers are good at range versus rails, but not as good; however, close the gap some and lasers should reign all things considered due to rate of fire over rails.
Small > Great, great tracking, decent range, small power consumption, decent damage and fast fire rate. Great as point defense against missles, bad versus torps and good against smaller sized ships too fast to hit with large lasers such as escorts and frigates. Enough damage to give cruisers sized targets some concern in number, pack a lunch against capital sized targets however.
** Lasers are great against armour and average against shields.
RAIL GUNS/MASS DRIVERS/SLUGS etc-
Large > Bad tracking, great range, low, low power consumption, great damage and slow, slow fire rate. Good for ship of the line slugfests at great ranges. These babies are your first choice for station or stationary target (like a planet) take downs due to sheer range and damage per shot. These work very well against other capitals but not as well as lasers due to range involved and tracking. Even a capital has a chance of dodging one of these. These should outrange lasers on average as well as outdamage them at great ranges.
Small > Decent tracking, decent range, low power consumption, great danage, medium fire rate. Great for point defense against torps and lousy against missles while good against smaller sized ships just like small lasers above.
** Rail guns are great against shields and average against armour.
MISSLES-
No sizes here, just what I think a missle should be for gameplay. Tech could influence # per salvo, payload, speed etc. Overall they are cheap, fast and lightly armoured with a small payload. Basically the idea is you spam missles. The more the merrier as they are easily killed by small guns (maybe fighters one day as well). Lasers are the bane of missles due to high ROF and enough damage to kill missles in one shot. Rail guns have problems tracking fast moving missles. They can still hit, just not as efficent as lasers. As far as what damage they excell at, I am tbh undecided if they should be good against say shields or just all around spread out damage. I'd like to say shields though. Call it the shield systems have trouble keeping up with the repeated hammer blows of multiple impacts. :)
TORPS-
Same thing, no sizes. As tech gets better they carry bigger payloads are more heavily armoured etc. Torps are more quality over quantity. They are slower than missles, but carry a much higher payload and are much harder to take down either via ECM or small battery fire. Railguns work best against these has they have more punch than lasers and torps use armour (inherent in game, you don't build torps) as their defense which small railguns are more successful against. As far as damage, same as missles. Sort of undecided, but I'd make these good against armour. Just the thought of one of these punching through a capital ships armour gives me chills. :)
Ok, so like I said, not too worried about science and omg don't you know a laser can't work against armour like that and missles make no sense in space warfare That said, I just want to see certain weapon plaforms perform better at some things than others. I'd like to see the AI show up in a fleet of capitals sporting lots of rails with picket ships packing lasers and me wondering if I can close the range enough with my caps since they are laser heavy and if my pickets have enough missles to overcome their small lasers. Or whatever scenario. I have no idea how something like this codes but the only thing I can think of that would be hard is to make it so that large weapons systems like the rails and lasers don't attempt to shot down torps or missles as it would never work (maybe 1 in a million but for gameplay don't bother). Other than that small weapons would fire on anything and everything with a prevalance towards missles/torps when those are within range. This would prevent the scenario where your picket ship is firing on an enemy capital in range and a missle shower is launched by another enemy ship. I'd be pretty mad if the picket ship ignored the missles and continued to plink away at the enemy capital it had been shooting at. If those things could be worked in as well as some sort of formation control I'd be in heaven as far as combat goes. Get the AI to build ships either scripted or smartly via reactions to your designs and other AI designs so people who don't want to be bothered with designing ships and fighting battles and it's a win-win.
Actually anything like this would be great...this is just what I think about when I see weapons balancing. 
|
Printable Version
RE: Weapon balance for the future - 
Good show and the airship fights were cool. Reminded me of WW1 & 2 naval battles sorta.
But although some of the recent posts were thoughtful, informative, and interesting, they were also heated and circular. So I figured I'd chime in again as well. 
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread