Weapon balance?

[Misery]

Okay, so, with all of the balance-related talk on here currently, and also with all this new content that has quite a lot of combat additions, I thought this might be a good subject to bring up, as it's been bugging me for awhile.


Currently, some of the weapons that players can get just.... well, arent exactly of much use.  What I've found myself doing alot of is using the minigun to hit anything that has no shields, and the energy shot thing to hit anything that does.... and that's about it.  Third weapon is usually Mass Driver, but I use that mostly to knock out missiles or particularly dangerous groups of oncoming shots, as opposed to actually attacking ships with it.

When I try out other weapons... such as experimenting with the spreadshot earlier.... they just dont seem to do all that much, and it's right back to the original pair.

Now, I dont think those two weapons are overpowered.  They're not exactly slaughtering flagships left and right (though the minigun can tear up smaller ships at a decent rate).  My feeling on it is that the other weapons are all underpowered, and could do with some sort of boost, or something.   To give them purpose and all, as right now, they really just dont seem to have much.

So, I'm curious, are there any other thoughts or opinions on this particular issue?

[x4000]

The gravity lance is also super useful.  Do you not use that?

[FortunaDraken]

Nope, you've just listed the three weapons I always use. Minigun, Energy Blaster, Mass Driver. I'm usually sighing over my pitiful amount of damage before I get those three. I've found they're the best combination, since anything that the Minigun can't kill effectively, the Mass Driver can, and vice versa. Energy Blaster takes down shields and turrets.

I can't stand the Gravity Lance because it's range is so short. Having to get in so close is annoying when I just want to take out one ship, then turn around and get to the next ASAP, or if I'm trying to catch up to a ship. The Minigun and Mass Driver have decent enough range for my liking (love the Minigun's range in particular; also three guesses who's loving the new Triple Range ability...).

I've tried some of the other weapons but they just don't seem to hit anything that I can't take down with the above three. Armour Piercing seems very useless, and Spreadshot is so weak when you can't hit with all the bullets. Spreadshot's damage in particular seems to be calculated as if you're hitting with all the shots on the target which...isn't the point of Spreadshot I thought?

The Disruptor has been handy though, I will admit. My recent Invasion run took forever to give me the Mass Driver, so I ran with it and it was handy for beating both the shields and the ship, though it was rather weak on the Obscura ships so I didn't keep it once I got the Mass Driver. I need to try it in a normal game and see how it goes against the original races' ships...

[Hearteater]

Admittedly I've played very little of TLF, but the weapons did feel a little "simple" in terms of usage. Each weapon basically worked best against a given target, so obviously that's the one I used. No side effects, like reducing speed, reducing target's ROF, bonus damage when it breaks a shield, partial shield penetration, homing lasers!!!!, or whatever. Just "is that a nail, screw, bolt? guess I get my hammer, screwdriver, wrench." I actually liked the Gravity Lance because it was instant, meaning I could actually hit the ship I was chasing (before the shot speed increase). I would sometimes use it even when it wasn't optimal because of that.

[Misery]

My problem with the gravity lance is that the range is so short; the minigun and energy thing together can take out flagships and such just fine, so the lance has no particular advantages there.

Granted, there could be some trick I'm missing, but I've really just never found a use for it.

One idea is to give more of these weapons special properties, that arent just about dealing damage.  The Mass Driver for instance; not just for clearing missiles, but it can also be used to directly attack something that's firing them (or firing some heavy and dangerous shot like a monitor bolt), which essentially keeps them from doing so.  And if aimed properly (not always simple to do) it can cancel shots.  So that gives it a use as a sort of utility weapon without it being just about damage VS protection of some sort.

[Hearteater]

Yeah, that's what I was getting at with the current weapons lacking side effects. Side effects make the weapons more than just their damage number.

[NichG]

Playing a Betrayal run recently I found the Disruptor to be pretty good too.

[Misery]

It occurs to me that the minigun could use some sort of nerf.

It smashes up large ships too easily even when it doesnt make sense.  Shields?  Still hits hard.  Armor supposedly resistant to it?  Nope, still usually the weapon that can do the most damage.

It makes sense as a decent all-around weapon, that's good at popping smaller ships quickly, but it ends up going a bit too far past that point.

[Histidine]

I made a Mantis report about UP Armor-Piercing and Gravity Lance back in the day; dunno if they've been improved since then.

Drak proposed a greater overhaul of the weapons system here.

[Misery]

I agree with those completely. 

Far as I know, they've not changed at all.   I was messing with the armor piercing one when I started a new game since the Boarine ship starts with it, and.... yeah, it's basically useless.

[Jerebaldo1]

I agree that the minigun, less the energy blaster, and to a yet lesser extent, the mass driver, are shoulders above the others in usefulness. The others have their own unique benefits, but they're oh-so-conditional that I'll rarely encounter a use case for them. The suggestions in the mantis ticket are an improvement, though I don't agree with making the minigun have homing bullets.

Tweaking the damage of the others upward significantly would help, and be the simplest solution. My preference, though, would be more interesting behaviors like having the armor piercer apply a 10%-of-total-hull-hp damage addendum so that larger ships are hit harder by default. Other possibilities are damage over time, teleport knock-back, damage\movement reduction...all sorts of interesting possibilities.