A while ago, I created a thread in forums about WMD and asteroid stuff. I mentioned that WMD properties on weapon currently is being superior with almost no downside. Non-WMD weapon can damage armors, but it can't damage effectively to capital ship and multihull station. Meanwhile, WMD weapon damage both of them. This makes non-WMD weapon becoming less practical as stated by many players and many of them more prefer near-mandatory WMD weapon on their playthrough. Even though non-WMD weapon is generally higher fire rate or speed, their lack of power against multihull or capital ship makes it almost impossible to compete player's favor over WMD weapon.
I have several suggestions:
1. WMD should affecting asteroid
As written on aforementioned thread, I suggests WMD should be able to destroy ore deposits. This would makes sense since shooting asteroid with WMD often launches unsalvageable boulders. This also makes non-WMD weapon slightly more useful if player interested on mining as they will more cautious with their WMD weapon or enemy encounters. However, there is might be a conflict between mining and WMD properties since some weapon such as Magma Cutter uses WMD. We can reason the mining properties could mitigate or perhaps enhance WMD effect so they able to extract large portion of ore from asteroid.
2. Damage on WMD & Mining weapon should be reduced
Similar with suggestion above, combined WMD and Mining weapon may too beneficial because they can be used both mining and combat with tough enemy that requires WMD. Perhaps, mining weapon that uses WMD (or perhaps all mining weapons do have WMD) should have relatively less damage compared with regular WMD weapon. In practice, mining weapons is finely tuned damage so they able to extract ore effectively. If their damage were too high, they instead destroying it.
3. WMD should affecting wrecks chance
Medium-sized starships and below should has higher chance leaves no wreck by WMD weapon compared with non-WMD. This would makes non-WMD weapon is more useful to farming non-capital ship enemy (e.g. farming Viking for fuel or farming Ranx gunship for repair kits).
4. Ammoless WMD weapon should uses two slots or consume more power
Usually, ammoless WMD weapon is a large matter weapon. Perhaps, several WMD weapon such as Howitzer requires two slot to charge up large projectile. This may worse ideas due slot limits problem. Another idea is make ammoless WMD weapon requires more power.
5. WMD should be a damage upgrade
Instead being a permanent properties, WMD should be an upgrade for weapon. This is reasonable because current WMD generally is a high damage weapon. Perhaps if a damage type reaches certain damage numbers, they add WMD properties at proportional number.
The WMD damage upgrade idea is excellent. Worth considering IMO.
And affecting the leavesWreck= chance is also a good idea. Does WMD do this already?
These are all nerfs to WMD weapons, perhaps aside from the WMD upgrade proposal which I don't think I fully understand. But is the problem that WMD is too good, or that WMD is too necessary? I feel like the big problem that needs to be solved, which these proposals do not address (aside from the WMD upgrade, perhaps), is that in the late game there are a lot of enemy capital ships. Either you have a WMD weapon or you cannot effectively fight them.
Given the squeeze on equipment slots, it's not surprising that some (many?) players would choose a single weapon that's good at dealing with capital ships and mediocre at dealing with smaller ships. The converse type of weapon (good at small ships, not great at capital ships *but it can do the job*) does not exist so far as I am aware.
I see a few potential routes here:
- The expectation is that ammo is your primary source of damage vs. capships. The various WMD nerfs proposed above would make sense under that design ethos, but we may need to rejigger ammo supplies/costs/masses.
- We make WMD0 weapons viable vs. capships. They don't need to excel, but they should be at least as good vs. capships as ammoless WMD primaries are vs. swarms. Given the preponderance of capships in the late game, I'd be comfortable with saying that a WMD0 weapon should be a bit better vs. capships than a WMD weapon should be vs. swarms, just to keep the game flowing.
- We just grant some amount of WMD to all late-game weapons.
@relanat Seems not yet implemented. I think all ships uses default wreck chance except quest-related ship. I'm not quite sure how much leavesWreck= chance they have, but they should have higher chance. So mass-destruction weapon could reduced its chance.
@derakon I don't remember when, but WMD and multihull came along to replace non-critical armors to capital ships and multihull station. Before that time, weapons largely was based on two factors: fire rate and damage; other factors is usually uniqueness to certain weapon (such as Flenser; high speed projectile). Thus makes weapon usage splits into two categories to balance the game:
- Fast firing weapon, but low damage.
- Slow firing weapon, but high damage.
And after WMD replaced non-critical mechanic, WMD became third factor that play too much roles on space combat. This made weapon categories in current game somewhat complicated:
- Fast firing weapon, but low damage with WMD; e.g. slam cannon, thermo cannon.
- Slow firing weapon, but high damage with WMD; e.g. Mark I howitzer, Fusionfire howitzer.
- Fast firing weapon, but low damage without WMD; e.g particle beam cannon, ion blaster.
- Slow firing weapon, but high damage without WMD; there is no such weapon as far as I know.
We can see that fast firing weapon is always opposed with damage in order to makes the game balanced. However, there is no opposing properties towards WMD and there is no weakness or disadvantage on WMD to makes non-WMD can compete with. Slam cannon and particle beam cannon has relatively similar usefulness toward gunship. But when it comes to capital ship, particle beam lost its competences against slam cannon. They makes non-WMD usage obsolete quickly on game, especially late game. My proposal is makes WMD weapon has few acceptable weakness (excluding WMD as weapon upgrade suggestion).
Making WMD0 viable vs. capital ship is same as making non-WMD become WMD. Even WMD3 is least number to be considered WMD because WMD1 and WMD2 is not effective enough. And if we give all WMDs on late-game weapons, non-WMD is basically pointless.
I made a suggestion on the forum about five years back concerning capital ships and internals that I still stand by: Remove the WMD requirement to significantly damage capship internals. True, a lot of capships would need their interiorHP completely rebalanced (and, in some cases, increased), but it’s a change that would immediately improve non-WMD weapons at a stroke.
@digarw: I get that your goal is to make WMD and non-WMD weapons balanced. It's a good goal, and I agree with it. We need to keep in mind the environment that weapon decisions are made in when pursuing that goal, though. Nerfing WMD weapons won't change the fact that they're basically mandatory to fight capships. Something like assumedpseudonym's suggestion would be necessary to keep non-WMD weapons viable.
WMD requirement removal to immediately improve non-WMD seems fine, but doesn't it also significally reducing purpose of WMD: effectively damaging interior/multihull (and wrecks)? In reverse, WMD become somewhat pointless.
My proposal is to nerfing WMD without removing purpose of WMD. While WMD still mandatory to fight capships, the non-WMD have some advantages to excel in fighting lesser ship. But if that don't help, perhaps we should remove WMD at all.
My suggestion is meant only for making non-WMD weapons viable against capships, which as it currently stands are often more difficult to destroy than fortified stations. WMD would still be necessary for destroying multihull stations and objects such as shipwrecks or empty abandoned crates, making WMD a bit more specialized but not obsolete or pointless.
I see. That should works. But I would like to see some WMD nerfs on my suggestions above applied. Especially WMD and asteroid stuff, because it makes no sense if ore deposit still available on asteroid after bombarded by heavy gun.
It is a combination of too many targets requiring WMD to hurt (not to mention the nagging hints if you do not use WMD) and too few slots.
WMD is mandatory enough that I put WMD on most of my mod energy weapons (which are mostly hitscan beams), because I would never use them otherwise in a real game with my mods loaded.
My suggestion: Raise no WMD to 25%, which is current WMD:1. Even that is a bit weak.
WMD affecting asteroid would help against Marauder strongholds, which resist everything except mining damage. (I have put mining damage on few of my WMD beam mod weapons not to mine ore, but to destroy the likes of Marauder strongholds.)
Aside, overleveled low tier damage, like level 7 laser or kinetic, against a capital ship will tear it apart once armor is breached, but still does nothing to a station that has no hull, only armor.