THese are the changes to weapons proposed in this thread: http://forums.kronosaur.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7419
I've merged my own suggestions with those by others and tried to give sources for additional suggestions (apologies to anyone I've missed out). These take the simple solutions ONLY, and more advanced changes which might be a better solution are left in that thread. This ticket only handles changes which would be relatively fast to implement. Where possible I quote numbers, but as most suggestions didn't have numbers, I am largely unable to do this.
Also, because there's no formatting guide for how the heck we make text bold, it's all in wall of text format without nice highlighting or anything. (EDIT: I've added some lines to break it up though!)
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-Omnidirectional Laser Cannon (Source: PM): Overlevelled by 1. Suggestion: Reduce level to 2, cut price to match.
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-Dual Recoilless Cannon (Source: PM): Overlevelled by 1, low DPS. Suggestion: Reduce to level 2, reduce soft stats (eg price) to match.
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-Mining laser: Has trouble with damage thresholds, and is incapable of damaging the player when borers use it. Low range is not accounted for in its damage levels. Suggestion: Boost damage slightly per shot (+1 or +2 modifer to the existing 1d4 roll) to get past mining thresholds more effectively and make borers more effective at defending themselves. Tested in SM&M++.
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Valjor Series Lasers [Corporate Command] (Source: Various): Sucks if it's not on a Freyr, is merely annoying when it is. When power use is fixed (see AssumedPseudonym's ticket) will lose their use as auton guns as well. Suggestion: Add flavor by increasing range to ~75ls, adding significant WMD
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Sabel series particle/ion guns [Corporate Command] (SOurce: Various): Just plain terrible. Suggestion: Add WMD. Consider adding extra damage or the shieldbuster trait (which seems to be a Rasiermesser thing).
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-Laser Cannon Array: Is completely useless and incapable of hitting a barn from the inside. Suggestion: Tighten spread by moving off spread3 to a custom config closer to that of the trident. PM suggests increasing the rate of fire to match the laser cannon (and I think I agree).
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-Slam Cannon (Source: PM): Major victim of power creep. Low DPS for its level, minimal WMD. Suggestion: Add higher WMD. I would also suggest considering a slight damage or DPS buff.
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-Heavy Slam Cannon (Source: PM): Same issues as normal slam cannon. Suggestion: Buff WMD, possibly DPS.
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-PM6 Slicer Cannon (Source: PM): Overlevelled by 1 given how it performs against the dual particle beam. Minor issue. Suggestion: Reduce level to 5, adjust power use and other stats to match. (SHRIKE NOTE: I personally think you should make the Slicer act like the Dragon wreck [only without the auto-damage] so the player can always loot this gun as a reward)
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-Shuriken Neutron Blaster & Tau Beam/ Advanced Tau Beam: Suffers massively from the armor absorption system having a high penalty to low damage/shot weapons. High rate of fire matters little if the shots don't actually do any damage. Suggestion: Consider adding special effects to counter the armor system. PM notes that most particle weapons have this issue due to their low damage and the very high resistances that you've given the enemies in that part of the game. He suggests that possibly some general particle traits might be useful (eg: Armor penetration).
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-TeV9 Blaster (Source: PM) (and variants! -Shrike): Very minor increase in damage over lower-level particle weapons, at a point when particle resistance is massively ramping up. Suggestion: Increase rate of fire.
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-Hanzo Blaster: Performs poorly for its level and has a higher price tag than a slightly better (but still bad) weapon (the dual TeV9). Suggestion: Increase damage per shot so the high price tag is justified. May also be worth reducing rate of fire and buffing it even more. Exact numbers uncertain, but SM&M++ used this approach to the gun.
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-Omnidirectional Tritium Cannon [Corporate Command] (Source: PM): Misses a balance change made to the other two tritium cannons in a previous patch. Solution: Replicate balance change by upping damage to 39 average damage (don't have the dicecode, sorry. Copy the other two).
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-Ion Blaster: Completely useless. Low rate of fire makes it impossible to crack compartments and multi-hull stations. Very low range. Suggestion: Increase lifetime to between 45 and 60, change from WMD1 to WMD3 (as a minimum). Consider a damage boost so it can get through high-regen shields
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-Heavy Ion Blaster: Like the ion blaster, only worse. Suggestion: Increased WMD to at least 3, possibly 5+. Increase lifetime to match the buffed range of the Ion Blaster (between 45 and 60). Consider adding an ion effect such as shieldbust or increased damage so that it can penetrate the shield on the ICS (right now it regens faster than this gun damages it).
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-Omnidirectional Ion Blaster: Is actually an omni-light-ion-blaster. Takes a bad level 7 weapon, makes it worse, and puts it at level 9. WMD1 weapon with low rate of fire. Suggestions:
Either 1: Alter to actually be an omnidirectional version of the Ion Blaster, with similar stats to the (buffed) base gun, but at its current level and price.
OR 2: Rename to "Omnidirectional light ion blaster", reduce to level 8, consider a rate of fire increase.
OR 3: Change flavor text and massively increase the rate of fire to considerably exceed that of the base light ion blaster.
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IM90 Multitarget Blaster: Got nerfed into the ground because it was overpowered, then nerfed some more because it wasn't entirely dead yet, then hit by the truck that was internal HP and compartments. Uses the (terrible) spread3 configuration. Suggestion: Redo from concept. Personally I would make it based on Ion Blaster projectiles, not LIB....but I was never a massive user of the IM90. PM suggests reducing mass, tightening the spread of shots. Also suggests that multitargeting may be glitching: Advise investigating behaviour as the reduced use of this gun in recent years means that bugs may have crept in unnoticed.
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Qianlong Archcannon: Quest weapon that requires a large string of Hauri quests that have no reward for completing, then a long backtrack, then an opaque dockscreen to pick the difficulty of a massive battle. Does very low damage and has a useless reload system. Not a fitting reward for saving an entire civilisation. Suggestion: Buff to the current damage level of the Lamplighter Archcannon, possibly slightly higher. Consider adding "Quest weapon" modifier to balance tables for weapon damage. Alter Longzhu Sphere dockscreen to always have the QAC selected by default if it's installed on the ship.
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-Lamplighter Archcannon (Not the prototype): Same issues as the QAC, but not quite as big a kick to the groin as that piece of garbage. Suggestions: Improve damage per shot significantly so that it's better than the (buffed) QAC.
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-NAMI Heavy Launcher (Source: Ferdinand, JohnBWatson, Shrike): Generally pretty sucky. I've personally given up trying to make it competitive although I still keep it in SM&M++. Suggestions: Increase availability of missiles in some way. Reduce rate of fire of launcher by 25-50%, increase damage of all missiles by at least the same percentage as the rate of fire reduction. This makes it more efficient per missile.
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-Positron Lancer (Source: PM): Inferior to the other level 10 weapons. PM suggests adding extra damage and range, and possible WMD. Also a reduction in power consumption to 300MW.
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-Luminous Launcher [Eternity Port] (SOurce: PM): Lacks WMD on plasma and thermo missiles. Suggestion: Add WMD.
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-Gaian Demolition Cannon: HONK. Probably the single most joked-about gun in the game, beating even the Penitent cannon. I imagine that Dvalin starts crying when he sees one of these brought in. You get 15 shots of a reasonably resisted damage type. They fire once per second for 78 damage per shot. You cannot recharge it, the range is fairly low, the shot HP is garbage....and it uses 300MW and two slots. One would be better off throwing cans of salmon out the airlock at the enemy than using this wretched waste of cargo space and device slots. Suggestion: Make this gun anything other than what it is now. Shrike Suggestion: Rework into a nano weapon, balanced for the endgame, charged with degenerative nanite barrels and using an overlay effect to dissolve peeps hit by it. That would at least be an interesting weapon for a gimmick run.
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Other notes: Common themes of particle resistance making the guns useless. Possibility that thermo weapons are a bit too powerful?
Implementing these buffs may have unexpected effects on armor/shield balance. Expected result will be to make shields even more useless, armor less effective. That's nothing new though....in the longer term it may be worth looking at armor balance again though.
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This isn't everything, but it's a bunch of things we can come up with reasonably quickly. I've no idea which if any of these are already obsolete, but I'm throwing everything up here anyway. :)
-Shrike
Sadly, 'Summarised' is perhaps not the best description for this monstrosity.....
…The sad thing is, this is the summarized version…
PM6: Making this a reward for beating The Slicer in the Arena is actually an excellent idea.
IM90: Instead of the (much maligned) spread3 configuration, making a custom three-shot configuration similar to dual or wall might be worth looking into.
GDC: …Ask Shrike and me about the origin of “HONK” sometime… <.< >.> <.<;
Shrike and *I*.
And I think that 'HONK' is one of those IRC in jokes that is best left mysterious. It takes ages to explain anyway.
Does the IM90 even serve an interesting purpose? It's a swarm swatter at a level where nothing exists to use it on. If it's not being used against multiple targets on which it would be overkill if it were single projectile the multitarget is a liability over a conventional omni unless its using a parallel firing base configuration. Even at best multitarget doesn't provide any value over a simple omni configuration that fires weaker shots faster and therefore shouldn't enter into the balance math at all.
I think it does....but we can't be sure until it has some competitive stats again.
Edited the ticket slightly with some extra bits on the Ion and Heavy Ion blasters...namely that they may be lacking in damage against targets with moderate to high regen shields (the heavy ion most certainly is).
Extra stuff that we all forgot about:
Teraton weapons!
The kytryn blaster is solid, but has underwhelming stats, low range and high power use. It could use a bit of a boost, or a cut to the power requirements. Range increase might also be nice.
The launcher is a joke. It needs redoing from scratch with a nice new effect.....basing the explosion on particles rather than radius/missile fragments would be awesome, but my experiments with this have shown it's hard to balance. And I'd suggest making it very, very powerful, but very slow firing. That makes the uber-rare ammo actually worth it.
Krytyn blaster was borderline overpowered before power creep of Ares positron cannon and level 10 plasma weapons. Kytryn ammo was rebalanced recently; it is no longer level 12, making them more accessible. While it is not as damaging as some thermo ammo and a bit difficult to use, its level 10 plasma fragmentation DPS seems to be on par. If Kytryn launcher needs help, the pods and their explosions could be a bit faster, and possibly more ammo types aside from plasma pods.
See also: https://ministry.kronosaur.com/record.hexm?id=30008
Turns out that low damage weapons actually do more damage-per-second than comparable high-damage ones, because of round-off.
Well that explains the turbo-pulse repeater issues in TSB at least. Interesting though that it's actually the opposite to how it feels ingame.
Fixed in 1.7 Alpha 1. See https://ministry.kronosaur.com/record.hexm?id=30518 for a concrete list of changes.
Thank you to everyone who participated in these improvements!