The "new and improved" M6s

[chibajoe]

I'm not sure I follow the thinking behind vastly upgrading weapon recharge rates on M6s; they now have basically unlimited weapon energy.

Last night, I took my "new and improved" Hyperion up against a Zeus. After dodging some incoming fire, I parked myself in its blind spot and proceeded to rip it to shreds with HEPTs. The PACs and HEPTs in my turrets made short work of any missiles and the fighter escort, and by the time the dust had settled, the Zeus, all of its fighters, a RRF Ares, a couple of Hades, and a Nemesis had all been rendered into their component atoms.

Another RRF Ares and Zeus jumped in, but I actually got bored and left

This can't be right. With almost unlimited energy, there is no need to break off an engagement, making M6s dammed nigh invincible. It was actually easier to take out the Zeus in the Hyperion than in an Agamemnon!

Ok, maybe not, but even with FAA and IBLs all around, the fighters and missiles eventually chew through the shields of the Agamemnon, whereas the Hyperion (or any other M6, I would imagine) can just nuzzle up to the intended target, making it way more difficult for fighters and missiles to get a clear shot without running into one of the turrets.

Perhaps I'm missing something, but was there a huge hue and cry about the woefully inadequate weapon recharge rates on M6s? It just seems to me that this one falls under the "if it ain't broke" mantra?

[A5PECT]

With almost unlimited energy, there is no need to break off an engagement, making M6s dammed nigh invincible.

No, it makes M6s capable of doing significant damage to large targets and able to engage multiple small targets instead of doing little more than get shot.

The player makes M6s damned nigh invincible.

In fact, it does that to all ship classes.

[pr0nflakes]

and proceeded to rip it to shreds with HEPTs

Try fitting some CIG's and watch the carnage..
I personally think a buff was needed. M6's where pretty weak before hand, and if your gunna have a bunch of turrets on a ship it seems logical to have the energy to use them.

My Hyperion has 8xCIG 4xFBL and 4xEBC and hits a whopping 284m/s

Spoiler

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thanks to the overtune containers i found lying around

On a side note i absolutly love the buff to laser towers!
All new towers placed seem to carry 1GJ shields as opposed to the previous 100MJ.

[Jumee]

With almost unlimited energy, there is no need to break off an engagement, making M6s dammed nigh invincible.

No, it makes M6s capable of doing significant damage to large targets and able to engage multiple small targets instead of doing little more than get shot.

The player makes M6s damned nigh invincible.

+1 almost any fighter can easily take down any capital in hands of a player, and corvettes have been begging for a buff for quite some time now.

ofcourse I used springy and hyperion that were already really good but classic commonwealth corvettes? they needed that buff

example is centaur which (IMO) was worse than any M3/M3+

[Gazz]

The stock Centaur had 31% more recharge rate than an argon M3.

Some capital ship!

[MS_Cowboy]

It really only brings commonwealth M6s a bit closer to what any Terran corvette could already do with the M/AML, and really they still aren't quite at that level. They can now reasonably use actual heavy corvette weapons instead of settling for the close-range HEPT for energy efficiency.

[chibajoe]

and proceeded to rip it to shreds with HEPTs

My Hyperion has 8xCIG 4xFBL and 4xEBC and hits a whopping 284m/s

On a side note i absolutly love the buff to laser towers!
All new towers placed seem to carry 1GJ shields as opposed to the previous 100MJ.

I've got a bunch of CIGs stashed somewhere, but since I started my Paranid pogrom I have so much junk that it's hard to keep track of it all. I'm sure the FBLs are great, but the noise is way too annoying for me to mount them (unless that's the "weapon sound" fix they mentioned?). I usually run 6xHEPT 6xEBC 6xPAC, which is enough to take down about 3KMJ worth of shields before having to bug out and recharge (pre 1.1).

Speaking of weapons, what's the DPS of ISRs vs CIGs? Is there a chart somewhere?

As far as speed, I've run a super fast Hyperion before, but that dammed nose kept getting in the way. I think I'm going to use the "gofast goodies" out on a heavy hydra (they look awesome) or maybe an M7. I wonder what kind of hilarity can be achieved with a 150 m/s Megalodon with turbo booster.

[Cougar81]

I can mount more than 2 prototype starburst cannons....

[Bobucles]

The stock Centaur had 31% more recharge rate than an argon M3.

Some capital ship!

And it has over 5 times the health. It works out just fine.

The real problem is NOT the ship. It's with the WEAPONS. M6 weapons suffer from being horrendously inefficient. They consume over twice the energy for barely any improvement over a fighter weapon. Fixing that solves the M6 problem.

Not only that, but it helps bridge the gap between Frigates as well. All frigates suffer from being unable to make effective use of M6 weapons, with no exception. The only good M7s are the ones that skip the CIG/ISR/IPG entirely for capital grade weapons. With a properly balanced medium weapon, ships like the Cerberus finally become viable.

These changes are taking the long way around and are bound to only create issues. The problem is very simple with an obvious and direct solution.

[MegaJohnny]

With almost unlimited energy, there is no need to break off an engagement, making M6s dammed nigh invincible.

No, it makes M6s capable of doing significant damage to large targets and able to engage multiple small targets instead of doing little more than get shot.

The player makes M6s damned nigh invincible.

In fact, it does that to all ship classes.

I agree; given the amount of blind-spots on many capital ships, and their nooks and crannies, many people have found it easy (if tedious) to destroy capital ships in fighters and such. Doesn't necessarily make the ship itself overpowered.

But do M6s really have higher laser recharge now? I'm not up to that point in my AP game yet.

[chibajoe]

The stock Centaur had 31% more recharge rate than an argon M3.

Some capital ship!

And it has over 5 times the health. It works out just fine.

The real problem is NOT the ship. It's with the WEAPONS. M6 weapons suffer from being horrendously inefficient. They consume over twice the energy for barely any improvement over a fighter weapon. Fixing that solves the M6 problem.

Not only that, but it helps bridge the gap between Frigates as well. All frigates suffer from being unable to make effective use of M6 weapons, with no exception. The only good M7s are the ones that skip the CIG/ISR/IPG entirely for capital grade weapons. With a properly balanced medium weapon, ships like the Cerberus finally become viable.

These changes are taking the long way around and are bound to only create issues. The problem is very simple with an obvious and direct solution.

My gut reaction is to agree with this. Medium weapons have always been pretty useless because they were such energy hogs. Good DPS vs fighter weapons means squat if the weapon uses so much energy that you can only fire it for 10 seconds. While it might take twice as long to do the same amount of damage with a set of HEPTs, the fact that you can stay on the trigger 10 times longer means that, in an extended fight, the weaker weapon does more overall damage.

I suppose if the goal is to get more people to use M6s instead of other ships, then the changes to energy recharge rates makes sense, but the better solution would have been to fix medium weapons IMHO.

[
But do M6s really have higher laser recharge now? I'm not up to that point in my AP game yet.

Since the 1.1 patch, M6 weapon energy recharge rates have increased by about 3X.

[Gazz]

The real problem is NOT the ship. It's with the WEAPONS.

And that's where we disagree.
Reducing the energy consumption on the lasers would increase the firepower of ships like the Spitfyre or Shrike, which was not the intention.
The change was to be limited to the M6 class.

You are welcome to use the mods you're advertising but it requires more than changing TBullets if you want to avoid the afforementioned side-effects.

[chibajoe]

Reducing the energy consumption on the lasers would increase the firepower of ships like the Spitfyre or Shrike, which was not the intention.

However, isn't this more of a symptom of a lack of medium weapons in the Terran arsenal? They have pew-pew lasers and boom-boom lasers, but nothing to make Goldilocks happy...

[Gazz]

However it happened - it's the way it's going to be in vanilla X3.
If you wish to change this part of the game, you're in the wrong forum. =)

If Bobu wants to rebalance all the other ships that use M6 lasers to account for his desired energy changes, noone is going to stop him.
It's just not very likely that the dev team will see the urgent need to rebalance lots of ships to be able to rebalance other ships - to arrive at the current state of game balance.

[MS_Cowboy]

Reducing the energy consumption on the lasers would increase the firepower of ships like the Spitfyre or Shrike, which was not the intention.

However, isn't this more of a symptom of a lack of medium weapons in the Terran arsenal? They have pew-pew lasers and boom-boom lasers, but nothing to make Goldilocks happy...

The M/AML is their medium weapon and it beats anything in the commonwealth. What they're supposedly missing something between corvette and heavy capital grade for their M7s to use.

The spitfyre can fire its PM/AML continuously already so it really has nothing to do with the energy vs corvette weapons debate; There are no M3s that I can see that would be affected by changes to corvette weapons, however I find it... interesting that a mod would try to make us think so and hope no one bothers to check. As for the other side, yes, M7s would become a bit more powerful... Although, M7s having problems with M6 weapons was actually part of Bobucles point, and whether or not that is a valid point wasn't actually addressed... merely dismissed with 'we didn't feel like messin with it'.

I'm not taking sides as to what should be done as I personally haven't used CW M7s enough to know. However, while I don't particularly want to be disrespectful to anyone involved, and while 'we're the devs, we do what we want' is technically a valid response, I'm not particularly fond of players being shut down by it.

[Gazz]

There are no M3s that I can see that would be affected by changes to corvette weapons, however I find it... interesting that a mod would try to make us think so and hope no one bothers to check.

If you had bothered to check you would have known that 8 MAM use more energy than a Spitfyre generates indefinitely and if the ship runs out, it's firing... less.
Math isn't taking sides, either. =P

[MS_Cowboy]

There are no M3s that I can see that would be affected by changes to corvette weapons, however I find it... interesting that a mod would try to make us think so and hope no one bothers to check.

If you had bothered to check you would have known that 8 MAM use more energy than a Spitfyre generates indefinitely and if the ship runs out, it's firing... less.
Math isn't taking sides, either. =P

If that's how it's intended to be, you might want to check your game files. Both M/AML and PM/AML have an energy consumption of 1/s, and it's been that way since TC.

[Catra]

There are no M3s that I can see that would be affected by changes to corvette weapons, however I find it... interesting that a mod would try to make us think so and hope no one bothers to check.

If you had bothered to check you would have known that 8 MAM use more energy than a Spitfyre generates indefinitely and if the ship runs out, it's firing... less.
Math isn't taking sides, either. =P

If that's how it's intended to be, you might want to check your game files. Both M/AML and PM/AML have an energy consumption of 1/s, and it's been that way since TC.

and in TC the spitfyre can run out of energy(the vidar and vali could as well with full MAML loadout).

dont look at just energy consumption, look at RoF as well, its high enough to strain the energy generators.

[Jumee]

I dont think that vette weapons need any buff at all with the increase in energy regeneration M6's can keep firing vette weapons without taking long recharge gaps which increases their damage output quite significantly.

And it also buffes them up compared to Terran M6's (which are still superior but that was never intended to change)

[MS_Cowboy]

There are no M3s that I can see that would be affected by changes to corvette weapons, however I find it... interesting that a mod would try to make us think so and hope no one bothers to check.

If you had bothered to check you would have known that 8 MAM use more energy than a Spitfyre generates indefinitely and if the ship runs out, it's firing... less.
Math isn't taking sides, either. =P

If that's how it's intended to be, you might want to check your game files. Both M/AML and PM/AML have an energy consumption of 1/s, and it's been that way since TC.

and in TC the spitfyre can run out of energy(the vidar and vali could as well with full MAML loadout).

dont look at just energy consumption, look at RoF as well, its high enough to strain the energy generators.

Unless you're talking about a very early TC patch, I have to wonder if you've actually played with the ships in question. In TC I quite clearly remember taking down as many as 3 Qs in succession with continuous fire in a Vidar, and Js and Ks on other occasions. I have never witnessed a slowdown in fire rate.

And no, fire rate will not make you run out of energy. Now, I'm no mathematician, but firing a weapon at 1 MJ per shot in a ship with a 9000 MJ capacitor, which also happens to have cargo space for only 3 crates of ammo after weapons and shields (spitfyre), coming to 600 shots... you can fire your maximum ammo capacity 15 times over before running out of energy... if you had 0 laser recharge. 270 MW recharge means you can fire endlessly, with the corvettes too. Since Gazz seemed to think otherwise, I can only assume the 1/s rate is a mistake. If it is, it's a rather long-standing one.


Edit:

Yay for actually testing in-game! I can only assume the "MW" and "MJ" in the ship description is a typo that actually means "kW" and "kJ". Turns out the spitfyre can run out of energy. Of course, it only did at the very end of my ammo supply. Which I overloaded by loading on 3 crates of ammo, firing once to lower it by one crate, and then reloaded, so I actually had one crate more than I should. Meaning it can still fire its normal capacity of 600 shots continuously. So, I will concede the point that it's technically possible. However, considering the argument was about CW corvette weapons and the Terran ones were not being questioned, and the fact that even if corvette weapon energy consumption were lowered it would obviously only be done to non-ammo based CW ones, my statement that there are no M3 ships affected still stands.

So thank you. Thank you for calling me out on a clerical error and implying my lack of due diligence and/or mathematical competence instead of addressing the meaningful discussion points brought up by other users. I have never had more faith in a moderation team...