(Suggestion) I think Terrans needs a bit more weapons

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adeine
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Re: (Suggestion) I think Terrans needs a bit more weapons

Post by adeine » Mon, 26. Jul 21, 18:03

KextV8 wrote:
Mon, 26. Jul 21, 14:30
adeine wrote:
Sun, 25. Jul 21, 01:03
Crucially, Terrans have no access to any anti-fighter AoE damage (flak) and no access to artillery (L/M plasma).
They can mount all the commonwealth weapons too. So from a player perspective, Terran ships blow the pants off everything pretty much.

And as an AI faction, they seem to demolish everyone too, so they don't need it there either.
Yeah, like I said, that is why I think it's intentional. It still feels weird to have TER crippled this way when there is no precedent in earlier games, and means TER only playstyles are not a lot of fun or super viable if you need to rely on Commonwealth equipment and blueprints. Especially since said equipment uses an entirely different economy to build and maintain it.

I'd rather the balancing was done in a more natural way - whether by adding more complexity to the Terran economy (let's face it, the reason it's so incredibly efficient is because of how basic it is right now; it's ironically a nice touch how similar to playable Xenon it is) or by rebalancing ships. Then we could have a complete arsenal of TER loadouts without it breaking the game.

sirprosik
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Re: (Suggestion) I think Terrans needs a bit more weapons

Post by sirprosik » Tue, 27. Jul 21, 03:33

More of anything variety is always good.

However with that said the Meson Stream weapons need much love. In both 4.0 release and 4.10 beta they are just not worth using/equip/firing. Tested
on a Gladius and could not even destroy a mine with either solo or 4 equip fired same time nothing. Was a waste of time. Compared to beam emitters and burst
ray they are pure garbage!!

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Re: (Suggestion) I think Terrans needs a bit more weapons

Post by GDS_dmitry » Mon, 16. Aug 21, 16:53

It's just another confirmation of how poorly the game was designed from the beginning, and how poorly the developers were able to implement weapon loadouts and options. The simplest example: the ship build menu at the shipyard allows you to implement a (varierty) choice of weapons for the main battery of destroyers in theory. But what do we end up with? Each destroyer in the game has only one unique for him armament (for main battery), which must still be equipped or installed (although there is no logic in this, because there are no other options for installation, why not to install this by default to ship hull and increase price correspondingly?). For example, give an ability to equip torpedo or missile tubes to destroyer main battery. It will be a very interesting main battery loadout and will justify the existence of menu selector for destroyer main battery on shipyard.

P.S. I don't really understand why everyone is so enthusiastic about the TER L Bolt turret, since it still has too low rate of fire (0.74 per second without mods) and damage on impact (461 mw) without ship mods. Let's say there is an Osaka armed with these two turrets at its top side. Each turret rarely fires, so it is problematic to destroy even one fighter in this way, because by the time the next salvo hits the fighter, it usually has time to restore its shield, and the turrets in X4 doesn't have enough accuracy, fire range or bullet speed to reliably hit fast moving targets (that's why I can't play unmodded game at all, after all I've built my own mod to increase weapon stats to make them more reliable). L turrets (except beam), even pulse, can't reliably hit targets at the limits of its maximum fire range. In 1-2 km they are good (partially). But then, they start to behave horribly. And yes, again, we have L turrets with... 4-6 km maximum fire range? Seriously ? Bad design (or balance?) decision, because ship AI try to get closer as possible and fire at each other, which become a mess in IS combat with many ships and glitches from ship textures going through each other.

I've found interesting observation: since I've modded weapon stats and maximum fire range, now I have far less problems with ship and station collisions in the middle of the battle. Apparently this is how it should have been done from the start in the game.
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Karmaticdamage
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Re: (Suggestion) I think Terrans needs a bit more weapons

Post by Karmaticdamage » Mon, 16. Aug 21, 16:58

Why bother adding a bunch of new weapons when most of them are not used anyway. Look at split dlc weapons for example. Every new weapon that came with that expansion failed to out preform standard pulse lasers. Terran DLC at least added a better version of the pulse laser. All weapons and turrets need a rebalance as only a hand full are vastly superior choices to the others. Terrans could use some plasma cannons, L bolt is no sub for a L plasma turret. Beams are so bad right now, all beams of every type "except the asgard's super laser". A small pulse laser mk 1 does more dps then L beam turret currently.

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Re: (Suggestion) I think Terrans needs a bit more weapons

Post by GCU Grey Area » Mon, 16. Aug 21, 17:54

Karmaticdamage wrote:
Mon, 16. Aug 21, 16:58
L bolt is no sub for a L plasma turret.
It's far more versatile & accurate. By far the better turret as far as I'm concerned. L Plasma is only good against capitals & useless against anything smaller. In contrast L Bolt's good for pretty much any size ship - have even seen L Bolt turrets shoot down drones.

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Re: (Suggestion) I think Terrans needs a bit more weapons

Post by SwizzleStick86 » Mon, 16. Aug 21, 18:19

I agree L-bolt is a great turret, I get the impression that the projectile collision box is larger than others allowing it to hit small ships well (just my observations).

I do agree the terrans should have some race specific missiles..maybe an amped version of the light swarm missiles? (Poltergeist missiles)
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Karmaticdamage
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Re: (Suggestion) I think Terrans needs a bit more weapons

Post by Karmaticdamage » Mon, 16. Aug 21, 18:46

GCU Grey Area wrote:
Mon, 16. Aug 21, 17:54
Karmaticdamage wrote:
Mon, 16. Aug 21, 16:58
L bolt is no sub for a L plasma turret.
It's far more versatile & accurate. By far the better turret as far as I'm concerned. L Plasma is only good against capitals & useless against anything smaller. In contrast L Bolt's good for pretty much any size ship - have even seen L Bolt turrets shoot down drones.
That's what M flak is for. If you haven't heard by now, flak is stupid op in 4.1. And with capital ship explosions now doing lots of damage to your surface elements, its far better to kill capitals from range with L plasma. RIP knife raptor.

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Re: (Suggestion) I think Terrans needs a bit more weapons

Post by GCU Grey Area » Mon, 16. Aug 21, 19:50

Karmaticdamage wrote:
Mon, 16. Aug 21, 18:46
That's what M flak is for. If you haven't heard by now, flak is stupid op in 4.1. And with capital ship explosions now doing lots of damage to your surface elements, its far better to kill capitals from range with L plasma. RIP knife raptor.
Playing a Terran game currently & mostly avoiding non-Terran gear. Also find Flak turrets unpleasantly loud, so prefer to find other solutions for dealing with fighters.

My favourite destroyer (Syn) doesn't have many M turrets anyway & prefer to use them for missile turrets. 50/50 mix of L Beam & L Bolt on my destroyers has worked well enough for my purposes - L Beam's lethally accurate against S/M fighters, L Bolt's effective against larger targets too.

If I need to kill from range I prefer to use destroyer main guns, rather than close to L Plasma range (I usually distract enemy capitals with S fighters, to keep them at range & prevent use of travel drive). That goes double for stations. Many of my targets have a considerable number of L Plasma turrets of their own (e.g. https://www.dropbox.com/s/npwt9i2ny53l6 ... 1.jpg?dl=0), suspect it would be suicidal to send my ships into L Plasma range of such a target. Consequently I have very little use for L Plasma & don't fit them to any of my ships.

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Re: (Suggestion) I think Terrans needs a bit more weapons

Post by Karmaticdamage » Mon, 16. Aug 21, 20:54

GCU Grey Area wrote:
Mon, 16. Aug 21, 19:50
Karmaticdamage wrote:
Mon, 16. Aug 21, 18:46
That's what M flak is for. If you haven't heard by now, flak is stupid op in 4.1. And with capital ship explosions now doing lots of damage to your surface elements, its far better to kill capitals from range with L plasma. RIP knife raptor.
Playing a Terran game currently & mostly avoiding non-Terran gear. Also find Flak turrets unpleasantly loud, so prefer to find other solutions for dealing with fighters.

My favourite destroyer (Syn) doesn't have many M turrets anyway & prefer to use them for missile turrets. 50/50 mix of L Beam & L Bolt on my destroyers has worked well enough for my purposes - L Beam's lethally accurate against S/M fighters, L Bolt's effective against larger targets too.

If I need to kill from range I prefer to use destroyer main guns, rather than close to L Plasma range (I usually distract enemy capitals with S fighters, to keep them at range & prevent use of travel drive). That goes double for stations. Many of my targets have a considerable number of L Plasma turrets of their own (e.g. https://www.dropbox.com/s/npwt9i2ny53l6 ... 1.jpg?dl=0), suspect it would be suicidal to send my ships into L Plasma range of such a target. Consequently I have very little use for L Plasma & don't fit them to any of my ships.
You lost me at L beam's lethally. They don't lethally anything, beams are the worst weapons in the game. Their is a terran L tracking turret now if you're trying to keep it rp, they work a lot better and terrans only use the same few resources for everything, including missiles. At least you get to keep your favorite ship with the next patch. With the new capital explosions damage my knife raptor can no longer plow into blobs of capital ships and fighters and meat grinder them all anymore. All station mods and capital ships will have to be killed at range or else all your surface elements, and your engines go pop.

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Re: (Suggestion) I think Terrans needs a bit more weapons

Post by GCU Grey Area » Mon, 16. Aug 21, 22:04

Karmaticdamage wrote:
Mon, 16. Aug 21, 20:54
You lost me at L beam's lethally.
It's the combination of Beams & Bolts which is lethal, together they work far better than either can on their own. L Beams rarely miss - if an enemy fighter is within 5 km it's taking continuous damage, stripping it's shields & keeping them down as long as it remains within 5km (which it generally needs to do if it wants to be able to use it's own weapons). Meanwhile the Bolts perform much better than they would otherwise because, more often than not, they're shooting at unshielded targets which are utterly incapable of regenerating their shields. Without the Beams enemy fighters have a much greater opportunity to regenerate shields, meaning the Bolts may have to restart from scratch.

It's also one of my favourite weapon combos purely from an aesthetic point of view: https://www.dropbox.com/s/spjlxymslb341 ... 1.jpg?dl=0
End result a couple of minutes later: https://www.dropbox.com/s/583zh0wou7lqc ... 1.jpg?dl=0
Incidentally, those are Behemoths with L Beams + M Bolts. Works even better if you're using L Bolts instead of M.

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Re: (Suggestion) I think Terrans needs a bit more weapons

Post by Karmaticdamage » Mon, 16. Aug 21, 23:05

GCU Grey Area wrote:
Mon, 16. Aug 21, 22:04
Karmaticdamage wrote:
Mon, 16. Aug 21, 20:54
You lost me at L beam's lethally.
It's the combination of Beams & Bolts which is lethal, together they work far better than either can on their own. L Beams rarely miss - if an enemy fighter is within 5 km it's taking continuous damage, stripping it's shields & keeping them down as long as it remains within 5km (which it generally needs to do if it wants to be able to use it's own weapons). Meanwhile the Bolts perform much better than they would otherwise because, more often than not, they're shooting at unshielded targets which are utterly incapable of regenerating their shields. Without the Beams enemy fighters have a much greater opportunity to regenerate shields, meaning the Bolts may have to restart from scratch.

It's also one of my favourite weapon combos purely from an aesthetic point of view: https://www.dropbox.com/s/spjlxymslb341 ... 1.jpg?dl=0
End result a couple of minutes later: https://www.dropbox.com/s/583zh0wou7lqc ... 1.jpg?dl=0
Incidentally, those are Behemoths with L Beams + M Bolts. Works even better if you're using L Bolts instead of M.
I just find beam dps to be abysmal. A L turret shouldn't be doing less dps then a mk1 fighter gun. L beams use to be a lot better back when they had 760 dps, but ego decided to nerf hammer them hard even tho no one asked for it.

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Re: (Suggestion) I think Terrans needs a bit more weapons

Post by xant » Tue, 17. Aug 21, 00:01

Bernd, give me back my point singularity projectors!
- Emperor Augustus, probably

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Re: (Suggestion) I think Terrans needs a bit more weapons

Post by GCU Grey Area » Tue, 17. Aug 21, 00:03

Karmaticdamage wrote:
Mon, 16. Aug 21, 23:05
I just find beam dps to be abysmal.
Used to think much like that myself until I tried using them.

Just happened that one day (during a demolition job on an HOP defence platform) I realised that my destroyers rarely got close enough to use their L Plasmas, which at that point was standard kit for all of my destroyers. Turrets that hardly ever shot at anything began to feel like a bit of a waste & wondered if it might be worth trying some of the other options instead. L Beam was quite literally the last alternative I tried after everything else.

Expected it to be a very brief experiment (mostly just to rule them out as an option), however L Beam quickly became my favourite L turret to use alongside M Bolt or M Pulse for anti-fighter defences. L Beam damage may be comparatively low, but having an effective means to negate shield regen on fighters made a surprising difference to the speed at which my destroyers could eliminate them.

adeine
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Re: (Suggestion) I think Terrans needs a bit more weapons

Post by adeine » Tue, 17. Aug 21, 03:29

L Beam is absolutely terrible compared to flak when it comes to S ships. It takes forever to kill any serious number of ships. They work alright against slow M ships, but the damage output is pretty low for an L turret.

In my experience there's really no point to any of the L turrets other than the plasma ones and missiles. M turrets with flak are the proper response against fighters, bolt or pulse are the worse alternative if you don't have access to it. The only advantage of L turrets is their use against other capital ships and stations, where the range and damage of plasma is the only viable option.

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Re: (Suggestion) I think Terrans needs a bit more weapons

Post by Imperial Good » Tue, 17. Aug 21, 04:54

adeine wrote:
Tue, 17. Aug 21, 03:29
In my experience there's really no point to any of the L turrets other than the plasma ones and missiles.
L missile turrets are basically a large missile storage module. They have the exact same fire rate and characteristics of a M missile turret.
adeine wrote:
Tue, 17. Aug 21, 03:29
The only advantage of L turrets is their use against other capital ships and stations, where the range and damage of plasma is the only viable option.
Considering the Asguard literally slices stations apart, it does not need turrets to help deal damage. This is likely why the Terrans were not given a L Plasma alternative.

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Re: (Suggestion) I think Terrans needs a bit more weapons

Post by adeine » Tue, 17. Aug 21, 07:00

Imperial Good wrote:
Tue, 17. Aug 21, 04:54
adeine wrote:
Tue, 17. Aug 21, 03:29
In my experience there's really no point to any of the L turrets other than the plasma ones and missiles.
L missile turrets are basically a large missile storage module. They have the exact same fire rate and characteristics of a M missile turret.
adeine wrote:
Tue, 17. Aug 21, 03:29
The only advantage of L turrets is their use against other capital ships and stations, where the range and damage of plasma is the only viable option.
Considering the Asguard literally slices stations apart, it does not need turrets to help deal damage. This is likely why the Terrans were not given a L Plasma alternative.
Yeah, but missiles can compete with plasma (even L Plasma) if you can resupply.

The Asgard definitely benefits from usable L turrets. The XL beam cooldown is pretty long, and it takes a while to put a dent in a more heavily defended station (Xenon defence modules take a couple percent damage from a full charge). Main battery is decent damage as well, but in the same order of magnitude as regular destroyers.

A full complement of L Plasma turrets on an Asgard is an insane amount of consistent damage that you're otherwise leaving on the table. Taking on a Xenon I for instance, the main guns aren't enough to bring down the shields. A full suite of L Plasma turrets will chew through the shields in a matter of seconds, allowing you to finish the job with the XL Beam.

I do suspect that the omission of plasma weaponry for Terrans was very much an intentional (if questionable) choice to cripple TER loadouts to try and balance their efficient economy and overall superior arsenal of ships with those of the other factions.

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Re: (Suggestion) I think Terrans needs a bit more weapons

Post by Imperial Good » Tue, 17. Aug 21, 08:45

adeine wrote:
Tue, 17. Aug 21, 07:00
The Asgard definitely benefits from usable L turrets. The XL beam cooldown is pretty long, and it takes a while to put a dent in a more heavily defended station (Xenon defence modules take a couple percent damage from a full charge). Main battery is decent damage as well, but in the same order of magnitude as regular destroyers.
It is my understanding that the beam damage is based on the range it is fired since it takes time to extend. As such firing it from maximum range does significantly reduced damage than firing it from close up. Beam will cooldown faster when only it is fired, and the other main batteries are left idle and cooled down.

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Re: (Suggestion) I think Terrans needs a bit more weapons

Post by GCU Grey Area » Tue, 17. Aug 21, 10:24

adeine wrote:
Tue, 17. Aug 21, 03:29
In my experience there's really no point to any of the L turrets other than the plasma ones and missiles. M turrets with flak are the proper response against fighters, bolt or pulse are the worse alternative if you don't have access to it. The only advantage of L turrets is their use against other capital ships and stations, where the range and damage of plasma is the only viable option.
L Plasma is only useful if your only enemy is Xenon (due to their pathetically short range guns). If you're fighting any other faction going within L Plasma range of one of their stations is asking for trouble. Defence stations with 70+ L Plasma turrets are not all that uncommon. Pretty much suicidal to assault such a station from L Plasma range. Much better to demolish them from main gun range, which meant installing L Plasma turrets on my own ships became pretty much useless.

Consequently very much prefer to use my L turrets to boost my destroyers anti-fighter defences instead. Not a fan of L missile turrets (only advantage over M variant is extra ammo capacity) & of the remaining options when I was doing these tests L Beam worked out better than L Pulse for destroying fighters (i.e. shield negating effects of keeping a target under continuous L Beam fire worked better than the additional damage L Pulse can inflict). TER L Bolt's nice for those ships which don't have many M turrets but have lots of L's such as Syn & Asgard (I usually fit them in a 50/50 mix alongside L Beam), however for my Osakas I'm sticking with the tried & tested method of L Beams + M Bolts.

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Re: (Suggestion) I think Terrans needs a bit more weapons

Post by jlehtone » Tue, 17. Aug 21, 10:52

All my Terran gear is via board/capture. There is no refit option. By laws of statistics, I did get an Asgard with all beams (and most shields).

If the beams are terrible, then going solo against TER Patrol Tokyo, its Osaka, Honshu, and 60+ fighters escorts would be terrible or at least very lenghty episode? It was not. The fighters vanished pretty quickly.

Only Falx and Katana swarms can make small dents on the shield of Asgard, and only Katana are fast enough to survive. Some of them.

The longest range in Terran stations are missiles, but Terran main guns can snipe the turrets. Plasma turrets would just make it quicker. Commonwealth stations that have Plasma turrets, now that is more fun. As said, at XL range turrets do not matter.
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Re: (Suggestion) I think Terrans needs a bit more weapons

Post by adeine » Tue, 17. Aug 21, 17:29

Imperial Good wrote:
Tue, 17. Aug 21, 08:45
adeine wrote:
Tue, 17. Aug 21, 07:00
The Asgard definitely benefits from usable L turrets. The XL beam cooldown is pretty long, and it takes a while to put a dent in a more heavily defended station (Xenon defence modules take a couple percent damage from a full charge). Main battery is decent damage as well, but in the same order of magnitude as regular destroyers.
It is my understanding that the beam damage is based on the range it is fired since it takes time to extend. As such firing it from maximum range does significantly reduced damage than firing it from close up. Beam will cooldown faster when only it is fired, and the other main batteries are left idle and cooled down.
If you leave the main batteries idle between beam cycles, you're dealing even less sustained damage though. It's great for one-shotting destroyers, but flying right up against a defence module to get maximum damage with your beam seems a bit suicidal unless you're uh, 'helping dismantle' a friendly station for reasons. :wink:
GCU Grey Area wrote:
Tue, 17. Aug 21, 10:24
adeine wrote:
Tue, 17. Aug 21, 03:29
In my experience there's really no point to any of the L turrets other than the plasma ones and missiles. M turrets with flak are the proper response against fighters, bolt or pulse are the worse alternative if you don't have access to it. The only advantage of L turrets is their use against other capital ships and stations, where the range and damage of plasma is the only viable option.
L Plasma is only useful if your only enemy is Xenon (due to their pathetically short range guns). If you're fighting any other faction going within L Plasma range of one of their stations is asking for trouble. Defence stations with 70+ L Plasma turrets are not all that uncommon. Pretty much suicidal to assault such a station from L Plasma range. Much better to demolish them from main gun range, which meant installing L Plasma turrets on my own ships became pretty much useless.

Consequently very much prefer to use my L turrets to boost my destroyers anti-fighter defences instead. Not a fan of L missile turrets (only advantage over M variant is extra ammo capacity) & of the remaining options when I was doing these tests L Beam worked out better than L Pulse for destroying fighters (i.e. shield negating effects of keeping a target under continuous L Beam fire worked better than the additional damage L Pulse can inflict). TER L Bolt's nice for those ships which don't have many M turrets but have lots of L's such as Syn & Asgard (I usually fit them in a 50/50 mix alongside L Beam), however for my Osakas I'm sticking with the tried & tested method of L Beams + M Bolts.
This is only true if you leave everything stock. AI factions don't really use modifications at all, so if you just pop an increased range mod on your L Plasma, you can use this same strategy against any faction. The only thing that can get you at range is missiles.

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