Thank you for the field testing, it's been valuable. I did some on my own as well, crounched some more numbers, and made quite a lot of adjustement to weapons in the last update. You are right about most things, and I changed them, however those issues are not as big as you thought they are, and I'll explain.ranykt wrote: ↑Tue, 18. Dec 18, 05:09 I think there's a definitely balance issues still with guns. I tested Bolt Mk2 vs Pulse Laser Mk2 vs Beam Mk2 and the differences are horrific. I ran 3 minutes tests with 4x each gun vs my Odysseus Vanguard, thee one you find for free, FULLY MAXED modded vs FULLY MAXED modded guns. These guns are 35% damage, 35% cooling, 100% reload. Yes, i'm using a mod to get these consistent values.
Bolt Mk 2
<2km >1km
8 salvos
100% shields
50% hull damage
halfway through cooldown after 8th salvo
Heat: 660
Speed: 2880
Range: 8km
TTH at max range: 2.777 seconds
Pulse Laser Mk2
<2km >1km
6 salvos
Destroyed 1 second past the timer.
Heat: 190
Speed: 6912
Range: 5 KM
TTH at max range: .72 seconds
Beam Mk2
<2km >1km
6 salvos (30 seconds past the timer) Cool down was halfway at the 3 minute mark like Bolt Mk2 for salvo 5 at 5% sields.
15% hull damage
Heat: 125
Speed: 21k
Range: 12k
TTH at max range: .57 seconds
Based on this, there's literally no reason to not use Pulse Laser, just like the base game. They fire fast, have little heat buildup, have high projectile speed, and are just flat out amazing.
Beam weapons have over twice the range of Pulse Laser, Bolt has 8/5 the range of Pulse Laser, and in total there's a 105% damage difference between high DPS and long range. This is on a stationary target of my own property.
Beam: Instant hit, low damage
Bolt: Slow projectile, moderate damage, less than 1/3 the shot capacity
Pulse Laser: faster projectile, low damage, but equal fire rate to Bolt and 2.4x the accuracy
My conclusion: Bolt is worthless. If you want long range, go Beam. If you want high DPS, go Pulse Laser. Bolt serves literally no purpose because it's a crappy middleground with slow projectiles that miss everything except large entities. It's worthless against fighter agility. If you want to take out a XL, you might as well use Pulse Laser because the DPS is so much higher.
My suggestions: reduce Bolt heat generation to about 50% of current or reduce the fire rate or damage of Pulse Laser by 50-60%, and adjust from there. Pulse Laser is just waaaaaaay too OP compared to anything else in the game and needs some severe balancing.
There is such a thing as burst damage, which Beam and Laser lack. Weapons are not all about sustained damage. In a fight I am not shooting 100% of the time with Beam or Laser, but I run, change targets, evade attacks, etc. If you use a weapon with burst, while you do those flight maneuvers, the cooldown recharges, so not that much damage is lost.
Example: a weapon does 200 dps burst and 100 dps sustained (let's make it simple and say that you shoot half time, half time you wait to recharge), another has just 150 dps sustained. If you shoot a target continuously for a few minutes, sure, the 150 dps weapon does +50% more damage. But if you spend half your time flying and half the time shooting, then the 200 burst weapon has time to cooldown while you fly, so it ends up doing close to 200 dps in practice, vs 150.
Second point is that you are using weapon heat cooldown mods. I don't use any mods for my ships and I don;t intend to, maybe I will add an optional file to remove mod bonuses. I feel like I am strong enough against the impotent NPC, and even if the AI was better, I don't like the idea of bonuses that NPCs don't have.
Third thing is that damage values differ for more guns, in favor of weapons for lower heat drain. That is because there is a set value at which weapons regain their heat, while the weapon slots add to max heat capacity. In other words, a 4 weapon ships regains heat 2 times slower than a 2 weapon ship, so that means that weapons with lower cooldown are more effective in a ship with more front guns. I have also nerfed the Argon Eclipse in my mod, bring it in line more with the 3 gun fighters.
Tl;dr. Thank you for making me re-recalculate weapon damages, it wasn't that bad as it looked from your side, but I made adjustements in latest version.
