Weapon ranges

[george moromisato]

To be honest, up until now I haven't paid much attention to weapon ranges. The current ranges are somewhat arbitrary and inconsistent in many ways.

I'm interested in ideas for how to balance them better. Here is one proposal:

1. All things being equal, beam weapons (laser, particle, ion) should have a longer range than matter weapons (kinetic, blast, thermo). I propose that beam weapons should have a range of 60 light-seconds while matter weapons should have a range of 40 light-seconds.

2. In general, omnidirectional weapons should have a shorter range, probably 40 light-seconds.

3. In general, weapons that require ammo should have a longer range, probably 120 light-seconds.

4. Low fire-rate weapons (howitzers) should have an intermediate range, probably 90 light-seconds.

5. Lancers should have a range of 90 light-seconds (to be consistent with their name).

6. Of course, there will be plenty of exceptions, particularly for those weapons that explicitly trade-off range to do more damage (e.g., MAGs).

Just for comparison:

20 light-seconds is beyond screen range (horizontally)
100 light-seconds is beyond long-range scanner range

As always, I'm interested in opinions and counter-proposals.

[Atarlost]

For the most part you're talking about reducing ranges across the board and I'm not sure that's a good idea.

I think that's backwards. If anything beams should have shorter range. They spread out over distance for various reasons. 60 light seconds is pretty much the maximum range for a very powerful laser. Most would realisticly be shorter.

But physical projectiles keep going until they hit something.

Omnis having shorter range is a bad idea too. Omnis are primarily used by slow ships that will be unable to close with ships that keep their distance to use longer ranged weapons. This also compounds the unfairness of allowing AI ships to use non-omni weapons as if they were omni. An Earth Slaver would get 60 ls from its particle beams, but you'd be stuck with 40 or 50 ls if you used an omni particle beam. This is an assymetry you don't need.

There are also a number of opponents that can only be fought effectively by exploiting the long travel time of their shots at long range, and slowing down shot speeds makes them unweildy and makes the AI almost completely unable to use them on fast ships. Slowing down ship speeds as well would make the game too slow paced.

I'm also concerned by what the change will mean for mods. Every single existing mod with a weapon will need to be rebalanced. Also every station in a mod that has patrols.

[Blitz]

1.While I agree with atarlost on the kinetic vs laser issue about how it should be, wouldn't changing that would mean you'd have to rebalance the whole thing? I mean, right now lasers fire faster, do lesser dps and slightly longer ranged while kinetics fire slower do more dps and are shorter ranged (except for the flenser).

2.

Omnis having shorter range is a bad idea too. Omnis are primarily used by slow ships that will be unable to close with ships that keep their distance to use longer ranged weapons. This also compounds the unfairness of allowing AI ships to use non-omni weapons as if they were omni. An Earth Slaver would get 60 ls from its particle beams, but you'd be stuck with 40 or 50 ls if you used an omni particle beam. This is an assymetry you don't need.

Omnis are already underpowered, they have a slower refire rate. Enemies are balanced overall and fake omnis are used mostly on larger ships. I actually think it'd be better if they have a lower range but that might nerf them too much for effective use as they'd do less damage, fire slower, eat up more power AND have a range lesser than a equivalent non-omni weapon. I say, make them shorter ranged - the effective range of an omni weapon and a non-omni weapon would remain approximately equal but increase the refire rate a bit.

3. Agreed, it'll make then far more attractive to use but then wouldn't the smart cannon become a sniper weapon which shoot with - and not miss - from off the screen?

4 & 5. No comment. They sound good to me.

6. That's how it should be. I think these ranges should be used more as a base guide line against which you can balance the weapon rather than a definite value. I mean, the range as a balancing tool is being used effectively in the 1.0 version (moskva 21 turret, for example, although I find the range to be waay to less to be useful on it's intended target, the freighter....) and I think it should be used a lot more - it'll multiply the variety without adding too many weapons.

I'm also concerned by what the change will mean for mods. Every single existing mod with a weapon will need to be rebalanced. Also every station in a mod that has patrols.

As long as the overall balance of the game remains the same, I think older mods wouldn't need too much retinkering.

There are also a number of opponents that can only be fought effectively by exploiting the long travel time of their shots at long range, and slowing down shot speeds makes them unweildy and makes the AI almost completely unable to use them on fast ships. Slowing down ship speeds as well would make the game too slow paced.

Slow down shot speeds? But who talked about slowing down shot speeds? That'd make kinetics and any projectile weapons ridiculously hard to use on tiny ships...

EDIT 1, 2 & 3 - kept finding mistakes. So, kept going back and correcting them.
EDIT 4 - mistake in the EDIT *sigh*

[OddBob]

1.While I agree with atarlost on the kinetic vs laser issue about how it should be, wouldn't changing that would mean you'd have to rebalance the whole thing? I mean, right now lasers fire faster, do lesser dps and slightly longer ranged while kinetics fire slower do more dps and are shorter ranged (except for the flenser).

I'm not sure this would change overmuch. The effective range of kinetics is lower due to their generally lower projectile speed- this is a boon in some areas but overall it makes them sort of bad at mid range fighting (which is currently their max range), where lasers shine.

But if they could extend out a little further they would start to beat out lasers at long range again by nature of doing more damage per shot (as at this point you're not really capable of keeping fire on a single, fast moving target for very long due to both travel time and the granularity of turning).

So you'd have lasers having roughly the same effectiveness out to mid range (where they then stop working) and kinetics being good close up and far away but sort of lacking in the middle.

(laser/kinetic ---> beam/matter)

[george moromisato]

Thank you--great feedback. A few general comments:

I have two goals in the weapon range rebalance:

1. I would like weapon ranges to be consistent and well thought-out.
2. I would like to add more variety to weapons (as Blitz points out).

It's not my intent to decrease weapon ranges in absolute terms--though I don't want to increase their range either.

Let me approach it this way: Weapons today fit into the following niches:

A. Standard beam weapons (e.g., laser cannon, particle beam weapon, star cannon): These weapons are designed for short/medium range melee, mostly against ships. Their fast speed help them to hit fast-moving targets. They have a high rate of fire, but low per shot damage.

Today, these weapons generally have a range of 60 light-seconds, though some (e.g., star cannon) have a much longer range.

B. Standard mass weapons (e.g., recoilless, slam cannon, tritium cannon): These are also designed for short/medium range melee. The have a lower rate of fire but do more damage per shot. They often have some WMD (which makes them more useful against bases).

Today, these weapons generally have a range of 48 light-seconds, though some (e.g., Flenser) have a much longer range.

C. Howitzers: These have a very low rate of fire but do a lot of damage per hit. They also often have a high WMD rating, which makes them perfect as base-crakers.

Today, these weapons have a range of 120 light-seconds.

D. Omnidirectional weapons: These trade-off something (usually damage) to gain omnidirectional firing and auto-targeting.

Today, these weapns have various ranges, most are around 60 light-seconds.

E. Ammo weapons: These gains something (usually extra damage) in exchange for limited ammunition.

Today, these weapons have various ranges, some are below 100 light-seconds.

QUESTIONS:

Q0: Are there other niches today or other niches we could create?

Q1: How can weapon ranges help to differentiate these niches, if at all?

Q2: Are there individual weapons whose range needs to be adjusted, either to fit in their niche or to otherwise balance them?

In my first post, I attempted to answer Q1 by altering weapon ranges. Perhaps that wasn't the right idea. Or perhaps there are alternative proposals that make more sense (post them if you've got them).

Or perhaps, there is no good answer to Q1 and we should concentrate on Q2 instead. In that case, feel free to suggest some (I'll do the same in a later post).

[Betelgeuse]

What I really would like to see avoided is weapons that are used without fear of reprisal. If your weapon range is long enough you can fire at a station without worrying about its stations guards or the station firing back.

Now this doesn't mean making the ranges shorter. It could mean having any ship nearby trying to loot the station.

[schilcote]

Q0: Are there other niches today or other niches we could create?

Well, "tachyon" weapons might be an idea. They would trade damage and fire rate for accuracy & range. Tachyon damage would instead of creating a projectile just run a trace and if the trace hits you get hit, creating an undodgeable weapon (you'd still be able to move out of the line of fire before the weapon fires though). It'd be a sniper-type weapon, you move out of sight of your enemy, line them up in your sights (maybe add some sort of scope equivalent, moving your view 200 LS in front of you) and hopefully take down some smaller ships before going in and fighting the big ones & the station.

Also, perhaps we should be allowed to define our own damage types (if a shield/armor's resistance to a custom type isn't defined, it's assumed to be 100% and if there's a resistance to a damage type that isn't defined, it's simply ignored), so if new "niches" show up the modding community can go in and fill it. Less work for you George, I think you'd agree to that.

A little bit of philosophy: I think the modding community is good for making small changes very rapidly, adding new weapons, inventing new effects, and doing other small clever things, while the main developer is better for making large changes at a very slow rate, like changing the balance of the entire game.

[Atarlost]

Most of the ranges are actually pretty good. The problem is the AI. It doesn't line up shots well so non-turreted weapons are wasted at long range. The "Big Spinal Mount" capital ships need some swivel, at least +/-9, maybe more like +/-15. That would be the Sunflare Cannon on the Heliotrope Destroyer, the Nandao on the Earth Slaver, the Qianlong Archannon on the Dragon Slaver, the Hecates Cannon on the Diemos, and the Ares Plasma Cannon on the Phobos. These are all weapons you may blunder into once or twice, but which never hit enough to deal serious damage if you fight from outside the range of the lighter guns. The Sunflare in particular is terrifying on a station where it's omnidirectional but laughable on a ship where it's not. Of these the Ares Plasma Cannon and Qianlong Archcannon are weak enough that I would strongly consider making the weapon itself swivel rather than putting the swivel on the ship carrying it.

There is one niche you missed though: Scary long range weapons that aren't scary at short range. Currently the only one is the Kiloton, but an entire category of weapons with heavy fragmentation and long minimum ranges would encourage shorter ranged combat at least against ships and stations that mount them.

Just as an example let's take the Ares Warhammer Nuke. It would fall into the same category if only it were ever used outside of a scripted attack. Putting an Ares Launcher and a regenerating Warhammer stash (like the XM300s on Sapiens stations) on an Ares station would do a great deal to encourage close assaults. New weapons with even longer failsafe ranges could be placed on other stations so as to leave more room to maneuver within the failsafe range while still forcing the player in close enough to have to fight the defenders.

RE Betel:

I think that can, apart from the abbasids, be solved by better escort handling. A fairly simple script could task guards to hunt you down. Nobody complains about the weak defenses of the ferians because they do just that. Large ships patrolling at 100 ls or so also prevent you from engaging from beyond range except with certain missiles. Adjusting the perception AI attribute on the longer ranged ships can also help.

I don't think outranging the base fixed defenses is a problem if the base's mobile defenses properly interfere with attackers who try to sit and blast from long range before killing the mobile defenders. Outranging bases is, or at least used to be before the speed loader came into the picture, the big payoff for spending a slot on a howitzer.

RE Shcilcote:

Tachyonic weapons would require a special hack for collision detection and possibly special handling in the AI and would consume relatively speaking lots of processing power calculating collisions all across their range in a single game tick. There are still people playing the game on machines that this will lag unacceptably.

In other words the game engine doesn't support them and they make what George has said is the worst processing bottleneck worse. Oh, and they're something novel and very high tech level that it wouldn't be appropriate to introduce until the game extends past Heretic anyways. Some mechanics need to be saved to lend interest to the later game and tachyonic weapons are a good candidate, especially if when the second or even third chapter is unveiled there will be fewer people using older computers.

[Prophet]

1. I am also in the group that feels lasers should be short range compared to matter weapons (only for realism sake)

2. I think Omni's should have the same range as their inherited weapon with reduced fire rate, and increased level, price, power consumption, and mass.

3. I agree

4. I disagree (see below)

5. I agree (this falls into an exception to the following statements)

6. I agree

Personally, I feel that the weapon ranges are merely a symptom of a larger problem, namely weapon niches.

I would like to propose a rough category/niche overview for consideration on how weapons could be categorized into specific niches:

Code: Select all

	Skirmish
		Short-Mid range (10-50ls)
		med-high fire rate
		mostly energy weapons
		most omnis appear here
		designed for 1-on-1 and small groups
			
		Point Defense (subset of Skirmish)
			Short range (5-30ls)
			high fire rate
			mostly energy weapons
			multi target, omni, spread, frag weapons
			designed for multiple targets


	Assault
		med range (30-80ls)
		med fire rate
		mixed damage types
		These are the primary damage dealers
		designed for 1-on-1 and small groups

		BaseCracking (subset of Assault)
			Mid-Long range (60-120ls)
			low-med fire rate
			mostly matter weapons
			most ammo weapons
			designed for 1-on-1 

Not every weapon is clearly defined by these niches, nor should they be. There will be exceptions and special cases, but for the most part, these are the 4 main uses of weapons. I included damage types merely as a personal opinion of where they should sit.

Most weapons (~50%) should fall into the two main niches of Assault and Skirmish, ~25% in the subset niches (point defense and basecracking) while the final ~25% is allocated to exceptions.

Anyways, just a thought.

[george moromisato]

Awesome feedback, as always.

I think the best course is to keep weapon ranges the same across the board but alter a few specific weapons (MAG comes to mind). I'll post a separate thread to ask for feedback on those specific weapons.

@Betelgeuse: I agree that (some) stations need to be better at defending themselves against long range attack. I'll see if I can get station guards to defend better (right now their max range is arbitrarily limited).

@schilcote: Yes, I really like the idea of instant-hit tacyon weapons. I do think they should be introduced beyond level X (i.e., after Heretic) for the reasons that Atarlost describes (save some new mechanics for later in the game).

[I should also say, that I've read about a different collision detection algorithm, called Sweep and Prune, that might help to increase performance and make such weapons practical. I'll consider that post-1.0]

@Atarlost: I like the idea of giving swivel to some capital ships. That would definitely help.

I also really like the niche of weapons that are only good at medium/long ranges. That is definitely a new and interesting niche. It should be easy to do what you suggest for Ares stations--great idea.

And you're right about howitzers--I don't want to nerf them by decreasing their range. I just thought that 90 ls was good enough for most purposes (it's already at the edge of LRS range). But I'm happy leaving them alone.

[Ihlosi]

2. I think Omni's should have the same range as their inherited weapon with reduced fire rate, and increased level, price, power consumption, and mass.

I thought about that a bit. As far as I know, a weapons level weighs into how much damage it does against armor and shields of a different level, right?

In that case, giving omnis an increased level would make them better against higher level armor/shields than their non-omni base weapon, even if they are just the non-omni version mounted on a turret. That doesn't make sense to me. Omnis should be the same level as the (unmodified) version of the fixed-fire weapon.

[Blitz]

With regard to the niches, I think, rather than have set niches, it's better to have a continuum. With different weapon series across the continuum. It's like the Class I II II, Mammoth 10W, 25W and 50W series and the Yoroi series of shields. You'd similarly execute different series of weapons, each series having a particular characteristic. This is already in place to a certain extent but I'd like to see it extend more in both directions. This would also let you introduce more damage types earlier and later into the game (and maybe you'd actually find use for R1 deflector ). With just a few base types, you'd be able to accomodate everyone's playstyles through a large portion of the game.

Apart from this you would have certain unique weapons of course.

Another niche I'd like to see elaborated are more disposable and autoequippable weapons.
And maybe weapns which have a rate of fire even faster than fast fire lasers so that it's more of a continuous stream of energy. Of course, they'd have a lower dps so that they would be effective against ships but not so much against stations.
And lots more shieldbuster weapns too...

If a weapon has a range of 100 or above, and you very nicely position yourself at the max range and bombard from long range, even if the station guards come to protect the station, they'd be moving very nicely into your line of fire, effectively destroying themselves.

The "Big Spinal Mount" capital ships need some swivel, at least +/-9, maybe more like +/-15.

Actually, +/-9 is more than enough. The ai lines it up as close as possible. Since all the enemy ships currently have 20 facings, 18 deg per facing, it's enough. Also, giving enemies +/- 9 makes the game VERY challenging. I've only ever played till sanctuary with 18 deg omni weapons and it becomes tough after st.ks. But how about increasing the no. of enemy facings to 40 like player ships (or has this not been done because of reasons I don't know? Load on older computers perhaps?)? And maybe then giving them +/- 5 degrees?

[Retroactive]

Point-defense or repulsion weapons are another niche that needs to be thought of as distinct from other weapons. These are weapons with extremely short range that are used to keep ships from engaging at close range, and include the Advanced Urak Mass Driver and the Iocrym Repulsor. These are generally not available to the player in a useful form, since they are omni-mounted on their respective ships but mount as forward-facing weapons on the player's ship. To make these useful to the player, they would need to be omni by default or upgradeable to omni; giving them an auto-fire ability might also be good. Expanding-sphere type weapons also can serve as point defense (i.e. HARASS, shatter)

There are also flare weapons like the morningstar and the various plasma weapons, which have low rates of fire, short ranges, and do less effective damage at a distance; but that can hit multiple enemies and require less aiming.

A twist on flare weapons are cloud type weapons, which have short range and slow projectile speed but which also create persistent "walls of fire" that effectively block incoming enemy shots. The only weapon of this type is the actinide waste cannon, which also has an interesting delayed effect (radiation). HARASS has a similar blocking effect. Pteravores could also be thought of as being this type of "weapon", and also have a delayed effect.

EDIT: Aren't enemy facings limited to 20 in order to reduce download size?

[Atarlost]

Actually, +/-9 is more than enough. The ai lines it up as close as possible. Since all the enemy ships currently have 20 facings, 18 deg per facing, it's enough.

The problem is that the capital ships turn relatively slowly. The extra swivel makes it harder to dodge out of their field of fire. The Heliotrope Destroyer is smaller, faster turning, and has a faster weapon so it probably needs only +/-9, but the bigger slower capships can benefit from more.

[Blitz]

Actually, +/-9 is more than enough. The ai lines it up as close as possible. Since all the enemy ships currently have 20 facings, 18 deg per facing, it's enough.

The problem is that the capital ships turn relatively slowly. The extra swivel makes it harder to dodge out of their field of fire. The Heliotrope Destroyer is smaller, faster turning, and has a faster weapon so it probably needs only +/-9, but the bigger slower capships can benefit from more.

But I think that's how it should be. U should be able to dodge a slow turning cap ship with a gigantic front weapon if you wanted to but the cap ship shouldn't miss if you were standing still. The Heliotrope destroyer is smaller and faster - relatively easier to destroy but harder to dodge.