Math Says: Don't use the Super Weapons

[taltamir]

Death Ray
DPS: 164.7
Size: 140
Space Efficiency (DPS/Size): 1.18
EPS (Energy per second: 47
Energy Efficiency (DPS/EPS): 3.5
Cost (to purchase): 4800
Money Efficiency (DPS/Cost): 0.034

Titan Beam SR:
DPS: 31.4
Size: 6
Space Efficiency (DPS/Size): 5.2
EPS (Energy per second: 24
Energy Efficiency (DPS/EPS): 1.3
Cost (to purchase): 168
Money Efficiency (DPS/Cost): 0.187

Ratios (Death Ray / Titan Beam SR):
Space Efficiency: 0.23
Energy Efficiency: 2.69
Money Efficiency: 0.18

The Death Ray is 2.69 times more energy efficient than the Titan Beam SR. It only has 23% the space efficieny and 18% the money efficiency though.

Ratios (Titan Beam SR / Death Ray):
Space Efficiency: 4.4
Energy Efficiency: 0.37
Money Efficiency: 5.5

The titan beam is 4.4 times more space efficient and 5.5 times more money efficient. But only has 37% of the energy efficiency.

Unless money and space are of no issue, and for some reason energy is extremely limited, the titan beam SR is a superior weapon. Not taken into account here is the fact that the titan beam SR delivers its damage in many small shots, which reduces wasteage (ex: delivering 1400 damage to an enemy with 300 life remaining is a waste of 1100 damage that could have gone to other opponents) However, the Death ray does enjoy an initiail first blast of extra damage. Unfortunately it is not enough damage to pentrate the shields of anything but a trade ship.

Conclusion: never use the death ray, it sucks.
Addendum: This was comparing the death ray to regular beam weapons, however, beam weapons all suck. The death ray has a range of 440 and heavy loss of damage. the titan beam a range of 450... both are inconsequential compared to the range of torpedo weapons... But even when comparing rays to rays the death ray is inferior.

Devastator Pulse
DPS: 75
Size: 170
Space Efficiency (DPS/Size): 0.44
EPS (Energy per second: 78
Energy Efficiency (DPS/EPS): 0.96
Cost (to purchase): 3840
Money Efficiency (DPS/Cost): 0.020

Derasian Shockwave WSD-230:
DPS: 26.875
Size: 9
Space Efficiency (DPS/Size): 3.0
EPS (Energy per second: 26
Energy Efficiency (DPS/EPS): 1.0
Cost (to purchase): 168
Money Efficiency (DPS/Cost): 0.160

Ratios (Derasian Shockwave WSD-230 / Devastator Pulse):
Space Efficiency: 6.8
Energy Efficiency: 1.04
Money Efficiency: 8

The Derasian Shockwave WSD-230 is 6.8 times as space efficient, 1.04 times as energy efficient, and 8 times as money efficient as the Devastator Pulse...

there is no reason to use the devastator pulse, ever.
If you want to weaken an AI who has the highest tech level area weapons, give him the devastator pulse as a gift, all his craft will become weaker as a result.

The fact it has longer cooldown between shots, more damage in each shot (thus wasted damage), more damage loss over distance... all also work against the devastator pulse... it does have a max range that is slightly greater though, at 520 vs 480.
Personally I dislike pulse weapons at all, but if you have to use a pulse weapon, do NOT use the devastator pulse, it utterly sucks.

[Bartje]

Well this here needs some tweaking!
 
 
Good find, Taltamir!
 
I hope Erik sees this [:)]

[Erik Rutins]

Once 1.0.4 is complete, we'll take another look at weapon balance in 1.0.5. [8D]

[taltamir]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Once 1.0.4 is complete, we'll take another look at weapon balance in 1.0.5. [8D]

sounds good. no rush
would be great if weapon descriptions actually listed the following values:
Space Efficiency (DPS/Size): 1.18
Energy Efficiency (DPS/EPS): 3.5
Money Efficiency (DPS/Cost): 0.034

It would also make it simpler to balance if you are looking at (and teaking) these values for each weapon.

Also, I noticed that a ship's firepower is simply the sum of the damage per shot of each weapon it carries... it should be the sum of the damage per second of each weapon, not damage per shot.

[Canute0]

Also, I noticed that a ship's firepower is simply the sum of the damage per shot of each weapon it carries... it should be the sum of the damage per second of each weapon, not damage per shot.

Not realy true.
When you got Shiped that can destroy all other Ships at the 1. Salvo it doesnt matter if it got huge reload time.
But beware if all shoots of that Salvo missed the target

And even when at a fight 1 vs many, when you kill 1 enemy instantly it can't do any damage to you anymore, that means you can stay longer against the others.

[lostsm]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Once 1.0.4 is complete, we'll take another look at weapon balance in 1.0.5. [8D]

if the next patch actually allowed us to mod values you realize that you guys wouldn't have to work on patches to address balance issues anymore

[Jaimoe_MatrixForum]

Well they'd still have to balance the game for the casual player who has no intention of modding.

[taltamir]

ORIGINAL: Canute

Also, I noticed that a ship's firepower is simply the sum of the damage per shot of each weapon it carries... it should be the sum of the damage per second of each weapon, not damage per shot.

Not realy true.
When you got Shiped that can destroy all other Ships at the 1. Salvo it doesnt matter if it got huge reload time.
But beware if all shoots of that Salvo missed the target

And even when at a fight 1 vs many, when you kill 1 enemy instantly it can't do any damage to you anymore, that means you can stay longer against the others.

You will only be able to destroy freighters with with an initial salvo of a superweapon... It takes multiple shots to penetrate the shields of even a single military ship of reasonable size.

besides, if you are looking at initial salvo, then all you are comparing is damage (not DPS, but damage per single hit) /size and damage (not DPS, but single hit) / cost.
for titan beam its 22/6 = 3.7 damage/size
for death ray its 1400/140 = 10 damage/size
the death ray indeed has more initial damage per size unit. 2.7x as much...
Oh, and a thunderbolt MX torpedo does an initial shot damage of 14.4 damage/size unit. (size 5, damage 72 per shot)
that means that 140 space worth of torpedoes does more initial damage than 140 space worth of death ray.

The AI puts 6 shields on a cruiser and 10 on a capital ship (which is way too little)... using top end shields that is 2880 and 4800 shield strength repectively. The top end shields take 2.92 shield components to stop a shot of a single death ray. So a ship with 10 death rays (size 1,400 for the death rays alone) would only be able to penetrade 29.2 shields, oh look, I put 30 shields on all my capital ships (8x30 = 240 space total).
But even the AI designed ships... that cruiser the AI designed has 2880 shields and 560 armor. it will take 3 death rays to penetrate all that in one shot.
Captial ship designed by AI? 4800 shields and 800 armor. It will take exact 4 to strip away all that armor and shields without doing any actual damage, so you actually need 5 death rays to one shot an AI designed capital ship.
Lets not forget the good old space stations with their heavy shielding.

BTW, if the death ray multiplied both damage and cooldown by, say, 10... it would be viable due to initial damage... 14,000 damage but fire only once every 85 seconds. Still, a far from ideal weapon. but it would actually have 1 redeeming factor and be of some use in certain tactics. or if it had very long range, or if it took less space, or any one of other improvements that could be made. The example with 14,000 damage and 85 seconds cooldown actually means that all the numbers about efficiency and DPS I have mentioned stay the same, while initial damage/space ratio goes up by a factor of 10x. which drastically alters its usefulness... of course, in such a case it would have even more damage wastage and handle groups of smaller ships really badly.
When I took the AI designs and removed the super weapon to replace them with plain old torpedoes my ships began slaughtering all that opposed them... they had a massive increase in damage capacity.

You know, I originally compared the death ray to a laser weapon because they are both rays... but if I think about it, lasers have rapid firing rate and no or low damage. Torpedoes are high damage and longer cooldowns... in this manner, deathray could be though of as a bad torpedo... this makes things worse as torpedoes are vastly superior to beam weapons.
As shown above, 140 space gets you one death ray that does 1400 damage per shot... or it gets you 28 torpedoes that do 2016 damage per shot (and with much faster firing rate)

[lostsm]

ORIGINAL: Jaimoe

Well they'd still have to balance the game for the casual player who has no intention of modding.

what for? the game is fun out of the box. the casual player has as much chance of updating as modding.

seeing how the game is fun and addictive straight off the shelves, why are they putting in any time working on balance when things like balance can be resolved in the hands of the community in a much more better way that from a developer

[taltamir]

but if modders come up with great balancing schemes, they could then be integrated as the official default balance.

[Munchies]

true
as long as the modders aren't idiots and keep the game within the context of what the devs originally had in mind.

I have seen mods that were well balanced, but after all was done it was a completely different game.
but then that may be a good thing

[Erik Rutins]

We do plan to open more things up to modding, but we have to get a few more things done first. With that said, if you all are interested in the weapon balance, feel free to post your suggestions and back them up with any analysis you have done. We will read them and definitely take your feedback into account when we look at the default weapon balance. Taltamir's feedback on this has been quite good so far, for example.

[Fishman]

The Death Ray does have one VERY important factor, though: It's the only worthwhile weapon that can accomplish anything within the constraints of a single gun.

[Cindar]

Another factor that makes the Death Ray worse: Missing. Lets say both weapons have a 20% chance of missing. For the Death Ray, that means you kill nothing and have to wait forever as your weapon recharges. For a much larger number of weaker weapons, your variance from the expected mean damage is much smaller, leading to consistent damage.

This is particularly aggravating when my Death Star is staring at an enemy station and misses multiple times with its main gun even though the station is completely immobile. Had I used a much larger number of standard weapons, I would not have a ship that managed to inflict an impressively weak 0 damage over the course of a minute.

Frankly I would like to see the missile-energy weapons balanced first though. The super weapons you almost never see, but missile weapons are always hands down the best weapon and its a major problem when the AI likes to use energy weapons. I think it would be a good idea to give lasers an inherent +accuracy while missile weapons should miss more often if an enemy is faster, as a way of simulating the enemy ship being able to dodge around the missiles. But thats just my suggestion. The AI certainly needs to learn that lasers are not effective weapons when you can't catch up to enemy ships.

ORIGINAL: Fishman

The Death Ray does have one VERY important factor, though: It's the only worthwhile weapon that can accomplish anything within the constraints of a single gun.

Coincidentally, Civilian ships just got limited to 1 weapon per ship... [:D]

[lostsm]

they could also boost ECM efficiency

[taltamir]

ORIGINAL: Fishman

The Death Ray does have one VERY important factor, though: It's the only worthwhile weapon that can accomplish anything within the constraints of a single gun.

haha... yes... they are good for arming your transports... but I find that arming them isn't worthwhile anyways.. Heck, I even have some with no armor, no shields, no weapons... I managed to half their price that way... 1 or 2 shields and a single plate of armor and a single gun double the price of the ship, but doesn't really affect its survivability much. (well, it does help early on... I make the change in the late game where things are "safe")

[Fishman]

ORIGINAL: Cindar

Coincidentally, Civilian ships just got limited to 1 weapon per ship... [:D]

That was my point. Every other weapon isn't even worth bothering with with only one, as it would be incapable of penetrating shields. Only the Death Ray can still do damage under those conditions. Sure, the size-efficiency is terrible, but if you're stupidly limited to ONE weapon, that's the only option there is, everything else is worthless.

[taltamir]

ORIGINAL: Fishman

ORIGINAL: Cindar

Coincidentally, Civilian ships just got limited to 1 weapon per ship... [:D]

That was my point. Every other weapon isn't even worth bothering with with only one, as it would be incapable of penetrating shields. Only the Death Ray can still do damage under those conditions. Sure, the size-efficiency is terrible, but if you're stupidly limited to ONE weapon, that's the only option there is, everything else is worthless.

A deathray costs 4800!
my small unarmed, unarmed, and unshielded freighter costs 1040, and my large one 1688... average of 1364

That is quite an increase in the cost of freighters there... my annual ship and base maintenance for my civilian sector is 435k of which 59K is bases and 376K is freighters and passenger ships.
2 shields and a deathray costs 5152... increasing the cost of every freighter by that much would increase average cost from 1364 to 6516... a 4.77x increase. increasing the expenses for private sector by that much means going from 376k * 4.77 = 1793.52K... an increase of 1358.52K... currently my private sector is earning 1064K total.. this will make it go to -294.52K.

1 single weapon on a private ship would actually work fine if:
1. they shot at any hostile within range, even while escaping (currently they only start shooting after being hit... thing is, once something is hitting them they are doomed, and if I have dozens of freighters bunched together, it will pick them off one by one, regenerating the shields from their ONE weapon as they are shooting it... while 20 ships shooting at once is not that easy to shrug off)
2. They use lasers... they should use 1 torpedo. better range, better initial damage... 20 torpedoes firing at once (all freighters in an area) would do lots of damage. a lone freighter shouldn't be a threat... 20 freighters vs 1 small lone military ship? the military ship would die if they actually all fired on it at once.

[Fishman]

ORIGINAL: taltamir

A deathray costs 4800!

Yes, but you're forgetting an important point. In DW, the continued existence of the universe is contingent on my patience! I have already demonstrated that I am willing to do some very unreasonable things if it will reduce the level of annoyance. If I have to take to arming freighters with death rays just to avoid being bothered by the problem over and over, I WILL! Why do you think I made 20-gun Indiaman freighters to begin with?!?

[taltamir]

ORIGINAL: Fishman

ORIGINAL: taltamir

A deathray costs 4800!

Yes, but you're forgetting an important point. In DW, the continued existence of the universe is contingent on my patience! I have already demonstrated that I am willing to do some very unreasonable things if it will reduce the level of annoyance. If I have to take to arming freighters with death rays just to avoid being bothered by the problem over and over, I WILL! Why do you think I made 20-gun Indiaman freighters to begin with?!?

Turn off pirates... I actually find it makes for a better game, pirates are annoying mechanically... no matter how many you kill new ones always spawn at an equal rate... explorer ships do NOT patrol systems that have been explored when the entire galaxy is explored, so its a PITA to find the pirates. and honestly, they harm the AI more then you, and give you an easy way to keep your approval ratings up (by blowing their bases)... Acting dubious actually hurts when there are no pirates to kill for a quick boost.
Or you can just pay them off, it is a pittance and is much cheaper than arming your freighters with death rays.
1,358,520 more credits per year to put a deathray on every civilian ship... or a few thousands per pirate faction? I'd take the payoff.

with no pirates what remains? monsters (your fleet hunts those) and enemy empires (no biggie)