Weapons Rebalancing Numbers

[joproulx99]

I'm crunching the numbers to try to make it so that almost all weapon types are required to make a ship/fleet effective in combat.
Here is my first WIP test at making it possible on paper.

shield 100 - 10 recharge size 10 (shield strength is up for debate, ive put it at 100 for now.)
armor 20 - 20 size 10

dmg - rate

beam 10 - 1 sec = 10 dps size 10 + energy 10
torpedo 20 - 2 sec = 10 dps size 20 + energy 20

missile 20 - 4 sec = 5 dps size 10 - no energy

phaser 30 - 12 sec = 2.5 dps size 10 + energy 30
rail guns 5 - .33 sec = 15 dps size 10 - no energy

Now what you can see is this:

-no damage lost per ''X'' at least for now.

Shield recharge rate is quite high at 10 per second.
Reactive armor is quite high at 20

beam:
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Counter shield recharge rate ie: stop the regeneration of shields 1:1 but cant penetrate armor

torpedos:
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does the same as beam weapons, ie: same role to stop shield recharge, call it flavor for now. Ressource requirement is also different from beams,
so that is another thing to consider between the 2.

missiles:
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Do not use energy but dont have enough dps to counter shield recharge.
But they will chunck shield with their higher damage per shot as long as beams stop them from recharging.
And since they dont use energy, you save on generator compare to just adding more beams, which is invaluable.
like beams and torpedos, they cant penetrate armor.

Phaser:
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Armor buster. Phaser have low dps so cant counter shield recharge rate. But high enough damage per shot + their bonus vs armor to break armor 100%.
They use energy, so while they will help missiles chunck shields, they cant be stacked excessively without support of other weapons, or you will lose in design efficiency.

rail guns:
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components buster. rail guns have 5 more dps compare to beams and do not need energy, cant penetrate armor.
While they will hit some shields they are only 75% as effective vs shields recharge compare to beams even with 5 more dps.
Since they dont use energy they can be a useful addition to destroy ships faster once they lost thier armor.

I'll think about gravity, fighters and ions weapons later, but lets say I want ions weapons to be much better then what they are now,
I mean they dont do any damage so they need to be very effective at stoping ships in their track.

CONCLUSION:
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from what I see it would make every weapon type mandatory to make a fleet effective in combat, and focusing on only one type of weapon would be obsolete.

you could make fast ships with rail guns and missiles since they dont use energy, supported with beam and phaser ships, and tracktor/ionizer type ships. or go for a balanced ship design with all weapon type etc..

it looks good on paper to me at least

NOTE: My thoughts on missiles and rail guns not using energy. rail guns use ammo, missiles are self propelled.ie: both only use up space(size).

[CyclopsSlayer]

Hmm, very interesting, but this also renders the usage of small hulls as impractical. At least early game.

A Frigate might have room for two weapons. So it has a Shield Buster and Armor buster, but nothing left over to stop the target.
A mixed fleet isn't feasible as each ship will likely select different targets. Shield busting beams concentrate on a single thin layer of armor for zero effect. While all your fleet armor busters are off chasing some fighters or shielded ships.

Pretty much a single ship would have to combine Anti-shield, anti-armor AND anti-component functionality to serve this synergistic weapon functionality. I can visualize an endgame warship that is totally immune to itself, as it cannot carry the weapons to defeat its own level of defenses.