Beam also never miss while Laser still capable to miss a shot. So it is likely that Beam is the to go weapon right now. Slug, and Missile for some reason, can get stop by shields so why even bother? Slug miss boardside of barn until close range but that only give them 85% accuracy. It got stop by both armor, and shield. Missile is the worse, it can get shot down easily by slug, then get stop by both armor, and shield.

I feel like the dev's need to spend a bunch of time in a spreadsheet with a basic damage model and start running scenarios on weapon balance.  It's just crazy.

I agree to disagree to some extent.

Keep in mind that strategic weapons have added bonus effects. They can turn the tide of a battle. Evasion + -% accuracy on opponent weapon modules is really good.

Some of the bonus effects on strategic weapons CAN make a difference, yes, but some are just not worth the cost.  Evasion may be nice, but a mere 5% chance to dodge is still only 1 in 20 shots.  That's really not that big a difference in effective hull survival.

Perhaps if strategic modules had their special effects buffed a bit so they're not necessarily superior statwise but serve a more specific role?

Yes, 'beams vs lasers' is really only the tip of the iceberg. 

Arbiter01 wrote:

To chime in, I would say that weapon modules are clearly still in development, with the recent addition of railguns, disruption weapons, some kind of group-blast weapon I can't immediately recall, so I would certainly expect to see more done with this by the time the next DLC comes out or maybe even before that. What the game really needs is a more clear-cut rock-paper-scissors system for weapon modules, or maybe having different factions get bonuses with a certain weapon type, for ex. the vaulters might do better with boarding pods than anyone else.

I am not sure about making weapon modules counter clear. Can you specify what you mean?

As far as I can tell CaniTerrae, the issue is that if the opponent starts at far distance with certain cards the "short" cards can help but ultimately the issue still exists that beam has a better accuracy and thus a higher dps. If you attach one flak module to a ship, it can shoot down 3 modules worth of equivalent missiles. If you add however many slots are left over to beam or laser, that's what will actually deal the damage and kill the enemy ship.

At parody, the rock paper scissors dynamic isn't tooo badly balanced. If you match exact matches of ship against eachother except one is all missile, one is all flak, and one is all whatever laser or beam you have, you'll see the missiles beating the energy beating the flak beating the missile. However, exact parody is almost never the case.

If you are at parody and the opponent starts using missiles, you can dedicate one slot to flak and beat 3 slots worth of missile. With missiles severely neutered, those ships are now mostly afraid to lose to energy or flak. At that point, you can either compete with them on flak, or just use energy and shields yourself. If they keep using missiles, they lose because they're tossing a huge amount of effort into something that is wasted. If they switch to flak, they lose because they get outranged by the energy. If they compete with you on energy, ignoring the flak slot because you aren't using missile, they win because they're using one more energy weapon then you.

Remember: the prior examples are only for mirror matchups at parody. This becomes much worse when asymmetrical tech or ship slots come into effect. Especially when you consider defensive modules. Let's go back to the mirror'd at parody tech example.

Hull plating does nearly nothing against energy weapons. Shields are still partially effective against flak, while being nearly ignored by missiles. So here's what happens. You let one flak module take care of all incoming missiles, and you ignore the hull plating for additional energy shield. As already explained, missiles are so heavily mitigated by flak that if your ship is using flak, the only risks become energy weapons and enemy flak. Because energy weapons hit more consistently at longer ranges than flak, you place the energy shields in. But that's not all, because these energy shields Also help against flak. Not near as much as plating would, but if the enemy is successfully making it through the rain of beams/lasers and shooting you to death, you must not be at parody. Because at parody, they simply don't survive long enough to both get in effective range And kill if they are massing flak. Perhaps if they also ignore plating and go only shields, perhaps they can survive long enough to deal damage. But they won't win that way, so they have to compete with you on energy, using the better range and the spot that used to be a missile to eke out the edge on you while you still have the flak equipped.

That's the basic issue with the non-choices for at parody weapons. If the fight is fairly close to even, you simply start at long range if they have projectiles, use a bit of flak to cover, and blast them to pieces if they made the mistake of using plating instead of shields.

As for the strat resource cost, I used to agree with you that they were better than the white ones. However, after seeing just how many ships are made for pvp fighting. Yeah. The cost adds up so quickly that the white versions are generally better just because it makes it easier to outnumber the enemy. It also makes the retrofitting cheaper so that you can build empty hulls for reduced production and simply retrofit for dust afterwards in order to get a few more ships out every X number of ships (depending on game speed).

You're correct that the numbers are strictly better for the strat versions, but you can't make enough of them most of the time to make them significantly more valuable than the white ones (in pvp). The one that I would most consider is the hyperium energy one, because you can try to play the tactics cards in such a way that the choice between Beam and Laser is actually significant due to how your opponent chooses to deploy and because they can inflict negative %tohit modifiers for energy weapons. And also because Hyperium is common enough that sometimes you high-roll into having enough that it's worth to have not only the hyperium fleetaccelerators and hyperium shields, but the weapons as well. Kind of an edge case though, since the accelerators are straight up neccessary and the shields are a much better return on investment since they protect themselves and the accelerators.

Uhm. Basically all of the ideas of flak vs missile vs energy still work semi-properly against the AI? But the AI cannot make war properly, so even in the case that you are surprised you can simply out fight them and grind them out over time. Against players you're either playing as a faction with good ships, or a faction that starts off as pacifists, or you're playing a faction that prays that it can survive the early game somehow. If left alone, all races are similarly viable. If everyone is opportunistically attacked by players that know their ships will beat your ships 1:1, certain factions become quite volatile to play as.

Just so you're aware, I think you meant 'parity', not 'parody'. 'Parity' means equal; 'parody' means imitiation for humour, like satire.