I just started the game and I have no exact data.

What I have is the strong feeling that deflectors + bombers would slaughter a glass cannon LR kinetics fleet.



You reduce damage to about 1/4 before battle actions / hull vulnerability for LR kinetics if you spend the same amount of tonnage into deflectors than the opponent does for LR kinetics.

Is there a sandbox mode or mod to put my hunch to the test?





Another issue with your nose breaker is that if you are forced to use nose breaker than glass cannon of the enemy fleet will be protected and continue to do damage in the next phase, but that is only relevant if other weapon systems will out damage LR kinetics in other battle phases even more than LR kinetics do in the LR phase. Have not looked into those numbers either. What I have seen in this topic is that LR missiles do actually more damage than LR Kinetics IF the battle will be longer than just the LR phase. So a nose breaker scenario should benefit LR missiles over LR kinetics.



But again, hunches not real data, I really need data to create something working out of those hunches and either proof or disproof them.

I spent a lot of time evaluating combat mechanics a few patches ago. There has been 1 balance change patch (details were not listed in patch notes) since my knowledge was valid. I doubt anything really changed, especially given what I've read on the forum today.



Anyway, I think you'd profit by reading some of the threads we worked on back in the day, e.g.,

/#/endless-space/forum/27-general/thread/10605-math-makes-power-module-useless

I've always assumed that the LR Kinetics damage in the latest patch is an oversight and have got it modded to min 1 max 1 long time ago. The triple damage really goes against the whole weapon design philosophy stated for example here: (/#/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/11570-beta-patch-1-1-15-balance-update) and the AI can't cope with it because it calculates the correct threat value out of amount/type of kinetic modules on the player's ship, not their actual damage.



Even with 1-1 damage LR Kinetics are still a viable option for the player and can rip fleets to pieces if you manage to catch them with their pants down (that being, minimal investment to deflector modules).

The tricky thing with accuracy is it is additive, not multiplicative. Going from 80 to 90 evasion is worth more than going from 10 to 20.



100% accuracy against 1 CP ships is 50% to hit.

110% accuracy from beams against 1 CP ships is 60% to hit, an effective increase of 20% compared to kinetics.

90% accuracy from beams will actually do even worse relative to the other against fast ships (40% to hit)



The base damages aren't balanced well enough for this to matter, but it is interesting.

Uncle_Joe wrote:




Missiles (level 1):

Long Range Damage: 400

Medium Range Damage: 247

Short Range Damage: 136



Beams (level1):

LR Damage: 103

MR Damage: 135

SR Damage: 45



Kinetics (level1):

LR Damage: 3(!)

MR Damage: 1

SR Damage: 1



Obviously there are a lot of other factors involved in the combat results (including ROF, Salvo size, reload, and how the attacks interact with the defenses) but the thing that stands out is that Kinetics do 3x damage at LONG range than in either of the other two ranges. Their fire output is not as high at that range but the 3x damage seems to compensate for that a LOT:



LR Kinetic (rough calculation):

3 (damage) x 25 (#ofsalvo ) x 3 (projectilespersalvo) x 1.0 (accuracy) = ~225 damage output for 8 tons = 28 damage per ton



MR Kinetic

1 (damage) x 45 (#ofsalvo ) x 2 (projectilespersalvo) x .75 (accuracy) = ~67.5 damage output for 6 tons = 11.25 damage per ton



SR Kinetic

1 (damage) x 60 (#ofsalvo ) x 2 (projectilespersalvo) x 1.0 (accuracy) = ~120 damage output for 4 tons = 30 damage per ton. SR Kinetics have a further entry for RateofFire which is 20 so depending on how THAT interacts with the rest of the stats it could result in a large force multiplier for them.



For comparison at Long Range, a similar calculation rates LR Missiles at 30 damage per ton and Beams at 11.33

As I did start to dig a little into mechanics a few things that I did notice.



LR beams at tier3 do more 6 times as much damage as tier1 beams, while the LR kin get only 5 times as much projectiles and no damage increase at all. The beams have at the same time an increase of 40% in tonnage, while the tier 3 kinetics require 50% more tonnage than their tier 1 counter-part. And LR beams have in general a 10% bonus to accuracy, which should be not relevant at LR, but increase the damage output in Medium and Short Range dramatically.



Speaking of different than the primary damage phase, according to the wiki the hit-chance is gives medium more damage across all 3 phases than you get with LR. Alas, in the case of kinetic the lower accuracy at medium of the weapon system itself seems to turn that advantage into the opposite again.



[table="width:500"]

Phase

Long Range

Medium

Melee

Long Phase

100%

33%

10%

Medium Phase

25%

100%

10%

Melee Phase

25%

33%

100%

[/table]



Anyway, lets include extra damage into calc of you.



LR Kinetic for all 3 phases:

(3 damage x 25 projectiles x 4 rounds x 1) + (3 x 25 x 4 x 0.25) + (3x25x4x0.25) = 300x1.5 = 450 damage

Per ton damage: 450 / 8 = 56.25



MR Kinetic for all 3 phases:

(1 x 45 x 4) x (0.33 x 0.8 + 0.8 + 0.33 x 0.8) = 239.04 damage per ton

Per ton damage: 239.04/6 = 39.84 damage per ton



M Kinetic for all 3 phase

(1x60x4)x 1.2 = 288 damage

Per ton damage = 288 / 4 = 72 damage per ton





*scratch head*

That is if the rate of fire is the same with all types of kinetics.

edit: Checked within the xml files, yeah rate of fire stays 1 per round without any delay and actually the accuracy for MR is just 0.75, that another 5% damage gone for MR kinetics. They seem to be really bad.



P.S. edit:

Oh and while checking the files I did notice that the level 2 are missing their crit bonus that is mentioned in the techtree. Is it me or are the techtree descriptions full of errors?



[CODE]


CriticMultiplier="0.0" CriticChance="0.0"

InterceptionEvasion="0"

NumberPerSalve="62"

TurnBeforeReach="0" TurnToReload="0" Accuracy="1.0">

Kinetic

LongRange




Priority="100"

BoardSideMaxDuration="1.5"

BoardSideFireDelay="0.1">















%ModuleWeaponKinetic2LRDescription



1



[/CODE]

Uncle_Joe wrote:
Apocalypse, is that with the modded data or vanilla? Sounds like they forced you to change tactics

Just plain harmony without mods.

And it was too late for them, I was controlling half the galaxy at that point and just replaced the ships constantly and slowly but surely killed them, 2 cruiser at a time. And replacing my loses constantly. My siege fleet did backdoor their homeworld at the same time too, invading from the spiral arm above them.



But yeah, if that would have happened early and/or on a higher difficulty level than I would have been in trouble. Which is happening right now in my next game. Those Sophons dare to stack about 5 deflectors (+ hero defense bonus that doubles their defense nearly), no other defense modules and combine it with 10 melee kinetic. There seems to be literally nothing else on those ships. And once the fleets of those get to big for nosebreaker to decimate them, I might be indeed forced to change my fleet. Spreadfire is already dangerous, nosebreaker manages to still apply the alpha strike advantage of LR kinetics no matter what. But that is with small fleets, 4 enemy ships, and a level 14 hero advantage and 30% more mp. With spreadfire I still lose sometimes already when my LR battlecard gets countered and I fail to kill anything in LR phase. A few turns later and I got slaughtered by those fleets, well at least if the AI is smart enough to not send a 2-3 ships per turn into my fleet to die.



It is funny to see how random the AI acts, and I guess it was pure luck that the AI stacked purely deflectors.

Apocalypse, is that with the modded data or vanilla? Sounds like they forced you to change tactics

I just run into a amoeba fleet with about 10 deflectors stacked into their cruisers against my LR kinetic sheredyn corvette fleet. I could not hurt them anymore with spreadfire and they did hurt me more when I had slowly reduce their numbers with nosebreaker. I even had a little bit more MP, which did not help me much as my fleet was still was faster dwindling than theirs. And they still had wasted about 40% of their defense budget on shields. *g*

Apocalypse wrote:
Tweaking the playstyle of the AI simply play better would be preferable in my book. *g*

As long as the balance is not broken in MP matches too at least. Which in some way seems to be the case right now as LR Kinetics seem to dominate there too and LR Missiles are most likely completely useless there too.



But yeah, the AI is indeed very weak in endless space … at least in harmony, so as a quick and dirty fix adjusting the balance to favor the AI playstyle is for sure not a bad idea.

Depends what kind of balance in multiplayer you mean. In terms of weapons and range balance, no - same as AI play, long range kinetics still dominate.



But in terms of balance = fair and challenging to both parties equally, then yes, multiplayer in ES disharmony is very balanced - because your human opponent can use every advantage you have. If they dont, that has less to do with balamce and more their personal choice or learning curve to find out what works best, which is true of any game where veterans always have an edge.



I mostly play my brother so cant speak to lot of human opponents, but even though multiplayer has same game mechanics (e.g. LR kinetics is king), it opens up a ton more strategy and tactics - maneuvering your fleets and avoiding having your best combat fleets be trapped in stack locking and doing end runs is key, and since both of you have the same destrucitve potential with LR kinetics, its fair and forces both sides to carefully consider how many fleets to use.



Too few and you lose the attrition war in a hurry, too many and you can get stack locked down while an end run is done on your other planets. I find multiplayer is a lot more about strategy than tactics as its a given how both sides will design their fleets and how they will be fought.



In some less common situational scenarios though, other weapons can work. It just depends how your human opponent designed his ships. Sometimes because LR kinetics is so dominant, someone will just stack 100% deflectors so as to reduce as mich as possible the attrition rate between two mutually armed LR kinetic fleets. In that case, LR lasers are pretty deadly - they'll chew right through someone with zero shields and you dont get the 4x shots as kinetics but at least you get 2x and hits same round.



Missiles i havent really found much use for in multiplayer because of the delayed hit vulnerability. Although if you out tech your opponent, its pretty funny to do the tactical retreat fire and forget game with all missile ships. But again thats pretty situational.



In the end, since i've never, ever seen a game yet where there isnt a "best" offense, defense, unit, game stat (e.g crit chance), etc in multiplayer, i can live with ES multiplayer re: dominance of LR kinetics. Long as both sides know the game, its a fair contest, and strategy plays a key part which i like since it makes multiplayer more about skill than dice roll luck.

Uncle_Joe wrote:
Yes, MP will always be better for competitive games but the AI can do a credible job with the right conditions. The trick is getting the balance such that it rewards the playstyle that the AI's favor. The numbers are all there in the data so it's easy enough to change, it's just knowing what will make it work better than default that is the trick.

Tweaking the playstyle of the AI simply play better would be preferable in my book. *g*

As long as the balance is not broken in MP matches too at least. Which in some way seems to be the case right now as LR Kinetics seem to dominate there too and LR Missiles are most likely completely useless there too.



But yeah, the AI is indeed very weak in endless space … at least in harmony, so as a quick and dirty fix adjusting the balance to favor the AI playstyle is for sure not a bad idea.

Yes, MP will always be better for competitive games but the AI can do a credible job with the right conditions. The trick is getting the balance such that it rewards the playstyle that the AI's favor. The numbers are all there in the data so it's easy enough to change, it's just knowing what will make it work better than default that is the trick.



That's the reason why I attacked the things that the AI doesn't use (LR Kinetics) and boosted what it does (defenses). I'd be curious what you think if you try the mod I currently have. One other person (who posted in the modding forum) thinks that the balance is better, but that LR weapons are still the best. I haven't played enough yet to make that declaration but it would easy to reduce LR ability a bit more if necessary.

Ive been handicapping a lot lately by not using LR kientics except in human v human multiplayer games with my brother, but against the AI when you stack kinetics (and the way the AI response seems to be triggered is by the post battle reports - most effective weapon = X, best defense = Y), Ive consistently seen the AI stack deflectors + something else.



Oddly they never go 100% deflectors but split the tonnage with something else like shields. But they do start stacking deflectors a lot as response against human best weapon = kinetics results. But for reasons discussed in this thread, its just not enough.



The best that Ive seen the AI somewhat stave off LR kinetics is harmony dreadnoughts with lots of deflectors (and unused shields) + their affinity hull hp bonus that can on endless mode if they outpace my tech in the early to mid game (higher grade deflectors vs my lower tier kinetics) let them tank one full combat turn and have half their fleet survive.



In those cases i kill about half their fleet using nose breaker in turn 1, survive the medium and melee range battle by using cruisers with bit more defense than i usually use (normally 3 each, but in these scenarios i upgrade em to 5 each). Also in those caess the harmony guy is usually one pf the runaway AI so he has like 20+ fleet stacks, so i basically need 2 hero LR kientics fleets plus a few replacement ship fleets to trap each stack and just pound it out, half killing 2 fleets each turn until battle damage the AI never effectively heals becomes an issue few turns later, and then its back to killimg entire wounded fleets in 1 turn.



The true weakness of the AI imo is not only how they split countering your best weapon, but never really effectively use repair modules. If they could heal their battle damage, it would make tank dreadnoughts viable to at least significantly slow down LR kientics chewing through them.



When i play my brother or other humans, LR kinetics is still good but not as dominant because of course the human opponent is also using stacked LR kinetics, and human opponents respond much faster to mix in other weapons to sneak past your defenses - in human v human games, the combat losses are much higher since both sides are using LR kinetics and using stack locking warfare to counter your best combat fleets



(E.g. Use a pure defense, zero weapons tank dreadnought fleet with steady stream of replacememts to lock down human opponent who makes mistake of using too many fleets in one stack. Tank dreadnoughts will still die, but if you designed them right with tier 4 repair module plus huge armor, you can generate enough replacememt streal to effectively lock dosn the opposing LR kinetics fleets forever. Which just makes the human opponent move their hero out of those trapped fleets, build new ones and come at you somewhere else.



Gotta say i really enjoy multiplayer a lot more than solo vs AI these days.

Ok, this forum has the most awkward quick reply function in the history of forums. I will reduce this reply to a minimum.



For tanking LR Kinetics:

I was not thinking of Dreadnoughts. 2 CP ships seem to be quite weak in most cases. I was thinking more of sophons battleships or harmony/amoeba cruisers. Stuff that can stack deflectors cost effectively, and btw deflectors seem to be the most cost effective defense system even without any bonuses. The math behind might be really interesting. As well how tinkerer 1 and tinkerer 2 might change the math. I am not sure if that is another advantage for or against kinetic weapons.



LR Missiles:

Ok, I did assume that they would fire in round 1 and reload the rest of the round. Sounds like a bug to me, it does not fit the description of the weapon system either. And it makes the whole weapon system useless, because it comes with far to many drawbacks. You are weak against kinetic snipers, you pack the damage of a whole phase into a single strike, overkill damage a result of that and on top of that is your damage delayed for a whole phase. Definitely not a weapon system to stack on ships with weapon tonnage bonus. In this context the damage seems to be rather low too, because it not that much bigger than from kinetics.



Which does not mean that LR Kinetic Damage might be not still indeed a typo. The damage is incredible if you compare it to other weapon systems and the way the weapon system works is additionally full of advantages. 4 volleys per phase mean much less overkill damage, the damage is instant and thus removing enemy damage sources instantly from the battlefield. So yeah, as many people in the topic mentioned LR Kinetics are very strong and the AI seems to not even try to properly trying to counter you.

Apocalypse wrote:
I just started the game and I have no exact data.

What I have is the strong feeling that deflectors + bombers would slaughter a glass cannon LR kinetics fleet.



You reduce damage to about 1/4 before battle actions / hull vulnerability for LR kinetics if you spend the same amount of tonnage into deflectors than the opponent does for LR kinetics.

Is there a sandbox mode or mod to put my hunch to the test?





Another issue with your nose breaker is that if you are forced to use nose breaker than glass cannon of the enemy fleet will be protected and continue to do damage in the next phase, but that is only relevant if other weapon systems will out damage LR kinetics in other battle phases even more than LR kinetics do in the LR phase. Have not looked into those numbers either. What I have seen in this topic is that LR missiles do actually more damage than LR Kinetics IF the battle will be longer than just the LR phase. So a nose breaker scenario should benefit LR missiles over LR kinetics.



But again, hunches not real data, I really need data to create something working out of those hunches and either proof or disproof them.

All good points, but worth clarifying my post -



1. stacking LR kinetics doesn't mean glass cannon - it can be, sure - but what I meant was stack only LR kinetics, no need for other weapon types - and add whatever defense you like. I find that on endless mode, glass cannon fleets aren't that good - you still win your battles, but you end up losing a few ships a lot, and I prefer to not have to resupply my fleets as much so usually do 1 each defense for corvettes (which I stop using after early game), 2 each defense for cruisers early game - then 3 with extra tonnage tech, and 5 each for dreadnoughts - and every remaining tonnage is pure LR kinetics



2. regardless of your fleet weapon mix, enemy bombers is a whole separate topic/issue - since point defense is useless, the only real counter to bombers is fighters. Even when your fleet massacres the opposing fleet on phase 1, round 1 - unlike other weapons which you can nullify that way, the bombers still get their strike. So whether you use LR kinetics or not isn't related to bomber vulnerability - all fleets without fighters will suffer attrition losses to bombers.



So only real options to counter bombers is either

a) just take the attrition losses, no anti-bomber defense, you'll lose a few to sometimes half the fleet if enemy has enough bombers even when you kill them in phase 1. I mostly dislike this option because I don't like the extra management of ferrying replacement ships



b) my preferred option, use fighters in battle mode - cruisers with 1 or 2 squadrons each pretty much nullifies bombers. You may lose a ship rarely here and there, but mostly nullifies bombers unless your fighter tech is really low compared to the bombers.



c) mid game or later - use tank dreadnoughts and just soak up the bomber hits with armor and repair modules



This is again just my experience, but I've never seen deflector stacking that can counter LR kinetics enough. A fleet with heavy deflectors + bombers will still get annihilated by a LR kinetic fleet that has fighters for anti-bomber protection. Either spread fire will be just fine, or if the deflector/bomber fleet is tank dreadnoughts, then nose breaker.



Re: nose breaker - you'll see as you use it that nose break is NOT a free pass for the opposing fleet to get into phase 2. Using nose break, you can still kill the entire enemy fleet in phase 1, since kinetics fire 4x in phase 1. What happens is that if spread fire is not enough to break the defenses of tank dreadnoughts, then nose breaker will concentrate your entire fleet firepower for round 1 of phase 1 on the lead enemy ship. That is almost always enough to kill that first ship. So then in round 2, phase 1 - same thing, you kill another, and so on.



Worst case scenario is that you use up all of phase 1 to kill the 3-4 tank dreadnoughts. Even an affinity with big fleets perk is only going to have max 23 CP, so that's 5 dreadnoughts max + 3 lighter ships. In phase 1 you can definitely kill 3 minimum, so at worst I've never gone beyond part of phase 2 to kill the entire enemy fleet using nose breaker.



Watch the battles manually and you'll see that's how nose breaker works, it's great. As long as you have enough stacked LR kinetics firepower, you are basically just hosing down with a stream of ballistics each ship one by one, with the huge advantage that you get 4 rounds of fire per phase.



As for LR missiles, I'm sure the damage number crunching would be interesting, but there's just one big flaw with it in terms of reality vs theory - the reality is missiles don't fire at all until round 2 of phase 1. So whatever huge damage numbers a design of all missiles can do, it will do zero if you kill the enemy ship the missiles are deployed on in round 1 of phase 1. And again with LR kinetics, you are usually slaughtering the entire fleet in phase 1, with a great majority of that fleet wiped out on round 1 before even one missile can fire.



That's basically the big weakness of missiles - you don't even get a chance to fire off most your missiles because LR kinetics kill you before you get a chance to fire.



I'd suggest just playing the game on harder difficulties, especially endless mode. The AI throws a bunch of different designs - especially towards mid game and later when they start coming at you with pretty interesting tank fleets. You can see by manual view of the battles what works and what doesn't, and in my experience LR kinetics is just so good that like people have talked about, we end up not taking it after awhile because it's too good.

I’ve recently picked up Endless Space again (after a trip to GalCiv3 which while interesting, needs a lot of patching and polishing IMO).



For background, I had played a LOT of Endless Space after release and popped back in for a game every now and then with major updates/DLCs. I gave up when Disharmony released and a lot of the core combat mechanics went out the window but was pleasantly surprised by some of the patches which somewhat restored balance.



I say ‘somewhat’ because the general consensus seems to be that LR Kinetics are the way to go now. I’ve played a handful of games and while I wasn’t 100% convinced of the logic, there are some things I had observed that are causing me to lean in that direction.

I took a look ‘under the hood’ at the data and I’m somewhat puzzled by something:



Missiles (level 1):

Long Range Damage: 400

Medium Range Damage: 247

Short Range Damage: 136



Beams (level1):

LR Damage: 103

MR Damage: 135

SR Damage: 45



Kinetics (level1):

LR Damage: 3(!)

MR Damage: 1

SR Damage: 1



Obviously there are a lot of other factors involved in the combat results (including ROF, Salvo size, reload, and how the attacks interact with the defenses) but the thing that stands out is that Kinetics do 3x damage at LONG range than in either of the other two ranges. Their fire output is not as high at that range but the 3x damage seems to compensate for that a LOT:



LR Kinetic (rough calculation):

3 (damage) x 25 (#ofsalvo ) x 3 (projectilespersalvo) x 1.0 (accuracy) = ~225 damage output for 8 tons = 28 damage per ton



MR Kinetic

1 (damage) x 45 (#ofsalvo ) x 2 (projectilespersalvo) x .75 (accuracy) = ~67.5 damage output for 6 tons = 11.25 damage per ton



SR Kinetic

1 (damage) x 60 (#ofsalvo ) x 2 (projectilespersalvo) x 1.0 (accuracy) = ~120 damage output for 4 tons = 30 damage per ton. SR Kinetics have a further entry for RateofFire which is 20 so depending on how THAT interacts with the rest of the stats it could result in a large force multiplier for them.



For comparison at Long Range, a similar calculation rates LR Missiles at 30 damage per ton and Beams at 11.33



Again, I know not every factor is probably taken into these calculations but what stands out is how amazingly well Kinetics stack up at Long Range. One thing I don’t see reflected is the supposed ‘4 shots’ that Kinetics get in the LR phase which if accounted for cranks the damage per ton to an incredible 112!



So while I might be missing something (many things), this rough calculation shows that it’s quite possible for LR Kinetics to be mathematically ‘the weapon of choice’. This is especially true when you figure in that LR does the damage FIRST so it’s more effective vs retreating ships AND you can effectively use LR glass cannon designs to whittle down opposing fleets without the need of putting defenses since the vast majority of your damage will be front-loaded.



Is it possible that there is a bug or a data error here? It’s just odd that Missiles still retain some of their ‘good at Long range, weaker at Medium, weakest at Short’, while Beams have the ‘middle curve’ (ie, best at Medium), and then Kinetics have an inverse curve being more effective at Long and Short than Medium. If it’s just a data error, it’s child’s play to correct but without knowing how EVERYTHING interacts within the combat model I’d just be throwing darts at a board.



I realize that expecting a patch at this date is probably unreasonable but a simple confirmation of an error or suggestion for a ‘quick fix’ would enable modders to make tweaks on a hot-button issue (and one which has received a fair amount of criticism regarding balance).



Thanks in advance for any input!

Apocalypse wrote:
Is there any data available how damage weapon is handled outside of their designated range? What kind of penalty have LR Kinetics at Medium or Close Range? Besides that, as already mentioned LR Kinetics seem to be countered by deflectors quite well.

Not if you stack 100% kinetics. No amount of deflectors I've seen, and there have been games where some AI have really built strong tank dreadnoughts with pure deflectors to try and counter my kinetics (or just luck coincidence as AI counter strategy doesn't always seem that smart), can stand up to concentrated kinetics fire - either normal spread fire or nose breaker.



If the AI/human opponent has really strong tank dreadnoughts, the most you will have to adapt is either nose breaker or the other formation for concentrating fire on first 3 ships. It is true that for some really strong dreadnought tank fleets with deflectors that spread fire with kinetics will definitely not work for a 1 battle kill of all enemy ships, and have seen some dreadnought fleets not even lose 1 ship to spread fire kinetics if their deflectors are strong enough.



But I've never come across an AI fleet that can't be massacred using nose breaker as long as you have a fleet with 100% stacked LR kinetics. The only real design decision you're making is the micromanagement trade off of using smaller corvette/cruiser hulls that you will from time to time lose a few ships and need to resupply your fleets with replacements (but have lot more mp), or use dreadnought hulls and never lose a ship but have weaker mp and sometimes have to use nose breaker a lot more.

KnightofPhoenix wrote:
@jacozilla

Yes I know that with disharmony, the vanilla range optimum is nullified. But I play Harmony as if the range optimum still exists (that's what I meant by "theoretical optimum"), as a self-imposed handicap because LR kinetics are absurdly good.

Ah, gotcha.



I agree LR kinetics are just too good. takes any decision making out of designing ships, so doing a personal handicap of setting weapons only to the pre-disharmony optimum ranges seems like a good option. I usually just add some negatives like using a -75 point custom race but I've also done no kinetics at all games to add handicaps as well.



Like most ppl here, I doubt we'll ever get another balance patch, but that doesn't stop me from wishing for one. Would be real nice to have some sort of actual ship design balance without having yo artificially handicap ourselves.

Apocalypse wrote:
Is there any data available how damage weapon is handled outside of their designated range? What kind of penalty have LR Kinetics at Medium or Close Range? Besides that, as already mentioned LR Kinetics seem to be countered by deflectors quite well.

its 50% less damage outside its optimal range setting. They also suffer an accuracy penalty but I dont remember nor know any numbers for certain.

It solves retreat spam so i can't give up my LR kinetics, but would be nice if there were actual weapon choices. As it is, LR kinetics is a no brainer - max stack every ship with 100% LR kinetics, no other design needed ever, even on endless mode. You can win without them, but its a self imposed handicap if you do - which is fine since the AI is so dumb.

Sadly this exact reason is WHY the game lost some of its appeal (when it comes to combat). When in classic the system forced me to overthink my designs and react to my enemies its now the same design versus everything regardless of turn, tech level or difficulty. I lack the self-discipline of KnightOfPhoenix needed for a personal handicap.

KnightofPhoenix wrote:
@jacozilla

Yes I know that with disharmony, the vanilla range optimum is nullified. But I play Harmony as if the range optimum still exists (that's what I meant by "theoretical optimum"), as a self-imposed handicap because LR kinetics are absurdly good.

Is there any data available how damage weapon is handled outside of their designated range? What kind of penalty have LR Kinetics at Medium or Close Range? Besides that, as already mentioned LR Kinetics seem to be countered by deflectors quite well.

And looking at the data, there seems to still be some 'favoring' of certain ranges by each weapon (ie, missiles still do the most damage at LR, beams at MR which is what throws it off when kinetics are ALSO best at LR).

@jacozilla

Yes I know that with disharmony, the vanilla range optimum is nullified. But I play Harmony as if the range optimum still exists (that's what I meant by "theoretical optimum"), as a self-imposed handicap because LR kinetics are absurdly good.

KnightofPhoenix wrote:
Yea I'm almost inclined to say it's a mistype.



In any case, I personally refuse to use any weapon system outside of their theoretical optimum range for that reason.

Agree in sentiment but this is a good opportunity to highlight one of the less advertised / understood aspects of the Disharmony expansion "resetting" prior combat mechanics.



Prior to Disharmony, your statement would have been totally accurate - each weapon system had a theoretical optimum range - but with the expansion, that got totally erased and reset to the new canon or "correct" fundamentals of weapon evaluation.



All weapons come with no preset range penalties - the only penalty is if you use them at a range other than the installed range. So if you install LR kinetics, by canon law of the new exapansion, its theoertical optimum range IS long range.



Same for short range missiles.



But of course what makes actual eval of combat power favor LR kinetics is because of rate of fire. While all weapons got rebalanced to have whatever optimum range you wanted by choosing range type when installed on ship, the rate of fire stayed fixed - 4x per combat phase for kinetics, 2x for lasers, and 1x for missiles (fired on round 2, hits on round 4 of each combat phase)



Which left kinetics as highly accurate at long range, with instant hit ability vs missiles delay betwen launch round and hit 3 rounds later, and firing/hitting with highest rate of fire.



It solves retreat spam so i can't give up my LR kinetics, but would be nice if there were actual weapon choices. As it is, LR kinetics is a no brainer - max stack every ship with 100% LR kinetics, no other design needed ever, even on endless mode. You can win without them, but its a self imposed handicap if you do - which is fine since the AI is so dumb.



But would be nice if another balancing factor was tuned in, say slower rate of fire for all weapons based on range. Because as it is, the made LR kinetcis the highest damage (on an equalized per round basis), highest rate of fire, and just as accurate as any other weapon tuned to long range.

Yea I'm almost inclined to say it's a mistype.



In any case, I personally refuse to use any weapon system outside of their theoretical optimum range for that reason.

Thanks for the input. I did similar tests a few days ago and I wasn't seeing extreme variations but the LR Kinetics were outperforming what I would expect to see given the way the weapons stack up at different ranges. So I created a quick mod which just reduced that damage from 3 to 2 and it seems to work out really well. I still use LR Kinetics for some designs but they aren't the 'go to' all the time when I need an effective design.



I also made a few other minor tweaks while I was under the hood and the AI seems to be doing better as a result too. I really doesn't take much at this stage to have a favorable impact on the game.

I never had the analytical mind of patience (as well as intelligence huh) to go through data as you do but my gaming experience pretty much mirrors your statement. Tho I feel in single-salvo comparison missiles are still pretty much overkill compared to the other weapon systems the fact that kinetics fire 4 times and beams twice compared to the single salvo Missiles per segment turns the whole thing upside-down.



The Rate of Fire also messes up defense. Even tho true that kinetic attacks can be countered effectively, the fact that you have to do it 4 times in a single segment puts the favor back to kinetics. I sacrificed a whole evening once to test out different weapon layouts versus the same opponent (load an auto-save with a turn of conflict) and LR kinetics vs kinetic defense are even better then LR missiles vs zero missile defense.

WhiteWeasel wrote:
I skimmed though your post so maybe you covered this but kinetic deflectors will deflect a fixed number of projectiles, regardless of it's actual damage. So because of the smaller salvo size, aren't LR kinetics are stopped much more effectively than melee kinetics by deflectors?

That may very well be and in fact, it matches my observation that 'a little goes a long way' when it comes to Kinetic defense (unlike Missile defenses where it seems like more of an investment is needed to actually prevent being hit and taking serious damage.



But it was the damage curve that struck me as odd. And in any case, many people have stated repeatedly that they get the best performance out of LR Kinetic 'glass cannons'. Using Ail's AI ship mod shows that very well because the AI fleets (which use a lot higher percentage of LR Kinetics) are far more terrifying than the default ships are.



Thanks for the input and that is definitely something to consider. If we could ever get a good 'flowchart' of exactly how combat works we could then backtrack from there and see if any modifications should be tried.



Thanks again!

Uncle_Joe wrote:
-snip-

I skimmed though your post so maybe you covered this but kinetic deflectors will deflect a fixed number of projectiles, regardless of it's actual damage. So because of the smaller salvo size, aren't LR kinetics are stopped much more effectively than melee kinetics by deflectors?