I don't think the issue is with the weapons, but rather the firmly set ranges per stage. If the cards included options to burn the engines in stage one in an effort to close the distance, and a counter option to burn to maintain distance, with bonuses toward that tactic based on engine types, the whole battle dynamic would change. Hrmm, think I'll go add that to suggestions...

Those are great ideas Skyles, I've suggested things like that before. There should be cards to stay at long range longer, or close in more quickly, etc. A ship with all missiles would obviously want to remain at long range as much as possible. I think that alone would help the issues a lot.

I think the problem with Kenetics is that it is easy for someone to get defense for it, in fact, all players start out with at least a very basic defense for it. With Beam weapons, you really have to go out of your way to get shields, and while flak is not as out of the way on the tech tree as shields, it is rather ineffective at lower levels. Overall, the problem may be that flak defenses aren't quite good enough, and shields aren't easy enough to get. Either way, this means Kinetics feel less useful, especially early in the game.

Kinetics tends to be the weapon that can be safely ignored. You can slap a single deflector on a ship and just assume that the few projectiles to hit in Phase 1 will be deflected, and hopefully the ship is dead on Phase 2.



What Kinetics needs is for deflection to only work on 75% of projectiles and not 100%.

K__ wrote:
Kinetics tends to be the weapon that can be safely ignored. You can slap a single deflector on a ship and just assume that the few projectiles to hit in Phase 1 will be deflected, and hopefully the ship is death on Phase 2.



What Kinetics needs is for deflection to only work on 75% of projectiles and not 100%.

That's exactly it. I always put ten each of the highest-tier of defences on my ships. What ends up happening is I always take a severe beating from missiles, oftentimes losing ships in the process. Against Beams, I'll take some damage, but generally do pretty well (Being Beam-focused myself). Against Kinetics, no matter their fleet layout, I know I'll be AOK. That's a balance issue.

Just while we're on the subject, beams should be changed to actual beams, visually and mechanically. They should be lasers, no pew pew plasma bolts.



That would, at least aesthetically, go an awful long way to differentiating between them and kinetics.

But how can they be lasers if they are plasma-based?

If lasers, they would travel much faster than kinetic weapons. People just call them lasers because they are used to (and there are no actually laser weapons in the game).

Lasers would essentially be instantaneous. Which is my point. They should be a beam of light just like a laser, rather than a glowing projectile.



As it stands, the word beam is being used incorrectly to describe something that is not a beam.



The visual of a ship arcing huge lasers across the enemy hull is something I'd like to see. It would provide them with a role because, right now, they don't have as well a defined position in the armory. Kinetics are merciless up close and have a pleasing visual effect to accompany a solid gameplay role, and missiles have an equally well differentiated position in the game, with entire different strategies. Beams right now are just sorta a default middle ground. I'd like to see them pushed further from the other two and made into their own thing. If they were actual lasers with a charge up time and all that jazz they'd be not only useful but cooled to use.

You want some kinetics in you fleet. Your enemy can go heavy shield and flak, but not all three. Well they can but then they wouldn't have space for weapons. :P





I think they're ok for now but wouldn't be afraid to review their power.

Sparks wrote:
Lasers would essentially be instantaneous. Which is my point. They should be a beam of light just like a laser, rather than a glowing projectile.



As it stands, the word beam is being used incorrectly to describe something that is not a beam.



The visual of a ship arcing huge lasers across the enemy hull is something I'd like to see. It would provide them with a role because, right now, they don't have as well a defined position in the armory. Kinetics are merciless up close and have a pleasing visual effect to accompany a solid gameplay role, and missiles have an equally well differentiated position in the game, with entire different strategies. Beams right now are just sorta a default middle ground. I'd like to see them pushed further from the other two and made into their own thing. If they were actual lasers with a charge up time and all that jazz they'd be not only useful but cooled to use.

According to the in-game descriptions, most "Laser" weapons actually are plasma based, which is why they move slow enough to see.

Ash_F wrote:
You want some kinetics in you fleet. Your enemy can go heavy shield and flak, but not all three. Well they can but then they wouldn't have space for weapons. :P





I think they're ok for now but wouldn't be afraid to review their power.

I have yet to encounter a single situation which isn't alleviated by more Beams and Missiles, rather than Kinetics. They're just utterly worthless weapons as is. As mentioned, the AI doesn't need to put much in the way of Deflectors on, because so few rounds hit, and those that do are completely washed out by the Deflectors. At least the Beams and Missiles have a chance to connect and cause some hurt.

Surprisingly, if you can get to the late game kinetics without your enemy finding out you could employ kinetic glass cannons with some effect.



20% accuracy is bad, but the last few kinetic weapons fire up to 35 and 42 shells per round, with and average of 7 damage.



That's an average damage of 49 to 58.8 damage per module at long range.





Not much I grant you, but in a surprise attack against enemy's who have given up using deflectors, it could be an edge.



P.S. that would be 220.5 damage to 264.6 damage in melee range. Not too shabby if you can get into that range.

Romeo wrote:
I have yet to encounter a single situation which isn't alleviated by more Beams and Missiles, rather than Kinetics. They're just utterly worthless weapons as is. As mentioned, the AI doesn't need to put much in the way of Deflectors on, because so few rounds hit, and those that do are completely washed out by the Deflectors. At least the Beams and Missiles have a chance to connect and cause some hurt.

I don't know. I have gotten battle reports where kinetics scored highest even though I always run less in the fleet than missiles or beams. This was because the enemy was stacking shield and flak(probably because I am mostly missile and beam). I commonly see Battleships with ~15 kinetics pop 1-2 cp ships in round 1 of phase 1 when they don't have deflectors. Killing a ship that fast is itself a big advantage, something beams and, especially, missiles can't do.



I'm not saying they are OP, or even balanced. Just not obviously UP.

There are easy counter against missiles, but other than killing them before melee, Kinetics destroy everything.

When you have tech advantage, you can put more tonnage on some inpenetrable defense, and still able to destroy everything.

Since at their effective range, Kinetics deals lot more damage per tonnage.

meowww wrote:


Since at their effective range, Kinetics deals lot more damage per tonnage.

Statistically speaking kinetics do more damage than beams, not accounting for their deplorable accuracy...

meowww wrote:
There are easy counter against missiles, but other than killing them before melee, Kinetics destroy everything.

When you have tech advantage, you can put more tonnage on some inpenetrable defense, and still able to destroy everything.

Since at their effective range, Kinetics deals lot more damage per tonnage.

Killing them before melee is usually pretty damn easy, and even if they survive, Deflectors turn Kinetics in to a joke. Let's assume you assemble three different fleets against three statistically similar fleets with balanced defences and weapons (Say, 500MP of every defence and weapon type):



You make a missile fleet: You do awesome damage in round one, more than likely taking out a sizeable chunk of their fleet in the first round. You may also take out the remainder, as your fleet is now focusing fire on a smaller number of ships, effectively overcoming the accuracy loss with more missiles being shot at each target. On top of that, you also receive less damage on rounds two and three, as more of their fleet is eliminated.



You make a beam fleet: You do acceptable damage on the first round, though are unlikely to flat out kill anyone just yet. Still, the enemy is seriously hurt as they enter round two, where you're likely to either kill them all, or leave few survivors. Melee will be spent picking off any survivors with relative impunity.



You make a kinetic fleet: You do no damage in round one. The few shots of yours that do connect will be harmlessly deflected. As round two starts, the enemy might finally start taking a small amount of damage, though certainly not enough to kill any. As melee rolls around, you now have one round to try and kill their whole fleet, meaning yours shots are still being spread throughout their whole fleet, minimizing how many shots are being fired at each opponent. Also consider that the enemy will more than likely still be at full strength going in to melee, meaning your own fleet will have been taking a beating this whole time.





If we continue this through to Kinetics vs 'x', we see:



Kinetics versus Missile: Missile wipes out a good chunk of the fleet right out of the gates, picks off a few more in round two and then picks off any stragglers in melee, while the weakened enemy fires at only a couple ships.



Kinetics versus Beam: Beam weakens the enemy fleet, Kinetics does nothing. Beam takes out a number of ships, Kinetics weakens the enemy. Beam now finishes off survivors while Kinetic fires at only a couple ships.









People keep saying "Kinetic does the most damage". Which is technically true. But they have to wait to do any decent damage. It'd be like playing a shooter with a Shotgun out in the open: Sure, you'll do great damage when you close the gap, but that means nothing if you're dead before getting there.

I'd imagine changes are going to have to wait until the expansion. They talk about boarding and stuff like that which I'd imagine is going to completely revamp the melee phase of battle.



It will be better if a lot of combat changes happen together, so they can be reasonably balanced, rather than trickle in only to drastically change later on. From the looks of the expansion thread there's a whole host of new mechanics going in so let's operate a wait and see approach to this sort of thing. Especially as 'new weapon types' was an explicitly mentioned feature.

No.



Encouraging people to use more variety through innovative game mechanics or alternatively making it so that ships have more HP would be vastly preferable.

Waylander1982 wrote:
No.



Encouraging people to use more variety through innovative game mechanics or alternatively making it so that ships have more HP would be vastly preferable.

More HP doesn't make Kinetic awesome though. It just means it gets one chance to shine at the very end of a battle. Beams will simply become OP then, as they outperform Kinetics at drawn out battling. As for encouraging a variety of innovation, I think we all agree - which is why we want Kinetics to be a possibility in that process. If something is blatantly underpowered, it is abandoned. Making it relevant gives the player more freedom, thus, encourages more innovative tactics.

I'm not suggesting it for the purpose of making Kinetics more useful, just as a general point.



The people I play with have been using a 3-1-0/5-1-1 lock in for weapon and defensive modules, whereby the 3/5 must always be Kin/Defl. To explain, for every 3 Kinetic modules you may have 1 Missile or Beam and/or for every 5 Kinetic you can have 1 Beam and 1 Missile. It might sound odd, but its made space battles far more about card usage (and the upcoming addition of cards to auto will make our games much faster ) and much less about just spamming whatever you can get your hands on.



It makes battles last longer, in that it can often take a few turns to destroy a fleet, and be more fun on average.

the problem is not kinetics the problem is melee range. Since it always take 2 full rounds of fire to get to melee range, melee attacks will never be an optimal solution.



I agree with others that if kinetics are too be useful, there have to be ways to get into melee range quicker.





For one, I like the idea that stellar effects could inhibit long ranges. For example, perhaps long range is impossible in a nebula system (or something) so all combats within them start at medium range.