wait, the reason you think that kinetics aren't usable is the way its defended? Do you think that defending kinetics with deflect is too easy or too hard? because i can tell you right now that the deflect is the least effective at preventing damage compared to shields or flak.

Just some food for thought but having weapon systems counter weapon systems would be a nice idea in terms of balancing, I mean currently we are already developing laser systems to counter missile threats and well rapid firing kinetics would shred missiles anyway just a thought for balancing so kinetics based ships can close for the Punch.

Another minor suggestion would be to change the lasers weapon point to say an energy weapons point, that way we are open to a more creative licence, I mean PAC's would be baddass (fun little thing I like to refer to as a particle accelerator cannon).

if neither can be achieved a racial modifier would certainly be nice, for example Human's are generally seen as a younger sort of race and as such kinetic weapons suit them better so they get a bonus of some sort for kinetic weapons, Sophons are scientists so they get a bonus towards energy weapons etc.



Just the rantings of an avid Sci-Fi fan

Interesting topic. I too find it lacking that we have only 3 type of weapons and no variant to speak off (ie i see no reason why kinetics can only be rapid fire spam cannons). I think the most limiting factor is the way each type of weapons are countered; Deflectors block kinetics outright regardless of how much damage/force the round has, shields block damage so it doesn't matter if lasers are high damage or fast firing and missiles can only block a limited amount of missiles regadless of tier (thus making rapid fire missiles and such would break the defense outright). To add more variety in weapons there would be need to change how each type are defended against...

would be nice, not a priority. could always make official mod, and leave the core game largely simple.

Igncom1 wrote:
I have always felt that weapons like beams should change their damage at range rather then accuracy.

Definitely, I thought I wrote it, but I guess it got cut off with my posting problems, anyway: the reasoning behind my laser types was that the direct lasers were short range because the further the range, the laser strength will diminish, leading to less damage (as well as high energy costs :P). Don't lasers already do less damage at further ranges? If yes, I guess not enough reduction? XD And if not, well that's pretty damn strong for a laser!!

I have always felt that weapons like beams should change their damage at range rather then accuracy.

Yea, in my ideas for missile and laser range versions was to make it that shorter weapons deal larger quantities of damage while suffering at range, the problem with that is (or at least it was) was that a battle rarely lasts to close range phase and missiles, for example, would usually blow up the entire fleet from first couple salvos (at least vs ai :P). Applications of laser weaponry varies highly on the series, genre, what ever you want to call it. The main reason that kinetics are so much worse here than other 4X games like this is that you were able to get in the enemies face with kinetics and blow them to hell. In this game, it has phases which you can't skip or order different tactics, and I think they attempted to make it so that you'd grab all 3 weapon types, and all 3 defenses to be a more realistic type of game, but as shown in games like EVE, its better to just focus one type and get as much damage out of it as you can. This lead to people mainly getting missiles, and in a few cases lasers, because of their high damage and high chance of hit instead of the (looker looking) kinetics.



I'm not positive on the difference of pilot, spy? and commander, only knowing that they buff damage and defense on fleets instead of system benefits. Maybe they'll be further explained in the expansion, but right now it's pretty.. blank. Fleet heroes do have some high defense bonuses early, like the Defense, but the card versions of them are not only free but provide much higher bonuses. Space games are usually the least played because (most people play horrible games like CoD :P) and because they are so hard to do. Books and movies are easier to do because you don't have to worry about balancing issues, but with games there are problems to try and make variety so that not all races are like red vs blue, as well as making sure no race and their weapons, or just any weapon just completely wrecks another type.



OMG Lol, I thought I posted this but I got distracted XD Don't know if I even finished my points XD

Well kinetics, far as I feel, suffer most from retreat option as they are just not... there, before the last phase. Missiles do suffer from this in a sense that a missilefleet will not be able to pull off any damage to retreating fleet, but kinetic fleets just get shafted. Long range, they're worth nothing. Medium range, fine they'll hit some of the time but if Im facing a strong kinetic fleet this is where I bugger out, hopefuly having dealt some hurt in the first phase with lasers/missiles. Bottomline is that I took hardly any damage and more often than not dealt more than I took at least.



This would be good assuming this would take strategy, but as it is that involves absolutely nada. And is more or less always a viable option. Of course this tells us, as said, more about the retreat system rather than kinetics but it is a system in the game that needs to be accounted in.



Far as the missiles go, the logic was that torpedoes being long range but generally a bit sluggish, might not be best option for longest of the ranges, hence my chain of tought. Far as lasers go, beams 'n pulses are what eve uses and honestly I've no idea about physics and previous applications of laser weaponry in a lot of scifi so I wouldn't go guessing myself. :P I've learned to keep my head down on things I haven't got a clue. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed-energy_weapon has few suggestions tho. =)



It was said that giving all weapon systems all ranges would make things boring, but again I emphasise on the point that I don't want them to be exactly same, I'd prefer if everything would have its own flare BUT, and this is the kicker, would be viable as a combat system in general. So it might actually force people into diverse setups requiring equal diversity to counter. If likes of EVE have taught me one thing, its to always have a system that brings all of the damage output in a certain range, whatever that range is, so the whole fleet will be effective at a set distance. Failure to effectively engage at this setting, means you bugger off before you get to enemy's preferred range assuming he didn't have longer range. In realistic terms this might mean something like fleet-wide flak,



This would also enable the game to (perhaps?) let close-range fleets have lighter weaponry, so they could fit more defensive modules in order to actually close in while still resembling a spaceship rather than debris. Which would actually shift my focus on them as I like heroes with (very) high defensive boosts and up-close 'n personal would suit me just fine.



Furthermore I would think that it would also mean that closer-range weaponsystems would put out a lot more stuff than long-range which, far as I considered are more built on the emphasis of accuracy over quantity of things thrown to the wall. Anyway this might just all be madman's ravings at this point. =)

I've never understood rail guns in EVE they never made sense to me, it's inaccurate, but I guess its balancing issues, can't make rail guns realistic by being both accurate even at long ranges AND deal realistically high damage. But hey, if you create specialization in ES and make kinetics more worth it, sure



But I feel it should be:

Long range, torpedoes

Medium range, missiles

Short range, rockets.



But that's probably because of the other space games I've played and or know (BFG :P)



Lasers:

Long range: "Beams" (The flying piece of plasma)

Medium Range: Phasers

Short range: lasers (the single direct laser)

I've never understood rail guns in EVE they never made sense to me, it's inaccurate, but I guess its balancing issues, can't make rail guns realistic by being both accurate even at long ranges AND deal realistically high damage. But hey, if you create specialization in ES and make kinetics more worth it, sure



But I feel it should be:

Long range, torpedoes

Medium range, missiles

Short range, rockets.



But that's probably because of the other space games I've played and or know (BFG :P)



Lasers:

Long range: "Beams" (The flying piece of plasma)

Medium Range: Phasers

Short range: lasers (the single direct laser, reason: they'll probably use up the most energy (realistically) so it'll be more efficient at closer range, as well as the fact the beams die down after range)

Ok, really now, yes it is true if you use missiles and they hit, boom, my ships are dead before they can shoot. And kinetics aren't very good in that case. But flak is the most efficient defense....you can fairly easily put enough flak on to prevent missiles from killing you. If I have enough flak, and you decide to retreat, awesome, I get the system. If I don't have enough flak, I retreat and take 0 damage until I can get enough flak.



If you don't have enough deflectors, or no deflectors at all, and you retreat in the second phase, then I get 2 rounds to shoot at you, 40% accuracy of kinetics will do a lot of damage if you aren't equipped with deflectors. If you try the stupid "offensive retreat" then you might get away once, but then it's easily countered by a card I would probably play anyway, +40% kinetic damage.



Alternatively I could use lasers, but flak is the same tech as kinetics, so I only have to research one thing.



Besides, the whole "i can just retreat" argument is really saying that the retreat mechanic is stupid (which it is, and should be tweaked) and doesn't say as much about the combat itself.

Affinity wrote:
wait, the reason you think that kinetics aren't usable is the way its defended? Do you think that defending kinetics with deflect is too easy or too hard? because i can tell you right now that the deflect is the least effective at preventing damage compared to shields or flak.

No it's bad because its most effective phase is at the 3rd one where you can easily retreat before, or by that point have half your fleet knocked out (making your increased damage output pointless). It would certainly help at the longer range phases though if the defense was changed to absorbing a % of the damage for a certain number of hits, with an increase in accuracy. Deflectors are the worst because they currently don't deflect as many projectiles of the same tier, there would be adjustments to change the stats around for everything, perhaps it would be too much work when there are simpler solutions.

Right! I wasn't certain whether a several month old thread is worth necroing ( https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/11056-discussion-about-weapons ), so I made a new one. Feel free to include this post in it rather than as a separated post if you deem so better. Neither did I find a similar thread via search to cover the points I want to bring about. I saw "more X weapons" in https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/13098-community-suggestions-amplitude-is-following but again, no discussion thread relevant to it. Phew, mandatory apologies done.



Basic assumption:

Weapons in endless space are similar to what we have these days. We have projectiles varying from .22 to 155mm shells and up. As such I find it curious that in the distant future we're given option between short-range kinetics, long-range missiles and laser weaponry which seems to be workhorse of all ranges yet doesn't excel in any.



So what would I like to see?

Different weapon types within their respective categories. Each category having its own hit-chances and damage output depending on type of weapon. By this I mean something like this:



Kinetic, smaller chance to hit smaller targets from longer ranges maybe?

Long range, rail-guns.

Medium range, artillery.

Short range, rapid-fire auto-cannons(?)



Missiles, add an disadvantage here. Perhaps flak could be more or less fleet-wide, making actual escort ships viable option vs heavy missile users?

Long range, cruise missiles?

Medium range, torpedoes

Short range, rockets.



Lasers, being beam weapons, maybe an actual beam, slowly moved across the fleet able to damage multiple ships? Used maybe on phases' 2nd turn? Or maybe the workhorse without much benefit or disadvantage with current format? Note: Possible counter for swarms of small ship, broadside of dreadnought’s beams swooping across the fleet?

Ranges - Different radiation based lengths? I don’t' want to copy-paste eve-online's here but I don't know enough of physics to put something tangible here. Maybe someone will help me?



What would be the goal of this?

As it stands I feel that my choice of weaponry and thus defence is limited. As I prefer myself to play with lasers, having the sniper trait on my faction, everything combaty ends before phase 3, as such I really never see projectiles in use. I could even stack missiles and never see computer use lasers to much of an effect. The goal would be to make combat more... Diverse I suppose, without having to actually touch the core system that is out of question according the "followed suggestions".



To further elaborate, I don't mean all of these would deal same damage as I'd imagine further you need to lob things, or project things, more you need to focus on delivery part. As such I'd imagine longer ranges would suffer from penalty to damage and to an extent accuracy, as well as being later discovered than close-range weaponry. By this I mean the tech would go somewhere along the side you come up with new material as it already is, first you are given ability to project it effectively to short ranges, then medium and last but not least, long ranges. Meaning close-range fleets would actually have meaning as they would be first to be able to utilize newer materials + higher damage potential once they do close in.



Furthermore I would LIKE to see ship size mean something in this context. If you are lobbing ammunition over vast distances, your chances of hitting a dreadnought should in my opinion be higher than your chances of hitting a destroyer. But that’s just me and I'd like to see opinions about this. How to exactly implement it in a balanced fashion I've no idea as I've no real grasp on game making and balancing. Fortunately there might be people who have. =)



Of course everything said here is just matter of opinion and as such open for debate. If you want to tell me I'm an retarded rhesus monkey you are free to do so as long as you tell me why. So far I've seen one of the best forums in any game I've played so maybe it won't come to that, but you're certainly welcome to tell me I'm wrong.

Affinity wrote:
Roughly equal? I think that would be boring.What is proposed here would do just that, it would equalize the 3 types of weaponry. Long range kinetics (while completely viable realistically) would take away a lot from the combat system from a strategic viewpoint. Kinetics are the punch in your face weapon, if your ships are tough enough to survive missiles and lasers, they get to pummel the little pipsqueak destroyers.



The weapon types being different makes it more interesting. missiles interact with flak differently than lasers with shields, and kinetics with deflect. In fact, these interactions heavily favor kinetics, and if you only compared weapon to defense modules (not taking into account that missiles and laser fire first) kinetics outright obliterates the other two point for point.









Against AI this may be true, but that is a reflection on the AI more than the combat system itself. I will tell your right now that if you "prefer" lasers or missiles, I will easily counter your ships and wreck face. The dynamic of different weapon types, retrofitting, and adapting to the situation is the depth of the combat. I don't think you need to add in 6 more weapon types to make it interesting, you just need competent opponents that actively work to kill you in the most painful way possible.

"Equal" means equality in usability, not all having the same stat. Why would I want them to have all the same stats?

Is like to see a kind of balance that has each type doing this:



Kinetics: Low accuracy, high volume, high damage, anti-kinetics reduce damge rather then blocking it.



Beams: High accuracy, medium volume, low damage, anti-beams scamble the accuracy of beams to prevent a hit.



Missiles: Vearing accuracy, low volume, vearing damage, anti-missile defences destroy the missile ordinance as they come in.



And then have the weapon types detirmine what the weapons try to do.





And thats before we attempt to introduce new weapon types like torpedos, heavy combat lasers, drones/strikecraft and ect.

I agree, having "armor" reduce the damage of kinetics, and having "deflectors" for lasers would make kinetics more usable.

I do agree that flak should defend the whole fleet rather than just the one ship being fired on. Shields could be "extended" as well for this. Maybe 1/2 of the shields of an untargetted ship could be extended to a ship being targetted?



Deflectors should also reduce damage of beams (maybe by 1/2 as much as it reduces kinetics damage).



Bingo, all three defenses made better! And, now you don't have only "one ship vs one ship" all the time.

Weighing the weapons will be important to determine a good balance for cargo usage so if one type of weapon is more useful than the others you cant simply put as many of it as x other weapon system, where it would negate the point of using other suboptimal systems.

Is like to see a kind of balance that has each type doing this:



Kinetics: Low accuracy, high volume, high damage, anti-kinetics reduce damge rather then blocking it.



Beams: High accuracy, medium volume, low damage, anti-beams scamble the accuracy of beams to prevent a hit.



Missiles: Vearing accuracy, low volume, vearing damage, anti-missile defences destroy the missile ordinance as they come in.



And then have the weapon types detirmine what the weapons try to do.





And thats before we attempt to introduce new weapon types like torpedos, heavy combat lasers, drones/strikecraft and ect.

Dementophobic wrote:
I'd like to see this in an expansion, in the current game I just want to see all 3 weapon types roughly equal.

Roughly equal? I think that would be boring.What is proposed here would do just that, it would equalize the 3 types of weaponry. Long range kinetics (while completely viable realistically) would take away a lot from the combat system from a strategic viewpoint. Kinetics are the punch in your face weapon, if your ships are tough enough to survive missiles and lasers, they get to pummel the little pipsqueak destroyers.



The weapon types being different makes it more interesting. missiles interact with flak differently than lasers with shields, and kinetics with deflect. In fact, these interactions heavily favor kinetics, and if you only compared weapon to defense modules (not taking into account that missiles and laser fire first) kinetics outright obliterates the other two point for point.

Azver wrote:
As it stands I feel that my choice of weaponry and thus defence is limited. As I prefer myself to play with lasers, having the sniper trait on my faction, everything combaty ends before phase 3, as such I really never see projectiles in use. I could even stack missiles and never see computer use lasers to much of an effect. The goal would be to make combat more... Diverse I suppose, without having to actually touch the core system that is out of question according the "followed suggestions".

Against AI this may be true, but that is a reflection on the AI more than the combat system itself. I will tell your right now that if you "prefer" lasers or missiles, I will easily counter your ships and wreck face. The dynamic of different weapon types, retrofitting, and adapting to the situation is the depth of the combat. I don't think you need to add in 6 more weapon types to make it interesting, you just need competent opponents that actively work to kill you in the most painful way possible.

I'd like to see this in an expansion, in the current game I just want to see all 3 weapon types roughly equal.

Oh right I was supposed to make a point out of that, that defensive systems would have to be reworked more than just the (maybe) fleet-wide flak. Might edit a bit of that in once Im done with my game atm.