PPB Rebalance Poll

[raynor]

In my opinion, the problem with the current tech tree is that there isn't a significant advantage to researching weapons higher up the tech tree. Certainly, the Null Space Projector is an exception because it is great against Starbases that may have tons and tons of both armor and shields. But it seems like most of the other weapons that you get further down the way are seriously underpowered due to their low rate of fire.

Would anyone disagree with giving the Wave Motion Gun a ROF of 2 instead of 3, increasing its range by 4 and upping its damage by 50%?

What about the Graviton Hellbore? What happens if we double its range altogether?

The PPB seems to be the poster child for problems with the tech tree. But I wouldn't modify just this weapon. Still... I guess if you reduced the power of this weapon, then it would make the WMG and Grav Hellbore seem less inadequate.

[Phoenix-D]

"Would anyone disagree with giving the Wave Motion Gun a ROF of 2 instead of 3, increasing its range by 4 and upping its damage by 50%?"

Can we say "overkill"? Remember that the WMG gets a 30% bonus to hit, and if the WMG ship has superior speed it can pop in and out of range. Painful.

One *maybe* two of those would be good, but all three would be too much. Actually just the range increase alone, maybe with a slight boost to to-hit, would be enough. That and make the Ripper and Incinerator beams seperate weapon families.

Phoenix-D

[raynor]

Some numbers:

Wep Damage Rng size Research Cost(medium)
APB XII 65..45 (8) 30Kt 1,600,000 (ROF 1)
Meson VI 35..35 (6) 20Kt 510,000 (ROF 1)
PPB V 60..60 (6) 30Kt 290,000 (ROF 1)
WMG III 140..140 (8) 70Kt 4,212,000 (ROF 3)
GHB V 145..40 (8) 60Kt 290,000 (ROF 2)

That Last one is the Graviton Hellbore V. Wow. I didn't realize that one was so easy to get compared to the Wave Motion Gun. Which would you rather put on your ship: a weapon that costs 1/14th as much to research and fires 50% more often and weights 10Kt less... Wow! (Granted, its damage definitely falls off over distance.)

Here are some other numbers:

Null Space Projector skips shields *and* armor and does this damage:

NSP III 60..60 (5) 50Kt 187,500 (ROF 3)

I might set the rate of fire on the Wave Motion Gun to 1 and let it fire every turn for a total research cost of 4.2 million and twice the size of the APB XII that costs a third as much to research.

With an ROF of 3, you could put 2 APB XII's on a ship and get 270 damage points at max range 8 every three turns compared to a single WMG doing only 140 damage points at the same range during the same timeframe. Plus... the WMG is more likely to miss and do no damage at all.

Anyways...

[Phoenix-D]

"Which would you rather put on your ship: a weapon that costs 1/14th as much to research and fires 50% more often and weights 10Kt less... Wow!"

Key difference: the Hellbore *does not get a bonus to hit*. The WMG DOES- a 30% bonus. That means the WMG is a heck of a lot more likely to connect at max range.

Phoenix-D

[raynor]

Yep. You're right. The Graviton Hellbore doesn't fare very well against the WMG. In addition to the 30% bonus of the WMG, that cliff-like drop-off of damage possibly plays a role as well.

So, let's go back to comparing the PPB to the WMG.

Because of the tech cost difference, I don't think it is fair to assume a ship with the WMG is going to have the speed advantage sufficient to maintain maximum range. So, the PPB devastates the WMG ship. With a speed benefit of 3 to the WMG ship, it seems like the two ships are in a dead heat.

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by raynor:
In my opinion, the problem with the current tech tree is that there isn't a significant advantage to researching weapons higher up the tech tree. Certainly, the Null Space Projector is an exception because it is great against Starbases that may have tons and tons of both armor and shields. But it seems like most of the other weapons that you get further down the way are seriously underpowered due to their low rate of fire.

Would anyone disagree with giving the Wave Motion Gun a ROF of 2 instead of 3, increasing its range by 4 and upping its damage by 50%?

What about the Graviton Hellbore? What happens if we double its range altogether?

The PPB seems to be the poster child for problems with the tech tree. But I wouldn't modify just this weapon. Still... I guess if you reduced the power of this weapon, then it would make the WMG and Grav Hellbore seem less inadequate.

Actually, I'd give the WMG a bit more range than any other 'beam' weapon and a higher damage ratio than any other beam weapon since it's supposed to be the 'ultimate' but then I'd give it an even slower rate of fire. Look at the cartoons it's extracted from. They spend entire episodes waiting for the WMG to charge up & fire. So, range 10, max damage of 280 (4-1 ratio) then increase ROF to 4 or maybe even 5. This would produce a weapon of awesome power in capital ship mounts but you'd have to wait 4 or 5 turns to fire it and you'd be pummeled in the meantime.

I'd give the Graviton helbore a new damage type, like Skips All Shields. It doesn't get a bonus to hit and it has a VERY steep range attenuation. It's worthless as a standard damage weapon. I don't know why the default races were setup to use it since it's a step down from torpedos. Since it's supposed to be a 'gravity' tech weapon I thought that skipping all shields would make it worthwhile for races like the EEE and Fazrah to actually use it.

The PPB could be balanced by increasing its size slightly and/or increasing its research cost somewhat.

[ May 28, 2002, 06:37: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[Phoenix-D]

"Because of the tech cost difference, I don't think it is fair to assume a ship with the WMG is going to have the speed advantage sufficient to maintain maximum range."

OTOH, remember that a decent chunk of the WMG's research cost is in Propulsion.

Hmm. Personally just dropping the cost of High-Energy Discharge might do it.. but you do get three types of weapons in one field there.

Phoenix-D

[Andrés]

I disagree with the idea of making research harder. If you do that you'll never get them before the enemy has phased shields and will never be able to exploit their special damage type.
IMHO PPB should be balanced to make them useful ONLY when you can exploit their special ability and become obsolete once phased shields come into play. A solution to acieve this should involve rebalancing not only PPBs but also SGs and PSGs (I recall complains about shields being too weak)

I had the idea of finding a formula relating all features of a weapon, and then modding all weapon to get the same balance result.
Something like
AverangeDamage/Size/ReloadTime
but making it more complex to involve things such as range, to hit bonuses, weapon type, special damage type, cost and research cost.

I had made a spredsheet with that but could never find a formula because the role of most of those factors, and their relative importance will vary with the situation.

[Taera]

I think that reducing the ROF without increasing the damage would make it unsuitable as a primary weapon. You would have changed it to a torpedo then. If you do that then any race that uses the PPB should be changed to use it only as a secondary weapon and stick with a ROF 1 weapon for main armament.

I have to agree with the Baron that reducing rate of fire would make it unsuitable for the role of a primary weapon. Increasing size might not be a bad idea, but I really think that increasing the research effort would be all that is needed.

OK. I will explain my own opinion.
You might notice that in the game all weapons with some special abilities are support weapons - NSP has RoF 3, Ionic Dispenser have been fixed, Tachyon Projector is expensive and has ROF 4. Repulsor/Tractor weapons are limited in their strenght by size tonnage.Shield depleter is shield depleter, no damage to anything else. Shield dustruptor is just same as Tachyon Projector, a hell expensive thing. Same with Computer Virus.

So all the weapons with "special ability" are made this way that even while being mostly not any difficult to reach, having disadvantages from "normal" weapons and thus being reduced to support weapon scale, what they are supposed to be.
Very similar thing was in SEIII - the PPB was reduced in effect due to being not too easy to research and having 2/3 of the damage the PPB does have, plus to the deal that Emmisive Weapon was stopping it completely.

The point is that PPB is supposed to be a "special" weapon, support weapon, call it however you want. But in the SEIV the PPB is brought to the point of being one of the cheapest techs to research (50+100 research, and then 5 levels beginning from 5k -- cheap), having damage superior to most weapons of the same time, including APB at most levels and being averagely cheap with tonnage of 30kT only.

I realy wish to see the weapon reduced back to its special place. There are many ways and each one is good.

[God Emperor]

I agree with those who suggest that the problem isnt necessarily PPB's but the fact that there are no better weapons further up the tech tree. WMG's rate of fire is too slow for it to be an automatic replacement for PPB's.

What we need are additional weapons (like in MOO2) such as disruptors, phasors, Gauss Cannons, Neutron BLasters, Stellar Converters, Plasma Bolts, etc.....

Sounds like a few of us need to come up with some additional components!