Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Ok, I have been pondering this in various forms for a while.

Here is something I think might be a good addition.

Make each size class of weapon capable of holding two, of the next size class below it.

(A large turret hard point could hold two medium turrets, or four small ones)
The tracking and support for such weapons is not a thing given freely, however.
The ship must mount sensor boosters scripted for a size class matching the weapon to be supported, or the smaller weapon set will track and target using the larger weapon's speed and accuracy.

(The script simply gives a generic unboosted equivalent for a hull the appropriate size for the weapon, a second unscripted sensor booster would give normal bonuses)

Thoughts?

This would be stupidly over-powered. Just looking at some numbers real quick:

A single Neutron Blaster Cannon II does 78 DPS mounted on a Megathron (note, that's *with* the hull bonuses to Large Hybrids).

Two 250mm Railgun II's do 73 DPS and have roughly 3 times the Optimal and around twice the overall total range with Antimatter.

Four 150mm Railguns do 87 DPS, have twice the optimal, and roughly the same total range with Antimatter. Oh and they can effectively track Frigate sized targets fairly easily, never mind what they do to anything larger.

Note, those last two are un-bonused long-range guns being compared to a ship-bonused short-range gun. If you get into comparing short-range to short-range it gets even stupider, with 2 Medium Neutron 2s doing 87 DPS, and four Light Neutron 2s doing 130 DPS. Of course they suffer in terms of range but who cares when you can throw 32 of them on a Vindicator with that web bonus and hold someone in place for the short amount of time it takes your personal-frigate-fleet worth of mounted guns to blow through them.

It doesn't even cost more cap for this, the combined small or medium guns cost less cap than the Large one does.

A version of this which does this by bundling the turrets into size appropriate packages has been proposed. Lets let this easily abused implementation of the concept die, and all support one of these two implementations of the same high level concept:

Turret-Equivalent of the Rapid ML Concept [Quad Beams&Dual 250 Rails] by Iroquoiss Pliskin

Or

Proposal for 'multi-barrelled' turrets (example given) by Gabriel Karade

Both of those include that they would have comparable, but not quite equal, tracking with the undersized guns they are mounting in an array.

As for the need to fit application mods to reach cruiser/frigate tracking on oversized modules, HTFU. you have more slots and more fitting space. Get over it and make the tracking happen, or don't make it happen and live with what you get.

basically using star citizen weapon mount system with swivel mounts....

Rather than screwing with existing fitting, they need to make the double weapons a thing. Dual 425mm auto cannons have worse stats than the 425mm cruiser varient yet uses large ammo instead. The existing dual weapons need a touch up and new ones need to be added that fill the missing slots. Would be nice for dreads to with twin battleship guns

Would be an interesting idea, but i would reduce the dmg from the smaller sized weapon systems.

Another option would be to lower the applied dmg from smaller ships to lager ships :

e.g.:

Small --> small = 100%
Small --> medium = 75%
Small --> Large = 60 %
Small --> Capital = 30%

It would make bigger ships capable to last longer against smaller weapons. But would not make small ships worthless, because their support role would be still the same.

+1

Not needed, not balanced, and never going to happen. Small ships already do overall less DPS than larger ones almost without exception (certainly the top DPS in each class is lower than the following classes) because small ships have smaller guns and fewer guns. They tend to fire faster but the overall DPS is still lower by a significant amount.

At present it's perfectly viable to run fleets of smaller ships. What you're talking about would completely kill this, along with probably 90% of the solo PvP in the game, since now a Frigate pretty much physically can't kill a Cruiser with a decent active tank (oh and there's no room in your listings for BCs or Destroyers).

Oh and using sub-caps to kill a Carrier... yeah no. That's not gonna work anymore either.

Your big ships have more base HP and more guns. There's your DPS offset by size category. Not by some arbitrary damage reduction based on the size of the gun firing the antimatter shell at the target.

I am revisiting the drawing board on this.

I am looking for a way to have large subcap hulls, AKA the Battleship class, be more combat effective against smaller hulls.

Without necessarily involving drones. Using those as a universal go-to here doesn't feel right.

It comes down to the avionics (scan res, sensor strength), tackle, and mobility. With hard tackle on a frigate, a battleship can rip it right off the field, especially if using close range, high tracking guns.

Why this happens so rarely is a big difference between armor and shield

Armor:
Order of problems: tackle, mobility, avionics
Issues come in with the fact that: armor battleships have got room for cap booster, web, scram, prop and maybe if you are lucky, or pick your ship for it, one other mod, like a target painter or second web. Add on the terrible mobility of a buffertanked armor battleship and/or the major compromises to get a multi-rep active tank, and it is likely that Joe Rifter can get under your guns well before you can lock him down.

Shield:
Order of problems: tackle, mobility, avionics
Again, biggest issue is the lack of space for hard tackle. In this case this is a soft limit, as tackle, prop and tank are all competing directly for those precious mids, for which you have maybe 7. To match the normal 3 slot tank of a roaming armor ship, you end up with 4 for tackle and prop, which means that you are SOL on getting the necessary hard tackle. Then you have to sacrifice DPS to have the avionics to catch that little frigate before it warps off, and maybe a bit more to keep from being jammed. All this combines for a slightly better time than armor, while still requiring a different fit from if you were persuing prey of more even size.