A proposed fix for a preceived problem with weapon calibre

[xenoscepter (OP)]

I did a minor write up in the 2.4.0 Suggestions thread, so if you want the sloppy TL;DR, go here: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=13404.msg167778#msg167778

 - The Problem:
 --- Meson Cannons and High-Power Microwaves are weapons that have no damage scaling. In the case of both, damage scaling cannot easy be tacked on without having a serious impact on the overall functionality and intended roles of those weapons. This wouldn't really be a problem, but calibers higher than 30cm, while gaining range benefits, also fire much slower. In the case of weapons like Lasers, Railguns, and Plasma Cannons, this doesn't matter because damage scaling makes them hit harder. For Particle Beams and Lances, they do full damage at all ranges and cap out before the Beam FCS cap, so not a problem. For Gauss Cannons, they just have a straight up Rate of Fire tech, and their max range is well under the Beam FCS range cap so it's a moot point anyways.

 - The Proposed Solution:
 --- As my many posts on the subject would likely indicate, I have something of a hard-on for this particular issue. It popped into my head on a lark, again, but this time the idea was just so... simple. Elegant. So much so that I felt the need to jot it down quickly in the 2.4.0 Suggestions, but then decided to a do a somewhat fuller write-up.

 --- To wit, have Meson Cannons and HPMs increase their effective rate of fire as they get bigger. Every three caliber techs, make it so that the weapon can fire one more shot for the same amount of power. This avoids them overlapping with one of the more unique facets of Railguns and Gauss Cannons in that those two weapons are actually able to fire more than once per increment. This also gives them a more unique flavor while maintaining their intended roles as secondary weapons.

 --- So if this proposal was implemented, Meson Cannons and High-Power Microwaves would gain the unique trait of becoming more power efficient as they got larger, unlike other "primary weapons" which get stronger. Instead, they would become more in-line with the other existing niche weapons like the Particle Beam/Lance and Gauss Cannon which both have unique gimmicks of their own that help them stand out.

 --- To be more specific about the changes, the caliber breakpoints and their effects would be:
 - 10cm to 15cm: No change.
 - 20cm: Power Requirement to fire per increment changes from 10 to 5.
 - 25cm: Power Requirement to fire per increment changes from 16 to 8.
 - 30cm: Power Requirement to fire per increment changes from 24 to 12.
 - 35cm: Power Requirement to fire per increment changes from 32 to 11.
 - 40cm: Power Requirement to fire per increment changes from 40 to 13.
 - 50cm: Power Requirement to fire per increment changes from 64 to 21.
 - 60cm: Power Requirement to fire per increment changes from 96 to 24.
 - 70cm: Power Requirement to fire per increment changes from 128 to 32.
 - 80cm: Power Requirement to fire per increment changes from 168 to 34.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Weapons in Aurora, excepting the Railgun and the Gauss Cannon CANNOT exceed a RoF of 1 shot per 5 second increment. Under this proposed change, both HPMs AND Meson Cannons would NOT be exempt from this. So their RoF is STILL capped at 1 shot per 5 second increment, it just takes LESS to achieve that RoF as they get bigger.

[nuclearslurpee]

Also re-locating and expanding on part of my comments from the suggestions thread for discussion here:

--- To wit, have Meson Cannons and HPMs increase their effective rate of fire as they get bigger. Every three caliber techs, make it so that the weapon can fire one more shot for the same amount of power. This avoids them overlapping with one of the more unique facets of Railguns and Gauss Cannons in that those two weapons are actually able to fire more than once per increment. This also gives them a more unique flavor while maintaining their intended roles as secondary weapons.

The problem with changing the number of shots is that we hit major tech level breakpoints where certain techs are super-critical and intermediate techs are not. This doesn't fit Aurora's tech modeling very well and would create an unsatisfying progression for the player IMO. In principle I like the concept, just not the breakpoints that would come with it.

Thus, I think implementing this as fractional damage would accomplish substantially the same thing with a smoother progression, and then we can allow mesons and HPMs to increase in damage but not nearly as much so as other beam weapons do, since both of these weapon types specialize in internal damage. This would require Steve to handle fractional values for internal damage calculations which he previously avoided when implementing fractional missile warheads but I think it would be worthwhile. Similar to particle lances there should not be any damage falloff with range to target, this would be kind of silly with such small damage values anyways.

I do agree that the capacitor scaling for mesons and HPMs with caliber is not very reasonable since they don't gain damage with caliber in the way that lasers do. I'd suggest here to simply make the scaling linear like it already is for particle beams. The key difference compared to particle beams is that the caliber techs influence range (up to a point) so we can't simply hold the size constant to keep the DPS balanced, and we have to be careful that the DPS remains roughly the same for all sizes.

What this could look like, for example:

• 10cm: 1 damage, 3 HS, 3 power/shot, 0.3333 damage/HS
• 12cm: 1.25 damage, 4 HS, 3.75 power/shot, 0.3125 damage/HS
• 15cm: 1.5 damage, 5 HS, 4.5 power/shot, 0.3 damage/HS
• 20cm: 2.0 damage, 6 HS, 6 power/shot, 0.3333 damage/HS
• 25cm: 2.5 damage, 8 HS, 7.5 power/shot, 0.3125 damage/HS
• 30cm: 3.0 damage, 9 HS, 9 power/shot, 0.3333 damage/HS
• 35cm: 3.5 damage, 11 HS, 10.5 power/shot, 0.3182 damage/HS
• 40cm: 4.0 damage, 12 HS, 12 power/shot, 0.3333 damage/HS
• 50cm: 5.0 damage, 16 HS, 15 power/shot, 0.3125 damage/HS
• 60cm: 6.0 damage, 19 HS, 18 power/shot, 0.3158 damage/HS
• 70cm: 7.0 damage, 22 HS, 21 power/shot, 0.3182 damage/HS
• 80cm: 8.0 damage, 25 HS, 24 power/shot, 0.32 damage/HS

Note that the damage/HS (about 1/3) and power requirement per HS (about 1:1) remain nearly the same across the entire range. I think this solves the problems outlined in the OP, and avoids the old particle beam problem of lower DPS for larger weapons. This should mean that larger calibers are preferable since alpha-strike damage is important, but depending on capacitor tech a specific intermediate caliber might be called for to achieve high DPS as well at certain tech levels. Since the maximum capacitor tech is 25 any caliber can eventually have ROF 5, which sounds scary but then again so does a high-caliber laser or particle lance.

The concern here is that HPMs and/or mesons might become too strong, although this is also a potential issue with the more-shots approach. This is probably a bigger concern for HPMs since they are already a viable weapon type while mesons have a long way to go before they are overpowered again. We can always bring down the range multipliers if needed to balance the DPS a bit.

[xenoscepter (OP)]

 --- See what I don't like about this is that it has to account for HPMs triple damage against shields and Mesons chance to ignore armor. Both of these weapons are already quite powerful in their own right and get much stronger as you go. Mesons straight up ignore shields completely. That's huge in and of itself, while HPMs completely ignore armor and can quite easily neuter an enemy ship even IF they have hardening.

 --- Damage increases runs a serious risk of completely unbalancing these weapons, because they don't exist in a vacuum. Under the damage model, a 5 second 80cm HPM could put out 24 damage versus shields per increment, while a single 80cm Meson could do 8 damage to the enemy hull per increment and potentially send a good chunk of that directly to the internals. And once the shields were stripped or the Mesons got lucky and hit them through armor, the HPMs would swiftly render the enemy unable to fire back. All at a very long range comparatively speaking, since you could rush down Capacitor Tech and Weapon Caliber. And as long as you kept up with your Beam FCS range, this would be incredibly potent.

 --- To say nothing of Mesons being able to be turreted or how armor ignoring properties would handle the extra damage. I've proposed elsewhere, possibly a few times, of having bigger mesons gain more chances to ignore armor as they go bigger, effectively giving them more dice rolls at it per shot, but still doing one point of damage overall. I've also floated the idea of HPMs getting damage scaling and even a tech to have them focused more for sensor damage at the expense of shield damage and vice versa.

 --- Honestly, while I agree that the tech progression would make Mesons and HPMs an outlier, I disagree with this resulting in an "unsatisfying progression". Nor do I think some techs would be "super-critical" over others. Caliber still scales with Focusing Tech. 12cm over 10cm, and 15cm over 12cm, represent a significant increase in range over their predecessors. Likewise, with the damage model unchanged, more, smaller weapons becomes the only way to generate higher DPS, and at the cost of range, so those weapons remain relevant over a longer period of time as tech advances. Tech breakpoints are valid for three whole tech lines, and require a lot to get to. Likewise, it's not like those gains are retroactively applied to smaller calibers. 10cm is not anymore power efficient at 80cm tech then it was at 10cm.

[nuclearslurpee]

--- Damage increases runs a serious risk of completely unbalancing these weapons, because they don't exist in a vacuum. Under the damage model, a 5 second 80cm HPM could put out 24 damage versus shields per increment, while a single 80cm Meson could do 8 damage to the enemy hull per increment and potentially send a good chunk of that directly to the internals. And once the shields were stripped or the Mesons got lucky and hit them through armor, the HPMs would swiftly render the enemy unable to fire back. All at a very long range comparatively speaking, since you could rush down Capacitor Tech and Weapon Caliber. And as long as you kept up with your Beam FCS range, this would be incredibly potent.

What I'm failing to see here is how this is any different than increasing the effective rate of fire. If a meson cannon or HPM deals 4 damage per hit, how is that any different in practice from firing four times as fast? I can see minor details like shield regeneration but these are minor, the main effect seems the same to me. The one exception is the ROF 5 limit, which working with damage instead of ROF neatly avoids and I would count that as a point in favor of working with damage.

And if the practical effect is the same then the only point which needs to be settled is the matter of degree, since we can adjust the damage/ROF/etc. scaling as needed until a reasonable balance point is found. On this note, I do want to point out that a 80cm HPM doing 24 damage per 5 sec to shields is basically the same as what a 80cm laser does, except that the laser does 168 damage to shields (at close range) every 35 seconds. Similarly, for mesons I have done some calculations in the past and while of course meson effectiveness depends on the target's shields and armor I can state that for a target with ARMOR_TECH_LEVEL armor thickness (e.g., if the armor tech level is 10, an armor thickness of 10), mesons of similar tech level will have about a 4% chance to penetrate and deal an internal damage hit. So an 80cm meson cannon hitting 8 damage per 5 seconds is dealing an average of 0.32 internal damage per 5 seconds, of course this is not eight 1-damage shots but one 8-damage shot to the variance is very high but the average value is the same, and more importantly I'm not sure this is stronger than what a similar MaxTech laser or particle lance can do although those weapons do need to take the enemy shields down first - though, again, this does vary a lot based on how the opponent has configured their passive defenses.

--- Honestly, while I agree that the tech progression would make Mesons and HPMs an outlier, I disagree with this resulting in an "unsatisfying progression". Nor do I think some techs would be "super-critical" over others. Caliber still scales with Focusing Tech. 12cm over 10cm, and 15cm over 12cm, represent a significant increase in range over their predecessors. Likewise, with the damage model unchanged, more, smaller weapons becomes the only way to generate higher DPS, and at the cost of range, so those weapons remain relevant over a longer period of time as tech advances. Tech breakpoints are valid for three whole tech lines, and require a lot to get to. Likewise, it's not like those gains are retroactively applied to smaller calibers. 10cm is not anymore power efficient at 80cm tech then it was at 10cm.

By "breakpoints" I refer to the fact that every three caliber techs gives a much greater boost to the weapon than the others. With the OP proposal, every caliber tech retains whatever its usual bonus is but the 20cm, 35cm, and 60cm techs gain a massive additional bonus. This is like if we said that the Delta, Sigma, and Omega Shields techs each granted an additional +100% recharge rate (not necessarily in terms of power level but rather as another example of the "breakpoints" I am talking about). It's true that caliber contributes to range, but only to a certain point as once we exceed the BFC maximum range the caliber becomes largely non-critical for range purposes.

That said, I guess what we could do is grade the effective rate of fire (EROF) so it improves with every tech, and the impact is felt on the resulting capacitor requirement. To wit:

• 10cm: EROF = 1.0, power = 3
• 12cm: EROF = 1.25, power = 3.25 (was 4)
• 15cm: EROF = 1.5, power = 4 (was 6)
• 20cm: EROF = 2.0, power = 5 (was 10)
• 25cm: EROF = 2.25, power = 7 (was 16)
• 30cm: EROF = 2.5, power = 9.5 (was 24)
• 35cm: EROF = 3.0, power = 11 (was 32)
• 40cm: EROF = 3.25, power = 12.5 (was 40)
• 50cm: EROF = 3.5, power = 18 (was 64)
• 60cm: EROF = 4.0, power = 24 (was 96)
• 70cm: EROF = 4.5, power = 28 (was 128)
• 80cm: EROF = 5.0, power = 34 (was 168)

This way it is graduated instead of having sharp steps in power level per tech (although the 40 to 50 cm jump looks a bit odd).

The problem I don't see this solving is how to make large-caliber weapons worth using over the smallest caliber that still achieves maximum range, which if I read the OP correctly is something you already are aware of. For example,a 30cm meson caliber confers a 12x range multiplier and is the 30k RP caliber tech. At 30k RP the focusing technology tech gives 60,000 km base range yielding 720,000 km range for the highest-capability meson canon at this tech level. At this tech level the BFC maximum range is 384,000 km, which we could still exceed with a 25cm meson cannon instead (8x multiplier resulting in 480,000 km range). Given this, we have no really good reason to research the 30cm caliber until we develop the 120k RP beam fire control range tech, at which point the maximum BFC range becomes 600,000 km. Even then, we could develop two more levels of focusing tech instead to achieve 640,000 km range, which costs more RP but means we can keep mounting smaller cannons and thus have more effective meson damage per ton.

The proposed change to meson power requirements with calibers does not solve this problem, because (1) we are still mounting bigger weapons that deal the same damage each which means less effective damage per ton, and (2) the power requirement still increases with caliber, so we do not gain anything in terms of DPS from larger weapons. Even with the breakpointed approach in the OP, the only decrease in power requirement with caliber is from 30cm to 35cm, and that is a small decrease that probably doesn't balance out the increased weapon size.

One possibility would be to reduce the range multipliers due to caliber, however this would make mesons and HPMs effectively short-range weapons until mid-to-high tech levels, which I don't think is desirable if the aim is to rework and probably buff the weapons (at least mesons do need some buffs).