--- So my 2am proposal was rushed and crap. As anything done in a hurry to get to bed usually is at such an hour. C'est la vie. Here follows a more thoughtful, and hopefully easier to digest version:
--- Meson Cannons:
I have proposed changes to Mesons on several occasions, though I'm too lazy to go digging them up for this post. This change would be several things with several intended consequences.
The goals are as follows:
- Bring Mesons out of the garbage.
- Make them more flavourful.
- Give them more interesting outcomes by letting them evolve over time as a player invests research into them.
To achieve this goal, several changes:
--- Meson Caliber Techline is inverted. The guns start big and become small.
This change makes Mesons into a gun for only the largest ships, or more likely just STOs. This ALSO means that early tech Meson Cannons, starting at 80cm, will far outrange any other weapon system. They will also be the heaviest, and as such, early game ships would likely need to mount them in turrets, with 4x / 4x Beam FCS to make any real use of them. As this techline progresses, Meson Cannons get smaller, terminating in 10cm Mesons.
--- Meson Cannons always fire per increment. They have no RoF, so even really big ones always fire every 5 seconds.
This change is pretty straightforward. It turns the Meson into a premier Anti-Armor DPS weapon which gets better over time. This will have several consequences:
1. Meson Cannons will fulfill a similar role to Particle Beams / Lances.
2. Unlike Particle Beams / Lances, Mesons will be the superior option for heavily shielded foes.
3. Unlike Mesons, Particle Beams / Lances will be the superior option for long range fire AND enemies employing heavy armor.
4. A player investing heavily into both will likely fall behind in CIWS, Gauss, Railguns and other relevant techs or risk being spread out too much between them.
--- Meson Cannons will be heavier, because they will require a built-in Reactor like STOs have for their weapons.
This is the crux of the change. Meson Cannons will need a built in reactor, which will be assumed to be large enough to provide the necessary power to fire the gun every 5 seconds. That reactor mass is ON TOP OF the gun's weight, so an 80cm gun is still the same size as an 80cm gun already is, but now heavier still. This will ALSO require more crew, equivalent to a reactor of that same mass, rounded up of course as everything in C# is. This achieves several important thigs:
1. It keeps Mesons from being broken. Flat out vital.
2. Mesons incur a weight penalty and an explosion risk. Reactor boost would take the place of Capacitor's in the design window and would reduce the weight penalty in exchange for and increase in the explosion risk. Putting them in Armored Turrets would leverage advanced armor tech to help alleviate the explosion risk, but might end up being too heavy to be worth it.
3. It makes Mesons a poor Anti-Missile choice despite their ability to be turreted. This amplifies Gauss and Railguns by comparison, since Gauss becomes an even more important Point-Defense option for Meson builds while Railguns retain their Anti-Shield relevance by being dual-purpose Anti-Missile / Anti-Shield weapons, thus preventing Mesons from outright replacing them in the Anti-Shield role.
(Mesons bypass shields, and Railguns are good at battering down shields, but are also good Anti-Missile weapons on the very same fast ships which best make use of their Anti-Missile qualities.)
(Gauss Weapons don't need a reactor and can be turreted for Anti-Missile, thus good for slower ships. Under these changes, every Masons NEEDS a reactor, but can also be turreted for slow ships.)
--- All of these changes leverage existing rules to some extent. Reactor tech already exists, indeed ALL of the techs already exist. The Meson Reactor changes are already how STOs in game are built, having built-in reactors as part of their mass. It is worth noting, that with this change Mesons would ALREADY have these reactors, and thus STOs wouldn't need to allocate any... however, it might just be simpler to have those reactors be ignored for simplicity since it could potentially be cheesy to have reactor boosted Mesons in unarmored turrets as STOs where the reactor boost's explosion risk doesn't matter. I lean towards the latter, for simplicity and balance.
On the subject of HPMs:
--- I came up with a different proposal entirely, and will place it here for completeness:
1. Do NOT invert HPMs caliber. This for the sake of clarity.
2. HPMs, like Mesons, would just fire every five seconds, or per increment if you will.
3. HPMs, UNLIKE Mesons, would draw power from the ship's own reactors.
4. As such, HPMs simply would not fire if not enough power was available and would always require the full amount of power to fire.
5. HPMs under this change would only check for power AFTER other weapons had charged, and only use the surplus.
6. HPMs under this change would prioritize HPMs needing more power over HPMs needing less, and would simply charge HPMs of equal power requirement sequentially.
--- So in rules terms they are mostly consistent with the existing power mechanics, and where they differ is not really a problem if you already are allocating enough power for everything like the Ship Class Designer warns you to. So it's unlikely to be a problem to a new player, and even if it is, you'd fix it the same way you'd fix any other power related problems. By adding more / bigger / boosted reactors.
--- Additionally, since this change would ALSO remove the need for the Capacitor selection in the UI when designing an HPM, I came up with what I think would be an interesting change. A techline, maybe two, and optional at that. Currently HPMs, regardless of size, do two things: 1. Do three damage to shields and 2. Do "damage" to sensors. These techlines would serve to skew HPMs in one direction at the expense of the other. So it is as follows, and I will be using the two tech model for the example:
-A: Techline which reduces the sensor damage chance when hitting unshielded opponents. Not unhardened, unshielded. In exchange for the reduced chances to inflict sensor damage, an HPM would gain shield damage. The progression would be 4 Shield Damage / 60% Sensor Chance, 6 Shield Damage / 30% Sensor Chance, 9 Shield Damage / 10% Sensor Chance. As you might guess, the shield damage increases from 3, to 4, to 6, to 9 while the chance to inflict sensor damage drops from 100% down to 60%, down to 30%, down to 10%.
-B: Techline which does the opposite and increases sensor damage chance at the expense of shield damage. The progession would be, 2 Shield Damage / 120% Sensor Chance, 1 Shield Damage / 150% Sensor Chance, No Shield Damage / 200% Sensor Chance. As you probably can see, this just does the opposite of the techline proposed above in -A.
-C: You might have noticed the diminishing returns. You might have also noticed that the sensor increase has better returns than the shield damage increase. Both of these things are intentional. The diminishing returns in general ensures that the balanced option, 3 Shield Damage / 100% Sensor Damage, remains the most efficient option overall. This means that massed HPMs will always remain the "best" option when both functions are desired, with the specialized variant existing only to diversify the capabilities and make more interesting combinations possible.
--- Under both of these changes to HPMs AND Mesons; and let me be VERY CLEAR here: The meson change can be standalone. The HPM changes I've proposed are balanced around the Meson changes and I make no claim that they would end up balanced without them. So, under both of these changes, the following choices are created:
-1. Do I go all in on Mesons? If I do I'll have an advantage against a heavily shielded enemy, but a missile wielding and/or heavily armored enemy will require me to invest in Particle Beams and Gauss.
-2. Do I go all in on HPMs? If I do, how will I do damage? Will I specialize? I could pair HPMs with high shield damage to my Railguns for extra shield busting DPS, but if I go too far I won't be able to do any sensor blinding, and even if I only go a little, E-Hardening could severely dampen my already impaired sensor blinding abilities.
-3. Do I use HPMs with enhanced sensor blinding? What will I use to lower the enemies shields? Does the enemy even employ shields? If not, I could maybe field some craft with hastily thrown together 10~12cm HPMs and some enhanced sensor blinding to gain an advantage. Maybe deploy them on some fighters...
There are other choices that these changes could create. The HPM changes are meant to enhance their niche as a Secondary Weapon, and likewise make the larger calibers less of an RP sink, since no matter what size the HPM is, it'll always be a 5 second RoF... and thus the viability of larger HPMs comes down to Reactor Tech.
Under these changes, Mesons and HPMs would have some research synergy, while HPMs would not need larger caliber research until better power plants were researched, which progresses nicely since those are ALSO needed for better engines. Likewise, Meson Caliber research would only be useful insomuch as mounting them on smaller ships, since Mesons of ANY size would naturally shrink as reactor tech increased, but even then the 80cm Mesons would still be reserved for large ships, since they are by nature already big. Furthermore the player would have more reason to research and use boosted reactors for both HPMs AND Mesons, since smaller reactors would allow HPMs to have dedicated reactors for less mass, freeing up the larger reactors to power capacitor-based weapons... creating an interesting tradeoff. Doubly so in making small backup reactors more useful as a design choice.
