- Well, the return of reduced size FCS already makes Beam fighters
wayyyy more practical than they were before. Like,
quite significantly so.
- With that having been said; for Plasma Carronades I'd like to see them have an option to consume fuel as ammo. Perhaps a kind of alternative shield that was stronger and/or smaller, but consumed fuel as well to go with it. In
Homeworld and
Homeworld 2, the Plasma Bombs were fluffed as using a portion of the starship's fuel as ammo, which keeps with the idea and logic of what plasma actually
is, that being a state of matter. I don't really expect Steve to put all that work into them though, as much as I'd like to see such a change it really doesn't jive to well with Aurora's flavor, IMO.
- An alternative for the Carronades would simply to be adding in the reduced size and giving them an "Extended Minimum" analogous to the Laser's Spinal Mounts. The Extended Minimum would have two levels, with the first reducing damage drop off for a corresponding increase in weight, say halving the drop off in exchange for a mass increase equal to +1 calibre. AKA, like how Spinal Mounts increase the laser's weight. The second tier would add +2 calibres of mass for a removal of damage drop off. This would mean that you could combine the two upgrades to make an expensive 15cm Plasma Carronade that had no drop off and weighed the roughly the same mass, but had drastically increased recharge needs.
- For the HPMs, I'd really just like the option to turret 'em, tbh. I think they'd make nice Anti-Fighter / Anti-FAC guns. I'd also like to see the damage of HPMs, well "damage", but you know what I mean... I'd like to see that increase with calibre. Likewise for Mesons, I'd like to see bigger Meson Guns do more damage. So a 12cm HPM would do 4 damage to shields and a 15cm would do 5 damage to them, but both would still only roll once for E-DAC, while the 20cm would do 6 Damage to shields and roll twice on the E-DAC. Basically have the bigger HPMs increase the shield damage while making the number of rolls on the E-DAC be equal to half the shield damage rounded down.
- Mesons could do something similar, in that they fire a bigger "shot". So a 12cm Meson fires a 2-point "shot", a 15cm Meson fires a 3-point "shot" and so on and so forth. Thus the Meson Retardation Tech would become more useful as you went up in size, with each failed roll removing 1 point of strength from the "shot" until it finally fizzled. The size, power requirements, costs and so on would keep smaller guns useful for fighters, turrets and such, while the FCS needed to make use of the better range would help keep the mid-sized guns relevant for some time as well. These factors would also curb the usefulness of truly monstrous guns, like 30cm+ ones, as their FCS and Power Requirements would hamstring their damage output via accuracy, RoF, and required technological & material investment.
- Thus under these changes Plasma Carronades would become a more robust and interesting weapon system to invest in, without losing their low-cost / low-tech niche. HPMs would become shield-buster / ion cannon-esque weapons, and with the option to turret would double as Anti-Fighter / Anti-FAC against beam-centric foes. Mesons would a lot more useful to research as a main weapon option, since the big ones would give better performance against ships while the turreted small ones remain a viable Anti-Missile / Anti-FAC, with the ones in the 12~15cm range would double as Anti-Fighter weapons. These would make Mesons into an actually threatening weapon, without reverting them to the overpowered monstrosities that they were. Add back them Armored Missiles and suddenly they become very,
very attractive options indeed.
