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Discovery 5.2 Dev Diary #2- Guns And Stuff
Our last dev blog covered 5.2's shield changes. Naturally, they're not the only thing changing. This dev blog will go into the changes we're making to guns and missiles in the upcoming update.
Overview
After wasting all his time on optimizing and stabilizing the server's performance, @Aingar finally focused on what's truly important: burst-fire weapons. This new mechanic coming with 5.2 has allowed us to bring much more variety to weapons. We've revisited existing guns like Hellfire Rocket Pods and Annihilator Rocket Launchers, added a magazine system to many types of missiles, and we are — of course — introducing lots of new codenames. We'll work our way through the changes from top to bottom: from the lightest fighter guns to the largest capital turrets.
Fighter Guns
Before we can get into specifics, we need to address some macro changes coming to all fighter, bomber and freighter weapons. We've adjusted the formula we use to calculate their power usage, increasing the weight of per-shot (alpha) damage; damage-per-second and velocity. This means that gun efficiencies scale down more aggressively as a gun's performance goes up. In addition, we've reduced the effect of mass on power usage, as the mass on bomber guns was not a large enough factor for the increased efficiency it provided. Finally, we've slightly reduced the positive effect on efficiency provided by dispersion.
Does it sound like every gun on every snub you own is getting hit with the nerf bat? You're probably not wrong. The guns that are largely unaffected by our changes are those that are the least used: low damage, low velocity guns, in particular those with high fire rates like the Zoners' Fury 4. We're hoping to finally encourage players to try and master these weapons, instead of defaulting to the cookie cutter guns that have been popular for over a decade.
There's one archetype of guns that is gaining some efficiency, which is the "hybrid" gun type. Guns with additional shield damage, like class 1 guns and some codenames — TREMOR and QUASAR for example — are penalized less for their hybrid nature. While they're still hit by the other changes, most of them will now use less power. Outliers like the Supernova Antimatter Cannon will still draw substantially more power than they do in 5.1.
Class 1 Light Fighter Guns
While we've seen some use of Class 1 guns, players have mostly been using them to very slightly optimize loadouts. Players will switch out one Pulse gun for two hybrid Light Fighter guns and min-max their hull damage output. Ironically, however, Light Fighters' limited number of gun slots pushes them into using higher-class guns, including Bomber ones, to try and dish out as much damage as quickly as possible. Therefore, we're adjusting Class 1 guns in the following ways:
All Class 1 guns are now 150 m/s faster. This means that 600 m/s guns like Lavablades are now 750 m/s. 750 m/s guns like Starbeams are now 900 m/s.
All Class 1 guns now deal 20% less damage.
The aforementioned power usage changes, of course, affect Light Fighter guns: the increased weight on velocity pushes down their efficiency, but the buffs to hybrids offset a portion of these "nerfs". Still, Light Fighter guns are now much more distinct from higher-class guns and feel more satisfying to use on Light Fighters themselves. Our goal with these changes is to make Class 1 guns the most accurate by virtue of their high velocity, while keeping them fun to play against by keeping their damage in check. While they may not be very efficient at dealing hull damage, they are roughly as efficient as their Class 2 counterparts at taking down shields, while being significantly easier to land shots with.
We're also hoping that a sliding scale of velocities all the way from 900 m/s down to 600 m/s will give players an easier learning curve as they learn to aim their shots in fighter combat.
Missiles
In 5.1, we've noticed an uptick in missile usage on fighters. This is something we're very happy to see, as it enables weaker aimers to still be very relevant in groupfights. This is exactly what we were hoping for when we first rebalanced missiles. As such, we're very cautious with adjusting them. However, as fighter gun efficiencies have gone down on average, missiles did need some adjustments to keep them balanced. In addition, we found that the high fire rate and substantial power usage of missiles allowed players to nearly forego using guns at all, which prevented them from getting better at positioning and aiming. Therefore, the adjustment we chose to make does not directly affect missiles' power level. Instead, we're using the new burst-fire mechanic to give missiles a "magazine size" and a "reload time":
An example of missile burst-fire stats
As a result, missiles can still feel powerful, but during their reload time, players are encouraged to get some shots in with their guns to make optimal use of their powercore. We've also adjusted the "light" missile archetype, with a focus on putting the burst in burst-fire:
New Peacekeeper missile stats. Their fire rate is 3.03.
Gunboat Forward Guns & Turrets
Compared to our changes to fighter weapons, Gunboat weapons have received fairly small tweaks. As we're not too fond of the dominance of "Pulse-Streamer" loadouts, we've bumped up the damage output of Nullifier Pulse Cannons. Annihilator Rocket Pods — as mentioned at the start of the blog — have been switched over to burst-fire, allowing them to deal very large amounts of damage very quickly and making them a much more viable and interesting choice. Codenames have been made a bit more exciting, too, with QUAKEs gaining burst-fire mechanics and VOIDSTORMs getting a substantial DPS boost.
We're also introducing new Gunboat weapons: Railguns will provide Gunboats with a punchy, accurate, high-velocity forward gun option that can be built relatively cheaply on Player Owned Bases. The new "IFRIT" heavy turret slot codename joins the QUAKE as a burst-fire option at a higher velocity (750 m/s) bracket. Gunboat primary turrets have also been adjusted. They now fire quicker, with the lowest fire rate gunboat primary turrets firing 6.5 times per second. The highest available fire rate is now 8.0 shots per second. Their overall DPS has been increased by 35%, making them a lot more threatening, but their efficiency has been reduced slightly to make sure heavy turrets and forward guns still have a role.
Perhaps the biggest change to Gunboat weapons is our rework of Vandal and Silencer Missile Launchers. Both are now vertically-launched swarm missiles, (rapidly) firing four missiles. These missiles are very agile, quickly curving towards their target, but have limited top speeds, giving their target time to disengage, dodge or shoot down the missiles.
Vandal missiles launched at the Battleship Missouri. Don't ask.
Cruiser Turrets
Cruisers turrets have seen the fewest changes. We're not currently sure they need significant adjustments, as the Cruiser meta is so heavily focused on the pin-point accuracy required to shoot down enemy Cruisers' engines that we believe it is warping the perceived power level of weapons like Tachyons. Instead, we have done a thorough pass of Cruiser engines: we've adjusted the hitboxes of engines we think are too easy or too difficult to hit, and the armor values of Cruiser engines have generally been increased. They're still very viable targets, but focusing solely on shooting down an enemy Cruiser's engines is now not nearly as viable.
Some small changes we have made include:
Light Mortar/Trebuchet's turret turning arc increased from 15° to 45°.
Light Mortar/Trebuchet's velocity reduced from 950 to 900 m/s. Efficiency slightly increased.
Cruiser Battle Razor velocity increased from 900 to 950 m/s. Efficiency slightly reduced.
New Heavy: Cruiser Railgun. A very high velocity artillery weapon. Built on Player Owned Bases.
New Heavy: Cruiser Crimson Blaster.
Cruiser Repeater Turrets switched to burst-fire.
As Cruiser heavies are no longer used by Battlecruisers — which we'll get into in a second — we have however been able to adjust their missiles. Cruiser Torpedoes now turn faster, making them better at tracking enemy Cruisers and smaller targets, like Gunboats. We're also (re)introducing the Desolator Missile Launcher in the form of a rapid-fire missile launched from a silo. While they share some traits with Gunboats' Vandals and Silencers, featuring a low maximum velocity but a very high turn rate, they set themselves apart by dealing very large amounts of energy damage, suppressing the powercores of anyone hit. Desolators are mounted on Cruiser Defense Turret slots.
Desolator Missiles about to ruin a Tridente's whole career.
Battlecruiser Turrets
After the Cruiser changes we made in 5.1, Battlecruisers were in a weird spot. Their forward-firing guns now had much more limited ranges, making chasing enemies risky and awkward. So, we decided to bite the bullet and remove access to Cruiser Heavies from Battlecruisers, instead giving them their own Heavy Turrets to slot in. To avoid confusion, we've renamed their old "Heavies" to "Main Batteries". Don't worry, it's hard for us to get used to, too.
Battlecruiser Heavies are not too different from Cruiser Heavies, but generally output more damage and have much higher maximum ranges. Their new turrets are:
Battlecruiser Avalanche Turret: A huge Laser turret. 800 m/s velocity, 1.5 fire rate, 2800 meters range. A reliable, middle-of-the-road option.
Battlecruiser Breacher Cannon: A heavy-hitting Plasma cannon that rapidly fires two shots in a burst, and then has a short cooldown before being able to fire again. One of the slowest Battlecruiser Heavy Turrets available, at 700 m/s, capable of hitting targets up to 3000 meters away.
Battlecruiser Concussion Turret: A codename weapon that fires three shots in a very quick burst. It's slightly faster than the Breacher, at 750 m/s, and has a maximum range of 2900 meters.
Battlecruiser Energy Shell Barrage: A codename Pulse weapon. It fires six shots in quick succession before going on cooldown. It shares its velocity and range with the Breacher, and provides a strong alternative to conventional primary slot Pulses.
Battlecruiser Mortar: A familiar archetype. The Mortar is an accurate, high velocity (900 m/s) weapon with a slow traversal rate and high per-shot damage. Its range is somewhat limited at 2650 meters.
Battlecruiser Particle Repeater: A high velocity (850 m/s), rapid-firing codename. Particle Repeaters can fire ten shots at a fire rate of 8.33/s, up to a range of 2750 meters.
Battlecruiser Razor: A scaled up version of the Cruiser Battle Razor. Hybrid damage, 950 m/s velocity, limited (2550 meters) range.
Battlecruiser Revenant Cannon: A relatively slow-firing, multi-projectile codename weapon. This turret fires six shots at once, dealing equal parts hull and shield damage. While the shots spread out significantly at range, the Revenant Cannon's ability to quickly take down opposing shields makes it very potent.
While Battlecruiser Main Batteries are largely unchanged, we are introducing two new variants: the Battlecruiser Dual Railgun, a larger Cruiser Railgun that can fire twice before reloading, and the new codename Battlecruiser Hailfire Turret, a high-burst dual-barrel Laser turret.
The Battlecruiser Hailfire Turret
Battlecruisers have also been slightly adjusted as a class, shifting their focus from defense to offense and agility:
Armor — including components and their corresponding damage fuses — has been reduced by 20%.
Mass reduced by 5000.
Thrust speed increased by 10 m/s.
Maximum turn rate increased by 10%.
Powercore recharge increased by 15,000.
Redistributors now provide 20,000 energy per second, up from 12,500.
Battlecruiser shields now draw 34,730 energy per second while recharging.
Battleship Turrets
In 5.1, large groups of Battleships are incredibly powerful and difficult to answer with anything other than your very own fleet of Battleships. This is in no small part thanks to their incredibly long-ranged heavy turrets — especially fast and accurate ones. For this reason, we've changed their turrets up a little. Like Battlecruiser Heavy Turrets and Main Batteries, a Battleship Heavy Turret's range is now inversely proportional to its muzzle velocity. This means that highly accurate turrets that are particularly hard to dodge now have much more limited range, while slower projectiles continue to have very high range. Of course, we wanted to preserve as much of the identity of existing weapons as we could, so artillery weapons like Mortars have had their speeds reduced, and their range preserved. In addition, all Battleship Primary & Heavy Turret power usage values have been recalculated based primarily on their velocity.
Now's as good a time as any to mention some other changes we've made to the Battleship class:
Light Battleship Impulse speed has been increased from 90 m/s to 110 m/s.
Medium Battleship Impulse speed has been increased from 90 m/s to 100 m/s.
Battleship armor has been reduced by ~33%.
Battleship powercore recharge has been increased by 20,000.
Battleship shields now drain 43,700 power per second when rebuilding.
Heavy Battleship shields now drain 54,850 power per second when rebuilding.
Battleship strafe power usage increased from 250 to 450.
Final Thoughts
There's plenty more coming this blog doesn't touch on. Either on purpose, or simply because I forgot to mention it. For example, I almost forgot this:
