slowriderxcorps wrote:A two power, four damage missile, I think it's called the Ares Missile in CE but is named the Apollo Missile in the patch. Given that the two-power player Hermes isn't a part of basic CE, the fact that there's a missile that costs less power yet deals more damage is ridiculous, especially when enemies can use it, and because of its lower power requirement they'll use it just as often as Artemis missiles. I understand that the charge time being identical to the Breach Missile is part of the reasoning why it's two power, but I personally don't agree with it. In addition to the whole Player Hermes thing, the CE patch makes this weapon a three-power weapon with a noticeably faster charge time, about 18 seconds.
I fail to see what is so ridiculous about that. Missiles are universally regarded as the worst weapon category and the CE Ares adds a solid hight-tier bread and butter missile to counteract that notion a little more. The fact that it costs two power does make it much less of a threat that the fact that it costs two power. You lowering the cool-down actually makes it much more of a thread in my opinion. As you mentioned, you changed it according to your personally opinion. That what the kit for CE boils down to in my opinion. You have a different opinion on how things should be balanced and tell everyone that you opinion is the superior one whenever CE is mentioned.
slowriderxcorps wrote:@Totalbiscuit As the author of the only mod out there that attempts to balance that thing, I'm curious as to your reception of CE.
slowriderxcorps wrote:Fully-automatic lasers. These have been rebalanced in core CE numerous times, but ultimately in the wrong direction. They were initially designed as shield-suppression weapons, but their rate of fire is ultimately too slow for them to work acceptably in that role, so in the patch, their fire rate was increased, for 4 seconds on the two-power Mark 1 and 3 for the three-power Mark 2.
I don't think you take into account how fast those get with fully trained weapon crew and stacked reloader (more easy to aquire in CE due to engineering options). Then again the CE ones are already almost as fast as yours anyway (5 and 3.5 seconds).
slowriderxcorps wrote:* Light Lasers. About the only weapon class that eventually got changed entirely in purpose in the patch, it's also been altered countless times in basic CE in order to increase their usefulness, mostly regarding their shield-piercing capacity. Initially, the only thing I could do, aside from increasing penetration, was to simply make the weapons of the highest rarity so they simply wouldn't get in the way of much more useful weapon drops, as they are essentially super-nerfy Anti-Bio Beam-like weapons, something so incredibly niche that it rarely gets used outside of the Man Of War. The weapon rarity changes were effected across the board to improve the loot pool, if I recall. Now though, I made a strange decision and completely rewired what they do. In exchange for the weakening of the shield piercing to the original levels, the weapons also deal system damage, turning them into laser-based Small Bombs essentially, able to shut down ships without damaging the hull. I don't think the Light Laser drones have been retired to do this though.. I'll need to check that.
Here I fail to see why you believe that this category has so little use. They provide an accessible, economic way to give ships crew kill capabilities, which offers tremendous economic advantages. The damage output of the mid and high tiers (mark III's and the light artillery) can easily be on par with the bio beam and they are also more versatile than the beam in the early game due to their shield piercing.
Further, however rarity truly works exactly, giving them 5 rarity will most likely just make them appear instead of other hight rarity weapons, essentially still preventing the player from getting "better" weapons anyway.
slowriderxcorps wrote:Micro-Missile Batteries. Okay, I guess these were altered significantly as well, and for the longest time these were by far the biggest criticism of CE balance, so much that they were completely changed in base CE.. to the point of being quite pointless. They were meant to be missiles that sacrificed a little of their ability to damage ship systems in order to be capable of slipping past Tier 1 Defense Drones without being shot at. Unfortunately, the result of this was that they resulted in being a total menace for practically every single player ship throughout their journey, as there was simply no reliable method of defending against them outside of Cloaking, since the more affordable Tier 2 Defense Drones had a charge time too slow to really be worth using in the first place, and their high damage-power ratio meant they racked up the hull points at an alarming rate. Even the mighty MantisB was considered to be one of the worst ships to face CE with simply because it couldn't do anything about them. The other massive problem they had was that they were classified as Lasers in the game code so that they could evade the drones. This was the only way it could be done before Advanced Edition came out, and the means to make Missile-class weapons invisible to simple drones is now available. But they're still classified as Lasers and because of the way FTL chooses weapons for enemies to spawn with, favouring lasers over missiles and never having missile-only builds unless the ship had only 1 level in Weapons.. they show up A LOT.
The larges part of this paragraph concerns itself with things that no longer matter. Swarms where pretty great in enemy hands, now they are pretty bad overall. That has become their place by design, but they still remain pretty economic and fast overall, and appear much more useful when you realize that often one system damage can be all that matters.
Also they don't show up disproportionally anymore in CE, this was counteracted via double entries in weapon lists. As far as I know you simply changed their type to MISSILES. That solution depraved them of their animated projectiles (at last as far as I can tell those still don't work for MISSILES type). So you threw hours of my spriting work out of the window there.
slowriderxcorps wrote:That's a long enough spiel as-is, but I'm not even finished yet. Before AE came out, I had taken to trying to rebalance these weapons by reducing their shield piercing capacity significantly down to 2, while making enemy variants more costly to run. The result of this is that they were still very threatening in the early game, but once you got a third shield layer running on your ship you now had a semi-reliable Defense against them, since they can still quite easily sneak in amidst a volley of laser or drone fire. It also gave the weapons a more unique feel and purpose as a hull-damaging weapon. However in basic CE now, they're simply normal missiles with lower power requirements, less system damage and a vulnerability to all Defense drones. To be honest, they've taken a massive grace-fall.
At least CE swarm missiles still pierce all shields. In my opinion you just devaluated the weakest CE missiles even further.
slowriderxcorps wrote:Stealth Missiles. I'll bring them up while on the topic of missiles just to throw that they had a power requirement increase in order to balance the fact that they are unassailable missiles that deal their full damage to systems, unlike the micro missiles.
Again I believe that there should be overall better missiles to strengthen this weapon category. I'm also overall ok with stronger missiles in enemy hands, cause harsher game is part of the premise of CE.
slowriderxcorps wrote:Scattershot Weapons. Particularly the Heavy Laser ones. In core CE, they are quite simply nerfy Heavy Lasers with no real benefit to using them when the other is an option. In the patch, they take upon the role of an anti-hull weapon, dealing pretty severe damage to armour but dealing reduced damage to systems. In addition, adding to the 'feel' of some weapons, every weapon that fires in a scatter fashion including the micro missiles had their shot speed reduced slightly, making them more unique to fire.
In my opinion that just dilutes the category and removes contrast. Not everything has to be as powerful as the rest. BLI is has no benefit in using when a BLII is available, but that does not mean that BLI has to become better. And again, sometimes often one sys damage is all that matters. In comparison Heavy Scatter one is slightly faster than Heavy I, so it actually has a partly advantage.
