Russian Rockman wrote:Hey dmi, I went through all the files in the new version and made a few small changes, fixed a few problems. There were a few ships that had the artillery overlapping other systems, the crystal ship was using the laser artillery, and other things like that all of which I can't remember right now.
Yeah, I realized the crystal artillery wasn't assigned shortly after 0.32 was uploaded. Thanks for all the help, by the way. I think you've done more work on this mod than I have.
Generic Artillery: I can confirm that the 0 radius thing you found does work, the artillery will always hit the center of random rooms and will not miss more than normal. I checked the Fed C Flak Artillery and it has a radius of 35, so that is why it does not miss very often. While this can be useful, I actually think that having a higher chance of missing would balance the artillery since it has 6 shots. So maybe it should have a radius between 35-70 and/or only 5 shots. What do you think? Also, keep in mind that the artillery fires "heavy" lasers with a higher fire and breach chance than normal lasers, which also makes it even more powerful.
I think it's good to have the radius fit within a 2x2 room, but not a 2x1. Ideally it should be slightly more powerful than a BL3.
Engi Artillery: With the discovery that the radius applies to each room individually when using Burst Artillery, the radius for the Engi ship should probably be decreased to something like 70, that way it still won't be as good against systems, but right now it often even misses the shields entirely.
Mantis Artillery: Same as the Engi Ship, I think the Mantis Artillery should have a radius of 35, with this tweak it should hit pretty much every room on the ship, making it extremely useful for boarding preperation.I do not think the weapon should do system damage though because it has sooo many projectiles and such a large range. A very slight breach chance is fine though. What do you think? Also should I change the projectiles to tiny "scatter" missiles? I think the artillery should be like CE's flashbang missiles, just with added Mantis flavor.
Agreed. These two were designed with the idea that every shot would hit in the same radius, so now that we know that's not true they should be adjusted. If that's the case, mantis artillery will be hitting too many rooms to make system damage fair. As for graphics, I always imagined it as small, corrosive doodads.
Slug Artillery: After playing with this the 3 shots is not a problem at all, in fact it feels like the weapon got stronger!
I was afraid of this one missing systems altogether, but hadn't tested it much. Trading hazard chance for stun seems smart.
Zoltan Artillery: 2 system damage is a lot better than 3 system damage each! But now the beam is a bit more on the underpowered side than the overpowered side. To find the middle ground a had an idea, what if the beam also stunned crew? Even if it just stunned them for just 3-5 seconds that would prevent them from repairing the systems right away and give the beam a little while longer to charge up again. The fire chance should probably be decreased back to 1 though in that case, I noticed that it was setting a bit too many fires. Which brings me too...
It does seem like 3 fire chance is too high, considering the length. A few seconds of stun would work well.
Rock Artillery: This thing is sooo satisfying, but right now it's a monster.So it should probably either have a Fire Chance of 6 and/or a shortened beam length, something like 250-300???
I really hadn't thought of the Sunfire's balance at all. I think it's best to keep the length more or less the same and decrease its fire chance.
Lanius Artillery: I really like this one, I like the description, and I like what it does. However, it is slightly buggy, I will use an analogy yo explain... In CE Sleeper originally had an Anti-Bio Beam drone. It was buggy because it would not hit certain rooms due to the way the AI aims beams, therefore it could not do what it was meant to do it could not kill off all the enemy crew because they would hide in the rooms it could not hit. So he took that drone out of the CE mod. The Lanius Artillery does sort of the same thing right now, it will often hit the same few rooms and drain the oxygen from them entirely, but will not hit other rooms at all. This isn't as much of a problem with the Rock Artillery because fire spreads... Fire also does system damage so that is another plus over the Lanius Artillery.
So here is my suggestion for the Lanius... I think it should be more of a flak type weapon than a beam, that way it will be able to hit all rooms with the same probability. It could fire something like small shards of Lanius metal which embed themselves in the enemy ship and not only cause breaches, but suck the oxygen out of rooms. It would also add even more variety to the artillery... One less beam... But I think something like this is necessary for the weapon to work more consistently.
My idea here, if we get the different cooldowns working intuitively, is to make the Anaerobizer a (relatively) fast shield piercing laser type that shoots one or two hull breaching shots. This would fix its targeting and make it even more unique, since only the crystal artillery is laser-based.
I'm excited to see your improvements, especially the stealth artillery. If you put it up tomorrow, I should be able to check everything and upload the first officially "working" version.
I would never have started this on my own either. Most of what I did was make the interior images and test out each of the artillery for balancing and that was fun. 
For now maybe what we should do is make the Lanius artillery is make it sort of like CE's Light Lasers, just without the personnel damage. It should be able to create about 4-5 breaches like it does right now, just more consistently spread out over multiple rooms. What I'll do is write up a a Blueprint in the comment block for a laser based version of this artillery and you can decide what you want to do with it.
