Octavio Santillian
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Posted - 2006.03.28 20:17:00 -
[2]
 Originally by: Sarmaul
Originally by: Karash Amerius
I know Tux keeps in mind the defensive side to weapon balancing, but I have to stress that a lot of casual pvper may under-estimate the ability to do more than just 2 damage types. We get a lot of fanboi attention here that only look at DPS or DPS in regards to range...just do not want to see that mistake happen in any such "fix".
the ability to do all 4 damage types is overrated. not completely useless, but not as uber as the majority of people make out. a tanked ship with 3 hardeners will have resists between 10% of each other, so unless your guns do under 10% less dps than another race's guns which only do 2 damage types, you still won't see much of a benefit.
EMP ammo however, is teh sex.
QFT
To take advantage of the any damage type æadvantageÆ you have to:
1) Determine what type of damage the ship is actually most vulnerable to, which isnÆt necessarily easy.
2) Wait 10 seconds while your guns reload and your enemy is pounding you. During that 10 seconds you are canceling out the advantage you are supposed to get for having the right ammo.
3) Adjust your range based on your new damage type.
Also, donÆt forget that our Tech II ammo negates this æadvantageÆ all together.
Sure, if you have advanced intel it can be an advantage but in the real world you use EMP if you're using autos, period. If youÆre using arty, you generally use the highest damage ammo you can get away with for the range at which you expect to fight. You might adjust based on expected armor or shield tank, but you donÆt always get that luxury.
Yes, EMP does rock, but mainly because it does EMP and Explosive and you donÆt have to swap ammo. On the other hand, it does less total damage than the other races 50% range ammo/crystals, and because it does three types of damage that total damage is ends up being even lower because one or two of those damage types is likely to be reasonably tanked against.
How do we make multiple damage types a real advantage? No easy answer.
Two ideas, but each with their own flaws:
1: Offer different damage mix ammos at each range modifier (i.e. donÆt just offer Proton at +20 range, offer another ammo at the +20 range level that does Explosive and Thermal).
Problem here is now we have to carry EVEN more different types of ammo, which is just nuts.
2: Revamp Matari ammo so that all ammo types are like EMP and Depleted Uranium and use a mix of damage types.
Problem here is that you still might not get the damage type you want at the range you want, and the ammo will still do significantly less real world damage than other race's ammo because one or two of the damage types will likely be highly tanked against.
Even if you mix options 1 and 2 in various ways, you still run into issue where range is going to dictate what ammo you use. If on the other hand you offer so many types that all ranges are covered for all damage types, you get into the situation were you have to carry around a crazy amount of ammo, and you would have to be switching ammo all the time.
Maybe the best idea is to make change the Matari ammo so they all do all 4 types fairly equally and increase the total damage to match the other races ammo range for range.
Problem is half the damage would be negated almost all the time, so IÆm not keen on that idea.
Then what do you do about Tech II ammo?
In the end the point is that the ædo any damage typeÆ thing is more myth than reality.
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