Balance Proposal: Universal Weapon Power Equation

[Goddess Astra]

but if I'm correct in reading this then it looks like you are claiming we could balance fighter weapons without accounting for:

• Alpha damage, or the ability to use quick flicks to immediately do large amounts of damage at very close range where accuracy is far higher than medium and long range.
  
• Burst damage, which has a similar impact in fighter PvP in particular, where it allows players to capitalize on opportune moments where maximum target surface area is available for them to hit (say while turning), or again when the target is at close range.
  

This is what I'm saying, yes.

At a glance it also looks like exponential relationships are not treated accordingly. For example, again in fighter PvP but certainly also in every other class, just at different scales with different weights, velocity is a highly exponential factor. ... Meaning linear power usage increase for this is an objectively incorrect approach.

This is true if you don't factor range. However, when you include range in the equation as well, then an inverse exponential curve emerges:



This is the graph for my equation where x = projectile velocity and y = projectile range, and energy cost is static. As you can see, in order to have higher projectile velocity for the same energy, you need exponentially less range, and vice versa. Equation is here, with numbers pulled from the DULZIAN codename and ran through my equation:

Players are happy when they achieve 5-10% hitrate with a 600 m/s gun -- especially a high-refire, low alpha one, which we have established we apparently don't care about -- while hitrates approach nearly 100% at a velocity like 1200.

If players are happy using a high-refire low-alpha gun, then they're happy with that. I'm not sure how this is relevant to calculating power consumption.

Other things that I don't see any handling for are burstfire mechanics, where a gun can temporarily do large amounts of burst damage yet its damage over time is fairly tame, which is good for capitalizing on opportunities but places restrictions on the player.

This equation only calculates damage for each energy bolt, because an energy bolt with the same characteristics should always cost the same amount of energy. DPS should not change the cost per energy bolt. Therefore, burst-fire is not relevant to the equation, as the difference between firing three shots in 1 second or 3 shots in 0.5 seconds with a 0.5 second cooldown is literally inconsequential to energy calculations. Burst cooldown is another factor of balance that's separate from energy consumption.

I also don't see how hybrids are handled. It seems like they would be incredibly heavily punished for their ability to do alright against both shields and hull, acting as if they are simultaneously hitting both at the same time. This is not how the game works. In reality you're only ever shooting shields or hull on a target, and while guns that do both add to the player's burst generally (which we've gone over above), by allowing the user to dedicate more of their weapon slots to hull damage by rocking some hybrids, it is definitely not a big enough advantage to warrant your extreme approach towards nerfing their efficiency.

ASMD railguns currently cost 1221 energy to fire. Running the numbers through my equation, they cost 1147 energy to fire.

There are likely myriad other issues. Given your attitude on display here I might even be tempted to actually run the game's guns through these numbers just to have a good laugh, but I don't really know if that is worth my time.

Please don't mock me for making a reasoned balance proposal that differs from your philosophy.

Oh. I just realized we're also weighing range as an equal stat to velocity. That might be the spiciest take I've read on gun balance in a while. It sounds funny to me that a 10 m/s gun crawling towards a target 60,000 meters away would have the same power usage for the same damage as a 600 m/s gun with 1000 range, which might just actually hit something.

Range is an equal stat because the relationship between velocity and range is exponential, as you can see above. Increasing both velocity and range increases the energy cost exponentially, which is important for cap balance. Also, no one would ever make a gun that's 10 m/s and 60,000 meters in range, even if the equation supports it. The fact that the equation supports it is proof that it's functional.

Edit, since you also edited:

The Drake Type A deals 114.4 hull damage and 85.8 shield damage per shot for 121 energy per shot.
The Daito deals 162 hull damage and 81 shield damage per shot for 119 energy per shot.

Obviously the Daito in terms of raw performance is the better gun. Thanks to this Great And Objective, Superior Formula™, it now also uses less energy to do much more damage! Of course, the 3 damage less that it does to shields is so very crippling that it warrants a 43.9% increase in efficiency.

You got the math wrong for the Drake Type A.


At least get your numbers right if you're going to say my formula's bad.

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