I sit here in sector 9 working on how to even out the guns. i think i got it covered. i'll post for each one as i come up with what it should be.

So far...

Ion Blaster
Energy: 5
Speed: 150 m/s
Dmg: 250
Repeat: 10/s

Pros: Low energy consumption, ok repeat

Cons: low dmg, low speed
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Phaser Blaster
Energy: 15
Speed: 175 m/s
Dmg: 350
Repeat: 10/s


Pros: Low energy consumption, medium speed

Cons: low dmg

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Tachyon Blaster
Energy: 15
Speed: 150 m/s
Dmg: 650
Repeat: 12/s


Pros: Nice dmg, ok repeat

Cons: Slow
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Graviton Blaster
Energy: 20
Speed: 160 m/s
Dmg: 675
Repeat: 15/s


Pros: Medium dmg, fast repeat

Cons: slow, energy drain
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Gatlin Gun
Energy: 10
Speed: 125 m/s
Dmg: 200
Repeat: 50/s


Pros: Low energy consumption, spews out lead

Cons: low dmg, low speed
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more in just a sec

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Adv. Gatling Turret
Energy: 25
Speed: 175 m/s
Dmg: 350
Repeat: 50/s


Pros: Fast, spews out lead at the person in your screen.

Cons: Energy drainer
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Rail Gun
Energy: 100
Speed: 400 m/s
Dmg: 2000
Repeat: 1/s


Pros: High speed, hurts.

Cons: High energy drain, slow repeat
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Guass Cannon
Energy: 50
Speed: 175 m/s
Dmg: 1000
Repeat: 2/s
Splash: 10m


Pros: Powerful, not very slow, can catch others in the splash.

Cons: energy drain, slow repeat, can get caught in splash.
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Plasma Cannon
is good as it is...

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Charge Cannon
Energy: 1 per 5 dmg
Speed: 175 m/s
Dmg: 250-2500
Repeat: 1/s


Pros: high dmg, medium speed

Cons: Slow repeat, charging can take time
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Everything else seems fine...
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Now for an new (vendettawise) idea! The javelin pod!
Javelin Pod
Energy: 2
Speed: 400
Dmg: 250
Repeat: 100/s
Ammo: Javelins
Cost: 5 c
Ammount holdable: 10000

Pros: Fast repeat, low energy costs, lots of ammo

Cons: Ammo costs money, low dmg

My thought for a gun:

Sniper laser
Energy: 500
Speed: 1000 m/s
Dmg: 30000
Repeat: 0.05 shots each second (1 shot per 20 seconds)
Ammo: Gas pod
Max ammo: 20
Ammo cost: 100c
Gun cost: 50000 (L)

Pros: High accuracy, built in scope, Very high damage, Extremely Fast
Cons: High energy usage, expensive ammo, slow repeat
Note: Very similar to the "beam cannon" except with ammo. And, of course, with non-devness

Heh. I was just working on this topic myself, and doing some deep thinking on what makes a weapon balanced. Clearly a railgun is not balanced if it uses 200 energy - it is nerfed. I'm not sure why the decision was made to nerf it, but there you have it.

I heard that there was a technical issue involved in high repeat rate ammo consuming weapons which might render them less than optimal. As such, probably would be good to focus your inventive energies on another concept.

rougelaser: You got to be kidding. That is about the most broken thing I've ever seen.

Umm... Rogue... .05 sec repeat is insanely fast... Urza, the rocket pod is nice, but that's 25k damage per second... Eeeee...

I'm working on a formula for judging a weapon.

A tachyon blaster rates 13,361 under this formula. The pre-nerf rail gun rated 19,839. The nerfed railgun rates 6,970.

The javelin pod rates 150,000. Yes, 25,000 damage per second and no real disadvantages is a problem.

roguelazers sniper rifle is weird enough that my formula can't yet correctly assess it. It has a high theoretical repeat rate but takes so much energy that in effect you can only use it ever 12 seconds or so, which would actually reduce the damage per second down to a reasonable 2500. However, since the first shot would often hit (1000 velocity!) and since it would destroy virtually anything it hit (30000 damage!) its even more broken than the javelin pod. A weapon which does more damage per hit than an average weapon does in a second needs considerable disadvatanges, which is one of the reasons a quad railgun is more probablimatic than a single one. The sniper rifle rates a 9090000 under the formula I'm using to judge a weapon's balance.

Good ideas, but please try again.

I think he may have meant 20 second reload...

My bad. That's better but it still has the problem of 'first blood'. The snipers rifle would still rate a 112,500.

Maybe if the damage was reduced to 5000 or so...

The devs tried a gatling gun that used ammo, but it lagged horribly, i suspect mostly to the fact it is updateing the ammo about 10-20 times a second...

0.05/s means 1 every 20 seconds, you know. 0.05 shots per second. duh. As for damage, well, it is supposed to be one shot kills. Oh, and please note that you need a heavy battery to operate it, therefore increasing costs. And you cannot boost away...

How about this neato weapon:

CFL (Constant Fire Laser)
Energy: 110/s
Speed: 3000/s
Range: 1000m
Dmg: 1000/s
Repeat: NA
Gun cost: 100000 (L)

Pros: Constant fire means a blanket cover or a constant beam, high damage, takes less than 1/3 of a second to reach max range
Cons: High energy usage, low range.

Notes: This weapon would be a constantly firing beam like the ion beams in Homeworld. It does a max of 5000 damage before the battery is exhausted in a large battery scenario.

1000m is low range?

Yeah, that would be fair. If you can keep the target in your sights, you do 1000 damage per second - which is rather low to make up for the beams velocity induced accuracy. The velocity is a little too high, but you cured that by giving it a low effective range which means that you can't really use the velocity to snipe something at further than its ability to reply.

FYI - any weapon that fires more than about 15 shots/second has potential to cause enormous lag. Each shot fired requires one network packet to be sent, so the more you fire, the slower things get. Keep in mind linked weapons too, and the potential for firing rates to stack up.

And yes, rapid-fire weapons with ammo are infeasible right now.

Aha. Which means probably any kind of constant beam is out, since you'd be wanting to update the position of the beam well..constantly.

Yeah, that sounds pretty good. That's only 3750 damage per sec, about on par with a lot of the guns. The ammo should go down to about 100 or 150ish...

Except now you have a rail gun that does X2 the damage of a rail gun and uses barely more power and has no gaps in its coverage because of its fast cycle rate. You don't have quite the first strike advantage, but more than make up for it the time 4-5 seconds have passed. Imagine dual or quad javelin pods.

And you also still have a rapidly cycling ammunition consuming weapon.

Flak Cannon:
Energy: 15
Speed: 500 m/s
Dmg: 350-4000 (depending on proximity to blast)
Repeat: 1shot/2 seconds
Range: 200m
Ammo: Flak Shells - 750c/shell

Essentially a shotgun in space. Incredible damage, but you'd have to be nose-to-nose with your enemy to get that. Spread is relatively loose, and range is abysmal.

ok.. an edit to teh rocket pod.. how does a fire rate of 15 s/s sound?

Just a thought, but couldnt the problem of rapid fire ammo weapons be solved w/ someting like a burst? Instead of figuring each shot sepperately for ammo, have each "round" of ammo count as 5 or 10 or 20 shot burst... whatever... so w/ a .05 rate for example you do a 1 sec burst or maybe a half second burst per trigger pull. and it shoots out 20 or 10 "shots". The shots in effect would be a single shot as far as the program is concerned, and damage envelope would be essentially a linear blast radius, so that if you ran into the burst anywhere along its length you would take damage. The special effect would just look like a line of bullets... Is this coming across? You could aslo use this technique for a long laser pulse weapon. These weapons would be easier to hit with so should not do as much damage as, say a half second burst of a standard weapon.. Is any of this coming across? Not sure how well I explained what is in my head.