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My opinion deals with the roles of weapons. Purely opinion here.

Sunflares: Secondary weapon
Tachyon, Ion, Phased, & Gravitron: Primary fighter vs. fighter weapons
Gauss: Fighter vs. larger ship weapon
Small-port homing weapons: fighter vs. fighter

Disclaimer: The opinions stated here are drastic changes.

To make these suggestions feasible, we must first see a large difference of armor between "slow" and "fast" ships. I would propose knocking the Cent, Vult, Valk, and Hornet down 1000, and giving 10k-15k more armor to the Centuar, Rag, and Prom. (Random numbers, but you get the idea)

First, I'll deal with gauss, as it's one of the worst offenders as a weapon operating outside of my stated purpose. To make gauss a more feasible anti-larger ship weapon, it must have more damage per second than tachyons. To do this, I propose to substantially boost the damage of gauss while lowering its velocity. Right now, the Gauss does 2400 damage per second. Contrast this with the tach's 4000 damage per second. I would propose increasing the gauss's damage to 5000 damage per second, while leaving the repeat rate alone. Of course, energy consumption would go up so it would be clear that this is a one-port weapon, and that it would be hard to mount in multiple configurations. Gauss would look like this

Gauss Cannon
Damage: 2500
Velocity: 120
Energy: 75/blast
Repeat: .5/second

This *is* a radical change to the gauss cannon we know, but I think it would delegate the role of "large"-ship killing to it.


Now, we deal with the grav, tach, phased, and ion. I won't touch them all in order, but just give an example layout for the tachyon. The goal here is to make tachyons an effective fighter-vs-fighter weapon. The main thing here is an increase in velocity.

Tachyon Cannon
Damage: 600
Velocity: 220 m/s
Energy: 12/blast
Repeat: 0.15 seconds

Gravitrons could be a variant, be harder hitting but slower firing. Ions blaster could be an upgraded ion cannon, and phased could have a low damage but insane repeat rate.

Now, sunflares. I think sunflares would be fixed with a cap on ammo capacity. Think, six rockets per tube. That'd make them a secondary weapon.

Homers, I think homers need radical speed boosts. Observe the current homer:

Yellow Jacket Missile
Capacity: 8 missiles
Repeat: 1.5 seconds
Damage: 1800
Splash: 30m
Detonation: Contact
Maneuverability: Low
Fuel: 12 seconds
Speed: 85 m/s

A missile's job should be to kill a target, or at least make him hard-pressed to avoid it. Here are my proposed changes, marked with an asterisk (*):

Yellow Jacket Missile
Capacity: 6 missiles*
Repeat: 10 seconds*
Damage: 3000*
Splash: 50m*
Detonation: Contact
Maneuverability: High*
Fuel: 30 seconds*
Speed: 160 m/s*

We could also introduce a new weapon, sort of a fighter vs "heavy" ship missile:

White Crow Mortar
Capacity: 2 missiles
Repeat: 15 seconds
Damage: 7500
Splash: 80m
Detonation: Contact
Maneuverability: Low
Fuel: 120 seconds
Speed: 60 m/s

This would be a small port, and make an effective anti-"heavy" ship weapon. The other homers could have similar changes made to them.

I like, although I don't think that the Centurion needs to be touched except for a slight increase in agaility. I also disagree with your assessment of the Graviton. I think it should be a faster speed lower refire rate weapon that does slightly more damage per second than the tachyon.

I like the general idea SirCamps. I see the gauss cannon as a close range 'cannon'. Kinda like some old (pre B.V.R missiles) planes used to have a couple of machine guns (tach, grav etc.) and an actual cannon (guass) for taking down other planes at close range, or hitting slow moving targets (bombers and the like). I personally hate dogfighting with guass, i find its really only good in close. With tachs, you can keep out of rocket (and guass) range and keep pumping away with a steady stream, trying to get the shots to fall over your opponent.

I'd also like to see a new homing missile for a similar purpose as SirCamps suggested, but also very different. Something with a very high speed and high maneuverability, but mid range damage and only enough energy to fly for 3-4 seconds. Almost a guided rocket. The missile would power off at 150ms and be able to match medium ships in turning, but if it does not score a direct hit in the first pass, it can't go back for a second due to its life. Give it a low repeat rate and only ammo for 2 or so shots. This would be the perfect 'interceptor' for taking out an inbound heavy bomber, such as a prom or rag, but rather useless against a fighter. Quite like the long range missile that the US navy uses to defend their carriers, I think its called the sparrow... May bring about a similar problem to sunflares tho ;)

No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No. The gauss isn't that great as it is, lowering the speed would completely nerf it.

I'll have to disagree with Phoenix. Lowering the speed would be great. That or the autoaim needs to be lowered. It's just way too powerful now.

The problem is the range of ships, right now i think tha range of ships we have now are just variations of fighters. Remember, we are going to have 200m+ ships, your precious prometheus isn't gonna be god of the heavy ships.

You failed to see my point, Phoenix. My opinion is that gauss should be an fighter vs heavy weapon. Lowering the speed would not "nerf" the weapon. It would relegate it to a role of just shooting up heavies. It would be better suited for such a task because it does more damage than the high-repeat tachyon. However, it would be ill-suited to taking down fighters because of its slow velocity.

Why can't we just have armor and weapon types (sorry too much Warcraft 3).
Simple example:
normal attack do good against medium armor but do bad against light
heavy attack do good against heavy armor but do bad against medium
piercing attack do good against light armor but do bad against heavy
etc... just some of my weird ideas that I get when I'm tired.

That's the idea we're working with, Blaster. Fighters > Transports, Heavy/gunships > fighters. We're just balancing the weapons and ships.

It already IS a fighter vs. heavy weapon, leave it how it is.

::removed:: due to orginal post edit

Phoenix, what would you rather use against a rag, a gauss or a tachyon? Answer? The tachyon, it does more damage per second, and since the rag can't dock, any serious pilot would use a tach.

Eldrad, the way I've done it, tachyons do 4000 damage per second, gauss do 5000.

yeah but by having types, you can specialize a weapon. Like a heavy bomb that kills capital ships (1million hull 20,000 damage) but only does like 2,000 damage to fighters, etc.

I think the best way to deal with this would be different types of hit points. Like the Kid is trying to suggest: Heavy fighters and bombers would have heavy armour and light shields, a fighter would have light armour and heavy shields. Guass could deal to armour (do lots of damage) but do little to shields. Tachs could do major damage to shields, but little to armour. That way, a guass would be little use against a fighter, but plenty against a heavy. A tach would be ideal against a fighter by useless against a heavy. Seekers would be best against armour and less effective against shields etc... Something like the gravitron, which at present is pretty useless, could offer the best of both worlds, doing medium damage to armour and shields...

This way, you would have much more specialisation in roles. A fighter may be armed to defend heavies against other fighters, but effectivly unable to bring down other heavies. The opposite could also be true. If you pick a multi-role load out (gravitrons) you can do both, but not as effectivly as a ship equiped to do one specificaly.