A possible rebalance/reiteration of weapon modifications?

[Genoscythe]

As it stands now, the numbers on weapon modifications are kinda unbalanced in my opinion.

Let me give you some examples. The first problem is the Cowboy mod:-30% - +100% reload speed, this does actually increase the overall fire rate of a gun, which is pretty overpowered on turrets because they don't have cooldowns, a single M plasma turret with 50-70% fire rate boost has a higher shot frequency and thus a virtually higher chance to hit while retaining all other stats, the increased firerate does lead to an equal increase in DPS and heating, which can be dramatic for some fixed weapons with a low cooling treshhold like plasma or beams, but on Pulse Lasers and Bolt Repeaters it's simply a heavy increase in damage and bullet coverage. Other damage increase mods don't even compare to it, neither do the range or cooling mods. Who would choose up to 15% projectile speed over up to 100% more damage per second? 15% won't cut it on a plasma gun which will still miss everything, while shard, pulse, bolt and the new guns in 3.0 will still hit everything.

Then there's the exceptional weapon mod Annihilator, which can roll Damage, Reload, Cooling and Rotation speed. It's so good because you can roll damage AND reload, that I can't really see myself using anything else. The utility mods are totally overshadowed by the raw damage ones.

I think some number tweaking would greatly increase build variety, in general the roll margins seem a bit too high for some mods and make it too RNG-based to get usable rolls (-30 to 100? Then 6-35% damage, -30-100 reload and 2 more on exceptional mods), which encourages save-scumming for minutes or hours until you get what you want, maybe each re-roll of the same mod should increase the minimum roll in a curve that stagnates at many rolls, giving more reliably good rolls with materials invested. while others only give marginal bonuses that are barely noticeable in normal gameplay. Especially projectile speed and lifetime stats are kept very low, there is no -spread or projectile amount mods that were present for the shard cannons in X:R for example, and the general variety of high-end mods is a bit low. It would be nice if guns could be more specialized into certain stat directions with exceptional mods instead of just having each mod give 4 out of 8 positive stats. E.g. I want a plasma gun with much higher projectile speed but have to sacrifice cooling, or fast rotating turrets that sacrifice damage and range for fast tracking. Cetain stats should affect certain guns more than others, fast tracking weapons should profit less from tracking speed than the slow ones.

It would also be of much use to have a descrition for each mod effect, what exactly does cooling do? Does it increase general cooling time or also affect the cooling ramp-up delay? Where can I see the modified stats of my weapon apart from the raw MW output values? How does sticky projectile time affect my bolt repeater or does it only work on pulsers? More explanations would be awesome to have us guessing less and wasting materials on possibly bad rolls. Also having the possible extra stas of mods listed would make deciding about them a lot easier.

Finally, I haven't found any way to transfer modded weapons from one ship to another, can we make this a thing? Having to tear apart my precious ships weapons only to experiment is really a hassle and a huge waste of materials, being able to stare weapons at stations or capships would be a HUGE QoL improvement.

[GCU Grey Area]

Who would choose up to 15% projectile speed over up to 100% more damage per second?

I would. Indeed have done so on multiple occasions. Projectile speed can improve accuracy (i.e. less deflection needed to hit a moving target). Combined in a high end mod with projectile lifetime can also have a dramatic impact on range - both modifiers stack when it comes to range. In my last game the main guns on my personal Phoenix had a range of over 10km (very handy for shooting Xenon turrets from a nice safe range where they couldn't shoot back). In my current game the Flak turrets on my Cormorant open fire at around 2.3km & have a significantly better chance of hitting fast moving fighters than before I installed the mods.

Incidentally, save scumming is not necessary to get good effects from the mods. I never do it & have got fantastic results for my ships. Can just dismantle & re-install mods until you get something you like. Obviously can end up costing quite a bit (mods on some of my ships must have cost 10's of millions to get just right), & some materials are lost every time you do it, but it's less cheaty & FAR faster than reloading the game each time.

[Genoscythe]

Who would choose up to 15% projectile speed over up to 100% more damage per second?

I would. Indeed have done so on multiple occasions. Projectile speed can improve accuracy (i.e. less deflection needed to hit a moving target). Combined in a high end mod with projectile lifetime can also have a dramatic impact on range - both modifiers stack when it comes to range. In my last game the main guns on my personal Phoenix had a range of over 10km (very handy for shooting Xenon turrets from a nice safe range where they couldn't shoot back). In my current game the Flak turrets on my Cormorant open fire at around 2.3km & have a significantly better chance of hitting fast moving fighters than before I installed the mods.

Incidentally, save scumming is not necessary to get good effects from the mods. I never do it & have got fantastic results for my ships. Can just dismantle & re-install mods until you get something you like. Obviously can end up costing quite a bit (mods on some of my ships must have cost 10's of millions to get just right), & some materials are lost every time you do it, but it's less cheaty & FAR faster than reloading the game each time.

I never said you can't, but overall having more damage (be it by fire rate or raw damage mods) is still way more effective with the current numbers than having a bit more range, in direct combat when piloting and especially when out-of-sector simulation takes place for your fleet. I think destroyer main batteries are an exception here because they get so much better when piloting yourself as AI can't seem to use them properly or estimate range and ship rotation/turret coverage and enemy prioritizing properly while aiming them. But the main battery has 7km range already, which is 2km more range than any turret has, so you might as well have gone for damage because you have a 2km of room where you can nuke enemy destroyers from without getting shot at (Edit: XEN L pulse have 6km, so you have bit less, but still 1km). Beam weapons don't get projectile lifetime. Have you tried simply using pulse turrets as fighter defense with cowboy mods? They send walls of bullets towards enemy fighters and they don't even have a chance of evading. Fire rate is especially OP on plasma m turrets on a corvette. Simply use the main guns with pulse/beam and let the turrets take care of any L/XL for you, simply fly close, let turrets get the angle and you're fine, that's around 2000 MW damage without overheat or reload constantly. Much more with an exceptional mod that increases RoF, damage, tracking. With the

I never said save scumming is necessary, I said it is encouraged, my point still stands. You don't have to reload after every failed roll, you simply roll a couple of times and if you get a desired roll you save and roll the next gun, but it's a slot machine. I know that you can dismantle, but still I'm always short of the consumed catalysts, not of weapon chambers and money isn't a problem at least yet. The current way mod rolls come out is a slot machine, it would just save players time and grind if they added some kind of safety that gives you higher chances the more you re-roll one mod, with an upper limit to maybe not make 35% damage 100% fire rate 30% tracking 30% lifetime stuff possible.

[GCU Grey Area]

Nah, perfectly happy with the mods I use. Have tried boosting raw DPS (& occasionally still use it in certain circumstances) but in general have come to prefer ~50% extra range & improved accuracy. Bear in mind increasing range also effectively increases damage since guns can fire sooner & enemy targets remain within range for longer. In particular this has significantly increased effectiveness of short range guns (e.g. new Flak turrets). Regarding destroyer main guns, I am fully aware of their stats. 10km range gives more margin for error when outranging Xenon L turrets & remember the ones on ships can move. That extra 3km has also proved very handy when, for example, a Xenon station has launched a worryingly large defence drone swarm at me & I'd rather like to get back to the rest of the fleet ASAP - again more margin for error & more time to get the travel drive up to speed before the drone swarm arrives.

[Genoscythe]

Nah, perfectly happy with the mods I use. Have tried boosting raw DPS (& occasionally still use it in certain circumstances) but in general have come to prefer ~50% extra range & improved accuracy. Bear in mind increasing range also effectively increases damage since guns can fire sooner & enemy targets remain within range for longer. In particular this has significantly increased effectiveness of short range guns (e.g. new Flak turrets). Regarding destroyer main guns, I am fully aware of their stats. 10km range gives more margin for error when outranging Xenon L turrets & remember the ones on ships can move. That extra 3km has also proved very handy when, for example, a Xenon station has launched a worryingly large defence drone swarm at me & I'd rather like to get back to the rest of the fleet ASAP - again more margin for error & more time to get the travel drive up to speed before the drone swarm arrives.

Flak turrets aren't final in their current iteration and I'd wait with judging final modded performance until 3.0 is out, because oh boy if they would leave the new guns like they are now in beta you could just use a muon charger Pulsar Vanguard or Nemesis to kill Xenon Is with 12x the power a of capship main battery . Idk about targetting drones with main batteries, my turrets normally shred them for me but you seem to be playing on 3.0 atm which has severe balancing issues with capships anyway, my feedback is based on the 2.6 final weapon mod stats and weapons, which haven't changed in 3.0, at least I spotted no difference during my testing.

It's totally fine that you like your builds, this does not change the fact however that damage boosting mods are objectively better on Player-piloted and AI controlled ships in 90% of cases and that certain weapons do profit too much from certain stat increases while others get almost no benefit, which severely decreases the possible build diversity especially in the normal to advanced mod area. Exceptional weapons mods get 4 out of 6 stats anyway, you can also roll lifetime + damage for example. I don't know if you played X:R but mods worked pretty well there per gun. Every weapon had own stat margins, you could for example have pulse lasers that did low damage over time for 4 seconds in order to keep shields from charging, modify your space shotgun so that it either spammed out shots and quickly overheated or fired slowly while having three times the projectiles per shot, having to decide between +charge time and speed vs. damage on a plasma cannon was meaningful there, also because the good mdos did not simply boost almost all stats. In X4 your plasma cannon won't hit jack shit with +15% speed or lifetime and your only option is fire rate/damage for a turret, add cooling/rof/dmg for main guns. Having mod options like +150% speed but - 70% lifetime was a thing there, or the other way around. It actually created more meaningful but balanced trade-offs. Of course this was all balanced around one ship, but carfeully introducing more weapon mods options into the game while reducing grind and RNG a bit would make it even better and a lot more interesting in my opinion. Another thing would also be making mk1 and mk2 guns sidegrades to each other instead of making most mk1 effectively worse than their mk2 counterparts, with a price adjustment of course.

[GCU Grey Area]

Idk about targetting drones with main batteries...

Not sure where you got that idea. If I see a big drone swarm coming towards me I run away, back to the fleet where several dozen turrets can obliterate them rapidly. Extra range on the main guns means those drones have a lot further to travel, so better chance of me getting back to the fleet before they arrive. Tend to go all anti-fighter on capital ship turrets & stand off at range to bombard enemy capitals/stations with main guns - prefer not to get close enough to such targets for turrets to fire.

Another thing would also be making mk1 and mk2 guns sidegrades to each other instead of making most mk1 effectively worse than their mk2 counterparts, with a price adjustment of course.

Agree, would be good to have a reason other than price to use mk1 guns. Difference in price rapidly becomes effectively irrelevant, so in practice mk1 guns never get installed.

[Genoscythe]

Idk about targetting drones with main batteries...

Not sure where you got that idea. If I see a big drone swarm coming towards me I run away, back to the fleet where several dozen turrets can obliterate them rapidly. Extra range on the main guns means those drones have a lot further to travel, so better chance of me getting back to the fleet before they arrive. Tend to go all anti-fighter on capital ship turrets & stand off at range to bombard enemy capitals/stations with main guns - prefer not to get close enough to such targets for turrets to fire.

Another thing would also be making mk1 and mk2 guns sidegrades to each other instead of making most mk1 effectively worse than their mk2 counterparts, with a price adjustment of course.

Agree, would be good to have a reason other than price to use mk1 guns. Difference in price rapidly becomes effectively irrelevant, so in practice mk1 guns never get installed.

It's a down and upside thing, with the way drones and S fly they always take at least one direct, straight approach at your ship when trying to fire, if your turrets manage to kill them during that time it's game over for the enemy. With a fleet I sometimes get hit by my own ships stray shots if I pull a swarm of drones to some other L/XL, normally before assaulting a station I get into my Nemesis and take out turrets and moving targets, because I can just outmaneuver anything and make use of dead angles of a station. I find M/S Piloting a lot more exciting, in X2 and all X3 you were still able to manually control all your capship batteries, but since you're stuck with only one or no option in a destroyer/carrier in X4 and we have no ship class between destroyers and what X4 calls frigates (Split Panther or the M7 class if that rings any bells) I find Corvettes and heavy fighters the most entertaining to fly.

The most dangerous thing to capships are still missiles imo, no matter what mods, weapons or turrets I use they always somehow come through, their hitbox is too small and the turret tracking on them is abysmal. They also cant be targeted which makes it worse.

[iforgotmysocks]

The balancing is pretty terrible. Currently a Tier 1 mod has the highest possible reachable dps, duo to possibly gaining 50+% damage and 100% reload speed (firerate). Tier 3 only go up to about 30% damage and the same or even less reload speed. Also the rng behind it is pretty terrible.

Currently the game has some other issues that need fixing, so i wouldn't expect any meaningfull rebalance of content anytime soon.

Luckily that's easily adjustable by modding and could be made static by setting min and max values to something balanced. Takes some work to find values that make sense and aren't too overpowered, but can be easily done, even by someone who's never modded before. I believe there's a mod on nexus already that just sets all modifications to the maximum possible value, but that makes it hardly more balanced. Could be a nice reference to get started tho.

In case somebody wants to crunch some numbers:
viewtopic.php?f=181&t=402452
viewtopic.php?f=181&t=402382
viewtopic.php?t=354310

/libraries/equipmentmods.xml

[Genoscythe]

The balancing is pretty terrible. Currently a Tier 1 mod has the highest possible reachable dps, duo to possibly gaining 50+% damage and 100% reload speed (firerate). Tier 3 only go up to about 30% damage and the same or even less reload speed. Also the rng behind it is pretty terrible.

Currently the game has some other issues that need fixing, so i wouldn't except any meaningfull rebalance of content anytime soon.

Luckily that's easily adjustable by modding and could be made static by setting min and max values to something balanced. Takes some work to find values that make sense and aren't too overpowered, but can be easily done, even by someone who's never modded before. I believe there's a mod on nexus already that just sets all modifications to the maximum possible value, but that makes it hardly more balanced. Could be a nice reference to get started tho.

In case somebody wants to crunch some numbers:
viewtopic.php?f=181&t=402452
viewtopic.php?f=181&t=402382
viewtopic.php?t=354310

/libraries/equipmentmods.xml

As it's probably only numbers changing, it would indeed not be that hard, but I'd like to have a stable and well balanced base game first, excusing bad balancing with the possibility of mods makes devs lazy in my experience (see bethesda games). Not saying that Ego are, all previous titles had a pretty solid balancing in their later iterations, I'm just giving my thoughts. because it is just that easy to fix, it luckily also won't take too much devtime. Most stuff could be adjusted by turning some numbers here and there.