I thought we were talking about DPS I'm sorry. A weapon that fires 2x slowly and do 250 damage is 125 damage in my eyes so only 25% increase which wont warrant the use for it. It would be a niche weapon used on slow moving targets you can hit 100% the time. Against fighters you would just artificially limit yourself since your actual DPS would be around 60 unless you hit 90% of the time but then you might as well use gimballed without the combat software (as you can now) since you'll barely notice a difference.caleb wrote:Those are example numbers, it could be 100 damage on one, 110 on the other. 250 on a weapon that fires 2x slower, 1000 on torps that fire 8x slower. And yes, a fixed weapon with more power would hit harder on slow/immobile targets. Why would you take a turreted weapon to hit an immobile target? You see, it's all about choices, tactics. The skillful commander that prepares for that battle will have an advantage.csaba wrote:In your example you have a weapon that hits for 4 times as much damage or +400%. That is stupid in a game where you have large or slow structures which you can hit 100% of the time. This actually is what dumbfire missiles do in the game but they have a limited ammo or are limited by a(n easily implemented) timer on the AI +travel time. Tweak it a little to 50% hit chance which is about the average for a regular fixed weapon ED player and +200% damage and it is still not suitable for a game like this.
Think how trivial pirating trade ships would be. Again +20/25% works in ED because fights there are 1v1s, last much longer and the shields recharge much slower and there are many countermeasures to gimbaled weapons like chaff and shield cells with different damage types etc. In X4 25% damage wont warrant the use for it and while 200% would by average numbers work, it would break other parts of the game.
Balancing the AI for fixed weapons is also not that easy. Especially since X games AI have very little room for decisions/flight patterns compared to something like ED where they are more dynamic. X fighter AI on an attack run flies in a straight line while ED AI adjusts constantly using FA off on higher difficulty. Of course you can limit weapons to players like mostly in XR (especially in vanilla) but it looks stupid and since this time the player wont have a unique ship it would be even more weird.
You want to hit the fast targets? turreted weapons are probably better, unless you are a hotshot, and can hit that fly on the wall with an arrow. So skill can come into play again.
I don't want a 1-config-fits-all kind of thing. There is not much gaming there. I want the commander that foresees the battle to feel satisfied when his setups are just perfect, and the hotshot pilot to feel great when his skill can make a huge difference. That's kind of what I would like to see.
And it can be done. It's all in the programming. If a ship is hitting 90% of the time, and it should hit 80%, then you can make it "miss" a few hits. That depends how far they want to go with their "AI", but some checks on the AI would help a lot in the long run... If they just make the AI without any modifiable parameters... Well... Yeah... I'm sure you can see how that would end.
It's a game, everything is under control of the programmers. Or it should be at least...
For the torpedo example we already have them. If you just want to artificially limit yourself then just buy 1000 V Crushers dirt cheap and try to hit fighters with those.
In X you need at least 200% DPS on your fixed weapons to be comparable to gimbaled ones against fast moving targets.
In ED 25% is not an artificial limit since there are many many more layers to space combat. Silent running, chaff, heat weapons heat sinks, shield cells, hull tanking, FA off, reversing (very limited in X), ramming, very different weapon travel times, different damage types, different bonus effects etc etc. These would be awesome if they would get implemented in X4 but I don't see a chance.
"Missing" with fixed weapons is not the same as "missing" with gimbaled ones since you need to physically turn the ship's nose in the direction. Of course you can make them gimbaled for the AI but than we get weird shots from them that are clearly angled while it shouldn't. It would look cheap and people would hate it.
This game is not about dogfighting strategies. Fighter vs fighter in this game boils down to face your enemy and kill it. If you want something that requires more motor skills play ED if you want to build a working empire play X. I'm 99,99% sure this wont be implemented in this game. There is a reason why ED doesn't have a simulated economy and this game doesn't have a complex fight system.
There will be exceptions like I'm pretty sure the Destroyer sized ships main cannons will be fixed but I don't think those would hit anything smaller than an L sized ship outside hitting the lottery jackpot.