In terms of weapon balance, Lasers seem the weakest right now. Kinetics have a very good and strong attack. The missile barrage can be useful to soften up a hard enemy (though the damage seems extremely variable, sometimes I kill a fleet with a barrage sometimes I do like 2 damage). Its also useful to kill a weak ship where you don't want to risk losing any HP.
The issue with lasers is the cheaper cost is not useful enough. Considering I am already paying for other aspects of the ship, the hull, engines, etc....saving a few manu is not worth making a weaker ship. Right now kinetics offers a lot more bang for the buck imo.
The only time I use lasers now is if I have a lot of elerium over other strategics and so can afford the special weapons.
Reducing the manu cost of lasers further may be the key. I do think there's a price point where cheaper ships can compete with superior ones, but I don't think that mark has been found yet.
Yeah, i completely agree, beams need a boost.
I also agree, and I do not typically use lasers.
Maybe this would be less of a problem if elerium was more common, for example. But in a typical game, if I were to blindly decide on my weapon choice based on available resources around me, it is rarely elerium. And if I base my weapon choice on functionality, then it doesn't feel like the beam weapon trade-off is worth it.So yeah, I also only use it if I end up in a spot with more elerium than anything else, which does not happen often.
As a fan of lasers I would personally like to be able to shoot holes through planets, but those are just fevered dreams. I will certain pass the feedback to the team so they can improve the balance. There's always trade offs with weapon types, armor types, etc. We have to make sure we don;t make them too powerful.
Another idea is that elerium based lasers are much more powerful than their missile/durantium cousins. The idea being that regular lasers aren't that great, but focusing in speciality lasers is very powerful, which interacts with the rarity of elerium and give the lasers a niche.
I recently played a game where I took specific aim at making lasers often throughout the game. I will say, that in a cutthroat war with a nearby civ where you must spam out as many ships as possible, the laser production bonus does actually feel pretty impactful, allowing ships to come out several turns faster at a time.
I think perhaps I wasn't giving lasers their fair shot, but that is usually due to the relative scarcity of elerium compared to the other resources. When I see so little elerium comparatively, I think "Late game I will have so much more of this other stuff, so I should invest in the other weapons instead". Maybe this is intentional for balance. Anyway, I am going to try to incorporate more lasers and see how it goes.
I use all three techs together.
I also tend to use all 3. As it usually stands, there's always someone coming at me with all their defense in only 1 or 2 techs, usually only 1, or 1 on ship type A and another on ship type B. So if my attacks are spread across all 3 areas, I'm guaranteed to be able to snuff them. That was mostly in GC3 and I haven't gotten too many battles in GC4 just yet (only just got the game and work interferes, so more time this weekend).
That said, the tech follows a general level of realism. Pretty much everyone will discover how to throw rocks at some point (kinetic - kinda general purpose, low range accurate, decent damage that sharply falls off at range), then boulders (missiles - high damage that splashes, longer range, less accurate), then learn how to dig under the walls and sneak in (beams - more precise, localized damage so "less" damage overall, but devastating to the spot targeted even as accuracy falls off with range but not damage potential).
Just noting that these differences no longer exist in GCIV. All weapons have the same range, and same accuracy (80%). These are the key differences:
You may have known that already but since you said your experience was more GC3 than 4 that new change may have escaped your notice.
Yeah, I've only really gotten to play today as it is. Work got in the way during the week and I only got a little bit of tie to play around with adding back in my custom race from GC3. I haven't gotten into any battles yet, beyond losing a couple probes to space monsters, so I haven't seen the ranges used. Honestly, I hope they do add in ranges to the weapons if only because it's a simple enough part of reality everyone expects.
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