The balance sheet containing pulse guns and mag cannons has undergone a significant revamp and upgrade to bring it into the newest format that we are using for balance sheets. A lot of DPS values, sizes, and ranges for these weapons will have slightly different numbers as a result of simplified and refined formulas and new look up tables. All the new values can be found on the test server, and here I want to point out some of the bigger changes. So far, these changes are only to pulse guns and mag cannons, but the general ideas will be applied to other weapon types in the future.
Under the previous version of the balance sheet, range gave a lot of size to the weapons and there were some weird interactions possible. The range and size classifications have been simplified, but the main effect is that very long range weapons aren’t necessarily so big and very short range weapons aren’t necessarily so small. Some short range weapons, like Venusian Jackhammer, were taking advantage of a quirk of the previous formulas to gain more power than they should. Such weapons will be a little bit weaker, while more normal weapons with normal ranges, like Solarian Pulse Gun has gained significant power so there isn’t as much of a DPS gap between short range and normal range weapons.
The parasite damage was previously very erratic and hard to account for. There is a new parameter that weapons can have that specify an exact percentage of damage that should be inflicted via the parasite versus upfront and new balance formulas to balance parasite weapons. Some that were previously very powerful by accident, like Kalthi Fiery Pulse, are slightly weaker than previously, while most weapons that inflict parasites are much stronger. All fire weapons in this sheet will now inflict fire parasites, including the fire burst.
Bursts, which were originally Sebastapols, and then mag cannons, are now going to be pulse guns, since that fits their niche a lot better. Their tracking has been reduced to where their bullets will converge at the edge of their range if a player has no tracking augs or skills, but they will now inherit the velocity of the ship firing them. The power bonus from self-damage has been reduced significantly, but Bursts, probably being the most important pulse gun/mag cannon, have had their DPS help constant, while on average, all other weapons in this sheet got about a 35% increase in DPS to close the gap.
Augmenter stats on weapons used to just make the weapon do less DPS. For example, if a weapon had a +10% damage stat on it, then that weapon would do 10% less DPS to compensate. This lead to weapons as stat-sticks and people just equipping weapons that they would never use. Going forward, weapons with aug stats on them won’t lose DPS because of it. Instead they will gain in size. In addition, several new aug stats were added to the sheet to potentially be used on weapons, including “weapon slot” for theoretically externally mounted weapons.
Projectile movement and tracking has been standardized into several categories now instead of just whatever random numbers were typed in before. The main effect that you’ll see is much higher speed on high level weapons as well as generally higher tracking. Weapons with low speeds or tracking will now get a power bonus to compensate.
Lastly, all of the “+” and “Micro”, “Oversized”, “Gigantic”, etc weapons have been removed from the balance sheet and replaced with options for the code to generate those variants. This will result in slightly different stats, but a leaner and more maintainable balance sheet. There is now the option to easily add “+2″, “+3″, etc gear which might start showing up as very rare drops.
