The Weaponry Update Suggestions

[BossDos]

Well, hello again Mates and fellow player of BSG:Deadlock,

I was silent in the last few month, because of work and family stuff.
But first of all, I would like to thank the Slitherine and Dev Team for their great work in the last Armory Update, which was much needed and gave the game a nice new asset.
But with the Armory reworked quite heavy I think its time to address an place which also needs some love.
Its the Weaponry which I had quite some trouble in the past to get in love with.

At the first playthroughs, I had no problems with the weaponry but after a few more runs like the third or fourth campaign run on admiral, I began to think about some things.

In some points I will go a little bit more into depts in details then on other points, but if I like share your opinion.

1. Why have all weapons (except missiles) the same range? Shouldnt be heavy artillery be made for higher ranges and light weaponry more for point and perimeter defense? At first it made sense to me, because in space velocity doesn't decrease so that point has no influence on range.
But there is a point which has influence, fire solution which is often or mostly done by computers. And this has a quite big influence, to keep track of fast moving light armored targets like fighters, you need to process data and math very quit and adjust your fire solution pretty quick.
Because of that, this needs quite some computer power even more, when used on high range targets, because you need to process even more data.

My recommendation would adjust the ranges von 5km on all weapons to something like this, light weapons to 3km, with higher accuracy against nearer targets.
Medium Weaponry at 5km with mediocre accuracy on every range.
Heavy Turrets with 7,5km range, with a high accuracy on long range, but low accuracy for near or smaller/fast moving targets.

2. Why does every weapon deals nearly the same damage against every target? Would a super heavy armored battlestar really care if some fighters with their light guns fire on them? It's like shooting a Tank with a 9mm pistol, they wouldnt even notice.
Some might say.. yeah but they deal less damage, only 1 DMG instead of 4 of the heavy artillery and yeah I know that, but its still to much.
Light weaponry on ships is specially designed to fight soft or fast moving targets, firing with machine gun onto a battleship has absolute no result.
That's what the heavy artillery is for´because its designed to pierce through the thick armor.
And it adds more tactical depts into the game, lets look at the adamant, a very usefull little frigate with its light fast firing weapons and a fighter squad.
But its as useful in fight against capitals as the especially for this designed minotaur cannon boot, but it should be perhaps more of an anti-fighter/flak frigate.

I would recommand that weapons and armory class get a type of influence. So light weaponry does full damage against light armored targets, and lesser on heavy armored targets like battlestars. Like Light wepons deal x1 dmg to light targets/0.75 against medium armored / 0.5 against heavy armored.
Medium armory deals x1.25 to light targets with slight reduced accuracy/ x1 against medium armored targets / x0.75 against heavy.
Heavy weapons deal x2 dmg to light targets with almost no (10%? maybe 20%) to hit / x1.5 to medium targets / x1 against heavies.

With that we also could solve the DMG problems of the vipers, which were much to powerfull earlier on but are now... quite mediocre.
Especially the MK2 are not worth their money atm, because you lose 2 ships and only get 0.1 dmg more, and they are lighter armored.
With giving their guns the light weapon tag, you could give them more dmg, but they wouldnt wreck battlestars heavyly because they do reduced damage to heavy armor.
To give them a little dmg against capitals you could give them restockable missiles like the raptors for anti-capital fighting.

3. Raptors? Which purpose do they have atm? None? They can buff the firewalls on smaller capitals, but thats all.
Their purpose of scouting is heavy influenced by the point that they are fucking slow and pretty much dead when a fighter squad intercepts them, which will often happen.
The Raptors we know from the series are designed for electronic war face... so giving them the ability to jam missiles would be cool, would make them useful and would asign them to the job they where designed for.
At the other point that would make the sweepers useless, but thats what i intended to.
I would like to replace the sweeper with an other ship, with another raptor design especially.
The assault raptor, armed with heavy missiles and a squad of marines for boarding action, or to buff up the marines on other ships, which got boarded by centurions.

That were my thoughts in the short, i couldve written more but i think that are enough points to discuss about.

[Haveatya]

The Raptor change you put forth is my favorite idea. Give standard Raptors the ECM/ECCM with light payload and add the Raptor Gunships for boarding and heavy vessel strike.