Weapon Balance

Well, I been looking at weapons again and I would like to reiterate an earlier suggestion:

Get rid of useless weapons.

There are more weapons than there need to be. If each weapon fulfilled a unique role, sure, it would make sense to keep them. I'm going to list weapons with overlapping roles that could be merged.

Whenever I mention "what will be lost", please keep in mind that these are very rare or minimally beneficial situations under just about any PvE or PvP strategy.

Heavy Artillery
Heavy Armored Vehicles
Heavy Jeeps
Light Artillery
Light Tanks
Anti Tank Missile Batteries
Guided Missile Frigates

1) Offensive Land Forces: Heavy Tanks, Heavy Artillery, Heavy Armored Vehicles, and Heavy Jeeps. These all do the same thing and can be hit by the same weapons at more or less the same rate. They have the same strength and weaknesses to the point where, in all cases, the player will only be using one of them (Heavy Tanks) if they know what they are doing. This single weapon does the same thing as all other weapons in this category except better. To the extent that some of these weapons use ammo and some don't, sure there is some mild differentiation. In either case, I propose eliminating Heavy Artillery, Heavy Armored Vehicles, and Heavy Jeeps. What will be lost is using 1000 Heavy Tank + 600 Heavy Artillery together if you're using them against stronger targets that would be better off attacked with other weapons anyway and losing an ammoless option for hitting targets if you're willing to wait through multiple attacks per target.

2) Defensive Land Forces: Defensive Armored Vehicles, Light Tanks, Light Artillery, and Light Jeeps. These for the most part do the same thing, I believe the Armored Vehicles can be hit by some things the other three can't which is actually useful. For that reason, I will only be proposing that two weapons here are eliminated. Of all these weapons, one fulfills the role of defending solely against offensive land forces better than the other by miles (Defensive Armored Vehicles). I could be mistaken, but it definitely seemed that the Light Tanks and Light Artillery even have the EXACT same stats. Despite the fact that I can't say for sure whether defense damage spread is done by amount or type, this is for the most part irrelevant. These weapons all do the same thing and one does it better than all the others. However, given that some situations leave that best weapon more vulnerable than the others, let's narrow it down to the other three. Of these, they all are very weak, too weak to actually defend anything and common practice is to treat the one that doesn't use ammo as filler. Unlike previous times I've suggested this, the ones that use ammo are now slightly stronger than the one that doesn't use ammo. In either case, these are filler material as actual defense would prefer the other weapon making one weapon (Defensive Jeeps) much better for the role than others given that it minimizes the interference of supply units on quality. As such, I propose that Light Tanks and Light Artillery be eliminated. What will be lost is possible extra damage spread in very rare occasions.

3) Offensive Land Batteries: Anti Tank Missile Batteries and Mid Range Missile Batteries. These two weapons have overlapping roles with one (Mid Range Missile Batteries) capable of hitting more weapons, taking less damage, and doing more damage to weapons that both can hit. There is little to no need for keeping AT batteries given that their role is taken and then some by the other weapon. As such, I propose eliminating Anti Tank Missile Batteries. What will be lost is the ability to slightly reduce damage spread in clearing defensive land forces on very weak targets.

4) Offensive Sea to Land Ships: Guided Missile Frigates and Cruise Missile Ships. Everything that the Guided Missile Frigate does is vastly improved upon by the Cruise Missile Ship to such an extent that if there were one weapon that were the most useless, it would be the Guided Missile Frigate. As such, I propose eliminating the Guided Missile Frigate. What will be lost is nothing.

Honorable mentions:
Light Attack Boats, I can see where in the future these could be used in "Naval Transport Units".
Supply Ships, I can see where in the future these could be used in "Naval Supply Units".

Scarlet, heavy jeeps? The best mass invasion weapon in the game and you want to eliminate it? You've obviously never been attacked by 10,000 HJ. I owe you one, so maybe I'll treat you to a display of how useful they are ;)

Oh noes! The big meany bully crafty is being mean and bullying me for trying to improve the game!

/me flames about nonsense.

But on a serious, do you see a use for HJ or even HAV? I mean if you prefer to keep your secrets it's cool. Mostly just like a yes or no thing.

For Jeeps, yes, heavy and light.

Well I'd like to point out that I have a specialized unit that uses Heavy artillery and Heavy Jeeps, and a special unit that uses Heavy jeeps, and a special kind of unit that uses anti-tank missiles, but I believe after my last edit I have obsoleted the anti-tank missiles.

For the most part I agree with you like tons, but the cost differential can matter also, and when you are dealing with proportions and weapon quality that is a way to shape your fighting ability. But I don't know HTanks are like in nearly every land unitI know, but artillery can be substituted for a corp slayer as they go down easier. H-Jeeps have no ammo making them incredibly inexpensive. H-Jeeps are the most cost effective least time efficient unit in the game. If a corp has 0, no, nunca, way of defending against a unit Heavy Jeeps can attack and attack lossless without using any ammo at all!

I think the problem is overlapping purpose which probably can be done better, but probably more from the confusion in the units purpose, in this case Scarlet's right some units simply have no purpose unless you really specifically craft a purpose. Though Scarlet's suggestion probably also selected the proper units maybe an increase to their variability might be better, shouldn't artillery have a larger range than tanks for example? Or shouldn't artillery be much easier to hit, as another? The number of operators could also change the allignment of how to use these units in different ways, because atm I only use artillery instead of tanks in ONE unit because the ammo is cheaper, but I could probably just lower the amount of tanks as a direct replacement, proving it to be completely useless to me, and probably almost everyone else.

An alternative to deleting these weapons is obviously to alter their stats so that they have slightly different functionality. My problem isn't necessarily that there are too many weapons... it's that some weapons are clearly better than others enough that there is very little reason to use them.

Like: Artillery can be given greater range than tanks, then consideration of whether to pick better range versus better firepower is a meaningful choice.

but with lots of useless weapons noobs will be confused and inefficient in their strategies allowing stronger players to easily overpower them so I suggest leaving the useless weapons.....plus free players cant get cruise missile ships so we need guided missile frigates

So where is Drew?

Last I saw him he was down south trying to corner the medical materials market.

I'm feeling sad about the situation he was in. I miss him. He's a snotty lil devil, and a bit cheeky but I miss him.

bump... I like this topic reminds me what weapons I should use and which ones to avoid

sounds like Iranian navy tactics, a Crafty swarm.