• 5X did just add the splash damage weapon type, so that does add a bit more variety. This specifically uses the plasma web mechanic, but the damage only happens once instead of persistently. Due to how plasma web works, it will have a 100% hit chance, so I can't make them low hit chance. Since they are 100% accurate, I made them short range.
  
• Torpedoes are not affected by ECM jammer or any other specials. I can't change this.
  
• The "sniper" profile for ships will have ships stop once they reach the very edge of their longest ranged weapon's range. That means if you allow very long range certain weapon types, you can only include those weapon types on the blueprint since other weapons will be wasted in a battle until your front line ships are destroyed and they come for your sniper ships. This means essentially one type of weapon on a ship, which is not good for the variety of situations that an AI will need to face (the exception being missiles, where if you're going to put any on, you need a lot in order to overwhelm the defender's PD).
  
  Currently there's basically two range levels. Long range weapons (range 75-90) include heavy mount cannons/beams, torpedoes, fighters, and fast missiles. Short range weapons (range 50-60) include normal cannons/beams, normal missiles, and splash damage weapons. Mauler device is an exception, having an even shorter range and extremely high damage output with a long cooldown.
  
• The battlefield isn't large enough to support weapons whose range is greater than around 90. That is, the fleets start around 90 distance apart, so any range beyond that basically doesn't matter for weapons since the AI will fly toward you.
  
• I did use an excel sheet to rebalance all of the weapons. I've made adjustments since, so I don't have quite an up to date sheet to share.
  
• Weapons do have different focuses in some ways. Cannons and beams while similar in range are differentiated by cannons having lower armor penetration while beams have multiple hits per shot. Each of the beam hits is subject to shield damage reduction, making them less effective against shields but more effective vs armor. Cannons, firing their shots in one burst, face less damage reduction from shields but do less to armor, so they're better for shields.
  
  Cannons fire faster, beams are slower. Some weapons are shield piercing but do significantly less damage overall than other weapons at the same tech level (the shield piercing ones also have slightly less range except particle beam).
  
  The difference with missiles and torpedoes is already apparent, with missiles being subject to PD and ECM jammer but being guided, while torpedoes are not. In this case, it's actually the torpedoes that are long range, though missiles can be given the Fast modification to increase their range as well.
  
  Fighters have the longest range, but due to the sniper issue I mentioned above, their range is not that much longer than other long range weapons.
  
• I can't change the speed of fighters. At least UCP makes them stay out fighting for longer instead of returning after just one shot. They hold up to PD weapons better than missiles but can still be destroyed with enough fire (or lightning field, which instantly kills all nearby fighters and missiles).
  
• Races do tend to have preferences for certain weapon types. For example, The Mrrshan, having the best beam attack, almost exclusively use beams/cannons and closer range ships, while the Alkari and Trilarians, having the best ship defense and fastest ships, tend to prefer missiles and sniper rolls. Some races like researching and using fighters and others don't.

Thanks for the detailed feedback. A lot of your post is about how things work now. I haven't played for a while and had actually forgotten that torpedoes aren't affected by specials and ECM. I guess I was remembering MOOII. I already knew about the specifics of beams vs cannons, it's a nice differentiation. And if it's impossible to add an explosive radius to normal weapons, then that's to bad, but it wouldn't be a defining part of my envisioned artillery weapons. I also do appreciate all the work that you've already done to improve combat, including your most recent addition of specials. Maybe I should have led my first post with that.

But now for the two main problems that you mention.

• Battlefield size. You mention that ships start at a range of 90. I was a bit surprised by that as I never see my heavy mount beam weapons fire directly from the start of a battle and they have range 90. Maybe ships only start at range 90 during huge battles with many ships and a crowded battlefield.
  However, I had foreseen that the battlefield would be to small for range 200 weapons. I had hoped that you could further enlarge the battlefield to allow space for these long range battles.
  
• The AI problems. Maybe the most crucial objection . If the AI can't be made to handle it, then it's a bad idea to force such changes into the game.
  However, I don't quite grasp the problem with specialised AI ships. I usually focus my ships into a certain role, for instance long range beam weapons. I won't add short range beam weapons to such a ship as those weapons won't be used efficiently in combination with the longer range weapons. I won't add fighters to such a ship as the ships specials are designed to optimise beam weapon fire. I won't add torpedoes to such a ship as they are shorter range and don't benefit from the beam specials that I added.
  Now you're saying that it's better for the AI to build ships with a variety of weapon systems. I don't quite grasp why. The long range beam weapon ship that I just described is purely specialised, but is suited to deal with all battlefield situations (It does have pd-weapons). I usually at some other specialised ships to my fleet. For instance a ship with a wide area ECM jammer to support the entire fleet. But that's not even required to build a decent fleet. It's just an extra for a great fleet.
  Why should the AI build ships with mixed weapons? This is indeed a bad idea if those weapons vary greatly in range.
  I envision an AI building a fleet with long range artillery ships facing another AI with a fast fleet of short range beam weapons. Who will win? If the balance is right and the fleets equal in size, then that won't be clear.

I can increase the battlefield size, but it just adds more space behind the ships. Starting range is a bit of a guess; I've never measured it. I have seen fighters launch at the start of battle, so some battles must start in that range. Most heavy mount cannons/beams have a range of 82.5.

For every ship strategy, there's a counter to it. If the AI is just loading up on all missiles, you can throw on some jammers and PD, and they won't stand a chance. So even with ships like the Alkari and Trilarians that do prefer those long range missile ships, there are other ship designs available for them to build too.

Perhaps the biggest issue with the AI though is the tech they research. If they're specialized for missiles, for instance, what if they don't have the latest missile tech? Their ships may be quite underpowered compared to other ships. I can put in a line for their race that makes pulson missile a "preferred tech" (and I have), but they may still choose the other tech or choose to research a different part of the tech tree entirely.

By having other designs available (and the extra ship hulls I added help with this as well), the AI will build whatever available design has the best stats. So I give the AI all a preference for certain designs of ships, but I don't restrict them to that design in case they don't end up with the right techs (researching the right specials is also an issue). With an uncreative race like the Klackons, this is even more of an issue; they have to take what they can get. It also adds a bit more unpredictability to the AI if they've been using a certain design against you for a while and you're countering it, but then they fly in with some new ships using different weapons/specials.

I have tried to make unique designs and themes for the AI as much as possible. I try to give each individual ship design a "theme" of sorts, be it long range beams/cannons or torpedoes/fighters or lots of missiles, and I try to make certain things a theme among a race's design, like the Darloks using cloaking device on all ships for instance, but for the reasons mentioned above, I have to allow the AI some versatility.

I guess missie ships have the best counter. You can create ships to specifically counter other types of ships, but those counters aren't as strong as for missile ships.

I do agree that a race shouldn't exclusively specialise in one type of vessel. Although I do think that each individual vessel should be specialised towards one type of weapon. You can just create more efficient specialised ships that only need the special systems to support one type of weapon.

However, if it's not possible to change the starting position of ships in a battle, then my dream of a battle with extremely varied weapon ranges is impossible. Ships do need to start at a distance greater than the longest range weapon. How was the starting position of the star base in battles changed?

By the way, I do appreciate all the variance you already created in battles. Thanks.

There's a boolean setting for whether a given ship hull type starts in the middle. Vanilla has it set to true for defense structures; I just changed it to false.

Originally posted by Spud Dastardly:

There's a boolean setting for whether a given ship hull type starts in the middle. Vanilla has it set to true for defense structures; I just changed it to false.

Good call to change that. But of course, it's not the more detailed battlefield manilpulation needed to change the entire position of two combatting fleets. So a pity, but the modding possibilities don't allow what I had hoped.

Thanks for thinking with me.

I'd second the call to have torpedoes be shorter range.

I think it would actually improve their utility. Currently, ships release their first volley of torpedoes at long range so a lot of them will miss because they're so slow. You generally don't get much joy from firing torpedoes at long range anyway.

It would be better IMO to have ships only release torpedoes at closer ranges (wait until you can see the whites of their eyes!). Then they would miss less often and you'd have more incentive to put torpedoes on faster, more manoeuvrable ships that can close in to compensate for the slow, unguided projectile.

It also makes sense for ship design because torpedoes are supposed to be used to counter those big, slow enemy capital ships right? Having small close-range torpedo bombers as a response to large, long-range heavily armoured capital ships is a classic ship combat scenario.

It's the same premise that underlies bomber fighters and heavy fighters: quickly get in close to drop a high damage but short-range payload on a much larger, but slower target. Just scale that up so we can use our frigates and destroyers against Battleships and Titans the same way.

Torpedoes at long range are very effective against planetary defenses. The Fast modification for torpedoes was also recently buffed with reduced cost and twice the speed. That and Semi-Guided can make them effective against larger ships at long range. Of course, you can always right click to disable auto-casting until your ships get to a closer range before firing them. Torpedoes are meant to miss rather easily though, which is why they have high damage and aren't affected by jamming or PD.

Hi.
Loadouts focused on semi-guided torpedoes seems to be uber weapons against all medium and big targets. Are there any counter-measures against them?

Displacement device and subspace teleporter can get you out of the way of torpedoes. Planetary defenses have no real defense against them though.