Large Cannon Rework

[pliant cosmos]

Large cannons are certainly one of the weapons of all time. They're one of the most broken things in cosmoteer (and not just in the sense that they are OP).

In career, large cannons are super fun to use. They blast through just about anything early game, they are their own armor due to their high HP and penetration resistance, and are relatively cheap to keep firing (just 2 operators, 1-2 suppliers, and some ammo) due to their ammo capacity.

However, in reality they are very frustrating to use (at least in my experience) because they require hyper-coils to build and thus repair. Running them without shields is a practical guarantee that hyper-coils will be in your repair bill (figure 1). And which faction has the least hypercoil-using ships? The most common starting faction, Fringe. Hyper-coils practically force you to buy them from stations which is rather frustrating especially when you play as a hoarder, since you'll have tons of almost every resource except hyper-coils.

The only positive I see here is the high quantities of hyper-coils that exist on freighters and trade stations, so there's actually a reason to attack them and interact with the "Wanted" mechanic instead of just clearing pirate bounties. Still, it's frustrating as this is difficult to do in multiplayer co-op playthroughs due to the amount of coordination you need to not lose your entire fleet to police ships in the process.

In elimination PvP, large cannons are easily the most powerful weapons, only seeing competition from railguns and nukes. Due to their damage and penetration, the lightly armored sides and backs of most elimination PvP ships are highly vulnerable to them. Shielded ships suffer against them too if they don't place structure in front of them because of phasing. Even lowering some of the shields down doesn't help (figure 2).

Large cannon phasing can happen in a couple different ways:

1. A large cannon ship rams a ship with large shields, blocks their shield arc, and obliterates the shielded ship

This is great, it takes advantage of an intended weakness of large shields

2. A large cannon ship rams a ship with small shields or a single layer of armor and kills the ship straight through the shields or armor

This is the other reason large cannons are so strong in PvP. Because their projectiles spawn from the tip of their barrel, and the barrel has no hitbox, large cannons can easily phase their shots past small shields and even a full layer of armor without difficulty (figure 3).

Because large cannons have so much HP and penetration resistance, the shield phasing interaction is particularly annoying because there isn't really a surface-based weapon that can win against them in a ram. Deck cannons are the best option to beat them, but because every ship in the current elimination meta is so fast, they barely win any other matchups, making them frustrating to counter.

The last big reason large cannons are OP in PvP (not just elimination this time) is their ammo cache. Large cannons store 16 full shots worth of ammo which makes them usable as an alpha weapon, especially on small flanking ships. In elimination, two archetypes exploit this to its maximum: large cannon swarm and "spinner squib" (figure 4). Most other archetypes that use large cannons do need to run storage, but they benefit from this huge cache that allows them to run very few supply crew, oftentimes just 1 supplier per cannon (figure 5). The high ammo capacity also makes large cannon "waste" ships possible in domination, which use their high ammo capacity, high damage, and cheap credit cost to do lots

So, how do we fix this?

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure how to fix all of these issues right now. However, I believe we can fix the most annoying ones pretty easily, so here's my initial suggestions:

1. Remove hyper-coils from the large cannon recipe, but make them use more coils in exchange to keep their cost at 5k credits. This would be a buff to large cannons in career, but ships there run a lot more side/back armor so the phasing and flanking issues present in elimination aren't really a thing there. I think it's safe to buff them this way, especially since it has no effect on PvP. I do think that large cannons requiring hyper-coils to build is "fair" in a sense but requiring them to repair every single time isn't.

Space engineers has a pretty clever solution that I think could work well here if it doesn't take too much development time, which is to make parts lose components in a set order when they are damaged instead of losing them all equal to their credit value. Such a mechanic could also serve as a neat career balancing tool as well, as OP parts could be made to lose their more valuable components faster.

2. Remove barrel phasing. This mechanic is extremely annoying and buffs large cannons in way that seems completely unintended. It looks janky and is not fun to fight against because your defenses simply get invalidated. I would suggest making the projectile spawn at the top of the cannon's actual hitbox instead of the end of the barrel as a band-aid fix, but it could look even more janky so a more complicated fix is probably needed.

I won't mess with ideas for their excessive ammo storage because I'm not a domination player, it seems like a straight ammo capacity decrease would kill waste ships altogether

[fickle crescent]

Hmm I think maybe instead of removing the hypercoils from the recipe they could instead be added back to cockpits and hyperdrives so that there's always some to repair the cannons

Tho I know that the hyperdrives were removed for a reason that I do not remember

If it was due to there not being enough of them in stations for quick building that has been fixed already

Also

For hoarders

I think the economy rework could help there so that you don't feel the need to hoard stuff

For barrel phasing maybe projectiles could have an invisible state so they can start before the barrel end

[pliant cosmos]

Honestly, for cockpits that's a good idea

I find myself spamming them instead of using larger control rooms because of hyper-coil issues which is a bit annoying

[fickle crescent]

Ok so, I found that first hypercoils were removed from cockpits, small hyperdrives and large thrusters, with me finding no explanation, and then in a later update they were added to large cannons, large lasers and mining beams, with the explanation being that it should actually increase the amount of hypercoils you get

Feels to me that the first one was added so that building the parts is easier

So you accidentally have two of these going against each other

Also might just be me but I always have way too many regular coils

I suggest simply adding back the hypercoils from the first change

That way there are enough of them for both repairs and creating new parts, as well as slightly gating the large weapons from the first and maybe second tier

[shadow grail]

agreed phasing being removed would be a suitable rebalancing starting point for LCs

[hallow ermine]

I would definitely approve of phasing being removed. This is for both a practical and aesthetic purpose. It is disconcerting that the barrel of a gun has no hitbox and can clip not only through a meter of steel armor but also through crew members. Also, it is very annoying when a rammer starts firing from the inside of your ship by sticking its barrels through solid metal.

[compact ginkgo]

theagument with needing to buy hypercoils, i mean that is just real live capitalism

[digital thunder]

I disagree with reducing more and more stuff to steel and coils

play the economy game damn it

To make large cannons more affordable, bringing hypercoils back from where they were removed would be amazing

An old eve online saying says "if you can't afford to lose it, don't run it" and I think it should pretty much apply to cosmoteer as well

In a sense, I like the game being punitive about repair costs

Plus, hypercoilless large cannons will immediately obselete standard cannons which are basically only run on starter ships or when you can't afford the hcoils

[hallow ermine]

That's my philosophy in Cosmoteer! That's why I spend so much time mining...

[rose prawn]

Well that's a problem in a game about building different ships no? My career ships rarely use large cannons because of the hypercoil repair cost, and the fact that you want to put cannons on the front of the ship, so they're generally going to be the first thing that get obliterated.

I get it with railguns, if you don't want to have them blow up, protect them better or don't get shot, but it doesn't mesh well with a close range weapon

[rose prawn]

Very well written post
Perhaps if the source of hypercoils is one issue, then sources in general could be explored, what about the new missions rewards? They could still have normal credit rewards, but with some resources as a secondary so that you can fix your ship afterwards.

The little item caches you can find on ? around the map also come to mind, it might be nice to scavenge some too

[paper nimbus]

In dom cannon phasing can feel gimicky and rng based at times and isn’t fun to play against (although it’s counterable) and in elim it’s also not the most fun thing to die to

You have rear armor there oops you got bad rng and my barrel went straight through and hit you irl gg wp

They would still be great/top 3 without this interaction as well