nothing

[Lain]

nothing

[BlueTemplar]

It's supposed to be the ultimate end-game weapon, isn't it? If you care about balance (and AI) you should probably use the Balance Mod anyway. And IIRC, fighters are even more overpowered in vanilla than WMG...

[Lain]

yes but then whats the point of every other weapon

[BlueTemplar]

Aren't they cheaper to research?

[Lain]

No cause wave motion gun is part of the high energy weapon tree which is imo the only weapon tree that matters. To get this tree you need level 3 physics which is nothing. The first weapon is as good as any of the other underpowered weapons you will find by level 5 you have the ripper beam which is already the most advanced weapon anyone could have at this point in the game with a max attack of 500 no mounts. Finally you get to the wave motion gun at level 10 which once you max it has 1000 damage and only uses 70 space. You litterally have fridgites playing about one shotting stuff or more likely destroyers for the extra space. When put on a dreadnought or battle base you can get 2000 damage with amazing range. The only weapon to come close to this tree is the cystal techs beam at max lvl 500 damage. Even worse the ripper beam is also a fighter weapon so you not only have amazing ships but fighters to with out even teching small weapons but once you do prepare your self. The entire tree is unbalanced cause we have energy discharge and steam but we only ever do one point for anti fighter weapons which then dont matter and all the special tech the missles the every other weapon in the game becomes useless like if the crystals had 500 damage and kept the lower tier bypass armor sure great that would be a balanced trade off but the only reason you do any other the special tech trees is usually for one thing. Crystals energy deflector, Organic population buffs, Temporal space yards,ect. I feel the races dont use special tech cause its inferior but thats my rant i am now going to mod the balance mod and make it balanced.

[CaptainKwok]

You're thinking about damage in the absolute sense, in which case the WMG does the most damage in one shot, but that doesn't mean it is the best.

A better metric to look at is damage per kT per second when you are comparing weapons. Then consider the type, so direct fire (which are less accurate at range) versus seeker (always hit unless knocked out by PD or run out of range). The accuracy penalty for direct fire weapons is a big deal, for example a WMG at maximum range will have about 1/4 the damage/kT/sec that it would have at point blank range.

When I designed the weapon damage amounts, I took into account the following parameters:
dmg/kT/sec at Point Blank vs Armor * accuracy at point blank
dmg/kT/sec at Medium vs Armor * accuracy at medium range
dmg/kT/sec at Max vs Armor * accuracy at max range
dmg/kT/sec at Point Blank vs Shields * accuracy at point blank
dmg/kT/sec at Medium vs Shields * accuracy at medium range
dmg/kT/sec at Max vs Shields * accuracy at max range
Puncturability (dmg-typical emissive/regen rate)/kT/sec * accuracy at medium range
Bonus for range over 100

For seekers, I substituted accuracy with a rating based on the seeker's speed and ECM %.

Overall I took a weighted average to generate a final rating for comparison.

Your example of large ships (which are slow!) with massive mount WMGs can easily be defeated by longer range smaller (faster, harder to hit) ships using seeker weapons like Quantum Torpedoes or Plasma Missiles. In fact if there is a single weapon that is most effective in almost all situations, it would probably be the Plasma Missile!

If you look closely at the weapons you'll start picking up on their strengths and weaknesses. You mentioned Ripper Beams, which are a great short range weapon that fits on small ships, but it is also very short range and has very poor accuracy. Anti-Proton Beams don't do lots of damage, but they are very accurate.

[Lain]

Well i never knew thank you

[serge037]

I never used the WMG in any of my games so far, I prefer the incinerator beam for direct fire and I use it on close to med range attack ships. As Captain pointed out, the range penalty of high energy beams is quite high.

I prefer indirect fire weapons and there is nothing better than quantum torpedo imo. Plasma Missiles (PM) are just a bit too slow for my liking, more chance to get killed by PD. Though i havent tried the small plasma missiles in BM 1.20 so far. I will probably use them for fighter class bombers.

[Emphraim]

Can I just say its incredible the developer of the Balance mod is still active and actually responds to random posts here on steam. I bought this game on a whim and haven't played much yet, but now I feel like i will be playing it quite a bit over christmas.