Originally posted by GammaWave:

I personally feel the reloading effect worsens the pacing of combat, and that having melee weapons use energy discourages weapon swapping. However, FU adds so much content that uninstalling just because of these tweaks would not be ideal. Any options?

Not really, no. Both are key reworks for balance:

Energy for melee is barely problematic, and is a balancing measure. Weapon swapping is not at all affected, since each weapon type behaves in its own way, and a need for different damage types to succeed in combat makes this even more important. You'll really only have energy issues if you are spamming the attacks really fast. Instead, precise strikes are the goal!

As for reloading: there are numerous types of ranged weapon. Energy weapons don't require reloading, charge weapons have a limited "magazine" that auto-recharges slowly over time, and ammo-based weapons have reloads. If you do not like to reload, then use one of the other two types.

You can also shift-click to reload whenever you like, which can also be handy in a bind when using ammo-based weapons.

I didn't know about shift click, so that certainly solves one gripe for me.

Sad for me that there is no change add-on for melee. For example, I would use melee for initial surprise attack and strong first strike, then follow up by retreating a bit and switching to ranged. However, having melee use energy discourages this a bit and seems to coral players into melee or ranged builds, not combos of both, because they both use the same resource. It also soft nerfs melee a by removing its utility as a reliably no-energy weapon.

The extreme elemental resistances sort of forces swapping (which I like), but melee energy usage somewhat penalizes it.

But that change (melee energy use) is something I doubt you/FU team is going to change and is a respectable balance change, even if I disagree with it.

Kinda late but an easy & fast fix if you cant stand the energy use is to simply d/l cheat engine and freeze energy values and/or freeze ammo values so you never need to reload or both. Limitations are there to increase difficulty, but if they aren't fun for you, adjust em! I feel the same as you btw, and I usually ignore the energy mechanics as I prefer a more terraria-like combat.

Originally posted by Gamerzilla:

Kinda late but an easy & fast fix if you cant stand the energy use is to simply d/l cheat engine and freeze energy values and/or freeze ammo values so you never need to reload or both. Limitations are there to increase difficulty, but if they aren't fun for you, adjust em! I feel the same as you btw, and I usually ignore the energy mechanics as I prefer a more terraria-like combat.

Thanks for the advice. I'm more or less finished with Starbound until GiC gets updated, and I dislike/am not proficient with using in game cheats, but if I ever end up coming back to this game, I'll give this a try.