The way weapons and defenses work in GC4 Supernova are completely different than previous games. In Supernova defenses can block damage from any source. Weapons have stats and new uses. This will be a basic guide to weapon and class systems as well as some of my feedback at the end. Not all of the information in this guide may be correct or accurate. I will try and update it as information becomes available. I've been trying to go through battle logs to determine how everything works.
Weapon Systems
Comparative Damage per Phase (CDP) = Accuracy*Damage/(Mass*Reload)
CDP is not official, but it is a way to compare weapons damage output excluding range. Range however is a very important factor to consider as a ship that has been destroyed will be unable to fire. If I get a volley of missiles off that decimates the enemy fleet before they reach me I can mitigate a lot of damage that way.
Kinetic: 2 phase reload, short range, 50% accuracy, 1 mass. CDP= 1.25
Beam: 4 phase reload, medium range, 100% accuracy, 2 mass. CDP= 0.625
Missile: 8 phase reload, long range, 75% accuracy, 3 mass. CDP= 0.15625
(For the CDP I assumed the damage is equal to 5 which corresponds to graviton gun, phoenix missile, and plasma pods)
Defense Systems
It seems armor and shields have a chance to trigger. They will not always activate and your ship will take all of the damage. However when they do trigger they can have a couple different ways to do so.
Armor: Mitigates damage, high mass, high rating. Armor is interesting because it has a chance to mitigate some of the damage. When it triggers, armor will mitigate some of the incoming damage. If the incoming damage is 3 it can mitigate between 1-3 of the damage even if you have an armor rating of 40. However if you only had an armor rating of 1, you could only block up to 1 damage.
Shield: Absorbs damage, low mass, low rating. When shields trigger, they will absorb damage up to your shields rating, or weapon damage, whichever is lower. This would imply they're much more useful than armor however they also seem to trigger a lot less often so they may not actually prevent more damage.
Point Defense: Evades damage, medium mass, medium rating. As far as I can tell these modify the accuracy of enemy weapons reducing their chance to hit and allow the ship to evade all damage.
Class System
Feedback
1. The weapons system is great, although missiles might need a slight buff in the future. I haven't played with them enough yet to say whether that is the case. I really like the changes as they make each weapon type unique.
2. I like the concept behind each of the revamped defense systems. Absorb, mitigate, and evade are great concepts each coming with their own versatile uses. Example: Point defenses are probably less effective against beam weapons because of beam weapons high accuracy. I would really appreciate a little more information about what each defense is doing in either the description of the defense, or hovering the cursor over the defense stat on the ship stat block.
3. For the ship class system I don't find each class distinct enough. They play very similarly as before and strategies haven't really changed with the inclusion of the current system. Carrier swarms are still extremely effective vs large and huge ships, and cruisers play very similar to how medium ships worked in the past. I could be overlooking something, as I haven't run hundred of battles to gather statistics.
4. Having the targeting priority is a great change. It's not as intuitive as I would like, but if it stays that way, I'll figure it out.
Suggestions (These are just making changes to the current system)
S1. Reduce the damage done by fighters to large and huge hull ships by 50-90%. This would nerf carrier fleets and make fighters act more as escorts. Larger ships can be used as something that isn't a carrier.
S2. Replace frigate class with a destroyer class. Buff the destroyer to that it is the go to for destroying large capital ships like dreadnought and the battleship. Set the fighter to target destroyers and other fighters first.
S3. Cruiser, battleship, and dreadnought could all use a little more distinction. Maybe make cruisers weak against dreadnoughts, battleships good against battleships and dreadnoughts, dreadnoughts for taking on cruisers, and battleships.
Radical Suggestions (These are adding classes, or overhauling some systems)
RS1. Change the targeting system to set priority based on ship size. To me this makes targeting much more intuitive for the player. Most of the ship building is based around ship size. Most battles are fought with tiny ships at the front on to huge ships in the back.
RS2. Split each class into 2 classes for a total of 10 while keeping them unique.
Some ideas:
- Fighter and Bomber classes one for taking out small ships, and one for larger ships. You could decrease the bombers tactical speed.
- Gunship and Destroyer classes. Gunships could add to siege bonus and destroyers take on larger ships.
- Cruiser and Corvette classes. Cruisers are generally a good all rounder and corvettes to take out fighters, bombers, and destroyers.
- Battleship and Battlecruiser classes. Battleships generally take on battleships, battlecruisers, and dreadnoughts. Battlecruisers are faster and generally focus on medium ships.
- Dreadnought and Superweapon class. Dreadnoughts generally are best against medium and large ships. Superweapon would be almost solely to take on other huge ships and struggle to hit anything else.
