I think balancing weapons to have similar stats is ok at best. It makes builds through implants and ship modifiers more important. Changing weapons so that they have similar mechanics is bad.
My two cents.
I am not comfortable with this change at all. With an organized squad , memorization of the artifacts would be crucial and aquireing them would be the difference of a win or lose. You effectively killed teamwork IMO. This is SC not Mario Cart!
Ah? That’s contradictory
Game modes
Team Battle
Scientific and exploratory expeditions advance further into the depths of the most dangerous space sectors.
Expedition ships locate many artifacts of Alien nature. Most of these artifacts are deposited in top-secret research centers of the Empire, Federation and Jericho.
But the mysterious depths of space continue to surprise, and deaths of expedition ships are not so rare. Perhaps this is explained by the fact that in recent years in space there have been more and more strange artifacts that look like the creation of human hands, but with very strange properties.
Below we list the most common artifacts and their properties:
Destroyer
Increases weapon damage by 50%
Lasts 13 seconds
Cocoon
Temporary Invulnerability
Lasts 7 seconds
Neocube
Repairs hull by 3000 pts. in 3 seconds
Spur
Increases ship speed by 50%
Lasts 45 seconds
Does not affect Adaptive Shield activation threshold
Notes on artifacts:
Once activated, an artifact affects the whole team
If the ship that activated an artifact is destroyed, the effect is removed
We need a better explanation of this i see no artifacts in team battle
The curved reflector buff really increase the effectiveness of long range fights.
I don’t like this artifact feature. This is waaaaaaaaaaaay too OP. You should dial it down a LOT. Right now this basically means whenever a team gets the artifact it will completely steamroll the other one, wtf? Now imagine what will happen in games with allready dominating teams… lol… you should give like a small buff that just may help you a bit, or place it in positions so that kill squads are less effective and you have to spread out a bit to get them, giving a reward and a chance to players that are being destroyed by more powerful teams. Will I support the main battle or cap the artifact to help give us a little boost? It’s not a bad idea, but you should really tone these buffs down a bit and make them a bit more passive (like static +15% buff to something while you are holding it) not this, this right now is *exactly* as Mario Kart with silly “trololol” power-ups.
A good idea for something in between and that takes more skill and is fun to use would be something like a buffer shielding artifact with visual and sound effect of 20.000 damage reduction to you and allies in 750m radius which depletes after you take 20.000 of combined damage across the ships you protected.
It is not something OP as increase ship speed by 50% for 45 seconds (are you serious??) or 50% weapon damage but an useful artifact that will give you some adaptive cover to either you or allies around you, and can be taken down either in 3 seconds or 30 seconds, depending on how much damage the shield takes. You would have to balance it out if an interceptor is carrying it, maybe give smaller radius of effect to interceptors or smaller strength, and make it more powerful for a frigate (since it’s easier to hit).
It’s a fun idea, but current implentation is too simple to gameplay and just plain too powerful, try thinking about giving the artifact more UTILITY (hint: needs intelligence to use it) and not power.
I don’t understand the Railgun buff at all. It’s not like I love that weapon but it’s still a lot of crit chance.
Same with RFB, why the hell did it get another buff? it was insanely strong already!
Plasma Gun… I hate that weapon, and I dislike inty players that base their gameplay in firing you from 4k m away, but that weapon is supposed to be like that. You should have reduced the damage. Imo this weapon should have same RoF than Railguns, a standard 3k range and much less damage, like it used to be, but only for interceptors.
Pulse Laser change seems fine since I don’t see anyone using them.
Sharpnel change is good tho, I don’t remember how many spread it was before, but now 4 looks a bit high, have to try anyway.
Bubble crit nerf looks fair, altough the problem of that weapons are Gunships, they’re too deadly in their hands, in other fighters they’re pretty meh, and now they will be even more meh.
I also like the buffs on some ammunition modifiers.
This is perfect :bomber:
Why would they nerft bubbles to something like that?! 
This will be fun weapon :yes_yes:
Balance part (interceptor weapons)
Ship : Falcon-M. Tweaked implants & CPU to make both cannons ~equal in
[ Range, Critic Chance, RoF & spread (Rf blaster needs max ~2.6sec. to reach max spread, so the max spread here 1.9 ~ 1.8 ) ]
Pulse laser vs Rf blaster ** (Close combat)**
still RF blaster has low projectile speed & it depends on lead marker to target enemy.
while Pulse laser never depends on lead marker.
White Noise doesn’t affect Pulse laser.
Pulse laser is kinda OP now.
Pulse laser have +33% critic damage bonus** than Rf blaster** and with 65% critic chance most of shots will be critic hits.
where both weapons are for close range fight.
Pulse laser vs Plasma Gun ** (medium range combat)**
Plasma gun is now the weakest ▲ weapon as range reduction by 750m.
This is not any kind of balance on plasma cannon, it is simply Nerf. may be help it later by increasing RoF to total 240 & reducing damage by ~100 points.
for me Plasma gun is pretty useless now.
not able to play at the moment but those artefacts in team battle look well over powered. and why did you not nerf the damage of the plasma guns? with supernova those things are very op. you can drop people from miles away and not even engage the enemy because the damage is so high. especially on a covert ops
Mario Kart > SCon
15 years ago there was a game called Homeworld that had the option called bounty which randomly distributed goodies on the map. Even further back a game called Command and Conquer had the same.
Guess what, in all the online matches I played that option was disabled, so no random/distracting stuff when playing against other people. So why do you think this is such a good idea in Star Conflict? Oh you think TDM is boring? Well “it is” because that game mode is supposed to be only about surviving and killing. So why do you try to make an orange out of an apple?
Balance part (interceptor weapons)
Ship : Falcon-M. Tweaked implants & CPU to make both cannons ~equal in
[ Range, Critic Chance, RoF & spread (Rf blaster needs max ~2.6sec. to reach max spread, so the max spread here 1.9 ~ 1.8 ) ]
Pulse laser vs Rf blaster ** (Close combat)**
still RF blaster has low projectile speed & it depends on lead marker to target enemy.
while Pulse laser never depends on lead marker.
White Noise doesn’t affect Pulse laser.
Pulse laser is kinda OP now.
Pulse laser have +33% critic damage bonus** than Rf blaster** and with 65% critic chance most of shots will be critic hits.
where both weapons are for close range fight.
Pulse laser vs Plasma Gun ** (medium range combat)**
Plasma gun is now the weakest ▲ weapon as range reduction by 750m.
This is not any kind of balance on plasma cannon, it is simply Nerf. may be help it later by increasing RoF to total 240 & reducing damage by ~100 points.
for me Plasma gun is pretty useless now.
In RFB vs pulse, you forget about the cooling time and heating time cycle. The RFB does more damage to shieds and less to hull, while thermal is good all around, but most people boost thermal resistances because of missiles, mines, minefields, LRF weapons and such.
In Pulse vs Plasma, you forget about the spread. Plasma gun has better accuracy. With pulse laser is quite difficult to hit anything smaller than a styx further than 2000 m.
Yes, that SPREAD on PL. It is useless without 2x spread reduction, you cannot just compare plain dps stats and say “oh this one is better”.
Oh you think TDM is boring? Well “it is” because that game mode is supposed to be only about surviving and killing. So why do you try to make an orange out of an apple?
Yeah, this pretty much. It’s boring? Remove it. Pimping with this just makes it an even worse experience.
Yes, that SPREAD on PL. It is useless without 2x spread reduction, you cannot just compare plain dps stats and say “oh this one is better”.
I’m doing fine with just 1 spread reduction module, while in a RFB I need two to hit consistently things smaller than a tormentor.
All my face wants is open cosmos 
, but yeah just throwing another game that does constant changes, to the very core of it’s weapons and stuff - Planetside2, I’m not sure if these changes are logical since I really haven’t spent much time in the game yet only have top tier2 ships so far.
Hopefully the game got changed for a better.
TDM is boring because a smart team will turtle in cover, not feed. If both teams are smart the bulk of their points have to come from feeder Bots.
The issue is purely down to the maps and the core design of the game. This ‘fix’ is going to piss people off no end because nobody wants to play a TDM were the other team capped a beacon and suddenly got 60 seconds of invincibility.
Plasma gun problem was the DPS not the range, but whatever…
Assault rails with vanadiums now are the same than before, because the base spread is increased. But now we have more critical chance, which is good.
Bubble critical damage got nerfed… well I don’t know what to think about that. I have to test it.
Pulse laser buff: I’m always in for more pulse buffs. It is my weapon of choice for recons.
Ammo buffs. Now the curved reflector and the supernova are more viable, more variety is always good.
So far it looks like a nice patch.
I was going to post my personal commnets…Then i red this and there’s no need of posting anyomre lol
I agree on every single word evi 
I’m really surprised aboy the dev work recentely… Well done guys!
Still have some littele doubt about the new plasma. Dps are still the same, let’s see how range change will affect the weapon 
So, Which is better for the CO as of now? Pulse lazer or RF blaster?
I have been using RF blaster for a while since the Shrapnel Nerf. But now that they buffed both a bit, I dont know what to use.
I did read here that the Pulse Lazer is good for Dog fighting in a Recon, and the Plasma Gun is good for a recon for taking out drones in SecCon.
Any thoughts or pics comparing them now?
So, Which is better for the CO as of now? Pulse lazer or RF blaster?
I have been using RF blaster for a while since the Shrapnel Nerf. But now that they buffed both a bit, I dont know what to use.
I did read here that the Pulse Lazer is good for Dog fighting in a Recon, and the Plasma Gun is good for a recon for taking out drones in SecCon.
Any thoughts or pics comparing them now?
And that proves tha devs made a good job
It’s up to you…For sure pulse should be better in dogfight, while RFB vs fighters and guards…