This is a base game patch to make charge lances viable: they are worse than assault rifles in terms of damage output, but cost more to make than charge rifles—there’re zero reasons to ever make one.
Charge lance now comes in heavy and light variants that are rebalanced separately. The light version can’t be created and is exclusive to lancers—this also band-aids the immersion problem of being able to make lancers in Biotech before researching charge weapons.
The heavy variant is now comparable to the charge rifle damage-wise, but receives no increases to range—it’s not a sniper rifle and hasn’t been for 4 years since 1.1; if the developer thinks that range is a problem, it might be best to shape charge lances into something else instead.
The light variant is comparable to the vanilla charge lance damage-wise, because rebalancing against beam grasers (used by tesserons) is tricky. The damage is more consistent, though.
Lance
Vanilla
New (heavy)
Reason
Damage
30
18
Charge lances do too much damage to body parts.
Amount of projectiles
1
2
Charge lances do inconsistent damage.
Time between each projectile
0
0.1 of a second
To differentiate from automatic rifles.
Cooldown
2.7 seconds
1.8 seconds
To level the changes above with the output of charge rifles.
Stopping power
1.5
4
Stopping power staggers moving enemies with that value as body size. I never understood why weapons described as so powerful in lore can’t stagger big enemies. It’s a tiny thing that should help not only sell the power, but also carve a distinction without going overboard—it won’t be very useful against mechanoids, but you’ll see some increase in safety when fighting certain bigger animals.
Work to make
16.67 minutes
12.8 minutes
Since lances are now similar to rifles, they can take just a little bit longer to make. For comparison, charge rifles require 12.5 minutes.
Cost to make
60 plasteel, 3 advanced components
75 plasteel, 2 advanced components
Since lances are now similar to rifles, they can cost just a little bit more to make. For comparison, charge rifles require 50 plasteel and 2 advanced components.
Stopping power
0.5
2.5
Charge rifles are fine and don’t require tuning. That said, it’s for consistency lore-wise and to underline the difference between charge rifles and assault rifles, especially when charge rifles are compared to assault rifles of +1–2 quality.
Notes:
All relevant text was changed for the sake of immersion, so unless you play in English, heavy lances will keep original translations, and light ones won’t be translated at all, so feel free to send me corrections.
Since it’s only an XML patch and I don’t expect much external input, I’m not putting it up on GitHub, but it’s published on Workshop under the MIT license.
