Realised there's one thing I failed to edit:
"Saving throws are equal to 10+(level of spells rendered impossible to cast)+ABILITY SCORE MODIFIER"
Thanks, added.
Why aren't they called "Magitechniques"!?
They are now.
Ok, can you please list those "few things" that you consider too strong and the middle point that you consider would be ideal?
OK, I'll do it in stages since there's a lot to cover and I need to do things like sleep. Chances are other members of our group will have more examples.
Arsenal Weapons:
- FXA-03M2 Hyper Mega Launcher (III) - Comparable in damage to the other T3 Heavy weapons, but wide crit range and special properties make it just too good. Suggestion: Reduce damage.
- High Mega Cannon (IV) - This has the same base damage as the GN Buster Beam Sword (IV), but it's ranged, costs less energy, has a better crit, and takes up less than half the space. It's volatile and has three less to-hit bonus, but I don't think that makes up for its raw power. Suggestion: Increase space and energy cost.
- Hv Ruin Cannon (V) - This series of weapons (the light/medium/heavy cannon trio) works at lower levels, but the multiplication means that at the highest levels the heavy variants are too much. Suggestion: Reduce damage and ammo.
- Hv Orphan Cannon (VI) - This has a typo - I assume it's meant to be 20d10 currently. See Hv Ruin Cannon. Suggestion: Reduce damage and ammo.
- Sledgehammer anti-ship missiles (VI) - Incredibly high damage even by Heavy weapon standards. The limit of two ammo and high space requirement mitigate it somewhat, but it still seems too powerful in raw numbers. As an ammo weapon, it's also affordable to twin-link. Suggestion: Reduce damage and space taken.
- Hv Neo Cannon (VII) - See Hv Ruin Cannon. Suggestion: Reduce damage and ammo.
- Satellite Cannon (VII) - Super high damage, long range increment, incredible crit, great specials, only ten space. Suggestion: Reduce the damage, keep the crit range and specials so it's still special. Increase space.
- Anti-Matter Blade (VII) - Damage almost as high as Satellite Cannon. Crazy crit range. Same suggestion as Satellite Cannon: Less damage, more space.
- Moon Class Hypermissiles (VII) - The highest damage arsenal weapon by dice, though 20/x2 crit makes it less egregious than the previous ones. This one seems mostly balanced by the space requirements. Suggestion: Less damage, but still higher than the other T7 Heavy weapons.
-Reduced FXA-03M2 Hyper Mega Launcher damage from 10d12 to 10d10 (average 65 to 55), just a bit higher than the rectangular launcher's 49,5.
-High Mega Cannon's energy cost increased to 55 from 30, arsenal space to 12 from 8. Takes less space than buster sword but still over half more expensive to use plus still volatile.
-Hv Ruin Cannon damage decreased from 20d10 to 16d10 (average 110 to 88), and ammo reduced from 10 to 6.
-Hv orphan Cannon damage changed to 20d10, ammo reduced from 11 to 7.
-Sledgehammer anti-ship missiles damage reduced from 23d12 to 18d12 (average 149,5 to 117), arsenal space changed from 22 to 17.
- Hv Neo Cannon damage decrease from 32d10 to 28d10 (average 176 to 154), ammo decrease from 12 to 8. A damage bonus of +40% over the Graviton Cannon but it's still a 20 space weapon with basic crit and only Rending for specials, contrasting with the Graviton Cannon's half arsenal space, much better crit (should now deal more damage in a crit besides higher chance of scoring them) and several specials.
The main Arsenal issue is that Heavy weapons tend to have just too much damage output, particularly at high tiers. The one not-fun thing I want to avoid is a situation where almost any character is nigh-guaranteed to die instantly to any crit, with even Defend or barriers not giving a good chance to survive. At higher levels it gets easier to restore energy, so the higher EN costs for many of them have less balance impact within their tier.
Well at high-tiers getting crit resistance/immunity also becomes easier too.
This is exacerbated by Arsenal weapon linking. Early on being able to double/triple etc. a given weapon isn't so bad, because the results are comparable to the weapons of the following tier. At the higher tiers linking ends up being much powerful because the difference in damage between tiers is so far away from linear. This is less of a problem with weapons that cost energy since those still cost the same energy to use per-shot, even linked. Ammo weapons not having this restriction makes them significantly better for linking. For balance reasons I'd rather both types have the behavior of energy weapons, but I can't think of a logical way to express that for ammo weapons. The other way to deal with that would be to treat ammo as less significant than energy as a way to balance a weapon, but that would make ammo weapons underpowered within their own tiers. I don't have a good solution for that, honestly.
A key disadvantage of going too deep with twin-linked weapons is that most maneuvers that allow to use a weapon allow only one weapon, so it may pay off to have a single weapon with high damage rather than two that technically have higher combined damage but can't be combined with a strike at the same time. Also notice that right now anything over twin-linked also means they can't ignore any DR at all.
At the top of my head I could also make twin/x-weapons unable to benefit from precision damage like multi-shot.
As for the balance between energy and ammo, although true that ammo is better for twin/x-linking, the thing with ammo is that it doesn't recharge passively, and several reload effects only reload one gun at a time. That's why I advise the use of mook waves to wear down party resources. I've also toyed with the idea of alternate more gritty campaign rules where recharging resources would be harder and thus energy-based attacks would be more valued.
Something I consider a well-balanced heavy arsenal weapon is Graviton Cannon (beam)(VII). It has solid damage, a great crit, good specials, and fairly high costs. The difference from the others is that the lower base damage makes the crit merely very scary instead of utterly terrifying and isn't a nigh-guaranteed instagib on a pilot. Another good one is Rectangular Launcher (III), which has a good mix of damage, to-hit bonus, crit, and specials without being an answer to everything.
Thank you very much for the detailed-analysis, I took those in account when tweaking the values above. Hope we can continue this way.