I didn't realize that a slight decrease in weapon animation speed would result in unparalleled catastrophic results for gameplay.
As an Admiral in snark, I appreciate this. I realize I probably came out of the gate a little strong, and I do apologize for that. I responded in short form during the tail end of my lunch break. I should've waited until I was able to respond more thoroughly.
I only assumed it would help in immersion as players would be able to better enjoy the weapons effects in a live session instead of through screen shots and slow motion replays since combat begins and ends so abruptly. But from your statement I can only assume then that my casual method of gameplay isn't what you had in mind developing SotP.
The crux of it is that, yes, your casual preference doesn't line up with our competitive intent. SotP is designed to be brutal and fast with a competitive slant. However, SoaSE runs on pure math. There is no random chance. Even things presented as randomness to the player are actually really basic arithmetic additions or subtractions, like asteroid fields' "chance to miss" just being a reduction in damage. Slowing down weapon travel effects by any noticeable amount would affect balance in ways that would take a lot of man-hours to rebalance. This would be much easier to explain if fans in general understood the game's mechanics as they work in the code, instead of just what you see at the end. Damage is backloaded, meaning it takes effect on the ship after the weapon effect completes. A good example of the issues adjustments can cause would be possibly reducing the weapon cooldown of MACs. Even a marginal change on some ships would result in the ship becoming mathematically superior to all other ships because of the way we handle combat rounds. Imagine getting two MAC rounds on your foe to their one. Slowing down also causes similar kinds of issues, namely things staying around longer than they should and thus laying down significantly more firepower than intended. We have to balance the mod in a way that ensures ships all have necessary functions and you can't spam one ship to victory. Changes to combat pace would affect damage values, abilities, health values, supply cost, and even the mod's economy.
Could we slow down combat in a way that would keep the mod working and satisfy your needs? Yes, but the amount of work that would have to go into it would set the project back by months due to having to tweak, then test, then tweak, then test in order to keep combat balance lore-friendly while simultaneously keeping the AI from falling apart. Combat would then be slower, but one of our major features when compared to other SoaSE mods (the speed of our games) would be gone. SotP is meant to be a compromise between the usual slow gameplay of SoaSE and the faster pace of more competitive RTS games. It's a middle ground with depth AND speed.
We actually did test slower combat than we have at the moment early on when we stepped away from the insanely fast combat of our first release and testers complained about how boring it was. We ultimately agreed and it never went public. The mod isn't just for SoaSE players, it's also for Halo's console fans who may not play many strategy games. We try to appeal to a very broad range of people all at once. Unfortunately, folks such as yourself suffer because of it.
One of my statements that you appear to have glanced without thought is the following:
I don't think addressing qualifiers is productive.
I'm not the person complaining about range, so please don't predispose a hostile attitude towards my minor, cosmetic suggestion.
The point I'm making is that what seems like a small change to you, or a need to adhere to lore without concession, can have unforeseen and large consequences. I'm trying to turn what to you is a small conversation about a single change into a meta-conversation that educates you about the convoluted environment we have to work in to force SoaSE to work as a Halo mod at all. We did have a conversation about this thread in our Skype call tonight and came to the basic conclusion I present above - a lot of work for negative gain.
Once again, I do apologize for coming off hostile initially, it wasn't my intent but rereading it now I see it very clearly from your perspective. Brevity was detrimental to effective communication in this case.