More weapons anyone?

I love this game, it is wonderful!

But i think its lacking on the cool weapon department. Its all kind of the same ol’ same ol’.
Beam weapons.
Lasers.
Missles.
Emp.
and now the underpowered Knetic weapons.

I thought the EMP missles were a cool idea, and the knetic weapons seemed great until you realized all it does is a tiny little gun flash. you cant even see where it hits!

So really, i think this game needs more diversity of weapons.

Here are a few ideas;

Flak cannon:
Explosive area of affect, good against fighters and weak frigates.

Nuke launcher:
I find this game, however gratuitous it is, lacks one gun that just does a MASSIVE explosion. This will solve that problem easily. This isnt going to be an overpowered weapon though, since there is no air in space nukes cannot reach their full explosion potential. basically, it doesent have to be a massive explosion that fills the screen white and kills everyone. Just a very large explosion is all.

Dual weapons:
A module that you can put on another weapon slot to make two weapon spots. Takes a lot of power and crew to even out the extreme advantage this gives.

Cannon:
When you just need something to punch through everything, this Monsterous gun launches explosive shells toward your foes. High armor damage and penetration, high hull damage, low shield damage and penatration.

Decimator:
Extremely close range gun, like a massive explosive balistic shotgun. For when you need that classic almost impratical hillbilly feel. 300 max range.

Laser Decimator:
Same as the Decimator, but in laser form.

Grapple:
Like a tractor beam, but can only be used against frigates and cruisers. Cruiser weapon only. A high-density metal ‘rope’ flings over toward your enemy, and if it hits it magnetically latches itself onto it. Motors pull in the ship so close that you are at point blank firering range under shields. Great to be used with
the Decimator.
Neither ship can break the grapple unless one of them dies.
Max 300 range.

And just as something that would be cool…

E-I-I

Nicknamed the “zombiafier” by the users, the device can only be used when you are grappled onto a ship. Your ship sacrifices itself to spread the infection, and takes the grappled ship with it. It becomes overrun by an organic virus that spreads with air, and anything organic. so once it gets inside the ship, it spreads like a wildfire, taking over the ship in seconds and spreads to the outside hull. Once this is complete, its only goal is to corrupt all other lifeforms, so it grapples onto other ships with vines, infecting them.

These infected have no favorites, they shall infect your own ships too if they get close enough.

This would make for fun games where frigates would latch onto you, infecting your ships as you scream ZOMBIES!!!

So, any other weapon ideas?
New modules?
Complaints on me taking all the good ideas?

Great ideas.

Got any of your own?

I’d like to see bigger ships and maybe bigger maps. Maybe give every team 1 Battleship sized ship.

Could also have a “boarding party” weapon. It launches shuttles (which count as fighters) which fly to an enemy ship, does some damage to the ship’s internals (bypassing armor and shields) and then returns to the ship that launched it. Boarding parties always attack crew quarters first, so multiple reinforced crew quarters and nano-repair would limit the damage a boarding party could do.

A flamethrower weapon might be nice. What was that one ship from Star Control II… its weapon was a very short range, high damage flamethrower in the nose. Maybe make it do cone damage that could hit multiple ships at once.

Oh yes, here it is. Oh, internet, is there anything you CAN’T do?

Thats a good weapon, maybe you have to have a hangar bay too for the boarding partys to land

And be realistic, there are no flames in space.

I like the flak cannon, big cannon, and graple ideas.

I’d prefer a graphical overhaul of some of the current weapons first. The megaton missile could do a ton of splash damage and have a huge explosion, the howitzer could be a lot more explosive, cruiser lasers could actually look like lasers, etc.

hi,

according to the amount of threads you post, you seem to be very excited of the game.

however, none of those ideas are really something nevver heard before. take a look at the suggestions forum!

i’ve got the flak cannon idea before you, haha
viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3840

besides my childish behaviour i’d like to see some more weapons, for example a howitzer that is actually a slow firing rail cannon of somekind. terrible damage, but reload time of 20 sec or so.

greetings
driver

Sure there are! How do you think the space shuttle works? It’s really just a question of having to bring your own oxygen as part of the fuel for the fire.

Weapons with extreme damage but low refire would actually be an interesting addition to the game. They could have a comparatively lower DPS, but would still be a great choice, because the high damage per hit (thinking 150+) would pretty much guarantee knocking out a ship module on each strike.

Another interesting style of weapon that could be introduced, would be a shield piercing weapon. One that ignores, but doesn’t harm, shields. To be honest, I think the kinetic weapons should fall in this category. The justification, would be that the shields wreak havoc with energy weapons, and the electronics within missiles and rockets, but have essentially no effect on solid objects. This would be relatively consistent with the fact that fighters happily fly through shields (lets assume their electronics are better hardened than a missile…) So again, you’d make a weapon with dps below the other weapons in it’s range/tracking class, but with the advantage that it bypasses the shield.

Combine the two, and you’d have something pretty unique… A slow firing, low DPS, weapon, that snipes out ship modules from the enemy fleet while the shields are still up.

I like the idea of incendiary weapons. Could make for some hugely Gratuitious visuals, with fire splashing over a ship when the projectile hits. You could either go the ‘short range, terrible damage’, or something that adds something new to the game - ‘low but persistent damage’, with the weapon dealing only minor damage, but continuing to deal damage for a significant length of time, so that after say, 30 seconds, your hit has actually done a very nasty amount of damage - high but delayed dps, essentially. Repair systems could perhaps extinguish the fire sooner.

Three words:
Point Defense Fighter.

Oh nice. Yeah, a fighter that could take down missiles would be pretty awesome. Would have to be careful on balance though - you wouldn’t want fighter fleets that were effectively immune to antifighter missiles.

Also a fighter to fighter weapon, that was unable to harm normal ships (after all, if point defence weapons can’t harm anything bigger than a missile, why shouldn’t there be weapons capable of harming a fighter, but incapable of harming a frigate?)

I think there should be very little done to expand the number of types of weapons (with one exception: we need an AOE 0-AP flak gun), and a lot more done to balance the types we already have.

hi,

that’s exactly what i was thinking of.
and the new projectile weapons need balancing anyways. it feels “wrong” to me how those big mighty howitzers sound like popcorn when firing…

fighters that shoot down missiles are also highly interesting. someone know the game starlancer? in EVERY mission you had to intercept those annoying torpedos.
don’t knwo why this came to my mind suddenly…
´
greetings
driver

I agree that KE weapons should, like fighters, go through shields, ignoring them. OTOH, as I have said in other threads, armor should protect but not get reduced, IMO (which balances this change). I also think most missiles should go through shields depending on the type. Most could be contact weapons, or even missiles that dispense shrapnel and ignore shields. Others might be assumed to detonate away from the ship, in which case the shields should be in effect. PD can always be improved slightly to balance things.

For the distant detonation missiles, I’d say EMP missiles should fall into this category.

Nuke missiles that detonate some range from the target and have an area effect (both EMP, and damage to shields) would be great. (have the module description include the proximity range?).

“Torpedoes” are odd in game. They differ from missiles how? I can only assume that they might be more like the “plasma torpedo” in Star Trek—a blob of energy as opposed to a physical object like a missile. If that is the assumption, then they would clearly hit the shields.

PD fighters are another story, and I am sort of against them, here’s why. PD fire control solutions are trivial as long as the shooter is the target, or effectively right next to the target. This is because the target missile is 100% predictable—it is coming to hit YOU. That reduced the FC solution to a 2D problem. PD should not miss at all, IMO, it should literally be rated by how many missiles it can kill per minute (we did tons of calculations on this for traveller). This means beating PD should require overwhelming it. So a swarming mass of fighters might not be ideal for a PD platform—in addition, they have less in the way of sensors to spot the missiles.

On a side note, I wish that the radius of the shields was available to mod in the hull text file.

That’s only true if you make the assumption that missiles fly directly towards you. As soon as you start talking about missiles that curve into their target, or that are able to take any sort of evasive action, then all bets are off on that count.

Sensors are somewhat moot. I think we need to assume AWACS style equipment on the cruisers, otherwise the fighters wouldn’t be able to find each other, even.

The advantage of the fighters, as a PD platform, when you think about it… Is they can place themselves somewhere along the path between the missile and the target. PD on the ship itself, is a bit of a ‘last moment’ thing, but a fighter screen (or any other sort of PD screen) can give a bit more depth to your defense.

I’m not entirely sure why point defense weapons shouldn’t be able to harm unarmored fighters… It’d be a means to differentiate those defenses from the more specialized missile scrambler, at the very least.

Awesome ideas, OP.

PD is nominally a system to deal with targets on a pure or lead pursuit to your vehicle—they are trying to hit you, exactly. As such, the control systems required are fairly straight forward. Dealing with crossing targets is far more complicated (you need to then start wasting shots to blanket possible future positions of the target to get a hit.

I’d wager the code aspect with the many missiles in flight is better or more efficient treating them as special weapons.