Bigger beams/shots/missiles.

[david2001david]

I think it looks stupid, when you have a GIANT gun on a ship, that shoots a needle thin beam. Cmon now.
Maybe it should be fat, depending on the size of the gun. lets say, you are looking at a gun from the front, and its 3x3 square. when is shoots, the beam should be 3x3 but not a square, a fat cylinder. It will look much cooler and the game will get MUCH more awesome.

" Such game, much fun."
-Doge

 

[Dragleones]

Bigger textures for bigger weapon arrays wuld definitly look better, but i don't think we need anything complicated.

Though it would make some enable some cool gimmicks like making a 8x1 beam array for a wide beam. There are many problems to deal with:

If you have a giant cannon on the ship and a few blocks of the barrel at the front get destroyed. Would the size of the bullets suddenly shrink in the heat of a battle?
How would hit detection work? Giant weapons would probably be lag monsters for hitting a number of blocks at a time.
Would giant weapon arrays with tiny outputs still look as weak as now?
Would tiny weapon arrays with giant outputs suddenly look ridiculously big when shooting?


The by far simplest solution would be just to increase the size of the projectile-textures according to their damage. Not indefinitly, but up to certain to degree to allow players to distinguish the power of a weapon from its look when fired.
Hit detection would behave the same way as now
(might look a bit weird if the projectile is ridiculously big and still only creates a 1x1 hole on impact, but thats a small price to pay for the overall vibe provided by this feature)

A giant beam weapon with a tiny barrel would on the other hand would look something like

Spoiler: this

But i think thats another small price to pay.

 

[Battle]

See this thread http://starmadedock.net/threads/weapons-and-modifiers.19982/ regarding weapons and their projectiles. It's main focus is although on weapon systems itself. I will add the text below as a post.

The easiest and possibly the best solution for projectile sizes would be to let them scale depending on block amount. This renders their output area irrelevant and focuses on only one question: How much boom does it make? Of course weapon slaves would alter the damage output, so these would modify also the projectile scaling - however with their own values. An exponential formula would be needed in order to correctly capture the 3 dimensions, in which weapon blocks would grow. The result should look like this:
2^3 blocks -> scale 1.0
4^3 blocks -> scale 2.0
6^3 blocks -> scale 3.0
8^3 blocks -> scale 4.0
The AoE of each projectile would scale alike, and also with an exponential formula, to give multiple weapons of the same kind instead of one combined big one also the reason, that they can deal more AoE block damage.

 

[Kaamio]

Not sure how possible it would be to create larger than one block projectiles, but i'd be fine with variable intensity based on projectile damage or damage per tick for beams. Just add config for minimum and maximum effect damage numbers, starting for example with 49 and less damage being lowest intensity effect and highest being reached when the projectile reaches 20 000 damage or something. I'm sure the community finds suitable values on their own if this is put in.

Mechanics wouldn't necessarily need to change, just the effect could become more glowy and maybe elongated, possibly a bit wider to something like 0.75 block wide cylinder or 'murican handegg* shape.

Would go well with new soundeffects, hint hint


*they call it a football for some reason.

 

[Lecic]

Projectiles should get larger with damage, not output size. Otherwise you've got trolls running around with a 100x100 rapid cannon to piss people off.

 

[Ithirahad]

Projectiles should get larger with damage, not output size. Otherwise you've got trolls running around with a 100x100 rapid cannon to piss people off.

But if it's 100x100 and small it's going to basically do zero damage per block... Besides, one way or another damage/array size and projectile/output size should be independantly controllable.

 

[Lecic]

But if it's 100x100 and small it's going to basically do zero damage per block... Besides, one way or another damage/array size and projectile/output size should be independantly controllable.

The issue was that you could blind people with massive projectiles if you're allowed to control the size.

 

[Ithirahad]

The issue was that you could blind people with massive projectiles if you're allowed to control the size.

Well, then cap size based on damage, I guess. A projectile doing only one damage could only be the default one block wide, a projectile doing 100 damage could be a maximum of 5 blocks wide, ...