Read by Schine Jump Drive as a Slave and Master System: Charge lasers, jump drive diversity, and more!

[Ithirahad]

It's pretty clear that we won't be getting Mine Layers in the near future, so I thought.... Why not make Jump Drive the slave system for charging weapons? It kind of makes sense compared to our current slave systems. As it stands, jump drive modules seem to be some kind of reservoir for power to be used in a jump... So what happens when we reroute all that jump power in the modules into our weapons in one brilliant burst?

This happens.

• CANNON/JUMP DRIVE: Charges for a while, then fires one projectile that is 3 blocks wide and has the range of cannon/beam but more damage (Maybe a bit of armor piercing? Or is this overkill?). Has a cooldown equal to cannon/beam before it can be charged again. Projectile size, projectile speed and power usage increase with amount of modules slaved; recharge duration and charge time might increase a little bit too.
  
  
• BEAM/JUMP DRIVE: That "Massive Charge Laser" thing from the initial weapons chart that we all wanted. Charges, then fires a five-block-wide beam (at 100%) that continues to fire for five seconds. Has a cooldown similar to Beam/Beam before it can be charged again. Firing duration, beam size, power usage, and charge time increase with amount of jump modules slaved.
  
  
• MISSILE/JUMP DRIVE: <I don't have any brilliant ideas for this one. If someone has a better idea for this than me, they can go ahead.> This combo might be kinda bad. Charges for a while, then releases a volley of lock-on missiles that do the equivalent of missile/pulse's damage split between them. Has a cooldown equivalent to missile/missile before it can charge again. Number of missiles scales incrementally with number of slaved jump drive modules, scaling from one to five missiles.
  
  
• PULSE/JUMP DRIVE: Fairly predictable. Charges for a while, then fires one very large pulse bubble. Damage is actually decreased a bit, though; this is probably better for larger ships or someone who's got enough power to use Overdrive to compensate... Bubble size and charge time scale up with the number of jump modules; damage scales down.

If projectile/beam size is determined some other way in the future, the jump drive slave system could just increase it by some amount, maybe up to 200% each.

But wait, what if we turned things around and slaved some systems to our jump drive? Surely that should do something, right?

Yes, yes it should!

• JUMP DRIVE/CANNON: Charges faster, takes a bit more power. However, it is also a lot more vulnerable to jump interdiction systems - the effective size of the drive actually goes down to a minimum of 50% at 100% cannon slave.
  
  
• JUMP DRIVE/BEAM: Charges longer, jumps further (up to 200%?). Not much to explain here.
  
  
• JUMP DRIVE/MISSILE: Splits a single jump charge into a few short jumps before needing to recharge; total range increases up to 200%. Number of jumps scales up to four. Takes a little longer to recharge, and takes more power to do it. This would make for a decent escape system, I guess. <IDK how to make this any better than just having multiple jump drives, though... ATM it kind of sucks. As with its inverse, any suggestions on this are welcome.>
  
  
• JUMP DRIVE/PULSE: With this one, I honestly have no idea. When slaved to weapons, Pulse increases damage, energy usage, and cooldown time. That precedent has no use when coming up with a jump drive mechanic, though, since they do no damage. For the moment, they could just do about the same thing as Jump/Beam, but that would be lame... Any ides on this are welcome.
  
  
• JUMP DRIVE/JUMP DRIVE: Increased charge time, increased transit time in wormhole, decreased jump accuracy, massive increase in jump range: Quite possibly up to 4 times the default jump length, but with the highly increased possibility to wind up a lot nearer to a star than intended. Increases range, charge time (up to 2.5x default), and transit time (Up to 4x default animation length) with number of slave modules, decreases accuracy down to a sphere of about 5 sectors. This could possibly start to lose charge naturally after remaining fully charged for more than 5 seconds or so.

 

[Lecic]

B-buh muh minelayers...

Good suggestion, though.

 

[StormWing0]

hmm rather interesting at least.

 

[Ithirahad]

B-buh muh minelayers...

Good suggestion, though.

Obviously something has been stopping Schema & co. from adding them... Most of the minelayer slave effects you described are different from the ones I'm suggesting here anyway, charge lasers being the only overlap. Given the other effects you described, it sounds to me like Beam/Minelayers could instead create a small spreading DoT area on impact. (Although that would probably go better as a "Plasma" tertiary. Meh.)

 

[Jerryfan271]

Maybe missile+Jump drive could make a super-fast missile?

 

[kiraen]

Small shipyard on a ship (capital) + logic undocking + warhead = minelayer.

I don't understand why people expect the devs to do all the work. They make the pieces, it's up to us to make the ships. If you want complex systems, build it yourself.

Totally offtopic, tho.

I do like the idea of master/slave jumpdrives.

 

[StormWing0]

May for Missile + Jump Drives = Jump Missiles? The Missiles Jump Right to their Target or try to at least.

 

[Ithirahad]

Maybe missile+Jump drive could make a super-fast missile?

That would be silly, and not fit with the rest of the options. Want a superfast missile? I find that Missile/Cannon is highly underrated, given the right conditions you should go check that out some time. Especially at close range, those things are brutal. Try packing some extra thrust and overdrive passive, too...

...I'm rambling.

Really, though, the point of a jump drive slave effect is to add charge time and power usage in return for extra damage and some unique behaviour... A super fast missile, while being the logical combination of the two systems themselves, just doesn't fit that.

Small shipyard on a ship (capital) + logic undocking + warhead = minelayer.

But nobody will fall for these, and you can just shoot them, causing them to explode, or jump through them if worse comes to worst. Likewise with a lot of mine suggestions, block-based or otherwise. The other option is for them to be somehow undetectable, which would really just be a massively OP troll weapon more than a legitimate tactical tool. I suspect that this is why Schine is not implementing mines.

 

[kiraen]

Actually, I was already thinking about how to add a cloak/jammer to the mines. As for being OP, that's why we have scanners. Admittedly, both systems need balancing, but so does absolutely everything else in the game.

 

[Jerryfan271]

Missile+Jump Drive would be more of a supercharged hypervelocity missile; It would travel almost instantaneously, and maybe puncture through armour(Destroys small line of blocks before detonating, doesn't work on shields) before exploding with a decreased radius but making it inside of the ship. Basically an AP missile, but worthless against shields.

 

[therimmer96]

Yes pls. All of it.
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JUMP DRIVE/PULSE: With this one, I honestly have no idea. When slaved to weapons, Pulse increases damage, energy usage, and cooldown time. That precedent has no use when coming up with a jump drive mechanic, though, since they do no damage. For the moment, they could just do about the same thing as Jump/Beam, but that would be lame... Any ides on this are welcome.

Could be a sort of violent jump that causes a large pulse that damages anything within range (thinking when the supercarrier in halo 2 jumped over the city and pretty much nuked it)

 

[Zackey_TNT]

More weapon options is always a good thing.

We were promised unlimited weapon types but so far the only relevant weapons for pvp is missiles and cannons and while other weapons do something like cannons and missiles no one really wants to work with the short range of lazers...

 

[Ithirahad]

More weapon options is always a good thing.

We were promised unlimited weapon types but so far the only relevant weapons for pvp is missiles and cannons and while other weapons do something like cannons and missiles no one really wants to work with the short range of lazers...

Beams currently don't even hit past 500 meters... This is a bug but it will be fixed. In my experience, they're actually a good weapon when they do hit things...
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Missile+Jump Drive would be more of a supercharged hypervelocity missile; It would travel almost instantaneously, and maybe puncture through armour(Destroys small line of blocks before detonating, doesn't work on shields) before exploding with a decreased radius but making it inside of the ship. Basically an AP missile, but worthless against shields.

Let's please not. The HP and missile updates both happened partially to get rid of missile oneshotting of smaller ships; this would reintroduce it, combined with a near-complete nullification of PD since it moves so fast. >.>

 

[Lecic]

no one really wants to work with the short range of lazers...

Pfft, speak for yourself.

 

[Blodge]

Chargeable weapons? Yes please! :D

 

[Dire Venom]

For the Missile + Jumpdrive, what it COULD do is create a variable speed-missile.
How this works: when fired they will launch from the ship at a slow speed, then (x) seconds latter they will 'flare up' (glow very brightly) and accelerate towards the selected target.
The acceleration is constant, meaning that if the target is near the missiles max range the missiles will be-able to achieve very fast speeds.

Thus this would become more of a specialized long range missile, the further it travels the harder it is to shoot down (but easy to shoot down at short range due to its low initial speed)
The missile could also gain a damage multiplier depending on how far its travels (and thus how fast, since when it hits its target itll have more energy to release)

 

[Lecic]

Charge missile idea- It travels the first 1/4 of its range as a dumbfire that PD won't target, then switches to lock on mode.

 

[Keptick]

missile/jump drive: Lock-on weapon that teleports the missile onto a random point of the enemy ship (on the surface), where it'd detonate. Would have a charge time, which could be slowed down by jump inhibitors. Blast radius would be default, reload would be 90 seconds like missile/pulse.

Also, it would only do 10dps/block instead of 20 dps/block (current missiles) for obvious reasons; They should only do half the damage per weapon block as normal missiles because they can't be shot down, and otherwise it'd be OP as hell. So 10dps/block would mean half the damage of normal missiles, on average.

 

[Parameter]

I think it would be neat if you had to charge weapons linked to jump modules as if you were charging a jump drive. Think of it like charging Samus' blaster in Metroid of Smash Bros - in general, it starts at near zero & the longer you charge it, the stronger a given weapon is, up to some limit determined by the weapon & # of jump slaves. These variable weapons would be very flexible, but only reach their real strength when you are actively using them instead of other weapons. Logic firing these weapons would always fire them at their lowest output state.

 

[Planr]

This is a really cool idea. I've never even thought about the prospect of using jumpdrive as a weapon slave.