Just a quick idea/suggestion:
Why not have it so that as the damage of a given weapon system increases, it's projectile gets gradually larger and more intense? By weapon:
Cannon: The "bolt" gets longer and gradually thicker.
Damage Beam: The beam gets drastically thicker as its damage increases.
Missile: The brightness of the missile increases, perhaps its model gets larger?
Damage pulse: The wave gets brighter/more defined.
I just thought it would be a neat way to spruce up space combat without too much work. I can't help but feel it strange to get hit by a tiny bolt lose no armor but a moment later get hit with the same sized bolt and get snapped in two (from a larger ship). The big one is beams though, it feels weird with a 25,000 dps beam as thin as a pencil. I think of the beams from freespace 2 and how you could identify the weapon by various attributes of it.
Why not have it so that as the damage of a given weapon system increases, it's projectile gets gradually larger and more intense? By weapon:
Cannon: The "bolt" gets longer and gradually thicker.
Damage Beam: The beam gets drastically thicker as its damage increases.
Missile: The brightness of the missile increases, perhaps its model gets larger?
Damage pulse: The wave gets brighter/more defined.
I just thought it would be a neat way to spruce up space combat without too much work. I can't help but feel it strange to get hit by a tiny bolt lose no armor but a moment later get hit with the same sized bolt and get snapped in two (from a larger ship). The big one is beams though, it feels weird with a 25,000 dps beam as thin as a pencil. I think of the beams from freespace 2 and how you could identify the weapon by various attributes of it.