Any Beam with Missile slave change.

[Zerefette]

Hello, every time I see any laser with a missile slave it looks silly and actually does anyone use it after a few tries? I think no.

This is what happens at the moment, depending on the amount of the slaved system the number of beams increases up to 9(IIRC) and they have a fixed direction but in the future are supposed to be random.
I think this is nice for cannons but for beams this feels like a waste unless they could be affected to be pulse lases, so why not change this to something like this.

The new missile combo for beams will increase the angle of the projection and the distance between the gunport and the contact determines the strenght of the weapon or utility tool.
The shot may look like the glow on planet atmospheres or sun bloom just not as intense, mega cone bright as beams maybe be an issue(but they sound fun).
Or if we wanna keep an intense projectile this could be done.

Waves of beams or whatever you wanna call it, could be something unique.
Thanks for your time, I'm done.
[doublepost=1489936623,1489933977][/doublepost]Bonus, Missiles/Ships caught in a deteriorating/any effect field.

But seriously on the other way what if we could speed/buff other shots with support weapons?
[doublepost=1489937937][/doublepost]After some discussions on the holy chat some starmadians raised the issue of intensiveness of a continuous field, slaving missiles to beams may change them in a wave like gun that applies it's effect on the impact area but also reduces it's cooldown resembling pic 3.

 

[NaStral]

The fact that missile slaving anything makes a fixed rather than random pattern really reduces it's value as a weapon. If the pattern were random each time it fired it could actually be useful for close range work.

 

[Lecic]

A projection like that sounds incredibly overpowered. Wouldn't it hit every block in its path?

Beam/Missile (and Cannon/Missile) just needs a much tighter spread and better damage per block than it currently has.

 

[NeonSturm]

Extremely Overpowered/Useful to

1. uncloak enemies.
2. defeat drone spam

Perhaps if the OP explains in detail how he wants to distinguish it from pulse and balance it, I could say something like yes.


Here is a possible_solution:

Split beams which split into 10 beams hit the first 10 targets.
Pulse hits all but scales against surface area.

​

I'd also like 2 modes:

1. Spray bullets/beams/… on all coverage.
2. Define a shape in which to spray - for example, the targets visible shape.

 

[Zerefette]

A projection like that sounds incredibly overpowered. Wouldn't it hit every block in its path?

Yes but keep in mind that as the area increases the damage decreases too depending on the distance from your enemy, imagine the total damage of a beam divided on the whole area of effect at the hit distance.

 

[Lecic]

Yes but keep in mind that as the area increases the damage decreases too depending on the distance from your enemy, imagine the total damage of a beam divided on the whole area of effect at the hit distance.

Ok, but that's still overpowered... If I can damage every block on a ship at once, even if it's only 1 damage per second, I could completely vaporize all the systems in a ship in under two minutes.

 

[Zerefette]

Extremely Overpowered/Useful to

1. uncloak enemies.
2. defeat drone spam

1) Scanners do that greatly, consider docked ones too.
2) It's not as strong as you think unless you have a huge damage per shot, it'd be more effective on big targets or extremely weak ones.

[doublepost=1489962006,1489961771][/doublepost]

Ok, but that's still overpowered... If I can damage every block on a ship at once, even if it's only 1 damage per second, I could completely vaporize all the systems in a ship in under two minutes.

You'd need a big base power to do 1 damage at some point, and beams already work like this, just focalized, let's say that with this weapon if your damage does not reach 1 point at impact the block remains uneffected.
I don't see this op at all.
P.S: Besides if the max angle may be narrower than I draw.

Let's assume it's just the green cone or the damage also decreases when going to the extremes of the cone.

 

[Lecic]

You'd need a big base power to do 1 damage at some point, and beams already work like this, just focalized, let's say that with this weapon if your damage does not reach 1 point at impact the block remains uneffected.
I don't see this op at all.

If you're doing less than one damage per tick, you do zero damage. It rounds down to zero. In which case this weapon would be completely worthless right up until the point where it tips over into doing 1 damage per tick, at which point it becomes COMPLETELY OVERPOWERED. Because it can kill literally nearly any ship in under 2 minutes. This is overpowered.

 

[Zerefette]

I fail to see this, every weapon can do that to an unshielded ship, and it's not like they should go through the entire ship in question if they keep similarities to our standalone beams.

 

[Lecic]

I fail to see this, every weapon can do that to an unshielded ship, and it's not like they should go through the entire ship in question if they keep similarities to our standalone beams.

Uh, no. A cone of death definitely kills ships faster than any conventional weapon.

 

[Zerefette]

At some point I only thought about pic 3, if you talk about something like pic 2 you may have some arguments but don't see waves as a big projectile but rather istances at every impact.
Also I think they should behave somewhat like missile impacts to not be so destructive as pierce may be really strong.

 

[NeonSturm]

What do you expect from a VORTEX_OF_DEATH (Zerefette's avatar)

Extremely Overpowered/Useful to

1. uncloak enemies
2. defeat drone spam

Perhaps if the OP explains in detail how he wants to distinguish it from pulse and balance it, I could say something like yes.

Point 2 still stands. If damage is distributed as n>1/10 to the first 10 targets it hits, it is extremely powerful against drones AND extremely useless against anything in numbers lower than 10/n.

If damage is distributed along hit targets (after shield check, before hull damage), it does not allow evasion at all (hit-scan, delayed hit-scan) and requires to be either instant-hit or do delayed-damage.

I think a fair distribution is: 60% distributed on all targets hit, 20% to first 10 targets.​

And 20% reduced damage maximum for being hit-scan.
NUMBERS ARE NOT FINAL

Or replace 20% reduced damage with 20% reduced range due to a damage-falloff.

​

And if you really want a VORTEX_OF_DEATH, you could:

Distribute damage over an area relative to your ship's or turret's size.
Everything takes damage equal to the area it occupies.

Calculate damage based on distribution from the ship's boundary box's corners.
Throw explosives at triangle faces depending on "normals" up/down/vector.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CubeAndStel.svg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dual_Cube-Octahedron.svg

​

 

[Zerefette]

I'd like more if it had a not hitscan wave propagation.
What if the wave slowed on contact?

 

[Ithirahad]

I'd like more if it had a not hitscan wave propagation.
What if the wave slowed on contact?

Your idea already means expensive calculations; having the cone work as a bunch of discrete projectiles would make things even worse.

 

[NeonSturm]

Your idea already means expensive calculations; having the cone work as a bunch of discrete projectiles would make things even worse.

Perhaps, or schema could just improve how the engine works.

Waves propagate as a change of topology.
They enter a shape which is easy to calculate if it is a platonic solid in the 4th dimension (3space+1time) if you know 4th dimension math:

Platonic solids fit inside a sphere and a smaller sphere fits inside them.
Their centre point is relative to:

1. other spheres in the time -dimension
2. two other spheres in line+time -dimension
   
3. other spheres in area+time -dimension
   
4. other spheres in space+time -dimension

The outer sphere radius tells if a collision is possible, the inner sphere radius tells if a collision is inevitable.
If a collision happens, you just translate the moving points into negative space behind the colliding sphere's centre to translate all effects into the other sphere.​

The problem starts only if these waves overlap, spawning/deleting new platonic solids. Similar to an interference pattern which spawns more and more solids until an observer collapses possibilities into concrete particles.​

 

[Calhoun]

Reload, damage and spread angle would need to be balanced. It's a damn thin line between useless and overpowered.

 

[Nickizzy]

If you're doing less than one damage per tick, you do zero damage. It rounds down to zero. In which case this weapon would be completely worthless right up until the point where it tips over into doing 1 damage per tick, at which point it becomes COMPLETELY OVERPOWERED. Because it can kill literally nearly any ship in under 2 minutes. This is overpowered.

Could you mod the tick rate so it only ticks every x seconds? It's hard to make AOE not OP when you can only have 20 fractions of HP in a target

 

[Lecic]

Put a "shitty" range as pulse and owerpowered gets nerfed.

If you give it a shitty range, then it's useless. Like pulse.

 

[Zerefette]

I imagined it work somewhat like this but with it's max area much close to the aiming reticle.

 

[Sgtwisky]

OK read the first few replies so forgive me if this has been said. Assuming the weapon would work as in image 3 of the OP, I would imagine it would only grow to a max size, and it could only inflict damage on X amount of blocks. This could be based around its total spread/damage of the weapon. Then at some point you just remove it. Everything has a max range. The range could be pretty small. As this is a take on the "Shotgun Laser" I doubt anyone would want it to travel long distances or become huge in size.

It could still inflict 100% damage to shields. Depending on how damage is calculated could change dramatically how much block damage is done. For instance, if n% of the blast area is not touching a block at impact that could reduce the number of blocks that take damage by n%. OR just reduce the overall damage done by n%.

I feel like this idea has tons of potential to be a fun weapon that has its advantages and disadvantages and avoids being OP. But that all depends on its implementation.

EDIT: Just read more of the comments and want to point out that basing my thoughts off image 3, I would expect this to NOT act like a hitscan weapon and more like Symmetra's Shield from Overwatch.

Video Link for clarification: (Displayed at 1:19)