Recognized Electrical/Tesla Coil Weapon Type

[Lecic]

I'd like to suggest a new weapon type- Tesla Coils. Many have tried to suggest an electrical weapon (whether through a primary, effect, or a similar "reflecting" style of weapon, but, in my opinion, none of them have fit what I think an electrical weapon should be like. So, after seeing yet another idea on electrical weapons, I've decided to make my own complete idea from the various thoughts and posts I've had about them over time.

Presenting...

ELECTRIC COILS

Electric Coils are a new weapon system. On firing, a 100m beam is released. At the end of this beam, a new beam is released, which is angled ~5* towards the nearest enemy ship.There is a small delay between each new beam firing, maybe 1/8th or 1/4th of a second. The first beam will be "stuck" to its output, and stretch between it and the original ending point of 100m, until the beam makes contact with another ship.

Beam is textured to look like electrical bolts.

Upon making contact, the beam does its damage, and then another beam is spawned facing the opposite direction. This new beam has halved total range, halved individual beam distance, and halved damage. This beam will try to hit a new target within range, but if there is none, it will arc back around to hit the ship it rebounded from. It can rebound 4 times, allowing it to hit something a total of 5 times, though each time is smaller and less damaging.


Primary and Secondary Effects

Primary

Coil : Nothing (just here as a standard) - In between Beams and Cannons in range. 100m beam lengths. 4 rebounds. 5s reload.

Coil : Cannon - Slightly beneath Beam range. 75m beam length. 2 or 3 (please help me find a balanced rebound number) rebounds. 1 second reload. Better for close range and fast targets.

Coil : Missile - In between Beams and Cannons in range. 100m beam length. Splits into up to 4 splits as you scale up to 100% secondary on the initial rebound. Initial rebound distances, damage, and beam length are divided based on the number of splits. After the initial rebound, each rebound is only a single beam, with halved of the rebound it came from. 5s reload. Best used for heavily turreted ships.

Coil : Beam - Sniper distances. 200m beam length. 4 rebounds. 5s reload. Most useful for slightly aim corrected sniper shots or for hitting multiple smaller ships in a formation.

Coil : Pulse - In between Beams and Cannons in range. 100m beam length. High damage. Continuously fires as long as the trigger is held, allowing for continuous charge to hit an enemy ship. Energy cost is exponentially increasing cost the longer the trigger is held down. Reload time is based on how long the trigger was held. 2 rebounds. Mainly anti-capital, focusing on hitting the main ship as much as possible.

Coil : Coil - In between Beams and Cannons in range. 50m beam length. 8 rebounds. 12s reload.

Coil : Minelayer (one can dream it'll finally be implemented one day) - Beam ranges. 250m beam length, but splits apart into 4 half length and quarter damage beams at that point with a 15* angle between them, creating a sort of electrical flak at that range. 5s reload.

Secondary

Cannon : Coil - Cannon ranges. Fires a tad slower velocity three round burst with slight (5*) turning. 1.2 second reload. Reload counter is 1.2s to account for burst time, since cannons normally have 1s timing.

Alternate Cannon : Coil (Suggested by Megacrafter127 in chat) - Cannon ranges. Fires a three round burst of cannon rounds. On impact, releases a short coil beam in the opposite direction with short beam segments.

Missile : Coil - Cannon ranges. Lock-on. On impact, missile throws out up to 4 heatseakers in the opposite direction, depending on Coil secondary percentage. Heakseekers will end up turning around if there aren't any enemy ships in the direction they flew off towards, and either hit a turret or the main ship itself on missile rebound. 30s reload.

Beam : Coil - Beam ranges. Beam travels as normal, but if other entities are within 150m of the main beam, an offshoot beam will fire off at them from the main column, dealing 1/4 damage of the main beam. One beam per entity in range. 5s reload. Good for crowd control and anti-turret, or if your accuracy is off by under 150m. Special thanks to JonasWalker for helping me out with the Beam : Coil system.

Pulse : Coil - Pulse ranges. If the edge of the pulse at the end of the bubble's expansion hits a block, a second, slightly smaller and powerful bubble will be generated on that spot. Only one new bubble per entity hit by this pulse. The second bubble will repeat the process. Repeats 4 times. Mainly a risk to larger ships. Smaller ships if hit once will have the second bubble miss them and the rebound combo will fail. Larger ships will have the bubble hit them on the inside pretty much every time, wrecking havoc. 60s reload.

Minelayer : Coil - Drops an electrified mine, which has 50m beam lengths, releases 8 beams aimed towards the ship that hit the mine, which each rebound 8 times.

EDIT 1-

I made some concept images of a Coil : Cannon system in action.

Spoiler: Concept Images (under spoiler for multiple large images)

A small corvette and fighter escort are travelling through space, when suddenly a larger corvette drops out of warp behind them and opens fire with one of its Coil : Cannon arrays. The two ships are 140m away.

The pilot, in his rush after dropping out of warp, aims a bit low with his coil : cannon. But this is not an issue, for at the beam break point, the electricity arcs upwards 5* to hit the enemy corvette.

The deadly electrical blast hits the back end of the corvette, and then rebounds upwards and arcs back down onto the fighter escort, hitting in on one of the wings. The coil shot rebounds and then curves downward again, the beam distance now cut in half twice of what it was before. It hits a small turret on the corvette, and the rebounds and makes a short arc back down onto the corvette one more time, running out of rebounds.

 

[Jaaskinal]

I like this idea, and I think it would work really well with logic considering how the beams angle to hit targets.

 

[Mortiferum]

Arcing between objects would be very, very nice!!! :D

Add in metal blocks which can be electrified, then we have the "evil guy's" lair :D

 

[jayman38]

Electrical effects are always cool. The primary concern will be the additional on-the-fly 3D floating point calculations in the middle of the most calculation-intense moments of the game: combat. It would be cool to throw this in to the game, to see how it performs. If too many people complain about lag, it could be taken out of the default game, and remain available as an official mod for those stalwart players with uber servers.

 

[Lecic]

I made some concept images of a Coil : Cannon system in action.

Spoiler: Concept Images (under spoiler for multiple large images)

A small corvette and fighter escort are travelling through space, when suddenly a larger corvette drops out of warp behind them and opens fire with one of its Coil : Cannon arrays. The two ships are 140m away.

The pilot, in his rush after dropping out of warp, aims a bit low with his coil : cannon. But this is not an issue, for at the beam break point, the electricity arcs upwards 5* to hit the enemy corvette.

The deadly electrical blast hits the back end of the corvette, and then rebounds upwards and arcs back down onto the fighter escort, hitting in on one of the wings. The coil shot rebounds and then curves downward again, the beam distance now cut in half twice of what it was before. It hits a small turret on the corvette, and the rebounds and makes a short arc back down onto the corvette one more time, running out of rebounds.

[DOUBLEPOST=1419743070,1419742059][/DOUBLEPOST]

Electrical effects are always cool. The primary concern will be the additional on-the-fly 3D floating point calculations in the middle of the most calculation-intense moments of the game: combat. It would be cool to throw this in to the game, to see how it performs. If too many people complain about lag, it could be taken out of the default game, and remain available as an official mod for those stalwart players with uber servers.

That's actually why I kept the reload times on the thing relatively high, to keep down the number of beams. This thing would only be laggier if people could fire them as fast as rapid cannons/beams.

 

[Byamarro]

It's cool but I think that Schema should update another SM aspects than weapons.

 

[Lecic]

It's cool but I think that Schema should update another SM aspects than weapons.

Well yeah, obviously more than just weapons are important to the game. That doesn't mean we can't discuss new ideas for weapons.

 

[Byamarro]

Nobody will

Well yeah, obviously more than just weapons are important to the game. That doesn't mean we can't discuss new ideas for weapons.

Nobody will stop You from that but I don't think that it's right moment.
Just after weapons update xd

 

[Lecic]

Nobody will

Nobody will stop You from that but I don't think that it's right moment.
Just after weapons update xd

http://star-made.org/news/patch-day-starmade-0-15

The weapons update was released almost 7 months ago.

 

[Byamarro]

http://star-made.org/news/patch-day-starmade-0-15

The weapons update was released almost 7 months ago.

It's not long ago if we talk about SM updates.

 

[PizzaPress]

Note: Logic might be used to make tesla coil waffle boards, which can home in on an enemy, thus removing the aiming problem with logic waffle boards.

 

[Lecic]

Note: Logic might be used to make tesla coil waffle boards, which can home in on an enemy, thus removing the aiming problem with logic waffle boards.

Correct, but it's not like people can't already do that with heakseekers.

 

[Lecic]

I don't suppose anyone else has thoughts on this?

 

[Megacrafter127]

I don't suppose anyone else has thoughts on this?

Doesn't look like it

 

[Krazykat]

I like it, but I worry about how it will scale in the larger numbers, especially the "flak" variant. I imagine a capital ship with one of these arrays could rip through tens of fighters at once without even trying

 

[Lecic]

I like it, but I worry about how it will scale in the larger numbers, especially the "flak" variant. I imagine a capital ship with one of these arrays could rip through tens of fighters at once without even trying

Considering the range is pretty short compared to most weapons, I don't think this will be that large an issue. Fighters are most useful for taking out turrets from a distance, anyway. If you're doing a close range attack on a big ship with a fighter, you better know what the hell you're doing. There's also kind of a safety zone, since if you're under the first split length while doing a close range attack it won't have enough range to curve back around.

 

[Blakpik]

I like the idea of tasing things, I support.

 

[Lecic]

With the new Prefixes on the suggestion forum, I think it's time to revive this for a bit to see what it might be given, and what the devs thoughts on a new primary weapon type are.

 

[Lecic]

Still curious about what the devs think new primary weapons. Not even mine, just in general. Calbiri ?

 

[Calbiri]

Adding new weapons isn't about the look, but the behavior, lightning is a look, and i hope that's something we can add as a setting assignable to a weapon later on (convert a beam to a bolt) the richochete or chaining to other things is a behavior, but probably one beyond what we will use in vanilla.

In attempting to design a new weapon, you will want to look for behaviors not currently covered by the existing weapons. Then you will want to consider how this will modify the other weapon types if it is slaved to them. As well as how this weapon would behave with the other primary weapons slaved to it.

1. Primary weapons typically describe the type of munitions a weapon uses (bullets, beams, missiles, pulse)
2. Secondary weapons describes how the barrel mechanics function (reload speed, muzzle velocity, range, number of projectiles, projectile size/damage)
3. Tertiary weapons affect the impact the weapon has on the target.

(Most support weapons are using the beam mechanic, at least for now, this may or may not change)

Mines and Drones are two possible future primary weapon candidates (mines were previously planned, and drones are something akin to missiles I have considered.) Their may be other interesting options besides these, but the basic concepts start to run out at this point, leaving only rather complex or specific situational weapons, which may not fit the theme of the weapon system well. Regardless, I have always urged anyone with a new concept to mention it, if it fits the weapon system, I'll happily add it to my list of weapons to try to add in the future. (Remember the 3 types have 3 areas their mechanics affect.)
[DOUBLEPOST=1425421749,1425421390][/DOUBLEPOST]I can mention to schema the target bouncing (the coils primary function) as well as its secondary effect of projectile fragmention/target tracking, but there may be some issues with coding that sort of behavior that may make it not as simple as it seems upfront (peirce and punch sounded simple up front, but its been a pain to get them to behave in a reasonable way after we learned that it was impractical to implement them as originally planned.)