A change for the master/slave system for weapons

[Zerefette]

Hi, it's me suggesting cataclysmic changes again.
So in one of the latest news it was said that the master/slave system needed no changes cause there's nothing wrong with it, while this is ok I think, what if it was more?
Remove all weapon computers and just use a single weapon computer for every weapon.
The kind of shot that goes out is dependant on the % of weapon blocks that you installed.
This image can help you Schematize.

Admire my paint skills.
From now on I'll use lecters to refer to weapons.
C refers to cannons
B to beams
M for missiles

For example a simple 1 C block would behave as a current CC shot, 1 M block would behave as a MM does now and 1 B would simply be the BB we have.
A weapon composed by 50% of B and 50% of C would be a continuous laser or BC as of now.
A weapon composed by 30% C and 70% M would be rockets.

However in this image you see another "thing" at the center, this is the magnetic plasma variant.
A weapon made by 33% of each would create a gunshot with small homing capabilities as well as a minor explosion radius, the homing rate would be tuned to the amount of M blocks, going too high would just make the shot a homing missile, going too low will end making a continous beam, other statistics are relevant to the amount of B and C blocks.
The weapon computer could change it's "display" to represent which weapon combo is active.

The point of this change is to let us tune the weapons and give the possibility to mix more, but if you think the combinations would be too much just cap the possible mix to 3-4 blocks and the variants that get included after the largest groups simply don't count.

And I can see this working even with the addition of new weapons.
Just add vertexes to the diagram and more weapon combos are born.
Let's add the "Tesla"(fictional weapon, just for an example) and make a combo of Cannons, Missiles, Teslas and we have the Flak shells.
(an image will come later)

Now I leave up to you which penality should affect weapons.
A: Weapon combo changes if the groups get damaged in battle enough to shift the ratio.
B: Weapon combo does not change until a "reboot" and damage only applies a % malus to the whole weapon group that affects more the weapon based on how large it is.

 

[YamiHikari]

I didn't go through it too thoroughly, but this all sounds very confusing and doesn't seem to do much other than blend weapon types and damage types. I think keeping things to clearly-defined weapons might be the better way to go.

 

[Edymnion]

Yeah, honestly I think we're good with what we've got, especially after the announcement of them introducing damage types that can be altered.

 

[OfficialCoding]

This sounds too confusing. What we got is good, that is, if they let us keep damage pulses

 

[Nosajimiki]

I believe they said they are replacing damage pulse with mines in the weapons update.

As for mixing secondary effects, over-all this is not a bad idea, but it does leave a few major flaws. First is that adding a new weapon in the middle blacks out certain ballences of weapon and defeats the point of making it all gradient. Second is that you have ambiguities where weapon types converge IE: is 50%M:%50%B:0%B a homing missile or a scatter beam? Also, this is probably too much slider madness once they add damage types and such.

 

[jstenholt]

Yeah, nah.

I honestly love how weapons work currently and this doesn't seem like it would add anything significant to the game.

 

[Coyote27]

Also, would a weapon change its type if it takes damage? What if you have a weapon with 400 beam blocks and 600 missile blocks, but you get hit and lose half the missile blocks? Does it then become a 400 beam / 300 missile that operates in a completely different way?

 

[EricBlank]

This is a nice suggestion, but having neatly defined weapon types is still better in my opinion, and it does bring into question which weapon type is dominant if two are identical and a third is either not present or an extreme minority. The plasma weapon too would need a range of values defining its behavior, say the three weapon groups must each represent at least 30% and the remaining 10% can be used to define its behavior.

I would prefer keeping the weapon-slave combo, as it is simple enough to understand and make use of, but i do think a tertiary weapon slave being available to adjust values on different axes like this would be nice. And perhaps getting a neat new plasma weapon...

 

[Valiant70]

This sounds annoying as heck to work with.