Alternative weapons

[James2568]

Non-traditional Weapons!

I was thinking about when we will eventually be able to have an entire fleet, of AI controlled ships, and it made me wonder, would they all shoot guns? As it is, we would have some that shoot ant matter canons, and others that shoot the various types of missiles. But we wouldn’t stop there. We, or at least I would have ships with things like technician beams, or salvage cannons. I would even have ships that were just docking stations, designed to go out and rescue any ships that wound up dead in the water.

Then I got to thinking, wouldn’t it be cool if salvage cannons could eat other ships. Once the shields were already down (They might be able to, I don’t know). And from there, I wondered about what other non-traditional weapons there could be. These are what I came up with.

Matter Cannons

The idea behind this, is effectively a reverse missile. It would allow people to point at other ships, shoot, and have new blocks appear on the other ship. I know what you’re thinking, that sounds stupid. Well it’s not. You would be able to shoot at the outputs of guns, making it so that if they were to shoot anything, they would blow their own guns up. Or making it so you can shoot at the doors to hangers, to obscure them, and lock in fighters.

It would also have the effect of adding mass. Not a good thing for any ship, but even worse with little fighters. One hit from this, and their engines would no longer be able manoeuvre, and accelerate them like before, taking a ship that was lightweight, making it heavyweight, but giving it none of the advantages.

Inverse acceleration beam

The idea behind this, is that you would shoot it at a ship, and rob it of its speed. Basically if it was traveling at 50 mps, and got hit by this, it would suddenly only be traveling at 40 mps. You could use this to assist in an escape, on a ship designed to be faster than everything else, and draw fire/ be a distraction. You could also have several fighters with this, or a really big ship, using it to make another ship dead in the water (Vacuum?). This, coupled with the above cannons ability to neutralise weapons would allow you to render a ship useless, and ready for boarding, without the hassle of destroying half of it. Perfect for when we want to take over an enemy ship.

Burrowing module

This would have similar uses to a matter canon, with one small difference. It uses your ship instead. The idea being that You can use a module, to make your ship temporarily noclip. Allowing you to fly through asteroids, planets, ships, and things like that. But if you "Go out of phase" while part way through a ship, or other entity, then your ship merges with it. It aligns it to whatever it just hit, deletes whatever blocks (except for command blocks) that were still overlapping with it, then makes it so that theyre now the same entity. Your ship core would get deleted, and placed in your inventory, and they, if they took time to make sure it was safe, could now make use of your systems.

But it would still add mass, and get in the way of things. And, more awesomely, it would get you on the enemies ship. Since you would appear wherever your core was when it despawns.



I would love to hear other ideas for alternative weapons, so if you have any, please share them with me. I would love to hear them

EDIT: Note for the Burrower. It aligns itself to the nearest 90 degree angle, in relation to the ship. Meaning to will have your old foreward (Z+) become aligned with another angle, in relation to the new ship. (Could be X+ or -, or Y + or -, or even Z+ or -, if you know what I mean)

 

[Curithwin]

I like some of your ideas the speed leaching beam could reduce the speed of the target as long as you have then beam weapon hitting: A few I would like to add is an explosive de-coupling block added to a docking module to allow you to fire block based projectiles like Asteroid Bombs that have the explosive blocks attached to it.

I would also like to see weapon systems that are designed to attack larger vessels like none- tracking (also not allowed in small vessels due to the energy drain) anti-capital ship beam weapons - spinally mounted.

Kinetic Shunt - This weapon is slow firing, but impacts the vessel as though it was hit by another vessel similar in size to the power generation and weapon size. This is just to knock the enemy vessel off it\'s attacking run and to attempt to get you a more favourable tactical advantage.

 

[Florrible]

Besides the salvage cannon being able to take blocks from non shielded ships and matter cannons I like the ideas.

Once, salvage cannons could salvage any ship making it a very often used weapon. Imagine 100 beams mining at0.05 hitting your ship for 1 second. That would be 2000 blocks gone. Also, salvage cannons do not require electricity.

For the matter cannons,the aren\'t useful in the current state of the game because a entity can\'t shoot itself(shots will go through). Also, unless attacking a small ship, it would take ages to add enough mass to a ship for it to slow down. And once it is slowed down due to the high mass, what do you do then? YOu shoot it causing there to be nothing besides a lot of wasted time

 

[Touhoufanatic]

i like some of the weapon concepts here so ill add a few i thought up.

phase cannon. - laser weapon that would do less damage and have a slightly slower fire rate than the antimatter cannon but bypasses shileds completly.

EMB cannon (Electro Magnetic Bolt cannon) - energy bolt that when it strikes a ship temprarily deativates blocks surrounding it( say in a 9x9x9 radius for example). usable for crippling ships or assisting in talking down pirates by deactivating weapons, engines or even shields if the block is to close to the outer hull. it would do no damage and would fire only moderatly fast.

Shredder cannons or flak cannon - cannons that fire multiple shots in a cone similar to a shotgun. individul shots ould do small damage but the more hit the more damage is done. could be more effective against smaller faster ships.

 

[Ultraviolet Dugong]

If only to yell \"We\'re going to combine!!!\" beforehand.

 

[Abyssal_Warrior]

I think a good weapon would be a gun that gradually degrades on the power max of another ship, which of course after a while it would regenerate it\'s max.

 

[Draren Thiralas]

The inverse acceleration beam sounds a lot like tractor beam. Also, i would love to see weapons that fire block-based projectiles, auto-rebuilding then by taking blocks from connected storages. It would be like an AMC, except instead of the bolt, a block-based structure would appear, travelling forward with speed set in the weapons window, and limited by weapon group size. Imagine building a missile launcher that launches missioes designed by you, or an automatic robotized interceptor launcher.

 

[James2568]

Explosive decoupling block

Is awesome, but like I said earlier when someone was sugesting it for escape pods, the fact that you slow down, would be a problem. I would maybe suggest working in a grace period, where the torpedos dont slow down, for several seconds.

Anti Capitol laser

This sounds like the D1000, but as a beam instead of a misile. It could work, but it would be effort, without really changing the game play much.

Kinetic Shunt

So this is something that accelerates the ship away from you? It would only be really used to stop it when its flying at you, which is something that the inverse accelaration beam could do. At least I think thats all it would be used for. I cant hope to guess what peoples creativity use it to come up with.

 

[James2568]

Salvage cannons. That would be a problem, but everytime either of the ships moved with small salvage cannons, they would need to start salvaging again. And if the ship has enough salvage canons to get all the way down to 0.05 seconds, then even if you just replaced all those blocks with weapons, it would stil be a nightmare to deal with. But one of the key parts in this, is it would need to be an unsheilded ship. So you would also need regular guns to actually get them to that state.

Matter cannons. Well that sucks, I was really looking forwards to that. But even if you cant seal a ships guns, you can still get in the way of hanger bay doors, and docking zones, and cockpits. But it also has the use, that it could be used as a quickpatch job on your hull, in the form of friendly fire, when you know that theres ships coming, or youre in the middle of a dog fight.

 

[James2568]

But two of them probebly wont work.

The idea of going through shilds, would need to have some risk vs reward. Theyre already nerfed a little, but they would need to be nerfed even more, somhow.

EMB cannon is awesome, I see no issue with this, as long as shields need to be taken down first.

Shredder cannon. This sounds just like having a load of beam weapons scattered around your ship. It woud look awesome, but it wouldnt really be any different. Neat but I dont think a new feature, that can be easily simulated by an old feature will be added.

 

[James2568]

You could even make a load of zords, that group to make a mega zord! (power rangers reference)

Which i just realized means you could also use this to assemble ships in parts, merging a new gun or something on to an old ship, or combining a load of smaller ships from your hanger.

 

[James2568]

That would be cool, but it sounds more like a buff to that other power drainer thingy.

 

[James2568]

It would be awesome, kind of like the Curithwin\'s explosive decoupler. though it has the issues that I mentioned up there with it as well. :/

 

[-Moose-]

I notice that all of your weapons are anti-fighter weapons. A capital ship getting hit by a few blocks won\'t slow it down much, and the top speed decrease will be used by larger ships more than smaller ships. I doubt big ships need any more of an edge. Note that I\'m not claiming to be unbiased, I would rather pick a fighter than a big hulking frigate. So from a pro-fighter\'s standpoint here\'s my analysis.



Matter Cannons : I would like to hear more details about this weapon. Is it guided? Does it pass through shields? A capital ship being able to completely immobolize a fighter by turning it into an asteroid in one hit is hardly balanced. Additionally, it\'s more of a griefing weapon if anything, fly in, shoot a rocket, and have the target spend the next five minutes scrubbing off your weapon.

I think this weapon could work if it spawns a group of 3x3x3 temporary blocks regardless of how many cannons you have. The amount of cannons instead affects the duration which the blocks stay attached going from .05 seconds to 10 seconds.

Perhaps we can have the weapon have a differant purpose alltogether, quick messy on-site repair where the blocks add .1 weight, have the strength of a standard hull, but cann be applied in-mass by an allied ship to quickly patch up a bigger vessal. Blocks would still be temporary, but at a longer length.



Inverse acceleration beam : Again another very potent anti-fighter weapon. I am extremely opposed to this weapon. It is a beam so it is even more difficult to dodge, it takes away the only advantage smaller ships have over bigger ships. This isn\'t a tracter beam it\'s a stop sign.



Burrower Module : The only arguably pro-fighter weapon proposed as a fighter would be able to flip in and out of asteroids. Then again, a large ship could still do this as they have access to millions of potential blocks of power. Additionally it is still a very potent griefing weapon, harvest a station, build a huge box, and phase through your enemie\'s homebase for just a second and you cut off every hallway, block every room, and make every docked ship innaccessable in a matter of seconds. With that in mind I cannot support this weapon.



Creative ideas, but they would have terrible impacts on game balance.

 

[Trollerbobman]

Matter Cannons : I would like to hear more details about this weapon. Is it guided? Does it pass through shields? A capital ship being able to completely immobolize a fighter by turning it into an asteroid in one hit is hardly balanced.


It is balanced, so a giant blob of super deadly destructive antimatter shot from a giant capital ship can\'t even kill a less then 50 mass fighter? You sir, have some problems.

 

[-Moose-]

It is balanced, so a giant blob of super deadly destructive antimatter shot from a giant capital ship can\'t even kill a less then 50 mass fighter? You sir, have some problems.


A guided shot capable of bypassing shields and forcing me to spend an hour repairing the damage from one shot even if I win the fight is neither fun to play against nor giving the target a fair fight. This doesn\'t only apply to fighters but capital ships as well, it\'s just more painful for fighters who are already hard pressed to dodge dozens of turrets and antimatter lasers desgned to destroy planets.

And also, I just turned your ship into an immobile asteroid. How is that any better than destroying the ship outright? Please drop the ad-hominum attacks and have some actual dialogue.

 

[Touhoufanatic]

hmm, you may have a point, the shreder is kinda usless.

the phase cannon would probbly work if say. it fires half the speed of a amc and does only about half the damage maybe?



on another point i have another lovely idea.

Plasma gas cannon - fires a single blast that is one square in size and does nodamge on contact. when it contacts another block it explodes into a 12x12x12 cliud of gass that deals damage over time( say 5 dmg per half second.)

 

[James2568]

While I get what your saying, think that most of these weapons are more pro fighter (Way at the top I said this is what I had been thinking to be neat to give to AI controlled fighters).

Anyways, I like your idea on the matter cannons, it might be better if it was temporary matter, simply because that would mean that you could change the stats of the material as well, like you do the stats of a weapon.

It would still work for patch bots, but they would be specificaly designed for patching things up.

The inverse acceleration beam sucks a bit of the velocity out of things, but in my experience, fighters end to be able to accelerate to top speed in half a second. So if the beam was continuesly on a fighter, the best it could do is slow the fighter\'s acceleration, cause even though velocity was constantly being robbed, it would also be constantly increasing by a greater amount. A big ship, which is generaly slower would be more in trouble with this. Since it will probably get drained of velocity, faster than it can accelerate, making it slow to a stop. This is great for slowing down fighters that stray too close to an anemy carrier, but also great for fighters that want to capturre/take out an enemy carier. Its very much balanced, in my opinion.

And as for the burrower, it would be like the other modules, the cloaker and the jammer. It just wouldnt work with a big ship, since the bigger the ship the more power it would need. This would need to be extremely lightweight ships designed specifically to be hyper power efficient, so its prety much limited to fighters and boarding vehicles.

I dont personally think they would mess up the balance to much, but Im relitivle new, to the game, so what would I know?

(This is in reply to the little convo that moose and trollerbobman just had, without replying to eachother.)

 

[James2568]

Oh My God, YES! THat would be amazong, cause it would be set up to be floating like a little semi translucant asteroid. efectively setting a little mine. IT would be so fun, because it would give spacial awereness a bit more importantce. Right now its just, \"Keep faced towards the enemy\" in a one on one battle, but this would mean that even when you are in a one on one battle, you need to keep in mind these little dangerous clouds, which I supose would be some sort of block, that damages itself over time.

On the other point, I was thinking more along the lines of a little blast, where each hit went throught their shields, but also sapped a big portion of your shields. Something like this would need be a double sided sword, not just not being as powerfull, but inducing some kind of penalty, at least thats what I reckon