Change pulse to a fun and useful system.

[Gmodism]

So there are 3 weapons in starmade, and pulse...

To make this more useful the spherical damage should be changed to a 30-45 degrees cone of damage, in the direction of computer as usual, this pulse would be a short range system.

When fired it would look like disruption of space and time, basically a invisible wave motion that can apear in air of different temperature and compactness, you get it.

The pulse would when shields are down, damage everything in range, even if behind armour.

The damage of the pulse would be heavy, but limited to it's range and thus balanced.

The pulse would enable smaller ships to approach bigger ships in order to board, punching a hole in the armour and be able to get in, thus making huge vessels less invulnerable and over powered.

As the damage would be so heavy, the effects would be good also, enabling the pulse to be used as a "police" weapon, EMP-pulsing all the power away, and then using a grapple pulse to seize vessels.
[OF TOPIC: EMP needs to work like ION, taking the generators out for 10 seconds or so, a new GRAPPLE effect would be useful, making one be able with a ship align oneself to other ships, and move lighter objects, basically something that "holds" or grapples other things.]

System variants:
Pc Continuous pulse that never stops, useful for Grapple or continuous damage.
Pm Wider pulse, max support yields 180 degrees hemisphere coverage capability.
Pb Narrow more ranged pulse
Pp Heavy pulse

 

[aRottenKomquat]

That is an interesting alternative to the current pulse system. But having never used pulse primaries, I don't have much of an opinion on them.

 

[Gmodism]

That is an interesting alternative to the current pulse system. But having never used pulse primaries, I don't have much of an opinion on them.

Exactly, that's the problem, the current system is so useless, that some players never even tried to use it as first system, proving the importance of this fix.

 

[philthy mcnasty]

Pulse is useless. To give you an idea how useless, i tried using one as a mining torch to destroy useless blocks for tunneling on planets. Damage beam was better for this.

So far the only use i can think of, is a nasty booby trap for a ship. You enter an area of effect trigger, and a pulse is activated that kills you.

otherwise it is very useless. it does not work well at all. You might as well just cut it out, and allow over drive to be connected to a weapons system for hyped up damage.

Now, if it could destroy missiles, then that would make for one very interesting "death shield" around a ship, where instead of ams turrets, you have a logic activated pulse system that covers the area of your ship in pulse beams.

but i like this idea better, because it turns it into a sort of "space flame thrower", instead of useless bubble thingy.

 

[terra mining corp.]

the pirates on the server I play on use damage pulse and ram your ship with warheads,nasty little buggers!

 

[Batavium]

use damage pulse and ram your ship with warheads

That is some very clever use of the short weapon range pulse has. I love creative solutions like this. May i ask on what server i can find these nastly little buggers?

Also i'm so gona try that on some drones to use as a fleet!

 

[terra mining corp.]

That is some very clever use of the short weapon range pulse has. I love creative solutions like this. May i ask on what server i can find these nastly little buggers?

Also i'm so gona try that on some drones to use as a fleet!

The server this is on is Genx,I'm having a blast with the challenging pirates here.

 

[StormWing0]

Nice idea to change up pulse. Another thing that'd help is more of an AI issue and that's the AI normally won't come any closer than 40m to 50m or so. Maybe cut that down by half and that'd get the meat of the pulse blast right in the face of some ships while still keeping them out of collision range.

 

[Az14el]

Pulse is just like the xmls say, "hard to use this weapon"
but the sentence immediately before that in the same file is the kicker. Pulse primary has 2 very nasty & synergistic unspoken strengths that aren't very hard to discern.

Pulse is breddy gud, if it were to have more range it couldn't do the damage it does now, or there'd be not a lot else to be using. Similar position to warheads tbh, buffing it slightly is not a slight buff at all.

 

[PLIX]

i think the pulse should just be buffed ALOT and then make i that it does friendly fire and uses alot of energy

EDIT: pretty much kill everything except the entity ir is fired from and everything docked to it or is docked to good for soloing pirate stations but bat at fleet combat

 

[StormWing0]

One thing that'd fix pulse for the AI is to make the AI come at least 50% closer than it does before firing since at the moment only the front edge of the blast is hitting anything.

As for how else to make it better not sure since this is technically starmade's melee weapon alongside the warheads they do have their little spots they are useful.

 

[godmars]

fix pulse so it does its damage during animation and not after and this is much better

 

[MacThule]

The ancient 'pulse sucks' dialogue again

It does suck, and it's not about the range:damage relationship, it's about the fact that the effective range is so close that in order to use it you have to order up a bunch of collision calculations as well, and possibly even crash and get 'stuck' on another ship/station which blows out the entire server until you can disentangle. It's terrible.

Pulse is breddy gud, if it were to have more range it couldn't do the damage it does now, or there'd be not a lot else to be using. Similar position to warheads tbh, buffing it slightly is not a slight buff at all.

Personally, I think that extending range and drastically decreasing damage would be fine, if pulse could function as a vehicle for AOE effect casting. Problem is, drastically reducing damage to allow greater range reduces potential output for effects as well. I would be fine with seeing damage removed from pulse entirely if the damage equivalent could still be converted into powerful AoE effects like push, pull, stop, and maybe even EMP and ION (though I can't imagine a fair application of PT or pierce in a large AoE). Perhaps even allow drain/transfer computers to be linked to it for fleet-level support.

This would completely change the meta, because large AOE spheres of such effects can drastically change the course of a battle, but without it being about damage, armor, or shields at all necessarily.

 

[philthy mcnasty]

I think one option is to have pulse do direct block damage: ignore armor and shields.

If they did this, then boarding torpedoes become a thing. Pulse becomes an industrial anti ship torch. This also would all "boarding powerarmor" to become a thing: tiny ships armed with pulse and one other weapon and are used by players to board ships in combat.

It would also lesson the cheapness of the "advanced armor ship's core rail blast door". instead of having to wait forever for 6 astronauts to cut their way to the core, you can have a "boarding power armor" that melts the door real fast.

It would also make ams turrets more important, and force constant battle scans to prevent a cloaked bugger from melting you ship from the inside out.

 

[Gmodism]

I think one option is to have pulse do direct block damage: ignore armor and shields.

If they did this, then boarding torpedoes become a thing. Pulse becomes an industrial anti ship torch. This also would all "boarding powerarmor" to become a thing: tiny ships armed with pulse and one other weapon and are used by players to board ships in combat.

It would also lesson the cheapness of the "advanced armor ship's core rail blast door". instead of having to wait forever for 6 astronauts to cut their way to the core, you can have a "boarding power armor" that melts the door real fast.

It would also make ams turrets more important, and force constant battle scans to prevent a cloaked bugger from melting you ship from the inside out.

That some pretty neat additional ideas, could also be a thing to let them bypass the shields, that would change the game!

 

[Napther]

Guys, do rememer that the current Pulse calulates damage in a SPHERE, Cutting this into an EXTENDED range Cone AoE will not cause a reduction in its damage as far as I can tell.

And No, Never have a weapon that spammable/useable bypass shields. Otherwise people wont fight a fleet with another fleet, they will send 100(s) of small, cheap, disposable melee pulse drones and devastate heavy cruisers and battleships on AI mode as they wont be able to deal with them. Warheads are a 1 time thing, Pulses are infinitely useable until the ship is destroyed, its pwoer systems fail, or it is unable to keep up with its target.

The Weapon effects should not change, However it may also be impossible or impractical to code a pulse push/pull/stop effect to act like a grapple. And EMP should NEVER disable a target's systems so drastically for such little damage. This is going back to Push-Pulse drones, which rammed an enemy and caused their ship to spin around out of control almost permanently

 

[Tomssuli]

Pulse cone would be great for making an Umgah Drone =)

 

[philthy mcnasty]

Guys, do rememer that the current Pulse calulates damage in a SPHERE, Cutting this into an EXTENDED range Cone AoE will not cause a reduction in its damage as far as I can tell.

And No, Never have a weapon that spammable/useable bypass shields. Otherwise people wont fight a fleet with another fleet, they will send 100(s) of small, cheap, disposable melee pulse drones and devastate heavy cruisers and battleships on AI mode as they wont be able to deal with them. Warheads are a 1 time thing, Pulses are infinitely useable until the ship is destroyed, its pwoer systems fail, or it is unable to keep up with its target.

The Weapon effects should not change, However it may also be impossible or impractical to code a pulse push/pull/stop effect to act like a grapple. And EMP should NEVER disable a target's systems so drastically for such little damage. This is going back to Push-Pulse drones, which rammed an enemy and caused their ship to spin around out of control almost permanently

what happens when the cruisers are armed with their own melee pulse drones? and anti fighter drones? and heat seeking swarmer missiles?

I can hear the scream of thousands of servers as they die slow painful lag deaths...

That sounds kinda awesome, a massive robot fleet battle between swarms of boarding drones and large ships. Shotgun cannons and punch through cutting beams become useful again. Interceptor fighters will also be needed for fleets, and fleets will need defensive ships and formations to survive.

 

[jayman38]

I've always thought that a good way for pulse to change would be to turn it into a flak cannon. A short-range cannonshot fires out, and if it hits something, it is replaced with the pulse effect at the point of impact at the time of impact (not delayed, like pulse is now.)