Linkable Decorative Weapon Barrels

[petlahk]

Preface

I want to make this abundantly clear. This proposal is not a proposal for all weapon system blocks to be decorative.

The Proposal

I was looking at pictures of X-Wings on the Star-Wars wiki and noted that the barrels on just about every single ship weapon is longer and sleeker than what we have to resort to in Starmade. Given that weapon blocks are really weak in addition to being meter-sized cubes I came up with the proposal as follows.

It's already been shown by the developers that the game can handle complex shapes. The players need to look no farther than pipes and grates. So, why not take it a step farther and add a variety of about 3 different gun barrel types/schemes?

In addition to having decorative gun barrels they should be able to serve as outputs for the main weapon arrays. Given that weapon arrays can shoot straight through the ships that they're mounted to anyway, there is nothing stopping players from hiding the weapons deep in the ships interior. In conjunction to the decorative weapon barrels players should be able to 'C' select one of the barrels then 'V' select a corresponding group of weapon blocks.

I say that the weapon blocks should be selected with the barrel because if the computer were selected then it would break the concept of having multiple weapon arrays of varying sizes tied to one computer. Also, only arrays that are the main weapon type (not secondary, or tertiary) should be permitted selections.

And, in addition to the above, these decorative barrels should really have advanced armor stats so they aren't destroyed in the first few seconds of any fight.

 

[nogg]

perhaps when a shot is fired from a weapon barrel the barrel could put some sort of buff to the fired weapon? perhaps a speed boost on the weapon or a reload boost if its a missile launcher?

 

[petlahk]

perhaps when a shot is fired from a weapon barrel the barrel could put some sort of buff to the fired weapon? perhaps a speed boost on the weapon or a reload boost if its a missile launcher?

Then it's effectively another weapon/ship system, and the devs have weapon/ship systems as weaker blocks than the others. In addition to that, regardless of what the HP/Armor on it would be, it would then be another system that players would want to protect instead of putting on the exterior of their ships/turrets. I appreciate your sentiment that it be useful in some other way, but really I just think it'd be nice to have a functional decorative block that doesn't need to be worried about and that just makes stuff look cooler.

 

[jayman38]

I would recommend different armor levels for different barrel thicknesses. I.e. No change or hull strength for a spindle-thin 1/4 "stick"/barrel (perhaps similar in appearance to a light stick), standard armor for a 1/2 medium barrel (similar in appearance to a pipe, without the flanges on the ends), and advanced armor for the 3/4 heavy barrel.

Example Illustration: a sci-fi "barrel" that might be a good representation for a 1/2-thickness "medium barrel".

With this, I'd recommend two similar sets of barrels: one centered on the middle of the block. The other, the off-center barrel, tucked into one corner of the available space. In order to maintain barrel centricity, the game would need to auto-align all aligned off-center barrels along the center of the thickest barrel in the line. The center would be different if the thickest barrel is 3/4 thickness (3/8 block width from the edge of the voxel), versus a 1/2 thickness barrel (1/4 block width from the edge of the voxel), versus a 1/4 thickness barrel (1/8 block width from the edge of the voxel).

 

[petlahk]

I would recommend different armor levels for different barrel thicknesses. I.e. No change or hull strength for a spindle-thin 1/4 "stick"/barrel (perhaps similar in appearance to a light stick), standard armor for a 1/2 medium barrel (similar in appearance to a pipe, without the flanges on the ends), and advanced armor for the 3/4 heavy barrel.

Example Illustration: a sci-fi "barrel" that might be a good representation for a 1/2-thickness "medium barrel".

With this, I'd recommend two similar sets of barrels: one centered on the middle of the block. The other, the off-center barrel, tucked into one corner of the available space. In order to maintain barrel centricity, the game would need to auto-align all aligned off-center barrels along the center of the thickest barrel in the line. The center would be different if the thickest barrel is 3/4 thickness (3/8 block width from the edge of the voxel), versus a 1/2 thickness barrel (1/4 block width from the edge of the voxel), versus a 1/4 thickness barrel (1/8 block width from the edge of the voxel).

I love the way your post elaborates on my idea. It really helps to clarify what it might look like in implementation. Thank you.