Making handheld weapons

[Wolverines527]

As far as starmade goes the hand held does leave much to be desired from with them all looking like a handgun in my opinion a rocket launcher should look like a rocket launcher, a sniper rifle should look like a rifle with a scope and there should be other weapon classes too to add variety to combat.
Heres some examples


An assault rifle a fast weapon that can fire lasers at a faster pace then a hand held laser pistol with slightly more damage but with much less accuracy.

Rifle can more damage then the assault rifle but has a greater range and accuracy but same amount of damage

Shotgun a close range weapon and a corridor nightmare to defenders and attackers alike at close range this would be the equivalent of getting hit by a cannon bolt one shot can potentially Kill

Light saber or laser cutlass Controller need a close quarters weapon what could be better and its great for the scurvy loving buccaneers out there

Now for the smaller and less important spot

Building your own weapon from blocks and these custom weapons should have a statistical area depending on 5 areas

Damage
Handling
Energy
Rate of fire
Accuracy

Damage: should be calculated on how many cannon barrels are placed in the gun.

Handling: should be calculated on the grips and how the gun is shaped.

Energy: is which how much the weapon can be fired before its energy supply is diminished and is calculated from reactor blocks and capacitors and once you run out you have to wait for the weapon to recharge its self to continue firing

Rate of fire: is from weapons computers like in ships but also requires energy.

Accuracy: should be calculated on handling, length and weight to light your weapon is liable to drift up as you fire too heavy you drift down as you fire barrel length helps with accuracy but can also impede your firing in tight quarters.

 

[jstenholt]

I remember this idea being tossed around on the old forums: building guns like you build a ship. IIRC there might have even been some interest in doing this by the devs, but I'm fairly certain this was pushed to the wayside. But different models for existing weapons are definitely going to be a thing (I hope).

 

[Blakpik]

They should just nick Fallout 4's weapon crafting system. :P

 

[kiraen]

This came up in the Q&A, unfortunately the dev who is working on this system ( Saber ) was unable to attend. (How dare he let real life commitments interfere with my play time :p ). However, it was indicated that the idea was to have something like this, a modular approach to building and customizing astronaut gear. Iirc, it was not limited to just weapons. Jetpacks and armor were also mentioned. Details were sparse and nothing was confirmed tho.

I would add that beam color should be one of the customizable features. It may not seem important, but it's little details like this that can make a big difference. It would also be quite handy for events, making red team and blue team actually mean something. And more importantly, why not?

 

[NeonSturm]

Perhaps you could build weapons designed for your ship's interior.

That means for example, that their

• accuracy and fire range is tightly bound to how long your corridors are.
• damage is bound to how big the combat-mechs/suits of attackers can possibly be.

and fire-rate, energy and handling are only the second points of interest.​

Perhaps it is not even in the captains interest that weapons are as good as possible.

• The security could have just as good weapons to do their job. Not a rocket-launcher which will overkill.
• Instead these weapons could be built as light as possible to not add weight to the carrier.
• They could be fixed on the wearer's arm and disable themselves if you try to steal them (but suffer a lot of accuracy from being soft-fixed there).

You can make 100 weapons and don't fit everyone's needs closely.

 

[Wolverines527]

I forgot to include the ability to blueprint them so its easy to mass produce

 

[BrotherLazarus]

Some thoughts from a hammer mechanic:

Shotguns aren't actually short ranged like that--that's a balancing gimmick that came around with video games like Call of Duty.

In ship to ship combat, the shotgun is actually generally viewed as the king in most fiction (paralleling the real world) as each individual pellet isn't powerful enough to blow holes in the hull, but their tight grouping transfers a ton more energy into the target than a solid projectile (though slugs are powerful, shot is more likely in many cases that don't require 100+ yard engagements).

There are too many games that follow this meta-fiction to absurd (sub 5 FOOT range) extremes. Starmade doesn't need to join that silliness.

Assault rifles I tend to agree with, as they generally tend to trade power and range for higher ammunition capacity and more control under auto/burst fire (a 5.56mm NATO is nowhere NEAR as powerful as a more proper .300 Winchester Magnum rifle cartridge, but is much tinier).

Same with rifles and sniper rifles--conditionally. Most people think sniper rifle and envision an anti-materiel rifle instead--a common sniper rifle is generally a simple 7.62 NATO hunting rifle with military-grade optics, NOT a .50 BMG Barret.

The best idea, in the end, is to tweak things the way you've recommended with build-based weapon modding. It encourages player R&D, but more importantly in my book it steps away from wildly incorrect game tropes that facilitate some of the most annoying questions to field in a professional setting.

 

[Wolverines527]

Some thoughts from a hammer mechanic:

Shotguns aren't actually short ranged like that--that's a balancing gimmick that came around with video games like Call of Duty.

In ship to ship combat, the shotgun is actually generally viewed as the king in most fiction (paralleling the real world) as each individual pellet isn't powerful enough to blow holes in the hull, but their tight grouping transfers a ton more energy into the target than a solid projectile (though slugs are powerful, shot is more likely in many cases that don't require 100+ yard engagements).

There are too many games that follow this meta-fiction to absurd (sub 5 FOOT range) extremes. Starmade doesn't need to join that silliness.

Assault rifles I tend to agree with, as they generally tend to trade power and range for higher ammunition capacity and more control under auto/burst fire (a 5.56mm NATO is nowhere NEAR as powerful as a more proper .300 Winchester Magnum rifle cartridge, but is much tinier).

Same with rifles and sniper rifles--conditionally. Most people think sniper rifle and envision an anti-materiel rifle instead--a common sniper rifle is generally a simple 7.62 NATO hunting rifle with military-grade optics, NOT a .50 BMG Barret.

The best idea, in the end, is to tweak things the way you've recommended with build-based weapon modding. It encourages player R&D, but more importantly in my book it steps away from wildly incorrect game tropes that facilitate some of the most annoying questions to field in a professional setting.

I was mostly aiming to make it as balanced as possible shotguns do have a range in real life i was mostly thinking on the spread effect that covers a wide area which would be a great defensive tool while an assault rifle would be a great storming tool for offensives on boardings or planetary battles

 

[BrotherLazarus]

I was mostly aiming to make it as balanced as possible shotguns do have a range in real life i was mostly thinking on the spread effect that covers a wide area which would be a great defensive tool while an assault rifle would be a great storming tool for offensives on boardings or planetary battles

I would say that in a game like StarMade, having it unable to damage ship blocks would be a more balanced approach than turning it into a hallway hose.

IIRC all personal weapons can (slowly) damage ship blocks, so any scatterguns might have a slightly larger cone than reality to account for balance, but be completely unable to damage ship blocks (for defense, you don't want your marines blowing holes in your OWN ship!).

That being said, I've had to have a few discussions about balance because generally realism isn't necessarily fun--though I've had a blast (pun intended) with Insurgency and the far more realistic shotgun model they use in it.

Your commentary on assault rifles vs. rifles are, again, fairly on point (though the sniper rifle would be better suited being some form of anti-materiel rifle)...

Some form of completely custom ground-up weapon system would be amazing though. It's difficult to do well (such a system is in place with Planet Explorers, and it... didn't work well for quite some time) but when it works it leaves room for some incredible creative moments in weapons R&D by players.

 

[Wolverines527]

I would say that in a game like StarMade, having it unable to damage ship blocks would be a more balanced approach than turning it into a hallway hose.

IIRC all personal weapons can (slowly) damage ship blocks, so any scatterguns might have a slightly larger cone than reality to account for balance, but be completely unable to damage ship blocks (for defense, you don't want your marines blowing holes in your OWN ship!).

That being said, I've had to have a few discussions about balance because generally realism isn't necessarily fun--though I've had a blast (pun intended) with Insurgency and the far more realistic shotgun model they use in it.

Your commentary on assault rifles vs. rifles are, again, fairly on point (though the sniper rifle would be better suited being some form of anti-materiel rifle)...

Some form of completely custom ground-up weapon system would be amazing though. It's difficult to do well (such a system is in place with Planet Explorers, and it... didn't work well for quite some time) but when it works it leaves room for some incredible creative moments in weapons R&D by players.

Indeed that would be an issue and i think shields in that regard should be able to hold off the brunt of shotgun blasts and rocket launchers unless everyone has a rocket launcher then the shield will shut down

The sniper i was mostly thinking of what they had in world war 2 style with hunting rifles but to bring out the sniper rifles true potential you would need the piecing effect to pierce armor and high damage for 1 hit kills
[DOUBLEPOST=1448693742,1448693619][/DOUBLEPOST]I just needed a little time to think on the sniper rifle i wrote this while i was working i had thoughts of including a heavy machine gun type but that will come later

 

[BrotherLazarus]

Indeed that would be an issue and i think shields in that regard should be able to hold off the brunt of shotgun blasts and rocket launchers unless everyone has a rocket launcher then the shield will shut down

The sniper i was mostly thinking of what they had in world war 2 style with hunting rifles but to bring out the sniper rifles true potential you would need the piecing effect to pierce armor and high damage for 1 hit kills
[DOUBLEPOST=1448693742,1448693619][/DOUBLEPOST]I just needed a little time to think on the sniper rifle i wrote this while i was working i had thoughts of including a heavy machine gun type but that will come later

The Springfield M1903, Mosin Nagant, and Mauser K98 issue sniper rifles were actually scoped military service rifles that eventually formed the basis for civilian hunting rifles. The Mauser action is everywhere over a hundred years later, that's how successful and reliable it is.

I'll have to edit this post later when I recapture my train of thought.

 

[Saber]

Hey thanks for the summon kiraen . I can't confirm anything fully just yet, as how handheld weapon customization will work is still in preliminary talks with the team. However I can say that it isn't likely we'll do a "build your own weapon block by block" system (though it was discussed early on), but we will likely be doing a modular system. I doubt it will be anything so extensive as Fallout 4, but we are working on sorting out how the system will work both from a dev and player standpoint.

 

[serge1944]

Oh cmon i do the same post with the same idea and evryone ignores it but he does it and boom replys.

 

[Wolverines527]

Hey thanks for the summon kiraen . I can't confirm anything fully just yet, as how handheld weapon customization will work is still in preliminary talks with the team. However I can say that it isn't likely we'll do a "build your own weapon block by block" system (though it was discussed early on), but we will likely be doing a modular system. I doubt it will be anything so extensive as Fallout 4, but we are working on sorting out how the system will work both from a dev and player standpoint.

Ok thank you for your time i will shift the thread to weapon class ideas and optics

 

[Wolverines527]

Oh cmon i do the same post with the same idea and evryone ignores it but he does it and boom replys.

I know the feeling some of my topics took a while to start going

 

[BrotherLazarus]

Oh cmon i do the same post with the same idea and evryone ignores it but he does it and boom replys.

All about timing. The only reason I reply to the threads I do is when they're on a topic that interests me and show up in the Recent Posts sidebar when I check the forums. So it was a matter of chance that it was this thread, and not yours, that I saw.

 

[The_Onion]

Hey thanks for the summon kiraen However I can say that it isn't likely we'll do a "build your own weapon block by block" system (though it was discussed early on)

You have no idea how much this saddens me

 

[NeonSturm]

For inner-ship combat, I would prefer a weapon that can shoot around an edge and shrapnel-grenades that hit targets around an edge.

Sniper rifles have 2 specialities:

• They need a long time to aim in atmosphere where you have wind and gravity
• They can be built lightweight because of few shots after another - and then they might not double normal riffles.

Also:

• In space you don't need to account for wind-drag.
• You could use automatic aiming, but it may be illegal. Tracking ammo would be more expensive high-tech stuff (IRL they even got artillery to impact on specific GPS-coordinates).

Shotguns on mechs may primarily for hitting many targets with few aim-time with high-calliber shotguns.
I don't think shotguns will penetrate high-tech armour with a shield on it much better than single bullets.

I also think most peoples don't know what "assault" in "assault riffles" refers to. Perhaps some weapon-specialist from IRL could make a list of important facts/infos in a wiki or links to one.

 

[BrotherLazarus]

For inner-ship combat, I would prefer a weapon that can shoot around an edge and shrapnel-grenades that hit targets around an edge.

Sniper rifles have 2 specialities:

• They need a long time to aim in atmosphere where you have wind and gravity
• They can be built lightweight because of few shots after another - and then they might not double normal riffles.

Also:

• In space you don't need to account for wind-drag.
• You could use automatic aiming, but it may be illegal. Tracking ammo would be more expensive high-tech stuff (IRL they even got artillery to impact on specific GPS-coordinates).

Shotguns on mechs may primarily for hitting many targets with few aim-time with high-calliber shotguns.
I don't think shotguns will penetrate high-tech armour with a shield on it much better than single bullets.

I also think most peoples don't know what "assault" in "assault riffles" refers to. Perhaps some weapon-specialist from IRL could make a list of important facts/infos in a wiki or links to one.

Specialist is what "hammer mechanic" means--gunsmith.

Assault rifles are select fire weapons chambered in intermediate cartridges (5.56mm NATO for example) capable of burst or automatic fire. An M4 is an assault rifle. A civilian AR15 with an M4 stock is not.

Of note, all firearms have to account for drag, wind, and gravity--you just don't notice it at closer ranges (outside of rimfire plinking at 100-ish yards, you notice drift and drop pretty bad there).

Depends on the shotgun ammo--there are armor piercing slugs that at close range are devestating, due to the fact that (12 gauge) they're bigger than 20mm solid projectiles--that will penetrate armor at sub-100 yard ranges rather easily.

 

[NeonSturm]

If your weapon is incapable of firing accurate above 100-ish yards (perhaps because it doesn't support aiming that well), why should you account for it?
And if you fire in vacuum, there is no wind drag or air resistance.
In a ship corridor there is air resistances, but still no wind drag.
And in deep space, gravity can have a much lower effect than on Earth for example.

The bullet speed also changes a lot in vacuum, mainly because the bullet does not need to push the air out of the barrel.
"Laser-bursts" also called "Laser-bullets" or "Laser-projectiles" and similar for all other Laser-like guns such as StarTrek-phasers or Masers that work at near-light-speed almost ignore gravity apart black holes.

A sniper riffle that shoots 2000m on earth at about 700m/s needs almost 3 seconds before impact and you need to aim it about 9m above the target.

In space, the same projectile would travel at much higher speeds and the chance to hit the wrong target continuously decreases as each shot has is a slightly different direction and targets are much further apart.

That's why you need a different classification for sniper/other guns with different environments (space, low-wind-corridors with airlocks each 100m) and different ammo capacities (that may hold up to 2000 charges or be able to accumulate charge for multiple shots at once).