More Weapon Options ( plz read)

[A.Wolfrick]

THIS IS NOT A SUGGESTION FOR MORE TYPES OF WEAPONS.

This suggestion focuses on customizing a weapon far deeper then it can be right now. Here is an example of my suggestion which I have gathered from other games and scifi movies as well.

1; The cannon is an effective system but aside from firing in a full auto or a dictated delay which can't really be customized further. Here is what I suggest for the cannon.

Clip and burst ability.
-Have a cannon able to burst fire, aka it fires 2,3,4,5,8,10 shots and then has a cool down. You may ask why this is even relevant and I suggest it on the grounds that this change could have a profound change on how cannons are used. Enemy weapons are full auto but do poor damage? Well your cannons do more damage but yours rather then firing after 5-10 seconds have that aforementioned burst meaning you can close with the enemy and 'barrage' them with heavy firepower. Of course balancing this would require some work however something as simple as adding a longer cool down for each round fired in the burst would make them simple. This would of course be respective to the primary's support functions ie, Beam, Missile etc.

The idea again is it allows people to build strong cannon systems and choose how they fire.

2; Missiles have a range of different things they can be set to do. However I feel like any suggestions I make to missiles would take far to much time and coding to be relevant at this time. However I would still apply the 'clip and burst' to missiles as well but more in the "Dumbfire" aspect as I see a lack of use of dumb fire missile batteries. While they are not 'super' effective it would be nice to have a dumb fire missile battery or a missile that could fire on a burst or clip format.


3; Beams can also work on this and they already have the groundwork done for them to 'clip and burst'. The rapid fire beam set up achieves this but not to the extent I have yet to suggest. However I find that programming this for beams or even adding the options would be quite simple.

Pulse; I have nothing for this as considering how they work I can only see this being something that would add a 'part' to a missile instead of an effect. You could change the pulse to give the missile a customization effect like an EMP bubble ( I understand bubble projection would be hard on the user/computer however it doesn't have to use anything aside from the already implemented pulse models and such. For balance sake one could make said missile dumb fire only so it can't be 'locked' and can be evaded by a skilled pilot. This is however a side suggestion.

If someone has already made this suggestion then I rest my case if not I would welcome any and all criticism and options from others. I think adding that bit of customization would be to hard ( Dev's feel free to let me know otherwise ) Though being able to set a clip or burst shot count on weapons would mix up the way weapons would be used and how weapons are deployed. However, the stronger the weapons, the bigger the burst then the more cool down and power it would require of course.

Again, I welcome options both for and ageist and please, let me know why you think so. Who knows, maybe we can build a better idea?

 

[jayman38]

This has mostly been suggested before, primarily with ammo suggestions. In any case, I would like to see custom burst-fire modes made available. Sure, a human player can fire bursts at will. It would be very intersting to see AI-controlled ships and turrets firing bursts, instead of holding the hammer down for full auto, like it does now.

Various ideas for the "how"....
1. (Weapon Link Idea) Allow cannons to be placed as a tertiary weapon system. This eliminates the use of other tertiary weapon modifications (goodbye punch, ion, explosive, etc.), but would be an easy way to adjust bursts.
2. (Energy Ammo Idea) Link a capacitor group to the weapon system. The weapon only starts to fire when the capacitor group is full, and then fires until the capacitor is empty.
3. (Original Ammo Idea) Link a cargo block to the weapon system, and "ammo" of some type would define the burst. When the cargo empties, the weapon burst would stop, the cargo would be filled again to a specific extent from another cargo block. (Different cargo linking could create some very unique and potentially complex bursting options.)

There's probably a million other ways to implement bursting using blocks, instead of some sort of adjustment menu. (Schine generally abhors adjustment menus, and prefers a block-based approach, because blocks are nearly infinite and more flexible than most any other option.)

 

[A.Wolfrick]

I didn't know they preferred things to be blocked based. I wouldn't see an issue with a sort of "capacitor'. With that idea in and of itself it would be possible to give weapons their own personal energy for firing.

I just see so much possibility to have very well designed weapon systems. I would love to build big heavy cannon batteries that fire a few barrages and then go on a long cool down but that's not entirely possible as its either full auto or you're at the mercy of cool down which if you make that low enough you're still full auto.

Still, I appreciate shedding more light on the idea. Again this is a feature that I would like and while starmade's weapons are nice everything else has been getting some form of love but weapons seem a little left alone. This is not to be taken as "Schine doesn't care" No no, on the contrary I'm sure when its time for weapons to get some love they will make starmade's ability to build whatever that much more amazing.