Railgun, Archer Missiles and Beam Idea

[Unknown Entity]

Hi There, I though it would be cool and useful to add these ideas I'm going to list.

But before we start, how do I color the particles for weapons (i.e the color of the beams)? I saw it in the new weapons update but I don't know how to do it.

Railguns:
I'm suggesting there should be a railgun type weapon. That would be pretty cool. I have a UNSC Frigate and the closest I can get to a MAC Cannon is either beams or fast missiles (still moves way slower than a MAC round). Having this weapon and the piercing effect will make it look like going through the ship. This will look badass!

This is a good example:

Archer Missiles:
I would like the idea of missiles arching when exiting the missile array and moving strait to the enemy after the arch. This would put a use to making missile arrays point upwards, downwards, and either side. I thought it would make ship battles look more entertaining to watch. The closest I can get to this is the SB-KB missile array but it doesn't make good arches.

Basically this:

Beam Idea:
I would like the Idea of have to customize the size the beams. That would make battles look way better.


These are my thoughts on what should be updated on the weapons system (Still hate the idea of cannons shooting at a super slow rate, I like it the way it was before). Leave comments about the Idea if you like. Feel free to add anything.

Thank you.


Schema I hope you are seeing this!

 

[jzimmerman4]

To answer your question you can hook the master weapon computer to a light with c and v.

And for rail guns you can do a cannon/beam combo which is a long distance shot which I am pretty sure is a rail gun. Plus if it is powerful enough a piercing or punch through effect will create the type of gun seen in your gif.

You can rotate you missile computer to create the arching effect. (check out nuclearfun's ship page to see an example)

I believe beams will eventually be different sizes depending on how powerful it is, just hasnt been added yet.

 

[Unknown Entity]

To answer your question you can hook the master weapon computer to a light with c and v.

And for rail guns you can do a cannon/beam combo which is a long distance shot which I am pretty sure is a rail gun. Plus if it is powerful enough a piercing or punch through effect will create the type of gun seen in your gif.

You can rotate you missile computer to create the arching effect. (check out nuclearfun's ship page to see an example)

I believe beams will eventually be different sizes depending on how powerful it is, just hasnt been added yet.

Thanks for the help. I haven't play starmade in like 6 months so i don't know what is new or not except the weapons update..

But what do you by rotate missile computers? I would like to see a link to one of his ships that have it (he has a lot of amazing ships and i don't know if you mean all of the ships have this ability or a specific one).

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Thanks for the help. I haven't play starmade in like 6 months so i don't know what is new or not except the weapons update..

But what do you by rotate missile computers? I would like to see a link to one of his ships that have it (he has a lot of amazing ships and i don't know if you mean all of the ships have this ability or a specific one).

Missiles shoot in the direction the weapons computer faces. When used in conjunction with lock on missiles (missile master + beam slave) it will fire out the direction you set before tracking to your target.

Also I know it's been said but a sniper cannons (cannon + beam) with peirce or punchthrough should be a decent mimic for railguns. Currently punchthrough is the better option though as pierce needs some work yet (bug?).

 

[jzimmerman4]

Thanks for the help. I haven't play starmade in like 6 months so i don't know what is new or not except the weapons update..

But what do you by rotate missile computers? I would like to see a link to one of his ships that have it (he has a lot of amazing ships and i don't know if you mean all of the ships have this ability or a specific one).

http://starmadedock.net/content/phalanx-destroyer.721/

 

[mo05mAn]

I like all the ideas, and i do hope the cannons go back to what they were before. it was much better

 

[Lecic]

I like all the ideas, and i do hope the cannons go back to what they were before. it was much better

Use the master:slave system to your advantage. If the default cannon speed is too slow for you, slave some cannons to it to get the rapid cannons.

 

[Bedlamite316]

Well I love using missiles so I'll support any thread that's going to make some nice changes to them, I've also suggested arching missiles some time ago, they look amazing in games like x3 albion prelude. I also like using anything that has something to do with hurling ballistic projectile at enemy so I really like idea of railgun/mass driver. :D
(English isn't my native language so sorry for any mistakes)

 

[Bedlamite316]

Also I've tested this rotate missile computer thing to get arching effect aaand it's not working... at least in my game/on my computer(it works if I'm inside computer, but when shooting while sitting in core they fly straight towards front of the ship. I think I need to do more research about that

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Also I've tested this rotate missile computer thing to get arching effect aaand it's not working... at least in my game/on my computer(it works if I'm inside computer, but when shooting while sitting in core they fly straight towards front of the ship. I think I need to do more research about that

I just refit a ship with two missile computers each shooting out to the side and it works... some of the time. I'd say maybe 1 in in four shots will arc from the side. These same ships spawned as AI will always shoot the missiles out the side and it looks amazing.

 

[jayman38]

To experienced builders: Would it be beneficial to change the size of the beam/bullet/missile, depending on how many emitter blocks are connected along the same plane (perpendicular to the direction of the shot) as the primary emitter block (normally selected with "R")?

For example:
1. a beam with a long pole of emitters in a row would have a single-block-wide shot.
<- <LLLLLL
Legend:
L: weapon block
<: primary block and direction
<-: scaled shot effect
>: non-primary parallel block

2. a beam with multiple connected parallel emitters would have a shot as wide as the narrowest dimension of the emitter plane. (If you had an emitter array that was 3x5 blocks, the beam would adopt a diameter of 3, not 5.)
<- >LLLLLL
<- <LLLLLL
<- >LLLLLL

3. a beam with parallel emitters only at the shot plane would still work, even if there weren't blocks directly behind the parallel emitters.
<- >L LLL (missing a block directly behind the emitter block!)
<- <LLLLL
<- >L LLL (missing a block directly behind the emitter block!)

4. a wide beam would need to have its center adjusted to fall within the shot plane, so that the offset primary emitter doesn't cause the shot to look like it's coming half-out of the weapon and half out of something else. On the other hand, since you can currently cover weapon systems with other blocks without damage, this might provide some interesting weapon offset builds that could produce interesting effects and/or look good.

<- >LLLLL
<- >LLLLL
<- <LLLLL (primary emitter offset, beam re-centered on emitter plane?)

That way, you could use the structure of your weapon system to define the size of the shot, in addition to its power. This could eliminate the need to checkerboard your emitter array to get a wide effect, so you could have just a giant solid block of weapon blocks in a single firing group to affect a large area. Sounds logical to me. The only real problem on the programming side is: how easy would it be for Schema to scale the shot effect? Well, that, and determining the emitter plane to do math on the size of the shot.

 

[Lecic]

To experienced builders: Would it be beneficial to change the size of the beam/bullet/missile, depending on how many emitter blocks are connected along the same plane (perpendicular to the direction of the shot) as the primary emitter block (normally selected with "R")?

For example:
1. a beam with a long pole of emitters in a row would have a single-block-wide shot.
<- <LLLLLL
Legend:
L: weapon block
<: primary block and direction
<-: scaled shot effect
>: non-primary parallel block

2. a beam with multiple connected parallel emitters would have a shot as wide as the narrowest dimension of the emitter plane. (If you had an emitter array that was 3x5 blocks, the beam would adopt a diameter of 3, not 5.)
<- >LLLLLL
<- <LLLLLL
<- >LLLLLL

3. a beam with parallel emitters only at the shot plane would still work, even if there weren't blocks directly behind the parallel emitters.
<- >L LLL (missing a block directly behind the emitter block!)
<- <LLLLL
<- >L LLL (missing a block directly behind the emitter block!)

4. a wide beam would need to have its center adjusted to fall within the shot plane, so that the offset primary emitter doesn't cause the shot to look like it's coming half-out of the weapon and half out of something else. On the other hand, since you can currently cover weapon systems with other blocks without damage, this might provide some interesting weapon offset builds that could produce interesting effects and/or look good.

<- >LLLLL
<- >LLLLL
<- <LLLLL (primary emitter offset, beam re-centered on emitter plane?)

That way, you could use the structure of your weapon system to define the size of the shot, in addition to its power. This could eliminate the need to checkerboard your emitter array to get a wide effect, so you could have just a giant solid block of weapon blocks in a single firing group to affect a large area. Sounds logical to me. The only real problem on the programming side is: how easy would it be for Schema to scale the shot effect? Well, that, and determining the emitter plane to do math on the size of the shot.

This has been discussed to death, but I still support it so much.

 

[ltmauve]

I just refit a ship with two missile computers each shooting out to the side and it works... some of the time. I'd say maybe 1 in in four shots will arc from the side. These same ships spawned as AI will always shoot the missiles out the side and it looks amazing.

Have you been getting a green crosshair? I think that when you do that the missile will target forwards. If not, bugs.starmade.org

 

[NeonSturm]

What happens if the output gets broken?
I agree on everything visual, but damage should depend on the current system.

Ideally (for lasers) the beam would be a cone with it's circle being your weapon output and the tip a block on the enemy ship.

It could also be a transformed cylinder with a big area above your gun output and it's small area around the impact +- explosion radius.

 

[ltmauve]

Personally, I'd like the ability to make a beam weapon larger than the output by a fair amount. If you've ever seen Gundam Virtue (from 00) fire its bazooka, which has a barrel of about 3m^2, the beam expands after leaving the barrel to something about as big across as the Gundam (which is ~20m tall) and later we see it in burst mode firing a beam that cuts a trench deep enough for two other Gundams to stand in with room to spare (~25-30m)

 

[Vyor]

Personally, I'd like the ability to make a beam weapon larger than the output by a fair amount. If you've ever seen Gundam Virtue (from 00) fire its bazooka, which has a barrel of about 3m^2, the beam expands after leaving the barrel to something about as big across as the Gundam (which is ~20m tall) and later we see it in burst mode firing a beam that cuts a trench deep enough for two other Gundams to stand in with room to spare (~25-30m)

This is a sci fi game, not anime. These are 2 different styles.

 

[ltmauve]

This is a sci fi game, not anime. These are 2 different styles.

And the reason they can't be combined is....?
Besides, everyone complains about how underwhelming the lasers are.

 

[NeonSturm]

though I don't like screen-fillers and too exaggerated effects, I know this game will have a bigger community and greater future with this included.
The limitations should be what is reasonable, not technical - especially not on a simple minimum or maximum for a number.

Thus I suggest making it - dependent on blockBehaviourConfig.xml - either scaling by radius=(block-count)^(1/3), by ship size or by output size or have it fixed (like now) and add the possibility to scale by a user-defined value (3x, 5x, ...).

 

[ltmauve]

Honestly, I don't think having a 20m-beam would be good if all you have is a single shot. Instead, one giant "beam" should be drawn around all nearby beams. Same thing with bullets, perhaps?

 

[NeonSturm]

Then maybe instead of adding a ship-sized or scalable beam, let the user choose the size based on reload.
He should be able to define size combined with cannons (rapid-fire), pulse (long reload) and a size modifier by overdrive.
Relative to the default size which is based on radius = (block-count)^(1/3) or output size.