Rethinking Weapons Focusing - A partial solution to BSvSS and Turrets

[Lecic]

A major problem in game right now is how directed the combat is. Even with core drilling becoming a thing of the past in the future, we still face the problem that most weapons simply don't do damage over a wide range, but focus on a single point. So, I propose a change to weapon focusing.

What if the cannons didn't focus on your mouse cursor when you fired? What if they only worked like the alternate fire key?

*prepares to duck away from hail of rotten tomatoes and brick shards*

Now, before you all hate me, let me explain. I've noticed that the weapons of a fighter and a capital have no difference, beyond the power of each shot. If we changed it so weapons could only direct fire as opposed to focus, capital weapons would be wide attacks, while light ships would have weaker, but more focused attacks.
This would also fix the issues I've seen with turrets, in that they take time to turn towards an enemy and face them, but this turn time is completely useless, as the turrets can fire almost 180* away from the actual front of the barrel.

Now, I realise a lot of people still want to be able to focus somewhat. So, I have a solution for this. What if, in the master weapons settings, you could set a focusing point, where all the bullet streams would converge. Setting a convergence point would also allow for more intelligent piloting and fighting. Smart players would learn to engage at their own convergence point that leads to maximum firepower.

 

[CyberTao]

Made me think of this http://starmadedock.net/threads/id-like-everyones-opinion-on-this.596/ Which was an interesting Discussion.

By limiting the Cones of fire, it would allow people to target a small area at a distance (like Sniper type ships) and Larger spread at a close range.

I believe in the last Q&A there was talk about maybe being able to use Turrets as your main weapon as well (Aside from Fire at selected), Which would work well with almost Fixed main weapons :u

 

[Lecic]

Made me think of this http://starmadedock.net/threads/id-like-everyones-opinion-on-this.596/ Which was an interesting Discussion.

By limiting the Cones of fire, it would allow people to target a small area at a distance (like Sniper type ships) and Larger spread at a close range.

I believe in the last Q&A there was talk about maybe being able to use Turrets as your main weapon as well (Aside from Fire at selected), Which would work well with almost Fixed main weapons :u

Yes, that is exactly what I was going for with this!

 

[CyberTao]

My favorite part of this is that Lining up outputs of weapons becomes even more important and relevant. Possibly even Multiple Groupings of weapons (Left/Right separate computers) Depending on how Narrow the Arc Is to help with Targeting *^*

 

[Visitor]

The idea does seem interesting, though I'd mix it up a bit to take into account, when it comes to calculating accuracy, number of weapons linked together (to avoid people building big arrays of small, very accurate weapons) and rate of fire so slow, big, accurate long-range weapons will still be possible.

Alternatively, in case of the latter, make accuracy affected by size and master-slave weapon combo under the new system, allowing sniper cannons and charged beams to retain much more accuracy while scaling up in size than, say, rapid fire cannons.