Salvage beams should be a cone.

[Ithirahad]

This may sound strange, but it's pretty simple. With a small salvage array, your beam would be more or less linear, but as your array gets bigger the beam begins to open out into a cone of energy, eventually capping out at around a 60-degree beam angle.

Why do this?

This would give more value to having a larger beam array, and would allow the 'wafflecannon nerf' (Multi-group penalty) to apply to salvage beams too without making salvaging an impossibly long and boring process. Visually, a cone of energy would look far more interesting than a line, too.

What about the secondary effects?

That's easy. Cannons would stay as they are, increasing salvage speed at a cost of energy. Beams would decrease the cone radius but add extra range. Missiles would make the cone wider. Pulse would increase both speed AND range, but for 3 times the required energy of either the missile or cannon secondary effects.

...But what about performance? Won't people be able to spam tons of giant cones and detonate my GPU?

Not really. With this addition, the multi-system penalty would become much harsher, and it would become unfeasible to have more than two or three arrays on your ship. If all else fails, the cone could be turned into some kind of pyramid-shape, which would require far less polygons and, if textured right, could look even better than a cone.

 

[Jay_do]

That does sound neat. It would make having one or three massive salvage beams useful apposed to having 40 medium ones.

 

[Mariux]

This is excellent. It would discourage salvage beam spamming and allow nicer salvager designs.

 

[Blakpik]

It could also allow for a less harsh looking salvager, visually as the cone gets wider the colour could spread making a transparent cone rather than a bright beam. That is just me though, the idea functionally is good, I upvote.

 

[CaptainTaz]

Honestly, as long as it doesn't completely nerf larger salvagers meant to harvest titans and the like (Dont judge me... I have designs for those things....) I'm all for it.

 

[Nerixel]

I love this. In fact, I love this so much I'm moving it to Suggestions :P

 

[Will2brown]

I didn't even read it but I'm liking anyway because better mining is a better game

 

[Ithirahad]

I love this. In fact, I love this so much I'm moving it to Suggestions :p

Oops. I don't even think I realized that I posted this in General or wherever it was... I meant for it to be in suggestions. :P

 

[jath]

Already possible. Use missile slaves.

 

[Proxima_Centauri]

This would give more value to having a larger beam array, and would allow the 'wafflecannon nerf' (Multi-group penalty) to apply to salvage beams too without making salvaging an impossibly long and boring process

Except grouping penalties were already removed since all weapons have linear stats now.

 

[Megacrafter127]

Already possible. Use missile slaves.

Doesn't turn it into a cone, just a set of straight lines going in different directions.

 

[PizzaPress]

How exactly would this be calculated so it's not just a ton of beams spread out in a shape like an even, non-random salvage/missile?
Or is the same total number of beams with missile less laggy?

Already possible. Use missile slaves.

But it's not an exact cone, it's uneven.

 

[Megacrafter127]

How exactly would this be calculated so it's not just a ton of beams spread out in a shape like an even, non-random salvage/missile?
Or is the same total number of beams with missile less laggy?

But it's not an exact cone, it's uneven.

One could theoretically handle this task like hard-lined shadows in the case of graphics, kinda.
A circle(or very smooth polygon for simplicity) is used as a canvas, which is scaled up with the distance from the salvage module. Each block leaves a "shadow" on that canvas. Obviously blocks closer to the salvage module are calculated first, so they also "cast" their "shadows" on the canvas first. Whenever a block's "shadow" overlaps with an already existing "shadow" on the canvas, the mining speed on the block is reduced by the covered percentage. And if done right, this won't even take THAT much processing power, since mathematics allow for some crazy shortcuts when projecting areas from a 3D space onto a scalable 2D plain, and that task is already done many times each frame for simply rendering the 3D environment. And since in this case we don't care about textures and most of these "shadow"s are cast by blocks from the same grid anyways, many of their surfaces are(apart from weither they face clockwise or counterclockwise[rendering related]) identical, there are many shortcuts and calculations that don't need to be performed anyways. Tbh, just "firing" these canvases many times over and over (and also rendering them) might turn out to be a nice addition, although I don't really think it'll go all the way that way.

 

[Ithirahad]

Bump... Can I get an 'official' council/dev verdict on this one? Waffle beam boards are annoying. :P

 

[Winterhome]

pls
gib me nao

I want to make salvagers that look good and aren't bricks, please. Salvagers I'm proud to use. Salvagers that feel like ships. This would help with that.

 

[Ithirahad]

Doesn't turn it into a cone, just a set of straight lines going in different directions.

Yeah, that and now Salvage/Missile, in addition to being ugly and relatively slow at salvaging, isn't even constant... IMO, that system should be reverted anyway, but eh.

 

[Nickizzy]

I love this idea! You could have salvage beams on ships without having to ruin your design!

 

[Dire Venom]

+1
This would be a great way of re-doing mining and making it easier to understand for newer players

 

[FatCobra]

I think this would be great. What about the more modules you have the wider the cone to a certain point then it just gets faster.

 

[Magrim]

Perhaps I'm not following you but, do you mean each output would project a cone depending on how powerful that group of modules are?