The Current State of Weapons

[Keptick]

I like most aspects of the customization system, but I think that the rate of fire and projectile speed on non-rapid cannons is way too slow.
The projectiles themselves move so slowly that it's often hard to hit without significantly leading your target, something that you can only reliably do with a high rate of fire. I haven't been able to successfully use any of the non-rapid cannon weapon types so far. Shotgun cannons? They spread at a crazy angle; it's practically impossible to hit anything. Cannon/Beam? The faster projectile speed is nice, but it shoots so slowly that you'll never hit. I want non-rapid cannons to be like... BAM. BAM. BAM. and not BAM.................................. BAM............................ BAM...........................
That said, the incredible amount of customization of effects you can do is really awesome. I like the different types of missiles and beams you can make (except for shotgun beam, which is kinda dumb). It's just the cannons that are really lacking when used in a non-rapid capacity.

Exactly, I'd prefer a heavy autocannon as default instead of what we currently have, which is more akin to this:

 

[Criss]

Ugh. no guys please. Are you really are asking for your massive artillery cannons to act like machine guns? Come on. Theres a reason thats there. Hard hitting "shells". If the spread did splash damage that would be fine. Increase shot speed? Sure. But lets not forget that that they are intended to be slow firing. Its the anti-matter CANNON after all.

 

[NeonSturm]

Points to the link I posted a few responses back. I think that's the answer. Increases range, will look legit, be effective in combat, unique, etc.

Personally I would like pulse to deal damage per entity in a huge volume, not per block. We don't have such a weapon jet.

But then we need a vortex gun, flak or shot-gun.
At least it would make fighters not completely useless against a pulse-beam-explosive pulse backed up by 90 modules (=5dps * 10s * 90blocks = 450 damage per block currently)[DOUBLEPOST=1411616477,1411616404][/DOUBLEPOST]

I like most aspects of the customization system, but I think that the rate of fire and projectile speed on non-rapid cannons is way too slow.

I think that is because of effect modules allow for more than one block to be damaged per shot and to reduce LAG which I really like for the LAG reason.[DOUBLEPOST=1411616729][/DOUBLEPOST]

Exactly, I'd prefer a heavy autocannon as default instead of what we currently have, which is more akin to this:

I always think a beam is a stream of tiny particles, thus should create a rapid gun...
beam : rapid fire - bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
missiles : range - because of accuracy and a missile doesn't lose damage potential over distance like hot, cooling-down plasma ball ...
cannons : damage per shot - BAM........BAM.........BAM.........
pulse : spread

But it might be too late for a change for the more intuitive config. Peoples will complain.

 

[Crimson-Artist]

more great responses.

anything else?

Opinions on support systems?

or effects?

 

[jzimmerman4]

I

more great responses.

anything else?

Opinions on support systems?

or effects?

For support systems I think we should phase out the beams that take power and shields since we have effects that do similar things. My suggestion would be to give the ion and emp effects a shield/power return to the user.

 

[Crimson-Artist]

I

For support systems I think we should phase out the beams that take power and shields since we have effects that do similar things. My suggestion would be to give the ion and emp effects a shield/power return to the user.

interesting but I think for the sake of balance keeping the drain/supply systems separate from the Ion and EMP effect would be better as it help specialize fleets and would keep weapons with those effects from being OP.

 

[Keptick]

Ugh. no guys please. Are you really are asking for your massive artillery cannons to act like machine guns? Come on. Theres a reason thats there. Hard hitting "shells". If the spread did splash damage that would be fine. Increase shot speed? Sure. But lets not forget that that they are intended to be slow firing. Its the anti-matter CANNON after all.

If you want an artillery cannon you can always use the amc-pulse combo! The fact that it's named a cannon doesn't mean

"BOOOOM..... *Suns exode into supernovas in the background, new planets are formed*.... yawn.... BOOOM"

Real gattling CANNONS can fire upwards of 60 rounds per second (like the 30mm cannon on the A10 warthog). Cannons as default should act like heavy autocannons, so "Bang! (1sec) Bang! (1sec) Bang!". If you want it to fire faster, you use amcs as slave. If you want it to fire more powerful shots with longer reload, you use a pulse as slave. It would make combos like amc-beam and amc-missiles usable.

 

[aceface]

just reduce the spread of the shotgun, and maybe buff overdrive - otherwise i'm fine [DOUBLEPOST=1411670150,1411669860][/DOUBLEPOST]also, emp has to be severely buffed, nobody uses it because it is so weak

 

[Calbiri]

Hello!
We have been paying keen attention to comments about the weapons, even if we haven't posted much about them in any specific threads, many good points were made here, as well as in other threads. We've also come up with many of the same solutions, as well as taken note of good ideas we've seen mentioned. Thanks for all the input and the patience as we sort out a fun balance for everyone.

There will be a round of re-balancing coming (we didn't want to rush things for obvious reasons.) This includes plans to try to tweak the pulse primary to a far more usable state, adjusting the default RoF & Velocity for cannons, adjusting the spread pattern for shotgun effects (I found out that we cant do random patterns because of checks between the client/server needing to be kept in sync, you might see on pattern and the server decides a different one was used.) Also, we've planned some more improvements to missile flight behavior (turning speeds, velocities, tracking priorities, etc) increasing the default range for beams, though they will still be a lower range weapon, just not at the low 500 range and probably a few other items that I am forgetting to mention at the moment.

Also a quick note on the tertiary defense's, there's a bug affecting their power usage, so they seem to be charging far more power than they should be (unless this bug has been fixed since I saw it reported :p )

 

[Criss]

I think in the case of cannon-missile systems I would rather see it release shots in a burst instead of a shotgun. Multiple shots but you still get some precision with it. Idk but literal shotgun lasers seems silly to me and I will probably never use them. Not sure how this would apply to beams. I need to do lots of weapons testing because I have never messed with a lot of these combos.

 

[Lecic]

I'm thinking the cone of fire for the shotguns needs to be more focused.

EDIT- Burst fire would be cool, too.

 

[Yetimania]

Ugh. no guys please. Are you really are asking for your massive artillery cannons to act like machine guns? Come on. Theres a reason thats there. Hard hitting "shells". If the spread did splash damage that would be fine. Increase shot speed? Sure. But lets not forget that that they are intended to be slow firing. Its the anti-matter CANNON after all.

I agree that it's supposed to be a cannon, and I don't think it should be a machine gun. But, that said...
I'm a very talented shot in most first-person shooters, like Halo and CoD. Those skills don't translate well to StarMade, as their weapons are hitscan, and StarMade weapons have projectiles with speed and hitboxes and such. This is good. They shouldn't translate to StarMade.
But. I'm also a good shot in the older Tribes games, where every weapon worked like in StarMade and bullets didn't travel instantly across the world, but you fired relatively slow-moving discs at people who were jetting around. Hitting people was difficult but extremely satisfying. I'm not pro or anything, but I'd hazard to say I'm in the top 25% of players in these sorts of games, accuracy-wise. I have a knack for leading targets and estimating range.

[Note: a hitscan weapon is one that doesn't fire a physical projectile, but instead does an instantaneous check to see if there is an enemy under your reticle and damages them appropriately. Most weapons in most shooters are hitscans; rockets and grenades tend to be projectiles)

All of this is to say: I can't hit anything in StarMade with the Cannons. The projectiles travel really slowly, and the rate of fire is atrocious. I'm not advocating a return to the old gatling doom cannons, but a 3s reload time is ridiculously slow considering how hard it is to hit when you don't have any kind of targetting assistance. With a higher rate of fire, you can see how the stream of shots is missing and easily adjust your fire to hit, but by the time 3 seconds have passed, you and your targets relative speeds and positions have changed such that you just have to guess it again. My problem isn't that it's impossible to hit, but that, near as I can tell, AMC/AMC is by far the superior AMC combination. Here:

AMC/Missile: This causes a 'shotgun' effect, spreading relatively few bullets in a very large area, with most of them angling to the right. This can help accuracy at very close ranges, but at even a few hundred meters, the spread is a joke--your projectiles are hundreds of meters apart from each other, rather than the 10 or so that would actually help. Generally, it's more useful to use traditional 'shotgun' methods, ie, fire-linking multiple seperate AMCs to fire in parallel lines than in a cone.
AMC/Beam: The 'sniper' weapon. This increases projectile speed, which can greatly increase the likelihood of hitting at closer ranges, but it also increases the range of the weapon, which is pretty use-impaired. With a 3s reload time on a non-hitscan weapon (even with the pretty fast projectile speed) it's nigh-impossible to score a hit at >1km. I don't know about you, but I'd need a much faster projectile speed or faster reload time to score hits at that range. Even in Tribes, a game where most every weapon is non-hitscan, the snipers were laser hitscan weapons.
AMC/Damage Pulse: I haven't extensively tested this weapon, but my understanding is it slows the rate of fire even more.
AMC-Alone: an AMC by itself has a pretty slow rate of fire and a default range that's longer than it can really hit people anyway. Without effect blocks like punch-through, you're not going to be doing any anti-hull damage--one hit of a billion damage will still only kill a single block. However, effects like punch through reduce damage dealt to shields.
AMC/AMC: My weapon of choice, if you hadn't gathered. The higher rate of fire dramatically increases accuracy. As you miss, you can make slight adjustments in your aim on the fly easily. Also, it divides the damage of high damage shots over multiple hits, which allows for devastation against hulls (10x 133-damage shots will kill 10x as many hull blocks as 1x 1330-damage shot) without compromising anti-shield damage, and it leaves the effect slot free for overdrive, ion, or other effects.

Again--it's not that AMC/AMC is the only useful combination, it's just that it's by far the most commonly useful one. Most sniper rifles in FPS's, which are notoriously slow firing, still have a rate-of-fire of a little over 1 shot per second. That's three times faster than any non-rapid AMC. You can't design a cannon with moderate firing rate right now with any of the other weapon slaves, because your slave slot is taken up by the AMC.

My vote is that default cannon projectile speed is doubled, and default rate of fire is increased to 1 shot per second, with damage per shot reduced accordingly. Currently, the advantage of the AMC over the damage beam is the greater range, but it doesn't actually have the capacity to take advantage of that range.

Alternatively, I would vote for a way to make fire-linked weapons (again, that's two or more non-adjacent weapon groups controlled by the same computer) fire at a staggered rate [Left, right, left, right rather than left+right, pause, left+right, pause], rather than at the same time. That way, you could have a twin-linked, slow-firing weapon that could still get a reasonable firing rate.[DOUBLEPOST=1411684258,1411684197][/DOUBLEPOST]

I think in the case of cannon-missile systems I would rather see it release shots in a burst instead of a shotgun. Multiple shots but you still get some precision with it. Idk but literal shotgun lasers seems silly to me and I will probably never use them. Not sure how this would apply to beams. I need to do lots of weapons testing because I have never messed with a lot of these combos.

Burst fire would be rad. Have an 'I agree.'

 

[Crimson-Artist]

I agree that it's supposed to be a cannon, and I don't think it should be a machine gun. But, that said...
I'm a very talented shot in most first-person shooters, like Halo and CoD. Those skills don't translate well to StarMade, as their weapons are hitscan, and StarMade weapons have projectiles with speed and hitboxes and such. This is good. They shouldn't translate to StarMade.
But. I'm also a good shot in the older Tribes games, where every weapon worked like in StarMade and bullets didn't travel instantly across the world, but you fired relatively slow-moving discs at people who were jetting around. Hitting people was difficult but extremely satisfying. I'm not pro or anything, but I'd hazard to say I'm in the top 25% of players in these sorts of games, accuracy-wise. I have a knack for leading targets and estimating range.

[Note: a hitscan weapon is one that doesn't fire a physical projectile, but instead does an instantaneous check to see if there is an enemy under your reticle and damages them appropriately. Most weapons in most shooters are hitscans; rockets and grenades tend to be projectiles)

All of this is to say: I can't hit anything in StarMade with the Cannons. The projectiles travel really slowly, and the rate of fire is atrocious. I'm not advocating a return to the old gatling doom cannons, but a 3s reload time is ridiculously slow considering how hard it is to hit when you don't have any kind of targetting assistance. With a higher rate of fire, you can see how the stream of shots is missing and easily adjust your fire to hit, but by the time 3 seconds have passed, you and your targets relative speeds and positions have changed such that you just have to guess it again. My problem isn't that it's impossible to hit, but that, near as I can tell, AMC/AMC is by far the superior AMC combination. Here:

AMC/Missile: This causes a 'shotgun' effect, spreading relatively few bullets in a very large area, with most of them angling to the right. This can help accuracy at very close ranges, but at even a few hundred meters, the spread is a joke--your projectiles are hundreds of meters apart from each other, rather than the 10 or so that would actually help. Generally, it's more useful to use traditional 'shotgun' methods, ie, fire-linking multiple seperate AMCs to fire in parallel lines than in a cone.
AMC/Beam: The 'sniper' weapon. This increases projectile speed, which can greatly increase the likelihood of hitting at closer ranges, but it also increases the range of the weapon, which is pretty use-impaired. With a 3s reload time on a non-hitscan weapon (even with the pretty fast projectile speed) it's nigh-impossible to score a hit at >1km. I don't know about you, but I'd need a much faster projectile speed or faster reload time to score hits at that range. Even in Tribes, a game where most every weapon is non-hitscan, the snipers were laser hitscan weapons.
AMC/Damage Pulse: I haven't extensively tested this weapon, but my understanding is it slows the rate of fire even more.
AMC-Alone: an AMC by itself has a pretty slow rate of fire and a default range that's longer than it can really hit people anyway. Without effect blocks like punch-through, you're not going to be doing any anti-hull damage--one hit of a billion damage will still only kill a single block. However, effects like punch through reduce damage dealt to shields.
AMC/AMC: My weapon of choice, if you hadn't gathered. The higher rate of fire dramatically increases accuracy. As you miss, you can make slight adjustments in your aim on the fly easily. Also, it divides the damage of high damage shots over multiple hits, which allows for devastation against hulls (10x 133-damage shots will kill 10x as many hull blocks as 1x 1330-damage shot) without compromising anti-shield damage, and it leaves the effect slot free for overdrive, ion, or other effects.

Again--it's not that AMC/AMC is the only useful combination, it's just that it's by far the most commonly useful one. Most sniper rifles in FPS's, which are notoriously slow firing, still have a rate-of-fire of a little over 1 shot per second. That's three times faster than any non-rapid AMC. You can't design a cannon with moderate firing rate right now with any of the other weapon slaves, because your slave slot is taken up by the AMC.

My vote is that default cannon projectile speed is doubled, and default rate of fire is increased to 1 shot per second, with damage per shot reduced accordingly. Currently, the advantage of the AMC over the damage beam is the greater range, but it doesn't actually have the capacity to take advantage of that range.

Alternatively, I would vote for a way to make fire-linked weapons (again, that's two or more non-adjacent weapon groups controlled by the same computer) fire at a staggered rate [Left, right, left, right rather than left+right, pause, left+right, pause], rather than at the same time. That way, you could have a twin-linked, slow-firing weapon that could still get a reasonable firing rate.[DOUBLEPOST=1411684258,1411684197][/DOUBLEPOST]

Burst fire would be rad. Have an 'I agree.'

what do you think about adding a natural explosion like effect to all non rapid cannons combos as alternative to the speed adjustments?

a cannon should act like you know a cannon and slower firing rounds should have a natural AOE aspect to them to make them both satisfying to use and compensate for the relative slow projectile speeds. Cannon/cannon combos would not have this effect since the rapid fire makes up for the lack of skill needed to aim it.

of course merging these 2 systems could make for an interesting result

 

[Criss]

what do you think about adding a natural explosion like effect to all non rapid cannons combos as alternative to the speed adjustments?

a cannon should act like you know a cannon and slower firing rounds should have a natural AOE aspect to them to make them both satisfying to use and compensate for the relative slow projectile speeds. Cannon/cannon combos would not have this effect since the rapid fire makes up for the lack of skill needed to aim it.

of course merging these 2 systems could make for an interesting result

Yes because if I am correct, large cannons and small cannons alike only apply damage to a single block. Kind of a waste for all that firepower.

 

[Crimson-Artist]

Yes because if I am correct, large cannons and small cannons alike only apply damage to a single block. Kind of a waste for all that firepower.

indeed. this could be balanced out with beams since they hit targets instantly. Hopefully when we get the mine layer the Beam/minelayer combo will have an AOE too

 

[Yetimania]

what do you think about adding a natural explosion like effect to all non rapid cannons combos as alternative to the speed adjustments?

I haven't actually considered that. My gut likes it, but I'll need to muse a while on balance considerations before I can say I'm totally onboard.
That would be pretty freaking cool, though.

 

[Valiant70]

Apart from that, I would maybe suggest removing lock-on from the missile-pulse combo since the point of siege weapons is high risk (of missing) high reward (if it hits), this stands for siege beams and cannons but is nonexistent for missiles (a fairly big advantage imho since it mostly negates the downsides of the weapon).

There's no disagree button, so consider this my declaration of disapproval.[DOUBLEPOST=1411697896,1411697699][/DOUBLEPOST]

I'd like to see a pistol which is actually a pistol and not some fully automatic rifle.

But... I like my machine pistol!

 

[Keptick]

There's no disagree button, so consider this my declaration of disapproval.[DOUBLEPOST=1411697896,1411697699][/DOUBLEPOST]
But... I like my machine pistol!

There's no reason why there couldn't be both :D. Having different modes of fire on a single pistol would probably be easier. So Semi-auto, auto and burst maybe?

 

[jzimmerman4]

what do you think about adding a natural explosion like effect to all non rapid cannons combos as alternative to the speed adjustments?

a cannon should act like you know a cannon and slower firing rounds should have a natural AOE aspect to them to make them both satisfying to use and compensate for the relative slow projectile speeds. Cannon/cannon combos would not have this effect since the rapid fire makes up for the lack of skill needed to aim it.

of course merging these 2 systems could make for an interesting result

I like this concept, makes a lot of sense and makes cannons more practical to use.

 

[NeonSturm]

The most important thing is that weapons are diverse AND not obsolete.

I support a rapid machine gun as I support a heavy hitter.
Everything inbetween should be solved with logic.

A half sphere is "r^2 * PI * 3/8", a sphere "r^2 * PI * 3/4"
=> Explosive effect may do (dmg / PI * 8/3 )^(1..0.5)damage in dmg^(0..0.5)radius with (0%..100%)effect.

Else we could use many medium explosive shot-guns or punch/pirce to hit more blocks.