The weapon/armament/item suggestion thread.

[Innocent Flower]

Post your ideas concerning offensive and defensive items here.

Å for stuff that should be done during alpha, because they're pretty much vital for the game.



Anyways- Weapons.

Å -two types of aiming: Forward firing and multidirectional. See it this way: the first is the type you'd put on fighters and turrets. They fire exactly in the direction that the weapon is facing.

The second type is rather like the phaser in aiming. It can shoot anywhere in a 180 arc. The player can tell the weapon computer where to aim for this weapon and then can continue to fire the weapon without needing to re-aim the weapon. -'target those engines!"- (concentrations of items/computers should have their own mini beacons for the player's weapons to pick on)

(multidirectional rockets would probably be a lot cooler if they worked like stargate's drones- straight out for a few metres, then change direction for the target) The straight firing weapons should have more firepower overall in order to compensate for their lack of aiming.



Another issue is size. fat blocks are ok for bigger ships, but they look rather ugly on smaller ones. Minecraft fence blocks would make good looking weapons for smaller ones. They would be lighter than regular blocks (better for power consumption and thrust) though weaker and less effective with stacking.

Å Furthermore the weapon computers should pay a bigger roll in how the weapon behaves and how it looks. Like how long a beam weapon should charge up for (for more power) or if the guns should fire simultaniously or one after the other. What colour the projectile should be, what kind of spread should be used in the shot...


other 'weapon' items
Point defense systems- fire small lasers which reduce the number of missiles and hurt npcs
Boarding pods- Launch npcs into the enemy ships (or onto planets)
Repair drone- an npc which repairs and replaces blocks
Tractor beams (which could also possibly be used to follow larger ships)


Furthermore; elements for the main weapons:

Energy: damages everything fairly equaly, Could probably be broken down into stuff like 'plasma' or 'photon' which are slightly different from eachother.
Ion: mostly Only hurts systems, travels through most materials
Bio: mostly hurts only living things. limited traveling through items.


Misc:
Shield moddifiers:
Ion shields which create a threshold protecting from ion weapons. If 20 ion damage comes in and your shields have a threshold of 15, only 5 damage hits the player's power blocks.
Radiation (radiation type here) shields: create another threshold against a type of damage.

ÅShip creation points. These would spawn ships (using resources) of the player's (or factions) own design when told to do so. RELEASE THE DRONES kind of thing. Swarm the enemy with fighters.

ÅGas (air) emiters. These would be blocks that would create invisible blocks of air (or toxins!!!) that fill the ship with breathable/harmful air which escapes when there is a breach. It could also be a way to tell the game to not render liquid/clouds or have the effects of the liquids/clouds where the air is pressent. a cool particle effect would be pretty cool too (co2 smoke for example) .

Å Alternative power sources and good power systems (renewable energy used before consumable energy is)
- Gas collecting
- Mineral consuming
- Radiation collecting





Hulls

Flatter blocks are realy neccessary. Minecraft style windows and protective hulls no thicker than minecraft's snow block.

Get rid of the 'hardened' hull. Try these instead:
Powered hull (stronger than a regular hull, drains power)
Heavy hull- weighs more, meaning it slows down the ship more. Far stronger armour
light hull- costs less than the standard hull, weaker armour and less weight. This would be more for the player's extravagent exteriors as it less negatively affects performance for looks.
Shielded- blocks the stuff that ignores most blocks (ion, radiation etc)
Bio-hull - repairs itself so long as the 'bio core' is working and power is available. Power is needed to sustain the biohull
Damaging block- A superheated or shocking block that players can use as traps. Ship battering rams would be seriously cool too.

The powered hull needs a computer so that the player may alter it's consumption/protection ratio


The bio hull needs a 'bio core' which tells the ship how fast the bio blocks regenerate and if there is to be an overgrowth. An overgrowth would be a thin extra layer of biohull which grows over other bioblocks/ every block like moss. Kind of like how vines grow down walls in minecraft, (also, the bio-hull stuff should be available in different colours or styles. Wraith ship/collector ship/ xenomorph infested ship... i can imagine players wanting to try a few)

 

[Ixalite]

these seem like good ideas, except that the beam weapons shouldn\'t lock on. You might consider the possibilities of having weapon blocks and weapon MODIFIER blocks. I favor having three types of directional weapons (beam, pulse, and projectile) with low damage maximums suitable for fighters. The designer would then include other blocks and block formations on capital ships in order to increase firepower or other stats.

I love the idea of a bio hull, but I think you should have to give it biomass (more bio hull blocks in a chest) in order for it to grow. In certain circumstances (too near a star? In atmosphere?) the hull could start growing out of controll for some interesting effects.

Light and heavy hulls seem interesting, although we already have armored/unarmored which fill that role quite nicely. I would say that armor should mean more. Right now it seems rather pointless.

As to shields; what if there were two kinds? Damage blocking shields only block a low ammount of damage, while damage reduction shields use up as much power as damage blocked, and never quite block all of it, but never die/shutdown. This way, big ships can be tough, but not invincible. Also, since hulls are going to be taking a lot of low damage hits, the repair beam will start to have a point again.

 

[Innocent Flower]

Oh, i didn\'t mean beam weapons exclusively lock on. Think of it this way.



You have cannons, Beam weapons and missiles that come from the end of a stick and fly straight from that stick. Like a modern gun,

Then you also have cannons, beam weapons and missiles that don\'t come straight out from the \'stick\' Rather you pick a target for them to aim at. To compensate these types of weapons will be less efficient. But anyway. This is the type of weapon that makes the player go \'target the enemy life support systems, FIRE!\' you\'d probably have to pick which section of the ship you\'d shoot anyway. \'



your shield idea is sort of interesting. I think such a thing could be solved with a \'shield computer\'. A problem i see with your system is that a weapon that does 1000 damage and a weapon that does 10 damage are treated the same. If shields can block 100 of that 1000, surely 10 shouldn\'t do anything, but that system wouldn\'t work that way.

 

[Redgoblin]

I love both ideas. The only thing that i would like to see is the ability to change the weapons orientation. All i want is to be able to broadside a capital ship and light my enemy up with a baragge of missles and small laser cannon fire. Like with the Yamatos torpedoe bays.