So a while back I was reading a thread about looking at how it's not just the dps in weapons that matters(I'm sorry! I forgot who posted it! You can site yourself unknown author!). The thread talked about how m/p weapons, although having 14dps/block, needed way more power(all the power caps!) and waited so long that the combat shield regen turned off for a full 30 seconds, by far enough to recharge any decent shield setup. Compared to c/c, c/c's need a tenth or hundredth of the power per shot(You need practically a dedicated c/c frigate to use the full startup 50k power cap every shot compared to a meager 5-6 block m/p system taking 54k cap), but also doing constant damage, so against any fair(or even slightly unfair!) sized opponent a c/c system will eventually wear down their shields. I forgot about the post for a while, but after the holidays I had an idea about the problem.
c/c systems could instead turn into a "six-shooter" type weapon. By six-shooter I mean the computer would have a setting where you could set the number of shots per charge, going from one to 100. What you set the number to would be the amount of shots you could fire on a full charge(your ammo). You also could set the recharge time, this would set how fast you could "reload" you c/c system. It would go from 1 second to 60, the longer you set it, the slower it will charge. Why set it slow? because the faster it goes the more power it uses. doing it in one second would take a massive amount of power, all in one second, doing it in sixty would make it only take the same amount of power over a continuous 60 seconds. This would mean a less power focused ship could have a long recharge, while a more power centered ship could have the advantages of a much faster reload, at the cost needing way more powercaps, and a much larger power grid. Most ships could find a good middlepoint where that ship could just barely power the reload. In this way c/c's would work like a jump drive in their first stage.
When the c/c system was fully charged, hitting the fire button would fire a shot. Shots would have a reload time proportionate to the amount in the "magazine", so 100 shot bursters would shoot like the old c/c's, but a three shot alpha striker would have to wait between shots. To prevent one shot alphas from having no reload time, the reload would apply after every shot, before you recharge.
Finally, damage. The system would have the usual 10dps, but the charge would always have the power of 30 seconds of fire, so every block had 300 damage. However, the damage would be divided by the amount of shots in the system, every block would do 300 damage per shot on single, alpha strikes, or 3 damage/block/shot on 100 shot systems. The power usage would be the same as other systems, to charge up fully you would need 3000 power/block, which would scale up like other systems.
I can imagine the usage of this system, some fighters have little 10 shot magazines they have to reload every few seconds, and promote burst fire systems where your little turret swivels around and shoots three powerful shots at one fighter, before recharging. You could say "More power to the Weapons!" and make the reload time way shorter for a short booster to your ship, or pull it all out to focus on shielding or engines.
Side Notes
There would be a switch for the old c/c system, just with 5dps instead of 1o.
AI could be set to "burst fire" or "Slow shot" with a variable, and when AI gets improved(hint hint devs!) it could have options like using certain events or when receiving a certain message from other systems(shields down!, More Allies!, or Retreat! messages from some sensor or logic group) to add or subtract from the reload time.
The ratio of primary to secondary would, instead of increasing fire rate and decreasing damage, would expand out the possibilities of shots per charge, starting with a max of six and going up from there, as well as as your system got larger you could have longer recharge rates, starting with a max of 10 recharge rate and min of 2 recharge wait, to prevent 1 bock alpha damage systems and mini ships with checkerboards doing 3 damage per shot each 10 times per second.
All numbers are representations, none are fixed.
c/c systems could instead turn into a "six-shooter" type weapon. By six-shooter I mean the computer would have a setting where you could set the number of shots per charge, going from one to 100. What you set the number to would be the amount of shots you could fire on a full charge(your ammo). You also could set the recharge time, this would set how fast you could "reload" you c/c system. It would go from 1 second to 60, the longer you set it, the slower it will charge. Why set it slow? because the faster it goes the more power it uses. doing it in one second would take a massive amount of power, all in one second, doing it in sixty would make it only take the same amount of power over a continuous 60 seconds. This would mean a less power focused ship could have a long recharge, while a more power centered ship could have the advantages of a much faster reload, at the cost needing way more powercaps, and a much larger power grid. Most ships could find a good middlepoint where that ship could just barely power the reload. In this way c/c's would work like a jump drive in their first stage.
When the c/c system was fully charged, hitting the fire button would fire a shot. Shots would have a reload time proportionate to the amount in the "magazine", so 100 shot bursters would shoot like the old c/c's, but a three shot alpha striker would have to wait between shots. To prevent one shot alphas from having no reload time, the reload would apply after every shot, before you recharge.
Finally, damage. The system would have the usual 10dps, but the charge would always have the power of 30 seconds of fire, so every block had 300 damage. However, the damage would be divided by the amount of shots in the system, every block would do 300 damage per shot on single, alpha strikes, or 3 damage/block/shot on 100 shot systems. The power usage would be the same as other systems, to charge up fully you would need 3000 power/block, which would scale up like other systems.
I can imagine the usage of this system, some fighters have little 10 shot magazines they have to reload every few seconds, and promote burst fire systems where your little turret swivels around and shoots three powerful shots at one fighter, before recharging. You could say "More power to the Weapons!" and make the reload time way shorter for a short booster to your ship, or pull it all out to focus on shielding or engines.
Side Notes
There would be a switch for the old c/c system, just with 5dps instead of 1o.
AI could be set to "burst fire" or "Slow shot" with a variable, and when AI gets improved(hint hint devs!) it could have options like using certain events or when receiving a certain message from other systems(shields down!, More Allies!, or Retreat! messages from some sensor or logic group) to add or subtract from the reload time.
The ratio of primary to secondary would, instead of increasing fire rate and decreasing damage, would expand out the possibilities of shots per charge, starting with a max of six and going up from there, as well as as your system got larger you could have longer recharge rates, starting with a max of 10 recharge rate and min of 2 recharge wait, to prevent 1 bock alpha damage systems and mini ships with checkerboards doing 3 damage per shot each 10 times per second.
All numbers are representations, none are fixed.
The Cat] to make it possible, try it out. Or get a shared community voice on a certain solution.