So while reading and replying to the Fighting Gigantism in Starmade an Idea came through that I thought should show on a thread here in the features Category here.
In this post I proposed an idea to create specialty weapons and shields that could potentially allow some smaller vessels to serve as support guns and change a mechanic to make StarMade even more fun and exciting.
Weapons
I have a thought about weapon scaling for large and small ships. what you'd do is split the weapons into different categories and adjust scaling from stacking appropriately.
Say for instance you'll have fighter laser weapons that move quickly and fire rapidly and scales to max damage output quickly but is capped or exponentially less useful when each additional weapon is added to the array, so this would encourage their use for AA and fighters but not large main guns.
then say we have large plasma canon that fires slowly and move slowly and damage scales like the weapons do now, so that they would be used on larger craft that have space and energy for such a weapon.
and then you could do a couple in between that mathematically scale (damage\Range) between the two extremes (fast and rapid fire, and slow and dangerous)
with the more dynamic weapon systems people can specialize their ships according to how they love to play\fight.
Shields on the other hand could perhaps allow partial mitigation for certain weapon types, like a special weapon that takes a lot of power to use (stored power for example) and again scales to it's peak efficiency fairly quickly but severely less returns after that, could be used to fire shot that mitigate a small portion of shields.
In addition to these Ideas ION weapons (disables engines or increases a "Drag" buff on a ship slowing it down) and EMP weapons were mentioned elsewhere that would be specialized to only kill shields but little damage to anything else.
In addition to these cool weapons we could have specialized shields and armor, and "hot flak" systems.
Shields could be changed so they allow a tiny bit of damage through and you could adjust how much with a shield array computer, similarly with the weapons. for example you could set more power to not allow as much damage through but then you give up regen speed, or you can set regen higher but shield mitigation is higher.
Shields type could be set upon first placement or determined by the shield computer block, and could not be changed easily during battle or have a cool down where they will slowly shutdown and restart.
One shield type could resist laser weapons but are weak to plasma ( so typically used for fast maneuverable ships that can avoid the slow heavy hitting guns)
another shield type could be the opposite and resist plasma better than laser (by resist I mean lasers will do more than typical damage on impact and plasma would do less than the base damage on impact) and you could use these on slower boats that have TONS of shielding and armor that more damage would be done by other capitals not fighters.
Missiles!
I love missiles and torpedoes, there should be all sorts of types you can make. perhaps a way to craft a custom missile using feature costs as a base for how many\fast you can fire them, or perhaps cost per part then you buy this custom missile from a store and have a limited supply. Or your missile computer has a base missile creation speed and the more cost a missile the longer it takes to reload and more storage space you need to hold them.
so for example you fire a uber bunker, armor, shield killing torpedo that flies at max speed, you're reload time is set to 5 minutes and you can hold only one or two and it takes 20 minutes to regen a new missile.
But, if your missile is a dumb fire, slow, missile with relatively low damage you could fire off quite a few.
Now on to flack weapons! er defense... ok so shotgun effects are cool, and small objects are hard to hit. if you ever go Duck hunting you learn that an ultra accurate single shot weapon isn't always that great when trying to hit a moving target that is small. here is where flack comes in, you could use these to shoot down missiles and very small kamikaze ships. and have a sort of spread that makes them powerful close up and useful for those with bad aims who are trying to tit a small target like a missile.
flares could also be added that will attract heat seeking missiles to them so they won't hith their intended target.
so, pretty much quite a bit of combinations can be put into the Offensive and Defensive systems on each ship making every ship have a unique use and purpose with stats than can be left alone or tweaked to death
In this post I proposed an idea to create specialty weapons and shields that could potentially allow some smaller vessels to serve as support guns and change a mechanic to make StarMade even more fun and exciting.
Weapons
I have a thought about weapon scaling for large and small ships. what you'd do is split the weapons into different categories and adjust scaling from stacking appropriately.
Say for instance you'll have fighter laser weapons that move quickly and fire rapidly and scales to max damage output quickly but is capped or exponentially less useful when each additional weapon is added to the array, so this would encourage their use for AA and fighters but not large main guns.
then say we have large plasma canon that fires slowly and move slowly and damage scales like the weapons do now, so that they would be used on larger craft that have space and energy for such a weapon.
and then you could do a couple in between that mathematically scale (damage\Range) between the two extremes (fast and rapid fire, and slow and dangerous)
with the more dynamic weapon systems people can specialize their ships according to how they love to play\fight.
Shields on the other hand could perhaps allow partial mitigation for certain weapon types, like a special weapon that takes a lot of power to use (stored power for example) and again scales to it's peak efficiency fairly quickly but severely less returns after that, could be used to fire shot that mitigate a small portion of shields.
In addition to these Ideas ION weapons (disables engines or increases a "Drag" buff on a ship slowing it down) and EMP weapons were mentioned elsewhere that would be specialized to only kill shields but little damage to anything else.
In addition to these cool weapons we could have specialized shields and armor, and "hot flak" systems.
Shields could be changed so they allow a tiny bit of damage through and you could adjust how much with a shield array computer, similarly with the weapons. for example you could set more power to not allow as much damage through but then you give up regen speed, or you can set regen higher but shield mitigation is higher.
Shields type could be set upon first placement or determined by the shield computer block, and could not be changed easily during battle or have a cool down where they will slowly shutdown and restart.
One shield type could resist laser weapons but are weak to plasma ( so typically used for fast maneuverable ships that can avoid the slow heavy hitting guns)
another shield type could be the opposite and resist plasma better than laser (by resist I mean lasers will do more than typical damage on impact and plasma would do less than the base damage on impact) and you could use these on slower boats that have TONS of shielding and armor that more damage would be done by other capitals not fighters.
Missiles!
I love missiles and torpedoes, there should be all sorts of types you can make. perhaps a way to craft a custom missile using feature costs as a base for how many\fast you can fire them, or perhaps cost per part then you buy this custom missile from a store and have a limited supply. Or your missile computer has a base missile creation speed and the more cost a missile the longer it takes to reload and more storage space you need to hold them.
so for example you fire a uber bunker, armor, shield killing torpedo that flies at max speed, you're reload time is set to 5 minutes and you can hold only one or two and it takes 20 minutes to regen a new missile.
But, if your missile is a dumb fire, slow, missile with relatively low damage you could fire off quite a few.
Now on to flack weapons! er defense... ok so shotgun effects are cool, and small objects are hard to hit. if you ever go Duck hunting you learn that an ultra accurate single shot weapon isn't always that great when trying to hit a moving target that is small. here is where flack comes in, you could use these to shoot down missiles and very small kamikaze ships. and have a sort of spread that makes them powerful close up and useful for those with bad aims who are trying to tit a small target like a missile.
flares could also be added that will attract heat seeking missiles to them so they won't hith their intended target.
so, pretty much quite a bit of combinations can be put into the Offensive and Defensive systems on each ship making every ship have a unique use and purpose with stats than can be left alone or tweaked to death
