Weapons and Charge Effects

[Winterhome]

So, I seem to remember that there was some difficulty in determining how a Minelayer weapon would interact with the current tree system, due to the decision to list the Beam/Minelayer combo as "Charge Laser".

My proposal? Two new weapons.

The already proposed Minelayer, which does what you'd expect - AOE triggers on secondary (Flak, AOE beam, Sleeper Missiles, Auto-Pulse, and something something mines)

...and...

Tesla Coil - As primary effect, it is an autoaim constant fire lightning weapon with reduced DPS and range. As a Secondary effect, it functions as a Charge device, allowing you to hold down the Fire button to build up alpha damage and power consumption - for ALL primaries.

Thoughts?

 

[Glutton]

That sounds really cool. I was disappointed mines were not going to be used (or at least not yet) so I'm so down for getting that added. I like the Tesla Coil idea as well.

Question though. If it was autoaiming, is it able to target friendly or neutral ships as well? Possibly bring a risk/reward for using it?

 

[CyberTao]

Small kink that may be worth noting; weapons all have the same DPS per block (which is 5), which is done to prevent 1 weapon from becoming the ideal choice, etc. So not sure that 'in/decreased DPS" would be considered a good balancing thing, since Devs would probably also lock it to the 5 dps per block as well, with the differences between weapons being the reload time, range and effect.

That said, does sound like an interesting idea o -o I like the charging idea, though it somewhat seems to just be a way to use less weapon blocks (instead of having 10k blocks, only have 100 and charge it to 10x base), which would render overdrive on a weapon useless, no?

I dunno, latenight and tired ramblings~

 

[Winterhome]

Small kink that may be worth noting; weapons all have the same DPS per block (which is 5), which is done to prevent 1 weapon from becoming the ideal choice, etc. So not sure that 'in/decreased DPS" would be considered a good balancing thing, since Devs would probably also lock it to the 5 dps per block as well, with the differences between weapons being the reload time, range and effect.

That said, does sound like an interesting idea o -o I like the charging idea, though it somewhat seems to just be a way to use less weapon blocks (instead of having 10k blocks, only have 100 and charge it to 10x base), which would render overdrive on a weapon useless, no?

I dunno, latenight and tired ramblings~

Well, pretty sure Beam slaves have slightly lower Damage/Energy, so really, it should balance out because of its inability to miss anything in your ship's FOV.

As for overdrive being obsolete, I wouldn't really say so. There could easily be a cap placed on the charge effects, or a weapon charged beyond some capacity setting may start damaging the ship at the bonus of being able to continue being charged longer, or whatever.

Overdrive has its uses - notably, for smaller ships that can get high energy recharge (ie: haven't hit the 1m e/s cap yet). If you have a charge weapon, you can't make a machinegun, a seeking missile, a sniper... etc. You lose customizability.

As for X/Tesla/Overdrive, perhaps instead of having a higher capacity, it reaches that capacity 3x as fast for 6x energy usage. Dunno. Could play around with that.

That sounds really cool. I was disappointed mines were not going to be used (or at least not yet) so I'm so down for getting that added. I like the Tesla Coil idea as well.

Question though. If it was autoaiming, is it able to target friendly or neutral ships as well? Possibly bring a risk/reward for using it?

My guess, it could target neutral and hostile ships, like heat seeking missiles (swarm missiles).
Dunno if mines would ever be added, but the Tesla Coil gets around the problem of charge weapons.

 

[Lecic]

Wasn't Beam : Minelayer going to be a Charge Laser?

 

[Winterhome]

Wasn't Beam : Minelayer going to be a Charge Laser?

Yes, but I seem to remember that there were issues with that - notably, that it would be somewhat difficult to set up a weapon that had a different effect on every weapon type. Which is why I'm suggesting making Minelayer slaves use an AOE detonation effect (or, in the case of beams, AOE damage field - say, if you miss a ship by a meter or so, you could still cause minor damage to blocks in X radius around the beam). Charge effects really should be a totally separate type of Slave.

 

[Lecic]

So, would the lightning weapon work like beams did when they were first added, with a constant beam that took time to pulse? Also, the lightning weapon should totally chain to nearby ships and turrets, with heavily reduced damage, of course. Maybe it splits the damage up equally among all targets in range, so it's most effective against lightly or non-turreted ships.

 

[ltmauve]

The only way I see to balance an auto-aiming weapon is to make it close-ranged.
So with a 5 km sector, ranges should be:
5km: missile-beam, cannon-beam, beam-beam
3km: missile-pulse, missile-mine
2km: cannon, beam, missile
1.5km: tesla-beam, cannon-cannon, beam-cannon, missile-cannon
.75 km: tesla, missile-missile

 

[Winterhome]

That's pretty much what I'm expecting to happen.

Hits all targets in a cone in front of the output, with damage being split between those targets, and it being VERY short range.

 

[ltmauve]

That's pretty much what I'm expecting to happen.

Hits all targets in a cone in front of the output, with damage being split between those targets, and it being VERY short range.

Then what about split? What does that do?

 

[Winterhome]

Then what about split? What does that do?

Widen the cone of fire.

 

[ltmauve]

I was thinking that the autofire would target one ship in the center of the field of view, like the lockon missile, and then spilt would target multiple ships in that region.
If every ship was targeted, you'd have a fair chance of hitting your own allies.