Forums » Suggestions
Weapons Balance (post 1 of 2, long)
With the addition of beam weapons and their ability to instantly hit a target, and the introduction of large capital ships such as the HAC, Trident, and Leviathin class ships, it seems to me that we need to re-work the way weapons are handled, and take a look at weapons of larger sizes and how they should act as compared to the weapons we have now.
I also have a post that sort of goes along with this concerning larger classes of ships themselves, and you can find it here.
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/10941#127799
As such I have been doing a fairly large amount of thinking on this topics, and would like to post my thoughts here. In this particular instance I am actually not overly concerned with replys or comments and while i will endeavor to elaborate on any points that people have questions about, this thread is primarily for the developers, and they are free to use or ignore it as they see fit. As usuall, I only ask that comments are polite and on topic.
My first reccomendation is totally cosmetic, and will have no effect on gameplay whatsoever, and that is to rename the current Large ports to Medium ports. Leave all weapons and ship configurations the same, but use the term medium instead of large. My reasoning for doing this is simple… it makes it easier to name larger sizes of weapon ports than we have in the game at present.
(Basically changing our current large ports to medium ports lets me have the 5 port size names i want to use, as I said, the change is totally cosmetic, kind of like the renaming of arcade/physics mode to “flight assist mode”). We could then have the following weapon port sizes:
Small
Medium
Large
Extra Large (or Very Large)
Massive
For the purpose of this thread, each weapon port is equivalent in volume to 2 of the next size down, so 1 medium port = 2 small ports, 1 large port = 2 medium ports, etc etc.
In general the larger the port size, the larger the intended target of the weapon. Small and medium ports are meant to be used against fighters, Large ports against corvette and frigate class ships, Extra Large ports are for light cruisers and destroyers, and the Massive ports are optimized for the largest Cruisers and Battleships. as I said I discuss the ship classes in the above thread and provide more detail there.
Next we have the different types of weapons, I'm going to break weapons down into 4 types of weapon (Beams, Energy, Missiles, and Rockets), and describe what I feel should be the attributes of each. Each weapon type should be balanced against the other weapon types so that when people make a choice as to what kind of weapon to use there is a noticable difference in play style.
---Beam Weapons- These weapons are instant hit weapons, they strike instantly at any target within thier range and cone of fire, and as such are the hardest to defend against. In my opinion beam weapons should be limited to Medium ports and larger, preventing them from being used on the most agile light fighters.
Because a beam weapon is not subject to shot speed they should have the shortest range and the lowest damage potential as compared to other weapons of the same port size.
Beam weaopons should also be sub-divided into two distinct jobs, Point defence and Attack.
*Point defence beams need to have very high refire rates, large aiming cones and do moderate damage at VERY close range (say a max distance of 75M x port size. A medium point defence beam would have a 75 meter range, a Large beam, 150 meters, etc etc.) Point Defence beams should primarily be viewed as a last resort, and would be most useful against missiles, mines and rockets. (See below, I want these to be targetable and destroyable)
*Attack beams have a lower refire rate and for longer ranges. They also offer a tradeoff between accuracy and damage, the higher the accuracy, the lower the damage.
As the size of the attack beam port increases, there should also be a delay added between pressing the trigger and the weapon firing. Medium beams should be instant, Large beams should have a .1 second delay, Extra Large beams a .3 second delay, and massive beams a .5 second delay. This will prevent the largest beams from being able to instant kill fighters and the like, as such ports are intended to be used against capital ships
---Energy Weapons- These weapons are the mainstay of the vendetta universe, offering reasonable damage and no ammunition limits, Energy weapons cover every possible port size, and offer a wide range of variations, but in general they offer higher damage than beam weapons of the same size. Energy weapons are balanced against each other by offering higher damage at the expense of refire or aim cone, and each increase in shot speed should offer a corresponding increase in the energy drain of the weapon.
Thus you will end up with low damage weapons that have a high rate of fire/autoaim, or a high damage weapon that offers lower rate of fire and is more difficult to aim. The faster the shot travels the more energy it will take to fire the weapon. So you might have a very high rate of fire, easy to aim weapon that fires high velocity shots but does very limited damage and uses a lot of energy.
As the port size increases so should the “average” damage and speed of the shot, at the same time the “average’ refire rate should decrease and, of course, the energy needed should become higher.
Once again at the Extra Large and Massive levels, energy weapons should have a firing delay, probably of .1 and .3 seconds respectively, once again to minimize the danger of 1 shot kills to the smaller lighter fighters that these weapons are not meant to be used against.
---Missiles- Missiles are a conundrum for any skill based game, and very hard to balance for vendetta in particular. Because missiles are guided I actually feel that they should NOT have a use in fighter-to-fighter combat beyond how they allready work. The same missile AI that makes them easy to dodge in most fighters works perfectly well in allowing them to hit larger ships that are less maneuverable, meaning that in general missiles can be optimized for anti-capital ship combat with minimal effort.
Missiles should offer a tradeoff of damage and proximity for speed and accuracy. Because missiles have limited ammunition that allows another form of balance for them that is not availible to energy weapons and beams, namely the more effective a missile is, the lower its ammunition count should be.
Additionally all missiles SHOULD be targetable and destroyable, but they should not be EASY to destroy. I tend to think that they should NOT set off the proximity fuse of other missiles/rockets (otherwise a swarm would detonate itself the minute it was launched), howver if they happen to be caught in the blast of an exploding warhead they should take the appropriate amount of damage.
While small and medium port missiles offer some fighter-to-fighter combat potential, the real use of missiles comes into play when you start getting into larger port sizes. Missiles should offer more damage than beams or energy weapons of the same size, but be inferior to rockets. Because of their limited top speed, missiles are veunerable to interception, but require much less skill to use, particularly if at larger sizes the missiles themselves have enough hitpoints to survive multiple strikes from point defence beams or energy weapons. Missiles are a good choice for doing damage to larger, slower ships from outside the best range of the defensive turrets.
Finally as the size of the missile increases, so should its top speed.
---Rockets- Rockets should be the most damaging weapons in the game, offering the highest damage potential per shot of any weapon, they are primarily limited by the fact that they have no guidance of any sort, and have only a small number of rounds. Rockets should be faster than missiles of the same size/level, and offer significantly more damage. However as the damage potential of a rocket increases the ammunition count should go down. (We basically need to redo the ice, star and sunflares for a start. I’m thinking 30/20/10 shots respectively)
As with Missiles rockets should be targetable and destroyable, however rockets should be harder to destroy than a corresponding missile, as they don’t have the benefit or a guidance system.
Larger rockets should be faster and more powerful, with longer ranges, however at the Large, Extra Large, and Massive port sizes the safety fuse needs to be correspondingly longer, say a minimum of 3, 5, and 10 seconds, once again to basically ensure that it is much harder to use a weapon designed for killing a capital ship against a light fighter. Additionally the larger the port the larger the prox radius should be, however perhaps it would be possible to limit the proximity to certain sizes, so that a Massive weapon with a 100 meter proximity wouldn’t be triggerable by anything smaller than a behemoth, allowing fighters to get in close and attempt to destroy the missile before it hits its target.
I’m going to lump mines in with rockets because mines are basically just a stationary rocket. Larger mines of course would do more damage of course, however with mines I would also like to see options for larger magazines of lower port size mines to become availible. For instance an Extra Large port might be a basic proximity mine with 100 round of ammunition, allowing for the creation of significantly larger minefields.
As the last part of my discussion of weapon types I’m also going to discuss turrets. Turrets are a construct on a larger ship that allows a second player (or an AI) to take control of and operate a series of weapons that can be fired in a direction other than the movement path of the ship. Turrets should actually function as if they were a ship in their own right, with independent energy supply and weapons of their own. A turret might consist of several weapon ports, or might be just a single weapon port. In general a turret will have a size of Medium, Large, Extra Large, or Massive, and will have a number of weapon slots in it that equals that size. Possibly a turret could be made in a “volume” basis instead of a port basis, and the player could decide what weapons s/he wanted to place in the turret, using the above weapon sizes as a guide. Hence a large turret could have 1 large port weapon, 2 medium port weapons, 4 small port weapons, or any combination thereof in it, so long as it came out to the equivalent of 4 small slots. If this were not possible to do with the current port system, then different variants of ships would have different weapon layouts in their turrets.
Generally the damage a weapon should cause needs to increase by about 3 times as you increase in port size.
Shot speed should increase at ~ 50m/s once the weapon is larger than medium, and the duration of each shot should be +3 seconds for each step above medium you get.
Refire rate needs to be a very high increase, I’m suggesting 4 times the prior level once you start to get into large port weapons and above.
Energy consumption would need to be balanced to the amount of power generated by the ships these larger ports are mounted on, and I don’t really have any hard numbers for those at this time.
For the most part weapons larger than large ports would have an effective autoaim of 0, because they are mainly going to be mounted on turrets that have a ‘good’ agility, and they are meant to be targeted at large, slow responding capital class ships. Of course this assumes that the capital ships will react a bit slower and not bounce quite so much when they run into things.
Hence if a small port gauss cannon does 1000 damage a shot, the medium port equivalent (plasma devestator) should do ~3000 damage a shot at a lower refire rate. Extrapolating all the way up this would mean that a Massive port weapon with characteristics similar to a gauss cannon should be able to do ~81,000 damage in a single shot that travels at 330m/s. By the same token however it should take a relatively HUGE amount of energy, have a refire rate of no less than 30 seconds, and it will have to be aimed to lead the target more or less manually.
By the same token a Massive version of the unguided avalon torpedo would do around 325,000 damage, but should be a contact weapon with a refire of around 60 seconds and a top speed of maybe 160m/s, tho it might have fuel for 75 seconds (giving it a range of around 12 kilometers). Added to the fact that anytime you launch one you will have to compensate for the velocity of the firing ship (and unless you are moving directly at the target, good luck with that), hitting with one of these would be a very difficult, if rewarding feat.
Obviously it would be very rare to have a ship that can mount weapons of that power, the next step down; an extra large port version of the same weapon would only do ~100,000 damage and have a top speed of 140m/s.
[spellcast weapons post 1]
I also have a post that sort of goes along with this concerning larger classes of ships themselves, and you can find it here.
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/10941#127799
As such I have been doing a fairly large amount of thinking on this topics, and would like to post my thoughts here. In this particular instance I am actually not overly concerned with replys or comments and while i will endeavor to elaborate on any points that people have questions about, this thread is primarily for the developers, and they are free to use or ignore it as they see fit. As usuall, I only ask that comments are polite and on topic.
My first reccomendation is totally cosmetic, and will have no effect on gameplay whatsoever, and that is to rename the current Large ports to Medium ports. Leave all weapons and ship configurations the same, but use the term medium instead of large. My reasoning for doing this is simple… it makes it easier to name larger sizes of weapon ports than we have in the game at present.
(Basically changing our current large ports to medium ports lets me have the 5 port size names i want to use, as I said, the change is totally cosmetic, kind of like the renaming of arcade/physics mode to “flight assist mode”). We could then have the following weapon port sizes:
Small
Medium
Large
Extra Large (or Very Large)
Massive
For the purpose of this thread, each weapon port is equivalent in volume to 2 of the next size down, so 1 medium port = 2 small ports, 1 large port = 2 medium ports, etc etc.
In general the larger the port size, the larger the intended target of the weapon. Small and medium ports are meant to be used against fighters, Large ports against corvette and frigate class ships, Extra Large ports are for light cruisers and destroyers, and the Massive ports are optimized for the largest Cruisers and Battleships. as I said I discuss the ship classes in the above thread and provide more detail there.
Next we have the different types of weapons, I'm going to break weapons down into 4 types of weapon (Beams, Energy, Missiles, and Rockets), and describe what I feel should be the attributes of each. Each weapon type should be balanced against the other weapon types so that when people make a choice as to what kind of weapon to use there is a noticable difference in play style.
---Beam Weapons- These weapons are instant hit weapons, they strike instantly at any target within thier range and cone of fire, and as such are the hardest to defend against. In my opinion beam weapons should be limited to Medium ports and larger, preventing them from being used on the most agile light fighters.
Because a beam weapon is not subject to shot speed they should have the shortest range and the lowest damage potential as compared to other weapons of the same port size.
Beam weaopons should also be sub-divided into two distinct jobs, Point defence and Attack.
*Point defence beams need to have very high refire rates, large aiming cones and do moderate damage at VERY close range (say a max distance of 75M x port size. A medium point defence beam would have a 75 meter range, a Large beam, 150 meters, etc etc.) Point Defence beams should primarily be viewed as a last resort, and would be most useful against missiles, mines and rockets. (See below, I want these to be targetable and destroyable)
*Attack beams have a lower refire rate and for longer ranges. They also offer a tradeoff between accuracy and damage, the higher the accuracy, the lower the damage.
As the size of the attack beam port increases, there should also be a delay added between pressing the trigger and the weapon firing. Medium beams should be instant, Large beams should have a .1 second delay, Extra Large beams a .3 second delay, and massive beams a .5 second delay. This will prevent the largest beams from being able to instant kill fighters and the like, as such ports are intended to be used against capital ships
---Energy Weapons- These weapons are the mainstay of the vendetta universe, offering reasonable damage and no ammunition limits, Energy weapons cover every possible port size, and offer a wide range of variations, but in general they offer higher damage than beam weapons of the same size. Energy weapons are balanced against each other by offering higher damage at the expense of refire or aim cone, and each increase in shot speed should offer a corresponding increase in the energy drain of the weapon.
Thus you will end up with low damage weapons that have a high rate of fire/autoaim, or a high damage weapon that offers lower rate of fire and is more difficult to aim. The faster the shot travels the more energy it will take to fire the weapon. So you might have a very high rate of fire, easy to aim weapon that fires high velocity shots but does very limited damage and uses a lot of energy.
As the port size increases so should the “average” damage and speed of the shot, at the same time the “average’ refire rate should decrease and, of course, the energy needed should become higher.
Once again at the Extra Large and Massive levels, energy weapons should have a firing delay, probably of .1 and .3 seconds respectively, once again to minimize the danger of 1 shot kills to the smaller lighter fighters that these weapons are not meant to be used against.
---Missiles- Missiles are a conundrum for any skill based game, and very hard to balance for vendetta in particular. Because missiles are guided I actually feel that they should NOT have a use in fighter-to-fighter combat beyond how they allready work. The same missile AI that makes them easy to dodge in most fighters works perfectly well in allowing them to hit larger ships that are less maneuverable, meaning that in general missiles can be optimized for anti-capital ship combat with minimal effort.
Missiles should offer a tradeoff of damage and proximity for speed and accuracy. Because missiles have limited ammunition that allows another form of balance for them that is not availible to energy weapons and beams, namely the more effective a missile is, the lower its ammunition count should be.
Additionally all missiles SHOULD be targetable and destroyable, but they should not be EASY to destroy. I tend to think that they should NOT set off the proximity fuse of other missiles/rockets (otherwise a swarm would detonate itself the minute it was launched), howver if they happen to be caught in the blast of an exploding warhead they should take the appropriate amount of damage.
While small and medium port missiles offer some fighter-to-fighter combat potential, the real use of missiles comes into play when you start getting into larger port sizes. Missiles should offer more damage than beams or energy weapons of the same size, but be inferior to rockets. Because of their limited top speed, missiles are veunerable to interception, but require much less skill to use, particularly if at larger sizes the missiles themselves have enough hitpoints to survive multiple strikes from point defence beams or energy weapons. Missiles are a good choice for doing damage to larger, slower ships from outside the best range of the defensive turrets.
Finally as the size of the missile increases, so should its top speed.
---Rockets- Rockets should be the most damaging weapons in the game, offering the highest damage potential per shot of any weapon, they are primarily limited by the fact that they have no guidance of any sort, and have only a small number of rounds. Rockets should be faster than missiles of the same size/level, and offer significantly more damage. However as the damage potential of a rocket increases the ammunition count should go down. (We basically need to redo the ice, star and sunflares for a start. I’m thinking 30/20/10 shots respectively)
As with Missiles rockets should be targetable and destroyable, however rockets should be harder to destroy than a corresponding missile, as they don’t have the benefit or a guidance system.
Larger rockets should be faster and more powerful, with longer ranges, however at the Large, Extra Large, and Massive port sizes the safety fuse needs to be correspondingly longer, say a minimum of 3, 5, and 10 seconds, once again to basically ensure that it is much harder to use a weapon designed for killing a capital ship against a light fighter. Additionally the larger the port the larger the prox radius should be, however perhaps it would be possible to limit the proximity to certain sizes, so that a Massive weapon with a 100 meter proximity wouldn’t be triggerable by anything smaller than a behemoth, allowing fighters to get in close and attempt to destroy the missile before it hits its target.
I’m going to lump mines in with rockets because mines are basically just a stationary rocket. Larger mines of course would do more damage of course, however with mines I would also like to see options for larger magazines of lower port size mines to become availible. For instance an Extra Large port might be a basic proximity mine with 100 round of ammunition, allowing for the creation of significantly larger minefields.
As the last part of my discussion of weapon types I’m also going to discuss turrets. Turrets are a construct on a larger ship that allows a second player (or an AI) to take control of and operate a series of weapons that can be fired in a direction other than the movement path of the ship. Turrets should actually function as if they were a ship in their own right, with independent energy supply and weapons of their own. A turret might consist of several weapon ports, or might be just a single weapon port. In general a turret will have a size of Medium, Large, Extra Large, or Massive, and will have a number of weapon slots in it that equals that size. Possibly a turret could be made in a “volume” basis instead of a port basis, and the player could decide what weapons s/he wanted to place in the turret, using the above weapon sizes as a guide. Hence a large turret could have 1 large port weapon, 2 medium port weapons, 4 small port weapons, or any combination thereof in it, so long as it came out to the equivalent of 4 small slots. If this were not possible to do with the current port system, then different variants of ships would have different weapon layouts in their turrets.
Generally the damage a weapon should cause needs to increase by about 3 times as you increase in port size.
Shot speed should increase at ~ 50m/s once the weapon is larger than medium, and the duration of each shot should be +3 seconds for each step above medium you get.
Refire rate needs to be a very high increase, I’m suggesting 4 times the prior level once you start to get into large port weapons and above.
Energy consumption would need to be balanced to the amount of power generated by the ships these larger ports are mounted on, and I don’t really have any hard numbers for those at this time.
For the most part weapons larger than large ports would have an effective autoaim of 0, because they are mainly going to be mounted on turrets that have a ‘good’ agility, and they are meant to be targeted at large, slow responding capital class ships. Of course this assumes that the capital ships will react a bit slower and not bounce quite so much when they run into things.
Hence if a small port gauss cannon does 1000 damage a shot, the medium port equivalent (plasma devestator) should do ~3000 damage a shot at a lower refire rate. Extrapolating all the way up this would mean that a Massive port weapon with characteristics similar to a gauss cannon should be able to do ~81,000 damage in a single shot that travels at 330m/s. By the same token however it should take a relatively HUGE amount of energy, have a refire rate of no less than 30 seconds, and it will have to be aimed to lead the target more or less manually.
By the same token a Massive version of the unguided avalon torpedo would do around 325,000 damage, but should be a contact weapon with a refire of around 60 seconds and a top speed of maybe 160m/s, tho it might have fuel for 75 seconds (giving it a range of around 12 kilometers). Added to the fact that anytime you launch one you will have to compensate for the velocity of the firing ship (and unless you are moving directly at the target, good luck with that), hitting with one of these would be a very difficult, if rewarding feat.
Obviously it would be very rare to have a ship that can mount weapons of that power, the next step down; an extra large port version of the same weapon would only do ~100,000 damage and have a top speed of 140m/s.
[spellcast weapons post 1]
You've completely left out equipment that is non-combative. Such as the mining beams and scanners, and possible new widgest that get added, which should fall into several size catagories of "equipment ports".
"Hence if a small port gauss cannon does 1000 damage a shot, the medium port equivalent (plasma devestator) should do ~3000 damage a shot at a lower refire rate. Extrapolating all the way up this would mean that a Massive port weapon with characteristics similar to a gauss cannon should be able to do ~81,000 damage in a single shot that travels at 330m/s. By the same token however it should take a relatively HUGE amount of energy, have a refire rate of no less than 30 seconds, and it will have to be aimed to lead the target more or less manually."
I disagree. the really heavy damage weapons should travel slowly, but persist for a long time. I'd rather see Gauss be the fastest projectile, and as the weaponry gets larger, it gets slower proportionally. So, if we were to have a guass gun that fired at 250m/s, it's larger equivilants would only travel at something like 100m/s or so.
And:
"Finally as the size of the missile increases, so should its top speed."
Again, why? Bombs aren't supposed to be an uber anvil of death to faster ships. They should require a target lock, and detonate in a large blast radius, either when shot down (it'd also have to be slow to shoot down) or within ~50 m of the enemy ship.
I disagree. the really heavy damage weapons should travel slowly, but persist for a long time. I'd rather see Gauss be the fastest projectile, and as the weaponry gets larger, it gets slower proportionally. So, if we were to have a guass gun that fired at 250m/s, it's larger equivilants would only travel at something like 100m/s or so.
And:
"Finally as the size of the missile increases, so should its top speed."
Again, why? Bombs aren't supposed to be an uber anvil of death to faster ships. They should require a target lock, and detonate in a large blast radius, either when shot down (it'd also have to be slow to shoot down) or within ~50 m of the enemy ship.
John, perhaps because this post is about, umm weapons?
Harry, I looked at that as my initial thoughts on weapon shot speeds as well, but i rethought it and went in the other direction because I see capital ship to capital ship combat as being long range, at distances in the 2-3K range, and a projectile that travels only 100m/s would take far too long to get there to maintain the faster paced action i think the devs were trying for.
At 300m/s it still has a flight time of 10 seconds, giving a decent amount of time to react, keep in mind that that is only for the very largest weapons, and they would be fairly rare, and with long refire times.
Besides, 30 seconds is long enough that even a super slow ship could probably manage to move out of the way by accident. 10 seconds makes the skill of the gunner who fires the weapon a factor.
Harry, I looked at that as my initial thoughts on weapon shot speeds as well, but i rethought it and went in the other direction because I see capital ship to capital ship combat as being long range, at distances in the 2-3K range, and a projectile that travels only 100m/s would take far too long to get there to maintain the faster paced action i think the devs were trying for.
At 300m/s it still has a flight time of 10 seconds, giving a decent amount of time to react, keep in mind that that is only for the very largest weapons, and they would be fairly rare, and with long refire times.
Besides, 30 seconds is long enough that even a super slow ship could probably manage to move out of the way by accident. 10 seconds makes the skill of the gunner who fires the weapon a factor.
So speed up our current weapons to like 400m/s, and give us shields to compensate. ;)
And why should beam weapons be SO short ranged? 150m max seems really, really, really short. We need some really big beam cannons too. ;)
And why should beam weapons be SO short ranged? 150m max seems really, really, really short. We need some really big beam cannons too. ;)
I agree with you spellcast and I think you left out shot size. It may not be a big enough factor but these little dinky mining beam turrets are pitiful... And lets say you have a massive gauss cannon.... Say the shot size had a radius of 30m. That would actually make it "difficult" for a small ship to dodge out of the way (regardless, of whether or not the fighter was the target).
But all in all I agree.
/givemoney Devs 2c
But all in all I agree.
/givemoney Devs 2c
We obviuosuly cant increase our current weapon speeds to that high, it would be basically too fast for human reflexes to cope.
Besides, ahh those are just the point defence beams harry, the ones for knocking missiles out of the sky.
and technically an Extra Large point defence beam would be 225m, and a massive point defence beam (who the hell would mount one of those and waste the biggest spot on the ship lol) would be 300m range.
I kind of envision a large port attack beam as having a range that is about 75% of a corresponding energy weapon.
So with a shot speed of say, 230m/s and a duration of 6 seconds on a Large energy weapon (our extrapolated Plasma Devestator. =D ) would be a shot distance of 1280meters, Thus a Large beam weapon of the same licence levels would have a range of ~930 meters. I would want it to only do about 1000 damage a shot however, compared to the ~9000 the large port gauss cannon would do. On the other hand it's an instant hit and would refire ~5 or 6 times in the same 2 seconds our energy weapon fires once. I didnt really explain the attack beams very well in the post.. (not sure why, probably i lost my train of thought and moved on to something else, i'll remedy that in a bit)
Besides, ahh those are just the point defence beams harry, the ones for knocking missiles out of the sky.
and technically an Extra Large point defence beam would be 225m, and a massive point defence beam (who the hell would mount one of those and waste the biggest spot on the ship lol) would be 300m range.
I kind of envision a large port attack beam as having a range that is about 75% of a corresponding energy weapon.
So with a shot speed of say, 230m/s and a duration of 6 seconds on a Large energy weapon (our extrapolated Plasma Devestator. =D ) would be a shot distance of 1280meters, Thus a Large beam weapon of the same licence levels would have a range of ~930 meters. I would want it to only do about 1000 damage a shot however, compared to the ~9000 the large port gauss cannon would do. On the other hand it's an instant hit and would refire ~5 or 6 times in the same 2 seconds our energy weapon fires once. I didnt really explain the attack beams very well in the post.. (not sure why, probably i lost my train of thought and moved on to something else, i'll remedy that in a bit)
These weapons are still boring.
Energy, Beam, Rocket, Missile. Big whoop.
Can we please have some more unique weapons?
Example (for a big weapon)- straightfire cylinder-rocket-thing which fires bolts of lightning out of its curved face along its flight path before splitting into four homing drones which proceed to beat the crap out of the 4 nearest targets.
Or, more simply, a pair of beam weapons with a helix effect that converge at a certain range causing a large concussive blast. I call it the ADHD (Annihilator- Dave's Helix of Death)
We need more interesting boomsticks, and I will continue to campaign for them. Because the more interesting and diverse the guns get, the more fun the combat gets- and the less balance matters.
Energy, Beam, Rocket, Missile. Big whoop.
Can we please have some more unique weapons?
Example (for a big weapon)- straightfire cylinder-rocket-thing which fires bolts of lightning out of its curved face along its flight path before splitting into four homing drones which proceed to beat the crap out of the 4 nearest targets.
Or, more simply, a pair of beam weapons with a helix effect that converge at a certain range causing a large concussive blast. I call it the ADHD (Annihilator- Dave's Helix of Death)
We need more interesting boomsticks, and I will continue to campaign for them. Because the more interesting and diverse the guns get, the more fun the combat gets- and the less balance matters.
A beam that tracks the target, with a nice big energybolt going through it at 800m/s would look great, of course with lots and lots of glow in it.
I still think that my missile suggestions are valid:
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/9080
For the most part, good tracking, very high speed, and only one chance to hit. Goes a good way to eliminate spamming (the indiscriminate firing of large numbers of missiles in hopes of hitting something), and replaces it with more deliberate missile usage.
Along with UncleDave's ADHD, I suggest:
AIDS: Angry Insane Drone Ships - little drone ships that don't stray more than 50m from your ship and target nearby enemies. Fits in an an Extra Large port.
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/9080
For the most part, good tracking, very high speed, and only one chance to hit. Goes a good way to eliminate spamming (the indiscriminate firing of large numbers of missiles in hopes of hitting something), and replaces it with more deliberate missile usage.
Along with UncleDave's ADHD, I suggest:
AIDS: Angry Insane Drone Ships - little drone ships that don't stray more than 50m from your ship and target nearby enemies. Fits in an an Extra Large port.
i didnt read it all (again, go figure). just want to note, I'd love to have 120 ice flares (quad ice hornet). i can't imagine how long i could lay down the ultimate defensive rocket tactics. and this isnt a toys thread. okay, maybe one more.
FLASH MINES! no need to try to blind your target with a scanner any more, have a mine that does it for you in a brilliant flash of light which mainly exists within a few hundred meters.
FLASH MINES! no need to try to blind your target with a scanner any more, have a mine that does it for you in a brilliant flash of light which mainly exists within a few hundred meters.
One thing I don't think anyone (including myself) has taken into account into this thread. On larger ships, many of the weapon ports would be turrets, if not all. Thus, they would have *tracking speeds* that would correspond to their power & damage potential.
--For the most part weapons larger than large ports would have an effective autoaim of 0, because they are mainly going to be mounted on turrets that have a ‘good’ agility, and they are meant to be targeted at large, slow responding capital class ships--
covered that harry.
covered that harry.