Was just poking around the message boards and saw the "on the removal of FF" thread. One thing that Incarnate mentioned gave me an idea that I think might be amazing: "Another point worth considering is the ever-present idea of weapons having to be "enabled" by the player. Letting them shut down and power up with some mild time delay, and a change in aggression status to the rest of the world."

I think that this idea can go much further. A lot of games have power management, and this would be an interesting segway for VO to undertake that challenge.

Let me explain, say that players by default travel with their weapons cold (or not enabled). This might imply that if the weapons are turned on, they are consuming more power. So therefore there is more power to be had when the weapons are turned off.

In other words, a player without weapons enabled might have more thrust when turbo is engaged or a faster non-turbo speed. Of course, different ships would have different weapon-hot and weapon-cold speeds (say, some ships would be better at chasing with weps than others... these ships would most likely be pirate-targeted ships, and might be more expensive). Such a change would add a whole lot of versatility to the game, and not to mention it would really add complexity to encounters in grey space. Another idea would be that some ships could re-route that extra power towards shielding.
Also, a player might be able to tell where the ship-they-are-targeting's power is directed, so that a rat could tell if his prey has shut down weapons and diverted power to engines in order to outrun him. Edit: Maybe you could only tell where your targeted ship's power is directed when you are within a certain proximity, say... 1500m (rail range), or 2000m (for ample warning).

There could even be different warm-up times for different types of weapons. Energy weps might need a 3-second warm-up; flares would be 1-second; swarms/guided missiles a very-long 5 seconds; rails could be instantaneous.

Edit: While we are on the subject of power, it might even be interesting to make it possible to shut down your energy signature, making you invisible to anyone's radar if they aren't in a very close proximity. Inertia would let traders get into a system, power off so that they are harder to detect, and drift towards a jump point. Of course, warming back up would take a couple seconds, so use it wisely. Might also be a good tactic for rats to use near WH's.

This is still an idea-in-progress, and any thoughts comments etc. would be appreciated.

I likey, better than most energy management ideas I've seen.

How about lower turbo drain for cold weapons? I like the other ideas as well.

Or even higher turbo drain for hot weapons.

We could also add a few batteries that were better at multi-tasking... say, a battery that would be able to have both weapons and engines hot simultaneously. Of course it would have to have a small capacity. This battery idea is truly half-baked, but there might be a kernel of good there.

A little similar to this?

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/14519?page=2#187721

I like it.

I love this.

Finally! A way to properly recreate the opening shots of the Earth-Minbari war!

</uberdork>

I also am quite interested in this.

I like this idea a lot! People could even expand on this(or it could be put into the game as a whole) and if you're within a certain distance and someone turns on their weapons, you receive an alert telling you the name of the target and their distance from you. Id say perhaps 2000m would be a good distance.

This would also add a layer of communication that most pilots neglect: if you are targeted by another player, but their weapons are off, you would get no notification. But if they have theirs turned on, or turn them on while you are targeted you get a warning stating that you are being targeted by a potential hostile. This would allow traders to communicate that they are no threat to other players and for players to know that though they are being targeted by a player of their same faction, this player has the possible intent of shooting them (pirate).

This idea has my seal of approval. The only downside I see is the staggering amount of code involved in implementing this could delay it's priority or even kill it...

Practical question to that last comment: How and why would your ship know that you're being targeted? Don't say magic.

I think that it could be a pretty good idea... however, it might be easier to use it as a friendly/non-friendly sort of thing. The whole idea that having weapons on uses power is a strange one to me. Last I checked, a loaded rifle with the safety off didn't use power. Essentially the same deal, all that takes energy is firing. It's not like we need a reactor to keep the rock molten or something.

So, basically have it cost energy to power up, but also have it change the friendly / hostile thingy on radar. Other things could change that as well (such as hive bots) but still.

We don't have to use magic...

btw - "Magic is just everything that science hasn't made boring yet...."

Is it not true that today's fighter jets can tell when they are being targeted? And as an extra buffer, we are playing science fiction; we get to say almost anything is possible because we use the advanced technology excuse. A computer takes time to warm up, why not 'energy' weapons...

Sadly, science has made this boring.

Energy weapons simply do not work like a computer. A computer is constantly thinking, constantly changing information on a screen, or even just in the hard drive. Weapons are not. The simplest energy weapon is a laser. Laser "weapons" aren't even 'on' or 'off.' You just pull the trigger and they shoot. Only when they shoot do they use energy. It wouldn't make sense for them to use while 'on' energy, the only point of turning them on / off is to tell people w/o any communication if you're hostile or not. The reason you'd want a time for the weapons to change is so that a pirate can't be friendly, fly next to a ship, turn the guns on, and blast away.

No, as far as I know, todays fighter jets cannot tell when they're targeted. To do so would require a wireless link to the other fighter jet's targeting computer, and then proceed to hack into it. However, the jets today can look at an incoming missile and figure out where it will most likely go. Since the weapons we use are energy, and therefore faster, a system like that would be ridiculous.

Finally, the "science fiction" excuse. I'm sorry, that doesn't work for me. Even in this case, if you were to say, "Okay, then we have computer that can the other fighters," it would be illogical. If we have computer that can hack, then wouldn't we have computers that can dodge that hacking? If we didn't, that would be stupid.

Ships can detect radar locks, so yes, they can tell.
And things in space are more complex... so they should be able to do more than the common 21st century jett.
I think we're getting off-topic here.

Okay, now I know. I don't know if the ships use radar, but that's different. Still, adding the "targeting lock" as an addition to the on/off switch for weapons would be overly complex and unneeded.

Warming up weapons would work, but not while messing with energy use. Use it as a change from the current friend / foe detector, which is not entirely true. I mean, sure, someone may be hated by every faction, but they're not necessarily gonna attack you. If their guns are on, it's more of an issue.

As for the warming up of add ons, so like everything has a Power Grid use these days. The warm up time could be tuned to the amount of PG the add on in question needs. Mebbeh something like 1 second for each PG. The crazy good weapons like the Corvus Widowmaker would take ages to put back online, and the simple 2 Grid radar thingies are almost instant.

If add ons could be turned on/off in flight, it might make sense to equip more add ons than your Power Cell can handle all at once. For example, I might choose to fly a Hornet with a Widow Maker, and 3 rail guns. When I run out of ammo, I can switch switch them off and bring up my blaster.

Hmm... and what's the problem with just having two different groupings of weapons where your rails are primary trigger for one, and your blaster is primary trigger for the second?

I do like using PG though.

Great ideas. Giving more management options and specifically ones that have a real impact on the game is golden.

What's the problem with just having two different groupings of weapons where your rails are primary trigger for one, and your blaster is primary trigger for the second?

There's two problems. 1] You currently can't leave the station if you're grid usage is more than your Power Cell can handle, for example a Widowmaker and three rail guns. (Thirty is more than twenty.) 2] Letting players use more than 20 power grid at a time would clearly destroy the balance of the game.
3] Ready my previous post more carefully. =)

Modern fighter jets can, indeed, tell when a radar has actively locked on to them as well as detect passive sweeps. Their avionics suite can even tell you what type of radar and the potential threat level. As for VO, I have argued that what we term "radar" is actually a passive mass/energy detection suite which could easily detect when a ship's energy signature changes due to the arming or disarming of weapons.

While true that a laser is either on or off, you probably want to leave its power source on until you are no longer in combat. In any case, there are no lasers in VO; all the energy weapons are some variation of pulsed packets of atomic particles or highly charged matter.

The simplest energy weapon is a laser. Laser "weapons" aren't even 'on' or 'off.' You just pull the trigger and they shoot.

I'm sure your correct; it's only natural that simple mechanisms have simple operation. Complex mechanisms, on the other hand, might require complex operation, such as layered levels of onness. Since we've determined that VO weapons are not lasers, perhaps they are indeed those complex mechanisms I mentioned. We'd better take this up with some Akanese scientists. I hear they're experts on the field.

Has anyone here ever played Babylon 5: I've found her? It's a freeware, fan produced game; the reason I mention it is they have 2? (been awhile) display bars. One shows weapons energy aval. and the other shows the weapons temp (green / yellow / red). The power aval is just like ours, the temp one is there to keep you from just hosing the sky with energy. Shoot too much, too long and your weapons go into auto cool mode. This would add another layer to the energy management problem, though more directly related to when actually fighting.

As for detecting if a ships weps are 'on or off' I always got the impression from the Sci Fi shows that they were monitoring the energy freq of the enemies weps. No freq = no power draw, inital spike = turned on / energy circulating through the system, BIG spike = big power draw in prep to shooting. This is kind of like what aircraft have now since most radars have 2 modes; search and attack. The A/C's ESM gear can detect the passive search sweep of a radar; like said above, giving it a threat level index number and if it kicks over to the targeting / lockon mode the threat index goes through the roof, letting the pilot know life's about to get a whole lot more interesting than he probably wanted it to.

Since we too have a distance to target, something must be being directed out and received back to give us that info. Hence the reason that on some shows (B5?) 'they're pinging us' = getting an acturate range in prep for shooting.