the title pretty much says it all...modulating frequency weapons, the point of which being, after a certain amount of shots fired a a ship with shields...the weapon would be able to penetrate the shields.

which of course leads to...

modulating frequency shields a ship equipped with these shields would rotate shield frequencies to adapt to the modulating frequency weapons, thus only allowing a certian percentage of the shots fired through.

Like it. Probably should be variants of current blasters.

I think that if player ships had shields it would add an interesting twist, but would probably be too complex for the engine.

Okay... but what would be the downside? And... the upside? It'd only really work on capital ships... and good luck trying to take one down in the first place. Unless you're talking about a Hive Queen, which you can kill anyways.

The other thing about MF weapons is that it assumes the weapon uses a Frequency in the first place. Then by changing the frequency you'd probably also change the properties of the weapon.

I think MFW's would only really be used if they had a bonus against normal ships.

(Someone please check my facts on this.)

any energy weapon would have a frequency, because energy has a frequency. the up side is it would aide in the destruction of ships with shields. the down side is that it would aide in the destruction shielded ships.

the primary use would be against Queens, Levis and cappies.

It'd be cool if it changed the weapon colors. Since it clearly wouldn't effect small ship to ship combat, if I was PvPing I'd simply change it to match my paint.

it'd only be cool if the player can manually set the modulation freq, and would have to remodulate when needed (with a delay after you press 'remodulate')

because

any energy weapon would have a frequency, because energy has a frequency. the up side is it would aide in the destruction of ships with shields. the down side is that it would aide in the destruction shielded ships.


That's my point. Weapons need a downside or they become over-powered. Rails for example, even though they have high damage and high speed, they also have slow reload, and use quite a bit of energy.

With these, if you have MFW's versions of weapons, what's the point of buying other versions of the weapon? Less damage? More energy? What? The only other thing

Also, if you change the frequency too much, would the energy become less effective against armor? Would the change in frequency make it become something completely different? Would it even go through the shield? I'm not a scientist, and I'm not sure what the in universe explanations are, but they're all questions to think about.

keep it simple for now, Phish.

Straightforward; for this suggestion, we need...

Shields that can be remodulated

Weapons that can modulate and when are properly modulated bypass shields

Without worrying about any unnecessary realism junk, let's proceed on those basic assumptions; feel free to add a few more to the basis of this analysis. Ryan especially, as it is your idea...

thank you Zik.

i just thought of it...if the Devs like it, let them handle tech specs.

I could defend the "unnecessary realism junk" all day, but for the sake of the topic, I'll let it go. Besides, the Devs have lots of things to do.

On the other hand, I do like the idea. I just think it might end up being too powerful, considering that with a weapon like this, if a pilot were good enough, they could eventually take out a Levi/HAC. Note eventually, but it would be possible. Not only that, it would make taking one of those out a lot easier. That is the point, but, might it end up being too easy?

thats easy to fix and it comes with an explanation...

due to the power drain of the weapons modulator, the power output of the weapon is some what low say 380 with a velocity of 200mps but the range is 200m.

How about just shield polarity? Shields could be tuned to either positive or negative polarity, and certain energy weapons will have a polarity. For example positron weapons would be positive, and ions would be negative. Things like neutrons would have no polarity. Attacking shields with weapons of the opposite polarity will inflict more damage, while attacking shields with weapons of the same polarity will inflict less damage. Non polarized weapons will always inflict the same damage regardless of polarity.

Examples

Non polarized
Phased Weapons
Neutron weapons

Positive
Positron Weapons
Gauss weapons

Negative
Ion Blasters
Plasma Weapons

Three polarities, with three outcomes:
Pierce - ignores the shields and goes straight to armor.
Null - no damage, no effect.
Normal - damages the shields.

Hi, this is an interesting discussion.

On a not-strictly-related to shields note, we were looking at changing the way armor and weapons are defined in the game. So, you might have three compositions of armor, which then have different weapon designs that can impact the various compositions to a greater or lesser degree. Like a special "phased blaster" that's tuned to xithricite might have a damage bonus when used against that type of plating, but also a damage nerf against some other specific type.

Going along with this, ships of specific regions for specific use-cases might be commonly made of specific materials. In other words, if you were hunting cargo ships of Faction X, they might prefer Plating Y, causing you to select a specific weapon for pursuit of that group. Etc etc. One might see how the minerals and ores specific to a given region could play into the attributes of local vessels. An obvious logical question from this might be "if their supplies were interrupted, might local armor composition change or be otherwise weakened".. to which I'd currently have to say "that's a scary area where I'm not yet prepared to go", but the long-term possibilities are out there, as it were. (There's also other obvious directions, like the ability of users to potentially "Manufacture" ships and weapons with mixtures not otherwise available.. etc. More depth to crafting type stuff).

None of this has anything to do with shields. I'm not against the sort of shield stuff you guys are proposing. But be aware, we added shields basically because it fit a particular requirement for keeping these large ships alive and allowing them some use. Any road we took that could weaken shields would be tread carefully. Previously we've considered, and had independently suggested, weapons that might be specific to shields (or special shield-disabling mines, etc). But balancing the tradeoffs of this kind of stuff would take some thought. In particular, we do not want capships to be solo-able. The whole "shield" thing was initially created for the Leviathan, since we basically had no way, previously, of building a "Big Bad Guy" who you guys couldn't kill on your own, with a lot of patience. Shields adds another factor into that, a requirement of teamwork, a goal for a larger group.. something that plays into a lot of areas of expanding gameplay.

Anyway, an intriguing discussion and I welcome continued input. I thought I would post about the armor thing, since we're headed in that direction, and it seemed related to the *goal* of the shield idea, albeit through a different means.

Inc...that armor idea youre talking about...(and its implications, is AWESOME!!! if that makes it in game I'll violate every journalistic ethic I have and do a series of articles focusing on the online gaming community with the focus on VO.

Armor is integral to the concept, sectional damage, methinks.

Does anyone else just love it when incarnate posts?

/me drools

it really gives me hope

With friendly fire restrictions being removed, it'd be extremely helpful to have your allies tune their weapons, shields, armor, or whatever, to deal less damage to one another.

The idea translates to armor types receiving bonuses against certain kinds of weapons; the ideal situation is that you take minimal damage from your friends, and deal maximum damage to your foes.