I remember hearing somewhere that the devs were looking for more useful L-port weapons, so here's a suggestion:

Scatterfire Rocket Launcher
L-port weapon
Mass: 1100 kg
Ammo: 25
Damage: 800 (per warhead)
Prox radius: 30m
Splash radius: 70m
Speed: 55 m/s
Refire delay: 3s
Rockets per salvo: 5
Spread: roughly 45 degrees

This L-port weapon would basically fire five iceflare rockets simultaneously in a random-spread "shotgun" pattern. In addition to a forward velocity of 55 m/s each rocket would also be given a random lateral velocity of up to 55 m/s. The weapon would have a fairly large refire delay, and would only hold 5 shots before needing to reload. The individual warheads wouldn't do much damage, but because of the spread it would be easier to score at least one hit. It would make a good weapon for heavy ships to discourage the efforts of incoming fighters.

Rockets are already pretty dangerous in the right hands, this would make them way more powerful. Even limiting it to 5 shots, in a 45˚ cone is a scary prospect. Potentially hitting for 4000 points of damage, one hit quitter.

Rocket spammers unite!!

=(

I don't know. Trying to hit a smaller, faster enemy with a spray of rockets at 300m seems a bit haphazard and a waste of ammunition.

I think this would bring an end to any light ships bothering to come close to a heavy (read SkyProm and Agresso). It just wouldn't be worth it. If a heavy rammed my rev c with five iceflares.... thats 4000 damage. Thats down to less than 50%. I wouldn't even think about approaching a heavy if I knew those were in existance.

edit: Wow, a flurry of responses.

i like it, it would add a new level of tactics to this game

Well, I know how controversial rockets can be, and those numbers could be tweaked obviously... I just thought it was a relatively new idea and wanted to kick it around a little.

After all, missiles have the chaos and locust swarms (8 missiles each doing 750 damage... you do the math) so I thought that this could be the rocket version of a swarm.

Yaaar... swarms.

Gavan reads Phaserlight's post and vows to take time to think before posting.

Seems the idea is that the spread would be such that you wouldn't get hit with 4000 points dammage unless you were point blank and took the whole spread in the nose. A rev c moves what? 70? If you can't dodge a rocket at 70 then practice more.

Other than that, who is afraid of an iceflair? Does anyone even use them as a solo rocket? You can't kill anything but collectors with them.

hmm... to prevent point-blank kills, why not arm the rockets some number of seconds (or tenths-of-a-second) after launch? Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there some sort of real-world precedent for such?

Maybe it could be like a "Hyper-Velocity Rocket Launcher." Fires a burst of low-damage, high speed rockets. Kinda like Neuts with less damage, but with a proximity warhead.

HVR Launcher
L-port weapon
Mass: 1100 kg
Ammo: 30
Damage: 400 (per warhead)
Prox radius: 20m
Splash radius: 40m
Speed: 150 m/s
Refire delay: 3s
Rockets per salvo: 5

one lil prob with that crip... if someone is just moving forward... no turboing, in a Skycommand, the wep velocity will match an N3... with a 20m prox radius

Well yeah, but then N3s will be coming at them 65m/s faster, thanks to relative velocity.

The HVR doesn't need burst fire. If you remove the five round burst, I think it would be an interesting, viable weapon with a little tweaking.

Shape: but it'd only have 30 shots, and would do less damage than 30 neut 3 shots. With a 5 shot burst, you'd do a lot of damage, but the repeat is long. True, a single burst would put a centurion in a heck of a spot, but if the pilot was quick about it, he'd probably be able to just catch the fringes of the explosions.

I think the burst fire would be necessary. If it didn't, it might end up causing too much lag (I'm not the expert on this, but rapid-fire ammoed weapons cause lag - I apparently got back to playing Vendetta too long after the introduction of the AGT using ammo).

I already and would rather have my controlled rocket nets. Better than random spread fire.