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Weapons

#1
So, diplomacy is nice and all, but plenty of players(myself included) most probably want to have the ability to launch nukes, or fire the MAC(Magnetic Accelerator Cannon), or pew pew with lasers. How will weapons work? Will missiles be infinite or constrained by the number you bought in that station two systems back? Will lasers draw so heavily on the reactor of your ship that the engines barely work? How will weapons be added/removed?

Here are some of my ideas on the topic:
Laser Turret-Basic weapon, minimal damage, but can do basic point-defense and shoot down missiles/torpedoes
Missile Pod-A pod that cannot be refilled, only replaced, making them inefficient but easy to use and fast to fire. The missiles cannot lock onto small targets like fighters, and are not very maneuverable. Cannot carry heavy ordinance(Nuclear, Anti-Matter, ect)
Missile Launch Tube-Slower firing than a Missile Pod, but can be reloaded and can fire heavy ordinance as well as regular missiles.
Gauss Turrets-Fires ferric-tugnsten darts(possible ammo constraints?) at high velocities using magnetic forces. More powerful than lasers, but worse at point-defense.
Plasma Turret-Fires extremely hot plasma contained in a magnetic field, this turret consumes lots of power and is more powerful than Gauss and Laser turrets.
MAC-For those with big, capital ships, this among the best possible weapons. It uses magnetically conductive rails to fling 600 ton depleted uranium-tungsten-osmium slugs at up to 1/4 the speed of light. Has to be spinally mounted in the core of a ship, meaning firing it requires the ship to face its enemy. Can cut clean through a ship if powerful enough. Will drain all power except emergency life support while charging. Charge time varies by reactor
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Re: Weapons

#5
You are not required to have weapons. Of course, that precludes the ability to directly respond to acts of aggression against your PC.

The game is a sandbox, as such, you get to determine how you wish to proceed from the starting point. There is no central narrative or specific plot to follow. That is the beauty (and potential downfall) of this type of a game.
I know not what life is, nor death.
Year in year out-all but a dream.
Both Heaven and Hell are left behind;
I stand in the moonlit dawn,
Free from clouds of attachment.
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Re: Weapons

#6
I think weapons are nice and all, but the real issue is how to decide how many you can have. After all, a fighter with, eg, 53,000 laser cannons is not quite balanced. I think a good system would be a power generator. You have a generator, which puts out a certain amount of power and could be upgraded, overcharged, or explode because you taxed it too much. Then shields, lasers, missiles, hull, cloaking, thrusters, etc would all take up power. A MAC might take up 100 power while a laser might only take up 5. I'm not sure if I like power being just instantaneous, where you set priorities like: (I always want to be able to fire my MAC, then thrusters if any energy is left, then my point-defense turrets, and if anything is left after that, shields.), or having them act like supply. (You need more energy to power everything, so you can't power it at all.) Basically, if you've played FTL, then that's the second idea. The first one is more complex but more rewarding, the second is simpler and more restrictive.

Also, how do we chose where the weapons go? A turret on the broadsides or the top is considerably different than a turret on your front.
-Keon-

(I don't have any funny quotes to put here yet. Somebody say something funny.)
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Re: Weapons

#7
As per Josh:
The ships that the player buys will indeed be procedural, and you will be able to modify the equipment of the ship, but not the actual form itself (unless we hit the stretch goal, in which case you will actually be able to design the hull). That means that you can choose which weapons to affix to which hardpoints, which internal modules to buy to fit into your available power slots, and so on.
I know not what life is, nor death.
Year in year out-all but a dream.
Both Heaven and Hell are left behind;
I stand in the moonlit dawn,
Free from clouds of attachment.
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Re: Weapons

#9
Tom wrote:As per Josh:
The ships that the player buys will indeed be procedural, and you will be able to modify the equipment of the ship, but not the actual form itself (unless we hit the stretch goal, in which case you will actually be able to design the hull). That means that you can choose which weapons to affix to which hardpoints, which internal modules to buy to fit into your available power slots, and so on.

So I take it the hardpoints are fixed and you couldn't change them?
-Keon-

(I don't have any funny quotes to put here yet. Somebody say something funny.)
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Re: Weapons

#10
If the project passes the $75 thousand stretch goal ships will be customizable (albeit from procedural components). The way I interpret that is that with customization one will be able to determine where the hardpoints will be located on the ship's frame.
I know not what life is, nor death.
Year in year out-all but a dream.
Both Heaven and Hell are left behind;
I stand in the moonlit dawn,
Free from clouds of attachment.
Post

Re: Weapons

#12
Perhaps if we get at least 70k, we can edit weapon hard points. Of course, hard points should probably be limited to something like intersections in the exterior of the ship. We could also have "wires", lines on the theoretical ship editor, where "power" flows. Then we could have hard points on intersections in the wires, or flat areas on the ship. IDK, the possibilities are endless.
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Re: Weapons

#13
I would like to see some deeper mechanics when it comes to missile weapons. (nothing has been presented at all so far to my knowledge about these).


Missiles in today's warfare is the main choice for engagements between our warships at sea or forces at land or in the air (and why wouldn't that also be true in space?)

General missile/torpedo characteristics:
Long or Very long range
Slow to no reload at all (carrier and land based craft often reload only at mothership/base)
Heavy hitting (great for a surprise attack or big alpha strike)
Heat/Noise homing (on engine size), or radar homing (on cross section/target size)

These are true for most, but not all missile/torpedo based weapons today.

I would like to see diverse missiles like torpedoes, extreme range cruise missiles, rocket pods, small anti-missiles used against small craft or torpedoes/big missiles.



The practical limitation of a guided missiles range is often not it's actual range, but how far your sensors can lock onto the target.

To get around this limitation many missiles today has the capacity of fire and forget, this means they often can be fired against a set of coordinates where they enemy might be located, and start scanning for the enemy with their own on-board sensors.

So to get a good solid missile mechanic you need sensors mechanics that work too. Basically using real physics there are 3 ways to detect an enemy (beyond visual range):

1.) Detecting the noise/heat from his engine
2.) Sending an active pulse that bounces of his hull (radar)
3.) Passive listening to emissions from the enemy (can be anything from radar pulses to communications or in sci-fi perhaps even shield emissions).

When it comes to anti missile systems they are equally important weapons to make sure you can use huge dreadnoughts with big guns or laser turrets if you want too. The AM (anti missile) is already mentioned. Lasers should also be very potent anti missile weapons given their accuracy (in most Sci-fi). Then we have the final defense style CIWS kind of weapons that just throws so much lead (or whatever is used in space), in the general direction giving a pretty good chance to hit the incoming missiles.

Imo Missiles should be very potent weapons in space. Especially against enemies that lack appropriate defenses or have less advanced sensors then you have (meaning you see and thus can hit them before they can see you).
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Re: Weapons

#14
Ixos wrote:So to get a good solid missile mechanic you need sensors mechanics that work too. Basically using real physics there are 3 ways to detect an enemy (beyond visual range):

1.) Detecting the noise/heat from his engine
2.) Sending an active pulse that bounces of his hull (radar)
3.) Passive listening to emissions from the enemy (can be anything from radar pulses to communications or in sci-fi perhaps even shield emissions).
Wow, this opens the world of camuflage system! It could also connect to the hull design.
Also the idea of the different types of missiles is really nice as well as the many kinds of lasers you can have (maybe build).

Sorry for the bad English, this time I know I really did something horrible with it.
Image roma
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Re: Weapons

#15
Missiles in today's warfare is the main choice for engagements between our warships at sea or forces at land or in the air (and why wouldn't that also be true in space?)
Missiles in space have few pros and cons. They can follow a target until they run out of fuel or are destroyed ala Point Defense of some kind. They are however limited in speed/acceleration/range based upon the creators propulsion tech. Missiles also have a variety of payloads... Conventional (High-Explosive) Nuclear Fission (Atom Bomb), Fusion (H-Bomb), Neutron which would be used to kill a ships crew with lethal radiation.

However energy weapons, mass drivers, railguns etc etc would fire there energy/ballistic projectiles at speeds which would pretty much unstoppable by point defense, but they do not track there target once fired.

Detection: Heat generated by the ships powerplant or just the life support system would be more than enough for a missile or sensors to detect/home in on.

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