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Weapons wishlist

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Jan 19, 2006 sissoko link
I love the fighting on VO, its superb, but sometimes i miss the strategic tools to do what is needed/wanted in different situations.
This game has quite a few different weapons, its just that they are based on the same formulas, energy, missiles mines or rockets i feel there is too little variation on the themes. And most weapons are based on 1v1 duels and after a while there is a certain balance to the different weapons and ships loadout
But we all want more!!

Can we make a list of what weapons we would like to see in the game?

Please use this preset:
1. damage dealing weapons

2. Group tools

Please keep a civil tone and try to figure out NEW or dig up OLD ideas, and dont find the first negative aspect of the suggestion and blow it out of proportions. I URGE you to stay positive. ;)
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My 0.02€

1. Damage dealing
-Super Corrosive Nanites:
rocket: Upon successful hit a ship hull will suffer x(100 to 300) ammount of damage every 1-3 seconds for 10 or 15 seconds. 30 energy/s 15 charges
Mines: more damage (2500+) in shorter duration (10s). 10 mines
Beam: needs to be 100m or closer to affect the target, does 200 dmg/sec and drains 75 energy sec
- bombs and grenades, travel with 100m/s for 3/5/seconds and 200m/s for 10/20 seconds. 100-500 m blast radius for 1000-3000 damage. will also detonate on direct hit- Delay 2-3seconds
- tactical bomber (political uncorrect) you are teh bomb!! you will blow up for 5k damage takes 10 seconds to arm and you cannot use turbo for that period. other ships will notice you are the bomb within 500m. delay 1hour

2. Group tools
- Energy chargers, widgets of 50/100/150 energy instantly boosting the receivers battery. 5seconds delay. Can be picked up by anyone
- Energy beam, adds 5/10 on the battery recharge rate of a friendly player, must stay within 100 m of the target
- Ammo crates replenishes your ammo by 10. Can be used by anyone delay 30 seconds
- Repair crates, repair your armor by 1000/2500/5000 can be instant or repair over time (25sec) can be used by anyone delay 1 min
- Webbers lowers the enemy targets top speed by 2%/5%/10%/15% for 3-5 seconds but targets suffer no battery drain. delay 2 minutes
- EMP shuts down you own and surrounding ships in a radius of 200m for 5 seconds, all non energy based weapons may still work . Delay is 5 min

Edit: fixed typos
Jan 19, 2006 nioubi link
1 ) Damage Dealing:

I loved the me-flare in parsec (abandoned game?).
Your ships sends a spherical wave of damaging-energy.
Anyone too close ( 50 m ?) is damaged like by a rocket.
This should be very energy consuming, or only available once or twice (ammo)
Jan 19, 2006 mgl_mouser link
I mentioned it before but I'd love a warp disruptor that sends affected target to another sector ratter than his plotted course.

Scenario:

Some red neck (and that doesn't necessarily mean Serco :-p ) starts a fight and decided to flee because his spam Valk is out of ammo. You shoot the warp disruptor at target and that target's next jump (perhaps within n seconds) jumps to YOUR next target coordinate.

Nice tool for pirates too. Nice for CtC as well.

Perhaps have a mine version of that thing would be nice. Or ratter more appropriate.
Jan 19, 2006 icbm1987 link
1) Damage Dealing

Large port rails.
Jan 19, 2006 CrippledPidgeon link
Some sort of multi-rocket that if simply shot at a target, doesn't deal very much damage, but if you press fire, and hit fire again, it launches a bunch of (say 10) rockets in a cylindrical pattern. Good for attacking convoys and things.
Jan 19, 2006 UncleDave link
Proper shotgun-style flak cannons.
Jan 19, 2006 genka link
A special weapon I could use to ban people that post new threads on topics that have had (pinned!) threads since 2003.
Jan 19, 2006 zamzx zik link
UncleDave..without auto aim :D
Jan 19, 2006 Hoax link
I've developed a bit of a blindspot where the pinned threads are. I really have to concentrate and sort of squint to even see them on the page.

Anyways: I always enjoy guided missiles that when launched give a camera feed to your HUD. They would be controled with your ships guidence system, leaving it vulnerable to attack while you steer the missile.

I'd have it so if your missile was destroyed (by means other than detonating itself) your ship controls would take a little longer to come back. Maybe in the neighborhood of 15 seconds.

I think both fast and slow missiles of this style could be a bit of fun. I'm not sure how I feel about other people shooting them at me...but thats no different than flying a prom.
Jan 19, 2006 Lord Q link
- A Rocket that splits into 4 seeking missiles 3 secinds after it's proxcimity is triggered.

-A railgun like weapon with flare like proxcimity and damage effects. (flack cannon)

-An L port version of the HAC's beam weapon. it would have no auto-aim, a max range of 100m. as well as a long delay, and steep energy drain. Damage should be enough to destroy a cent in one shot and most other light fighters in 2-3 hits.

-An area of effect weapon (perhaps a rocket) that activates the E-brake and completely drains the battery of anything within it's blast radius. the E-brake remains engaged for 10 seconds.
Jan 19, 2006 sissoko link
Hoax, i have that same blindspot.

And things may have changed gamewise and in the community for the last 3 years.
/offtopic end

I like the guided missile, to leave your ship view and steer and detonate the charge your self, with a small penalty after before you can regain control of your own ship.

stations: more NPC stationary sentry guns in addition to the occasional vult guard flying around. high armor and damageoutput

Sentry guns: for PC station defence, can fly around but need to deploy for 5 seconds before becoming a sentry gun. 5 seconds to pack and be able to fly again
- LONG range: detection range increase to 4-5km. fast projectiles, slow fire rate, slow tracking, high damage. weaker armor
shorter range range. slower projectles, fast fire, better tracking better armor

- Afterburners, gives a minor/medium/large boost to top speed for a very short duration. (it is too dangerous to use over a longer period of time, engine may blow)
Jan 19, 2006 Shapenaji link
Lord Q: I disagree with that lport beam wep, having it heavy doesn't really matter, you could make it weigh the ship down enough to make it act like a moth, and it would still easily annihilate any Cent, ALWAYS. Weps with infinite velocities are not interesting.

Anyhow, here are my Ideas

HAC cannon: it occurred to me that aiming is pretty uninteresting on a cap ship. On your fighter, you have the ability to add inertia to your shots, on a HAC, this option is not available. Moveable turrets is kinda weird, so here's my idea.

The HAC FLAK:

a timed detonation, which you can set before you fire. Essentially, you have to set the range for the shot. If it hits an enemy HAC, it will still do the same amount of damage, but it may not take out the turrets, seeing as there would be no explosion.

I think that taking away prox detonations for HAC weps is a good idea for gameplay, and having to work out the range that you want
the device to explode at, adds a whole knew level of skill to aiming.
Jan 19, 2006 CrippledPidgeon link
How about a mine launcher that drops small turrets? The turret has a non-charging battery and once it fires off its charge, it explodes. Maybe you equip the launcher and then equip the weapon to the launcher. So the weight of the launcher is dependent on which weapon you choose for it.

sissoko: re: afterburners... Have you tried pressing tab?

shape: re: hac flak. Or maybe even cooler, flak works a bit like the redeemer in UT, or some rockets in Freespace. Fire the flak round, you have a little range meter that says how far away the round is, and you press another button that detonates the round.

Or to make things even more interesting, you can fire multiple rounds, and each time you press the detonation button, it detonates the round farthest away. So you have to keep track of how far away your rounds are getting, compare that with how far the enemy ship is, and detonate accordingly. While aiming.
Jan 19, 2006 johnhawl218 link
I really like Shapes idea of being able to set time of detonation before firing the flak cannons, very remenicent of battleship cannons in WWII.

Beam weapons for player characters is fine as long as they are NOT one hit killers. If anything they should be only used as a point defense against swarms, missles enter within a sphere of influence they start popping off, with perhaps a 90% efficiency. Possibly even have different levels that hav better and better ratings.

EMP weapons, able to disable temporarily any ship within a sphere of influence for a mine type, or and ship hit with a beam variety. O% damage, simply loss of control, or even just turning the controls for a cent to feel like a moth for a few seconds as an example.
Jan 19, 2006 Shapenaji link
I totally agree with john's idea regarding beams, if they did like 5 dmg/sec they could take out missiles, but otherwise they're going to be pretty useless.

I also wanted to elaborate on the HAC FLAK idea, because I think there are a bunch of other nice features.

Capships could fill defensive roles by bombing areas with the weapons. Such as entry/exit points, but in doing something like that, if they were suddenly ambushed by another HAC, it would take time to realign the weps on a new target, Unless you had a particularly skilled crew.
Jan 19, 2006 vIsitor link
Contact mines: Mines that detinate on, you guessed it, contact. Basicly a Proxy mine without the proxy, low-level.

Seeker mines: Mines that home in on mass readings within their senor radius'. Indiscriminate between freind, foe, ship, or roid. Too slow to be practical as missles. Moderate-High tech level.

Repli-mines: Mines that detonate every 10 seconds, spawning 2 identical mines moving 1 m/s away from the blast point in opposite directions. Maximum number of replications (and thus, number of mines produced) varies with the flavor of repli-mine. Also, maximum number of 'seed' mines would vary, from 5-6 for conc mines, to only 1 for lighning. At least 2x the level of standard mine, might require new badge (mine-killer or something). Useful for Wormhole Blockades, but only briefly.

Coilgun: Big, bad, cool-sounding railgun so large that it is only practical to mount on a cap ship. Used as opening weapons in engagements--have pretty particle effects in the wake of the xith pellet.
Jan 19, 2006 everman7 link
ummmm avalons...he he

I would like to see a variation on swarms. But instead of tracking the target, they spray out missles in a cone similar to a shotgun blast. Small prox blast so that there is some chance of your opponent not getting hit.

MK3 Fletchettes with some real range, maybe higher drain to compensate...or not!

Variation on the turrets suggested by CP: Have the turrets dropped stick to roids, stations, etc. To set up defense perimeters or traps. If the mini turret doesnt stick to an object, it times out. Attacks anything that would be deemed enemy like the auto turrets on caps, but with much less damage than what the caps do.

Rapid fire, low damage, high drain beam weapons, no targeting, medium range.

One major theme I would like to see happen is some high level weaponry. Ones that the more experienced players can use that don't have all the penalties of the weapons we have now. For instance, most weapons in the MK1 variation are not too good. The MK2+ variations are just trade-offs. You get more range by gaining more mass or sick drain, and so-forth. I know that there are balance issues, but if we re-vamp many weapons and not just one or two, it would balance out. And then there's the n00b issue, well...B8 is supposed to be dangerous...not candyland...
Jan 23, 2006 Cunjo link
I want a manually-timed/detonated mine... the game needs more mines, and specifically ones with special purposes or skills ot use.

1)
Timed Mine (essentially the same as the prox mine, only with more damage, slightly larger blast radius, and less ammo)
Detonation: Timed - 10 seconds from keydown; jettison mine at keyup. This allows you to 'cook' the mine, causing it to go off sooner after leaving your ship. Must be careful to not cook it too long, or it will detonate immediately after leaving your bay, and catch you in the blast.

2)
Shrapnel mine (similar to a bouncing betty or a spherical claymore)
deals x (between 1000 and 3000) damage per piece, with y (between 20 and 40) pieces moving out from the center of the blast in a rnadom, spherical pattern, and at about 100m/sec. Could be made to use the same detonation mechanism as the above, or a proximity/delay mechanism (x seconds after entering a large proximity range)
This mine would be highly deadly up close, or in a very large ship, as you'd catch a lot of the blast, but further out, you stand a good chance of evading it.

Yes, the HAC needs FLAK.
Jan 23, 2006 LeberMac link
Going off of Cunjo's idea - stealth mines which do just a little damage, and can be set to go off - no prox trigger, they sit around until you tell them to detonate. You would have to remain in-sector to detonate the mines, you leave, they disappear and are wasted.
(Which would make it fun to mine an asteroid and set off the explosion when a fat, lazy miner comes up to get some easy bucks.)

I'm all for disabling weapons. EMP's, non-lethal weapons, whatever. Yay.

Cargo scanners. I want to see what's in people's holds. Without exploding them.
Jan 23, 2006 vIsitor link
Leber, its called asking really nicely.

I suppose Avalons could be brought back if they had the restriction of only being able to fire when they've locked on to a cap ship...

Rapid Deployment Rockets (RDR's): Basically swarms without guidance. Low damage/impact, salvo-firing rockets that you can carry allot of. Advanced vareities have prox detonation. Mid-level, useful if you know you're not going to be restocking on ammo for a length of time.