Forums » Suggestions

Cool new weapon

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Jun 07, 2003 TortugaMan link
I just a geart idea for a cool new weapon.

It would be a large port weapon and would be like a huge beam cannon. The weapon would take up all of the energy in the battery (depending on how much capacity ur battery has like heavy battery vs. Low battery, the more damage it would do). It would take a couple of seconds to arm (in wich your ship is totally imobile and defenseless), but it would be clearly visible that it is charging up like the ship would start to glow etc.
The beam would have a large diamiter like 25-30 meters and would travel about 250-300m per second. The beam would also keep firing for about 5 seconds (u could maybe move the beam very slowly in the process)
It would do somewhere from 15000 damage to 25000 damage depending on what battery. The range would be about 5000 meters.

This weapon would be ideal for flying in large groups if they wanted to take out a target and the ship would obviously need escourt.
Jun 07, 2003 roguelazer link
I like it, but I see imminent rejection by the rest of the community. Just warning you.
Jun 07, 2003 HumpyThePenguin link
I love it, its like an energy version of the avalon, but dont give it 5 seconds of discharging that would be too Uber...
Jun 07, 2003 Suicidal Lemming link
I like,
i think it should drain 100 energy per second, and max out at 500 energy, when it is fully charged the battery will NOT recharge due to it requireing massive amounts of energy to be stable. It should require an additional battery which it will dry up and discard after each shot (ammo) and carry like 2 rounds.

I think a weapon like this deserves a 5 second discharge, but it might need for the ability of ships being ionized, so they turn slowly and move slowly, any ship that fires this would be ionized for 5 seconds after the blast. (and during the fireing of the blast)

And i agree with rogue, people with nerf guns are coming to rain on our parade.
Jun 08, 2003 Celebrim link
So, let me see...

This weapon is faster than any weapon we have now except the railgun...

It does more damage than any weapon we have now including the Avalon...

It can kill just about any player (except a Prom pilot) with one shot...

The weapon has in effect a proximity radius like a rocket...

The weapon has a longer range than any weapon we have now...

The weapon can keep killing players over a 5 second period...

Hmmm...

Do you think maybe the weapon might be a little too much? Perhaps instead of designing a weapon with every neat feature you want it to have, try designing it with as few features as it would take for you to want to use it. One rule of thumb would be, if you wouldn't want to see bots armed with this weapon then the weapon is too powerful.

Beyond that, continiously updated weapons (as in a beam weapons that sweeps around) are I understand technically unfeasible.

For a similar idea (but not nearly as powerful), consider the 'Soliton Cannon' on the 'toys' thread.
Jun 08, 2003 Eldrad link
Ok... I've got a question.

1) Are you saying the gun would do 15000-25000 over the 5 seconds?
OR
2) 15000-25000 instantaneously?

If you're saying 1 then it isn't too much of an uber weapon. That's 3000-5000 damage a second compared to the tach which is 4000 damage per second.

If you're saying 2 then I don't understand how it would work. If you hit a prom, then moved away from them and hit them again would it do 30000-50000? And if you hit a ship for the full 5 seconds without ever missing (for example the Frigate). Also the 5km range is a little extreme, seeing as most weapons energy weapons have a range of about a tenth of that, and you couldn't hit anything at 5km except the Frigate, and once they program the frigate to move you couldn't hit that either.

If it does 15000-25000 damage over 5 seconds I think it would be a fairly reasonable weapon. But Sui is right that the ships would need a slower turning speed while firing, because on a prom or hog it would just be ridiculous.
Jun 08, 2003 TortugaMan link
ya i think that doing 15000-25000 over the 5 seconds is probably better and more reasonable.

Just remeber the weapon takes a long time to arm so if a pilot really wanted to, he could get away.

I guess that the range should be down to 2000m (remeber its a beam)
Jun 08, 2003 roguelazer link
Well, 2000m is ok, but don't take it any lower. I HATE these short range weapons. I cannot use a single weapon except the avalon at more than 700m. It's STUPID because that means the bots have greater range than me. We NEED a long-range energy weapon.
Jun 08, 2003 HumpyThePenguin link
So does the frig when It comes out, right now you can just pop out a few avalons from an extreme distance away and the frig cant touch you.
Jun 08, 2003 roguelazer link
Aye, but when it moves the whole situation will be different. The "wing position" won't exist, and nukes will have to actually be targeted.
Jun 08, 2003 Suicidal Lemming link
Celebrim go away. NOW.

I think it shoud create a beem the size of the ship you are launching it from, a small ship launching a big beam doesn't look very real now does it?
Jun 08, 2003 HumpyThePenguin link
But rogue, any skilled pilot(And I dont mean fighting) Can match speed with the frigate and get in the wing position, given the suggestions for frig top speed, all you need is a lot of good timing. and since the frig wont be turning or moving very fast AND its 800m long Id think it would be pretty easy to dump a few Avalons into its hull.

Oh yes, Clebrim, GET OUT OF THIS THREAD!
This is a good idea and just needs a little tweaking, not destructive criticism that destroys it!
Jun 08, 2003 roguelazer link
Well, if Celebrim (I think it was Celebrim, if it wasn't, tell me and I'll edit)'s solution for frig speed of far greater than fighter speed, it'd be impossible.
Jun 08, 2003 zamzx zik link
awww dont be mean to Celebrim.
Jun 08, 2003 Eldrad link
When it's said to be a beam does this mean that it's going to be a straight line or would it curve as you rotated after it fired? If it stays a straight line I think it would be way to powerful because a prom could move the far end 2121m in one second.

The only use for such a long range is hitting a stationary target. Since targets probably won't remain stationary as the game developes I don't see the point in designing guns to exploit the fact that the game is still a test. I think energy weapons have a 3 second range. I don't see why this is it makes sense for this weapon to have an 8 second range, which will looke wierd if it's only discharging for 5 seconds.

As for the size of the beam looking wierd Sui pointed out, the visual effect itself could be a thin beam with some sort of discharge covering the disired area of effect. All the ships have actual guns on them which appear to be far less tham 1m in diameter there for a 30m diameter beam would look odd coming out of any of them.
Jun 08, 2003 Suicidal Lemming link
Zamz, i wasn't really being mean to him, it's just that he posted many points of the weapon he didn't like, he could of pointed out a problem then say how it could of been fixedm thats what he should do, not just start a post with criticism, we need constructive criticism.
Jun 08, 2003 Celebrim link
"FYI - any weapon that fires more than about 15 shots/second has potential to cause enormous lag. Each shot fired requires one network packet to be sent, so the more you fire, the slower things get."

--Vlad

If the beam is continious, then it isn't it effectively being 'fired' (updated position of object) more or less continiously, ei much more often than 15 shots/second. I would think it would be problimatic to keep track of the position of the beam object. Imagine the circumstance of the beam being tracked according to its last known vector, the client updating the server with a packet .2 seconds old, and the beam suddenly swiveling around like a flashlight. Does the beam cut things that it passes through while swiveling back to its correct position, even though it should have missed them? Does the beam fail to cut things that it would have cutted had the beam been correctly tracked the whole time?

What exactly does 25,000 damage mean in terms of a continious weapon? 25,000 every second? 25,000 every 5 seconds? 1250 every 1/20th of a second? 250 every 1/20th of a second? 25,000 every 1/20th of a second? You do see how that totally changes the nature of the weapon right? 25,000 every 5 seconds applied continiously _is_ the same as 250 applied every 1/20th of a second, but try holding a beam onto a target once it gets hit and starts to evade. It wouldn't be like 'zap! and boom!'. Does this nerf the weapon or balance it? I have no idea. But, whether it does or not, it wouldn't be the sort of weapon that the original poster seemed to have envisioned in the first place - which based on his comments was more like 'zap! and boom!'.

Not that I'm sure that the original poster clearly envisioned how the weapon would work. I am more inclined to think that he pictured it in his head and went, "Oh, Cool!!!". Which is fine, but you got to get that sucker to work if you are a game maker and not a movie maker.

You can get mad at me all you want, but its not my fault if you post an idea that you haven't fully thought through yet. I wasn't even particularly harsh, I just said, "You know, I don't think you've fully thought through this idea of yours yet.", and that's all I'm basically saying now.

Now, as far as giving suggestions on how to make this work, I can't - well, not at least without totally taking over the design. There are simply too many problems with this weapon, not the least of which is that superficially it has too many 'good' things about it. And more gimicky restrictions doesn't appeal to me either. Its already got enough gimicky restrictions. If the designer wants my advice, or if someone else would like my advice, they should pick 2 or 3 attributes of the weapon that are most important to them to keep and then we can try to see what we might could do for the rest.

One thing that probably ought to go if only to keep the weapon within the bounds of what we know can be done with the current code is remove the continiuity of the beam. You think the lightning mine produces problems when it interacts with lag, you just try this puppy. As far as 'wide munition' weapons go, obviously, my idea was for something like the above mentioned soliton cannon (#106 in the toys thread). If you want something more powerful than that, combining something like the idea of the soliton cannon with something like idea of the charge cannon would be something like the original posters idea.

roguelazer: I have no idea what you are talking about. The only time I remember talking about capital ship speed directly, is when I got into an arguement with someone who said that they should have a top speed of 5m/s and I said that that was ridiculously slow. I have suggested in two or three places that a capital ship needs to vacate its position in at most 6-10 seconds in order to be tactically interesting, but that applies a top speed of more like 70m/s and since fighters regularly top 150m/s I don't think I'm even close to suggesting capital ship's being faster than fighters.

PS: AFAIC, one interesting place to start would be to take the 'soliton cannon', give it a charging time, reduce the damage to 400 or so per shot, but give it a 'burst fire mode' where it fires continously for 3-5 seconds at a rate of 10 shots per second. The grapic could be comet like and quite large, giving the impression of a relatively continious (pulsating) beam.
Jun 09, 2003 Suicidal Lemming link
Just make the cannon fire 10 shots a second and have the shots' graphic be fairly long so they appear to be continous.
Jun 09, 2003 TortugaMan link
look this is just an idea nothing really to make such a big deal out of. This is why they have this message board so if the devs want to use this, they can adapt all the ideas, not just the first one.
There is no reason to imply that I demand it be the way i first mentioned it. I knew there would be faults and its good to point them out, but try not to over react.
Jun 09, 2003 Celebrim link
TortugaMan: When I start putting words in all caps to emphasize them, THEN I'm overreacting. ;)

There is nothing really wrong with the idea, just its implementation. It did cause me to think of the idea of a 'burst fire' energy weapon, which is not an idea I had had before.

At present the way I see the weapon is:

"Subspace Pulse Cannon" (L) - 30,000 cr
Velocity: 210 m/s
Range: 6 seconds
Damage: 400
Proximity: 18m*
Explosive Burst: N/A
Cycling: .1s*
Energy/Shot: Special*
Special: The subspace pulse cannon (SPC) generates a distortion in the fabric of space which stresses and distorts all matter in its path. The wave front of each pulse is 36m in diameter, and can pass through small objects without loss of energy. To arm the SPC, at least 300 power must be applied at a rate of 100 energy/second. If power runs out before charging can be completed, all energy is lost. The most power that can be applied to the SPC is 500, after which the armed SPC can be held charged at a cost of 100 energy/second. When the trigger is released or power to hold the SPC charged runs out, the SPC fires 1 pulse for each 10 energy spent arming it at the rate of 10 pulses per second until the energy is spent. While the SPC is firing subspace distortions temporarily triple the effective mass of the firing vessel resulting in reduced manueverability.

It has nothing like the range you wanted, but it will do max. 20,000 damage if you just stay in its way and it does have something like the other features you were interested in.