Forums » Suggestions
Weapon Idea
I was using the std gatling gun today, and it's a great weapon. But I think it could be better with a couple of improvements:
1) Make it either Small or Medium slot. Large is too big.
2) Make it more accurate. This would be cooler as a rapid-fire weapon with the accuracy of a phased blaster or so
3) Decrease damage to 200/shot
4) Keep fire rate and energy usage the same
5) Increase range to 800m
Just a thought...
1) Make it either Small or Medium slot. Large is too big.
2) Make it more accurate. This would be cooler as a rapid-fire weapon with the accuracy of a phased blaster or so
3) Decrease damage to 200/shot
4) Keep fire rate and energy usage the same
5) Increase range to 800m
Just a thought...
I like the fact that it is a large slot. Dispite it's lack of auto aim, any monkey in a worthog can still kill just about anything but a valk/cent. If said "medium slot" was avalible, I would imagine that it would be put on the hornet, and that's just something really scary.
but 200/shot is half the damage now, and cent/valk can dodge just about anything.
What does range increase do except allow you to shoot the frigate without getting shot?
long range dogfights. at 1km
for long range battles we could have sheilds like in dune, they don't actually stop anything they just slow it down, this would be better for short range battles too.
Currently, all energy weapon fights that I've seen take place at less than 100m, with opponents trying to ram each other. It'd be nice to have long-range battles. Even rockets are close-range now, and that's not cool.
roguelaser: What does 'long range mean'? At above 400m, the 10-20m long ships that we have are very small on screen, even with a large high resolution monitor. If fights between opponents occur on average at a sufficiently high range, players will not ever be able to appreciate the visuals produced by the opponents ship moving about and firing.
One of the reasons fights occur at such short ranges now is that the penalty for getting hit is now relatively low. Average damages per second are falling, and average hull points on a ship are climbing. This encourages bolder tactics by the players, as well as limits the ability of a player to deter another player from over runing them. Prior to the damage fix, you didn't dare close to 100m because one lucky hit or bad move on your part, and the fight was over.
And yet we all want fights to last a reasonable length of time, right?
Another problem a would be designer of 'long range weapons' faces is increasing the range on the fight without increasing the effectiveness of the weapon at short range even more.
Yet another challenge faced by a designer that wants fight to occur at longer ranges is that to a certain extent as the fight becomes more and more separated, the more static and uninteresting the tactics become. A fight at 'short range' involves twisting and looping around the opponent. A fight at 'long range' involves only small changes in the position of the combatants relative to the distance between them. At a sufficiently large distance with point like weapons the fight superficially appears to be occcuring between stationary foes. There is no such thing as a 'long range dogfight'. Dogfighting is by necessity something that occurs at 'short range' relative to the velocities of the combatants.
Mind you, I'm not saying that we shouldn't have longer ranged weapons than we do now (especially aboard the capital ships, that absolutely need them IMO), but that there are reasons to keep the fights in the 100-400m range.
One of the reasons fights occur at such short ranges now is that the penalty for getting hit is now relatively low. Average damages per second are falling, and average hull points on a ship are climbing. This encourages bolder tactics by the players, as well as limits the ability of a player to deter another player from over runing them. Prior to the damage fix, you didn't dare close to 100m because one lucky hit or bad move on your part, and the fight was over.
And yet we all want fights to last a reasonable length of time, right?
Another problem a would be designer of 'long range weapons' faces is increasing the range on the fight without increasing the effectiveness of the weapon at short range even more.
Yet another challenge faced by a designer that wants fight to occur at longer ranges is that to a certain extent as the fight becomes more and more separated, the more static and uninteresting the tactics become. A fight at 'short range' involves twisting and looping around the opponent. A fight at 'long range' involves only small changes in the position of the combatants relative to the distance between them. At a sufficiently large distance with point like weapons the fight superficially appears to be occcuring between stationary foes. There is no such thing as a 'long range dogfight'. Dogfighting is by necessity something that occurs at 'short range' relative to the velocities of the combatants.
Mind you, I'm not saying that we shouldn't have longer ranged weapons than we do now (especially aboard the capital ships, that absolutely need them IMO), but that there are reasons to keep the fights in the 100-400m range.
I understand the desire for longer range battles. What I'm wondering is why anyone thinks increasing the max range will create this. The max range is normally around 600m or so, but fights all happen at 100m as roguelazer said, if the range was 900 million km the fights would still all happen at 100m because it is easy to dodge things at longer ranges. It's not a function of the max range, it's the weapons speed. (Just as a note I'm strongly against increasing weapons' speed)
Does anyone fight another player and go... wow those would have been wonderful hits... but they disappeared before they got that far. Have you shot at the station defenses when you're standing still 300m away? I have I'll tell you what happens about 50% of the time your shots don't hit because the smallest increment of direction is too large. You have no hope of hitting an accelerating target. At the moment increasing ranges of guns would only give the server more to think about and allow you to shoot the frigate without fear of the explosion killing you.
Does anyone fight another player and go... wow those would have been wonderful hits... but they disappeared before they got that far. Have you shot at the station defenses when you're standing still 300m away? I have I'll tell you what happens about 50% of the time your shots don't hit because the smallest increment of direction is too large. You have no hope of hitting an accelerating target. At the moment increasing ranges of guns would only give the server more to think about and allow you to shoot the frigate without fear of the explosion killing you.
Still, it would be nice to have a few "sniper weapons" with longer ranges for those that like to take long shots. Some sort of beam weapon that strikes instantaneously but uses a lot of energy/has a low firing rate would be nice. Like the railgun, except faster/longer range.
Short-range fights often turn into barrel roll waltzes that more closely resemble shooting range contests than dogfights. We need people to teach us newbs more tactics/maneuvers!!! I swear I sometimes feel like I've been on a merry-go-round too long after playing this game.
Short-range fights often turn into barrel roll waltzes that more closely resemble shooting range contests than dogfights. We need people to teach us newbs more tactics/maneuvers!!! I swear I sometimes feel like I've been on a merry-go-round too long after playing this game.
I think the reason for the stupid barrel roll waltzes is the poor responce of aim-bot to them. Hense my current hiatus from the game (probably to be at least temporarily over to play 3.2.6, but nonetheless I'm a wee bit annoyed by the aim bot right now).
/me can't be annoyed because of the aimbot, because I don't even know what the aimbot is
cheers
cheers
It's not actaully barrel rolls. I just use std strafe and the bots hit me with about 1 out of every 20 shots at most.
Currently there is no "max range" on any of the guns, they all have a "max time" there fore simply increasing the speed increases the range.
But most people don't want to increase the speed. Frankly, I'm with them. I would like to see SOME fast weapons, but a gauss cannon at 800m/s is scary.
A small slot gatling...
Yes I would love a rapid fire 180 m/s weapon x3 on my valk too...fun.
Reread the post, from what I understand you want a gat type weapon...aka rapid fire and random, on a small port. Decreasing the accuracy, aka speed, to that of a phase blaster sounds reasonable...but one thing to consider is the multiple useage of such a weapon, like on a valk.
Yes I would love a rapid fire 180 m/s weapon x3 on my valk too...fun.
Reread the post, from what I understand you want a gat type weapon...aka rapid fire and random, on a small port. Decreasing the accuracy, aka speed, to that of a phase blaster sounds reasonable...but one thing to consider is the multiple useage of such a weapon, like on a valk.
I agree that making weapons fast makes them much better in close range as well as making them viable at longer ranges and is there fore undesireable, but just increasing the max range will only increase the server load, it will never hit anything.
What about a weapon that instantaneously creates an explosion a certain distance away from the ship? (Like the explode-o-ray from Calvin and Hobbes) It could sorta work like the charged cannon, the longer you held down the trigger, the further out the explosion would occur until it maxxed out at 1 km. That way you would have a good long ranged sniping weapon that wouldn't be as effective at short range.