Forums » Suggestions

Energy Weapon Heat

Dec 24, 2004 Phoenix_I link
Alright, I know this was already suggested sometime back in alpha testing, but I can't find the thread, so I'm going to bring the idea back up. With the new patch most ships no longer have infiniturbo and require insane amounts of energy to turbo. So the idea is: Instead of having energy weapons require energy, each energy weapon will generate a certain amount of heat, each weapon would be differant in the amount of heat they generate and the cooldown time between firing. Each weapon will have an orange colored bar like the current energy bar you can fire until it reaches the bottom, like energy and then you have to wait for the weapon to "cooldown." Each weapon would be differant, take the n3 for example. lets say it generates 5 heat units per shot and the n3 has a maximum heat tolerance of 100 heat units, so you could fire 20 shots then the weapon would have to cool down. This would work exactly like the current energy consumption except it will let pilots turbo and fire at the same time.

Sorry, I wrote this in about 2 minutes off the top of my head, so I may have said a couple things twice.
Dec 24, 2004 overdork link
Seems like a good idea to me.

Realistically, it doesn't make munch sense to have your weapons powered by the very source that propels your ship.

It could also work conversely, your engines can only sustain turbo for so long before they overheat.

darn, this a difficult issue to satisfying most current players.
I am confident some genius here will develop the solution.
Dec 24, 2004 Tyrdium link
You already can turbo and shoot at the same time. It just drains your batteries hella fast.
Dec 24, 2004 Starfisher link
That was the whole point of his post Tyr...

You have these fast ships which are supposed to be fast to catch things, but when they do catch whatever they're chasing they can't fire their weapons. So they effectively can't do what they're supposed to.

I think the best solution to that problem is to make rockets viable again, but this might do it as well.
Dec 25, 2004 Spider link
Hmm, Yes. I think that might be what comes out of this tweak towards the end.

Theese thoughts are fairly unstructured, but may well prove to display it.

you have the following types of ships:

fighters with highish drain and fast boost, think 65e/s

fighters with slightly lower drain and slightly lower armor+mass. Theese have less mass, so they can boost at the same rate with a lighter thrust (I'll come to this)

Fighters with heavier armor, a slightly higher drain, and a slight more mass + thrust. Theese ships can accelerate the same speed as the first kinds of fighters, but can also carry off a touch more arms.

Currently, theese are a touch unbalanced, there are two vultures that fit the latter description, the SVG and the Corvus vult. The high drain makes them more or less useless with energyweapons, however they can very effectively push around rockets. of course, they can take energy, and will act a bit better with them in combat than other ships do, because they will accelerate faster and push their weapons around, at the cost of losing shots.

The lighter kinds of ships will behave better in a chase, where they are hampered by heavier weapons, they can take lighter weapons (energy mostly) and after the same time as the heavier would be out of energy, theese have a bit energy left to shoot.

Important here is that I'm talking about very small differences, just enough to be noticable, but not enough to make a combination of weapons unusable on the various ships. ie, a light energy weapon on the heavy fighter should not be a godlike ship that acts like the old valks with 2N3.

The important thing to note is that a rocket equipped ship has far higher needs on how they push themselves around, you use the ship as your weapon, and need very good control of your direction and acceleration, so the strength of the engines is very important in the end. and the only way to balance this out towards energyweapons, and not make the stronger ships the ultimate fighters, is to offput it with a higher energyusage.

This doesn't mean that I think that the various ships are balanced right now, for example the corvus vulturis is FAR too high in its drain compared to its power, and I think the SVG could do with more push, not necessarily a lower drain though.

Yes, I completly advocate making a certain set of ships as viable rocketpushers. They are still useful for the energycrowd, in a dogfight, but will not stand up to the chase cases that people moan about. (I also believe theese ships should have the extra drain after you let go of tab removed, to make them capable of travelling a slightly longer distance )

For energyweapons, it seems completly viable to take a ship with less acceleration, same topspeed, less mass/armor and a bit less drain. See the extra armor simply as the ram-buffer that rocketeers need ;)