Weapons Listing:

[DarkSun]

That would certainly be a more realistic 'ram' maneuver than the current 'ram' weapon... if it's realistically doable this might be an interesting feature to implement after lag is fixed.

[Rivard]

Ok, cool!

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

We pretty much pulled the ram because it's a broken concept for a weapon.

Here are the issues.

1 - Almost guaranteed instakills.
Ramming does not care what ship you are, or what ship the enemy is.  A rammer easily takes out starbases on the first pass if the starbase doesn't kill them.  Thus there is a balance issue where a tiny scout with a RAM can kill a starbase more often then not, rendering the base no more than a sitting duck.

2 - Absurdly beyond the ability suspend disbelief, even with sci-fi settings.
"I have an idea, let's strap a bomb to the front of our ship and then slam it into the enemy ship!"

Needless to say, there are some questions to answer, such as why we need a bomb to ram someone? And : What happens to US when it goes off?


3 - Using the RAM is not 'fun'.
I rarely, if ever, used RAM.  The only times I found myself making any use of the thing was to make attack runs on sitting ducks, like starbases only because it was the most clinical method of quickly dealing with them.


IF we bring back the RAM, it has to be reworked.
1 - The seriousness of the damage inflicted upon impact has to be determined more adequately by reletive speed and mass.  Light taps and spinning in place over my ship should not kill me, especially if we're talking a chase down where I'm only a few units slower and the guy barely manages to draw even with me and gets a free kill, with him in a tiny scout.

2 - Using RAM should be a suicidal option.  Strapping a bomb to the front of your ship and then slamming headlong into the other guy as hard as you can is not what I would call, a Darwin Free environment. 

As I see it, ramming someone is last ditch.  If you can run away, you would.  If you can shoot, you will.  Ramming is one of those actions where: "You know we're dead either way, let's take this bastard with us!"  Something that is a tactical failure, but buys you strategic points on the larger scheme of things.

[Rivard]

I agree. I'm not sure if those elements of the RAM can be changed (speed/mass of ship) to make the RAM logical. A scout hitting a Battleship probably shouldn't do that much, but an effective ram might give the very large ships more playability.

Anyhoo, I could see it being an interesting tube 6 weapon on a battleship or dreadnaught. Sometimes a dogfight can get personal, and people may actually make that sacrifice. hehe

Good list though! I think you addressed all the issues.

[NiteHawk]

I agree in general for the most part, should be a weapon that does damage but also hurts yourself. In general its a silly weapon, but right now mostly too due to lag, where you can run into a player, and still have 'ram' on the server side even if it doesn't look like it, thus you can keep trying to ram crap when lagging.

I agree atm it's useless, i'll be changing alot of weapons for the new 2.0 version. But nothing new for 1.3 yet, just want to get it fully debugged, with AI which actually does things rather then run in circles and fail to pick up colonies.. :p

[AndreaPlanet]

I have some Ideas for new weapons. For me they are more interesting than fixing lag. I believe that with different kind of weapons we can develop more strategies and have more fun.

1) Self Destruct Weapon
Once activated I have 10 seconds, a nice counter, and booom anything at a relatively range dies or get severely damaged... of course I will die too. The timer is good because then it's harder to do any attacking strategy. It should not be used as an attack weapon. Would be nice to see the counter on screen even by enemies, with a nice beep beep. Enemies should get some time to escape. If the damage is very high we should disable any key input, else we can warp to a enemy base just few seconds before blowing up.

2) Bouncer
Used like a RAM, but instead of hitting the opponent it just bounce him away a lot. In a team we can play socker with an enemy. Throwing into the sun or into a dangerous area. Or just away from us if we are in danger.

3) Wave
Anything at a short range get's damaged.

4) Bullet Bouncer
Any bullets/torpedos/mines/etc will bounce away from me. Good in a dangerous moment.

5) Bullet Inverter
Any bullets/torpedos/mines/etc will bounce away from me, in the opposite direction from where they where coming, but they will change 'owner' so hitting back the enemy.

6) Shadow Ship
If activated i have a shadow of myself flying around me at random. You must first guess which one is the real ship, in the meantime I hit you with the other one.
Maybe option to shoot shadow bullets too, same time I am doing.

7) Drop a Rock
The possiblity to drop a big rock in the space that doesnt move (or very slowly). I can bounce on the rock. And I can protect myself from bullets.

Wave weapon.
We have laser and bullets (torp, cannon, etc). But we don't have waves. A round line / arc going out from us. With a short angle. Like a wave.
This is for fun, graphical fun. Because basically the strategy is like with torpedoes and cannons.

9) Sabotage/Dropper
A kind of bullet that when hit will drop/sabotage one of your ship items. Maybe not always but at a 30% success rate. Dropping could be funny. But also a 1 minute sabotage is interesting. Because then I can attack you better.

10) Freezer
A bullet that when hit will stop keyboard input for 3 seconds.

11) Blind
A bullet that when hit will make your screen black for 3 seconds.

12) Whirl
A bullet that when hit will make you rotate on yourself like crazy for 3 seconds.

Such kind of weapons will make bigger ships more interesting because since they have more slots they can fit more than one.

just my 2 cents after two months playing

Andrea

[AhrenJB]

Got an idea on the mines.  Let's recyle the RAM for them.

Essentially, make the mines deploy and scatter in a group of ten or twenty, each about a pixel in size.  Each one is a floating metal ball, a very simple, kinetic impact mine.  So what you do, is scale down the RAM code and apply it here.  If you coast through them very slowely.  They don't do too much damage, effectively forcing you to pretty much either avoid the spot, pick your way through them, or go through at a snail's pace.  If you rip through them at high fraction C sprint, say, chasing another ship or trying to run a blockade, the rip the F*%$ out of your ship, almost or actually destroying it if you hit enough of them.

What do you think?

Let's clarify this idea. There should be multiple mine types IMHO, but I like this. Essentially its a weapon you equip, say "Kinetic Mine". Let's say the mine has a 2-3 second timer before it deploys once you dump it off your ship. On deploying, it scatters 20ish pixel sized inert masses. Damage is directly proportional to the speed at which you collide with them. A scout could be entirely destroyed if it tried to drive blow through an area at full speed, cruisers heavily damaged. They shouldn't be too visible, so if you aren't paying attention while zipping about you could easily end up in a world of hurt. The timer should be just long enough so that you can't just dump it to take out ships that are closely following you.

I'd love to see something like this in game, I can see them being deployed in large clouds to force enemies to slow down when entering certain areas, etc. Like a speed bump... that can kill you.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

That's actually the true purpose of mines.  They're an Area Denial Weapon.

You are forced to either completely avoid the location, or travel through it very carefully, making you an easy target. 

Making mines more like how they're realisticly used makes their strategy all the better.

[Weylin]

What about a "Minefield" weapon that doesn't fire off multiple projectiles, but instead creates a field that deals out damage according to the targets speed going through it.

If you went through the field at 0.10c your shields would recharge at about the same rate as you take damage.
If you go through at 0.30, you may lose your shields all together, but reach the other end of the field before taking systems damage.
If you go through at 0.60+ it would result in death before reaching the other side of the field.

The field would deploy fully in the direction opposite of your movement. If you are moving UP, regardless of your rotation, the field will deploy below you.

Mines would require a set period of time before becoming active. say, 1 or 2 seconds.

So, if someone was trying to rush in all bat shit insane with flames, you could backpedal and deploy a minefield.
This would either force them to slow down and steer around it.
Plow through and end up being either killed or being made an easier target.
Getting trapped in the field, trying to evade fire at any significant speed would increase damage dealt as you try and get out.



There could be different varietys.
A medium sized all purpose minefield.
A tiny but deadly minefield
A very large EMP minefield that ravages shields, but does no harm to hull.
A short duration micro minefield made for destroying non-energy projectiles.

[Cykotitan]

This info might end up being useful for SFWiki

[ChillFactor]

this might be helpful on version history.

for a weapons listing you might as well just wait for 2.0

[NiteHawk]

this might be helpful on version history.

for a weapons listing you might as well just wait for 2.0

I agree with sir chillfactor here :p