I was continuing a game last night when i got flash about how Super weapons could be added. If this is been proposed before by someone else please ignore it, don't wanna steal someone's idea .png" alt="smiley: " title="" />



So here my thoughts.



Lets take for example 3 types of super weapons 1 kinetic type, lets call it Mass Driver, 1 beam call it Phaser and 1 missile name it Anti-matter Torpedo. You can equip only one of those per ship and only on Dreadnought (or maybe Battleship too). If you equip Mass Driver thats it not more super weapons and only one per ship.

Also those weapons needs massive space so if someone picks them up he will lose some serious space on that ship.



Now during battle how those weapons could used. The answer is as battle cards. The battle card that activates the weapon comes along when you research that weapon.

The weapons themselves follow the rules of normal ones, meaning the torpedo is more effective on long-medium range the beam all-around and the mass driver at mediu-melee phase.

The super weapon battle cards can be used, each, only once per battle and for a bit more balance with some Dust cost also (dont know how much would be considered normal :confused

Also using a super weapon battle card holds a catch. Using them prevents you from using any other battle card type, its just a normal battle card after all, and the ship that carries the super weapon that you decide to activate, cant use the same type of weapons on board. For example if your Dreadnought carries a Mass Driver and you decide to fire it at melee range the ship will not fire any other kinetic weapon it may have, only the Mass Driver. The other ships go as normal but with no other battle card benefit.



Each weapon type activated should have some bonuses just like normal battle cards.



So Mass Driver ignores 50% of ship armor

The Phaser is continuous beam that never misses (not as much damage as Mass Driver or Torpedo) and if it destroys a ship during the phase its activated it moves to another target till the end of the phase.

And the Torpedo does area of effect damage



If there is more than one ship that carries a super weapon and you play the equivalent battle card it activates that super weapon on all ships



Now in order to keep it a bit balanced and not load super weapons on all ships on the fleet, the super weapons raises the construction cost of that ship A LOT. Also we could introduce 3 new resource types needed to build those weapons. They should be a bit rare too, something like Uranium in Civ series. Something that can make you go to war in order to acquire it



Thats my thoughts, more food for thought and as i said if someone already mentioned them before ignore the post .png" alt="smiley: " title="" />

You said battle cards, so I instantly agreed.

I forgot to mention that the super weapon battle cards could be countered as normal but to spice it a bit, for example you pick Torpedo super weapon the only battle card that counters it would be Camouflage and not all the Defence type cards.

Battle cards that could be constituted as "super weapons" already exist in game, and are extremely powerful. The Hero Abilities.

if you wanted to do something along the lines of the original idea, simply adding construction costs is not enough to balance it. well developed empires can have huge production values on systems that produce teched dreadnaughts in a few turns, adding another 2 turns to a dread doesnt do much in the grand scheme of balancing. If you wanted to add these as end tech-tree abilities (antimatter torpedo for finishing the missile line for example) I would still recommend limiting their use to one ship per fleet and only on dreadnaughts taking a good chunk of the end-game weight values.

Wouldn't the battle cards imply that you can only fire 3 shots per battle?



And with the possibility with being blocked?

You can use it 3 times per battle, point is if you choose to use a super weapon card the ship that fires cannot use its other weapons of that type (was my first thought) example if you fire a torpedo the ship will not fire any other missile that round but it could also be to not fire any other weapon at all. Now in order to be viable i was thinking those weapons to be blocked only from specific cards, one per weapon type, that is researched normaly from the tech tree like camouflage countering the torpedo but only camouflage can block it and all the defence type cards