Before you flame me, long time forum users, I did skim down the lists and did not see exactly these suggestions.



I was thinking from my long term obsession with games like Master of Orion 2 and favorite sci-fi shows, we need a lot more variety in weapon design and placement.



I'd like to suggest (or re-suggest) some of the following:



Weapon Mounts:



Spinal: 5x the weight for 10x the damage. Long range, no penalty. Mid-range -25% accuracy. Cannot be used in short.

Turret: 5x the weight, 5x damage. Normal accuracy all ranges.

Hard Mount: 2.5x the weight for 5x the damage. -25% accuracy long range, normal accuracy mid-range broadsides. +25% accuracy for short range punch.

Point: Same as current. Normal short range / also missile and fighter intercept.



Weapon Configurations:



Rapid Fire: Kinetic upgrade: -Accuracy, +number of shots

Continuous: Beam weapon damage x3, weight x3

Pulse: Beam weapon shots x3, weight x3

Multi-warhead: Missile weight x3, number of missiles x 5

Ionic Charge: Beam: 25% chance to pierce shields.

Shield Piercing: 3x weight. Missiles ignores shields.



Movement Adders:

• Engine Level 1: 3% evasion chance
• Engine Level 2: 6% "
• Engine Level 3: 9% "
• Engine Level 4: 12% "
• Engine Level 5: 15% "
  
  

I would even include something like if Fleet A's movement is 25% more than Fleet B's, then Fleet A can fire one round unanswered due to highly increased mobility.



Targeting Adders:



Same as the engine evasion numbers for accuracy increases.



Armors:



Each armor upgrade adds +% to the ship's hp. Xentronium: 25% hp increase, Admantium: 30% increase, etc.



Shields:



Shield layering effects mitigate all damage, shields absorb 100% of all beam damage, 50% of missile and kinetic.



Other:



Lightning Field - Flash Gordon re-do anyone?

Quantum Tunneling - Missile weight x 10, Cannot be blocked

Shield Disrupters - Like a gatling pulse cannon, only damages shields

Graviton Beams - Slows enemy ships, reducing evasion



Not a complete list, but I'd like to get some feedback before I spend too much time on ideas like this.



Thanks for reading,



Melancholy

We don't flame on this forum. We may flame the flamers, sometimes, though. We like happiness and bliss.

Raaaaagh da flamzzzzz!



Any way, the changes for the weapon configs sound possible as do the evasion on the engines.

And increasing your own accuracy is possible.



Not sure how the mounts works, unless it too is a weapon modifier like the weapon config.



Armor is good and workable



However shields working as an omni-defence is something that very early in the code was made impossible if they wanted to have defenses working how they are.



However you could create a HP armor mod that generates a set number of HP per round to simulate shields.



Technically this is all code able even to the modders (Not that I am volunteering) but dev posishing on the ideas would of course be a better idea.





As to my opinion: The weapon mounts and configs seem to have divergent purposes, why not just combine them into a set of weapon mounts for weapon types?

The extra evasion from the engines is a good idea, as long as the bonus goes down for larger ships, otherwise dreads will be as agile as corvettes.

Increasing your accuracy seems a little strange when weapons should be all they can be already.

Armor % increases might be good.

and omni defenses most likely wont make it into the game as long as armor is in the role, personally I would prefer defenses to take a backseat to HP mods.

Specifically to the mount versus configuration:



The weapon mounts are more range specific.



Spinal mounts are massive, straight ahead single point damage. Imagine a cannon / laser that actually slows the ship when you fire, the power drain is so great. You have to be pointing directly at the target, but the damage would be incredible. This would be an anti-star base weapon, or anti-capital ship gun. So long range would be the preferred, less effective mid range (as it's easier to evade), cannot be used in short, since short is for weapon broadsides, etc. Examples: Nova Cannon from Warhammer 40k, the Excaliber class from B5.



Turrets: Would be mounted top and bottom only, but are stacked so they can fire at any angle. Ex. The human battleships in B5. Massive weight and space requirements (360 degree mobility takes a lot of space) but good punch and accuracy at any range.



Hard Mounts: Essentially like the cannons of the old sailing vessels, you need to wait before the target is in range. These are hard wired, hard mounted, with very little angular adjustment, so they are typically very powerful. So close range, with little or no chance to hit at long.



Point Defense: Close range only, these blister turrets are typically anti-missile, anti-fighter turrets. When in short range they can add some punch to ship-to-ship, but they'd be almost worthless against a capital ship's armor.



And the configurations would be the choice between single shot power (is your race accurate?) or the 'pray and spray' approach.



Beams:



Pulse: I'm adding massive weight for cooling systems, but I can now fire 3x as many shots, some added space.

Continuous: A single point beam for puncturing and massive damage, 3x the space for energy capacitors, some added weight. Increased accuracy.

Ionic Charge: The charge is now an ionic blast in front of the energy round behind. Has a chance to overwhelm local shields, increasing pierce chance. Added weight and space for the secondary chamber.



Kinetics:



Rapid Fire: Vulcan rounds with rapid load feeders. Kinetic shots increased by 3x. Weight by 3x, space by 1.5.

Armor Piercing: Higher velocity rounds with magnetic spin. Chance to pierce deflectors. Weight 1.5x, space 3x for the charging equipment.



Missiles:



Multiple warheads: Increased weight and space, -25% interception

ECCM: 25% chance to ignore flak, increased weight and space

Photon / Energy Torpedos: Ignores flak, based on shields.

Kinetic Warhead: Ignores flak, based on deflection.



There are a lot of options that you could use to give us some very different abilites. Maybe your weapons are dense, heavy things, but you have light engines that take up space. Or super dense armor that's paper thin (requiring no space, but taking massive weight).



I used to spend hours on other games just tweaking ship design to get the most bang for my buck.



Further development... what do you think?

Sounds good, although this would require a massive overhaul of the games design to fit it in.



Could ships be required to firstly equip a number of mounts (Taking up the ships tonnage space) and then have weapons become accessible to be assigned to the appropriate mounts?



From there each mount/weapon type could be further modified with how and what they will be firing.



That is a lot of customization, which is good but I feel you may need to work on a simple and effective way of its implementation if you want to get it in the game.

Huge amount of customization? Not really. It was in Master of Orion 2, even as far back as the old MechWarrior space board game.



Weapon mounts either cannot fire at certain ranges or reduced accuracy per phase? Shouldn't be more than a few blocks of code.

Different mounts require different space and weight? That's just an additional drop down and mutlipliers.

Different configurations requirements? Same as above.



The only hard part would be the actual graphics of the mega cannon blasting a beam into the new starbase... but something leads me to believe they're going to go that route anyway in the expansions.



I mean you have to admit the design interface is very vanilla. Where's my carrier with torpedo bombers? My missile ships with multiport racks? Where's my short range sluggers with heavy armor? Long range beam vessels?



My mod interface isn't working or I'd look into this further.

melancholy wrote:
Huge amount of customization? Not really. It was in Master of Orion 2, even as far back as the old MechWarrior space board game.

Well in comparison.

Weapon mounts either cannot fire at certain ranges or reduced accuracy per phase? Shouldn't be more than a few blocks of code.

Different mounts require different space and weight? That's just an additional drop down and mutlipliers.

Different configurations requirements? Same as above.

Easy enough to code, but in regards to game balance and the style of the UI it may be hard to fit them in.



Not that this is a bad idea.

The only hard part would be the actual graphics of the mega cannon blasting a beam into the new starbase... but something leads me to believe they're going to go that route anyway in the expansions.

Well ships in ES use firing ports to keep weapons internal, preventing them from being blown off and keeping the art of the units very slick.



As for larger weapons, I would guess as larger weapon ports.

I mean you have to admit the design interface is very vanilla. Where's my carrier with torpedo bombers? My missile ships with multiport racks? Where's my short range sluggers with heavy armor? Long range beam vessels?



My mod interface isn't working or I'd look into this further.

Carrier warfare has been a accepted idea for a long time, the implementation of them has been of heated discussion many times.

Try this topic: /#/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/11335-discussion-strikecraft-implementation. Feel mfree to add your own thoughts on the ideas discussed and be sure to add your own!



"My missile ships with multiport racks? Where's my short range sluggers with heavy armor? Long range beam vessels?"



As in visually? This has been long suggested, although never denied by the devs.

"As for larger weapons, I would guess as larger weapon ports."



Why not allow the tonnage system to give tonnage reductions on larger guns the higher the tonnage of the ship is? The larger the base tonnage, the lighter the proposed heavy weapons get. It would be ridiculous, to see destroyers with the same large guns a dreadnought has.



----



Beams:



Pulse: I'm adding massive weight for cooling systems, but I can now fire 3x as many shots, some added space.

Continuous: A single point beam for puncturing and massive damage, 3x the space for energy capacitors, some added weight. Increased accuracy.

Ionic Charge: The charge is now an ionic blast in front of the energy round behind. Has a chance to overwhelm local shields, increasing pierce chance. Added weight and space for the secondary chamber.



Kinetics:



Rapid Fire: Vulcan rounds with rapid load feeders. Kinetic shots increased by 3x. Weight by 3x, space by 1.5.

Armor Piercing: Higher velocity rounds with magnetic spin. Chance to pierce deflectors. Weight 1.5x, space 3x for the charging equipment.



Missiles:



Multiple warheads: Increased weight and space, -25% interception

ECCM: 25% chance to ignore flak, increased weight and space

Photon / Energy Torpedos: Ignores flak, based on shields.

Kinetic Warhead: Ignores flak, based on deflection.



---



Good suggestions, but no counters.



For defense, I would offer,



I.Support Module



Double Hulls Module

Requires Titanium-70

Limit 1

Doubles the total HP of the ship.

70 Tonnage



Armor Module



Unstable Plating

+600 HP

Self detonating

-the self detonation works like this: if a single attack hits for more than 600 damage, the plates self destruct for 300 damage only. Therefore, you only take 300 damage overall and not 600. You have 300 hp in exchange.



Scrambler Armor

+500 HP

Delaying Charges

-delaying charges work like this; instead of taking the damage during the phase, damage is delayed and applied in the next phase.



I don't know what to add with the defense and offense modules, as adding any more to them would make the rock paper scissors foundation irrelevant.



but some defenses would go between the three classes. Same with the offense modules.