There have been many a discussion about how laser weapons should be more beamy and not so phew phew and changing colors and what not so I thought of a way that could be implemented in a way that everyone could get what they want.



What if they could add a little button like a star or any identifier in the corner of the weapon type in the ship design screen. You click it and a tooltip pops up where you are given lets say three options because that i believe all scifi laser weapons can be designated into 3 categories, the single burst phew phew we have now. a more solid but short burst beam (akin to Asgard Beam weapons installed on the Daedalus, Stargate) and the long duration beams found in star trek. Then under those choices you got a color box and upon clicking a that another tooltip could open given several choice of color. It would be nice if it would detect the advanced weapon type so that you could add multiple of the same kind. That way you could have Long Beam and burst shot on the same ship. If you wanted to you could create a rainbow of weapons fire of an assortment of color because you know someone will try... probably me



The same could be done for other weapon choices as well, could give kinetic more options to say machine fire it is now to solid heavy shots that would be much slower to fire like a cannon. Missiles could have an option to have high yield or low yield, high being what it is now, firing once and doing massive damage and low being where it would fire continuous over the course of a phase to lower damage. All of this is of course just for Aesthetics and would still deal the same amount of damage at the end of a phase.



Using this method could be a way to change other things as well like shield color, the main tint of a ship or the color of the engine fire.



As this is just a purely Aesthetic suggestion if of course would come after any kind real addition that adds to the core the of the game but i believe would add more life into the battle portion if you could directly change what kind of weapons your ships fight with and what color they are

I like how you're thinking about this.



+ Support

I entirely agree. sometimes I'm in a sweeping death ray mood, other times, a barrage of laser fire is my style. Hope they adopt this idea!

That's an amazing idea! Good job!

Gotta agree. But to be honest when it comes to the colour of weapon fire I'd be happy for it just to be your races colour. Going for the big evil Cravers with a red coloured nation firing bright blue lasers kinda kills the mood for me.

For AIs the default set color should be tied to what ever color is given to them during the game creation screen, I could think a few reason while someone would might want to have to AIs to have the same color, maybe RPing that there allies and share weapons or what have you. But having it set to the color chosen to be its player color would be fine with me

I don't think that it is necessary to have the control to change the look of the lasers also this would nice. But I do like the idea of different looks (laserbeam, pulselaser, scatterlaser, etc) and so I totally agree with that.

Moved to the proposals section.

It is the sort of addition that makes what is essentially an aesthetic only combat system that bit more involving.

Gotta say I love this idea. It's the small things that add up to a solid product, and having something like this really adds to the enjoyment of the game.