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[numgun]

Hi everyone!

I've been playing plenty of FL mods lately and seen various new features and implementations for FL. Although somewhat I've rarely seen modders make any other types of weapons than a more powerful and faster plasma cannon. So I want to suggest some whole new weapons.

Now do note, these are ment to diverse normal combat and give players more choices and possibilities with these new weapons to create new tactics and add more variety to battles rather than getting the best and fastest powerful laser blaster in the game. The point is, not make the most ultimate gear be the goal of the player, but finding his own style and then challenging others and the NPC's with his own fighting style.


Spread weapons/Shotguns/Flak
Basically they fire at a slow rate of fire, but fire projectiles on a wide range. Either expanding into larger areas or immidiatly firing a screen of projectiles opposed to just one. The idea behind these weapons is to hit the enemy as close as possible to deal more damage. It can be effective against almost anything and requires skill to use in order to get close enough to deal massive damage. It would still remain effective on a medium range dealing some damage, but to get the best out of it, the player must shoot it as close as possible.


Sniper cannons/Long range lasers
These weapons are extremely powerful and the projectiles are extremely fast, but they have slow rate of fire and require precise aiming and patience from their user. There can be either gauss cannons or railguns that require ammo or high-power lasers.


Micromissiles
Basically small missiles with homing capabilities that are fired rapidly at large quantities and require cheap ammo. The missiles do relatively much less damage than an ordinary missile, but they come at a faster rate of fire and are plentiful.
Its like a missile machinegun basicly.


Nuclear/Reaction missiles
Basically a large expensive missile that has half the agility and speed of a normal missile, but a very large blast radius and deals high damage. The idea behind these is that they are risky to use.
The blast radius is a very large one and theres a good chance the user might get caught in the explosion himself. However this weapon is not necesarily one hit kill, but its main ability lies in the large blast radius that will ensure that atleast someone will get hurt nearby. Another special feature of the nuke is a lingering heat field that deals further damage for about 5-10 seconds in the area of detonation. Acting like a temporary area-denial weapon of sorts and/or further increasing its effectiveness against large/stationary objects like stations.

Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCrwmxQpDxA


Super burst laser/Beam blade
These are sort of close range "melee" weapons on fighters.
There can be various types of these weapons. For example, one type can fire an extremely powerful very short ranged laser beam or blast that will drain the weapon energy very fast down to zero. This weapon is considered like a beam sword/blade of sorts that drains all the energy of the player, but causes very high damage to objects at close range.


Grenade Launchers
These weapons fire grenades that fly a certain distance and detonate, creating a large field. Now this field can be either a powerful explosion or a shield draining EMP field.
The idea is a weapon that creates a large radius blast at a fixed distance after firing it. Grenades use ammunition and there can be either a normal exploding type or an EMP field grenade launcher. For the EMP field, the effect stays for about 3-5 seconds after detonating.


High rate gattling lasers
Basically like the normal energy weapons, but fire weak shots at a fast rate.


Cluster missiles
They act like normal missiles, but upon detonating, they send out a bunch of mines that will either stays as a minefield or home in on nearby enemies.



Autocannons
Like normal rapid fire energy weapons, but much more powerful and require ammunition to use and cause tiny explosions upon hitting the target.


Anti-Projectile Turret NEW
This one functions like a normal gun turret on the ship, however its purpose is different. This turret is designed to easily take out incoming missiles, mines and torpedoes fast and effectively.
It does virtually no damage to ship shields nor hull and thus it is strictly meant for defensive use. It is NOT automatic.

A good example how this would work: Imagine you have this turret mounted at the rear of the ship (an ideal place for it anyways) and you've got an enemy on your tail firing away multiple missiles or homing mines and you quickly press V to look behind and shoot down all his missiles with little effort.
You trade your extra firepower turret slot for a defencive purpose, making it all a very balanced deal.

The turret itself is a very fast firing one (16.66 or at least 8.33)
and instead of 1 shot, it fires 3 with a slight spread to achieve a wider angle of protection per shot.

[Ogu]

Most of these weapons are possible to create with FL's limited engine. However, incorporating them with our balance scheme to ensure no abuse of them is possible would require a bit of effort. I'll take a look at some of these ideas and see what I can do. I won't promise anything, but if we decide that some of them are possible, we'll make some and add them in at the earliest possible time.

[numgun]

Great!

I've played many FL mods and seen some of these in action and they were really refreshing to use after those old plain energy blasters. As I said, try to take an approach with the weapons as you did already with the ship classes. So that ultimately a players goal is not to get a codename and the best super ship and then stay with it forever until bored since there is nothing more new, but change his fighting style at will with a new weapon loadout + new ship class and use that for a whole new experience.

Kind of like making Freelancer function like Team Fortress 2 with class based combat after or during the "discovery of all systems" phase of the game. First the player flies around while trying out all the weapons while earning a set of money on the way and once he's been around the major space and done a few missions/trades, he'll reach the level 9/10 weapons and equipment and fight tournaments and take on challenges.
Or simply chill and do roleplay.

This kind of approach would maximize the replay value of this mod and keep people hooked in it.

[Ramirez]

Thanks for the suggestions!

Like Ogu said, we'll take a look at feasibility and function of these ideas.

[Ghost]

I've always wondered why nobody has suggested slug cannons.
These would be Capital exclusive mounts but they're basically slow refire, high energy cost, high damage cannons that fire metal slugs [or maybe even small asteroids for those who can afford to produce heavy metal ammunition]

[As9]

Micromissiles
Basically small missiles with homing capabilities that are fired rapidly at large quantities and require cheap ammo. The missiles do relatively much less damage than an ordinary missile, but they come at a faster rate of fire and are plentiful.
Its like a missile machinegun basicly.

Anything but this.

[numgun]

Have you found them annoying ingame or do they lag?

Itano Circus mod has managed to make missiles really fun and worth using, I suggest the devs to check it out and see if they can take some hints from there.

If you're not familiar with this incredible mod, check it out now:
http://the-starport.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=1051&start=0

[Ramirez]

Have you found them annoying ingame or do they lag?

A lot of times I've seen them lag bad, myself. that doesn't mean we can't pioneer them, but we'll see!

[Ghost]

Have you found them annoying ingame or do they lag?

A lot of times I've seen them lag bad, myself. that doesn't mean we can't pioneer them, but we'll see!

As a gunfighter, I am also against missiles of such a caliber.
I've been on a few servers that used micro and cluster missile weapons and to be quite honest, It took the fun out of the game. Instead of having these high tension dogfights, like we do now, the servers turned "Who fires first, wins" basically a bunch of missile boats who had one or two of these things equipped and fired half salvos.
It doesn't matter that they require ammunition, money is easy to get, it doesn't matter if they're low damage, they come at you in a one-two fashion and they don't stop until the ammo runs out, it doesn't matter how good your CMs are, you cant put out enough [either the missiles come too fast, or you use all your CMs before their missiles are gone. If that wasn't enough balanced CMs are never 100% efficient and if you're not willing to make each missile have its own tracking if unbalanced, if the CMs dont get em the whole salvo hits, if they do the whole salvo misses. Its either useless or complete effective]. It adds laziness to the game in my opinion and has never been fun in the experiences I've had with them.

[numgun]

Hmm I see your point and its a valid one.
Perhaps instead of a machine gun rapid fire, have them launch in burst shotgun-like with a slow re-fire rate. And as a bonus, make the missiles fly slow.

To further develop this idea, add a new tactic of having turret(s) mounted on a ship take out the missiles.

Perhaps have a whole new turret dedicated in the role of a Anti-Missile Turret; Basically a fast turret for fending off mines and missiles effectively, but causing virtually no damage to shields nor hull. It might be quite fun hitting V and shooting down the chasing missiles. The micro missiles would only fire 4 missiles per 3-5 seconds and the turret would be able to defend the ship of a single volley really easy.

[Ghost]

That sounds like an immense amount of work. Shooting down torpedoes is an almost impossible task without hornets as is I'd imagine it'd be tough to match up missile and turret hitboxes without giving the missiles an extended collision range. And making an automated turret that shoots at ordinance and is mounted on a player ship also sound like a nightmare.

[IllogicalLemon]

I wouldn't mind such rapid-fire missiles, myself - as long as they don't lag everything up of course.

@ Ghost
What about if the rapid-fire missiles only had limited tracking abilities? Then they wouldn't be so overpowered - a few good maneuvers and you'll have lost them.

[Ogu]

I'm afraid any kind of auto-aiming turrets are impossible to code (as far as we know). Personally, I'm not a fan of rapid-fire/swarm/shotgun-type missiles. But if we did add something like them (not saying we will) they would be balanced and made to be as un-exploitable as possible.

[As9]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCrwmxQpDxA

Holy shit.

[numgun]

You got me wrong, the turret is NOT automatic at all.
Its just a normal turret like any other, but its designed to be only effective to defend against missiles/mines/torpedoes.
It has a high rate of fire and perhaps it could fire 3 blasts in a spread pattern in order to increase the chance to defend against an attack.

I think I'm gonna add this new idea that to the first post.