Hello there!
First of all: I promise not to talk about boarding other ships or face-to-face battles. This Game is about airship battles and I dont want this to change.
1. "So what the hell do I need a handgun for if there's noone to shoot at?" There IS someone to shoot at: The enemys airship. The better question would be:
2. "Why should I use a Handgun if i could use the Ships guns?"Because Handguns can do things you would never waste a ships gunslot for (there'll be some examples in the text below). At all, I'm talking about relatively weak weapons for precise tactical actions. They should not be usefull for damaging or even killing enemy ships. All the ship classes have a weakspot (a direction they cant fire to), and strong weapons you can use while you're running around on the ship would destroy this (very important) balancing feature, so i don't want to suggest a Railgun, a Rocket Launcher or something.
3. "So what weapons are we talking about?"]/b]Handguns should have a tactical function. The first time I was thinking about handguns was the first time I read something about the Flare gun: The abillity to see ships hiding in the clouds sounds great, but at all i would never install the Flare Gun on my ship, just because I need every single weapon slot on my ship in battle. My first Idea:
The
Flare Gun as a handgun. Same Effect like it's "Big brother", maybe adding a feature so you cant spam with it all the time. Talking about that, I have to add that the pilots "Gunnery Perk"-Slot is more than useless right now - what about adding the Flare Gun as a Gunnery Item so Pilots can use it?
My second idea was kind of a
sniper rifle, which makes no damage to hull or balloon. The sniper may be used for taking out one of the enemys Weapon on the right time. Just Imagine: The Moment the enemy comes really close and you finally recognize that it's got a flame thrower. Now, you can just try to destroy the enemys "components" at all, which means you try to destroy engines and weapons with shatter-damage, but in that moment you just need to destroy the flamethrower somehow. A few shots from the sniper rifle may give you another minute for repairing (or running) and save your live. On the other hand, taking out one Weapon is not overpowered compared to a ships weapon. I'm thinking about that rifle like a kind of a musket, so it has a really long reload time, to ensure that it is useless for the "real" fight and cant replace a shatter-damage weapon. A way to destroy one specific component (espacially weapon) on the enemys ship imo would be an interesting feature.
The third possible Handgun is the
crossbow, that shoots burning arrows at the enemys airship. Without inflicting damage, the Arrow just adds one (2? 3?) flame charges to the target. May be used to stress the enemys Engineer? Imagine your Gatlings are shreddering the enemys hull while one of you sets fire to the balloon... not too strong again, but I'm sure it could make an Engineer going crazy when it's used the right way.
At all, Weapons like this could be a great Advantage for Gunner class. Right now, a crew with more than 1 gunner isn't very intelligent, because a gunner is much worse in repairing than an Engineer in shooting. If only Gunners can carry handguns (or more than one gun... however it's balanced), they would be much better in shooting than an Engineer and may become more important to the crew again.
Fourth Idea:
The Chemical Weapon (Example name ;-) ) deletes all BuffTool- and Chemical Spray buffs from the hidden object (or the whole ship?). Nice to support your ships flamethrower attack!
The
Heat Laser (example name again^^) hits the target with a high temperature beam. For a few seconds after that, it can't be repaired, because its too hot. The weapon is adding a repair cooldown of a few seconds to the target (only if there is none, I would say. Otherwise it would be OP). Of course the reload Time is long enough so you can't spam cooldowns on every hardpoint. This gun could be used for starting a new attack. While focusing on the ships Armor, for example, someone could add a repair cooldown to the Balloon (because you're sure the enemys engineer is repairing armor right now) and then the ships weapons turn to shoot the balloon, wich can't be repaired for a few wonderfull seconds ...
Finally, I also was thinking about the
Abillity to disable the enemy pilots and/or gunners perks. That may be enough to rescue your ship in the right moment (Example: Enemy Gatling with Heavy Clip
).
I'm sure there are many other possible uses for Handguns, but those I mentioned imo seem to be usefull, but not overpowered. Of course, some of those ideas aren't as good as I thought, so just tell what you're thinking about it. Oh, and I have to mention that I never saw the old Forum, so if that kind of discussion was there before, I'm sorry for creating a new topic...
Awaiting your answers,
Ballu
