Medium Weapons, Anyone?

[The Djinn]

AKA, as the title of the thread states, Heavy guns have a distusting lack of variety right now, especially on the mid and close range department, we need more unique Heavy guns like the Hwacha and the Lumberjack and more brawling Heavy guns as well.

So let's brainstorm a bit. We've got a tech level that implies industrial age technology, but no real innovations in electricity, etc. Which means we're largely limited to projectile weapons, although I could see a laser-like flamethrower built out of mirror arrays and some sort of steampunk storage cell. We've also got naming conventions that are very Greek in theme. So maybe something like...

Hemera Array
Herema, daughter of Erebos and Nyx, grants her name and her brilliant daylight to this deadly weapon. Finely polished mirrors gather sunlight, storing it in the inner workings of the weapon until it unleashed in a narrow beam of destructions.

The Hemera Array is designed to fill the roll of a medium-range Heavy fire weapon. It features a precision beam that can be traced over an enemy ship, dealing damage and setting fires wherever it hits. Perhaps it has some sort of damage amplification mechanic, where continuous fire on a given element increases the base damage the beam deals. It's a bit of a stretch with our current tech levels though, and figuring out exactly what role it is supposed to fill seems like something that should be done: currently it's a mid-range firestarter, but that's basically mid-range disabling, which the Hwacha already does. Thoughts?

----------------------

Other names that came to mind were the Hurricane Repeating Rifle (a medium-long range armor shredder that's the bigger, slower cousin of the Whirlwind) and the Pompeii Heavy Cannon/Hephaestus Heavy Cannon, which would be a mid-close range AoE damager. My thoughts on the Heavy Cannon included possible impact damage and physical ship displacement, as if your target was actually struck by a very heavy and very solid projectile. It would give it a role of medium-close range ship displacement, allowing you to throw off enemy gun arcs at the expense of having another, more damaging gun.

Thoughts? Concerns? Other ideas?

[Echoez]

Definately sold on the cannons Djinn, it's something I've been wondering about, like, it's a ship game without cannon balls, it just struck me as very odd, definately something I'd love to see.

Also this game is pretty much WWI-WWII era, mostly dieselpunk if I may, the tanks in Paritus display a higher tech level than a regular WWI setting, especially considering what real WWI tanks looked like. I'd guess Tesla Tech would be a very good start for a mid range fire based weapon ( electricity -> heat -> fire ) that could probably use a cooling mechanic instead of a magazine, possibly with a penalty incurred to the gun if you over heat it, like taking damage overtime, which would create some awesome risk/reward posibilities! (for example, keep the gun overheating and do some extra damage and possibly finish the job or let it cool and have more for later with a healthier gun?) Gun could also not do much damage or have a high ingnition chance, but could have a chance to kick people off guns for example (say a small chance so it doesn't become too much of an issue, but that's something for a balance thread)

I've had an idea of possibly chaining the electricity on multiple components if they are close enough, meh, dunno.

We could have a missile based artillery gun pumped up with napalm (since we are going on the fire based theme) that could have an ability to instantly overheat any gun it hit directly (not with the AoE, but on top of the regular fire chances), missiles would have to travel at a reasonable speed of course, if it's single shot it should be perfectly accurate of course, if multi-warhead, have some slight spread, but still limited ammo mag, could deal a bit of fire and a bit explosive, but nothing TOO much on the explosive part, fire damage should be high though.

When it comes to medium guns having piercing, I'm much in favor of auto-cannons and not machine-guns, so we can use projectiles and have a considerable skill floor for them to be used as to not to be too easy. Pom-Pom cannons could fit that role easily while lookin' good as well.

Liking the Light beam gun as well, I think Muse already has a model designed for such a gun.