New Weapon: Shield guns

[SirNotlag]

No these would not be guns that shoot shields (but THERE IS AN IDEA!). Awhile back some people thought that allowing captains to place big steel shields on the ships in place of weapons to absorb damage. I was against the idea because most ships don't have the weapon slots to spare. But that did give me an idea for some new weapons.

What they would practically be would be a metal barricade with a small weapon fixed inside them that can be manned (INGENUITY!).
you can google images of the car turret from the game Metro 2033 simple google "Metro 2033 turret"for more of an idea how they might look but these wouldnt be 360.

anyway how they could potentially work in game would be to have them take up a light weapon slot have slightly larger hit boxes and a lot more health while still being relatively easy to fix if they do become broken. The larger hit boxes lets them soak up some of the damage that might be directed towards the hull of the ship while the large health boost without too much rebuild time added also makes them very resistant to disables.

so how would these be balanced compared to other light weapons? Well they just wouldnt be as good at killing things.

I have thought up 3 variants for these so far a machine gun, a grenade launcher and a flamer lets call them the Spartan, Legionnaire, and Persian respectively:

Spartan Machine gun:
arcs: 25 horizontal, 20 down, 30 up
Damage: similar to the chain gun but slower fire rate and smaller clip so less damage over the same amount of time.

Legionnaire Grenade Launcher:
Arcs: 30 horizontal, 25 down, 25 up
Damage: explosions that deals mostly shatter with some explosive damage, making this the most defensive of the variants as it is used to disable the enemy ships components.

Persian Flamethrower:
Arcs: 15 horizontal, 20 down, 30 up
Damage: just like the flamer but with crummy arcs.



Is the idea of durable guns that are also part of the ships armour seem like a good idea?
Do you think there are other varieties that could be good if these types of things where added?

heres some other weapon ideas I have had:
Scorpion
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,4484.0.html
Sonic Gun
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,4046.msg69823.html#msg69823

[Neithrantulre]

You could make a light gun with twice the hitbox of a heavy and it would still be easy to hit the hull/armor on most ships.
I do like the idea of guns that have more or less HP, so a merc hit doesn't guarantee a disable on some heavy guns unless Charged, and you can't just count shots on a Gatling and know for sure when the enemy gun is going to be broken. This could be implemented on current weapons as a secondary way to balance them.
Alternately you can combine your idea with the idea that inspired it and instead of the weaker weapons having a large hitbox and hitpoints, equipping them would increase armor or hull, balanced by the fact that they are less offensively useful.
I'd like to equip another engine in the back gun slot of my Galleon

[SirNotlag]

That is an interesting idea But flat out increasing health armour or other stats opens up a whole new can of worms on the balance issues. First thing that comes to mind is a junker that puts two buff placements on one side to increase health and armour and then has a full on kill side on the other. Now it has buffed stats and as long as it keeps the enemy in arcs on its designed kill side it has not lost any potential killing power.

[Sprayer]

Pretty sure rebuild times are directly linked to max hp of any component (see hull armor of different ships, how bloons became faster/slower to rebuild when their hp were unified). So a lot more hp means a lot more rebuild time.

Other than that, the hitboxes would need to be humongous in order for them to actually (or partiallly) keep bullets from hitting their intended target. What we learned from recent hitbox size increases is that bigger weaponhitboxes tend to restrict crew movement.

[SirNotlag]

i did not know the hit box blocked crew movement i thought it was just something bullets interacted with.