Sky Torpedoes

[RearAdmiralZill]

Why would I want to get closer to a ship outfitted with torpedoes that are so slow that staying far away from them makes it easier to dodge? Sure I'll move, but nothing stops me from just moving back and forth and watching them pass by.

I'm playing a little devil's advocate here.

[Zenark]

You could make it a wire guided torpedo.... Figure this:

Medium gun with maybe a little less arc than the merc. Arming time of three seconds. Long as hell reload. Heavy shatter and piercing (making it explosive would make it paired with a merc OP.) The gunner controls the torpedo by aiming the gun at the target; the torpedo following the crosshair. A line of sight must be maintained and if the gunner leaves the gun, the torpedo flies in a random direction.

Firing this weapon means you can't move the ship if you want a good shot. If the enemy sees the torpedo, they'll most likely see you too. If an enemy destroys the gun, torpedo explodes.

Oh, and it causes an impact like the mines! <3

[Moo]

Maybe give it a long arming time so it really can only be used long range. Best if it's something easily visible on the torpedo itself.

[Plasmarobo]

I'm telling you, settable timer.

I say make it invulnerable (or at least very hard to hit), and give it a massive explosion radius.
It should be something you NEED to see coming, and then get the hell out of dodge.

It'd make taking cover risky since you might fail to see it coming (and then it explodes right over your head, damaging everything on the ship severely. Impact damage is definitely the way to go. I wouldn't make the timer visible to enemies. Add a bit of chaos there.

Still not on board with any kind of guiding. That's silly, and takes the skill out of shooting it.
I like the idea of this thing being area denial and only area denial. A support weapon, not a outright killing weapon.

With a super large explosion radius the speed would need to be pretty slow (to give ships a fair chance to escape). Thinking Galleon at it's fastest?

[Captain Smollett]

Not to go too far off topic but I always thought it would be awesome to have a really powerful medium weapon that exploded after a set time, only did damage upon explosion and arming time had to be set manually by the gunner.

[Squidslinger Gilder]

Yeah it was changed by the end of the thread Zill. I cannot edit old posts so you kinda have to check the other pages and not just read the initial proposal. There was also a minimum distance arming time and a gravity drop on the ammo before balloon deploys talked about later. So getting close to a torpedo ship would be ideally what you would want to do.

Smo that was an idea I had. Dunno if I mentioned it or not but having a timer set manually by the gunner. Like say torpedo would not go active till a certain distance and would be able to ride it's initial firing momentum longer, which would be faster than normal flight once the balloon opened. Just getting the idea to work and implementing it are issues that could be a mess. Lot of this needs some Muse input to see if it could even be possible with Unity. Ressorius liked the idea but that has been all I've been able to find out and that was from talking to him in game one night.

I've never been 100% on board with the guidance idea either. But folks have mentioned interest in it. Personally I'd like a dumbfire Torpedo and if guidance is what folks want, then go magnetic style with very minimal guidance.

[RearAdmiralZill]

Forgive me for not reading through 4 pages of speculation. Perhaps in the OP you could give what the idea has evolved into?

Guidance in this game would be massively OP, unless the weapon was so weak it wouldn't matter anyway, so dumb fire for sure.

If a gunner would set the timer, why not just set it at the lowest range and fire-and-forget? What about other guns that could benefit from this if it ever did become a thing? Would they too get those mechanics?

I still don't see the point of a weapon that I could stay so far away from that dodging it would be easy, become OP at medium range, and then useless again (depends on stats) in short range. That just makes me want to avoid it altogether.

[Moo]

Presumably the idea of setting the timer is that it explodes at the set range, and not when it hits something, rather than just setting an arming-time-type activation delay. If you set this to the lowest range you'd never hit anything further away...
Presumably it also doesn't explode when it hits something, so setting it to maximum range won't work for closer things either. I think this adds a level of skill (and/or luck) to what could otherwise be considered an OP weapon.

[Plasmarobo]

Yeah, a hit before the timer went off would result in zero damage and the destruction of the torp. Basically the thing only does damage if you correctly set the timer for the range you want to use it at. This would make it super difficult to use. Which I think is a good thing.

There would also still have to be a minimum timer. Something like 5 seconds, or even 10, just to ensure the gun is useless (or at least very low power) at short range. Or just have the thing do massive friendly-fire damage if the gunner sets the timer too low.

Zill, I would say this has different roles at different ranges: Area denial long range, high damage/difficult to aim or time medium range, and useless short range. I think it would mostly mix up the long range game by forcing snipers into the open. Ships with this would be pretty weak against brawlers, sure. You need a good ally. Or an amazing gunner to hit them as they approach.

I'm not talking an overhaul of arming time system. The set-timer mechanic would only be for this gun (and maybe subsequent guns it makes sense for, but none I can think of). I'd be exicted to test this sort of thing, and maybe it'd never be viable (it could be too OP or too weak to make sense) but I think it deserves a shot.

[Moo]

It may help rather than hinder snipers though... If they are on a galleon or spire and sniping at you, they could fire the torpedoes off at you too, making it even more dangerous to approach them.

[JaegerDelta]

this weapon, while cool to think about in theory, just kinda doesnt seem to work if you pick at it.

all other guns in this game, with the exception of the mine launcher depending on how it is used, depend on the user to hit the enemy.  this weapon seems to depend on the enemy dodging it.  why is that a thing on a weapon that is the main damage dealer of 2 out of 3 of the ships that have them.

the recent talk of damage depending on a timer after zill's observations are another problem, a gun that depends on the gunner setting the correct time to do damage is awesome from a design standpoint. but why would someone on that ship use that weapon at all, it depends on alot of variables going exactly according to plan to kill your enemy and save your life.

Im with zill on this one, i just dont see the point.

[Squidslinger Gilder]

Speculation is mostly all we can really do with some of the design until Muse chimes in.

Problem right now with making it have a short range capability is we already have short range weapons. It would also be very powerful at short range because it is using an impact style damage like the mines use. Yeah I'd like it if you could use it at any range but then we'll go through another medium flak fiasco. I'd rather have it designed from the beginning with balancing in mind than have it nerfed to hell and be completely useless.

The concept on the range we discussed was similar to the mine launcher right now. Have the 3 sec style arming timer before the balloon deploys. Torpedo would be similar so it would drop till the balloon and engine activate. This puts some effort into aiming it and getting the torpedo on course. Ammo types could change the arming time so you could have the Torpedo going active much sooner but say at a cost to the overall range of the device.

The fact that the weapon is so visible makes it a bit weaker in standoff engagements. It will force ships into moving more than it may impact hulls, until engines are sniped out. Pilots with vertical assist tools will still be able to dodge but if the torpedo gunner is good enough, they can follow up their next shot predicting the direction of the ship. So battles on Dunes will likely be so-so. The real beauty of the weapon will not really be seen until on cover controlled maps. Canyon would be perfect. You could not have teams just sitting in the open areas of the map because there is so much cloud cover that all the torpedo team would need is one spotter. The torpedo boat could then fire from within clouds and keep the camping team on it's toes. Allowing the spotter ship to close range and prepare for a kill. The counter to this being good use of flares and gunners able to not only react quickly but also be accurate enough to stop the torpedo boat before it got it's shots off.

Jaeger if you read the original info you'll see the gun is very dependent on aiming. This is not a FOF weapon.

[Machiavelliest]

I would say that forcing ships to move even with an easily-avoidable projectile complicates the Mercury gunning solution for the ship targeted by a torpedo.  They would have to deal enough damage (a massive amount) to make it worth it to move the ship and not just eat one or two while using a Merc to snipe out the launching platform.

Also, if these things go really slowly, how do they fly?  It'd look wonky to have a giant hoverboard out there.

[Squidslinger Gilder]

The planned design would involve a balloon with propeller drive. Think we talk about it in detail about midway through the other thread.

Imagine if you will, someone in this world found a surplus of old torpedoes. They're big, heavy, and are not designed for air usage. Yet...they pack a heck of a punch. Now imagine them trying to figure out a way to get it to work for aerial combat. Remember limited resources and knowledge. Plus also the craziness of how technology would work in a steam/dieselpunk world.  Common sense does not always factor in.

The casing would be modified with a small engine with a balloon support. Pressurized air tank enclosed. With that there would not be much room for a rocket mechanism so a modification of the propeller would come into play. So alone this weapon will fall like a rock, no question about that. But that is where the balloon comes in as it deploys and keeps the course maintained. Speed is not necessarily the reining factor since the warhead would pack a heavy punch. It would be a weapon meant for downing galleon or larger size ships. Damage would be consistent with the mines prior to nerfing. Critical damage level. If you get hit with one, you're literally Zuka'd.

So to offset that amount of dmg there is the slower movement and firing mechanism. Plus each warhead will have a contrail effect generated by smoke coming from the mini engine driving it. It is the "oh shit, TORPEDO!!!" moment when that contrail is spotted. Pilots need to be worried, they need to be terrified. Specially if a torpedo boat has gotten close enough to make evasion difficult. Gunners must be perfect with aims. Accounting for travel time and predicting not only their own ship movement but also enemy ship movement. Which is all very possible.

Lorewise I think it would fit in as kind of an Anglean Raider weapon, maybe even Arashi scavenger. I imagine an Anglean finding this old tech and then modifying it for use. Lack of resources in their area may serve as a backstory. They wanted to turn it into a big rocket but lack enough fuel to move it so they designed a different mechanism. Arashi maybe similar. Imagine desert dwellers finding water based weaponry so what do they do...turn it into aerial weaponry in some bizarre scavenged way for use against the Guild.