New medium weapon ideas?

[-Muse- Cullen]

Its always fun to think about new weapons, and everyone's noticed there's only four medium weapons currently... so why not brainstorm for fun?


Trident Medium Harpoon Gun. Single harpoon that has a much stronger lasso effect than its light version. Longer duration, and can reel enemies in with noticeable force. Very long reload.

Lighthouse Medium Flare Gun. Lens flare effect that can obscure the vision of close-to-projectile ships, and has the same effect, albeit much larger, as its light version in smoke. Larger AoE, same damage, longer reload.

Maelstrom Medium Gattling Gun. Wind up time that increases fire rate the longer the trigger is held down. Wide spread, double barrels, larger clip, approximately the same damage per bullet, perhaps less, as the light version.

Orion Medium Rocket Launcher. Quicker fire rate than the light version, slower projectile speed, no projectile drop, large explosive radius, more damage, same clip size, longer reload time.

Basilisk Fang Medium Flamethrower. Smaller clip size, shorter range, smaller AoE, increased fire rate and damage.

Any other ideas?

[N-Sunderland]

We'll be seeing the Mine Launcher in not too long (hopefully with 1.1.5 tomorrow, but let's not get too optimistic). According to what the accidental entry on the weapons table said, it does impact damage. Looking forward to seeing how that plays out.

Anyways, your ideas are interesting. I've always wanted to see a heavy gat, flamer, or harpoon. I'm pretty sure that a heavy flare gun would be disregarded completely, though. Losing a heavy gun to get some disorienting/locating ability just wouldn't be worth it at all. I like your other ideas, though. I find the wind up time on the gatling to be a particularly good idea.

[-Muse- Cullen]

Losing a heavy gun to get some disorienting/locating ability just wouldn't be worth it at all.

If that's the case... then Muse better increase the clip, fire rate, damage, range, and reload speed of the Lighthouse.

[N-Sunderland]

Make it do 300 fire damage and put a fire stack of 20, but give it a high reload time and make it hard to aim. Problem solved.

[Lord Dick Tim]

I just love the Names given to these weapons!

You make them sound so badass that I can't even be partial.

[Pickle]

Acme "Coyote" Heavy Rocket.. ..



Explosive 200, Shatter 200, AoE 8, 1 round, 3 second re-load, range 2000m.

[HamsterIV]

This idea probably would involve too much in the way of engine change for Muse to actually implement, but I will submit it anyway.

Care Package Medium Harpoon gun:
A two stage weapon consisting of the regular harpoon gun, and an explosives dolly that traverses the rope.

The harpoon can only attach itself to an area of the ship reachable by the crew. (balloon and under-sail counts as a miss or shifts the contact point to a different location. Upon successful harpoon shot the explosives cart starts traversing the line between the two ship. The crew of the defending ship has until the explosive cart reaches the hull to dislodge the harpoon from their ship by using standard repair tools on the contact point. Otherwise big boom.

Edit: For spelling and grammar.

[Pickle]

A hybrid of a Breeches buoy and a harpoon.. I'm sure there's a rude trousers joke in there somewhere..

[Shinkurex]

This idea probably would involve too much in the way of engine changed, but I will submit it anyway.

Care Package Medium Harpoon gun:
A two stage weapon consisting of the regular harpoon gun, and an explosives dolly that traverses the rope.

The harpoon can only attach itself to an area of the ship reachable by the crew. (baloon and undersail counts as a miss or shifts the contact point to a different location. Upon successful harpoon shot the explosives cart starts traversing the line between the two ship. The crew of the defending ship has until the explosive cart reaches the hull to dislodge the harpoon from their ship by using standard repair tools on the contact point. Otherwise big boom.

I like this idea a lot.... It would also add some more gameplay for the engie.... I could see an ! on the hud or something to assist with it

[-Muse- Cullen]

What about a cannonball weapon that's affected by gravity? It does a go amount of damage to armor, but has a long reload. Special trait- it acts like a ramming ship, so struck enemies will have their velocity changed.

[Captain Smollett]

What about a cannonball weapon that's affected by gravity? It does a go amount of damage to armor, but has a long reload. Special trait- it acts like a ramming ship, so struck enemies will have their velocity changed.

That sounds really cool and tactically useful. It could even deal impact damage for it's multipliers. Currently I use ramming all the time to turn an enemy ship away from an ally. This could do something similar but from range. Would be tough to balance but I like the outside the box thinking.

[awkm]

We had the idea of a harpoon with bombs going down the rope, making vertical positioning very important.  However, we scrapped it because the interaction was pretty opaque and non-obvious.  Pretty OP if you think about it lol.

The other harpoon weapon doesn't tether with a rope, instead it attaches huge weights and mucks with your acceleration and turning.  That would be cool.  No way to disable the effect though.  It might be an extension of the engineer game.  That's very complicated already.  HP repair (big and small), fire, and harpoon removal.  It's screaming for an additional skill slot which I don't like.

There was always an idea for a ramming weapon... so I'll just put that out there.  Unfortunately, our premier ramming ship (Pyramidion) doesn't have a medium slot.  Will have to figure that one out at some point.  Maybe that's okay.  If it's a ramming gun, it only has one shot.  You ram and you commit.  It would be cool if it'd deal damage to yourself too.  For the record, I would love friendly fire on all of the time (probably just an option to toggle in match screen).

That Wile E. Coyote Missile would be so OP.  More like 10 second reload lol.

[HamsterIV]

So engineer harpoon removal is technically feasible but not implemented because it would be a bad game design decision?

I don't like the idea of friendly fire it opens the game too much to trolling. Especially since one gunner's actions could negatively influence the entire team. If you enabled friendly fire you would have to enable a kick mechanic to get rid of people who misuse it.

On the topic of ramming weapons have you looked into the Spar Torpedo?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spar_torpedo

[awkm]

So engineer harpoon removal is technically feasible but not implemented because it would be a bad game design decision?

The original engineer game actually included harpoon removal.  It was HP repair, Harpoon removal, and Fire extinguishing.  3 basic tools.  However, there weren't enough harpoons and not enough features (like the bomb harpoon) to make harpooning common so it was axed (harpoon removal tool was an axe).  The entire engineer game was quite different as well—much harder.  Instead, HP tools were expanded to create repair and rebuild.  So general repair has 2 tools, one for HP one for rebuild.  It's an important distinction.

The engineer can function 100% with just 3 tools.  Fast rebuild, lots of HP, fire extinguishing.  With harpoon you only get 75% effectiveness and require your gunner or other engie to carry the other tool.

So yes, bad game design in that it requires 100% coordination from the very start.

I don't like the idea of friendly fire it opens the game too much to trolling. Especially since one gunner's actions could negatively influence the entire team. If you enabled friendly fire you would have to enable a kick mechanic to get rid of people who misuse it.

It would be an option in match creation so ideally it'd be for high-level play.  And we'll probably never have public accessibility to Kick.  That's just a recipe for abuse.

On the topic of ramming weapons have you looked into the Spar Torpedo?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spar_torpedo

I raise you.





The World Blade cometh in your nightmares.

(Obviously these are super old designs)

[Phoebe]

(Obviously these are super old designs)

Back in the day when "Cuter" was still spelled with one T