Weapon DLC: $10 Arsenal Pack (A plea for more weapons!)

Leonhardt shared this feedback 4 years ago
Submitted

We've been long overdue for an expansion to our available Vanilla weaponry, and with my great satisfaction with the Decorative DLC pack, I feel an additional DLC pack for a weapon expansion would be a great way to implement this. There would be multiple new types of weapons, many of which were available as mods at once time, but have since become deprecated.

I'll make this super easy and break down my ideas by ship class.

Small Ship

Shotgun

>Close range scattershot weapon, fires a spread of bullets in each shot. Deals heavy damage to light armor at close range. Would have a 4x1x1 Footprint.

Autocannon

>Hard hitting, rapid fire weapon. Lower rate of fire than the Gatling Gun, but deals greater damage, and its rounds explode on impact. Would have a 5x1x1 Footprint. (Inspiration based on the popular CSD Autocannon mod, which is unfortunately deprecated.)

Heavy Cannon

>Long range high power cannon. Fires a powerful, high velocity round, but has a low rate of fire and high recoil, making it difficult to use on lighter craft and ineffective in close combat. A bulky 7x1x1 footprint. (Based on the CSD Battlecannon mod, which is also deprecated)

Flak Cannon

>Old school anti-air artillery brought into space. Fires a shell that explodes into a temporary "Flak" particle effect that damages any grid that flies into it. Shells explode after a short distance, but are great at area denial.

Scatter Rocket Launcher

>Wide range rocket launcher for small ships, fires a spray of small, low power rockets for bombarding a wide area. Has a 4x1x1 Footprint.

Homing Missile Launcher

>Fires small homing missiles that track targets. Lower rate of fire than standard rocket launcher, and must be reloaded manually, but its tracking ability makes it a powerful weapon against almost any target. Would have a UI effect for indicating a lock on. Can be shot down by point defense. Has a 5x1x1 footprint.

Bomb Launcher

>Drops a powerful Bomb that is affected by Gravity (But not Artificial Gravity). Has a wide blast radius and is strong against heavy armor, but can be shot down by point defense. Most effective on planets. Has a 3x3x2 footprint.

Torpedo Launcher

>Single shot heavy missile launcher, fires a slow, powerful rocket that is affected by Gravity (But not Artificial Gravity) Torpedos take longer to shoot down by point defense, but are easily evaded by more mobile craft.

Interior Turret

>It is time. Please allow us to install Interior Turrets on Small Ships, connecting them to Small Conveyors.


Large Ships

Shotgun Turret

>Turret version of the Shotgun. Effective at anti-fighter and point defense.

Autocannon

>Large version of the small ship Autocannon, with 2 barrels for double the rate of fire. Has a 3x1x1 footprint on the large grid.

Autocannon Turret

>Turret version of the Small Ship Autocannon. A reliable primary weapon effective against a wide range of targets.

Heavy Cannon

>Powerful "Forward Gun" for Large Ships. Abysmal rate of fire, but incredible destructive power. Has a 6x1x1 footprint on the Large Grid.

Heavy Cannon Turret

>Turreted version of the Heavy Cannon. Has a larger footprint than standard Large Grid Turrets. The "main cannons" for your capital ships.

Flak Turret

>Turreted version of the Flak Cannon. Effective against small fighters and at point defense. Greater rate of fire using 4 individual Flak Cannons on the single turret.

Scatter Rocket Turret

>Turreted version of the Scatter Rocket Launcher. Has two missile pods that fire in a wider spread.

Homing Missile Turret

>Turreted version of the Homing Missile Launcher. Takes longer to lock on than the Small Grid variant, but fires automatically.

Bomb Bay

>Large version of the Bomb Launcher. Drops bombs at a much higher rate than the Small Grid variant. Has a 1x1x1 block footprint.

Torpedo Launcher

>Large version of the Torpedo Launcher, can be reloaded via conveyors, but still has a low rate of fire.


Engineer Weapons

Pistol

>A simple, easy to produce means of self defense, replaces the Assault Rifle as the default weapon. Semi-automatic. Would have Automatic, Silenced (Muffled sound), and Elite (Higher rate of fire and damage) variants.

Shotgun

>A powerful close range pump-action shotgun for repelling boarding parties and hunting Spiders. Has Sawn Off (Shorter barrel, wide spread), Hunting (Long barrel, narrow spread), and Slug (Fires single, big shot) variants.

Sniper Rifle

>A long range bolt-action sniping weapon with a built in scope for picking off drones and ship pilots at long distance. Comes in Semi-Automatic (Faster rate of fire, less accuracy) Bipod (Greater accuracy while crouched) and .50cal (Single shot, deals heavy damage to Light Armor) variants.

Rocket Launcher

>A portable Anti-vehicle rocket launcher. Fires a single standard rocket and takes while to reload. Only has a Homing (Can lock onto and homes in on targets) variant.


A DLC of this caliber could easily go for $10, and would be very popular among those that like to make military vehicles and do PvP battles. Again, many of these may already exist as mods, but many of them are deprecated, and others simply do not work or fit the Space Engineers aesthetic. I know this has a Gatling Gun's chance against large Ship Heavy Armor of actually being implemented, but it's still worth suggesting. And for those who like to use "Engineered" weapons like large scale homing missiles or gravity driven shrapnel guns, don't worry, those will still be extremely powerful and are still absolutely valid, but these new weapons would be for people like me that just want to fly around and blow stuff up.

Replies (14)

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7

Yes, on weapons. Combat in general hasn't been touched since they were implemented. Some more variety wouldn't hurt. Lasers, defence shields (the mod), maybe an autocannon of some sort, and a nice well thought out balance pass on everything.

But a big fat NO on it being a DLC. God no. This game should never had had DLCs to begin with.

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I agree! I understand the DLC with decor, it doesn’t affect the balance in any way, but weapons are only available in the DLC - it's stupid! Sorry for the mistakes I use google translator ....

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yes i agree on the idea and i agree it should not be DLC but the reason they have DLC in the first place is so they can earn more money so they can pay their workers and get better technology thats the main reason most games have DLC and as a game developer my self i understand the reason, im not getting mad im just informing you guys the reason. but yes i agree DLC weapons are stupid and we need more weapons.

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You know what? I'll make a new post here to talk about your specific suggestions.

You have some good ones, like shotguns, flak, and homing missiles. I personally think our vanilla missiles should come with homing to begin with, since they are already notoriously inaccurate and wasteful.

But you really should stay away from anything resembling sniping. High accuracy, long range and hard hitting weapons really detracts from combat. Turns the it into a mind-numbing click2win. It's a trap I see weapon mods fall into CONSTANTLY. It's such an easy trap to fall into.

And your suggested size dementions are pretty laughable, no offense... 7x1x1 ain't big for small grids. Now 7x3x4, and making the ammo require large conveyors, THAT would be big.

Bomb launches and the like, I've thought about this. We can already achieve this with merge blocks and warheads. Its affected by gravity and everything, and can even be automated.

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And I guess I'll add my own suggestion while I'm here: Modular weapons. You start with a weapon base, which is fully functional on its own. And you casm add stuff like a long barrel (accuracy at the cost of fire rate), a gatling barrel (less accuracy for faster firing), an ammo box attachment, capacitor, etc. You get the idea.

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I'm not a fan of ridiculously oversized weapons. Bigger is not always better. Even the vanilla Gatling and Missile turrets are ridiculously large.


I based most of the cannons on the CSD Autocannon and Battlecannon, which were 4x1x1 and 7x1x1 respectively, and they were perfect. As for the sniping thing, the range on these would be balanced by reload times. Once you get clapped by the first volley, you'd be more than able to turn and begin pursuit or return fire with your own cannons before the next rounds are fired.


Merge Blocks and Warheads are good for dealing heavy damage to a wide area of terrain or light armor, but aren't very useful against Heavily armored structures (Assuming we're talking about Small grid warheads). Actual bomb launchers would deploy special bombs that can more easily punch through heavily reinforced buildings/ships


Though something else that would be neat would be individual missiles and bombs that can be dropped or fired from merge blocks or a built in hardpoint, like real world aircraft.


I like the idea of modular weapons, but again, it gets into the "Big for the sake of being big" territory that I don't really like.

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*The vanilla Small Ship Gatling and Missile turrets

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7

yes for weapons

no for paid dlc


for the simple reason of balance.

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I'd love for it to be part of a free update, but I feel like it has a better chance being implemented via DLC.

As for the balance issue, are people with DLC able to use them on servers with people that don't own it?

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What would be the sense of making a paid dlc, when only you can use them on specific servers. It would split the community into non dlc and dlc owners and therefor dry and split up the servers... don't think thats a good thing.


I really really would like to see more weapons in space, especially energy/laser stuff, it just fits perfectly into this theme or things like main ship canons, but it needs to be done good and especially be well balanced

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See I'm more in the camp of Battlestar Galactica-style ballistic and missile weapons only.

I remember when they used to try to push Space Engineers as "hard" sci-fi, then they added the giant space bugs, and the jump drives, and the alien planets. So I guess a class or two of directed energy weapon wouldn't hurt at this point. It really just depends on how its handled, to me.

I'm never gonna say "no" to new stuff of course, I'm just being picky.

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The space bugs were fairly reasonable. If there's going to be alien life, it won't look like us. And SE was lacking enemies at the time, so they were fairly easy to implement.

Similarly, if you're going to add planets, two of them with a moon each isn't exactly much variety.

And jump drives make it possible to go from one place to another in a reasonable amount of time. Just like gravity generators, they aren't realistic but are necessary to make the game fun to play.

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4

Where's the button to say no to this idea and vote against such?

DLC should not be charging us for functionality to the game. Decorations only. Its bad enough they charge us for vending blocks, now you want them to charge us for every update to the game that should have happened by now?

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Small Ship

Shotgun

The shotgun might be in a weird place. It's outclassed in range by gatties, and you're probably going to get melted if you try to go up against them. I suppose you could use them in boarding drones, but that's awkward at best. Plus, tons of bullets aren't good for sim speed. I'd give it a D rating. Not something that probably needs to be in the game, but it isn't outright broken.

Autocannon

>Hard hitting, rapid fire weapon. Lower rate of fire than the Gatling Gun, but deals greater damage, and its rounds explode on impact. Would have a 5x1x1 Footprint. (Inspiration based on the popular CSD Autocannon mod, which is unfortunately deprecated.)

This would be good. I'd reduce projectile velocity, so that the weapon isn't just a more expensive and powerful gatling gun. I might set it to be 4x2x1 too, to make it visibly different from the gatling gun. This would make changing designs to include the autocannon a sidegrade instead of an awkward upgrade-ish thingy. B rating, not 100% necessary to make weapons interesting but a good alternative for gatties.

Heavy Cannon

6x2x2. Please. 7x1x1 is too small for an artillery piece, even if it is longer than the others. Great idea otherwise. I'd give it an A.

Flak Cannon

This seems more like a large turret-ish weapon rather than something you'd mount on a small ship. C.

Scatter Rocket Launcher

Seems pretty inefficient and kind of weird. How do you manage to make a spray of rockets?

Homing Missile Launcher

Yes. This is a great addition, especially with the manually loading idea. 4x1x1 though, because it's another sidegrade and redesigning whole ships around those is pretty annoying. A++.

Bomb Launcher

Torpedo Launcher

Both already more or less ingame as small ship torpedoes. F.

Interior Turret

Yes. If we needed one bullet-using turret on small ships, interior is better than gatling. It doesn't make sense to mount a large ship's gun emplacement on a small ship, and the awkwardness of the current turret shows. A.

Large Ships

Shotgun Turret

I could see this having a niche at blocking lots of missiles. Maybe. That said, it would be better to just make interior turrets connectable to conveyors instead of this, so we don't have two defensive AoE turrets. I'd rate it at a C.

Autocannon

I'm not 100% sure about this one. Half of me wants to make it the official sidegrade for the gatling gun, keeping it turreted for large ships, but I also want to have an awesome quad-barrel large ship autocannon. B? C?

Autocannon Turret

Yes.

Heavy Cannon

Yes.

Heavy Cannon Turret

Yes.

Flak Turret

Yes.

Scatter Rocket Turret

It still suffers from the same problems as the shotgun, but with rockets too. It's too easy to keep a distance or jump out if you can't keep away. And there are more things to shoot down missiles, so the problem is compounded. I'd rate it D.

Homing Missile Turret

Yes.

Bomb Bay

Torpedo Launcher

Again, we already have small grid torpedoes. Either they're weak in PvP because of the workshop, or we lose one of the coolest bits of SE. F.

Engineer Weapons

Pistol

Yes. Progression is needed. A definite A+.

Shotgun

No. We're Space Engineers, not Space Marines. We use turrets to do most of the dirty work. If you're fighting boarders in a suit, you did something wrong already. F.

Sniper Rifle

No. Similar problems, but also makes raiding boring when you can sit back and snipe at enemy turrets until you stroll in with a grinder. F-.

Rocket Launcher

Yes. We need something good for effective suit-to-grid combat. This would be perfect.


But the big problem with all of this is that it's a DLC. Servers would be split over it, and most of the good ones would choose to go with the DLC because it's a massive update that actually affects gameplay. This is why a lot of things here would never work in practice. SE doesn't have a good source of income outside of initial sales, so now they have to do something truly massive to bring more people in, make a whole new game, or start releasing DLC. And DLC would split the playerbase if they introduced something that was actually worth buying.

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Edit: Oh wait, nvm. For some reason I got an email that said you replied to mine. Bizarre.

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The Shotgun I had intended for use in hit and run attacks. Fly really fast, get up close, BLAM, and then continue flying. It'd also be really useful to swat enemy engineers at short range.


The Autocannon would have its own benefits and weaknesses over the gatty that make it less of an upgrade and more of a sidegrade. It's more suited for tackling heavy Large ships than gattys, but isn't as effective in mobile combat against small ships. It'd go on your heavy fighters and bombers as the auxhilary weapon to supplement missiles and bombs.


Agree with making the Cannon larger.


I was imagining Flak Cannon equipped Small Ships to act as defenders for Large carriers/transports. Essentially offering more flexibility for the weapon type.


Scatter Rocket Launchers "spray" rockets by firing a bunch of small rockets rapidly. Essentially an explosive version of the shotgun, designed for dealing light area damage in a wide cone. It also has the benefit of being able to overwhelm point defenses with the sheer number of rockets it can sneeze out. This of course offset by its low damage versus Heavy Armor and Large Ships.


Small Ship Torpedoes are much more powerful than the block Bomb and Torpedo launchers. The benefit being that the blocks can be reloaded/rearmed without having to rebuild an entire warhead + blocks + thrusters, and are much more compact.


It still surprises me that we can't have Interior Turrets on Small Ships. Furthermore, a fixed, 1x1x1 version of the Interior Turret, effectively a mounted Assault Rifle, would allow for the creation of small security drones that don't have as much firepower as a larger unit with Gatties.


Onto Large Ships,

There's nothing wrong with having multiple defensive turrets. Flexibility, freedom and customization is part of why I suggested so many different weapons in the first place. That said, I do feel the Shotgun turret could be too powerful versus Players.


The Autocannon would become the basic direct fire weapon for Large Ships. Effectively the Gatling Gun for Large Ships.


Apply the same justification to the Scatter Rockets above to the turret version. It essentially becomes a longer range sidegrade of the Flak Turret, being capable of area denial by putting up walls of mini-rockets to deter attackers.


Apply the same above for Bomb and Torpedo bays. you can still build Small Grid Torpedoes. But the Bay launched Bomb and Torpedo projectiles would have better armor penetration over the Small Warhead's wider blast radius and raw damage, with the ability to be reloaded from the ship's conveyors.


Engineer Weapons,

The "We're Space Engineers, not Space Marines" argument kind of goes against having the rocket launcher and assault rifle then, doesn't it? Heck, it basically defies every part of this suggestion, as well. If we're all just supposed to be Space Engineers, then what's the point of having warships with homing missiles and flak cannons? Might as well just stick to Rockets and Gatlings.


I wanted to go back and edit the OP as I'm now against it being paid DLC, but cannot. Might just repost the whole suggestion with more information. Was also going to write up some thoughts on energy weapons.

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I could care less if it was DLC or free. I JUST WANNA SEE MORE WEAPONS DAMMIT! I'd like to see a whole pack centered around military-based blocks, like military Cockpits, containers, decorative blocks, you know the works!

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That shouldn't be in a DLC.

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You cant add DLC weapons thats making it litterally pay to win .. What they will likely do it the weapons core mod integration in an update and add a new weapon to the game along side a DLC for reskins of the current weapons

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I agree, for game centred around shipbuilding and ship combat it does seem to lack in the options of weaponry - a coolgun (I chosen coilgun as they are less powerful as railguns) or different types of missiles and or torpedoes would be nice.


For example:


Railgun/coilgun:

A long mounted version (doesn't move) and a more powerful, yet shorter range, turret version - very short area of affect but about to penetrate 1 Heavy Armour block and 3 light on blocked.


Missile/torpedo:

Different types:


Penetrating - small area of affect but damages about three blocks deep. Good for if you know the layout of your enemy's ship and able to target key components.


High yield - slow but good against heavy armour.


Explosive - normal in game missiles - good against light armour - faster


'Flack' - large area of affect, low damage, good for taking out conveyors and light armour to cripple the ships weapons systems and damage crewmen or remote controls.

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I saw someone say lasers and I thought "it is scientifically possible to have laser weapons, just it will eat through power to remain active." Now a few years ago or so, I saw a video about a guy making a laser bazooka. It was a high powered laser pointer that popped balloons and it even caught wood on fire. Fast forward a few months or so, same guy, different laser output. The laser broke a glass bottle, took a few seconds tho and I bet, if it was to be weaponized or used for mining, it would take some serious power output to maintain something larger than a rifle based laser or so. I think the videos are on youtube, not sure if they are still there. Its 100% worth watching if SE is going to implement Laser weaponry.


PS. FOR SCIENCE and ENGINEERING


Edit: videos are still up and its Styropyro who made the laser bazooka unless there is a older video than his

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Please no more DLC, i have forked out so much cash for Keens DLC, and yes, theyre high quality, but they dont even have a season pass. I also dont want to encourage keen to lock functional blocks behind paywalls, things like LCD's and small grid doors shouldnt be DLC, but part of the base game. ESPECIALLY WEAPONS. They'd provide an ENORMOUS benefit to people on servers. The concept is cool but I disagree with the DLC part. I also think shotguns should be called Fragmentation cannons, and bomb launchers bomb bays... and maybe add a thermal weapon.

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They are a reasonably small games developer company - they have to make there money somehow and it's nice of them to do free updates and to only have cosmetics behind the DLC pay wall, however from just being on the Internet it is clear that people dislike their DLC method alot - so maybe a season pass or larger DLCs world be better to make each each DLC more worth it....

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5

While more weapon types would spice up PvE and PvP, they should NOT be locked behind a paywall. Unless they're all much weaker than vanilla weapons (which would make them pointless) then they'd be pay to win, which given how people felt about the rover cockpit would cause a massive community riot.

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I agree; knowing Keen, if they were to implement a weapons DLC, it would likely be in every default world (and server for that matter), forcing players without the dlc weapons to go up against the DLC weapons.

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I like this, but not as dlc

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Please no DLC that you have to pay for but everything else I agree with could be done in a couple of updates I would be willing to wait long as they are going to officially work to put it in and not just for dedicated servers but also for single player in a PVE setting

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