Weapon suggestions and overhaul of current weapons
Considering PVP/PVE becomes a primary element of late game I find the lack of weapon types and current weapons lacking, below are my proposals.
Amendments to existing weapons and variations:
1. Change the small and large grid turret designs around, I feel the more 'turrety' small grid version would look better as a large grid one and visa versa, naturally the 'gun' part would need to be changed over but since the current large grid take up a 3x3 anyway widening the base to fill up some of that room might be good.
2. Create an Exterior turret using the existing large grid turret model but in 1x1, much like the interior version it uses 5.56mm ammo but has conveyor tubes and makes a suitable point defence without having to waste too many resources on 25mm by either setting them to do everything and therefore split their focus or pulling them away from damage duty.
New Weapon types
1. Cannons/Auto cannons
1a: Small grid fixed and turret
Sizes - 40mm, 120mm, 155mm
Basically a slower firing higher damage weapon useful in creating tank type units on ground and heavier hitting light ships in space.
1b: Large grid fixed
Sizes - 120mm, 300mm, 1500mm
Some overlap, ammo types would need to be worked out useful for creating non missile based broadsides or heavy forward firing uninterceptable batteries. Sizes of weapons suggestion 1x3, 1x4, 1x6 respectively.
1c: Large grid turrets
Sizes - 40mm quad, 120mm single, dual, triple mount, 300mm S,D,T, 1500mm S,D
Again like the revamp suggestion of turret sizes the ability to mount actual cannons over a ship in turrets for those volleys, the 120/300mm would come in single, double and triple versions while the largest comes in only single and double. Likely a 5x5 turret size. The 40mm is a potential option instead of an exterior turret acting as PD/Flak.
2. Guided and Unguided munitions
2a: Small grid fixed and turret
Sizes – 70mm and 400mm
The 70mm would look like a hydra rocket pod basically and be a lower damage area saturation weapon that is cheap to produce (no uranium requirements), the 400mm would be a single tube version of the current fixed quad launcher and be higher damage while requiring uranium as normal, turret versions would naturally follow their designs.
2b: Large Grid fixed and turret
Sizes – 400mm, Cruise, Torpedo
Larger versions of the current fixed missile, the 400mm would just have less launch tubes than the current while the torpedo version would have a single tube and be 1 grid longer, cruise would be larger again. Both would be more resilient to point defence, torpedo would be slower to accelerate but better against heavier armour while the cruise missile would have a larger blast radius.
Turret versions would have 3x3 grid for 400mm and 5x5 for both others looking like current real world naval based launchers.
3. Energy Weapons
Both large and small grid in fixed and turret versions.
Type: Short beam, pulse, wave, plasma
While it was said to keep realism in Space Engineers energy weapons are part of the current military in limited but usable fashion and this is only going to become more common over the next decades so energy weapons will certainly no be out of place in the game regarding the following variants.
Short Beam – This is the one shot damage version often seen in science fiction, a brief beam of energy with excellent range and accuracy that is better against light armour or as a point defence.
Pulse – Basically the gatling gun of the energy weapons sending multiple laser pulses out, a shorter range but better damage version as example.
Wave – A different type of beam, unlike the fire and gone this beam stays as long as you hold the trigger (or simply have the hotbar on fire) allowing for raking attacks over an energy ship, it would have a limit to operation to avoid it being too OP.
Plasma – While not a technical 'energy' weapon the plasma one would have generally higher damage than the laser counterpart but with a lower range. Of course it could be a family like the above and simply have a laser group (Beam, Pulse and Wave) and the same for plasma.
Ammo can be a thing if required like heat sinks or simply leave them powered to the main grid.
Ammo variants
Potential to add some crafting variants to the ammo production for late game when there is little else to do and resources are abundant to the player.
1: HE ammo, requiring more Mg to create they provide more voxel deformation and mild explosive force allowing for even near misses on engineers to cause harm
2. AP requiring Co, the rounds eat light armour and even small grid gatlings can hurt large light armour.
3. HEAP uses more Mg, Co and some Uranium, basically the best ammo to get.
I like this feedback
Also firing range needs to be changed from 800 meters to much, much more.
Also firing range needs to be changed from 800 meters to much, much more.
Honestly, the "recessed" appearance of the small grid gatling turret makes it look a lot better from a compact turret standpoint, although I can agree that the large variant should probably cover the majority of the space it takes up on a ship.
There's no reason to use the interior turret if there's a vastly superior version with better damage and automatic resupply. Sure, they don't fit into cramped hallways, but working around them is a small price to pay for effective defense that doesn't require manual stocking.
My thought process on the weapons can be summed up with something like this:
- How necessary is each part that you want to add? Is there a workaround for adding this extra block/item/variant? What are players likely to do with existing blocks/items/variants?
- How distinct are all these things? After all, differences in fire rate and damage aren't really enough to make something all that interesting compared to the other fire rate/damage variants. What are their strengths? Weaknesses? How might you emphasize these in-game?
By my count, there would be eight different types of ammunition (each with three separate variants) spread across eighteen different turret blocks. How necessary are all of these? For example, the larger guns could be only fixed, leaving the turret to players' creativity with rotors and mounts (and allowing greater customizability in the process) instead of requiring several large block variants that likely have the same corner hitbox issues as the Large Reactor but multiplied. I'm also doubting the uses of block turrets for more than the smallest weapons on small grids, because it's likely easier to just make it fixed on a rotor.
The range of ammo sizes could probably stand to lose a few variants. There's a point at which diminishing returns means that it isn't worth the extra complication, and there isn't really much of a distinction between all of them past the Autocannon and Heavy Artillery archetypes. Two or maybe three seems like enough without major special abilities to more strongly define the role of each. Ammunition types are just an enormous mess with issues ranging from a lack of reasons to swap out ammo instead of whole guns or turrets, to finding more than marginal differences in production, to supply and usage prioritization. I'd scrap the idea entirely, as it would significantly decrease clutter for only small losses in gameplay. At minimum, it might be better to link the specific effects you want to the previously-mentioned ammo sizes. For example, the largest type might be an HE round, dealing good explosive damage to the top levels of armor, while the second-largest is AP and punches through heavy armor to internals much more efficiently despite its overall lower power.
Missiles are a somewhat different issue, because they'd almost certainly be a direct upgrade to grid torpedoes, which themselves are one of the best examples of players' ingenuity in using various gameplay elements for combat purposes. And I have serious concerns about the 70mm being just a newbie raiding weapon that otherwise is kind of useless.
Honestly, I'm wondering why energy weapons exist at all. Sure, they're a good way to include power as a combat mechanic instead of a basic necessity that doesn't really do much otherwise, but there's not much here that you haven't already covered extensively with a variety of normal weapons. I could see them as a late-game weapon with specialty ammunition, but the amount of solid content here is already enough to keep Keen occupied for years trying to implement it in the most ineffective way possible.
As a closing note: I'd worry about TTK here. There are all these cool ways to blow things up with other things, but both things have to last longer than a few seconds for it to be fun to do so. Do you have any interesting ideas for defense?
Honestly, the "recessed" appearance of the small grid gatling turret makes it look a lot better from a compact turret standpoint, although I can agree that the large variant should probably cover the majority of the space it takes up on a ship.
There's no reason to use the interior turret if there's a vastly superior version with better damage and automatic resupply. Sure, they don't fit into cramped hallways, but working around them is a small price to pay for effective defense that doesn't require manual stocking.
My thought process on the weapons can be summed up with something like this:
- How necessary is each part that you want to add? Is there a workaround for adding this extra block/item/variant? What are players likely to do with existing blocks/items/variants?
- How distinct are all these things? After all, differences in fire rate and damage aren't really enough to make something all that interesting compared to the other fire rate/damage variants. What are their strengths? Weaknesses? How might you emphasize these in-game?
By my count, there would be eight different types of ammunition (each with three separate variants) spread across eighteen different turret blocks. How necessary are all of these? For example, the larger guns could be only fixed, leaving the turret to players' creativity with rotors and mounts (and allowing greater customizability in the process) instead of requiring several large block variants that likely have the same corner hitbox issues as the Large Reactor but multiplied. I'm also doubting the uses of block turrets for more than the smallest weapons on small grids, because it's likely easier to just make it fixed on a rotor.
The range of ammo sizes could probably stand to lose a few variants. There's a point at which diminishing returns means that it isn't worth the extra complication, and there isn't really much of a distinction between all of them past the Autocannon and Heavy Artillery archetypes. Two or maybe three seems like enough without major special abilities to more strongly define the role of each. Ammunition types are just an enormous mess with issues ranging from a lack of reasons to swap out ammo instead of whole guns or turrets, to finding more than marginal differences in production, to supply and usage prioritization. I'd scrap the idea entirely, as it would significantly decrease clutter for only small losses in gameplay. At minimum, it might be better to link the specific effects you want to the previously-mentioned ammo sizes. For example, the largest type might be an HE round, dealing good explosive damage to the top levels of armor, while the second-largest is AP and punches through heavy armor to internals much more efficiently despite its overall lower power.
Missiles are a somewhat different issue, because they'd almost certainly be a direct upgrade to grid torpedoes, which themselves are one of the best examples of players' ingenuity in using various gameplay elements for combat purposes. And I have serious concerns about the 70mm being just a newbie raiding weapon that otherwise is kind of useless.
Honestly, I'm wondering why energy weapons exist at all. Sure, they're a good way to include power as a combat mechanic instead of a basic necessity that doesn't really do much otherwise, but there's not much here that you haven't already covered extensively with a variety of normal weapons. I could see them as a late-game weapon with specialty ammunition, but the amount of solid content here is already enough to keep Keen occupied for years trying to implement it in the most ineffective way possible.
As a closing note: I'd worry about TTK here. There are all these cool ways to blow things up with other things, but both things have to last longer than a few seconds for it to be fun to do so. Do you have any interesting ideas for defense?
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