Upgradable or Modular Weapons

+1 Upvote. Modular weapons like From the Depths would be way cooler. Like you said, keep the normal weapons for new players and small ships but give us some more engineering possibilities and rewards with modular weapons.

I liked the modularity implementation in Starbase better. I would like to see something similar.

Honestly why stop at weapons? Modules similar to the refinery modules could be applied to so many things.

Great idea, anything that adds more depth to PVP is a vote from me. More blocks and more options is what players need.

Immediately hated the idea but now that I'm thinking about it, it might not be a bad one at all. I cannot stand tiered weapons, but if modifications will instead give complexity and strategy to combat, such as with bonuses AND drawbacks in mods, that would be really enthralling.

Making the railgun larger could be cool and maybe some sort of dampeners that sit behind the railguns to absorb the force of the railgun going off.

Honestly I would prefer they add different more expensive ammo types for one and the same weapon as a way of making it more powerful. The ammos can have complex production chains and exotic materials tied to them as well, which would delinearize the standard progression of more modules = better. It's also simpler than making a single block with (AI controlled) moving parts somehow accept components in real time and still function properly, which would have to be at least a currently novel system that I don't see much other use for, but that's just my 2 cents. I mean the only way I can see it work is if they did the same like with rifles, e.g. rapid fire, precision or elite modules and only allow the slot under it's conveyor port or something to be used. But I guess that they can make some platform with multiple ports to it as well and have more creative options than just that.

this is such an awesome idea, i cant even imagine the possibilities, imagine this mixed in with aerodynamics or something too, crazy.

the game would truly become a blackhole for my personal time.

Yes! It would be great that instead of spamming multiple small default weapons, you would also have option to build stronger single weapon.

Building custom missiles was my favorite thin in SE1, but the warheads themselves were very underwhelming, would be great if also warheads would be modular so that they would fit better to different sized missile and stacking them would allow building more powerful warheads. Here is an idea and how it could be modeled:

There would be 2 different types of blocks: shell and explosive. The explosives would determine the total strength of explosion and the shell blocks would determine the explosion pattern. The explosive blocks would be the ones that detonate in case they are hit while the shell blocks would also work as armor, but does not get in the way like normal blocks.

How this could work from game development perspective:

I understand that game performance should be optimized so i will introduce these in importance order starting from most important: Stacking explosives:

Adding multiple explosive blocks together, causes their energy be stacked. This energy determines the amount of damage the explosion will cause. This damage will be distributed between recasts that originate from explosive center of mass and which will deliver their individual damage to blocks that they hit. If this is only adopted feature, then also the range should scale based on the energy, but with diminishing returns so that there is soft cap for balance reasons.

Pressure and shrapnel effects:

Just like in SE1, explosives them selves would create ball shaped pressure effect that has relatively low damage and causes the main voxel damage. Then there would also be shrapnel effects that are created by the shell blocks. These consists of recasts on directed cones that cause much more damage to grids. There could be for example a typical fragmentation shell, that creates wide cone similar that could be seen in for example in grenades or claymore. then there could also be a shape charge style shell, that causes much more narrow cone with much more concentrated damage and longer range just like in something like in anti tank weapons. The direction of the cone caused by a shell block could be determined by what directions each shell blocks center is from the center of explosive center of mass. This would allow optimizing for perfect explosion pattern for each need. It could for example allow for NLAW style top attack or creating mainly sideways going pattern similar to many aa missiles. At least I would use countless hours trying to optimize these :D. For performance there probably should be a limit to the amount of recasts so that the amount of shell blocks do not change the total amount. the ray casts are just distributed differently based on the how different shell blocks are placed. Also adding more shell does not increase the total damage, but distributes more of the short range pressure damage to longer range shrapnel damage.

Here is another Sketch showing how multiple shrapnel blocks would generate the Shrapnel pattern. These centerlines could themselves be recasts and random recasts could be generated around them within angle deviation so that they stay within the cones.

Environmental effects:

If the engine supports it, and performance standards allow it, the environmental effects could be taken into account for extra realism. For example the pressure effect would be amplified in atmospheres and even under water while shrapnel would loose their energy much faster there compared to space. Also the pressure effect could use similar system as SE1 pressurization and cause mainly damage to blocks that they are in same space with. for example It would not damage blocks or characters that are inside a pressurized vehicle, but if explosion happens inside or the vehicle has holes, the over pressure gets inside and releases its damage also there. The pressure could be logarithmic and be very strong near the explosion, but drop rapidly as the gasses expand. For shrapnel's there could be a similar effect where their recasts cause less damage the further the target is and the reduction could related to the thickness of surrounding

Visual and voxel effects:

Visually there could be the typical fire/smoke ball at close to the over pressure center and it would also be cool if there was larger pressure wave effect surrounding it. There could also be smoke/fire trails along the centers of the shrapnel cones. The shrapnel recasts could cause dust could as they impact objects or voxels. This is what i think it might look like

I think normal shrapnel's do not need to cause performance expensive voxel damage as small fragments do little to no changes to terrain in real world either. Maby if it in line with game engine, there could be some temporary texture changes similar to bullet holes or darkened spots on ground. The shape charge pattern could dig a narrowing hole to the voxels allowing for example tunnel excavation. The pressure area could be the main voxel altering effect and work similarly to the current warhead. How ever the area where it damages voxels should be much shorter than the area where it can damage characters and blocks to prevent unnaturally large craters.

I really hope something to this direction would be implemented as it would go so well together with SE destruction mechanics and allow doing so many cool things. This is just my idea and it would be interesting to hear also other solutions to improve current warheads.