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Ship Weapon systems?


CharlesAugustus

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I'm here wondering what weapon systems for ships will be available in game? I have a few idea's and I'll discuss their uses but I do not know if these kinds of weapons will be in the final game these ideas are my own theories.

 

Plasma Weaponry - Now if your an Avid Sci-Fi reader like my self you'll know Plasma is a popular idea, Although in space i wouldn't say it is, Plasma is let's say essentially super heated Gas and Space is a Vacuum, no air and very very cold so over distance the Plasma is going to lose heat and disperse which will at best make it only a decent short range weapon, and in space you want long range weapons so Plasma weaponry on a ship i think would be best for just Point Defense, in fact it'd be great as an Infantry weapon as well.

 

Missiles - A classic piece of weaponry which could have many different types and uses, you could have your usual explosive ones to destroy targets or you could have ECM ones to confuse the enemy scanners and make them think you have more missiles than you launched, In fact you could have a load of very small missiles used for point defense purposes taking down large enemy missiles.

 

Lasers - Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation, this is what Laser stands for so it is essentially concentrated light to form a very hot beam (How many of us have gotten a Magnifying glass on a sunny day and murdered thousands of bugs?) And it has an effect on Earth but what would it be like in space with no Atmosphere to block most of the Radiation and refract the sun light? Why you'd get a 100% certified death beam and since Light travels very fast you have a great Point defense system and if the enemy don't have some strong ceramic armor then Lasers would be devastating in ship to ship combat.

 

Rail guns - A classic weapon, compared to the others listed so far its simple and easy and if enemy ships do have ceramic armor to prevent lasers then Missiles and Rail guns are the way to go, the great thing is once the rail gun round reaches top speed it's not going to stop until it hits some thing, so i guess Rail gun's are simple but what about their Rounds? Why you could stuff explosives in the middle of one so once it pierces enemy armor it explodes inside doing untold damage! (Essentially a Smart round.)

 

Mass Driver - A cousin of the Rail gun, this could be used to launch very large objects at an enemy ship.

 

Now i did this post on a whim and there may be more weapons that i did not mention (Torpedo's, but no idea how these would work in space?) if you can think of some just leave a post!

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A plasma charge can be delivered if a ballistic core can maintain a magnetic field for the duration of the projectile's flight. That, would be classified as a railgun as well, but it would be glorified grenade launcher.

Missiles are trusty and functional in any setting. If the devs go for a "taunt" ability, a battleship could also redirect the missiles onto it by increasing its own signautre and attracting the missiles.

Mass drivers would be acting as long distance, siege weaponry. You hurl a kiloton of a rock toweras a space station. Cool, those things can't really dodge anything, but for ship to ship combat, with possible firing runs gameplay, I can't see mass drivers being effectice for ship to ship action. Let's leave that to railguns and particule acclelerator coil-guns :P

Lasers absolutely. They would only have a cooldown timer, since, if they are a lamp-based laser the crystals would need to cool down before ree-firing the batteries, while a fission based laser would still need a payload of nuclear material to be relaoded on its deposit.


All of these weaponry come at varying costs and power consumption. 

A full laser based ship has the capability of great trades, but it's left on medium range periods of inability to fire back, while a plasma railgun would be able to deliver heavy, HEAVY punches, but at very high cost of operations. Missiles are cool, but, yeah, countermeasures are in place in real life for missiles. Namely, a laser intervention type of skill that can mitigate their number, or my suggestion of an "attraction" skill that will lead the missiles on a more sturdy ship, meant to take a pummeling, like a battleship, instead for a frigate they might be going for.

Mass drivers are fair game for sieges all day. Perhaps being utilised as a catapult of sorts for system sieges and can be easily be maintained, as space is full of junk lying around you may melt down and turn to shiny balls of destruction. Just, don't expect them to be any good at close quarters :P People will see them coming from miles :P

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A few more options:

 

Point Defense. Rapid fire automated guns (your choice, laser, ballistic, plasma). Could be used to defend against missiles, drones, or even light craft.

 

AoE self centered weapons. Something like an EMP burst or other Strong field fluctuations (gravity field burst?). Could be used for clearing the local field of small craft, or damaging satellites.

 

Siege weapons. Something to do high damage to a stationary target while making yourself somewhat immobile. This has the added benefit that "taking the field" in warfare has meaning. Examples are the mass driver, some sort of charged particle cannon, maybe large plasma bursts.

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I like all of these. I'd like to see a large variety of weapon types, each with their pros and cons. They should all participate in a balancing regime such that one type of offensive is fairly effective against a particular type of defense, and conversely, there would be one type of defense that is fairly effective against a particular offensive. Like a big game of rock paper scissors.

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I like all of these. I'd like to see a large variety of weapon types, each with their pros and cons. They should all participate in a balancing regime such that one type of offensive is fairly effective against a particular type of defense, and conversely, there would be one type of defense that is fairly effective against a particular offensive. Like a big game of rock paper scissors.

Technically speaking, Mass Drivers VS Space Stations is an "effective type vs appropraite target" kind of situation. The rest of my suggestion are mainly focused on cost versus utility :P

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Technically speaking, Mass Drivers VS Space Stations is an "effective type vs appropraite target" kind of situation. The rest of my suggestion are mainly focused on cost versus utility :P

 

That really isn't what I meant. "Space Station" isn't really a type of element that you can place to negate a certain weapon. I was thinking more along the lines of placing different types of armor to resist certain weapons. Or choosing a different weapon based on the defensive capabilities.

 

The point of my suggestion was not cost vs utility but rather balanced gameplay.

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That really isn't what I meant. "Space Station" isn't really a type of element that you can place to negate a certain weapon. I was thinking more along the lines of placing different types of armor to resist certain weapons. Or choosing a different weapon based on the defensive capabilities.

 

The point of my suggestion was not cost vs utility but rather balanced gameplay.

When I say space stations, I don't mean the ISS :P I mean a literal fort in space and mass drivers are slow to charge and fire, requiring time for them to lock-on the target due to the aiming mechanics in Dual. A weapon systems specialist would have a shorter time to figure out the minutia of how to send a slub of iron through space in the correct angles and stuff (RP in a way, since nobody is going to calculate trajectories manually :P ) which make a ship with a mass-driver the siege engine of the fleet and the player guaranteeing the hit on the space tower, a useful asset of a group.

 

 

And balanced gameplay should come from making the player think if he can spare the limited ammunition he has for something now, or wait and wage his enemy's firepower and endurance first. And "armor types" really doesn't work in space. The only real armor is alloy composition and thickness of the hull ,with an arguement to be made for structural integrity of the frame as a whole. Lasers are lasers, the alloy is what it'll melt. You can choose a differnt alloy, perhaps more resistant to heat (as laser is heat essentially) and hope for the best, but that alloy would simply make your ship a giant ceramic egg, easily smashed. My suggesion on that can be found on "shields" as a thread, where I explained why a "force-field" kind of shield would be better for a unified defense front on ships as  a ship's captain may choose to go for 100% on the shields power to block any incoming attack and exploit his enemies recharge timers on the weapon systems to go for a retaliation, or even, having the ability to withstand all attacks until the enemy is left barren of ammunition to keep fighting, which is how a fight between a Battleship and a Frigate would go in space. Battleships are behemonts of power, frigates, not that much.

 

Anything else that that in my opinion, makes the game susceptible to "rock paper scissors". And nobody likes losing a ship just because "oops, who knew the other guy had the EXACT advantage against you. Better luck next time. Why you ragequited?" .

 

Having weapons being balanced due to some physical aspect as I explained above, does make sense in the long run. Do not expect ships to stand still and fight. People will want to minimise their exposure to enemy barrage while maximising THEIR output. That includes juking speeds, which would be the ultimate test of skill and teamwork for a large warship. Arbitrary numbers and "luck of the draw" PvP does not mean much. and it only gives birth to "flavor of the month" classes or specialisations, that plague other MMOs.

 

I for starters, always was the teamwork kind of player. Played a healer in Arenas, knew how to time my cooldowns and can cooperate. if people want "classes" to be in the game, for the sake of "I play rogue, I win scrub" then I don't see the game lasting long as a ship could be literally strong one day, while the net is a pile of trash to be scrapped because "the devs tuned X skill and the meta is not worth this ship".

 

Let the meta change with fleet compositions, not arbitrary numbers on damage types.

 

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I'm not saying that physical balancing is bad, I'm just adding that defensive-offensive balancing needs to be considered as well. Add on defensive physical balancing and you have the trifecta. Each of those three areas would need to all be equally balanced, with each other and internally.

 

And I'm not suggesting that there should be massive advantages in the "rock paper scissors" scheme, nor too little, but just right. Balanced.

 

Also I am not a fan of this "space jousting" I keep hearing you talk about. Just because you want it, doesn't mean that's the way to go. If the DU ends up not needing jousting, that's no problem. If by all this "space jousting" you mean to imply that moving targets are harder to hit, then there are certainly better ways to go about it. Jousting would be one of the worst ways to avoid being hit, since you aren't moving much at all relative to your opponent, only appearing to grow in size.

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I'm not saying that physical balancing is bad, I'm just adding that defensive-offensive balancing needs to be considered as well. Add on defensive physical balancing and you have the trifecta. Each of those three areas would need to all be equally balanced, with each other and internally.

 

And I'm not suggesting that there should be massive advantages in the "rock paper scissors" scheme, nor too little, but just right. Balanced.

 

Also I am not a fan of this "space jousting" I keep hearing you talk about. Just because you want it, doesn't mean that's the way to go. If the DU ends up not needing jousting, that's no problem. If by all this "space jousting" you mean to imply that moving targets are harder to hit, then there are certainly better ways to go about it. Jousting would be one of the worst ways to avoid being hit, since you aren't moving much at all relative to your opponent, only appearing to grow in size.

Good sir, like it or not, space battles won't be like star wars/ star trek. While Star Trek got right the idea of a "submarine" of a space ship, space, is big, really big. When you charge at someone and start doping your speed back and forth, you throw their aim off due to relativistic effect. You expect for an EVE "slug-fesh". Well, sorry, but the devs go for a target and lock-on, not a atb-target system. The wise thing to do is to play be limiting exposure and maximising effectiveness. Godd PvPers who like challenge will pick up on this, bad players will call the PvP "broken".

 

 

Similar to how people who were clickers in WoW called the PvP "broken" because they wanted WoW to be a stand-still and slug like Lineage 2 was. Why would you even use scripts if space-combat is all about "slugfest"? Why would you need to time the turrets firing correctly given your velocity, if LUA scripts are just glorified macros? Cause that is a little too ironic if the devs went there, no?

 

 

In any case, I'm in it for the ground combat. If space combat is not going to be space-jousting I won't feel any less sorrow, as if I were on a spaceship I would have taken a utility role, instead of whatever hero fantasy people go for in games like these. After all, the Enterprise wouldn't do anything without Scotty.

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I'm here wondering what weapon systems for ships will be available in game? I have a few idea's and I'll discuss their uses but I do not know if these kinds of weapons will be in the final game these ideas are my own theories.

 

Plasma Weaponry - Now if your an Avid Sci-Fi reader like my self you'll know Plasma is a popular idea, Although in space i wouldn't say it is, Plasma is let's say essentially super heated Gas and Space is a Vacuum, no air and very very cold so over distance the Plasma is going to lose heat and disperse which will at best make it only a decent short range weapon, and in space you want long range weapons so Plasma weaponry on a ship i think would be best for just Point Defense, in fact it'd be great as an Infantry weapon as well.

 

Missiles - A classic piece of weaponry which could have many different types and uses, you could have your usual explosive ones to destroy targets or you could have ECM ones to confuse the enemy scanners and make them think you have more missiles than you launched, In fact you could have a load of very small missiles used for point defense purposes taking down large enemy missiles.

 

Lasers - Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation, this is what Laser stands for so it is essentially concentrated light to form a very hot beam (How many of us have gotten a Magnifying glass on a sunny day and murdered thousands of bugs?) And it has an effect on Earth but what would it be like in space with no Atmosphere to block most of the Radiation and refract the sun light? Why you'd get a 100% certified death beam and since Light travels very fast you have a great Point defense system and if the enemy don't have some strong ceramic armor then Lasers would be devastating in ship to ship combat.

 

Rail guns - A classic weapon, compared to the others listed so far its simple and easy and if enemy ships do have ceramic armor to prevent lasers then Missiles and Rail guns are the way to go, the great thing is once the rail gun round reaches top speed it's not going to stop until it hits some thing, so i guess Rail gun's are simple but what about their Rounds? Why you could stuff explosives in the middle of one so once it pierces enemy armor it explodes inside doing untold damage! (Essentially a Smart round.)

 

Mass Driver - A cousin of the Rail gun, this could be used to launch very large objects at an enemy ship.

 

Now i did this post on a whim and there may be more weapons that i did not mention (Torpedo's, but no idea how these would work in space?) if you can think of some just leave a post!

There are some good categories there, but I would include rail guns with the mass driver set.  There could be different levels within each category, and obviously rail guns would be at the top with cannons somewhere in the middle.  Lasers could have different classes based on energy requirements, and plasma weapons could include ion cannons that would disable ship systems without doing physical damage to most components (good for pirate boarding attacks, and ship rustling).

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  • 1 year later...

I really like the idea of railguns and coilguns in the game. it seems like a great weapon for long-range piercing damage. My inspiration would of course, come from the "Halo" series. Something like a MAC coilgun would be very nice to see in the game. 

Autocannons firing 35mm, 50mm, and/or 70mm ballistic rounds would be a good addition.

Lasers: great for tracking and destroying missiles

Missiles/rockets: excellent idea of deployed in large numbers.

MEGPB's: "Magnetically Encased Guided Plasma Bolts" would be excellent for melting through armor (mostly).

Ceramic Plate armor would be great for absorbing heat from plasma and some lasers 

titanium or equivalent metal plate armor would be great for protection against ballistic weapons.

energy shielding could come into play

Nuclear weapons would add some level of fun to the game

deployable mines would be nice to see as well

 

In all of this, I am thinking of large, multiple crew-member ships, not small fighter-sized craft. (i.e. at least 300 meters long, though preferably much larger.

 

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1 hour ago, 0something0 said:

Personally, I would like to see DU being realistic overall and let emergent gameplay take over. 

 

I would like to introduce you to Atomic Rockets, and in this case, the Space War: Weapons section. http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunintro.php

It has already been stated that there will not be any form of nuclear armaments. The most we can hope for are just big explosions... not world ending explosions. 

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In some games I have played they use a explosive plasma type weapon that seems to be effective on most targets small or large but I have a feeling we will probably start of with lasers and kinetic based weapons which is ok with me and maybe new weapons new one later. I would all so be ok if they just started off with just lasers but had some variety in types of lasers we could use.

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a nuclear bomb is far less effective in space than it is in an atmosphere, the worst in can do in a vacuum is irradiate a ship; while they might seem implementation in game, they will be balanced as explosive weapons along side kinetic em and thermal, at least, in my imagination that is.

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  • 2 weeks later...

What about an Ion Cannon? (mostly cause i like the idea of a blue beam) but Ion Cannon as the particle beam of the weapons choice that fire ionized particles which would do a mix of energy damage and psychical damage due to the fact of being a Particle weapon. :) 

Edit: also with the ideal of laser beam weapons and so on would there be a way to change the color of the beam weapons? so people could have a little bit of customization? 

Edited by Martok
something else to add
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We already have plasma weapons as an idea. Plasma is also a particle weapon capable of inflicting both ballistic kinetic energy and kinetic energy from the extreme heat. Needless to say, the color can vary simply based on temperature and the element used. I think plasma is just as good as an ion beam. I guess either would be ok though; it is just a game.

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7 hours ago, hellfire999 said:

We already have plasma weapons as an idea. Plasma is also a particle weapon capable of inflicting both ballistic kinetic energy and kinetic energy from the extreme heat. Needless to say, the color can vary simply based on temperature and the element used. I think plasma is just as good as an ion beam. I guess either would be ok though; it is just a game.

In most games I have played and mostly strategic ones the plasma weapons have more than one effect on a target : energy, heat , and explosive types which would make it a great weapon with multiple uses from small to large targets but those games also I guess as a counter limited the range of plasma weapons !

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One of the things about this game is that it is physics-based, which means the developers are looking at realistic weapons and how they should and would work in real life. Plasma is a material element in its hypothetical 4th energy state (Solid>liquid>gaseous>plasma). Plasma causes damage to other materials mostly through its extreme temperatures (usually about 3,000°f) but also by ballistic energy obtained by shooting it at high speeds. The problem with plasma is that it likes to dissipate quickly, especially in the vacuum of space. The way this can be solved is by "guiding" it using an electromagnetic "container" that effectively wraps around it, holding it together until it hits its target. Plasma is not explosive either. Its range is as far as it can go before dispersing. One thing that other games get wrong is that they portray space as being really cold. This is actually not true. Space is a vacuum. Heat travels only through matter. If you were to walk out in space without any protection, you would not freeze because your body heat couldn't go anywhere (you would, however, probably implode and/or suffer burning from direct contact with cosmic rays). Just another thought. Explosive things will have to come in the form of missiles/rockets or bombs (probably).

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A plasma or rather a highly ionized substance could be produced and expelled as a projectile without the use of extreme temperatures.  Think an ion beam except a highly ionized and heavier element that is expelled in bulk masses.  It wouldn't be affected by temperatures in addition its extreme reactivity would be perfect for space where the only thing to react with would be your target.

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Ions don't react with all materials. Plasma at least, can be guaranteed to go through most materials. The worst thing about a "beam" of ions is that because ions in a beam all have the same electrical charge, they would disperse each other, just as same sides of magnets repel each other. Plasma is still more practical (in my humble opinion).

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