This super simple new weapon concept came up in the "Original Weapon Concept (and maybe a new class of airship)" post.
Basically its a mitrailese, but smaller.
In gameplay terms you just have your normal rifle but it fires in bursts of 3-5 with half second pauses in between a few times before needing to reload!
Think of it as a middle ground between Gatling guns and normal rifles, lower fire rate but more accuracy/damage compared to a Gatling!
Well, I guess ideally it fills a middle ground between the two. Less expensive, lighter, and (maybe) smaller, but does less damage, and more expensive and heavier than a rifle, but does MORE damage?
I think it would be cool to include it if for no other reason than water cooled machine guns being just as important to steampunk as Gatling guns.
But to compare it your pretty much taking the firepower of the gatling gun and condensing it into five-shot bursts for much more damage/accuracy but it's fragile with same-or-slightly-less piercing/blast damage than Gatling's with a much longer reload time..
This creates a powerful weapon against smaller targets and could easily destroy them at range making any ship carrying one very dangerous to anything less than X armour (don't know what will/wont make it op, maybe wood armour).
So basically, your condensing five rifles into one three block long burst rifle (with better stats combined) to effectively deal with lighter units, as all the bullets in the burst hit around the same spot.
This differs from gatlings because instead of providing constant cover-fire this adopts the "hit rarely but with extreme force" option which (if allowed to fire) can cripple ships if it gets a lucky shot in!
This weapon might need to be a little bit resource intensive as to not allow people from spamming them (which makes small ships more useful as the price goes up).. Also this might need to be a 'unlockable' technology?
I'd kinda like for Zarkonnen to implement expensive but very useful modules into the game which are less useful to large ships (that are already too expensive/heavy) but gives smaller more compact ships the chance to shine end game.
Hopefully preventing campagns from boiling down to "my super hulk mother ship has 20 guns and three massive keels more than your fleet so it will win by itself"..
Considering this game has no tech tree, if you need to choose between rifle, gatling and this weapon, what will you preferably equip on your ship, Firebird11 ? Rifle, precise but slow / gatling, rapid random hits / this machine gun, less rapid than gatling but more precise ? Cost is not important for selection, in campaign you can always wait 2 more minutes to buying it.
In all my games where you customize ships (FTL, FTD, SPAZ, Airships, GSB, GSBII) i usually adopt the "shoot rarely but with extreme force" strategy, favoring power and good aiming for more efficient attacks..
So do I... In that case, how many of us will still put gatlings in our ships ? Or rifles... With this weapon, you have much power than a rifle and maybe gatling too considering the 3 or 5 shots will hit the same module... The only counterpart will be a lesser precision than rifle... It can unbalanced the game or simply "force" the player in his choise . In my opinion, you have a good exemple of tech that kill tech. And there is nothing worse than weapons, developped with love and with time by the dev ^^, never or partially used by people.
Plus if I understand the reply of Zarkonnen, he rather prefers a new tech bringing new strategic possibilities than a simple upgrade of an existing one (I hope I can read correctly between the lines ^^) ...
I'm sure it will be a great addition if players can use research points to upgrade their Empire, like TheClockworks suggest in another thread...
The way i see it is normal rifles aren't supposed to be too good on their own because they are cheap and reliable, that's their job.
Gatlings are more expensive, sturdy and provide constant cover fire against light targets by hitting everything everywhere on the enemy ship..
Burst rifles should be more expensive, fragile and barley fire but with good damage and single out individual rooms, so they are not a direct upgrade from the Gatling gun since they take the stats and go in the completely opposite direction..
lol no, that's an upgrade for rifles ! 3/5 bullets instead of one but loosing some of the precision. It's impossible for burst rifles to be more expensive than gatlings which have twice their size minimum and are equipped with 6 or 8 long and large barrels.
Btw, it's not me you need to convice ^^ I'm on the same boat than you - or hovercraft ! I also have some kind of weapons in mind but thanks to Zarkonnen's reply all I have to do now is to re-think most of them to be more usefull to the game. It's a good point however, I like challenges ! ;p
Yeah but if the idea is'nt good enough to convince a member of the community it's far less likley to convince the games developer..
yeah and i suppose its a direct upgrade.. the only limiting factor i can think of is to switch the blast/pierce values so a normal rifle can pierce and breach walls but the burst rifle deals high damage to the rooms themselves or it can have little burst damage too..
Which makes it it's own weapon! bad against walls but when versing rooms that are already breached it can devastate them!
So its like, if the room has some kind of back wall its kind-of safe. but if its already got a hole in it then the next time the weapon fires (remember the long reload time) there will probably be nothing left of the room!
Think of it firing shells that break apart on impact or slightly explode or something.. it is'int gonna' get through Armour very well but if it can bypass that (by using other guns to breech) and hit the actual components its going to deal a lot of damage!
I don't think we have anti-room guns yet, just anti blast/pierce/both armour
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
This super simple new weapon concept came up in the "Original Weapon Concept (and maybe a new class of airship)" post.
Basically its a mitrailese, but smaller.
In gameplay terms you just have your normal rifle but it fires in bursts of 3-5 with half second pauses in between a few times before needing to reload!
Think of it as a middle ground between Gatling guns and normal rifles, lower fire rate but more accuracy/damage compared to a Gatling!
Able Airman
Excellent idea i think this would be good,also make it as like make it fire first this one the this so you can have a continous shooting!
Aerial Emperor
Trying to figure out where this fits tactically - what does it let you do that you can't do with rifles or gatlings?
Captain
Well, I guess ideally it fills a middle ground between the two. Less expensive, lighter, and (maybe) smaller, but does less damage, and more expensive and heavier than a rifle, but does MORE damage?
I think it would be cool to include it if for no other reason than water cooled machine guns being just as important to steampunk as Gatling guns.
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
Ideally the weapon is its own type of thing.
But to compare it your pretty much taking the firepower of the gatling gun and condensing it into five-shot bursts for much more damage/accuracy but it's fragile with same-or-slightly-less piercing/blast damage than Gatling's with a much longer reload time..
This creates a powerful weapon against smaller targets and could easily destroy them at range making any ship carrying one very dangerous to anything less than X armour (don't know what will/wont make it op, maybe wood armour).
So basically, your condensing five rifles into one three block long burst rifle (with better stats combined) to effectively deal with lighter units, as all the bullets in the burst hit around the same spot.
This differs from gatlings because instead of providing constant cover-fire this adopts the "hit rarely but with extreme force" option which (if allowed to fire) can cripple ships if it gets a lucky shot in!
This weapon might need to be a little bit resource intensive as to not allow people from spamming them (which makes small ships more useful as the price goes up).. Also this might need to be a 'unlockable' technology?
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
I'd kinda like for Zarkonnen to implement expensive but very useful modules into the game which are less useful to large ships (that are already too expensive/heavy) but gives smaller more compact ships the chance to shine end game.
Hopefully preventing campagns from boiling down to "my super hulk mother ship has 20 guns and three massive keels more than your fleet so it will win by itself"..
Captain
Considering this game has no tech tree, if you need to choose between rifle, gatling and this weapon, what will you preferably equip on your ship, Firebird11 ? Rifle, precise but slow / gatling, rapid random hits / this machine gun, less rapid than gatling but more precise ? Cost is not important for selection, in campaign you can always wait 2 more minutes to buying it.
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
In all my games where you customize ships (FTL, FTD, SPAZ, Airships, GSB, GSBII) i usually adopt the "shoot rarely but with extreme force" strategy, favoring power and good aiming for more efficient attacks..
Captain
So do I... In that case, how many of us will still put gatlings in our ships ? Or rifles... With this weapon, you have much power than a rifle and maybe gatling too considering the 3 or 5 shots will hit the same module... The only counterpart will be a lesser precision than rifle... It can unbalanced the game or simply "force" the player in his choise . In my opinion, you have a good exemple of tech that kill tech. And there is nothing worse than weapons, developped with love and with time by the dev ^^, never or partially used by people.
Plus if I understand the reply of Zarkonnen, he rather prefers a new tech bringing new strategic possibilities than a simple upgrade of an existing one (I hope I can read correctly between the lines ^^) ...
I'm sure it will be a great addition if players can use research points to upgrade their Empire, like TheClockworks suggest in another thread...
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
The way i see it is normal rifles aren't supposed to be too good on their own because they are cheap and reliable, that's their job.
Gatlings are more expensive, sturdy and provide constant cover fire against light targets by hitting everything everywhere on the enemy ship..
Burst rifles should be more expensive, fragile and barley fire but with good damage and single out individual rooms, so they are not a direct upgrade from the Gatling gun since they take the stats and go in the completely opposite direction..
Commander, Engineering Corps
Perhaps the burst rifle could be a portable rapid-fire weapon for ground troops, once they're added to the game.
Captain
@Firebird11
lol no, that's an upgrade for rifles ! 3/5 bullets instead of one but loosing some of the precision. It's impossible for burst rifles to be more expensive than gatlings which have twice their size minimum and are equipped with 6 or 8 long and large barrels.
Btw, it's not me you need to convice ^^ I'm on the same boat than you - or hovercraft ! I also have some kind of weapons in mind but thanks to Zarkonnen's reply all I have to do now is to re-think most of them to be more usefull to the game. It's a good point however, I like challenges ! ;p
EDIT : @Clueboe Yes !! That's a good idea !
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
Yeah but if the idea is'nt good enough to convince a member of the community it's far less likley to convince the games developer..
yeah and i suppose its a direct upgrade.. the only limiting factor i can think of is to switch the blast/pierce values so a normal rifle can pierce and breach walls but the burst rifle deals high damage to the rooms themselves or it can have little burst damage too..
Which makes it it's own weapon! bad against walls but when versing rooms that are already breached it can devastate them!
So its like, if the room has some kind of back wall its kind-of safe. but if its already got a hole in it then the next time the weapon fires (remember the long reload time) there will probably be nothing left of the room!
Think of it firing shells that break apart on impact or slightly explode or something.. it is'int gonna' get through Armour very well but if it can bypass that (by using other guns to breech) and hit the actual components its going to deal a lot of damage!
I don't think we have anti-room guns yet, just anti blast/pierce/both armour