Basically a cannon that fires a load of incredibly devastating yet inaccurate hunks of metal.
Sort of a shotgun. I imagine it would be cheap and would severely tax your ship ammo.
On a side note will there be a midway cannon to fill the gap between the muzzle loading cannon and the heavy cannon?
I'd really like to see this idea in game! (kind-of reminds me of the FTL flak cannons)
It would be cool to see the mechanic for these to have clips of around five shots and a firing rate of 0 so it instantly fires the entire clip once loaded.
That would make for a pretty cool (ammo intensive) flak design, especially when you are able to tear multiple holes in light enemy ships simultaneously.
Yeah, but you would have to be right in their face. That with high ammo consumption, and slow reload(Depending on how much ammo crew can carry) would make the flak cannon really unbalanced unless dirt cheap.
You could make it work by putting them right beside ammo stores to fire faster, if the dimensions were 1x1 (doors: back, above, below) it would be a good close ranged weapon to cram into cheap ships!
A design example could be: A small ship with 3 flak guns in the front built to constantly pelt the entirety of an enemy ship's Armour.
I thought it would be a shotgun-like weapon? Because we already have a gun that fires fast. The Gatling gun. But, yeah. It would be good to put it on small ships. What i like about this is that it adds strategy contrary to the standard "out-gun-em" routine.
Carcass, an incendiary projectile that releases vile fumes.
Grapeshot, a bag filled with smaller cannon-balls that acts like a giant shotgun, and Canister shot, a similar projectile with smaller sub-projectiles yet.
Shrapnel, an anti-personnel weapon that would explode in midair, showering the enemy with iron balls and casing fragments.
There's also Scattershot mentioned here, which was ad-hoc grapeshot achieved by basically filling the cannon with random objects including nails, chains, rocks... even cutlery. A desperate measure, perhaps, but better than nothing.
This thread is a good reminder for me of something that I haven't really tackled yet: different kinds of ammo. Basically, there are three options here:
Ignore it. Each type of weapon shoots one kind of ammo. This is straightforward and ensures that each weapon has a clear niche.
Make variant weapon types, so you'd have "Cannon" and "Cannon (grapeshot)", etc. This is simple to implement and needs no extra UI, but might lead to a really long module list!
Allow weapons to have multiple ammo types switchable in-combat. This is the most complex but coolest option. Possible downsides: more GUI stuff, and might mess up the existing strategy in weapon choice.
@Zarkonnen You could implement subcategories in the options menu for variant weapon types to get around a massive options menu.
So say if you select a cannon like normal you can hit 'shift + scrollUp', to change the cannon in the menu and on your cursor placement to cannon(ammoTypeHere) and 'shift + scrollDown' to go backwards, etc.
Another option would be to make the menu extend rightward so clicking the right arrow on a weapon in the pallet pulls out a weapon type submenu for that object.
@madking321 It is supposed to be a shotgun weapon (sorry, 'constantly' should have been 'periodically')?
I meant having an ammo store right next to the weapon would make it fire much faster because it only shoots once before needing to reload. (meaning the fire rate would almost be directly proportional to the ammo carry time and reloading time)
On a side note: What do you think the effects of having a large suspendium chunk shot out of a heavy cannon be on enemy airships' lift chambers?
Perhaps a sub-menu or dialog to select module variants/options at ship design time, thus avoiding cluttering the module menu? Even already it could be used to avoid having separate modules for flipped weapons.
Being able to change ammo types mid-combat sounds cool, but I worry adding that kind of micro-management level to ship commands would make controlling ships cumbersome. Unless of course the gunners were capable of intelligently selecting ammo types on their own.
Anyways, speaking of the shrapnel (aka grapeshot or canister) cannons -- While I'm not sure how the mechanics work in terms of injuring crew, I wonder if they could find a niche as a kind of "anti-crew" weapon, by dispersing damage across a large area of the target ship so that crew members are more likely to be caught by the damage.
Then again, gatling guns kind of work the same way. Perhaps the shrapnel cannon could trade a lower overall DPS for some kind of damage penetration?
I was thinking the weapon would trade off the rapidness of a Gatling for a huge area of effect (the entire backwall of a 1-1500$, ship for example) and deals very low damage to enemy ships, but with one or two of the projectiles doing decently more.
This makes it pretty useless against fully armoured ships but devastating to anything that has hull breaches (as every crewman caught outside could die when the weapon fires)
Hopefully this gives the desired effect but makes them drastically different from Gatling modules without being too overpowered.
Air Admiral
Basically a cannon that fires a load of incredibly devastating yet inaccurate hunks of metal. Sort of a shotgun. I imagine it would be cheap and would severely tax your ship ammo. On a side note will there be a midway cannon to fill the gap between the muzzle loading cannon and the heavy cannon?
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
I'd really like to see this idea in game! (kind-of reminds me of the FTL flak cannons)
It would be cool to see the mechanic for these to have clips of around five shots and a firing rate of 0 so it instantly fires the entire clip once loaded.
That would make for a pretty cool (ammo intensive) flak design, especially when you are able to tear multiple holes in light enemy ships simultaneously.
Air Admiral
Yeah, but you would have to be right in their face. That with high ammo consumption, and slow reload(Depending on how much ammo crew can carry) would make the flak cannon really unbalanced unless dirt cheap.
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
You could make it work by putting them right beside ammo stores to fire faster, if the dimensions were 1x1 (doors: back, above, below) it would be a good close ranged weapon to cram into cheap ships!
A design example could be: A small ship with 3 flak guns in the front built to constantly pelt the entirety of an enemy ship's Armour.
Air Admiral
I thought it would be a shotgun-like weapon? Because we already have a gun that fires fast. The Gatling gun. But, yeah. It would be good to put it on small ships. What i like about this is that it adds strategy contrary to the standard "out-gun-em" routine.
Aerial Emperor
See also Wikipedia's wonderful list of cannon projectiles.
Some nice ones:
This thread is a good reminder for me of something that I haven't really tackled yet: different kinds of ammo. Basically, there are three options here:
Air Admiral
I would not mind it for the strategy.
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
@Zarkonnen You could implement subcategories in the options menu for variant weapon types to get around a massive options menu.
So say if you select a cannon like normal you can hit 'shift + scrollUp', to change the cannon in the menu and on your cursor placement to cannon(ammoTypeHere) and 'shift + scrollDown' to go backwards, etc.
Another option would be to make the menu extend rightward so clicking the right arrow on a weapon in the pallet pulls out a weapon type submenu for that object.
@madking321 It is supposed to be a shotgun weapon (sorry, 'constantly' should have been 'periodically')?
I meant having an ammo store right next to the weapon would make it fire much faster because it only shoots once before needing to reload. (meaning the fire rate would almost be directly proportional to the ammo carry time and reloading time)
On a side note: What do you think the effects of having a large suspendium chunk shot out of a heavy cannon be on enemy airships' lift chambers?
Commander
Perhaps a sub-menu or dialog to select module variants/options at ship design time, thus avoiding cluttering the module menu? Even already it could be used to avoid having separate modules for flipped weapons.
Being able to change ammo types mid-combat sounds cool, but I worry adding that kind of micro-management level to ship commands would make controlling ships cumbersome. Unless of course the gunners were capable of intelligently selecting ammo types on their own.
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
Going with the ammo types idea, airships could just have an extra button that toggles between 'adaptive' and 'normal'.
Adaptive being airships will analyze their target and chose which ammunition to use and normal being using the ammunition set inside of the editor.
This way ship AI will either react based on:
Preset weapons; For example, a ship being forced to use long ranged ammo will stay far away from enemies.
Enemy loadouts; A starting short range cannon ship might notice the enemy uses flamethrowers and switch to long range.
Commander
Anyways, speaking of the shrapnel (aka grapeshot or canister) cannons -- While I'm not sure how the mechanics work in terms of injuring crew, I wonder if they could find a niche as a kind of "anti-crew" weapon, by dispersing damage across a large area of the target ship so that crew members are more likely to be caught by the damage.
Then again, gatling guns kind of work the same way. Perhaps the shrapnel cannon could trade a lower overall DPS for some kind of damage penetration?
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
I was thinking the weapon would trade off the rapidness of a Gatling for a huge area of effect (the entire backwall of a 1-1500$, ship for example) and deals very low damage to enemy ships, but with one or two of the projectiles doing decently more.
This makes it pretty useless against fully armoured ships but devastating to anything that has hull breaches (as every crewman caught outside could die when the weapon fires)
Hopefully this gives the desired effect but makes them drastically different from Gatling modules without being too overpowered.