I figured since most updates come with at-least one new weapon added to the game (and Zarkonnen acknowledged this at some point on this forum) that a post dedicated to simple weapon suggestions may be appropriate:
Rules as follows:
Weapon suggestion must be decently quick to implement and without any major dedicated modification to the game's systems to allow it to work.
It combines some of the accuracy and range of a suspendium cannon with the large AOE damage of the torpedo. It also has the slow reload time of both weapons.
Aims left and right but fires upwards. The projectile will teleport when off screen to above the enemy and fall like a bomb.
This effect simulates an arched trajectory, and also lets the Artillery Mortar hit enemies from above anywhere on the map.
The inaccuracy angle is mirrored when falling, this means if the shell flies straight upwards it will land right on target. If it's off slightly then the bomb follows the trajectory when falling and will probably miss.
The projectile is visually quite large and fast moving.
Weapon suggestion:
-a bottom slap on-
a ballast module that can be put on bottom of the airship and dropped on a enemy like a giant rock or a pile of heavy junk steel
Weapon Suggestion- Quad Anti Air Gun, same size as flak gun, vertical firing arc. Just shoots a lot of light rounds at enemies above you. Could honestly just be a Gatling gun module facing upwards.
Flak Cannon- same size as deckgun, also exposed, slightly larger firing arc than deckgun. Low range, but good accuracy and high DPS at close range, bonus vs airships if possible. More designed to punch holes in heavier airships than fight multiple light airships.
diagonal sawblades ?? O.o for those moments you want to cut diagonal and maybe also vertical.
diagonal would be great to assist a horizontal or vertical to make a better shredder :D
also vertical would be great for ramming ships trying to go under or above to evade
A refill station module. for coal or ammo or water.
maybe even only in buildings or landships.. to spice things up and give the extra resources funderability
Yeah, so I think there needs to be a choice of two anti-air weapons. One of them should be very accurate and have reasonable penetration, but not have very high DPS. That's for shooting small, nimble things.
The other can be less accurate / slow, and have higher DPS. That's for shooting large bombers.
Thing is, the flak cannon falls kind of between those two poles right now. I'll have to think about what to do.
The flak cannon was originally more powerful, but that led to problems with people just putting them on airships and fighting with it like that, ignoring the weapons meant for ship-to-ship combat.
So maybe this:
Keep the flak cannon as-is, as a middle-of-the road, light, kind of expensive anti-air option.
Add a Suspendium anti-air battery, which is very accurate, and kind of slow-firing, and very heavy -- too heavy for airships. For shooting down small, nimble bombers.
Add suspendium mines, which are semi-accurate, slow-moving, slow-firing, devastating, and also too heavy for airships. For shooting down large, immobile bombers.
Oh, I'm also nerfing bombs a bit in 9.0.3, so that'll shift the meta a bit already.
i dont realy know (because i havnt played that much yet) but i have a small high altitude bomber that is quick, so the mines would maybe do not much rather than keeping an eye on them, move back and forth a bit.. giving some time to the enemy but with multible small bombers the destruction will still be big.. again i dont know for shure. A burst of smaller mines as a field in width and lenght would be more obstructive to push away bombers
I like those suggestions. Additional heavy weaponry would make buildings, and really specialized ground vehicles more useful in larger battles. Which in turn would make boarding against those constructs more important.
Specialized units, as opposed to big "I can do everything" units would make gameplay a lot more interesting. Especially in the campaign where you could have and would want a diverse unit pool for battles.
"suspendium mines" Glad to know your listening and remembering older discussions (or that name is just a coincidence).
I see no problem with the two new options as long as they are properly balanced, I really like the idea of "Landship preference because weight" modules. That adds a really big reason to use inferior ground-based vehicles over ones that can just fly.
The only issue I can see that comes inherently with the weapons is that suspendium mines will be at a disadvantage vs players, as they know how to move airships to avoid slow projectiles (or I'm imagining them as way slower than you are).
This may not actually be a big problem but if it is I guess this could be our first tracking weapon, it even has a fitting name!
The suspendium mines and suspendium cannons are good options for fighting larger ships but I think a better counter for light/small ships would be helpful.
Flak cannon is in a middle ground I guess but it doesn't do well vs large, medium, or small ships at the moments. At close range it is somewhat effective but otherwise it is quite underwelming.
Maybe buff cannons as well, don't necessarily need new cannons. I find the heavy and standard cannon both pretty average, never feels effective enough to base any decent portion of my force around either of them.
Maybe this thread should have been called "throw in module suggestions", do you guys agree?
If so I'm going to suggest a hybrid coal store/engine module, it's a small coal store that had half of it converted onto an engine.
It's more expensive than a small engine, more space efficient, only needs one crewman to do operating, and needs no coal hauling, but the thrust and maximum coal storage is half that of it's small propeller/storage counterparts. Ideal for very small or low crew ship designs.
Firebird, your hybrid module would be useful, but kind of antithetical to the process of actually designing a ship.
I'd like ground-based mines in addition to suspendium mines for taking out landships, both of the explosive and Flame Fougasse variety, and different kinds of indirect artillery like howitzers and mortars.
Edit: also, water-cooled machine guns. More accurate than a Gatling gun because you aren't yanking the thing around by a hand crank in wind-whipped high-altitude conditions, but requires the water jacket to be refilled from a fire point so the barrel doesn't overheat and explode.
The ability to gain the death ray from defeating a mad science tower would be awesome.
Passive or semi-passive anti-boarder devices could be useful- maybe something that will electrify steel armor to fry marines and arachnid infantry? Not Grenadiers of course, they have rubber soled boots. This might be useless if other ships can 'back scratch' each other by targeting infantry in the future, though.
The Firescorpio. (needs a Scorpion-heraldy in conquest)
A medium or long-rage weaponmodule, two long, 1 high, fires more or less straigth. It fires a burning woodenpole to pirce armour and set in on fire, with just a medium sucess-rate and a long loadtime.
The firing-ark would be simelar to the harpoon.
Reconnaissance Drone Light drone which flies out of it's bay seeking targets to fire at with its light machine gun... Also, there's a rocket variant to it.
How about a weapon that makes the weight of hit units increase. This would lower the speed and maximum height of airships and perhaps make tracks and legs go slower or just stop. It would of course have to wear of after some time, but it would be a good way to keep certain vessels out of combat for a few seconds.
I use deck guns on nearly all of my ships, but the main problem with them for me is not their lack of armor but that they're only effective if you're directly in front of or below the enemy ship. If they go even slightly under then there's nothing you can do but go down. It's hard to move down when you already have the bottom of the map covered in ships. I really want a bottom mounted version.
I'd also like to be able to make fires ships. Having a weapon that could turn a small fast cheap ship into an explosive ball of fire you could ram into and ignite a massive enemy ship would be fun to use.
Ya, one sec, I'll make it into an actual mod and balance it a lil and all that then put a link on here. It'll be the second one.
The first one is a direct hit on a large suspendium tank... Boom
Here's the mod. I also added one to the mods section on here which will probably be better because ill change some of it and maybe get a bump map made. just put it in your mod folder under your computer's user stuff. It might be a little glitchy, I only used it a lil so I'm sure it's way out of balance. It shoots a little under half the rate of a regular cannon but does pen and explosive damage. I really only made it to show what i wanted for a new weapon. A heavy cannon has the same firing inaccuracy as a regular cannon btw and the mortar is just slightly less accurate but shoots significantly faster than the heavy. Just tell me if you want me to change anything.
ugh i so want to use it for my flagship but sadly it is supposed to be vanilla only... i cri! just for the infos tho, will the mortar be more accurate than the heavy cannon?
How about a weapon you put inside your ship. It would function the same way as a dorsal/ventral turret, but have 360° aiming. I guess it would be simulated by having a weapon that sticks out of the airship on the z-axis. Probably most of the stats of the dorsal/ventral turret, but takes more space and wieghs more?
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
I figured since most updates come with at-least one new weapon added to the game (and Zarkonnen acknowledged this at some point on this forum) that a post dedicated to simple weapon suggestions may be appropriate:
Rules as follows:
That's it.
Air Admiral
Heavy Flamethrower?
Commodore
Heavy rifle or Heavy MG
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
Auto-Cannon, a 3x1 external cannon that fires rapidly.
Has same placing restrictions as a cannon, but no armour and a smaller firing arc.
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
Building/tank only Artillery Mortar.
3x3 weapon, exposed/external module. Fragile.
It combines some of the accuracy and range of a suspendium cannon with the large AOE damage of the torpedo. It also has the slow reload time of both weapons.
Aims left and right but fires upwards. The projectile will teleport when off screen to above the enemy and fall like a bomb.
This effect simulates an arched trajectory, and also lets the Artillery Mortar hit enemies from above anywhere on the map.
The inaccuracy angle is mirrored when falling, this means if the shell flies straight upwards it will land right on target. If it's off slightly then the bomb follows the trajectory when falling and will probably miss.
The projectile is visually quite large and fast moving.
Air Admiral
I actually like that idea... Much more than just Heavy (insert weapon here)...
Lieutenant
Weapon suggestion: -a bottom slap on- a ballast module that can be put on bottom of the airship and dropped on a enemy like a giant rock or a pile of heavy junk steel
slowing it and making it drop altitude
Midshipman
That'd be kind of cool. Could be fun to drop on landships too.
Captain
Weapon Suggestion- Quad Anti Air Gun, same size as flak gun, vertical firing arc. Just shoots a lot of light rounds at enemies above you. Could honestly just be a Gatling gun module facing upwards.
Flak Cannon- same size as deckgun, also exposed, slightly larger firing arc than deckgun. Low range, but good accuracy and high DPS at close range, bonus vs airships if possible. More designed to punch holes in heavier airships than fight multiple light airships.
Lieutenant
diagonal sawblades ?? O.o for those moments you want to cut diagonal and maybe also vertical. diagonal would be great to assist a horizontal or vertical to make a better shredder :D also vertical would be great for ramming ships trying to go under or above to evade
Lieutenant
A refill station module. for coal or ammo or water. maybe even only in buildings or landships.. to spice things up and give the extra resources funderability
Aerial Emperor
Yeah, so I think there needs to be a choice of two anti-air weapons. One of them should be very accurate and have reasonable penetration, but not have very high DPS. That's for shooting small, nimble things.
The other can be less accurate / slow, and have higher DPS. That's for shooting large bombers.
Thing is, the flak cannon falls kind of between those two poles right now. I'll have to think about what to do.
Aerial Emperor
The flak cannon was originally more powerful, but that led to problems with people just putting them on airships and fighting with it like that, ignoring the weapons meant for ship-to-ship combat.
So maybe this:
Oh, I'm also nerfing bombs a bit in 9.0.3, so that'll shift the meta a bit already.
Thoughts?
Lieutenant
i dont realy know (because i havnt played that much yet) but i have a small high altitude bomber that is quick, so the mines would maybe do not much rather than keeping an eye on them, move back and forth a bit.. giving some time to the enemy but with multible small bombers the destruction will still be big.. again i dont know for shure. A burst of smaller mines as a field in width and lenght would be more obstructive to push away bombers
Midshipman
I like those suggestions. Additional heavy weaponry would make buildings, and really specialized ground vehicles more useful in larger battles. Which in turn would make boarding against those constructs more important.
Specialized units, as opposed to big "I can do everything" units would make gameplay a lot more interesting. Especially in the campaign where you could have and would want a diverse unit pool for battles.
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
"suspendium mines" Glad to know your listening and remembering older discussions (or that name is just a coincidence).
I see no problem with the two new options as long as they are properly balanced, I really like the idea of "Landship preference because weight" modules. That adds a really big reason to use inferior ground-based vehicles over ones that can just fly.
The only issue I can see that comes inherently with the weapons is that suspendium mines will be at a disadvantage vs players, as they know how to move airships to avoid slow projectiles (or I'm imagining them as way slower than you are).
This may not actually be a big problem but if it is I guess this could be our first tracking weapon, it even has a fitting name!
Captain
The suspendium mines and suspendium cannons are good options for fighting larger ships but I think a better counter for light/small ships would be helpful.
Flak cannon is in a middle ground I guess but it doesn't do well vs large, medium, or small ships at the moments. At close range it is somewhat effective but otherwise it is quite underwelming.
Maybe buff cannons as well, don't necessarily need new cannons. I find the heavy and standard cannon both pretty average, never feels effective enough to base any decent portion of my force around either of them.
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
Normal cannons right now are pretty lethal, a four cannon ship can sometimes destroy medium armoured ships in two or three volleys.
Captain
I haven't based a combat ship around standard/heavy cannons in ages, and I think I have one of the most successful fleets in multi.
I find deckguns much more lethal/versatile in the short term fight than cannons, and heavy/suspedium cannons much better in the long term fights.
So yeah they aren't bad, but I can't justify basing any of my ships/bunkers around them due to their lower overall game impact.
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
Maybe this thread should have been called "throw in module suggestions", do you guys agree?
If so I'm going to suggest a hybrid coal store/engine module, it's a small coal store that had half of it converted onto an engine.
It's more expensive than a small engine, more space efficient, only needs one crewman to do operating, and needs no coal hauling, but the thrust and maximum coal storage is half that of it's small propeller/storage counterparts. Ideal for very small or low crew ship designs.
Midshipman
Firebird, your hybrid module would be useful, but kind of antithetical to the process of actually designing a ship.
I'd like ground-based mines in addition to suspendium mines for taking out landships, both of the explosive and Flame Fougasse variety, and different kinds of indirect artillery like howitzers and mortars.
Edit: also, water-cooled machine guns. More accurate than a Gatling gun because you aren't yanking the thing around by a hand crank in wind-whipped high-altitude conditions, but requires the water jacket to be refilled from a fire point so the barrel doesn't overheat and explode.
The ability to gain the death ray from defeating a mad science tower would be awesome.
Passive or semi-passive anti-boarder devices could be useful- maybe something that will electrify steel armor to fry marines and arachnid infantry? Not Grenadiers of course, they have rubber soled boots. This might be useless if other ships can 'back scratch' each other by targeting infantry in the future, though.
Midshipman
Are that our rifles? But back to topic.
The Firescorpio. (needs a Scorpion-heraldy in conquest)
A medium or long-rage weaponmodule, two long, 1 high, fires more or less straigth. It fires a burning woodenpole to pirce armour and set in on fire, with just a medium sucess-rate and a long loadtime.
The firing-ark would be simelar to the harpoon.
Air Admiral
Electrifying ships sounds awesome but it would also make them more volatile....
Air Admiral
Reconnaissance Drone Light drone which flies out of it's bay seeking targets to fire at with its light machine gun... Also, there's a rocket variant to it.
Commodore
Wall mounted grenade launcher
Commodore
Drones are overall not steampunky. Perhaps you could expend a crew member to fly a plane in hanger instead?
Captain
Steampunk drones
Aerial Emperor
Oh wow, these are fantastic. Thank you!
Warrant Officer
How about a weapon that makes the weight of hit units increase. This would lower the speed and maximum height of airships and perhaps make tracks and legs go slower or just stop. It would of course have to wear of after some time, but it would be a good way to keep certain vessels out of combat for a few seconds.
Probably quite long range and long reload.
Commodore
Thats just a keel...
Commodore
What about a steel keel?
Lieutenant
I use deck guns on nearly all of my ships, but the main problem with them for me is not their lack of armor but that they're only effective if you're directly in front of or below the enemy ship. If they go even slightly under then there's nothing you can do but go down. It's hard to move down when you already have the bottom of the map covered in ships. I really want a bottom mounted version.
Lieutenant
I'd also like to be able to make fires ships. Having a weapon that could turn a small fast cheap ship into an explosive ball of fire you could ram into and ignite a massive enemy ship would be fun to use.
Lieutenant
I'd love to have one of those stubby little mortars that fire a huge caliber ball that they had on old artillery ships that I could put on my deck.
How do you add an image again?
I give up
Oh there xD I got it
And have it launch a stereotypical bomb or something that works like the grenades already in the game do and does a lil AOE damage
Lieutenant
Okayy I made a mod of that mortar for myself just now. I'll try to upload a picture as soon as I figure out how to add a screenshot
It's taking longer to do this than it took to actually make the thing XD
Here use this link and yes, I know the muzzle location is wrong and the shading is inverted but shhhh
Commodore
Love mortars, I can feel like I'm playing Black Flag again. Could you upload that on Steam?
Lieutenant
Ya, one sec, I'll make it into an actual mod and balance it a lil and all that then put a link on here. It'll be the second one.
The first one is a direct hit on a large suspendium tank... Boom
Here's the mod. I also added one to the mods section on here which will probably be better because ill change some of it and maybe get a bump map made. just put it in your mod folder under your computer's user stuff. It might be a little glitchy, I only used it a lil so I'm sure it's way out of balance. It shoots a little under half the rate of a regular cannon but does pen and explosive damage. I really only made it to show what i wanted for a new weapon. A heavy cannon has the same firing inaccuracy as a regular cannon btw and the mortar is just slightly less accurate but shoots significantly faster than the heavy. Just tell me if you want me to change anything.
Sorry for getting off topic
Commodore
ugh i so want to use it for my flagship but sadly it is supposed to be vanilla only... i cri! just for the infos tho, will the mortar be more accurate than the heavy cannon?
Warrant Officer
How about a weapon you put inside your ship. It would function the same way as a dorsal/ventral turret, but have 360° aiming. I guess it would be simulated by having a weapon that sticks out of the airship on the z-axis. Probably most of the stats of the dorsal/ventral turret, but takes more space and wieghs more?
Commodore
That would literally break the weapons system