Just a suggestion, I thought of this a bit yesterday..
What if there were Capital Torpedo Launchers and Railguns?
Torpedo Launcher would be something akin to a missile, that wouldn't be able to steer it self so much, but could still be shot down. If it hit the other capital ship however, huge damage, and a huge blastradius, to make it obsolete in a close engagement.
Railguns would be something of the same. Huge slugs of metal at thousands of kilometers a second beeing hurdled into an enemy capital ship at quite some speed, doing a fair amount of damage. The return for it beeing that it draws a huge amount of energy, uses ammo, and the turret takes a long time to reposition itself.
What do ya think? (Constructive criticism please, dont turn this into a NO U flood thread)
Railguns would be awesome.
A kind of Cannon that has huge amounts of speed... A kind of instant hit weapon. Or close to, at least.
5k range or some BS on it, rapes your powercore, does Zero shield damage but a fair bit of hull.
Essentially it'd be used primarily as a sniping support weapon, or perhaps as a single railgun + pulse setup.
Dunno, I'm making this up as I go along but it sounds awesome.
hard to balance in general - about as hard as missiles on fighters ( in case you remember the fuss about fighters mounting too many missiles )
one side feels that 70 ammo makes up for some serious weaponpower - the other side ( usually the side that is very good with ammoless guns or has just been shot down by a missile and regards it as a "no skill" weapon ) thinks that its very unfair
capital ships balance their "ammobased" weapons by applying huge amounts of enery and/or a long refire.
furthermore
capital ship fights ( especially cap vs. cap ) last like 1/10th of fighter vs. fighter - shorten those fights may not be beneficial, cause even now - we have the feeling that its MUCH safer for your own skin to fly a light fighter than a huge battleship ( cause - experience tells us - your chances to survive are 10 times higher in a light fighter than they are in a battleship )
improving cap vs. cap weapons increases that rather strange feeling.
The torpedo launcher idea, I'm not so fond of, but the railgun sounds awesome.
Although I don't know how such a gun will be affected by the current slot splitting taking place.
' Wrote:hard to balance in general - about as hard as missiles on fighters ( in case you remember the fuss about fighters mounting too many missiles )
one side feels that 70 ammo makes up for some serious weaponpower - the other side ( usually the side that is very good with ammoless guns or has just been shot down by a missile and regards it as a "no skill" weapon ) thinks that its very unfair
capital ships balance their "ammobased" weapons by applying huge amounts of enery and/or a long refire.
furthermore
capital ship fights ( especially cap vs. cap ) last like 1/10th of fighter vs. fighter - shorten those fights may not be beneficial, cause even now - we have the feeling that its MUCH safer for your own skin to fly a light fighter than a huge battleship ( cause - experience tells us - your chances to survive are 10 times higher in a light fighter than they are in a battleship )
improving cap vs. cap weapons increases that rather strange feeling.
Which suggests that there IS a balance issue.......
I for one, am all for it.
Actually, railguns would be more suited as anti fighter weapons due to their insanely high muzzle velocity. But I can see the appeal of firing a massive slug at a distant target though.
Of course, there's also Jinx's argument of capship engagements lasting 5 minutes and fighter dogfights lasting 5 hours.
I'm torn.
also had a idea for a capital torpedo just some days ago.
big damage to hull
low damage to shield
slow but agile (100-120mp/s)
big range (~5-8k)
big model/hitbox to allow others to shoot it
more HP than a normal missle to make sure CDs cannot desroy it
big BOOM radius (~1k)
so nothing for face to face battle
of course ammo based and not too cheap (launcer and ammo)
/edit: for everyone who knows starlancer
something like the torpedos the kamov torpedo bombers shoot there
' Wrote:also had a idea for a capital torpedo just some days ago.
big damage to hull
low damage to shield
slow but agile (100-120mp/s)
big range (~5-8k)
big model/hitbox to allow others to shoot it
more HP than a normal missle to make sure CDs cannot desroy it
big BOOM radius (~1k)
so nothing for face to face battle
of course ammo based and not too cheap (launcer and ammo)
/edit: for everyone who knows starlancer
something like the torpedos the kamov torpedo bombers shoot there
Except that when it's shot, it will explode, unlike in Starlancer.
With your explosion radius, fighters will stay the hell away from them.