I realized that Zappers and all the beam weapons are not really in use.
I know they seem to fire in rather random directions, hardly even hitting anything.
But: I have flown by a playerbase that had beam weapons and it was really... really scary. It hit. And it did damage. It was close to a perfect anti-snub weapon.
Because they have been implemented so poorly, that it sounds like there's been zero testing at all.
Zapper transport turrets do kind of work, as long as you have good arcs (e.g the Ptrain). The Shock ray and the other zapper turrets are just awful though.
I also doubt the working of shock rays.But the NPC Gallic,Bretonian Battleships seem to hit all the snubs using their Shock rays with perfect accuracy.
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Zappers do too little damage to be used in low numbers, so you have to get a boatload of them. All they do then, because of limited arcs, is create lightshows.
This looks absolutely ridiculous, wastes core and does no damage.
They need to track faster, and Zappers need to be usable like BRs: one or two at specific locations on the ship that have the arcs required to cover all around it.
NPCs and stations use these things well because they fire ones that can hit. I'm also guessing that they individually track the zappers and shock rays, rather than have a load of them in a weapon group and hope they're going to hit something.
So do I get it right: Zappers would work fine when you fired them after the turret has turned into the right position? But when you fire them before the turret is in the position, it would just simply shoot someplace and waste my energy, instead of not firing at all, as normal guns would do?
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Correct.
That's why big transports with lots of turrets that cover different areas of the ships just create an enormous, wasteful light show when they shoot Zappers.
Smaller transports or ones that fire every single turret in a specific direction (think a Shire firing backwards or forwards) can do quite a lot of damage with them, however.
I still wouldn't get them over Charons.
If their projectile speed was actually (nearly) as frighteningly fast as the effect looks, they could probably be a lot more dangerous though. At least then if you got someone in the crossfire of multiple Zappers, they'd melt accordingly. I think they're actually slower than Solaris Gunboat turrets right now.
Edit: Just had a look. Transport ones are 1600 m/s, so slightly faster than gunboat turrets. I'd say bumping that up to 2500 m/s or so would be reasonable. At least they might feel like laser beams then.
Regular guns can fire projectiles at certain small angle that compensates for sometimes limited arcs. Try it with a fighter on turret view, shoot as most sideways you can. It also functions as semi auto-aim that adjusts projectile to fly right into where crosshair is right now.
Now beam guns do not have it. They fire straight and straight only even if they do not point towards enemy like regular capital ship turrets do. Due to some hardcoded thing in the code, they will fire no matter what you do thus creating rave show everytime you press fire.
to bad they dont work right i like beam weapons although i would only give them cap´s above crusers and even than the fight system of freelancer is not the best for such weapons.
Most of the times i ´f seen them used in games/media/books they were ether long range(and i mean realy long) to snipe out other battleships, Stations, planetary bound targets and deal allmost leathal dmg to a Capship but has also a masive reload time . (best exemple would be in my opinion the lightlance from battlefleet Gothic)
Or in close combat to cut Cap ships in half while bomb them with torpedos or other weapons. just look at freespace 2 for it ^^
Zappers/Shockrays are not implemented poorly, they're actually implemented reasonably well. The issue is that the Freelancer engine does not support beam weapons. For the weapons and the "beam" effect to actually work, they have to be set to fire at all times, whether they have LOS on the target or not. That is why all your guns fire in all directions, if they didn't, they wouldn't work at all. The only workaround would be for the guns to have unlimited arcs, which for obvious reasons, can't be done.
This creates functionality issues. They're just no good. I've said this before and I'll say it again. Zappers and Shockrays were a good attempt. They are something different and creativity within the development team is always a good thing, so 10 points. However, due to the way the game works, they are just no good. Please call it a day and get rid of them.
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