I would like to see the option to create more than 5 distinct weapon groups, There is plenty of UI space in the refit screen for the extra groups to be assigned, it would be very useful in a number of loadouts I use, And Would enable me to use some loadouts that are currently not feasible.
Comments addressed from the announcements thread where I first mentioned this in passing.
Are you guys talking about modded capital ships? Like the stupidly overpowered ones with 10+ large weapon mounts?
I can't imagine you needing more than 5 for vanilla ships - I always control missiles and/or super high flux weapons like Plasma Cannons but everything else is on auto-fire. With +50% OP via Tech tree you can max out vents and capacitors no problem and thus make flux management a near non issue so why would you possibly need to have more than 5 or so weapon groups? I don't think its humanly possibly to swap around 6+ weapon groups and still maintain optimal weapons fire uptime...
No I'm talking about vanilla ships as small as the Apogee and Aurora, I Generally have super high flux weapons on manual Control, Missiles, Too, And like to Assign Point Defence and pressure weapons to autofire groups, but different groups for optimum flux management. For example on an Apogee, I would like to be able to do this
Group 1: Hurricane MIRV Launcher
Group 2: Harpoon Missile Rack
Group 3: Plasma Cannon
Group 4: 2x Phase Beams
Group 5: 2x IR Pulse (hardpoints)
Group 6: 2x PD lasers (Turrets)
As it Is I'm forced to choose between attaching the PD to another autofire weapons group, which I may not have the flux to fire, forcing me to choose between losing PD or Risking unescecary flux gain or combining two attack groups. Putting the missiles together is silly: they are for different situations entirely, Combining the beams and Ir Pulse is unhelpful as Phasebeams are best used when the IR pulse have already brought the hard flux high enough for shields to go down at which point you want to use the flux efficient beams, Combing the IR Pulse with the plasma cannon group means you have to put them both on autofire and have spikey, overload prone AI usage, or wont be firing at all unless you commit to firing the plasma. Yes you could sink every OP point you can get your hands on into flux dissipation and capacitors and hope it covers it all firing at once, but you have to trade off defensive options, maneuverability range etc for the op cost, when an extra weapon group would let you turn off autofire on any given set of weapons and control your Flux output. A weapon load out should not require 10 points in technology if better finesse with controls would allow the same Results.
Another variant I would like to use is an Aurora with a varied small missile loadout. I like to split the Small turrets between PD and IR Pulse laser, fill the mediums with Pulse lasers, mount a Tornado Reaper Launcher in the large slot and have a bunch of Harpoons However the majority of the Tornado Ammo Goes to waste, being able to split the small Missile banks into A Harpoon for short vent windows, a Salamander for catching retreating ships and fast frigates/fights , two Atropos racks for heavy busting and the Hurricane for support and general shield breaking would be much more situationally effective, but takes up four out of five slots right off the bat, Forcing me to lump all my Flux using weapons into one group. causing me to be wide open to PD threats if I need to hold fire, on the big guns, and generally disallowing fine control.
I dont play much with Low/Mid tech ships, but given the breakdown of HE/Kinetic weapons they employ I can imagine the Efficient usage of these on complex ships gets more difficult, yes, you can just let them all shoot off at whatever, but if you want to play cunningly, and elegantly you are restrained by the limits on weapon groups which feel a little arbitrary.
If the design decision is to keep it minimal for ease of understanding and to prevent it from being mindbogglingly complex for newbies when setting up their first few craft fair play, but an advanced option to enable extra groups would be much appreciated.
And then of course you have the city sized mod ships of ridiculous doom which could really do well with them.
