Fractal Softworks Forum
Starsector => Suggestions => Topic started by: TJJ on October 12, 2017, 11:41:20 AM
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As per title; a little animation, either pre-recorded or rendered live, of the weapon going through its launch/travel/impact effects.
Given the variety of weapons and need for varied contexts, a pre-rendered animation would probably be the most sensible approach.
It'd help with accessibility for new players, especially with the early difficulty curve, where you don't necessarily have cash to waste on buying inappropriate weapons.
I appreciate this function is somewhat addressed by the refit simulation, but:
1) UI-wise the simulation isn't in the right place; you browse available weapons in the Cargo/Crew screen, not the Refit screen. (and direct from the Codex there's absolutely nothing)
2) You can only simulate ships in your fleet, so if you can't mount a weapon, you can't simulate how it performs without first committing to a hull purchase. e.g. Imagine having to find & then buy a Conquest, just so you can test out the tasty sounding Hammer Barrage.
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Prerendered might be better so that you can better show off more specifics of a weapon - say, for the Light Dual Autocannon, have one clip where it shoots a few times at a target dummy's shield and quickly overloads it, but then another where it shoots an armored dummy and doesn't do much. Then for the Light Assault Gun, have the same setup but it takes a lot of time to down the shield and it quickly shreds the target's armor. Then for the Thumper, have it fire at shields (to little effect), on a clean undamaged dummy (to little effect), and then on a clearly heavily damaged dummy, which causes a lot of damage and explosions. You could demonstrate things like the Devastor's ability to wipe out fighter swarms, how PD weapons work both against missiles and against ships, how ion weapons disable engines and weapons and ion beams make arcs through shields, etc.
The only issue is that it'd be a lot of work to make 1-3 clips for every weapon.
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As per title; a little animation, either pre-recorded or rendered live, of the weapon going through its launch/travel/impact effects.
Given the variety of weapons and need for varied contexts, a pre-rendered animation would probably be the most sensible approach.
It'd help with accessibility for new players, especially with the early difficulty curve, where you don't necessarily have cash to waste on buying inappropriate weapons.
I appreciate this function is somewhat addressed by the refit simulation, but:
1) UI-wise the simulation isn't in the right place; you browse available weapons in the Cargo/Crew screen, not the Refit screen. (and direct from the Codex there's absolutely nothing)
2) You can only simulate ships in your fleet, so if you can't mount a weapon, you can't simulate how it performs without first committing to a hull purchase. e.g. Imagine having to find & then buy a Conquest, just so you can test out the tasty sounding Hammer Barrage.
That would be extremely helpful, though the Hammer Barrage is a bit scarier than a Typhoon Reaper Launcher IMO.
Weapons aside, I'd also think it would help with recognition, especially if it includes a firing and hit sound, as it took me a couple months to learn all the vanilla weapons just by sound and/or sight.
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How about, instead, in the Codex, you can hit "test this weapon" and then there's a miniature "battle", where the weapon is mounted on a cool-looking test stand, and a target object / objects is available to blow up?
This would be far simpler (it's basically just a Mission where the "player ship" is an immobile object, after all) than building "official content" for weapons that might or might not make the final cut, get changed in ways that are no longer reflected in the static data... and what about mods, etc., etc., etc.
Basically, the idea of, "hey, you can test out all the things in the Codex for free" is not terrible, but "hey, we should add lots of new content hassles to a game that's trying to stay on a shoestring" is not.
Oh, and this concept's almost doable right now with a mod, except that we can't access the Codex or tell when we're in that state explicitly.
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How about, instead, in the Codex, you can hit "test this weapon" and then there's a miniature "battle", where the weapon is mounted on a cool-looking test stand, and a target object / objects is available to blow up?
This would be far simpler (it's basically just a Mission where the "player ship" is an immobile object, after all) than building "official content" for weapons that might or might not make the final cut, get changed in ways that are no longer reflected in the static data... and what about mods, etc., etc., etc.
Basically, the idea of, "hey, you can test out all the things in the Codex for free" is not terrible, but "hey, we should add lots of new content hassles to a game that's trying to stay on a shoestring" is not.
Oh, and this concept's almost doable right now with a mod, except that we can't access the Codex or tell when we're in that state explicitly.
I Like that.
The setup for the 'weapon test' mission would then be fully customizable on a per-weapon basis.
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How about, instead, in the Codex, you can hit "test this weapon" and then there's a miniature "battle", where the weapon is mounted on a cool-looking test stand, and a target object / objects is available to blow up?
While this might be over-complicated and bring up some odd issues (just a hunch I get with unusual suggestions like this), if it could be done well enough, I would absolutely adore this as a mechanic. ;D
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You could probably even have it in a legitimate laboratory being tested, as if the Hegemony was reverse engineering it. You could have the weapon on a firing stand and everything.
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Yeah, that was my vision for that, too :)
We could even have the same for ships; select a Variant to test, enter a similar scenario :)
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I like the idea of testing weapons but the DPS stats are only half the story. Weapons are highly dependent on the hull they're on. For example, if I don't know anything about a Heavy Blaster, I go to the weapons lab and see that it is really good against shields and obliterates armor. I like it! So I manage to snag one at a great cost to myself and mount it on my starter Wolf. It's only then do I realize I can't fire the thing but twice before maxing out my flux. However, put it on a Sunder and you have a murder-boat because it can actually sustain fire.
Basically, what we need is a "Test Hull" option in the Codex. Fortunately, this practically exists in the Edit Variants function of Dev Mode. It just needs to be accessible in-game through the Codex and cross-referenced through the codex entries themselves.
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You could probably even have it in a legitimate laboratory being tested, as if the Hegemony was reverse engineering it. You could have the weapon on a firing stand and everything.
That would be sweeeeeeeeeeeeet