Fractal Softworks Forum

Starsector => Suggestions => Topic started by: Brainwright on October 07, 2022, 09:57:47 PM

Title: New Input : Fire Weapon (n)
Post by: Brainwright on October 07, 2022, 09:57:47 PM
I like low-tech ships.  Fast low-tech ships with specialized roles, like the Vanguard, are some of my favorite ships to pilot.

But they're more complicated to control than other ships.  Most don't have the flux stats to consistently fire all their weapons.  One might use missiles to ameliorate this, but it's near impossible to use more than one missile type.  Switching between them, firing, and then switching back to a normal weapon group takes up too much concentration that could be better spent dodging enemy missiles.  So the weapon loadouts are fairly homogeneous when the truth is, you probably need more flexibility.

Many low-tech ships work best when they're not firing all their weapons at all times.  Heavy autocannons are the best example of this.  From the outset, it looks like they should be fairly useful weapons, but once they start firing they lose a lot of accuracy and most of their efficiency is lost.  It would be nice if you could stagger the rate of fire for heavy autocannons to get their maximum accuracy and then time a launch of missiles to land with the next volley.  Or you could have a pair of assault guns that would normally be too flux intensive to fire spin up and take advantage.

With the current control scheme, that's something you can screw up very easily, but there is an easy solution : add inputs to fire specific weapon groups.  There's nothing particularly odd about this : Mechwarrior games have worked this way from at least the second iteration.

Fortuitously, weapons not on autofire track the cursor while autofiring weapons act independently.  I don't even have to suggest it.

While we're at it, having an indicator for the status of weapon groups on screen would be magnificent.  Just four indicators would be necessary : not ready to fire, some weapons ready, full ready, and disabled.

Just a suggestion.