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[zakastra]

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.

[Axiege]

+1, I don't see any real reason to have any limit on the number of weapon groups.

Except of course the limits imposed by the keyboard.

[Gothars]

Good to see that you gave this its own thread

I am a bit on the fence with this one. Previously we had four groups, which was not enough. The sweet-spot between accessibility and control precision lies somewhere between five and six.

There is however a reason to go for six that you did only touch briefly: missile groups auto assignment. While other weapons are pretty well auto-sorted by their situational use, cramming all missile weapons into one group makes them often almost unusable. That means that I have to reassign weapon groups on any ship with two or more missile types by default.

If six weapon groups means that two are used just to auto-assign missiles, that is enough reason to support it for me.


(Let me give you a little tip zakastra, not as a mod but as a suggestion maker: if you keep your OP short more people will read it and it's more likely you will spark a discussion. Further explanation and arguments are better received if they are not in the "mandatory" to read OP but in he following discussion. Not that I would always stick to my own advice...)

[harrumph]

Personally, I don't think the amount of fine control you describe is necessary, and I think you're overlooking a few things. You can manually switch between alternating weapons, which is a perfectly manageable way to switch between Salamanders and Hurricane on the Apogee, if a little clumsy on the Aurora (but then, I don't think it's a good idea to mix so many missile types—missiles are strongest when you can really stack them up and deliver large numbers at once). There's absolutely no reason to group pulse lasers and IR pulse lasers, which have near-identical flux efficiency, separately. If you're in range, and you want one type to fire, you'll also want the other to fire. If one type is out of range, it won't fire, even if they're grouped. Also, you should reconsider only using Phase Beams against targets with their flux already maxed out. They're a super flux-efficient way to pressure a shielded target and suppress its ability to return fire, and they're great against fighters too—I think grouping them with the PD is quite sensible.

BUT, all that said, I don't think it'd do any harm to add weapon groups 6-0. It doesn't interfere with anything in the keyboard layout or the UI, as far as I can tell. Why not make everybody happy?

[zakastra]

There's absolutely no reason to group pulse lasers and IR pulse lasers, which have near-identical flux efficiency, separately. If you're in range, and you want one type to fire, you'll also want the other to fire. If one type is out of range, it won't fire, even if they're grouped.

This is quite true for single target engagements, but that's a bad assumption to make as it is a rather rare situation by the time you get a ship large enough to require 5 or more groups. Quite often I want my Side/Rear facing IR pulse lasers to stop firing at nearby craft that I am not prepared to deal with now.  Especially when my actual target is at or close to the range limit for my Pulse Lasers. When you are trying to burn down/overload one target through hard flux, disengage to vent and re-engage later, if all of your guns are firing at 4 different targets in separate quarters of your firing arcs, you likely wont have time to bring down the target before your flux maxes out, if you use just those main guns which can all be brought to bear on your quarry,  in my experience you have time enough to kill it and withdraw, without having to vent whilst surrounded, or at least begin able to vent with three rather than four ships arrayed against you. Yes, sometimes you just want to fire all the pewpew lazers at once, like when surrounded by a bunch of fighters or a couple of hounds, but when its three enforcers and a dominator its a different story.

Also, you should reconsider only using Phase Beams against targets with their flux already maxed out.

I do make use of phase beams to push ships to overload quite often, but when facing a ship you won't be able to overload in one pass, the flux is better spent on hard flux generating attacks, as if you don't drop the shields in that one pass, by the time you reengage after venting, the soft flux they caused is gone, and the flux spent is effectively wasted whereas a few extra shots form a less efficient hard flux weapon will still be there when you come back.

and suppress its ability to return fire,

Absolutely valid, but high tech ships with elite crews, especially with the right skill points can end up taking less flux buildup from the enemies fire than what they would generate by firing.

You can manually switch between alternating weapons, which is a perfectly manageable way to switch between Salamanders and Hurricane on the Apogee,

I hadn't considered that, And I may make use of it in future, although that seems like it would be very very awkward to say quickly clutch fire all three harpoons at once, especially if you are trying to save the hurricane ammo for something else.

And yes, More vents, more caps, more skillpoints probably mean you can blow your way out of trouble anyway without having to think about turning weapon groups off or having to make any choice more complex than between all guns firing and no guns firing,  But I think should be the possibility for a choice between a brute force advantage approach, and elegant, skillful play. [Edit : This last was not directed in response to Harrumph]

[Pendragon]

I can definitely get behind this. As Zakastra said, this can start to become a real issue as soon as you get up into the cruiser class hulls depending on your play style or weapons preference. As has been pointed out it's a particular issue when dealing with missiles. Yes, you can set them to a single alternate fire group and manually switch between them but in the thick of things when you're trying to swat fighters, hunt down a frigate and dodge a cruiser, the extra second or two that doing this could take is very much the difference between life and death.

[Gothars]

It's not even so much the extra second that is the problem with missiles in a group. If you want to launch for example all your Harpoons as fast as possible because the enemy shields are down, that's extremely awkward. You have to fire, pause the game,  hit the group button until the harpoon group comes up again, unpause, fire, repeat.

[harrumph]

No offense taken! I hope I didn't come across too combative myself; like I said, I think it's a good suggestion, and I don't think you're wrong to want more options to really fine-tune your play—just wanted to point out a couple things I thought you might be overlooking.

sometimes you just want to fire all the pewpew lazers at once, like when surrounded by a bunch of fighters or a couple of hounds, but when its three enforcers and a dominator its a different story.

You're absolutely right about this, and I hadn't even considered it—so I'll just make one last low blow in my defense and say that if you're surrounded by three Enforcers and a Dominator, you're probably doing something wrong that good flux management isn't going to fix.

seems like it would be very very awkward to say quickly clutch fire all three harpoons at once, especially if you are trying to save the hurricane ammo for something else.

Seems and is! It's on ships with missile mounts of various sizes (especially the Aurora) that I find the current weapon groups most frustrating.

[DJ Die]

one other thing that might come in handy is weapon overlapping in groups....
it might not be useful for all ships but for i could use it on my onslaught for example by setting 3 weapons groups like this: weapons with angles for the port side, front side and starboard side any many of these overlap on onslaught....if you use them in single group more than half the weapons cant/wont fire at times....

[Sproginator]

one other thing that might come in handy is weapon overlapping in groups....
it might not be useful for all ships but for i could use it on my onslaught for example by setting 3 weapons groups like this: weapons with angles for the port side, front side and starboard side any many of these overlap on onslaught....if you use them in single group more than half the weapons cant/wont fire at times....

I like this idea.

My suggestion could be to have the ability to bind only 6 weapons groups, But aren't restricted to what number key they are bound to

For instance you currently have 6 weapon groups assigned to:
1,2,3,4,5,6

And you can set it to have 6 weapon groups assigned to:
1,3,4,6,7,8

Or you can have number of groups less in any configuration such as 2 groups bound to:

3,6

[zakastra]

And you can set it to have 6 weapon groups assigned to:
1,3,4,6,7,8

You can already do this by rebinding the keys- or do you mean something else? If so please explain further.

[Sproginator]

And you can set it to have 6 weapon groups assigned to:
1,3,4,6,7,8

You can already do this by rebinding the keys- or do you mean something else? If so please explain further.

When it comes to weapon groups in the refit screen, They automatically "trim" what key you have set them to on your keyboard

so 1,3,4,6,7,8

would become

1,2,3,4,5,6

automatically