To Combat Module Storage Issues: Get Rid of "Fixed, Turret and Gimbal" Weapons, instead have only 1 weapon mount and let us configure at Outfitting

[teeth_03]

Pretty Simple Concept, an example:

So lets get rid of "Fixed Medium Beam Lasers", "Gimbal Medium Beam Lasers" and "Turret Medium Beam Lasers" and just have a "Medium Beam Laser"

Then there could be s a 3 way switch on the weapon hardpoint that can only be changed during Outfitting (or 2 way or no switch at all depending on the weapon) that changes between the mount option. When you change from Fixed to Gimbal or Turret, the stats drop like they do now so Fixed is still best. The stats would remain unchanged, and weapons that do not have Gimbal or Turret options now would still not have them with this. This is primarily a way to minimize storage and engineering needs. Any Engineered weapon currently stored would just be converted to the single type of weapon.

This eliminates the need for Engineering multiple weapons that are the same aside from the mount option, and therefore requires less storage to store them. This also helps with sorting modules since there are now fewer modules to sort through.

This is purely a QoL change but one that would help out a lot of people. You could engineer 1 weapon that works fine on a small ship fixed, put it on a medium ship Gimbal or a Large ship as a Turret and don't have to worry about engineering 3 weapons, just the 1.

 

[Captain Willard]

While not a bad idea if done early in the game.
Waaay to late now to make all the coding changes for price, looks, installing and uninstalling scenes, materials, engineers, on and on.
Never going to happen.

 

[JTFireblaze]

Why only during outfitting? I'd love to see a flexible mount that would allow a commander to change between fixed, gimballed, turret whenever they want outside of combat, or only when hardpoints are retracted. Sure, there are some power and costs that would need working out. But you could keep the same damage ratios. Fixed deals 100% damage, Gimballed 75%, Turret 50% or whatever they are.

Once your hardpoints are deployed you're stuck with them, and if you want to switch up in combat you're going to have to retract, change them all, bring them back out.

Would be highly useful for those commanders that might want to practice with fixed, or perhaps are feeling lazy and want to go turret mode for a little while.

And one of my favourite reasons: Being able to set a bunch of hardpoints to turreted for a Multicrew gunner when they join your ship, instead of apologising and telling them to get in a fighter instead...

 

[teeth_03]

While not a bad idea if done early in the game.
Waaay to late now to make all the coding changes for price, looks, installing and uninstalling scenes, materials, engineers, on and on.
Never going to happen.

Price - It's a set price per weapon, with the Gimbal and Turret mounts getting more expensive the larger you get

Looks - They don't need to look different?

Materials/Engineers - We currently don't have a difference in regards to engineering between the different mount options so I'm not seeing the issue

Animations - It goes inside as one mount and comes back out as the other, it's the equivalent of changing weapons currently

If anything you missed the one thing that would actually be work, the UI. I figured it could be like a SRV or Fighter Bay where there are 2+ "Sub Slots" on a hardpoint, one for the weapon, and another for the mount. Optionally there could be a 3rd sub slot for weapon color so we can finally do per hardpoint coloring. There is also the issue of limiting the options with the UI. You can fit a turret on a Large Laser but not a Huge Laser or any size of PA for example so it would need grayed out (personally I feel we could use Huge Turrets anyway).

 

[Northpin]

There are also differences in power and distributer needs plus the differenced in damage and accuracy

And for turrets, you already have the selector - forward fire turns them into fixed weapons, but more expensive and with less damage / power needs

 

[teeth_03]

There are also differences in power and distributer needs plus the differenced in damage and accuracy

And for turrets, you already have the selector - forward fire turns them into fixed weapons, but more expensive and with less damage / power needs

Of course

My thought is, the mount acts as a modifier and changes the stats to what we have currently depending on what is equipped, so we aren't changing any weapons balance or anything.

 

[JTFireblaze]

There are also differences in power and distributer needs plus the differenced in damage and accuracy

And for turrets, you already have the selector - forward fire turns them into fixed weapons, but more expensive and with less damage / power needs

The turrets selector is a global change to all of your hardpoints. You can either have all turrets or all weak fixed. What OP is describing would allow you to set individual hardpoints to Fixed/Gimballed/Turret.

As for power, distro, accuracy changes - when the mode switches the changes can be applied then. In outfitting it could show you the effects of changing.

Would be a fantastic way to improve on the hardpoint system. It still retains the flexibility of weapon choice, but allows a player to get access to more of those choices with reduced grinding.

 

[Northpin]

I can see what it look like all sorts of inconveniences and/or issues with this proposal*
While i don't see any issues with the current setup and everything is crystal clear.

* as in: certain weapons are fixed only, some have turreted versions only for multicrew, how will will you have it? a single switch as we currently have (which is mostly useless or niche at best) or a switch per hardpoint (which will increase the overhead), plus the cryes my ship lost power when i switched my weapons to gimbaled... and so on and so forth

Also i have to say that i have no problems engineering multiple modules... guess i have over 60 fully engineered ships spread over 3 accounts and many other modules in storage

 

[JTFireblaze]

I can see what it look like all sorts of inconveniences and/or issues with this proposal*
While i don't see any issues with the current setup and everything is crystal clear.

* as in: certain weapons are fixed only, some have turreted versions only for multicrew, how will will you have it? a single switch as we currently have (which is mostly useless or niche at best) or a switch per hardpoint (which will increase the overhead), plus the cryes my ship lost power when i switched my weapons to gimbaled... and so on and so forth

Also i have to say that i have no problems engineering multiple modules... guess i have over 60 fully engineered ships spread over 3 accounts and many other modules in storage

Maybe you can switch each hardpoint individually, to provide very fine controls of what they do. With restrictions for things that aren't gimballed/turreted (Rail guns, PAs). As for the hardpoints that only operate fixed, but turret for crew mode - they're fine the way they are. There could also be a hardpoint "loadout" view where you can save a fully mapped out hardpoints mode. Save 3 or 4 different hardpoint loadouts so you can easily swap between them.

As for you having 60 fully engineered ships over 3 accounts, that's your choice and I respect it. But not everyone wants to spend every minute of their playtime doing that. A newer player today would have to spend countless hours to get where you are now.

 

[teeth_03]

I have 25 fully engineered ships on one account and that is annoying enough

The way that it is now prohibits experimentation. Let's say I want to engineer some short range lasers. I initially use Gimbal because I'm primarily doing PvE, well if I wanted to dip into PvP I would want to primarily have fixed weapons so that is not any good. What if I wanted to do multi crew, it is not any good for that either. But if I could freely switch the mounts, I could switch between the three activities at ease, all the while only using a third of my module storage.

 

[Northpin]

Yea, but it's exactly what i said - an overcomplicated usage model that ads nothing to the gameplay.
Au contraire, IMO it detracts from it making the game shallow and removing the decision making process in building a ship and the consequences of those decisions.

As for you having 60 fully engineered ships over 3 accounts, that's your choice and I respect it. But not everyone wants to spend every minute of their playtime doing that. A newer player today would have to spend countless hours to get where you are now.

one cannot expect to play 50 hours and have the same benefits/achievements like someone that played 5000 hours

 

[znôrt]

While not a bad idea if done early in the game.
Waaay to late now to make all the coding changes for price, looks, installing and uninstalling scenes, materials, engineers, on and on.

hm ... money is irrelevant, looks stay the same, as do scenes, engineering is unchanged, mats unaffected.

it is a good idea to streamline the whole thing ... except it's only a drop in the ocean. plus the artificial complexity is not an accident so ...

Never going to happen.

yeah ;-)

 

[teeth_03]

Yea, but it's exactly what i said - an overcomplicated usage model that ads nothing to the gameplay.
Au contraire, IMO it detracts from it making the game shallow and removing the decision making process in building a ship and the consequences of those decisions.





one cannot expect to play 50 hours and have the same benefits/achievements like someone that played 5000 hours

It adds more to the gameplay than adding artificial grind for no reason. Ship loadouts should be flexible and easily changed, not rigid like they are now. We already have a dozen+ weapon types that come in different sizes that would still need to be engineered anyway, taking way one of the layers isn't going to make the game a shallow mess that you think it will.

Having a lower cost of entry for changing out weapons would actually make the game have a deeper experience, now a shallow one, because people will be able to experiment more instead of everyone using the same meta builds.

 

[JTFireblaze]

one cannot expect to play 50 hours and have the same benefits/achievements like someone that played 5000 hours

Hard disagree. There needs to be a way for that newer player to become equal to the experienced. This is a live service multiplayer game that has people starting it new all the time. If they have no way of matching a 5000+ hour player then what point is there in them playing? Gatekeeping progression "because I've played longer than you" is a terrible mindset that does nothing but alienate and turn away new players. Yes, a new player should not be handed everything straight away but there needs to be a way that they can catch up and compete with the players who've put many hundreds of hours in to the game.

"Catch up" mechanics are nothing new in games with ongoing development. MMOs will hand out catch up gear as part of levelling for example. Barriers to older content will be reduced so that newer players can keep up.

Adding the ability for a user to engineer a hardpoint that could have multiple purposes or modes isn't going to ruin the decision making progress. If anything it's going to allow people more choice and flexibility.

 

[GroG79]

This is suggested as a workaround for the lack of 'sufficient' module storage....
The idea itself is better than this workaround. If you are short on module storage you sell some modules or you buy a T10 or six T10s

 

[teeth_03]

Using ship storage as module storage is side stepping the problem as well.

We shouldn't have to sit through animations to switch ships to move weapons around.

We need more module storage and ways to sort them, nickname them and group them in folders or something.

I think it's rubbish I can store 40 ships on my FC alone but no more than 120 modules across the galaxy. At a bare minimum FC owners should have a storage increase, but I'd say give it to everyone.

 

[GroG79]

Yes valid points. But to change the essence of todays outfitting to over come this storage shortage?

How about... 150 storage? 200? 500? You will use it anyway and come back asking for more storage

 

[JTFireblaze]

Yes valid points. But to change the essence of todays outfitting to over come this storage shortage?

How about... 150 storage? 200? 500? You will use it anyway and come back asking for more storage

There is definitely a case of module bloat in some areas. See Limpet Controllers for example. There have been a number of threads suggesting the fabled "Universal Limpet Controller" to try and fix that problem. Hardpoints likewise do tend to have a lot of different variants. If there is a way that these could be reduced while still retaining the fantastic amount of flexibility in ship build diversity it would solve more than just the problem of storage shortage.

 

[Lugh]

Basically he's asking for mounts to be purchasable at outfitting.

So you would buy a mount then buy a weapon to put on that mount similar to a fighter in a fighter bay.


However like someone pointed out weapons are too old in the code and this would probably not be easy to change. Even simple systems get buried and tangled no matter how good your documentation is or how clean your coding is. And considering the size of the team at the beginning you can bet those two things weren't the best.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Not sure i think this should be a thing. However, would totally be in favour of a "remount" option available for either money or materials.

Problem is, there is more to it than just the mounting. Each weapon type has different characteristics which have nothing to do with the mounting itself. They actually have different damage ratings and stuff.

I'm not sure how that can be accounted for without a complete overhaul of the weapon system, and doing that now would cause lots of issues with existing builds, unless they leave existing weapons alone, and then that creates the issue of legacy items, so you need to make sure the new version is at least on a par if not better than the old version, then you get power creep (like we did with the engineer overhaul)....

Ugh... yeah, probably best if FD don't think about this at all.