Advanced Firegroups (Or Sequential Firing)

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

Just a thought.

Sometimes I don't want all my weapons and utilities firing at once, for many reasons, sometimes it's heat, other times capacitor, but mostly because "chain fire" looks so much better. Lol

So I thought it'd be cool if we could somehow tune our firegroups to allow sequential fire.
So instead of say, 4 pulse lasers, firing all 4 at once, with a gap, like;
4..........4...........4........
It's be;
1.2.3.4.1.2.3.4.1.2.3.4
Or have pairs, so;
2....2....2....2....2....2....

RoF might be slightly lower in some cases, and other weapon might not make much difference (like multicannons).

It would also be useful for chaff, and heatsinks, so they can be bound to one firegroup, and set off sequentially, instead of both at the same time. (To be honest, I've never used more than 1 at a time so I dunno if it already does that.. lol)

Thoughts?

 

[CMDR ROGER]

I can imagine this being something beneficial to people who hate having to cease fire for their weapons capacitor to recharge.

 

[War Eagle]

I've been wondering why there is a Annalist mode and a Combat mode but only one fire group? Shouldn't there be two?

 

[Daynen]

Hell, even old as dirt Mechwarrior games had the option to switch between chain fire and group fire...does seem like an oversight, doesn't it?

 

[[VR] Goooost]

Just a thought.

Sometimes I don't want all my weapons and utilities firing at once, for many reasons, sometimes it's heat, other times capacitor, but mostly because "chain fire" looks so much better. Lol

So I thought it'd be cool if we could somehow tune our firegroups to allow sequential fire.
So instead of say, 4 pulse lasers, firing all 4 at once, with a gap, like;
4..........4...........4........
It's be;
1.2.3.4.1.2.3.4.1.2.3.4
Or have pairs, so;
2....2....2....2....2....2....

RoF might be slightly lower in some cases, and other weapon might not make much difference (like multicannons).

It would also be useful for chaff, and heatsinks, so they can be bound to one firegroup, and set off sequentially, instead of both at the same time. (To be honest, I've never used more than 1 at a time so I dunno if it already does that.. lol)

Thoughts?

One thing I've already asked for is the ability to set weapon priority for when the distributor drains. Right now it might try to fire everything in that group and barely any weapon will work as a result, but it could automatically shut off predesignated weapons and leave you with a couple working just fine.

 

[Kreutzwald]

Yes, this would be nice. I have dual plasmas on my vulture and need to assign them to separate fire buttons. Very awkward.

 

[Azmuth Divarchchron]

Just a thought.

Sometimes I don't want all my weapons and utilities firing at once, for many reasons, sometimes it's heat, other times capacitor, but mostly because "chain fire" looks so much better. Lol

So I thought it'd be cool if we could somehow tune our firegroups to allow sequential fire.
So instead of say, 4 pulse lasers, firing all 4 at once, with a gap, like;
4..........4...........4........
It's be;
1.2.3.4.1.2.3.4.1.2.3.4
Or have pairs, so;
2....2....2....2....2....2....

RoF might be slightly lower in some cases, and other weapon might not make much difference (like multicannons).

It would also be useful for chaff, and heatsinks, so they can be bound to one firegroup, and set off sequentially, instead of both at the same time. (To be honest, I've never used more than 1 at a time so I dunno if it already does that.. lol)

Thoughts?

I set up my fire groups to be sequential on my plasma bomber "Solarstorm"
I have 3 plasma accelerators set in 4 fire groups.
I pull the trigger and go G1 -> G2 -> G3 ->G4 and stop on 4
G1 - G3 are the accelerators in their own individual groups and G4 is all of them.
So I set their timing by going 1 - 3 holding the trigger and G4 holds the timing.
So I effectively have a rapid fire plasma bomber that can also do burst fire.
Though having the option to set up sequential firing automatically would be amazing for managing ammo balance because I often purge my current "clip" if I stop firing during it so my accelerators dont preform a split reload if I keep it held all the way through.

 

[Jaylem]

Man, I suggested this like 2 years ago haha! I agree it would make things much easier in some cases. for example I could have 3 Advanced PA's, while currently if I place them on one firegroup they will all fire at once, but if you set them out of phase one could hold the trigger and fire a more continuous fire pattern, increasing chance of hitting target in motion while sacrificing concentrated damage.

 

[Killnine]

IIRC, I've suggested something similar. It would look cool and also allow maintaining sustained fire on a target.

 

[CMDR X]

I would like to be able to have cannons fire with lasers with button one, but only have the cannons fire with button 2.
Wish there was a way to set that without switching fire groups. I hate dorking around with fire groups that are littered
with guns and scanners during a fight.

This could be remedied if buttons were assigned to weapons instead of weapons assigned to buttons, as we have now.
This method would also expand the fire groups with a whole new range of possibilities.

 

[Lestat]

If you had your fire group set are up right. I don't think you will have everything firing at once. Please, why not show us your fire group setup on your ship. For me, I might have 5 fire groups. But everything 1 up to 2 clicks away.

Please Display your fire group. Including your ship and such.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

If you had your fire group set are up right. I don't think you will have everything firing at once. Please, why not show us your fire group setup on your ship. For me, I might have 5 fire groups. But everything 1 up to 2 clicks away.

Please Display your fire group. Including your ship and such.

Changing firegroups on console or Gamepad (pc) requires a bottom combo to be pressed. In my case, X+L/R Shoulder. So it's handy to keep everything in to a few groups as possible.

In any case, my suggestion isn't actually about firegroups, more firing style.
Sequential has visual and thermal benefits.

 

[Screemonster]

sequential also looks hella cool, and what's life without style?

 

[Sylow]

It would also be useful for chaff, and heatsinks, so they can be bound to one firegroup, and set off sequentially, instead of both at the same time. (To be honest, I've never used more than 1 at a time so I dunno if it already does that.. lol)

For chaff i can say for sure that it already works like that. Equip more than one chaff launcher. Have a hotkey for chaff. (I never put things on fire groups, which i can also put on hotkey. So i don't know how it works if you trigger a fire group with chaff. ) Press the hotkey, the first chaff fires. Press it again, the second one is triggered.

It's how the "perma-chaff" setups operate. For heat sinks i can't tell, i think i never ran two launchers at the same time. And for shield cell batteries it's not in place. All currently switched on SBCs trigger when you hit the SBC button. (Or at least they did so at some time. I didn't try that since a year or so. The heat spike almost killed me when i ran into it the first time. )

For weapons don't really see how i would use chain fire. But hey, that's me, perhaps this suggestion does has some use and i just don't see it immediately.

That being said, i would also like to have hotkeys for fire groups. Some of my ships, e.g. when set up for mining or exploration, have like 5 or 6 fire groups by now. Being able to bind hotkeys to directly go to a fire group, instead of the "previous/next" we currently have would really make things more convenient. (Implementing a fire-group split depending on combat or analysis mode, which also was suggested in many different variations in many threads already, would also help a lot. )

 

[Screemonster]

If you put your sinks on a firegoup, they will all fire at once.

 

[kaninren]

Firing heatsinks in a sequence would be better than firing them all at once!

 

[Azmuth Divarchchron]

Heatsinks already fire sequentially. Just use the dedicated binding for them.

 

[Greasetrap42]

If it were a real spaceship with our actual butts on the line... I think we would be willing to spend money for the ability to have programmed macros for combat. (assuming we didn't have AI just doing it all for us!) Programming firing sequences would be very beneficial. Other macros would be beneficial too: like an actual Combat Mode macro that sets your ship up to your desired defaults.

But pretty sure these types of ideas aren't part of the grand scheme. Combat reminds me a bit of WoW where you must have rotations burned into your muscle memory.

 

[kaninren]

Heatsinks already fire sequentially. Just use the dedicated binding for them.

Ohhh right... of course doh!