Tweaked conventional weapons as new weapons : Add diversity?

[Snarfbuckle]

We have 3 types of each kind of damage

Thermal - Pulse, Burst, Beam
Kinetic - Multi, Cannon, Railgun
Explosive - Seeker, Dumbfire, Torpedo

We have a pair of oddities with Kinetic/Thermal

- Plasma
- Mines

Would it not be fun to have some more variations within those that we THEN can engineer.

- Rapid fire pulse laser (lower damage than burst but faster fire rate)
- Burst fire Cannon (Faster projectiles, slightly lower damage, longer cooldown between shots, but fire X3 rounds)
- Burst fire multi-cannon (without being ONE piddly little PP reward weapon)
- Rapid fire plasma accelerators with twice the fire rate but half the damage
- FLAK cannons with a delayed AOE burst when it comes within target proximity instead of an extremely short range shotgun (instead of forward cone damage we get an AOE damage)
- Proximity rockets with limited sensors to explode when within X distance of an object
- Seeker mines that remain dormant until they detect an enemy and use a burst of power to move towards the target at the cost of less overall damage (Smart mines if you will).

And if not weapon variations, why not ammunition to regular kinetic weapons that we purchase to our ship? Sure, they would change the way weapons work in many ways but it would make them far more FUN.

We could even add "ammunition" to lasers by adding focused laser crystals to modify the way the lasers function but the crystals burn out after extended use.

- EXP rounds for multi-cannons and cannons giving them EXP damage and small AOE (completely replacing it's damage)
- Thermal and Kinetic warheads for missiles (Completely replacing it's damage)
- Charged pulse crystals to pulse lasers to make each pulse "explode" on impact converting some thermal damage to EXP.
- Focused beam crystals to give beam lasers an improved armour piercing ability
- Desync burst crystals giving burst lasers causing the individual bursts in a burst laser to fire out of sync, giving it a more auto-firing look and reducing the refire rate between shots.

 

[babelfisch]

I think weapon diversity would be great. I also suggest to apply the engineer special effects to buyable weapons directly and finally remove the stupid casino mechanic or (even better) remove them completely because healing lasers are still stupid.

 

[Elpapo]

We have 3 types of each kind of damage

This is incorrect, there is 3 more types.

Absolute - Part of Plasmas, and its 60% from its dmg. Remain 40% is Thermal/Kinetic split. Absolute ignore shields/armour resistances, but in case of shields, only pips on SYS can give some resistance for this kind of dmg.
Collision - This another type of dmg, wich can deal more dmg than any weapon. There is lot of factors that decide how much dmg collision will do, such as mass, speed, how much MJ shields have, how much hull intergrity etc.
Phasing - Comes from special effect, wich ingores all resistances, and bypass shields, and its not affected by Falloff. This is small fraction of dmg from weapon that uses this effect.


Also railguns are thermal/kinetic, not just kinetic.

 

[Snarfbuckle]

Absolute - Part of Plasmas, and its 60% from its dmg. Remain 40% is Thermal/Kinetic split. Absolute ignore shields/armour
resistances, but in case of shields, only pips on SYS can give some resistance for this kind of dmg.

Interesting, WHERE is this stated? Not in the game and not on the Wiki. One would think a 60% ignore on target resistances should be a pretty big sign somewhere.

Collision - This another type of dmg, wich can deal more dmg than any weapon. There is lot of factors that decide how much dmg
collision will do, such as mass, speed, how much MJ shields have, how much hull intergrity etc.

of course, but im looking at basic weapon damage which is usually THE/KIN/EXP.

Phasing - Comes from special effect, wich ingores all resistances, and bypass shields, and its not affected by Falloff. This is small fraction of dmg from weapon that uses this effect.

Yes, but this is usually from Engineering and im looking at basic non-engineered weapons and AFAIK none of our regular weapons (Engineering and PP excluded) have that.

Also railguns are thermal/kinetic, not just kinetic.

True, good point, they are more like a superfast plasma cannon in that regard.

 

[Elpapo]

Interesting, WHERE is this stated? Not in the game and not on the Wiki. One would think a 60% ignore on target resistances should be a pretty big sign somewhere.

Just a reminder, no one knows better about weapons than PvP'ers (and about anything that comes with outfiting). Wiki is not updated often, and when it is, its being done by incompetents, who never played in open or ever done any PVP. PA article seems like outdated as well, along many others.

You must be not into PVP too much, otherwise U would not miss it from changelogs. It was added at 2.2.03 beta, and then went into live. Line from 2.2.03 changelog:

"Damage split for Plasma accelerators changed from a kinetic thermal split to 60% absolute/20% kinetic/20% thermal (reduced from 100% absolute in beta), this means they partially ignore any damage resistance"

Ever since that time, PA+Rails became current Meta.

Why this is not being metioned ingame, well.... lot of things aint is. No suprise here.

 

[Snarfbuckle]

Why this is not being metioned ingame, well.... lot of things aint is. No suprise here.

This is the part that i find so damn lazy.

- FD have all the stats.
- It took us a YEAR to get actual numbers on weapon damage and DPS and armour penetration

It should not require one to be deeply engaged in PVP to get something like "60% of all damage ignore resistances" as one huge sign as a rather important weapon stat.

Not to mention heat mechanics and how well a ship is cool or not.

It's like shopping for a car and when asking about acceleration they say it's 3 out of 10 of the vehicles to choose from. Maximum speed is 7 out of ten.

They even told us that certain ship hulls are more frequently scanned due to hull reputation for smuggling and such - even THAT stat should be clearly labeled in game since it should be available as a statistic (X vehicle is used Y more times than any other for contraband).

 

[Elpapo]

This is the part that i find so damn lazy.

- FD have all the stats.
- It took us a YEAR to get actual numbers on weapon damage and DPS and armour penetration

It should not require one to be deeply engaged in PVP to get something like "60% of all damage ignore resistances" as one huge sign as a rather important weapon stat.

Not to mention heat mechanics and how well a ship is cool or not.

It's like shopping for a car and when asking about acceleration they say it's 3 out of 10 of the vehicles to choose from. Maximum speed is 7 out of ten.

They even told us that certain ship hulls are more frequently scanned due to hull reputation for smuggling and such - even THAT stat should be clearly labeled in game since it should be available as a statistic (X vehicle is used Y more times than any other for contraband).

I agree. But in case of Elite, just carefull reading of patch notes, gives info about most of necessary changes like that.

Personally, I would love to see all these information in-game, but Elite is not only one game wich lacks many important informations inside, but rather forces players to find it by themselfs. Luckly, if someone have some idea how things works in game, usualy sooner or later someone will post somewhere that knowledge.

In some games like Mass efect 3 multi, often information in game was wrong, and players did found that a lot of things aint work as described. Sometimes lack of information is better, than misleading information. Like just said, players will eventually figure things out, by themself in most cases, whatever they got information ingame or not.