9 steampunk ships now.
Also, all the weapons are based off of ship-sized revolver and musket ideas. They have large culverin style deck guns, primitive rockets, and a flak cannon for point defense. The flack cannon shoots a PD rocket (unguided projectile) that splits into fragments. Hopefully the fragments hit the incoming missiles and fighters. It's fairly effective, unless the targets get too close...
Comparatively, these guns do very good armor damage, except everything uses ammo, many weapons share this ammo.
Revolvers - 6 shots before a brief reload. Light and heavy varieties.
Muskets - 3 shots all at once in a spread pattern. More DPS than revolvers, but at the expense of using 2x as much ammo. Light and heavy varieties.
Gattling Guns - Better rates of fire, but less accuracy and the weapons are bulky.
Culverin Deck Guns - Large, slow firing cannons, massive damage.
Big Bertha Deck Gun - Like a ginormous musket.
- Incidentally, I discovered that while the reload rate decreases with multiple weapons, the burst reload rate stays constant.
A couple unguided rockets, fighter and ship varieties
There are some bombs too. Still working on how the bombs are to be launched.
Conceptually, they are supposed to be unguided powerful explosives.
I tried as a free fall bomb, and that's so unwieldy. But target ships don't fire PD on them, and that's just unrealistic.
So I may make them a turret weapon that subs into a slow moving, 0 turn homing weap.
The omni-directional nature gives them some more utility to make up for their inability to home in on a target, while still allowing them to be shot down.
And they get some tough armor, to help survive despite the slow speed.
Trying to strike some balance between them and guided missiles, while giving them their own flavor. Otherwise, no one will buy them over the missiles.
Steampunk ships have weak shields, and tough armor.
They have impressive turn rates, but less usable mass and cargo space compared to their mass. Both properties come as a result of the large spinning fans.
Most ships get 70% usable space from their total mass. These guys are looking at 50%, but this may get adjusted after balancing.
Story-wise, they guys rely on a lot of mining and scavenging parts. (have a special asteroid bomb) (is there a way to make asteroid bits grant ammo?)
Also, I'm seriously thinking adding an additional requirement for using non-faction items.
Yes, the player can get the best stuff by buying from multiple factions, but is there any reason to NOT do this?
As of now, no. And it makes for some strange combinations.
I mean, if your space ship is powered by steam and ether propellers, how the heck can you power fusion cannons from the Grapen?
So I'm thinking of making a requirement to buy a special generator to use Grapen power weaps. If you have a Grapen ship, you have this built in - no need to buy it. And similar for the steampunk people, you'll need to get a steam engine to use their weapons. Maybe if you want to use long-range missiles you'll need a long range targeting system.
This way, you can still mix and match, but lose a bit of space efficiency for doing so. You'll probably want to stick to 2 or 3 factions for items.
What do you think?
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