Submit your nifty weapon ideas here, and we'll make fun of them

Okay, so here's how this deal goes. The world of Nova developers is always forced to fall back onto the most common ideas and make a bland new plug, or forced to endure the countless number of pages of "Nova Hacks" and create a glitchy effect that makes most people's computers crash.

In here, we're going to talk about clever designs for weapons, or other ship systems even (performance boosts, etc), that somehow bend the perceived limits of the Nova engine without actually breaking any rules.

I'll start things off, as an example.

The "Cavalier" missile system featured in Delphi uses a unique two-shot system of delivery, meaning that for every pull of the trigger, you actually fire two missiles, though you only have one instance of the item outfitted to your ship. This is done by using submunitions delivered at the weapon's point of activation. The weapon itself fires an invisible shot, which immediately detonates into two smaller missiles, just like the polaron torpedo of EVN. The nifty trick in all this? First, it only draws one ammunition charge for each firing of two missiles (the ammo is even listed as though a pair of missiles is one bundle), and second, by allowing the weapon to explode when it splits, thus calling a bööm resource into play, you can cause the missile's firing to trigger a quick "smoke-blast" animation right at the source on the ship, adding a small degree of animation to the firing of the weapon, without using the ship's weapon sprites. Other direct-firing weapons can also be set to do this, as long as you set their primary accuracy to be dead on, allowing the sub-munition to carry the inaccuracy when it's generated.

In short:
Single-ammo weapon fires two shots simultaneously in different directions but tracking the same target, and generates its own firing animation independent of the carrying ship.

Either way, go nuts!

An Auto-Dodger. PD weapon, give it a very short lifespan (15), superfast speed (20000), set it to impact, blast range double the distance, set all shots to be guided with turning of 0 and it works.

Actually a weapon called the Ripper Cloud uses the method Delphi put forward, but minus the animation. It's in Space Opera.

Hyperspace Missiles:

Doesn't really use Hyperspace, but you fire a missile that after a few seconds submunitions in to a invisible shot which travels very quickly and turns well. When it gets into the Prox Radius it submuntions again into a weapon with the same sprite as the first, so to the player it appears as if the missile disappears and reappears next to the enemy, with appropriate effects to show hyperspace entry and exit.

These are also used in Space Opera.

This post has been edited by Templar98921 : 20 April 2008 - 02:58 AM

Dragonslayer rocket - uses negative inaccuracy to have a launching platform fire from the sides, then submunitions into a fast moving missile a few seconds later.

Pyrogon - crazy repeated submunitioning, high inaccuracy weapon with a pretty big explosion radius which generally causes massive quantities of explosions everywhere, admittedly to relatively little real effect.

Plasma torpedo - repeatedly submunitioning explosive to achieve a sort of a fireball effect that creates a path of destruction. Near misses do more damage than direct hits, often, though.

Desprez, oh where are you Desprez?

don't forget:
http://www.ambrosiasw.com/forums/index.php...78&hl=Avara

two-mode guns, ionization fields (JTH), variable-damage weapons, etc, etc.

Maybe we an make a comprehensive list of links to the topicsd about these individal weapons in one post, and get it added to the top of "Cool Nova Hacks"

@templar98921, on Apr 20 2008, 03:57 AM, said in Innovative Weapons - A Pool of Good Ideas:

Hyperspace Missiles:

Doesn't really use Hyperspace, but you fire a missile that after a few seconds submunitions in to a invisible shot which travels very quickly and turns well. When it gets into the Prox Radius it submuntions again into a weapon with the same sprite as the first, so to the player it appears as if the missile disappears and reappears next to the enemy, with appropriate effects to show hyperspace entry and exit.

A variation on this:

A normally invisible "Fighter," that uncloaks / unfolds to fire, with a graphic that makes it appear as a wormhole. Once visible / open, streams of missiles pour out towards the target.

Storywise, it's described as 'spotting' for a massive out-of-system missile platform that uses artificial wormholes to deliver its payloads, without putting the platform itself in danger.

This post has been edited by Eugene Chin : 20 April 2008 - 05:28 PM

As LNSU mentioned, the Ionization Field Generator. Creates an invisible field around the player via a detonating, short life shot with a fair blast radius, and set with no damage but really high ionization, effectively ionizing anything near the ship.

There's also the Trap Cannon and Flare Cannon, but you'll have to wait for CTC's release to see those.

Bumped for sheer usefulness. Sorry.

@joshtigerheart, on Apr 21 2008, 12:28 AM, said in Innovative Weapons - A Pool of Good Ideas:

As LNSU mentioned, the Ionization Field Generator. Creates an invisible field around the player via a detonating, short life shot with a fair blast radius, and set with no damage but really high ionization, effectively ionizing anything near the ship.

One thing you have to be careful of with 0-damage ionizing weapons though is that they don't make ships hostile towards you. So assuming you found a nice prey, you could jack their ionization up through the roof before engaging them (see: Ion Shock Battery, basically the exact same thing). The flip side, of course, is that anything hit in the crossfire will go hostile if you give it marginal damage. Also, a note for anyone who is interested in this idea: if you play around with the prox radius, speed, and count, you can get it to the point where AI ships will use it effectively; with 0 speed or count, they'll never fire it.

I've got one that I considered using in Anathema but canned later on. Sort of a manual point-defense system. The weapon has 180 inaccuracy, high speed, short count, 0 reload, and burst fire of say 20 with a long burst reload. Then, after it hits a certain radius around your ship, it submunitions into an identical weapon but with 0 speed, creating a "net" around your ship. High prox and blast radius. Watch the fighters die. I don't know how well the AI uses this as I never tested it.

Then there's Sunburst Torpedoes, Lightning Field Generators, and Graviton Streamers, but, as Josh said, you'll have to wait for those.

Fortunately, in Colosseum, most ships you'll be using the IFG against are already hostile to you on sight.

This post has been edited by JoshTigerheart : 01 May 2008 - 03:43 PM

How about the Plasma Shotgun? Still in the planning stage; the Plasma Shotgun fires a round which instantly submunitions into three rounds. Deals heavy damage, a close range weapon. Limited ammo, has recoil.

Sounds great, but there's one thing about plasma; it's basically super heated gas. What does super heated gas do? It expands. What will it do in space? It'll vaporize as soon as it leaves the ship.

Unless you put it in a solid container. Or a semi-solid container. With the solid, you could make it a missile, or multiple missiles that were submunitioned, with a transparent body. With a semi-solid container, you could get more of what you wanted. Of course, it doesn't make much difference with a semi-solid container, except that you would be able to see the plasma in it's entirety. And with the semi-solid, you could also have the container not require ammo, and it could have a life-span. The container would get thinner until it broke, and then the plasma would expand, and it wouldn't vaporize, it would actually solidify in a large chuck, similar to the frost that occurs when you leave the freezer door open.

This post has been edited by Jean-Luc Picard : 03 May 2008 - 03:07 PM

Well, since space doesn't actually have a defined temperature, and is an infinite vacuum, wouldn't it expand until it solidified?

Good point with the container, though.

It would still be very hot, wouldn't it? The high initial temperature, combined with zero-pressure in vacuum, would cause it to expand, not solidify.

On my part, though Plasma weapons sound cool, I'm pretty sure that there's no benefit in it.

If the Plasma container is unguided ballistic, what's the benefit over a kinetic-kill weapon? (Think Railgun or Coilgun slugs.)
Once a slug is moving fast enough (3 kilometers / second) it's doing it's own weight in TNT as damage to anything it hits. If you can up the velocity of the slug, you can up the damage. (Kinetic Energy = 1/2 m v^2 = 0.5 x mass x velocity x velocity)

Does putting a container of plasma on that projectile improve the damage better than throwing the projectile faster would?

And how do they solve this problem in Halo? They contain the plasma within a magnetic field and use that to direct it to the target.

...Ok, probably junk science. But who cares, honestly? As long as I can find an explanation that sounds good, I'm happy.

@shlimazel, on May 4 2008, 02:09 AM, said in Innovative Weapons - A Pool of Good Ideas:

And how do they solve this problem in Halo? They contain the plasma within a magnetic field and use that to direct it to the target.

Mmhmm. I'm just going to go on through life pretending that I didn't learn that. :rolleyes:

Alright, new to developing so I don't know if the engine could handle this or even if it's been tried before.

One of Professor Farnsworths Fabulous Future Doomsday Devices. (isn't alliteration fun!?)

Fire one slowmoving and large missile, most likely an EMP Torpedo with an altered graphic, possibly using the Hellhound graphic instead, and suddenly a small but shiny looking black hole appears (using the wormhole graphic but ... well ... black.) and disappears relatively quickly taking parts of the targeted ship (armor: i think it should bypass sheilds) and any fighters who stray too close. No need for a bööm resource because the ship would just disappear like a regular wormhole.

I know the engine has the capacity to create 'gravity' on spöbs and that it messes with the AI, but I think that if it could be made to last only a short while, and could be initiated somehow ingame, it'd be a rather neat little weapon.

Mine is still being planned out, and since I have no skill with weapon resources, this is just being planned out so far.

The Helix Sphere Generator is its name.

Scientifically, the Helix Sphere is virtually a huge... well... sphere filled with a heavily ionizing energy type known as helix. When fired, the Helix Sphere can last for a long time, but unfortunately, since helix cools down quickly, the Helix Sphere Generator must heat the Helix Sphere to 500 degrees Celsius (I might change that) before it is fired. It then leaches onto its target and not only causes ionization damage, but also eats away slowly at its shield/armor.

When coded into Nova's engine, it takes around 5 whole seconds to reload, and can last for 4 whole seconds before fading away. It's pretty slow, and has no impact, sadly. It decays .5 before the shot disappears.

And that's pretty much all for now.

Neutron turrets, dangit. We need more neutrons!

Alright, alright, for reals now:

Antimatter Cannons/Turrets - being that antimatter is the most powerful substance known to man, these could prove to be some of the most powerful weapons mankind could ever devise.

Stasis Cannon - This, to say the least, would take some work. The Stasis cannon would, upon impact, stop all activity from the target vessel for a few seconds, preventing it from moving or firing its weapons. However, because of the incredibly compact space-time pocket created, the resulting ship could not be harmed or interacted with during its time in stasis.

That's all I can think of right now.