Neutron Guns could disable a ship by killing the crew. That's a very cool idea. Maybe a Radiation Gun?

@warlord-mike, on May 4 2008, 11:49 AM, said in Innovative Weapons - A Pool of Good Ideas:

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.

Stasis Cannon - it would have to fire a homing weapons which would sub into a motionless fighter with a mass of 32767 that had a really strong tractor beam. The fighter would have a cool graphic to make it look like a "stasis field" and a big mask to protect the ship in "stasis".

Of course, it still wouldn't protect the ship from blast radius and missiles that don't collide with other ships. And I'm not sure if the ship would be protected if someone got on top and started shooting. Plus you could target the stasis field and fire at it (and the trapped ship could fire at it), it would be possible for the player to hostile the stasis field and draw it's attention off the ship, the stuck ship could still use weapons, namely missiles and fighters, and it could be interacted with through all the normal non-violent methods too. Creating a true stasis field would require an engine change.

Anti-matter weapons could just be any gun that does a bunch of damage. Nothing special there.

Well you could still call it a tangler field... have a "fighter" with use stand off tactics (may not be necessary, or even work right, but hopefully this would make the ship stationary once it got to the target, a short range tractor beam and a short range 0 damage gun that causes self destruct after the burst count is up, and very high mass and accel. It should fly to the target and pin it in place for how ever long you set the burst count on the second weapon to be.

@joshtigerheart, on May 4 2008, 11:07 AM, said in Innovative Weapons - A Pool of Good Ideas:

Anti-matter weapons could just be any gun that does a bunch of damage. Nothing special there.

Well, to up the difficulty factor, the way I've thought said weapons would work would be by "splashing" across a ship's surface. It would only cover an area of about 10 feet or so in diameter, a few inches thick. On smaller vessels, that much antimatter would essentially "insta-kill" the ship, but on more massive ones, it'd barely leave a hole worth mentioning.

So, that's the challenge: making a cannon whose damage is dependent on the size of the vessel. Whether or not this'd require engine changes, I don't know, though.

@warlord-mike, on May 4 2008, 07:34 PM, said in Innovative Weapons - A Pool of Good Ideas:

So, that's the challenge: making a cannon whose damage is dependent on the size of the vessel. Whether or not this'd require engine changes, I don't know, though.

Barring an incredibly tedious and very clumsy process, it would take major engine changes.

The way you could do it (it's a stretch, but it's possible) would be to have some sort of method, be it a crön or mďsn, of making only small ships or only large ships show up at any given time. Then, that crön sets a bit enabling an invisible mission that, if the player has the weapon, gets rid of it and grants either the higher- or lower-damage version of the weapon.

Like I said, very clumsy and completely useless. But still possible. :laugh:

One other thing I think people should keep in mind here is finding ways to make the AI effectively employ some of the stranger designs. Lots of them it probably won't even use.

All of Colosseum's weapons are A.I. friendly.

@warlord-mike, on May 4 2008, 01:34 PM, said in Innovative Weapons - A Pool of Good Ideas:

So, that's the challenge: making a cannon whose damage is dependent on the size of the vessel. Whether or not this'd require engine changes, I don't know, though.

I know of a way to do it that doesn't require engine changes: make the ratio between the shields/armor of a fighter and a capital ship extremely steep.

Let's say this weapon does 100/100 damage. A fighter would have 100/100 shields/armor and a capital ship would have 30,000/15,000 shields/armor. Voli­á, a weapon that kills a fighter with one shot but barely leaves a dent in capital ships.

This is also how the weapons work in CTC; if you have a fighter using a medium ship weapon, you'll scream foul for sure.

@jacabyte, on May 4 2008, 10:04 PM, said in Innovative Weapons - A Pool of Good Ideas:

I know of a way to do it that doesn't require engine changes: make the ratio between the shields/armor of a fighter and a capital ship extremely steep.

Let's say this weapon does 100/100 damage. A fighter would have 100/100 shields/armor and a capital ship would have 30,000/15,000 shields/armor. Voli­á, a weapon that kills a fighter with one shot but barely leaves a dent in capital ships.

This is also how the weapons work in CTC; if you have a fighter using a medium ship weapon, you'll scream foul for sure.

True, but that would apply to all weapons, not just the one in particular you wanted to have the effect.

That's true. It would require a different model of game play than what Nova currently has, no? Where fighters have small, fast weapons that are effective only against other fighters and capital ships have large bulky weapons that turn everything in their wake into space dust?

@jacabyte, on May 5 2008, 01:34 PM, said in Innovative Weapons - A Pool of Good Ideas:

That's true. It would require a different model of game play than what Nova currently has, no? Where fighters have small, fast weapons that are effective only against other fighters and capital ships have large bulky weapons that turn everything in their wake into space dust?

Sounds rather Battlestar Galactica-ish, with a complement of fighters unable to take down anything other than other fighters... and the capital ships, the Battlestars, really only able to target base-stars or the power to unleash barrages that turn everything in the path to, well, dust.

In nova terms, it's like sending out a squad of -sigh- vipers against an Auroran Cruiser (voinian has a better armor rating that would be more appropriate) they would do basically nothing. However a barrage of nukes with combined gattling fire, eg, hellfire missiles and railguns/chainguns can take down anything after awhile.

Even in Battlestar Galactica, it's my understanding that their vipers can be outfitted with heavy ship missiles. The stock Fed vipers in Nova are just kinda worthless.

I mean if fighters can't harm large ships, what's the point of having them at all? It would be more like Star Trek where you really don't have fighters, just shuttlecraft for going places where your heavy ships can't go. Even the Jem'Hadar "fighters" were crewed vessels, not something a single pilot straps themselves in to.

@sobercounsel, on May 5 2008, 06:26 AM, said in Innovative Weapons - A Pool of Good Ideas:

Sounds rather Battlestar Galactica-ish, with a complement of fighters unable to take down anything other than other fighters... and the capital ships, the Battlestars, really only able to target base-stars or the power to unleash barrages that turn everything in the path to, well, dust.

I never really understood the practicality of that system. If fighters really can't hard capitals and are only good for taking down other fighters, why use them? Plus, the whole "oops we didn't think to put two tiny weapons capable of hitting fighters on our two-kilometer-long space ship" thing always seemed rather unlikely to me.

@archon, on May 5 2008, 10:40 AM, said in Innovative Weapons - A Pool of Good Ideas:

I never really understood the practicality of that system. If fighters really can't hard capitals and are only good for taking down other fighters, why use them? Plus, the whole "oops we didn't think to put two tiny weapons capable of hitting fighters on our two-kilometer-long space ship" thing always seemed rather unlikely to me.

Well, there's recon, and economically attacking or defending civilian vessels that are unarmed for legal or technical reasons.

Damage proportionalish to size of ship.

Proximity Radius: 50
Sub Count: 10
Sub Theta: -10
Subs fire at nearest target
Submunitions: Guided with zero turn, prox ignores ships other than target (maybe), passes over asteroids (maybe), ProxRad 0 (maybe)

This is very similar to Random Damage, except the submunitions come off at regular intervals, and thus a ship with a large sprite will be hit by more of the subs. You can think of it as a cone of shrapnel, or a spherical explosion with its own momentum.

@qaanol, on May 5 2008, 05:35 PM, said in Innovative Weapons - A Pool of Good Ideas:

Damage proportionalish to size of ship.

Proximity Radius: 50
Sub Count: 10
Sub Theta: -10
Subs fire at nearest target
Submunitions: Guided with zero turn, prox ignores ships other than target (maybe), passes over asteroids (maybe), ProxRad 0 (maybe)

This is very similar to Random Damage, except the submunitions come off at regular intervals, and thus a ship with a large sprite will be hit by more of the subs. You can think of it as a cone of shrapnel, or a spherical explosion with its own momentum.

Isn't that the opposite of the intended effect? But yes, that works well.

On a similar theme, one of the more entertaining weapons in chapter 3 (Wyvern can attest to this) is a low damage, 800 speed, 60 count, -3 turn speed torpedo. Subs into the second stage with 5 rockets at -72 theta. The 2nd stage is a 0 damage planet type weapon (just to ensure that larger ships don't get crushed in one hit) that subs into 8 rockets at -36 theta. The third stage is a 12/8 mass/energy damage rocket, 6 count, 2500 speed, 65 blast 40 prox radius unguided that subs into itself 3 times 6 per at -60 theta. Somehow, this either gives the illusion of making a tight circle of rockets that flowers around the second stage's explosion point, or the engine freaks out and actually creates this effect.

I had also tossed around the idea of some sort of "force net" weapon that would fire directly forward, then sub into 2 at -90, then sub repeatedly back and forth like some intergalactic pong ball. Unfortunately, sub theta doesn't work unless there are 2+ subs.

@dr--trowel, on May 5 2008, 11:30 AM, said in Innovative Weapons - A Pool of Good Ideas:

Well, there's recon, and economically attacking or defending civilian vessels that are unarmed for legal or technical reasons.

They also take out nukes and missiles, and I believe that they are very effective against resurection ships.

Okay, if you don't want to give your fighters larger sprites, how about giving them smaller sprites and taking advantage of one of Nova's most longstanding annoyances to developers, the non-sub-on-direct-hit "feature".

Say all fighters have a maximum radius (distance from center) of 32 pixels, and all capital ships have a minimum radius of 64 pixels (in every direction.) Give the weapon a proximity radius of 50 or so pixels and a blast radius to match or slightly wider, then have it sub toward closest target. It's probably best to make it a guided weapon that can't hit other ships. Now when it strikes a big target it just goes boom once. But when it hits a small target it goes boom and then it goes BOOM.

You could also make the submunition be self-subbing, fail on expire, which means it will sub more times for smaller targets. The self-subbing weapon should have a reasonably short range so it won't mess up AI range-finding too much.

@qaanol, on May 5 2008, 07:52 PM, said in Innovative Weapons - A Pool of Good Ideas:

Okay, if you don't want to give your fighters larger sprites, how about giving them smaller sprites and taking advantage of one of Nova's most longstanding annoyances to developers, the non-sub-on-direct-hit "feature".

Say all fighters have a maximum radius (distance from center) of 32 pixels, and all capital ships have a minimum radius of 64 pixels (in every direction.) Give the weapon a proximity radius of 50 or so pixels and a blast radius to match or slightly wider, then have it sub toward closest target. It's probably best to make it a guided weapon that can't hit other ships. Now when it strikes a big target it just goes boom once. But when it hits a small target it goes boom and then it goes BOOM.

You could also make the submunition be self-subbing, fail on expire, which means it will sub more times for smaller targets. The self-subbing weapon should have a reasonably short range so it won't mess up AI range-finding too much.

Hmm, that certainly sounds good. Speaking of which (a little off topic but still pertinent), what on earth does the "subs fail on expire" flag do? I haven't for the life of me been able to figure it out.

The subs will only fire in the Prox. Radius, and not on the end of their life.