works as expected. Yay!

Setting one weapon with reload R and count C to be exclusive and also to use one shot at a time prevents other weapons from firing for the first R frames after is it fired. Furthermore, the weapon itself takes R frames after it hits something before it can be fired again.

If the shot doesn't hit anything, this means other weapons can fire for the interval (R, C+R). This is a method to make exclusive shots not actually be totally exclusive, so they stop all weapons for a short time, but they themselves take longer to reload.

Here is one implementation I've devise: Set up the exclusive gun so it never hits anything, and to submunition at the end of its life into an "actual" weapon. The net effect is a pause of R frames after you fire it during which none of your guns work. Then your other guns become active again. Then C frames later the submunition forms and the exclusive gun becomes active again.

I recommend numbers for the exclusive gun like R = 9, C = 19, so you can use it once a second, there's a one second delay between firing it and its submunition becoming active, and other weapons are only interrupted for a third of a second.

Depending on the graphic and behavior of the exclusive weapon, the one second delay could be a "charging up" or a "target acquisition" or a "countdown". In fact, if it's any of those things, you might want to be able to fire a second copy of it before the first finishes its countdown.

In that case, simply make the first submunition also not hit anything so it just continues the countdown for another two seconds or so before exploding or submunitioning into the actual weapon. That way you can fire one, wait a third of a second before you can fire other weapons, then another two thirds of a second before you can fire the first weapon again, then two more seconds before the initial shot goes live.

This is really interesting, actually. Your bit about charging the shot is similar to an effect I use in Delphi by which some weapons have a required charge time before firing. The Nichron Cannon is immensely powerful, but inaccurate because of this trick. First, a shot is fired that resembles a ball of plasma, set to spin continuously, designed to look like it is increasing in size ever so slightly, glowing white hot by the end of its sprite cycle. The weapon is then designed to submunition into its actual shot, with inaccuracy and other effects applied at this point. By timing the submunition point to the decay of the original "plasma" shot and its subsequent sprite sheet, the weapon always glows its brightest right before firing.

The clever bit here is that because the plasma ball is technically a weapon shot, it too can carry energy and hull damage, and for the purposes of Delphi and its powerful guns, one would assume that parking your self right at the weapon's charge point would be rather dangerous, and as a result, you can effectively ram ships by closing in close and firing your guns, incinerating them in the blast formed by the weapon's initial charge sequence. For most of the Nichron weapons, their plasma charge does twice as much energy damage and three times as much mass damage as its submunition, the actual Nichron energy packet. While this isn't particularly practical for warships against warships, a poorly defended cruiser may be able to stave off a devastating nimble fighter attack by firing its turrets at close range. The weapon plasma also generates more kick-back than the regular shot on impact, so its good at incinerating/repelling fighters that stray too close to the guns.

It also means that the weapon ports on the ships look just plain cool when they glow before firing.

Either way, I love the exclusive weapon idea. Perhaps someone could implement it as a gun that requires so much energy, it shuts down all other systems to fire?

Of course, using the same idea, someone could make a plasma gun that fires in the full colors of the rainbow, by using several weapons (all different colors) that each fire exclusively, in succession.

"FEAR MY FIERY RAINBOW OF HELLISH DESTRUCTION!!!" - pew pew pew -