I'm more than a bit surprised that the old MOO standbys, like Engine Pulsar and Lightning Field have not come up. Surely there is a use in SE combat for a weapon that sprays damage out to all ships surrounding yours?
If the Engine Pulsar were available and could do X number of points per undestroyed engine in a ship you could make them a specialty restricted to "Propulsion Experts" and increase the value of that racial trait. The lightning field would be a really cool artifact tech. Having a "one shot - many kills" weapon to stop missiles would be very powerful, though. It would need some special restrictions to balance it out. Maybe it should be impossible to use it with shields? That opens the possibility of a MOO defense tech being added, too, the damper field. Imagine if there were another racial tech with damper fields, lightning fields, and some special weapon like the "spatial distortion" weapon that the Antareans had. (Similar to Engine Pulsar but not dependent on Engines). That would be a really interesting variation that could through a wrench into lots of strategies that work pretty well right now against the existing AI races.
BTW, the principle of the solar sail as a weapon is logical but awkward. Think of a magnifying glass and bugs on a sidewalk.
It's the same thing. You could be able to focus the sail on something like a huge mirror and do some damage but it would be very large, slow and clumsy. Maybe as a base weapon it would be workable but it would still be very fragile. I guess it'd be best as a long range weapon. (Maybe on the strategic screen?)
[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 31 July 2001).]
Re: Ideas for new weapons
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