New weapon Type?

[Taz-in-Space]

Now that I have played with SEIV for a Couple months I thought I would try to introduce some
new components. One of these would be a weapon that overloads and burns out after firing. I envision that I would make this weapon come Last in the research chain and that it would have much greater firepower and maybe 1-2 advantage in range over standard for that type.
My question is how much greater would be useful
but not unbalance the game. Also would the AI's be able to handle it?
I would appreciate any comments from you as to these considerations and anything else that might
be affected it the game.

[mac5732]

sounds interesting, however, since there are various types of componets in the game system, the amount of damage done would depend on how you initially set it up in regards to damage against each particular component, I don't know if a general or one that aims at only specific types, such as only armor, shields, armor & shields,, engines, etc. also once unit is fired and burned out would it be replacable at a yard or repair station or planet?? if not then I don't see much use for it unless the damage is quite considerable In regards to the AI, you will have to ck with the modders, the computer and myself do not get along in these areas

just some ideas mac

[Taz-in-Space]

I was considering that the component would be fixable via repair components or shipyards. I might consider limiting it to repair only at a shipyard, if possable. As to how much damage I would probabily have to determine on a the basis of what would be needed for that component. I.E.
a component blockable by shields and armor could be much greater upgraded than one that can bypass both.

[Ragnarok]

What about a weapon as follows:

A weapon that overloads when you select to use it and blows your ship plus the enemy ship up. You may think: "Well, isn't that basically a Kamikaze ship?" Well it is sorta, but a Kamikaze ship doesn't garantee that you will blow up the enemy ship. But this blows up both you and the enemy no matter what. It'd be sorta a weapon that you would only use when ABSOLUTLY needed, such as a enemy that's glassing at least 1 planet per turn. Just an idea, it's kinda a bad one but oh well. I put in my 2 cents worth. Or wait... maybe that was only 1 cent. Here's the other cent. How about a weapon that needs 5 ships to be used. IE you put the main weapon gen on a dread or other ship, then the other 4 ships have the actual weapon mount. Then once fired it can destroy a fleet of say 5-10 ships. But each of these ships to make this fleet of 5 ships would take at least 5 years to build even if you have emerg build on. That way such a massive weapon wouldn't be easy to build quick. Also it could be set really far into the Tech Tree that way it won't be easy to reseach either. I like this idea better then my first one. What y'all think? Good/Bad?

[capnq]

AFAIK, no-one has ever gotten "destroyed on use" to work for weapons.

I don't think the code could handle one component split among multiple ships, or targeting an entire fleet, either. The closest thing I can think of to the former effect is the requirements for building ringworlds and sphereworlds.

[Iskander]

I know it's not exactly what you want, but why not set the reload time to 30, like with the rocket pods?

Isk...

[dogscoff]

A "destroyed on firing" ability would be so cool, especially if you could specify a percentage in the text files to represent the probability of the weapon burning out each time it is fired. You could do so much with that...

You could have "one use" prototypes of each new weapon before you research a stable Version.

You could have engines and shield components that your crew could desperately retrofit into a weapon (ST: TNG style) in the heat of battle for a Last-hope attack.

You could probably mod all kinds of interesting new boarding / subVersion weapons.