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Resizable weapons, custom turrets


Sofa
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Admittedly, I haven't seen all the game has to offer since I've been so hooked on building ships, so please tell me if I'm at all mistaken.

 

As far as I know, all the weapons in the game come in the form of small, pre-made turrets. A few ideas to enhance ship weaponry could be the following:

  • Scalable Weapons
    Just like other resizable blocks, but they shoot stuff. These might come in the form of static weapons such as mass drivers, beam weapons, and missile launchers. Making them larger might increase their power, while costing more energy or reloading time. It may also be possible that weapons exceeding a certain size can't be mounted on traverse/elevation mechanisms (see below), and must instead be mounted in a ship's hull (ie: a massive, forward-facing railgun made to obliterate capital ships).
  • Traverse and elevation mechanisms
    Traverse and elevation mechanisms might act as rotors and hinges respectively, allowing one to create objects attached to a ship or station that follow the player's aim. This might allow for the creation of custom turrets by building blocks, weapons, and certain other components on them. Another possibility could be a mass limit on these mechanisms - they might come in different sizes, which can support more mass (and heavier armament), but take up more space and move more slowly.
  • Magazines
    For projectile or missile-based weapons, one might be required to designate a storage space for ammunition. A larger magazine might permit one to store more ammo, while gigantic weapons may require equally massive magazines just to have any ammunition at all.

 

This idea might require some further elaboration or visual references, so I might try and add some of that when I have the time.

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+1  8)

 

More weapon possibilities = more destruction = more domination = more conflict = more more more more fun :D

 

Why not dream about a giant ship integrated RailGun/Laser for a station / dreadnaught killer

 

Like that 1.42 ;)

 

 

 

Not needed today but why not in future x)

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Also here's more notes on the subject.

 

Here is a visual examples of how a custom turret might be built. Of course, it may very well be that they may not be built at all, because the game might not be built to support such a feature. Iunno, I'm not the game dev here, I'm just throwing it out there.

 

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Below are some examples of the scaleable weapons players might be able to use.

 

  • Beam projector
    Maybe an ion cannon or particle cannon? Point is, it might emit a continuous stream of energy in the direction it's pointing that delivers high amounts of pinpoint damage (or maybe penetrates armor to damage components), but virtually no area of effect. The size of the weapon might determine the amount of damage it does, as well as reduce damage falloff over distance, whilst increasing energy consumption, and maybe making it overheat more quickly. Being an energy weapon, it doesn't consume ammo.
  • Mass Driver
    Kinetic weapon that balances penetrating power with splash damage, which might consume both ship energy and ammo, but not as much of either as missiles or beam projectors. While the scale of the weapon might affect a shot's power and range at the cost of ammo/energy consumption and rate-of-fire, it might also be possible that length and width have different effects - the weapon's width may affect the damage dealt by a shot at the cost of ammo consumption, while its length might affect its accuracy and penetrating ability at the cost of energy and fire-rate. Smaller mass drivers might be capable of rapid fire, while multiple mass drivers assigned to the same weapon group might fire in a sequence.
  • Missile tube
    This weapon launches relatively slow-moving missiles, which can track targets (not sure if these already exist in the game). Since they're slower than mass-driver rounds or energy beams, they have no penetrating effect, but can deal significant AOE damage. The launcher's size might alter the missiles' area of effect, at the cost of ammo consumption, rate-of-fire, and the missiles' maneuverability. Clusters of smaller tubes could be useful for making swarm-missiles, dishing out saturating fire and warding off smaller enemy ships, whilst large tubes might launch slow moving dreadnought-killers that would be virtually useless against smaller ships and must be used sparingly.
  • Flechette gun
    Space-shotgun that might fire off a cloud of shrapnel. The cone of fire might be affected by the gun's length; a shorter gun might have a wider spread, while a longer gun would have higher concentration of shot on a smaller area, and/or greater range. The gun's width might affect the amount of shrapnel per-shot, at the cost of ammo consumption and rate-of-fire. Small, turret-mounted flechette gun arrays, with broad cones and high fire-rates, could be devastating to fighter squadrons, while large flechette cannons mounted in the hull of a frigate or cruiser could be fired at enemy fleets with reckless abandon, forcing them to disperse.

 

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  • Scalable Weapons
    These might come in the form of static weapons such as mass drivers, beam weapons, and missile launchers, which can be resized like other blocks. Making them larger might increase their power, while costing more energy or reloading time. It may also be possible that weapons exceeding a certain size can't be mounted on traverse/elevation mechanisms (see below), and must instead be mounted in a ship's hull...

 

By "static" weapons, did you mean weapons that are not part of a turret per se?

 

Though, your Traverse and elevation mechanisms could aim fixed position weapons (within a size limitation) as if they were part of a turret, effectively functioning as such (perhaps with a slower response).

 

I didn't notice this thread earlier. But I guess this is a lot like my Fixed or Spinal Mount Weapons suggestion.

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Though, your Traverse and elevation mechanisms could aim fixed position weapons (within a size limitation) as if they were part of a turret, effectively functioning as such (perhaps with a slower response).

 

That's the point, yeah - The weapons themselves would just be blocks, and on their own, they might only fire in the direction you placed them in. This would make them usable as things like spinal-mounted guns, broadside weapons, or vertical missile tubes. Turret rings and elevation mechanisms would be used to make custom turrets for them. The response of these turrets might be dictated by the amount of mass they're supporting and the size of the mechanisms themselves.

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I really like this idea...designing turrets for my homeworld styled ships is very nesessary for my ship building (which this game is all about). Or to keep it simple just take any turret you want and redesign it to whatever you want, no need to get too realistic. Im really dreaming about this...its gonna be so awesome and lots of creative ppl will drive us crazy when they push the limits to what can be designed in this game!

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The current turret system is going to have a rework, which will include the ability to customise the looks of your turrets.

Also the ability to scale your turrets is planned to be implemented at some point.

 

I also seem to remember reading somewhere that the Devs are not going to have weapons that you build block-by-block, there's more of a focus on the "diablo style" random loot that we currently have than being able to build ideal turrets as/when you want to.

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I also seem to remember reading somewhere that the Devs are not going to have weapons that you build block-by-block, there's more of a focus on the "diablo style" random loot that we currently have than being able to build ideal turrets as/when you want to.

 

And that focus, frankly, needs to change.  This is primarily a building game, not, I repeat, not an action-RPG.  Game devs need to recognize when their vision conflicts with their audience (this is an industry-wide problem, not just for this game).

 

The audience Avorion attracts will be the type of people who play Starmade, Space Engineers, From the Depths, and their ilk, not the Diablo series or Path of Exile or Torchlight.  That's not to say those two audiences are mutually exclusive, I myself have played Diablo 2 and I'm sure many other gamers enjoy both types of games, but generally speaking, the type of gameplay and the desires of the playerbases are extremely different between the two game styles.

 

The ability to build your ships with/around their weapons is not just a nice feature, it's outright mandatory for this kind of game.  If we can't custom design and build our weapons themselves, that's fine.  I know when to pick my battles.  But at minimum, the ability to place turrets and weapons on your ship at creation is required, or the building side of Avorion will always remain incomplete.

 

Giving us the ability to customize our ship itself to a degree unequaled by any other game of this type, but then restricting our weapons choices to the tyranny of the RNG, is not only at odds with this style of game and its gameplay, but given the frequency with which new posts about this topic appear (about once a week or so), it's at odds with the desires of the vast majority of the playerbase as well.

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I also seem to remember reading somewhere that the Devs are not going to have weapons that you build block-by-block, there's more of a focus on the "diablo style" random loot that we currently have than being able to build ideal turrets as/when you want to.

 

And that focus, frankly, needs to change.  This is primarily a building game, not, I repeat, not an action-RPG.  Game devs need to recognize when their vision conflicts with their audience (this is an industry-wide problem, not just for this game).

 

The audience Avorion attracts will be the type of people who play Starmade, Space Engineers, From the Depths, and their ilk, not the Diablo series or Path of Exile or Torchlight.  That's not to say those two audiences are mutually exclusive, I myself have played Diablo 2 and I'm sure many other gamers enjoy both types of games, but generally speaking, the type of gameplay and the desires of the playerbases are extremely different between the two game styles.

 

The ability to build your ships with/around their weapons is not just a nice feature, it's outright mandatory for this kind of game.  If we can't custom design and build our weapons themselves, that's fine.  I know when to pick my battles.  But at minimum, the ability to place turrets and weapons on your ship at creation is required, or the building side of Avorion will always remain incomplete.

 

Giving us the ability to customize our ship itself to a degree unequaled by any other game of this type, but then restricting our weapons choices to the tyranny of the RNG, is not only at odds with this style of game and its gameplay, but given the frequency with which new posts about this topic appear (about once a week or so), it's at odds with the desires of the vast majority of the playerbase as well.

 

Wow.  Who died and made you the King of Videogameland where you dictate what a game can and can't be.  Games can mix genre elements.  It's what I like about indie games.  I've also done the block built weapons thing a lot.  It has it own share of problem as well.  But the biggest one that you really end up making the same gun over and over again.  RNG while it has it's own issues makes it so that you may not have your ideal setup all the time and may actually have you change the way you things depending on what's on hand.

 

Also, you speak for the vast majority?  As if.  People on forums are super small fraction of the playerbase right of the bat and the ones most likely to complain if they have an issue.  The other turret design topics ended up with lots of people on both sides.  Your claims that the majority of people hate the current system are fallacious and based off of what could very well be a vocal minority with no way to really tell the difference.

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I've also done the block built weapons thing a lot.  It has it own share of problem as well.  But the biggest one that you really end up making the same gun over and over again.

This is the main point i'd argue for the current style of turret/weapon systems.

 

With the current system you have to work with what's on hand, meaning that every enemy/shop has a chance at giving you a better weapon that what you currently have.

Only in the later-game can you (to some extent) pick specific weapons when you have access to turret factories and the requisite components, but even then you can't make exotic or legendary turrets in a factory.

 

With "block based" turrets, as said above, you'll just build the best turret you can, and always use that exact same design because it's the most efficient. (just like how railguns are the go-to weapon at the moment)

 

 

This is primarily a building game, not, I repeat, not an action-RPG.

This is debatable, as the only "building" you have to do in order to beat the game is to place turrets on shipyard bought ships.

If it was really a building game then you'd have no choice but to build your own ship(s), and not be able to get by with buying randomly generated ones.

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Been talked about a ton already

 

And most players agreed they wanted some thing like this but a lot want it to be simple

 

This was my idea

 

 

http://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,2590.msg13696.html#msg13696

 

 

And this was koonschi  reply and my reply to him.

 

http://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,2595.msg13655.html#msg13655

 

We have not heard any thing on this front seance.

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So explain to me, then, if the majority of players have no problem with the current drop-only, turret-only weapon system, that we constantly, repeatedly see requests for the ability to build and customize our own weapons and turrets?  Seems to me that relying solely on the RNG to give you the weapons you envisioned your ship carrying when you built it isn't what most people who play this game want.  We want it to be fully equipped, as we envisioned it, when it's built, not thirty hours later when we've just happened to find some drops and turret factories that give us approximately (but not really) what we wanted in the first place.

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So explain to me, then, if the majority of players have no problem with the current drop-only, turret-only weapon system, that we constantly, repeatedly see requests for the ability to build and customize our own weapons and turrets? 

 

Hey I dint say it  The Dev did.

 

I want block made weapons just like I suggested. And I would like turrets to be a addon and fire independently.

 

However I do understand what koonschi says. In borderlands LOOT and the random number god rocked so if thats what he is trying to do here, I get it.

 

That said the current systme with 30+ turrets pointed straight forward just SUCKS!

On the other hand it would be cool if I found an awesome 1 of a kind turret with really cool effects like borderlands had and was able to scale and use it as my main forward/spine mounted turret. That I can see being ROCK AWESOME. 

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So explain to me, then, if the majority of players have no problem with the current drop-only, turret-only weapon system, that we constantly, repeatedly see requests for the ability to build and customize our own weapons and turrets? 

 

Hey I dint say it  The Dev did.

 

I want block made weapons just like I suggested. And I would like turrets to be a addon and fire independently.

 

However I do understand what koonschi says. In borderlands LOOT and the random number god rocked so if thats what he is trying to do here, I get it.

 

That said the current systme with 30+ turrets pointed straight forward just SUCKS!

On the other hand it would be cool if I found an awesome 1 of a kind turret with really cool effects like borderlands had and was able to scale and use it as my main forward/spine mounted turret. That I can see being ROCK AWESOME.

 

I Think you are close to the best/most balanced alternative.. like have your main weapon something unique, and that scales (but on that how would that work with the current game play mechanic?) Would that mean an introduction of some kind of Leveling system for the player with boosts to stats and such? or some kind of new part to the research station, where you can use lesser turrets to boost the stats and effects of that main turret, without changing it just giving it a boost.

 

I dunno Just thought of all of that just then, I think it would be a great Idea and a way to make your ship truly unique....

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So explain to me, then, if the majority of players have no problem with the current drop-only, turret-only weapon system, that we constantly, repeatedly see requests for the ability to build and customize our own weapons and turrets?

Because these people do not give a shit about how much effort and time it will take to implement that system and its effects on the random drop system. Most people has no clue of what is involved into programming for new features, and only care for what they want.

 

Seems to me that relying solely on the RNG to give you the weapons you envisioned your ship carrying when you built it isn't what most people who play this game want.  We want it to be fully equipped, as we envisioned it, when it's built, not thirty hours later when we've just happened to find some drops and turret factories that give us approximately (but not really) what we wanted in the first place.

That's not what Koonschi is aiming for. In the same reply LordMaddog has linked, he specifically said, that he's planning to allow people to mass-produce turrets that they've acquired trough random loot.

 

Again, stop pretending like you're a representative for the majority. It's just silly. You only represent yourself.

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I also seem to remember reading somewhere that the Devs are not going to have weapons that you build block-by-block, there's more of a focus on the "diablo style" random loot that we currently have than being able to build ideal turrets as/when you want to.

 

And that focus, frankly, needs to change.  This is primarily a building game, not, I repeat, not an action-RPG.  Game devs need to recognize when their vision conflicts with their audience (this is an industry-wide problem, not just for this game).

 

The audience Avorion attracts will be the type of people who play Starmade, Space Engineers, From the Depths, and their ilk, not the Diablo series or Path of Exile or Torchlight.  That's not to say those two audiences are mutually exclusive, I myself have played Diablo 2 and I'm sure many other gamers enjoy both types of games, but generally speaking, the type of gameplay and the desires of the playerbases are extremely different between the two game styles.

 

The ability to build your ships with/around their weapons is not just a nice feature, it's outright mandatory for this kind of game.  If we can't custom design and build our weapons themselves, that's fine.  I know when to pick my battles.  But at minimum, the ability to place turrets and weapons on your ship at creation is required, or the building side of Avorion will always remain incomplete.

 

Giving us the ability to customize our ship itself to a degree unequaled by any other game of this type, but then restricting our weapons choices to the tyranny of the RNG, is not only at odds with this style of game and its gameplay, but given the frequency with which new posts about this topic appear (about once a week or so), it's at odds with the desires of the vast majority of the playerbase as well.

 

Finally.  Someone other than me had the guts to say this.

 

We want it to be fully equipped, as we envisioned it, when it's built, not thirty hours later when we've just happened to find some drops and turret factories that give us approximately (but not really) what we wanted in the first place.

 

+1

 

I feel obligated to link my thread about this here.  Note the Dev's response on the last page...

 

So I've been watching this thread for a while now and I'm starting to feel that a statement from my side on this whole thing would be beneficial.

 

Right now, I do not have plans to make fully customizable weapons, in terms of stats.

 

There are very simple reasons for this, and it's not because of doability or performance:

1. It would make the entire current looting system obsolete. This loot system is a very important aspect of Avorion that makes it fun, you can always find a better weapon.

2. It would be hell to balance, we're already running into issues where players say the game is too easy because the AI ships can't beat them, even on the highest difficulty. Players build their own ships, meaning that the difficulty is basically set by yourself and your ship. But that's a completely different point and I won't get into this any more here now.

 

So when I say I don't want you to be able to completely, freely choose your weapons stats, I'm not doing this because I want to annoy you, but because I think that it leaves more balancing control in my hands and it will be healthier for the game in the long term.

 

That being said, there are plans to make weapons (and fighters) more customizable. I'm planning:

- Custom models for weapons (and fighters on that matter)

- Custom models for turrets

- Better scaling for turret sizes (the current turrets-not-scaling-issue is actually a bug, but I want to address it at the right time so I don't have to change it twice)

- Turret templates so you can copy turrets you've built or looted

 

I hope this clears some things up.

 

Note that doability is not an issue here, so stop claiming otherwise if you're not the dev!

 

Another relevant quote for this discussion...

 

12) Influences on the Development of AVORION?

  - X-Series (Mainly X3)

  - X-Wing Alliance

  - Minecraft --> "A game like X with procedually generated ships would be great, wouldnt it?"

      ... and AVORION was born! --> resulted in Koonschi's first work, a Ship Generator,

      from which the game evolved --> Showed an early version to a friend:

Koonschi: "Look, all procedually generated ships made of little boxes!"

Friend: "Why not let the Players make the ships out of these little boxes?"

Koonschi: "!"

 

It's odd that the inspiration for the game was space sims and a creative sandbox game, and yet people claim that this should be an RPG.  It's not labelled as an RPG on the steam store page, although I feel like the point of the quests and the RNG is to make the game feel more like an RPG.  Mind you, adding more quests or story or whatever wouldn't be a bad thing (I would like to see more 'things' happening, not just ships flying around), but I agree that the RNG does not fit the rest of the game.  It basically eliminates the possibility of strategy as it is currently implemented, and I note that the 'improvements' that the dev is proposing would not change that.

 

With "block based" turrets, as said above, you'll just build the best turret you can, and always use that exact same design because it's the most efficient. (just like how railguns are the go-to weapon at the moment)

 

With the ability to manufacture found turrets in bulk, this problem does not go away.  Ultimately that's a balance issue, which turns out to be completely independent of how exactly turrets are obtained, contrary to the dev's claim (I am also a programmer/designer).

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I feel like the people who want block based weapons are just bullies at this point.  They just keep saying the same unproven claims over and over again.  Like they think if they bitch hard enough they will get their way.  Well the dev already said no so.  So discussion over.  Why are we even still talking about this?

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With "block based" turrets, as said above, you'll just build the best turret you can, and always use that exact same design because it's the most efficient. (just like how railguns are the go-to weapon at the moment)

With the ability to manufacture found turrets in bulk, this problem does not go away.  Ultimately that's a balance issue, which turns out to be completely independent of how exactly turrets are obtained, contrary to the dev's claim (I am also a programmer/designer).

You may be able to mass produce the best turret you have, but remember, you could find a better turret as a drop. and suddenly you have to mass produce your turrets again.

Sure, eventually you'll have the best possible RNG on a turret and have the best possible stats, but that's really unlikely to happen, so it'll basically always be worth keeping an eye on all the new turrets you get, but can still mass produce any that you want to.

 

I feel like the people who want block based weapons are just bullies at this point.  They just keep saying the same unproven claims over and over again.  Like they think if they bitch hard enough they will get their way.  Well the dev already said no so.  So discussion over.  Why are we even still talking about this?

They seem dead set on the idea, guess playing Starmade and From The Depths, really influenced them?

It's a neat mechanic in those games I won't deny, but I don't think it quite fits in with how Avorion is designed.

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Ooh! I haz idea! Weapon firing piece drops in addition to turrets. You place them into your hull, taking up a rectangular prism with 3/1/1 dimensions in length width and height respectively. I.e. 3 times as long as it is wide or tall. Sizes range from 1.5 to 15 in some extreme cases. Must be aimed manually and is placed like a voxel, so it can be rotated for broadsides. The actual barrels of the gun are placed like thrusters, and will take in the stats of any firing pieces touching it, or an average of several with none of their secondary effects.

 

Add this, and people will have their darned block based weapon systems in a way that at least tries to fit into the game. Happy? No? Go back to building a battering ram or whatever you were doing then.

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So explain to me, then, if the majority of players have no problem with the current drop-only, turret-only weapon system, that we constantly, repeatedly see requests for the ability to build and customize our own weapons and turrets?  Seems to me that relying solely on the RNG to give you the weapons you envisioned your ship carrying when you built it isn't what most people who play this game want.  We want it to be fully equipped, as we envisioned it, when it's built, not thirty hours later when we've just happened to find some drops and turret factories that give us approximately (but not really) what we wanted in the first place.

forum amplifier effect.

forums generally amplify the voices of players with a drive to be involved. though the general body of players just want to play.

 

would i myself like to get exactly the turrets i want for a given ship? sure. in the short term anyway.

 

the problem is, if you arent VERY careful, such a system would kill gameplay.

even if this was just an sp and co-op game, without a lot of balancing to add penalties to counter any bonuses, it risks leaving the player completly overpowered against the npc's.

it'd be launching avorion like its some broken end of life mmorpg.

 

wheres the playability, let alone re-playability, if the game isnt balanced, resulting in one design being just better than any others.

 

Sure, eventually you'll have the best possible RNG on a turret and have the best possible stats, but that's really unlikely to happen, so it'll basically always be worth keeping an eye on all the new turrets you get, but can still mass produce any that you want to.
if this is something that can happen, its already a fatal problem for game balance.
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Sure, eventually you'll have the best possible RNG on a turret and have the best possible stats, but that's really unlikely to happen, so it'll basically always be worth keeping an eye on all the new turrets you get, but can still mass produce any that you want to.
if this is something that can happen, its already a fatal problem for game balance.

So, you're saying that having a best weapon is fatal to game balance?

Or are you saying that being able to mass-produce this best weapon is fatal to balance?

 

A thing to remember about the game, i'm pretty sure it's built around co-op PvE rather than PvP.

To quote Koonschi:

Even when upping HP and DPS of enemy ships, there will always be one problem remaining: You build your own ship. You define how beefy your ship is. This means you also define how long you can take enemy fire, and that means that there is no possible buff to enemy DPS or HP that will make you happy long-term.

 

If I up the DPS by 500%, you can just build a ship that has 5 times more HP and we're in the same situation again.

If I up the HP of enemies by 400% combat will take a lot longer and will be extremely boring if you don't have enough firepower, but enough HP.

 

I'd rather add other, more meaningful changes to the game combat. I've got some changes to shields in mind, as well as changes to weapons that can penetrate shields or disable ships (including yours) or parts of them. These are just thoughts, not promises.

To put it into this context: if you don't want to oneshot all the enemies there's nothing forcing you to use the as many of the best guns as you can, you could use less guns, or guns that aren't as good, it's all up to what you want.

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