Additional Weapons and Armor

Variety is the spice of life.

Missiles, Energy Beams, Mass Drivers. Fun, but... looking at damage types in Master of Magic or Age of Wonders... perhaps there is room for more?

A couple easy additions would be dual-type "Particle Beams" and "Plasma Torpedoes". When I say easy, I mean easy graphically and in terms of the game engine... the interface, of course, would be problematic since there are already icons for missiles, beams, and guns that fill the available space. However, if a ship was limited to max. 3 types of weapons, it would be OK interface-wise.

Particle beam line: Branches off mass driver line. Medium space, medium cost, very high damage. However, as a beam of particles, it is blocked by both shields AND armor.

Plasma torpedo line: Branches off of missile line. High space, medium cost, extremely high damage. However, it is a guided energy ball, and can be deflected by shields AND interdicted by ECM/chaff/point defense.


A "Typeless" weapon - say, a gravity beam - might be interesting as well at very high tech levels.

Gravity beam line: Branches off of energy beam line. Medium space, high cost, low damage. Ignores all defenses.


Lastly - how about some "advanced" weapon versions, like in MOO2 with the MIRV, ECCM, Gatling, and Armor-Piercing upgrades? It may be to late to add these... but, it may not.


Now for armors. In addition to the three "typed" armors, how about a "Hardened Structure" line that boosts ship HP (and thus essentially increases resistance to all damage types)? Also:

Reactive Armor line: Branches off of armor line. Acts like normal armor, but gives +1 missile defense (bonus increases with tech). The armor explodes on missile proximity, causing a premature (and possibly underpowered) detonation.

FTL Point Defense line: Branches off missile defense tech line. Acts as normal missile defense, but gives +1mass driver defense (bonus increases with tech). The PD is so fast that it can target incoming near-lightspeed mass driver rounds, altering their trajectory.


Just some ideas. I like choices when researching or designing ships... the more, the better!
9,734 views 8 replies
Reply #1 Top
Doesn't sound to bad. The Gravity beam line might be a bit "overpowered" tho, just put a few of those on a ship with some defences and ignore all other weapons. The winner is the one who can fit the most Gravity beams on 1 ship. (The ones with the biggest hull and most miniturisation (??SP??).

As a side note, and to late perhaps to do anything with it, would it be possible to make the research more reliable on more then the previos tech ?

Meaning; you can't develop shields unless you have researched the shields theorie AND the beam weapon theorie. Later on you need to have researched a higher level beam based weapon before you can research "barriers".
Reply #2 Top
I tink i see where you're coming from. In the old Gal-Civ, all the tech lines had requierments from other lines. Made for some-what confusing tech tree, but the connections made good sense.
Reply #3 Top
I second to have a more interwoven Tech Tree.

Doesnt make too much sense to me being able to have hyper-sophisticated techs on one aspect and being illitterate (or so) in other areas.

But I also have to admit that being able to over-specialize in some areas makes the whole game more unpredictable. Or it should. Lets play and see.
Reply #4 Top
i think that would interfere with the games AI adn the way ship battles are determined. right now its rock, paper, scissors. if there were new weapon types then it would make the purpose of defenses almost useless because they might never be used
Reply #5 Top
Antimatter guns : produce little black holes, if big enough gun , then big enough hole to 'eat' a planet
Reply #6 Top
Jorian Drake, those are already in the tech tree, though not that big.
Reply #8 Top
Yes, I like the idea of a tech tree that makes it so you don't get stuck on one path, so your tech as a whole stays a reasonable length behind(instead of graviton guns and energy beam theory as your two best techs).