Some Miscellaneous Beam Weapon Suggestions

[xenoscepter (OP)]

 - With regards to all weapons, I'd like the Spinal Mount and Advanced Spinal Mount options to apply to all of them because I like big guns and cannot lie. Feel free to ignore that one, heh.

 - With regards to HPM, I'd like to see them do damage to enemy crew members directly, but also see a "Ghost Ship" type of status where the ship doesn't blow up, but produces a wreck that needs to be towed back. Maybe with a "Replacement Crew" option later on at some point. The chance for crew to be killed and how many would be killed would be tied to caliber and focusing tech. Higher caliber means more chance to hit and more crew killed when it does, while higher focusing means less chance for crew to be hit and less crew killed when it does. Open to suggestions on this one.

 - Plasma Carronades... I don't really use these... so I don't know. I'd like to see 'em lack the damage dropoff, and have their range be the only real limiting factor. Maybe have them use fuel as an "ammo"?

 - Mesons. I'd like to see some kind of benefit from using a bigger Meson besides range. Maybe every +5cm of calibre gives you a Railgun-esq. extra shot? More to hit chance with more possible damage? Maybe each "shot" does extra damage per "hit", so a 15cm would strip two points of armour at the minimum, and strip 2 more for every time it successfully resists being absorbed? We've already got three techs, calibre, focusing and retardation, and both calibre and focusing affect range and range only.

[nuclearslurpee]

- With regards to all weapons, I'd like the Spinal Mount and Advanced Spinal Mount options to apply to all of them because I like big guns and cannot lie. Feel free to ignore that one, heh.

Advanced Spinal Mount Particle Lances when? 

- With regards to HPM, I'd like to see them do damage to enemy crew members directly, but also see a "Ghost Ship" type of status where the ship doesn't blow up, but produces a wreck that needs to be towed back. Maybe with a "Replacement Crew" option later on at some point. The chance for crew to be killed and how many would be killed would be tied to caliber and focusing tech. Higher caliber means more chance to hit and more crew killed when it does, while higher focusing means less chance for crew to be hit and less crew killed when it does. Open to suggestions on this one.

This sounds like the sort of thing that would either be minimally effective or grossly powerful. HPMs already have a niche as anti-shield/sensor weapons and I think it makes more sense to think about how to accentuate those capabilities than adding more effects to the weapon type.

Currently with railguns getting a new mounting option in 1.13 only HPM and plasma have no mounting options - lasers have spinal and turrets, Gauss/Mesons have turrets, and particle beams have the Lance. I can't think of a mounting option for HPMs that makes sense but it would be really cool to have an EMP missile using a HPM-emitting warhead if that could be balanced. This would also give the caliber tech a better use than being a redundant range booster.

- Plasma Carronades... I don't really use these... so I don't know. I'd like to see 'em lack the damage dropoff, and have their range be the only real limiting factor. Maybe have them use fuel as an "ammo"?

There was a discussion about this but I don't remember the various ideas. Honestly, this is one where sharing the spinal mount with lasers makes a lot of sense, as it would overcome the range problem and give plasmas a niche as a corvette type of weapon.

- Mesons. I'd like to see some kind of benefit from using a bigger Meson besides range. Maybe every +5cm of calibre gives you a Railgun-esq. extra shot? More to hit chance with more possible damage? Maybe each "shot" does extra damage per "hit", so a 15cm would strip two points of armour at the minimum, and strip 2 more for every time it successfully resists being absorbed? We've already got three techs, calibre, focusing and retardation, and both calibre and focusing affect range and range only.

Meson and HPM both need something better for their caliber techs to do frankly. Maybe caliber could increase meson damage - dangerous, I know - but at the price of worse retardation. Something like: for a meson with X% retardation tech, the chance to pass an armor layer is 100%-X%, maybe this chance is divided by SQRT(damage) or something. This would let you make higher-damage mesons that are more effective against smaller ships while lower-damage mesons do better against larger ships.

[Lord Solar]

Meson and HPM both need something better for their caliber techs to do frankly. Maybe caliber could increase meson damage - dangerous, I know - but at the price of worse retardation. Something like: for a meson with X% retardation tech, the chance to pass an armor layer is 100%-X%, maybe this chance is divided by SQRT(damage) or something. This would let you make higher-damage mesons that are more effective against smaller ships while lower-damage mesons do better against larger ships.

About Micros, I can think of two ideas to make bigger tech more relevant: 1) Large Microwaves deal increased damage to shields, making them an anti-shield option 2) Larger microwaves make more attacks (maybe +1 for 5cm or something)

- Plasma Carronades... I don't really use these... so I don't know. I'd like to see 'em lack the damage dropoff, and have their range be the only real limiting factor. Maybe have them use fuel as an "ammo"?

There was a discussion about this but I don't remember the various ideas. Honestly, this is one where sharing the spinal mount with lasers makes a lot of sense, as it would overcome the range problem and give plasmas a niche as a corvette type of weapon.

I think someone suggested plasma burn like acid damage. I think that alternate "ammo" types for some weapons might be cool; one of them could have this effect. Personally I don't think basic plasma carronades need much adjustment if any due to their very cheap research and build cost.

- Mesons. I'd like to see some kind of benefit from using a bigger Meson besides range. Maybe every +5cm of calibre gives you a Railgun-esq. extra shot? More to hit chance with more possible damage? Maybe each "shot" does extra damage per "hit", so a 15cm would strip two points of armour at the minimum, and strip 2 more for every time it successfully resists being absorbed? We've already got three techs, calibre, focusing and retardation, and both calibre and focusing affect range and range only.

yes to this.

If I was to suggest a new beam weapon I would suggest a graviton projector that is a counter to large ships. It behaves similar to a plasma carronade but has a few tech options: Projector caliber (increases size, range, base damage, cost, and power requirement), Projector focusing (increases range and cost), and capacitor recharge rate. The weapon would be of similar base damage to a laser (but with worse armor penetration) against ships of 10k tons, but damage is multiplied x2 (or more) for every additional 10k tons of the target. It also deals reduced damage to smaller enemies than 10k, minimum 1.

[Migi]

If Plasma is supposed to be a simple short range option, what if you could recharge them more quickly than other weapons because it's easier to add more power convertors or something?
Add a multiplier to the power recharged every increment, (probably 2 for simplicity), and it keeps plasma as a short ranged brawling tech with worse damage template but gives it a DPS boost to make it a more viable choice vs rails or lasers.

Or if you want to make it more complex add a tech line, 1x recharge at base, increase by 0.5 for each step with a maximum of probably x3 or x4.

I haven't run the numbers for how this would stack up in terms of DPS per HS or anything so it might be horribly overpowered or laughably underpowered as written.

[nuclearslurpee]

If Plasma is supposed to be a simple short range option, what if you could recharge them more quickly than other weapons because it's easier to add more power convertors or something?
Add a multiplier to the power recharged every increment, (probably 2 for simplicity), and it keeps plasma as a short ranged brawling tech with worse damage template but gives it a DPS boost to make it a more viable choice vs rails or lasers.

Or if you want to make it more complex add a tech line, 1x recharge at base, increase by 0.5 for each step with a maximum of probably x3 or x4.

I haven't run the numbers for how this would stack up in terms of DPS per HS or anything so it might be horribly overpowered or laughably underpowered as written.

This could actually be a neat mounting option, maybe not as a tech directly but say having the ability to mount N capacitors instead of just one. That said, I'm not sure it does anything to make plasma more viable - fundamentally, plasma is already an excellent brawling weapon with limited range, and boosting the ROF doesn't really do much to overcome that limitation. It's basically a "win more" kind of thing - if you're in plasma range, you're already winning.

[Garfunkel]

Reduced size "gun" for Plasma Carronades.

Since missiles can now always be intercepted, a nice addition would be let Plasma FACs take the place of torpedo boats, like you had box-launcher fighters fire from inside the 5-sec range. Obviously, this would be a lot closer but a Reduced Size / Increased Recharge option for Plasma would be IMHO better than a Spinal Mount. Or both, that probably works too.

I want to recreate the sort of elephants versus mice battles between Dreadnoughts and MTBs that happened in WW1 and WW2.