remove hard weapon range?

[cy414]

would it be possible to remove the hard limits of weapon range, then depending on weapon type;

use velocity & spread to determine effective projectile range.

use damage drop-off to determine effective energy weapon range.

use delta-v to determine missile effective/guided range.

 

this would fix the issues faced by salvage/mining fighters turning away at the last moment, and npc navigation not getting close enough to do any damage.

 

it could also provide a nice way to tell the ai when to fire or not.

for kinetics the firing range could be linked to the accuracy(spread)

energy to some % of the damage drop off curve

missiles, to some aspect of the targets (that word for change in position i cant remember...), so that the ai know not to fire missiles at targets that are moving around a lot.

 

would save having to tell the ai when to fire for each individual weapon range, since at the moment it fires lasers at targets too far away, and sprays chaingun rounds with too much dispersion.

[LordMaddog]

I have always thought weapons should work something like that. It's kinda a duh common sense thing but no game I have ever see actually dose it lol.

[cy414]

actually got this idea while playing world of tanks after watching a few armoured warfare lets plays

[Amazigh]

One issue with this that immediately comes to mind: having "infinite" range on your weapons means that your projectile will keep travelling forever if it misses.

As such, you could easily clog up a sector with hundreds upon hundreds of projectiles if you use say, massed chainguns as your weapons and this could cause severe lag.

Sure you could have projectiles delete themselves once you have too many, but this could cause issues if you have several ships armed with chainguns.

Maybe damage drop-off could be added to some energy weapons to make them more interesting in their usage, but otherwise I feel that weapon range mechanics work fine as they are.

 

A game that has weapons function as you described is Children of a Dead Earth, which is a highly realistic spaceship combat simulation game, where this level of realism in weapon behaviour fits. While Avorion, which does have some realistic elements, is more of an "arcadey" game in how it is designed.