cryogenic weapons, thrust damage, and a change to field hardeners and shields

[Alpha393]

cryogenic cannon: space is usually either very cold or very hot. So why not take advantage of that? The cryogenic cannon fires a shell which on contact bursts and freezes a swath of the hull (possibly using the same algorithms for current field hardeners' area of effect, assuming a 1 or 2 unit cube) frozen hull pieces and any attached turrets are disabled entirely if in a shadow, and if in the sunlight, a large sum of damage (possibly the volume of the piece divided by 2?) is dealt and the frozen effect is removed. the frozen effect lasts 10 seconds unless it is reapplied.

 

Thrust damage: would undoubtedly require both a mechanic to disable sides of thrusters and engines covered by other voxels and a buff to thruster strength to give most, but not all, of the mobility back without having to make your capital ships look like Swiss cheese to turn around reasonably fast. I'd say it's worth it for how cool it would be to be able to fire a thruster in a desperate attempt to dispatch that fighter wing before they start cutting into your already crippled hull.

 

Proposed shield generator changes: make shields have a localized health bar based on the voxel they cover, perhaps the shield generator's volume divided by 100 times the health of the voxel for its shields' health? 50% of incoming damage is taken by the total shield health, while 50% is taken by the local health. Keep the main bar at the bottom as an overall measure of the shields remaining total health.

 

Field hardeners: make them only block 75% of incoming damage for themselves. Combined with the need to expose thrusters and engines, less maneuverable capital ships, as well as shields being more (read: at all) vulnerable to focused fire, this would add some fairly interesting counter-play to bring bigger ships down by outmaneuvering them and knocking out key components one by one.

[Warrax]

Great ideas - the cryogenic is interesting.

 

I would also like to suggest a heat disruptor weapon (or cold).

 

The heat weapon would start off with no damage, but as it heats up the target point, the damage scales UP.

 

I suggest no numbers here, because this would come down to balance.

Of course, this idea would have to consider whether the effect is additive/cumulative?  Like if i use 10 heat weapons, can i heat my target faster?

Would i also magnify my damage by using multiple heat turrets?

 

Dunno.  Again, a question of balance.

 

Anyway, all food for thought ...

[KooperChaos]

Wow with thrust damage you could replace the amor block in front with a Thruster block an basically melt any ship you run into  ;D

 

The idea if penetrating a shield locally sounds pretty good I would love to use my burst weapons to blow a big hole into the shield right above the generator to disable it