AS the title. Current implementation of the Starfire is another Lancer = boring. VS need some more visual distinction, so how about making the Starfire a damage-over-time beam weapon? Damage degradation over range (comparable to Lancer perhaps), plenty of visual feedback - proper laser beams. Mechwarrior Online does Lasers very well. Use that as a guide! Don't lump us with more Lancers!
I think sadly Higsby said they had nothing like this in their coding so it would take a very long time and have to be done from scratch. That said I totally want it too... Heck I'd be fine with a semi sustained beam laser that needs at least 2-3 seconds of sustain to do full damage. I've seen a few Mechwarrior videos and I love the beam weapons. Dunno how hard it would be to code, DOTs are already nothing more than incremental damage so something like 25 damage per quarter second sustain means 100 damage in a second. The difference is that instead of it only ticking every second, it -feels- like it's a dot because you aren't as aware of the time increments.
Personally I'd rather the Starfire be a small plasma ball that locks on near instantly but slowly homes in on enemy aircraft and causes a burn over time. ............
That's interesting, I hadn't heard that. Seems a bit of a lame excuse though Suppose if coding an MWO-style DOT beam is too much, then a similar effect could be achieved by making the beam itself do no damage, but send pulsed rounds out as in your example above. Either way, if we get lumped with another Lancer, I think quite a few VS will be disappointed!
The excuse for not making Beam weapons is BS. It's pretty simple, just make the animation show a BEAM, while shooting a invisible projectile with 0 COF... in fact this type of weapon was already done in a previous version/iteration of the VS Lasher weapon.
I also believe that just adding dual lancer with a name change is nothing but lazy on their part, and the fact that of all MAX RL ours just like the lancer is horrible versus infantry while the TR and NC counter parts are awesome.
The name's still wrong, that aside, darn I want that CB Lasher. I never got to use it myself, but it looked awesome. As for creating a continuous beam: Just take a lasher, 50 round magazine, ~500 reserve; make it shoot ~15 per second, with a slightly exponential trail effect fade of ~70-75 ms, with damage balanced appropriately. I'd honestly love that kind of weapon as a VS Pod weapon for scythes, mid ranged tank hunting. Yes, I know, it's not that easy, but faking a beam with a high firerate of pinpoint accuracy, extremely fast projectiles that just happen to have a trail can't be that hard. And now please, someone convince them to name the weapon... anything else, really.
Damn I want that CB lasher effect on something. When we're in full disco mode it should look like freespace 2 in the canyons of indar.
I also think that the VS could do with some (properly balanced) beam weapons that have basically instantaneous travel time but have to be on target for the full pulse duration in order to do damage (and might suffer damage fall off etc). The example of Mechwarrior beam weapons is a great one, essentially having to keep your beam on the target for the full 1-2 second duration in order to do maximum damage. It comes with the advantage of amazing accuracy but at the disadvantage of sticking out like a sore thumb for the whole duration and not being able to fire and forget, (although my idea for a max beam weapon was AI with small AV utility, being the other way around would basically mean massive AI damage or arbitrarily low damage to infantry that makes no sense). Another cool idea would be giving a beam weapon to the Magrider as a ESMBT cannon, like the Vanguard might be getting a railgun. It would be nice if SOE takes the OP's suggestion seriously. The only issue I can see with a beam DoT weapon is the server handling many small damage ticks over a short period of time, but I also have no idea how computationally expensive that is and it might be trivial even then. It might simply come down to being that the code hasn't been implemented because there are no beam weapons yet rather than any serverside concerns (the old beam Lasher was pretty bad, the damage tick rate was too slow).
Indeed it would make sense for a Magrider to have a beam type main cannon, since it combines well with the fact that its fixed to the hull has if it's too bulky to be rotated by a articulated turret.
Get on the train VS, TR got stuck with another Mutli-rocket gun... It just the Striker with A dumbfire instead of a lock on..
silly higby: uh sorry we'd have to code that from scratch we dont have DOT weapons in the game yet, plans to release flamethrower in the same patch
That's the old VS warpgate. they switched them around for a couple of game updates then randomly stopped. That was the VS warpgate during Beta and launch
I'd love some Gauss Rifle action on my NC MAX as well, and some sweet missile pods for the TR MAX. MECHWARRIORSIDE 2.
