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Looking for Weapon Ideas


kabill

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Great artwork Kabill! They look pretty awesome for simple Frankenstein mishmashes of the vanilla weapons.

Couple nitpicks:

Gauss: Maybe re-include the trigger guard on the top-right weapon. It also seems a bit too thin compared to the rest of them.

Thermal Lance: The bottom weapon on looks really weird with the little bit sticking out of the front. It just doesn't seem, I dunno, right.

Sonic: Yeah, I agree that that one is the most questionable one of the lot. If you want some inspiration, I always considered the District 9 weapons to be pretty cool sci-fi weapons. I'll link to them all, but here's the ones I think might look good as a sonic weapon.

D901.jpg

D902.jpg

Others:

http://www.imfdb.org/images/f/ff/District95.jpg

http://www.imfdb.org/images/a/a5/District9b.jpg

http://www.imfdb.org/images/7/7d/D91.jpg

http://www.imfdb.org/images/5/5a/D903.jpg

http://www.imfdb.org/images/e/e9/D904.jpg

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Gauss: Maybe re-include the trigger guard on the top-right weapon. It also seems a bit too thin compared to the rest of them.

Thanks, I'll have a play around and see if I can get it into shape.

Thermal Lance: The bottom weapon on looks really weird with the little bit sticking out of the front. It just doesn't seem, I dunno, right.

Do you mean the last Pulse Laser one rather than the Thermal Lance one? If so, yeah it can go. It was mainly to add some consistency with the other two but it does look a little strange. But if you did mean the Thermal Lance one, I don't know which bit you mean.

Sonic: Yeah, I agree that that one is the most questionable one of the lot. If you want some inspiration, I always considered the District 9 weapons to be pretty cool sci-fi weapons. I'll link to them all, but here's the ones I think might look good as a sonic weapon.

Thanks for the images. I think, however, that I'm going to cut sonic weapons entirely. I suspect it's going to be ebyond my skill to get something looking right and I was already a little ambivalent about their role anyway.

For anyone who's interested, I'm probably about 85% of the way through making this mod. I'm hoping to be done with it by the end of the day (for my own sake as much as anything; it's distracting me from work!), but we'll see.

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One more little thing: that little thing on the top of the upper graviton weapon looks a bit weird.

Okay that's enough nitpicking from me, can't wait to see the completed version of this mod!

Yeah, it does. I put it there without knowing what I was going to do to finish off around the barrel of the weapon and once it was all finished I didn't know what to do to make it better. Looking back, I wonder whether it couldn't be moved to the bottom instead as a grip and the top flattened off like the bottom is at the moment. Will have a play-around, anyway.

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Thanks for that. Wasn't aware there were resources like that available. However, I've been wanting to keep the art style the same as the existing art style as much as possible. As such. I've settled for extensive hack-jobs on the existing weapons assets instead.

Here's what I've got. If anyone has any thoughts about the graphics (or wants to make them better for me!), I'd be grateful for comments.

Not convinced by the sonic cannon, but I'm lacking inspiration and competence for that one.

Those look awesome.

I think a Disk on the front of the Sonic Cannon could work.

Edited by Man of Doge
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Weaponized Nano-bots deployed by grenades or rocket launchers. These are engineered to target alien biology but are harmless against non-organics or humans. They have a cloud effect that slowly spreads for a few turns causing harm to all aliens in the area of effect until the bots run out of power and deactivate.

Pros: Great for room-clearing - especially where there is danger of friendly fire. Good area of denial capabilities. Will continue to damage aliens infected by nano-bots until the bots run out of power.

Cons: Useless against drones and androns. No instant kills so aliens have time to react. Wind disperses them more quickly so less effective outdoors. Instantly destroyed by heat and fire.

Biological weapons deployed by dart launchers or explosive type weaponry. They can cause delirium and disorientation to organic aliens and can cause panic/berserk type effects and friendly fire in infected aliens and eventual death.

Pros: Damages alien coordination and can cause havoc in their ranks. Viruses continue to linger on a map and can infect by contact.

Cons: Results aren't predictable. Aliens might be immune, might not die and might not be affected before they return fire. Due to limited time available for weaponized anti-alien virus strains, indiscriminate deployment of these weapons can pose risk to humans that aren't wearing biological suits (weaker armor ratings). Humans can be infected by explosive type weaponry so using them can cause harm to operatives, lowers moral and harms relations with the rest of humanity. Using this type of weaponry requires building a decon lab at the dropship base.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Would it be possible to create some kind of advanced rocket launcher firing "smart" (so guided/homing) warheads? "Smart" could have different levels, for example, the first generation could always hit, but only when fired from a min/max angle to the target you have in sight. The more advanced stuff could literally fire "around the corner", as long you have some other guy around that has the target in sight. So you could create some recon/strike duo, with the recon guy scanning the area, while the strike guy stays somewhat behind to launch his missiles when the recon guy spotted/designated some alien.

Of course there's the balance issue since this could easily end up way too powerful, but for now it's an idea (if possible to implement).

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There isn't anything like the blaster launcher in Xenonauts - in fact smart weapons like the second gen type you're describing were deliberately left out. I personally am in the process of creating a smart drone-assisted hand grenade for drone strike, but that's going to simply be a more accurate weapon.

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Not sure if this has come up before but it would be really nice if there was a way to fire at multiple targets with burst fire.

There are often two or more targets I'd like to attack, or at least subdue, with my machine gun etc but you can only actually target one of them.

It would be great to have this option as if you were confronted with a few enemies in a room the chances are you'd spray your machinegun/combat rifle etc around the room rather than just attack one guy.

You used to have it in Laser Squad back in the 8-bit days so it must be possible.

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It's funny you should mention that, since I'm trying to think of a way to resolve a problem more or less related to that.

It's not possible in-game to have a single attack target multiple points. However, what I've done is reduced the TU cost of burst fire for LMGs (and other weapons as well) so that its possible to take two burst shots/turn (or three the Gauss weapons). For LMG-style weapons, there's a accuracy penalty for moving, meaning that when moving it's mostly only useful for suppression rather than causing damage.

I've played with a similar set-up before and I think it works really well. However, the system breaks down when you factor in short-range hit bonuses because these apply *after* the move-and-fire penalty has been applied. As such, in close quarters the weapon is better than any other weapon since it still has a fair hit chance but fires 2-3 times more bullets than anything else.

The only solution I've got for this is to remove the short-range hit bonus from them. That's not entirely unreasonable - you could argue that the weapons are too heavy and cumbersome to gain bonuses against a close-quarters opponent - but I'm not entirely comfortable with it especially for soldiers who haven't moved. Moreover, it takes away from the assault role of Predator armour, since it means all their weapon types won't be capable of getting close-range bonuses. So I'm a bit stuck on that.

---

In other news, after writing a week and a half ago that the mod is almost finished... the mod is now almost finished! LMG issues aside, all I need to do now is sort out the Xenopedia articles and give it a final pass over before uploading, all of which is tonight's job.

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A beta version of this mod has been made available for download

So, it's taken me longer than I thought it would to get to this point, but I've finally completed the first draft which you can download via the link in the OP.

The mod is 100% complete in terms of function. However, the xenopedia is very sketchy, there's missing short descriptions for research projects and no weapon tooltips/the old weapon tooltips which don't apply any more.

I have no doubt that this first draft won't be perfectly balanced which is why I'm posting it here rather than in the completed mods thread. If you want to try it out and provide feedback, that's great. But if you're just looking to get on and use it, you probably want to wait a while. In any case, I'm planning on doing a playthrough over the weekend that will help sort balance things out.

Very briefly, what the mod includes:

- Basic Weapons: I've added a carbine and incendiary weapons to the mix and rebalanced the weapons. Rifles and Carbines now only have snap and normal shots (along with burst), although the accuracy and TU costs of both of these are slightly higher than vanilla and 'normal' is more like the vanilla aimed shot. Burst fire has been reduced in TU cost for all weapons so you can fire two burst/turn. Nothing has armour penetration. Shotguns no longer have a x1.5 modifier.

- Needle Weapons: Do some stun and normal damage, as well as draining TUs

- Pulse Laser Weapons: These have been turned into single shot, long range and accurate weapons which are good for ranged combat but poor for suppression and close-quarters combat.

- Gauss Weapons: These are automatic only, but have reduced TU costs allowing 3 bursts/turn and have higher accuracy values.

- Beam Laser Weapons: These do lower damage but cause fire and can be used on burst mode to saturate areas with flame.

- Electroshock Weapons: Do EMP damage to robots and stun damage to organic units, as well as draining TUs. Better than needle, but shorter range.

- Bolt: Fire small explosive rounds for indirect fire and high suppression.

- Plasma: Fire highly powered bolts with good armour mitigation. Some alien weapons are of this type.

- Phased Plasma: Like basic weapons, but better. The majority of alien weapons are of this type.

- Graviton Weapons: Special highly damaging weapons a la the Particle Cannon of vanilla (but actually useable).

- Others: There's a toxin grenade along with the stun weapons as an alternative area-denial weapon. Researching Caesan Interrogation unlocks a the psi-grenade which is a replacement for the flashbang. All area-effect weapons have larger areas of effect, but damage drop-off has been increased. Plasma grenades and rockets are an upgrade to incendiary weapons with a smaller AoE than alenium/fusion explosives but causing fire and with armour mitigation (they're still mostly upgrades, but there's some room for choice between them). Medikits possibly heal less (I can't remember whether I left that in now). Alien weapons are a bit different. Expect more reaction fire early on as the basic alien plasma rifle is a carbine equivalent with a higher reaction modifier.

In addition to this, the mod includes a version of Armoured Assault adjusted for the changes this mod makes. Aircraft weapons are changed very slightly, but their effectiveness in game is exactly the same and the changes are just for flavour.

Any comments are welcome as usual.

EDIT: Ugh, forgot this. The mod uses Lt_Parson's true laser beam for the beam lasers and will replace the pulse laser projectiles too when I next update. Also, while all the work I did on these bits was my own, the introduction of the carbine and the incendiary grenade was inspired by Khall's carbines and shotguns mod and I suspect the end result on these is probably very similar.

Edited by kabill
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Okay, I just finished testing the first bits (ChemicalWeapons and up to PlasmaExplosives).

Here are the only issues I've found:

1) Xenopedia Entry for "Heavy Gauss Weapons" refuses to close when "Heavy Gauss Weapons" is researched.

2) The Shrike Dropship isn't popping up as a research.

Everything else seems to be working though! ^_^

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Re: Xenopedia issues - not sure if this is the cause, but I've noticed that the image files aren't set up properly. Try going into xenopediaimages in the mod's folder and renaming gauseweapons_basic and gaussweapons_advanced to simply gauss_basic and gauss_advanced.

Regarding the Shrike research, I'm not sure why that wouldn't be working, as it shouldn't be affected by the mod at all. Can I check you have all the prerequisites: alien alloy fabrication, alien electronics and directional thrusters.

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Re: Xenopedia issues - not sure if this is the cause, but I've noticed that the image files aren't set up properly. Try going into xenopediaimages in the mod's folder and renaming gauseweapons_basic and gaussweapons_advanced to simply gauss_basic and gauss_advanced.

Regarding the Shrike research, I'm not sure why that wouldn't be working, as it shouldn't be affected by the mod at all. Can I check you have all the prerequisites: alien alloy fabrication, alien electronics and directional thrusters.

That quick edit made the Images show up. But for whatever reason the problem still persists. I'll try it again on a new save and see if it still happens there.

Sure. Here's the save (It's XCE 0.27); [ATTACH]5436[/ATTACH]

Extended Armory Test.sav

Extended Armory Test.sav

Edited by Man of Doge
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Update: I've just uploaded a new version with some bugfixes and with the laser weapon projectiles set properly.

@Man of Doge: thanks for highlighting the issue with the Xenopedia. I'd missed a set of commas off a part of the researches entry (too ages to spot that!). As for the Shrike research topic, it seems to be working fine. In the save you sent me you'd not researched alien electronics.

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Update: I've just uploaded a new version with some bugfixes and with the laser weapon projectiles set properly.

@Man of Doge: thanks for highlighting the issue with the Xenopedia. I'd missed a set of commas off a part of the researches entry (too ages to spot that!). As for the Shrike research topic, it seems to be working fine. In the save you sent me you'd not researched alien electronics.

No problem. ^_^

Whoops, thought I researched it already. My bad!

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Yeah, agreed. The toxin grenade is one of two similar items that were removed from the game at some point, so I was using some existing stuff for it. I meant to use the lower tier one but accidentally used the higher-tier one instead.

EDIT: Nope, I set everything up fine except I had the research project unlock the wrong item. D'oh.

Edited by kabill
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Singularity grenade.

Have you seen Thor 2: The Dark World? Dark Elves use them. A tiny device, which creates a black hole and kills everything within the area of effect.

Neutron weapons.

It shoots beams of energy, which freely go through all kind of armour and kill any form of biological life in their way. Ray of death, kind of.

And make Plasma Cannon able to shoot 3-round volleys. It would be spectacular.

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Yeah, agreed. The toxin grenade is one of two similar items that were removed from the game at some point, so I was using some existing stuff for it. I meant to use the lower tier one but accidentally used the higher-tier one instead.

EDIT: Nope, I set everything up fine except I had the research project unlock the wrong item. D'oh.

Latest Issues:

"weapon.MAGpistol" should be using "ammo.bolt.boltpistol"

"weapon.MAGprecision" should be using "ammo.bolt.boltgun"

"weapon.MAGSTORM" should be using "ammo.bolt.heavyboltgun"

The Medipacks are showing "10/50" or "25/100" and I'm not sure why it's happening.

Feedback on the Multi-Missile Launcher:

It seems to be right where it should be for the Mid-Game. My only problem with it is that there are no other ammo types for it and the explosion animation makes it 'feel' less powerful than it can be.

New Suggestions:

1) Give Multi-Missile Launcher a Suppression [OR] Area-Denial Rocket.

2) Change the Multi-Missile Launcher's Impact spectre to "particles/largelaserexplosion/laserexplosion"

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Singularity grenade.

Have you seen Thor 2: The Dark World? Dark Elves use them. A tiny device, which creates a black hole and kills everything within the area of effect.

Actually might be an interesting late game item, maybe. Although there's already some very powerful late game stuff. Will think about it.

Neutron weapons.

It shoots beams of energy, which freely go through all kind of armour and kill any form of biological life in their way. Ray of death, kind of.

Already have equivalent items in game already (the Graviton weapons are basically this).

And make Plasma Cannon able to shoot 3-round volleys. It would be spectacular.

For the player, there's already an item similar (the multi-missile launcher). For aliens, I don't want to give them a rapid-fire area attack because 1) the Plasma Cannon is already powerful enough and 2) the AI doesn't understand blast radii and it likely to accidentally suicide with them.

"weapon.MAGpistol" should be using "ammo.bolt.boltpistol"

"weapon.MAGprecision" should be using "ammo.bolt.boltgun"

"weapon.MAGSTORM" should be using "ammo.bolt.heavyboltgun"

Thanks, must have missed those.

The Medipacks are showing "10/50" or "25/100" and I'm not sure why it's happening.

Already found and fixed this in an unreleased build. It's actually causing an issue with all of the items past that point too. I'll maybe get another version with bugfixes out this evening.

Feedback on the Multi-Missile Launcher:

It seems to be right where it should be for the Mid-Game. My only problem with it is that there are no other ammo types for it and the explosion animation makes it 'feel' less powerful than it can be.

New Suggestions:

1) Give Multi-Missile Launcher a Suppression [OR] Area-Denial Rocket.

2) Change the Multi-Missile Launcher's Impact spectre to "particles/largelaserexplosion/laserexplosion"

I like the idea of giving the multi-missile launcher different ammo types, but I wasn't sure whether it would work with having multiple shots as well. I should probably do some upgrades in any case and I'll have a look at the alternative impact effect.

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Update: I've uploaded another version with some fixes, including the ones brought up above.

I've also rebalanced automatic heavy weapons so they no longer get the move penalty but can only shoot once per turn for 80% TUs (like in vanilla). I was finding in my own games what I expected: that the LMG was too effective as a mobile assault weapon and it was either remove the short range bonus, or return it to one shot per turn. I chose the latter because it actually makes the weapon more distinct than the mobile rifles and carbines, and in the few missions I've tested since it's still very effective, just in a different way.

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