Is it time for ships to have a "Vanity" weapon slot?

pweistheworst

I don't know if I'm the only player like this, but I personally like to use energy weapons that are all the same so that all the beams or cannons or torpedoes look alike when I fire weapons. I just don't like firing "rainbow weapons" during combat. However, some of the best set bonuses require that I use a weapon that doesn't match the color of my other beams or cannons.

Do you think it's possible for the devs to add a "vanity" weapon slot (or "slots" since torps would probably have to be handled differently) to our ships to give players control over how our weapons look in combat?

We already have vanity slots for the deflector, impulse engines, and shields. I'd love to make all my weapons look the same but still get the set bonuses from weapons that have a different color.

dracounguis

Yup, needs to happen. Even if you aren't going rainbow, there's enough different colors w/in the same type that you can still be a rainbow of one type of damage.

davefenestrator

Yes, we have been asking for this for years. There was apparently an old developer post years ago saying the game engine does not support this because reasons, but that just means they should improve that part of the game engine.

It's annoying to me to get an episode reward omni beam, cannon, turret that does not match the rest of my beams. I want to use it for the set bonus, I don't want to use it because it messes with the visuals.

firehawk4

When the game first launched there was a command to change the color of your weapons. People were firing green phasers and pink disruptors and such. The PvP crowd quickly complained because they couldn't tell what kind of weapon(phaser/disruptor etc) their opponent was using. Cryptic quickly disabled that command stating some reason that I can't remember now.

shadowfirefly00

firehawk4 wrote: »

When the game first launched there was a command to change the color of your weapons. People were firing green phasers and pink disruptors and such. The PvP crowd quickly complained because they couldn't tell what kind of weapon(phaser/disruptor etc) their opponent was using. Cryptic quickly disabled that command stating some reason that I can't remember now.

Probably because that was the 'quick and easy' solution as opposed to taking the time to figure out how to disable it in certain spaces...

leemwatson

pweistheworst wrote: »

I don't know if I'm the only player like this, but I personally like to use energy weapons that are all the same so that all the beams or cannons or torpedoes look alike when I fire weapons. I just don't like firing "rainbow weapons" during combat. However, some of the best set bonuses require that I use a weapon that doesn't match the color of my other beams or cannons.

Do you think it's possible for the devs to add a "vanity" weapon slot (or "slots" since torps would probably have to be handled differently) to our ships to give players control over how our weapons look in combat?

We already have vanity slots for the deflector, impulse engines, and shields. I'd love to make all my weapons look the same but still get the set bonuses from weapons that have a different color.

They need to seperate the slots. It's the only way a Vanity slot would work without causing issues. Energy Weapons, Mines and Torps really shouldn't be able to occupy the same type of slot.

bumperthumper

I thought they already made an option to change the colors, but people were upset about it. This was in the PvP days.

djf021

dracounguis wrote: »

Yup, needs to happen. Even if you aren't going rainbow, there's enough different colors w/in the same type that you can still be a rainbow of one type of damage.

I agree. I use phasers on my Fed toons, and the 8472 2 piece, the Temporal phase 2 piece, plus the color of the Phased Biomatter beams (on my main, other toons use different kinds of phasers) cause me to shoot at least three different colors at all times. It's not a deal breaker, but would definitely be nice to get a weapon vanity slot.

xyquarze

Apart from the PvP issue (which is somewhat diluted by the other vanity slots also giving a false impression about what you can do)

You could of course make a vanity slot for every weapon slot with a "needs to fit type". So dual beam for dual beam, torp for torp etc. Though torps are quite different, some targetable when heavy, some cluster...

Anyway, I would prefer that so I can intentionally rainbow even if I am just using 8 standard phasers or whathaveyou. After some guy trash talked me for running a stupid rainbow during an STF while I was indeed only running one type of weapon - never mind that rainbows can be viable builds, never mind that said guy did nothing to further the objectives of the queue - I have been embracing my inner rainbow.

pweistheworst

The PVP argument shouldn't even be an argument considering how dead PVP is ... and considering you should instantly be able to tell what type of energy weapon your opponent is using by looking at the combat log ... which will tell you what energy type hit you and for what amount of damage.

Besides, if the only way you can survive PVP is to know what specific weapon your opponent is using against you then you've built a very weak ship for PVP ... or one particular weapon is way OP.

If it's the former then the color of the weapons don't matter. If it's the later then the devs need to nerf the OP weapon ... which still has nothing to do with the color of the weapon.

aliguana

but if you could set your beams to whatever colour you wanted, then you wouldn't have to open 200 lockboxes to get new beams. So no, i doubt they will do that, ever

disqord

> @aliguana said:
> but if you could set your beams to whatever colour you wanted, then you wouldn't have to open 200 lockboxes to get new beams. So no, i doubt they will do that, ever

Or, you know...they could make weapon types worth having?

asuran14

I would love to see them add a vanity slot that is dedicated to each weapon type (beams, cannons, torpedoes, and mines), and using that they might be able to override the visual an color effect that is displayed. The main issue I see is both the firing arcs of the weapons, and hard points, as would the visual effect of a dual beam affect single beams an which hard point would it fire from.

In regards to pvp I could see it working where within pvp maps/content vanity slots (weapon/shield/engine/deflector) are deactivated, which would be quite fair, and should be quite doable honestly. Also it is not only the beam color that is why people would want to get the weapon/s out of a lockbox, since if the proc is good (for example the pulse phaser is pretty good overall.), than people would still farm those boxes anyway.

vosoros

With my phaser build I'd love my quantum phase beam array to look AND sound like a regular beam array. The vanity (dare I say; plus sound) weapons option would be a fantastic thing IMHO.

Well done OP for bringing this one up...

evilmark444

davefenestrator wrote: »

Yes, we have been asking for this for years. There was apparently an old developer post years ago saying the game engine does not support this because reasons, but that just means they should improve that part of the game engine.

It's annoying to me to get an episode reward omni beam, cannon, turret that does not match the rest of my beams. I want to use it for the set bonus, I don't want to use it because it messes with the visuals.

Bort said in a podcast Q&A leading up to AoY that it would be incredibly difficult to implement, then immediately said he had just thought of a way but that it was terrible and they should never do it like that. I'd say it's a safe bet they have looked into it, and may occasionally revisit it to see if anyone has new ideas, but unfortunately nothing is coming any time soon.

tousseau

Yes...

strathkin

I'd certainly support a Energy Weapon Vanity slot for front/rear mounted energy weapons; besides the Deflector, Impulse or Shield's and one behind. Hopefully it effects all front/rear mounted energy based weapon except Kinetic Damage, so the Kinetic Cutting Beam would still have it specific tone.

It would be nicer if it only worked however for weapons of the same type; so if you loaded Coalition Disruptor's into Vanity it work for any Disruptor style but not for alternate energy types.

tirpider

Simple. Ship weapons become like slottable BOffs You have to train them with manuals for procs and take them to the weapon tailor to dress them up (with c-store outfits, of course).

shadowwraith

yes, along with a warp/singularity core slot to remove the default warp trails.

ssbn655

Eh so no biggie you fire different colors non issue. Fix some of the other broken things first or longer episodes.

nikephorus

Yes

davefenestrator

ssbn655 wrote: »

Eh so no biggie you fire different colors non issue. Fix some of the other broken things first or longer episodes.

Programmers don't write the story episodes, at least not if we're lucky. They also don't create the art assets, ground maps, or scripting.

You're making the same mistake as people saying the artists and voice actors should be working on fixing coding bugs, just in reverse.

soullessraptor

I think the biggest issue with the color options now is CBS. Star trek has always had the idea of color=type (orange phaser, green disruptor, teal plasma, etc).

avoozuul

Well by that logic they would also disallow the other vanity items such as the shields which change the ship material.

soullessraptor

One can argue that shields are simply projecting OVER the ship material, and not fundamentally changing the material itself. Whereas changing a weapon color would, in theory, be changing the weapon itself as well.

avoozuul

I don't think the reason makes any difference in this regard.

soullessraptor

Those, however, are distinct weapon types. Mirror universe, Isolytic, etc. The baseline weapons are the same color.

feiqa

I would like to see this. It would allow among other thing the 360 ToS phaser. Or a temporal ship to fire nothing but temporal beams.

[edit] And right after I post I realized a type solution. You have to match the weapon flavor type. So phasers can carry other phaser colours, Neutron beams only other neutrons etc.

asuran14

I would agree that the weapon visual/sound slot would need to have a limit on it, such as that it could only change the look/sound of weapons of the same energy/weapon type as the slotted weapon/energy in the visual vanity slot. Though some weapon/energy types I think would need to stay unique at least in visual, like visual of the quad-cannon for instance.

Though the more I think about it it might be better to make iut a option in one of the menus, or the drop down menu for the weapons you slot called something like "unify-visual/color", which would do something similar yet allow you to still unify the visual/color of weapons on a multi-weapon/energy built ship.