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Proposal: side-firing weapon slots.
seraphantilles
Member Posts: 97 Arc User
It just occurred to me that in naval combat, ships' cannons were usually facing out to the sides, not to the front.
For beam-boats it makes no sense to have front-facing torpedo launchers. There ought to be the ability to configure some of your weapon slots on cruisers to be side-facing instead of front facing. You'd have to broadside your target with the correct side of your ship facing them to use that launcher but it would be much better than having it in the front.
The 180-degree quantum launcher is the only torpedo launcher that makes sense for slow beam boats due to the lack of side-facing launchers.
But what I'm asking for would be the ability to say, right-click a weapon slot and change it from front-facing to side-facing and pick right or left. You could theoretically make all your slots side-facing if you did it this way.
That way you could have a Dreadnought with 4 dual heavy cannons that face out to the right side with turrets on the other side. Etc.
Or put a dual beam bank that faces out to the side of your cruiser. This would make dual beam banks actually worth something, because right now they're the ugly step-sister when really they shouldn't be. If they could be side-facing you could have four DBB on each side of a big cruiser and effectively have 8 beams on your target just like now, but have a blind spot directly in front and in back of your ship instead of on the sides. That would make for a deadlier broadside attack but with deadzones. Etc.
Thoughts?
For beam-boats it makes no sense to have front-facing torpedo launchers. There ought to be the ability to configure some of your weapon slots on cruisers to be side-facing instead of front facing. You'd have to broadside your target with the correct side of your ship facing them to use that launcher but it would be much better than having it in the front.
The 180-degree quantum launcher is the only torpedo launcher that makes sense for slow beam boats due to the lack of side-facing launchers.
But what I'm asking for would be the ability to say, right-click a weapon slot and change it from front-facing to side-facing and pick right or left. You could theoretically make all your slots side-facing if you did it this way.
That way you could have a Dreadnought with 4 dual heavy cannons that face out to the right side with turrets on the other side. Etc.
Or put a dual beam bank that faces out to the side of your cruiser. This would make dual beam banks actually worth something, because right now they're the ugly step-sister when really they shouldn't be. If they could be side-facing you could have four DBB on each side of a big cruiser and effectively have 8 beams on your target just like now, but have a blind spot directly in front and in back of your ship instead of on the sides. That would make for a deadlier broadside attack but with deadzones. Etc.
Thoughts?
Post edited by seraphantilles on
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http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/10052253
Why are you not rejoicing?
This. The original posters suggestion is still interesting though.
By turning sideways, a ship becomes a much larger target. Part of navel strategy involves deciding whether to bring all your weapons to bear or to provide a smaller target. Part of why martial arts stances shift the body to provide less of a target as well.
If they gave ships a defensive penalty based on their length vs their width when being attacked from the side, it would possibly compensate for the fact that Cruisers would just stack loads of DHC on their sides to go with their overlapping beams.
Otherwise it would be rather busted to let Cruisers side mount DHC.
In this game ; the side cannon is represented with Turrets. I could however see giving a few Cruisers and carriers an extra slot on each side which can only mount a turret and having the turret in that slot be reduced to a 180 degree arc instead of 360.
But you are not really addressing the main point of my suggestion, which would be to let ANY cruiser set ANY of its slots as being either front/rear facing or left/right facing. The point is that it's stupid that Starfleet would make ANY cruiser-type ship where the torpedoes and dual beam banks and single cannons must fire out the front only. Why not fire out the side? It makes much more sense.
To keep things normal lets say you could only make front slots be right slots, and only make rear slots be left slots, so you couldn't overload all your slots to one side. And only narrow-arc weapons like single cannon (or DHC on a dread), dual beam bank, and torp launchers could be put on the side.
Right now it just sucks to be a cruiser where you either broadside someone OR your torpedoes can hit them (unless you have the 180-degree launcher).
For that matter, on an aside, It is really stupid that cruisers can't deal more weapon-based DPS than they currently can. Why can a tiny little ship have more powerful weapons mounted than a huge big one can? If I was Starfleet, I'd put the biggest cannon I could onto my most expensive, biggest ships with the most crew to protect. The advantage of a tiny ship should be in how difficult it is to hit, and how maneuverable it is to bring its narrow-arc weapons to bear on a target. Not in what kind of weapons it has the capability of mounting. But I digress.
Cruisers use beams instead of cannons (generally) and thus can at any given time bring more weapons to bear.
This is space combat, not navel combat. This is Star trek, not BSG. In this setting, ships are rather maneuverable. Just sitting and aiming all your weapons in one direction on a cruiser would just get you killed. You would only be effective against other cruisers, starbases, and borg cubes.
Think of a cruiser as a mobile mini starbase. It needs to be able to interact with enemies surrounding it on all sides while the escorts cut through individual ships and science vessels control the flow of the fight. Putting all your weapons on one side would essentially make you a really slow and crippled escort.
And you can put the same big guns on a cruiser as you can an escort. It can get the same dps if you really wanted. It just would never be able to hit anything because it is too big and slow.
Well, I'm not really saying they should add DHC in this game to all cruisers.
But they should have configurable side-firing slots for certain weapons. Maybe for balance it has to be only one or two slots available for this? But I don't think it would be unbalancing to let cruisers have single cannons on a side, since escorts could notice this easily and just stay in the front of the ship or the back, if you're a good pilot anyway. Escorts already do this-- they already get behind you and stay out of your higher DPS weapons. So it really wouldn't make cruisers any better against escorts.
It would just make cruisers better against other cruisers, and if you've ever watched a 1v1 cruiser fight you can't really tell me it's fun to watch. It goes forever. Why not let them put 3 DBBs and 1 torp launcher on each side? They'd have zero DPS in front and behind, but better DPS on the sides. This would actually be an easier ship for an escort to avoid damage from, but another cruiser would be able to be hurt more by it.
I'm not sure what your point is here. I'm just frustrated because I bought a Mk XII Omega Plasma torp launcher and put it on my slow Tactical Odyssey and I can't shoot it at someone who I'm broadsiding. I have to come to bear on them to fire it which is freaking annoying and stupid. I should be able to have a side-facing torpedo tube.
The problem is I can't think of a single canon example where any ship fired from the side. Admittedly this could be me. When I am watching Star Trek I don't really pay attention to how a ship is firing. But nearly all fire from the Front, with a few instances of firing from the back.
So, if it were to be done at all, it should only work for cannons and beams should be blocked out. That way you could still use DHCs for a big-gun broadside with the same relative damage as a similar beam boat, or you can use all turrets for 360 coverage. This setup might be useful and appropriate for some carriers, hard to imagine who else would want it.