New Modpack: Weapons and Shields

[Atarlost]

http://xelerus.de/index.php?s=mod&id=237

This is a fairly simple modpack, just a new line of weapons and shields and a new corporate station.

• Gatling Laser: A fairly mundane weapon with a heat counter
• Orion Atomic Lance: A weapon nearly as dangerous to the user as the target
• Trebuchet aft mounted Howitzer: Fires a narrow spread of many small shots, each of which carries a single shot x-ray laser. These will track on nearby enemy ships.
• Cerberus Fusion Cannon: Short ranged seeker, similar in damage to Fusionfire
• Heavy Particle Blaster: A capacitor weapon with a very high rate of fire. Sustained fire rate and damage are similar to other particle weapons of the same level.
• Starfire Launcher: A launcher capable of firing beams ranging from laser to positron
• Claymore Launcher: A launcher firing particles with variable spread angle
• Parthian Launcher: A missile launcher with a variety of missiles including an EMP missile and a missile bus that deploys several seekers as well as more mundane dumbfires, frags, and seekers. It has forward and rear firing modes.
• Trafalgar Launcher: A broadside firing version of the Salamis, use to switch sides
• Cataphract Shields: powerful shields that block you from using certain damage types
• Variable Absorbtion Shield: A fairly potent shield that in one mode does not recharge and in its other mode recharges rapidly but is dangerously permiable.
• Verloren Hoop Shield: The Verloren Hoop or Forlorn Hope shield can be activated for area damage proportional to its remaining hitpoints at the cost of deactivating the shield. It has slightly higher regen and significantly lower hitpoints than the standard shield of its level, but nearly no downtime.
• Segment of light or heavy meteorsteel lattice: While lacking the immunity to low damage types of normal meteorsteel armor this armor provides excellent resistances and good hitpoints for its level and immunity to most status effects.
• Segment of powered meteorsteel lattice: This armor has lower hitpoints and mass than heavy meteorsteel lattice and higher power consumtion than v300 powered armor, but provides disintigration immunity and regenerates.
• Segment of (in)active armor: In inactive mode it's slightly weak for its level. In active mode it draws power, resists most status effects, resists most damage types, and decays over time.

Subject to change if anyone gives me input on balance.

[Atarlost]

Updated Nov 10

The mod is, in my opinion, significantly better balanced than it was previously and I recommend re-downloading.

• The Cataphract line of shields is less overspecialized.
• The Variable Absorbtion Shield has been tweaked to be of similar utility to other level 7 shields.
• The Cerberus has had its range increased slightly to make its tracking more useful.
• The Starfire has 30 degrees of swivel to make it more competative with launchers that have tracking or fragmenting munitions.
• The Orion is now a radius frag instead of an area frag so it hits each space object only once instead of doing multiple damage. It also does more damage before fragmenting and requires more power.
• The Salamis launcher has been subsumed by the Parthian launcher, which is now dual mode.

This update does not mean I am no longer interested in any input on the balance of these devices.

[Atarlost]

Updated again. There are now three armors. It is also, apart from not supporting random names, fully compatible with digdug's weapon randomiser.

Comments on balance still welcome.

[Atarlost]

Okay, haven't updated the thread in several versions.

There's been a change to the Trebuchet to make it more useful, there's a fairly mundane new particle weapon, there's now switchable armor, there's an activatable shield, and the switchable armor, shield, and activatable shield are AI compatible. See OP for details.