[Suggestion] Automatic secondary weapon firing.

[PM]

Can we have playerships fire all (enabled) secondary weapons automatically (like lancers on a Xenophobe capital ship) while the fire button is held? As of 1.04, all weapons in designated secondary weapon slots are dead weight -- at least until the player changes ships and the former playership starts firing them! While having full positional and weapon slot support is ideal, that sounds non-trivial to implement. Is automatic firing of all secondary weapons in tandem with firing the primary weapon easy enough to implement as a stop gap until the time a better slot system can be implemented?

[alterecco]

There has been quite a lot of talk on IRC over the time about implementing an Alpha Strike weapon, that, when selected, will fire all installed primary weapons. Perhaps that is also a solution to the issue you raise?

[Arisaya]

I think a properly functioning (not affected by the current sysCreateWeaponsFire bugs) alpha-strike mod (especially if it can be figured to say, exclude certain weapons that take too much power, etc.) would be the best solution myself.

[Ttech]

this was suggested and actually implemented in the rc's for 1.0 but was remove. or a similar idea at least

[Arisaya]

this was suggested and actually implemented in the rc's for 1.0 but was remove. or a similar idea at least

That was actually a result of a bug

[sdw195]

or.......

another key (like "B") to fire a preselected weapon

[Ttech]

or.......

another key (like "B") to fire a preselected weapon

and another option is to have the second weapon or primary be missiles as well

[digdug]

There has been quite a lot of talk on IRC over the time about implementing an Alpha Strike weapon

yeah, I tried to make it, and the result wasn't satisfy me completely

you can have a look at it here:
http://xelerus.de/index.php?s=mod&id=786

In general, secondary weapons have been requested many times in the past, the question is, why the player is limited to 1 main weapon and 1 launcher weapon and instead the AI can fire all the weapons installed on their ships ?
Answers to that can be:
- to keep the game more balanced and help a limited AI.
- to make the game harder (why not ?)
- because the playerships in the game are in theory small ships, in fact the game is quite consistent and only very large ships have multiple firing weapons. This doesn't mean that in the future Adventure Extensions or Official Extensions will have the player fly very large ships, where secondary weapons will be important and a new slot system (or new firing system?) will be necessary.

[PM]

In some mods, the player can pilot capital ships (and it is fun too). Having omnidirectional weapon slots is nice, but non-functioning secondary weapon slots, not so much. Having too many secondary slots is probably not overpowered for players because the player will not have enough power to fire more than three weapons simultaneously, unless he fills the slots with ammo guzzling weapons or underpowered low level weapons. With 1 GW, the player has enough power for two level X weapons and a level X shield. More secondary weapons will be weaker stuff.

[Ttech]

In some mods, the player can pilot capital ships (and it is fun too). Having omnidirectional weapon slots is nice, but non-functioning secondary weapon slots, not so much. Having too many secondary slots is probably not overpowered for players because the player will not have enough power to fire more than three weapons simultaneously, unless he fills the slots with ammo guzzling weapons or underpowered low level weapons. With 1 GW, the player has enough power for two level X weapons and a level X shield. More secondary weapons will be weaker stuff.

pew pew cannons and lamp lighters. pretty sweet deal. The Icorym will be very scared but like your point.