Ross154 wrote:- all ships have multiple lasers (more variation would be nice)
Not in small ships like escorts. Imho unfair if a 200t ship only capable to hold the same forward weapon than a 15t one, so currently mass and cost are the main factors in the number of mounts.
Moreover many OXP ships which should have still missing multiple lasers due to my laziness, install some then you will have variation.
Ross154 wrote:- multiple non-wide lasers mean more heat, but since it's possible to miss the target with side lasers, they are less energy efficient
Yes, the goal here is not to make extremely powerful weapons, nor that a triple mount must give exactly 3 times more efficiency. The attached drawbacks help to keep the game balanced so exists wilfully. For those who want better energy efficiency I recommend [wiki]Eco Lasers[/wiki].
Ross154 wrote:- you can sell the pulse laser for 3x money and have an easy start
We discussed recently that this could be a good thing, for example to get Injectors sooner than a new player give up against pirates.
Ross154 wrote:- so basically multiple non-wide lasers are almost a downgrade over single lasers
Maybe not much better, but still deliver more damage faster, just need longer time to cool down to zero before the next attack. Surely not a downgrade imho.
Ross154 wrote:separated multiple lasers are overpowered in comparison.
You just now mentioned the probabolity to miss with the wide mounts and the big energy consumption, these make separated lasers less powerful than sounds first time. Another one is the needed large ship hull which is an easier target than small ships. Still more powerful, but on those ships where it is logical. Maybe I left out some ships or not well balanced so if you have idea which ship should be changed then tell me.
Ross154 wrote:- also, do NPC's lasers heat up like player's?
Yes. The work here is if a ship oxp contain independent non-playable ship variants then must define multiple lasers for those also, else the player would be in unfair advantage.
Ross154 wrote:- is it possible to define variants for the same ship with different mount points
Possible, just much more work what I do not want to do due to I think the deep space is a harsh place where all pilots should use the maximal firepower what a ship can offer. The steps in cost are larger between the core lasers but there are packages like [wiki]New lasers[/wiki] and [wiki]Laser Cannons[/wiki] which give more stairs.
Ross154 wrote:have the heat build-up directly dependent on mount distance
This need changes in the core game in ObjC (heat value of a laser is fixed now) which is out of my scope and even if accepted by the dev team after a probably long disccussion, it will arrive into the stable release after about a year so I prefer only which is possible in addons using javascript functions. Although your idea is good, what I can do is already done: more powerful lasers need wider space to receive separation. I made levels at 30, 50 and 100m which are easy for ship designers imho. More levels is possible but just make more work without much additional benefit imho. Alternatively you can make it anytime if you want.
Ross154 wrote:ship variants with multiple mounts
I think this need an other addon package, mine just add more lasers to the existing ships. Creating new ship subtypes need more thinking, at least balancing with different cost, but maybe on other parameters also like pitch, speed, etc. A challenge to do this even on the core ships only and almost endless on OXP ships, there are about 500 in my machine. If you like to start it then worth to open a different topic.
Ross154 wrote:a) a single mount, low power/energy usage, low cost, low heat
b) 2 mounts, reasonably distant from each other...
c) 3 mounts, not distant enough for good cooling
I think a similar effect is achieveable using additional laser packages. A simple example if you use Pulse laser on a triple mount instead of Beam then you save about as much heat as you have a single Beam only.
Another way is to select a ship from the long list and setup for your needs. For example [wiki]Miner Cobra[/wiki] willfully missing multiple lasers for those who want a low-end variation of this classic ship with single laser only, in exchange for more cargo.