Siege Engine Variety

In Entrenchment, the Starbases are basically like castles and the TEC torpedo launcher could be analogous to a siege engine. How about some more variety of siege engines? Massive plasma and laser cannons, in-gravity-well Novalith cannons, a massive anti-matter blaster which would vaporize not only chunks of the starbase's healthpoints away but also anything in between it and the starbase.

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Reply #1 Top

Massive plasma and laser cannons
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It's called an Orkulus.

in-gravity-well Novalith cannons
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So... basically a stronger version of the Ogrov with more range/firepower?  That's not more variety, that's just two units with identical roles.

a massive anti-matter blaster which would vaporize not only chunks of the starbase's healthpoints away but also anything in between it and the starbase.
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The Radiance already has an ability called "cleansing brilliance" that does something similar to this, firing a beam that damages its target and anything caught in-between.  Its damage is respectable, but nowhere near the power you are implying.

You're suggesting something that is far beyond the level of an "ultimate" capital ship ability, meaning this would be superweapon level in power.  At the end of the day, that's already too similar to the Kostura, which damages and stuns everything in the gravity well (extra damage/stun to structures/starbases).

 

While I'm not opposed to new ideas and content, these are really just suggestions for superpowered versions of stuff that already exists.  Uncapped area of effect abilities in particular are extremely rare in this game and usually reserved for elite capital ships; it would totally inappropriate for a cruiser to have an ability that could vapourize entire fleets (and if something to that effect was introduced as a late-game weapon for all factions, it would be silly for it to also be a strong anti-starbase weapon). 

Reply #2 Top

You're probably aware of the various types of artillery throughout history, such as the ballista, scorpion, onager, trebuchet, just as varieties of catapults for starters. The ballista and scorpion are virtually the same basic design even, except the scorpion was smaller and more suited to a purely anti-infantry role whereas the ballista was more powerful and could be used to take out siege towers or send a single spear through a column of infantry. Onagers hurled clusters of rocks and was, basically, a siege shotgun of the medieval era. The trebuchet was unique in that it used the potential energy of a counterweight to power whatever projectile was placed into the sling, and the largest trebuchets were even able to ablatively wear away a castle wall.

 

Closer to the modern era, there have been so many varieties of cannons and firearms made - each with their own unique advantages and disadvantages. They could all be considered the same basic weapon, cannons and firearms, since both use a pressure wave to propel a kinetic energy projectile, but that would be, in my opinion, to not recognize the wider variety amongst the different types but instead to consider them equivalent on the basis of similar operation (or method of downrange effect). I see it this way, each have their own strengths and weaknesses compared to one another; even if two weapons/ships operate by similar principles. or have similar methods of affecting the enemy target, other factors - such as rate of fire, damage points, area of effect, accuracy, range, crew compliment, health, etc - allow for various applications to be performed by each.