We have Projectile waepons, Energy Beam weapons, and Missile weapons.

The way the game works, you have to assign a weapon a particular class - beam, mass, or missle. The defenses are likewise constrained. So you can not have a weapon that is equally defended for by all classes of defense.

The main coding for the game would have to be changed, and that is unlikely to happen.

Creating pulse weapons is possible, but they would have to be classified as either a mass driver, missle or beam weapon in the TechTree.xml - and that would determine the most effective defense for it.

That is not what I meant.
I meant creating a fourth type of weapon.

It would maybe be either:
Far smaller, but all defences defend against it decently.
Far Ceaper, but all defences defend against it decently.
Easier to research, but all defences defend against it decently.

Maybe Have them be smaller, cheaper, but more effective against armour than guns, but effected by both shields and missile defences?

What I mean by decently is that armour would defend against it, but not as effectively as if mass drivers were being used.

So Pulse weapons would hit the ship, and be effective against all types of defences.
Yet not as effective as other types of weapons against a ship that is missing that weapons defence. Get it?
So I think maybe it should be cheaper, or smaller, or easier to research.

Aren't Plasma and Disruptors in the Beam Weapons types of pulse weapons?

What you don't seem to get is that adding a fourth type of weapon would require the main game code to be rewritten extensively, as well as the AI to take advantage of it.

It won't happen.

btw, what is a pulse weapon?

I can make up stuff too and create DisTorsion Cannons.

Basically a pulse weapon falls into several different catagories:

Sonic pulse: This currently being looked at by the American military as a possible new "soft weapon" a weapon that incapcitates instead of killing.

Energy pulse: This one can really be placed into to sub catagories
Light pulse: Basically its a pulsed laser, which can have the same effect as a laser but saves vastly on power consumption.

While we're at it, we should add nukes, knives and sharp sticks.

Given that the existing three weapons function exactly the same way, I'm not sure how a fourth type that isn't substantially different would add very much.

Weeeelllll hmmmmmm...
I am not a game developer or programmer or anything but if you can not put a 4th weapon type into the game, why not just add a new value to an existing weapon? I think that is what the original poster was driving at.

Say you have Missiles doing 4 dmg defended by ecm
you have lasers doing 2 dmg defended by shields
you have rail guns doing 2 dmg defended by armor

Why not make the weapon able to use 2 of the values above, causing dmg with both values and able to be protected against by both defenses? The rest can be figured out by the programmers or the people who come up with the ideas. ( Less dmg, easier to produce, cheaper, blah blah blah )

Does not seem to be that difficult to do I wouldn't think, just assigning another weapon value to an already existing weapon.

Personally I do not see the need, would make things interesting but arent they interesting enough as it is already?

[Defenses ID="Shields III"]
[DisplayName]Shields III[/DisplayName]
[Cost]650[/Cost]
[Description]Mark III shields use even less space than previous generations of shield technology.[/Description]
[Details]Simply put, shields are pretty neat. They aren't terribly good in terms of saving space. But they do protect against damage quite well, particularly from beam weapons. The Mark III shield unit uses substantially less space on a ship than previous generations, thus allowing for more important items to be placed on board.[/Details]
[Category]Shields[/Category]
[Requires]Shields II[/Requires]
[Model]sheilds0[/Model]
[AIValue]4[/AIValue]
[/Defenses]

[Weapons ID="Singularity Driver IV"]
[DisplayName]Singularity Driver IV[/DisplayName]
[Cost]1000[/Cost]
[Description]The ultimate form of singularity driver. [/Description]
[Details]Others said it couldn't be done, but a few extra billion proved them wrong with the Mark IV Singularity Driver.[/Details]
[Category]MD[/Category]
[Requires]Singularity Driver III[/Requires]
[Model]antimatdrive0[/Model]
[AIValue]8[/AIValue]
[/Weapons]

"Category" can only be used once, and only a single value can be used.
You can change the Category, but you can't add to it.

I understand.

Wasn't really talking about something that we can mod. Was talking about re-writing the game code to allow such weapons for future aspects of the game is all.

Again, I care less either way, was just trying to get what I thought was the original posters idea across a little better.

It was an idea, not a Crusade. I am surprised at how hostile some of you were.  

Thanks Quixen for your help.

The idea came more from thinking about the graphical depictions:
We have missiles, and Beam weapons, and projectiles, why not pulsed weapons also.

That is all. If it isn't feasable, ok.
It was just an idea, and asuggestion.

Well i'm not really sure about pulse weapons, but talking about new weapon theorys, I wish they had lasers with Star Wars graphics (bolts instead of beams), to me all the weapon graphics are so corny.

Atlantians: Get used to it. Far too many posters on these forums get "hostile" when something is suggested that they don't understand or don't want to see implemented. I see many ideas thrown around the forum that someone thinks might improve the game. Inevitably, someone else disagrees, often times quite rudely.

Actually, those who shot down your idea did so rather mildly. I've seen much worse.

I've seen much worse.

"I've had worse!"
"You liar!"



... anyway, I get the impression of Combine Pulse Rifles from Half-Life 2 when you talk about Pulse Weapons. They're technically projectiles, but they seem to have an energy charge to them, as well.

Oooh... The Happy Fun Ball! (The name I give to the 'grenade' for the Pulse Rifle) What would that be classified as? It just vaporizes enemies on contact, and bounces off walls. Wait, it'd probably just bounce off ship hulls...

Sonics are pretty cool. I remember the Atreides Sonic Tank from the Dune RTS series, or the GDI Disruptor from C&C 2: Tiberian Sun. Only useful when there's an atmosphere, though. However, I've seen some really slick Sonic weapons, such as the ones from X-COM: Terror from the Deep. Those things fired a compressed 'bolt' of sonic resonance. Wicked deadly.

There's also Warp weapons, as featured in UFO: Aftermath. They essentially pull targets apart at the atomic level. To be honest, I don't think any existing defence types could deal with it. I forget what kind of protection helped resist it. May have either been a psychic defence, or something about the alien bio-armor that you could capture and reverse-engineer for human use.

Wouldn't pulse weapons be good also? Energy pulses.

What kind of energy? There's no such thing as "pure energy".

I'm sorry if I sounded hostile, I didn't mean to.
My apologies.

I was just trying to explain why there can not be a 4th category of weapons/defenses, and why no more than one category can be assigned to them.

It would be great if the devs added it to a future version or update, but as far as I have seen it is not even being considered for DA.

I hate the way mass driver weapons look. I mean think of a gun; it's a mass driver.
In the game, mass driver shots should travel FAST, like the PROJECTILE it... its not a floaty, slower-than-missile-blob.

I hope they fix this in DA, cause I'm seriously on the fence about the expansion.

Beam weapons encompass anything energy related, period. Pulse weapons are just that, beam weapons. I've heard some people say that sonic weapons are not beam, but the debate is open since both "energy" and "sonics" travel in waves. Now to have a Sonic Death Scream Ray?, hmmmm. But would it be beam or something entirely different in classification.

I would like to see a defense that would deal damage back to the attacker. Or perhaps a weapon like the ESG from Starfleet Command II.

You cannot have sonic WAVE weapons in the VACUUM of space.

Sound NEEDS something to travel through. Space does not provide that.

You cannot have sonic WAVE weapons in the VACUUM of space.

Electrical discharge is all throughout the universe thus any "wave" can be transmitted through space. I am no physicist but I have read enough to know that any "wave" can travel through space. Just because you don't hear it doesn't mean that it isn't there. Besides, this is a game, not a NASA simulator. So look at Star Wars movies, there is obviously sound, since it's a MOVIE. Make believe, ya know. But if you want to be technical, and I think PaladinStorm could add some great insight on this one, energy waves can travel through space. Sound is energy. Energy is a wave. Look it up yourself before tossing out comments.

SIR, sound waves most definately do not travel through space, case closed.

Do some research before tossing poo poo.   

Just for the fun of it..
"How do the astronauts communicate in space if sound cannot travel in a vacuum?
Since sound does not travel through vacuum, how can the astronauts communicate from space to earth? How do astronauts communicate with each other?

Sound cannot travel through the vacuum of space, but visible light and other forms of electromagnetic radiation can. One of these forms is commonly called radio. The astronauts have devices in their helmets which transfer the sound waves from their voices into radio waves and transmit it to the ground (or other astronauts in space). This is exactly the same as how your radio at home works. Radio waves are often thought of as a form of sound because of their use in this way, but radio waves are NOT sound waves - they are a form of electromagnetic radiation analogous to visible light, and therefore can propagate through a vacuum.

January 2005, Karen Masters (more by Karen Masters)"

energy waves can travel through space. Sound is energy. Energy is a wave. Look it up yourself before tossing out comments.

Oh man, thats priceless!

Stormbringer, sound is vibration through a medium

A vacuum has no medium.

Thus... Well.