Make Superweapons ramp up with energy grid

[GoogleFrog]

I came across the idea of making superweapons better with more grid energy. Perhaps they could be disabled at no energy, be about about as powerful as they are now at 500 energy, and linearly extend their power from there.

DRP could rotate faster, causing it to fire faster. Starlight could aim faster and BZZT with higher frequency, Zenith could gather meteors faster.

Effects:

• Adds a noob trap, because linking energy is an extra step.
• There are more ways to disable superweapons.
• Rushing a superweapon becomes a bit worse than making one with a large economy.

The rushing effect could actually be beneficial to the game. If it were possible to rush underpowered superweapons, ones that do not immediately end the game, then they could have more nuance.

[Licho1]

I like that.. grid was meant to work for big defs but we nerfed big defs to near uselessness (annihilator)

[alexpyattaev]

I think one way this can work is as follows:

• Starlight - more E => more range

• DRP, BB - more E => better rate of fire and more range

• Zenith - more E => more max asteroids controlled

• Nux - already has a nice dynamic Another mechanic that I really liked in original TA that we could use is that superweapons actually USE energy. As in, for each BB shot you need to have e.g. 1000 energy or something. Same could work for others:

• BB reload time cut to 2 seconds, 1000 E per shot. This will make feeding more E to BB better than getting more of them, will also make counterplay with shields draining E much more fun - i.e. you have to choose if you bank energy for BB to keep shooting, or let shields charge.

• DRP reload time cut to 0.2 seconds, 1000 E per shot (effectively it is ratelimited by energy only). Idea being that if you run it non-stop it will drain just about any eco into oblivion. While tearing apart enemy eco, of course. But you have to be careful in terms of how you use it, or you'd drain your own eco to death.

• Zenith uses 100 energy per asteroid attracted, but has no ratelimit on asteroid attraction, so it can also drain all your E into nothing in seconds, but can also produce insane amount of DPS

• Starlight uses 100 energy per second while firing, more as range increases (give it unlimited range, but increase cost linearly with range, such that at BB max range it uses like 500 energy/second). This would make it into a nice counter-superweapon thing with unlimited (but expensive) range.

• Lucifer uses 300 energy per shot, reload time 5 seconds.

• Desolator and Cerberus use both 50 energy per shot, cut reload times to compensate for this nerf to keep them useful

IMO it is a much nicer way to make them scale with eco. If not enough energy is available in storage then clearly the firing will not occur. Engine already supports this as well.

[Sharkgamedev]

I love this idea as well. I like the idea of sort of having to micro your weapons like with the higher energy use it may become neccasery to say turn off a superweapon in a certain location and just have to rely on it's other defenses in order to have that energy go towards other things like overdrive instead. I just really dig the whole new level of strategy that this would introduce.

[GoogleFrog]

How about just this for Zenith. Justification: Zenith causes metal to come into existence at a fixed rate, so is actually a mex.

• Allocate a base metal income to Zenith and make it spawn meteors at the appropriate rate.
• Balance can be adjusted both by tweaking this rate and tweaking the amount of reclaim in the meteors.
• It doesn't matter whether we imagine meteors as being worth their metal value, or being worth 1/40% their metal value (since they are wrecks when on the ground), as the mex income is purely theoretical.
• Allow Zenith to drain energy to boost its income, as per the overdrive equation.
• Don't balance Zenith around zero energy drain as this situation will be uncommon in practise.

Give players control over energy drain rather than treating Zenith as a mex.

• Give it misc priority energy drain.
• Retain the on/off button.
• Have it attempt to drain all the energy in its connected grid.

[sprunk]

I don't think a Zenith that has even triple the firerate stops sucking, simply because Starlight still does better at continuous fire (and Zenith would start heavily stepping on its toes regardless) and it doesn't solve bursty stockpile being approximately useless past some small amount of meteors (at which point you can kill approximately anything but then have to go back to 0).

[sprunk]

d4bb2bce794848adc2acb07f6e2d0b353902a0a6 grid requirement now exists.