ZachZent
commented
4 years ago I believe the plan is that laser bolts will have modules and barrels, laser beams will have just modules, and kinetics will have just barrels. That being said I would love to see those options for beams as well.
And just an aside, maybe one way to fix a potential hitscan problem before it comes up is the beams being less like laser pointers and more like spartan lasers.
Hold down the fire button and after a short time a powerful burst will fire before taking an amount of time to cool down. This completely removes any sort of problem with hitscan rather than needing to balance turret turn rates or damage rates to prevent massive, perfectly tracking hitscan turrets that can one-shot fighters. The larger the weapon, the longer the charge up and/or cool down time making it a more anti-cap ship weapon.
The modules wouldn't have to change and can still do what they do. As for keeping with the post with barrels... Gatling: Rather than one burst, it will fire multiple busts at once like a shotgun. Still need to charge/cool down Recoil: With the spartan laser in halo, after ever shot there is a large amount of upward recoil requiring the player to reset their aim. Perhaps the laser can have the same effect with the recoil dampening that a bit Cooling: Either cooldown rate is reduced or charge time is reduced Range: Obvious
Kaiser-Indrasil
Aside from the whole weapon balance discussion, I think it would be cool to have the option to equip the beam weapons with their own barrels. Right now they all have uniform Range and Fire Time. In order to keep their balance right, you'd have to introduce the Spread for beam lasers too. Beams could use same models of barrels as Lasers do, but they would grant different stats to Beams: