My personal take on a very old dispute...

[Zarel]

Zarel (correct me if I'm wrong) seems skeptical on how it would look like while you understandeably wouldn't want to work on something that is not likely to succeed.

Nah, I'm just saying it would take a lot of work to look good - I'm confident that if Olrox spent enough time on it, we would end up with something fairly high-quality. If nothing else, we can just scale down existing tank turrets.

The bigger issue now is that I just don't think it's a good idea from a balance perspective. You'd have to learn a whole new set of weapons. Cyborg weapons are designed for cyborgs, and have their quirks (such as being easier to angle up to hit air units)... It doesn't make much more sense than just sticking weight-restricted tank weapons on them...

Why does that sound oddly familiar... Oh, I remember now https://gna.org/patch/?774

I wouldn't mind something like that.

I think it would be better to have a boolean value to indicate fitness as a secondary weapon, and an arbitrary rotation restriction value for each body connector. And we really need to clean up the connectors. :-S

I still don't like rotation restriction...

[DuKe2112]

The earth 2150 series had this. So one should get some inspiration there. They did it by defining sizes for the mount points and turrets. And a turret could be placed on a mount point that same size or bigger.

It is pretty much decided that this will go together with a nearly complete redesign of chassis and weapons, isn't it?
I have seen people already started doing this, so there will probably be no better time than now to decide how multiple turrets are to be dealt with, after all the grafics were pretty much the worst problem in the past?

As for balancing: I would simply put that issue completely aside here, as it has nothing to do with how it's implemented in the first place. This is just about adding the possibility. If you are scared of throwing the campaign off balance just don't define additional mount points there (for now). But it would probably just mean toning town some weapons so that multiple turrets become necessary to get equal units.

And for the Cyborg Weapons, I think Zarax just suggested them as a basis to introduce the subject with little work. But it will probably be better to do it from scratch, along with the graphics.

For the actual implementation, I'd say Warzones biggest Problem is that all the original weapons are in a relatively big turret. If you make lets say the first machinegun a bit smaller it could be easily considered a secondary weapon.

Finding suitable mountpoints might be difficult though. Current chassis weren't designed for them, but some could be adapted. I like the idea of mountpoints on the propulsion casing, like in the artpiece above. Could be a tech, too.
Even having a light mountpoint on a heavy weapon is possible. Some of todays tanks have a machine gun ontop of their cannon.

[Per]

I still don't like rotation restriction...

It is (almost) impossible to stop the horrible clipping without it. Even if you make the weapons so small that they won't clip each other when facing each other, the one could shoot through the other and make things look really awful (it is not nice to get the muzzle graphics clipping into the other weapon either). If look at other games that have multiple weapons (eg SupCom), they have rotation restriction. What specifically do you not like about it?

[3drts]

Limit it to the "light weapons"
When a weapon line comes in 3 or more "sizes", allow the smallest size

Ie, light cannon, not medium/heavy

Minipod but not: MR-Array, lancer, TK, scourge

Needle gun, but not rail nor Gauss.

Flamer, but not inferno nor plasmite.

No indirect fire weapons (ie, no mortar, even though you have the bombard and pepperpot, same goes with howies)

Light machine gun (ok, allow the twin too), not heavy/assault (but then you'd need to keep it in the design menu?), light machine gun is an ideal 2ndary turret, 10 power is nothing, but 50 more hp is nice, and in campaign, it cleans up scav infantry nicely as a 2ndary weapon on my cobras and pythons (sadly the scavs dissappear, and it becomes just a 200 weight, 10 power, 50 hp boost)

Lasers: I viewed flash, pulse, heavy as equiv to light, med, heavy, when heavy was introduced, but others disagree, and the similarity of pulse and flash (one replaces the other now) make allowing either of these as a 2ndary turret questionable.

Or we could just make it simple: you are allowed a machinegun/twin MG/Flamer as a secondary weapon, nothing else.
Your tanks would thus have some measure of increased anti-cyborg capabilities (wouldn't help much vs lancer/cannon borgs at max range, but flamer borgs against heavy tanks with flamers would surely suffer more).

If its not anti-cyborg, and it has to be small, I don't really see the point.

[Zarax]

Nah, I'm just saying it would take a lot of work to look good - I'm confident that if Olrox spent enough time on it, we would end up with something fairly high-quality. If nothing else, we can just scale down existing tank turrets.

Well, I never said it would be simple to make it work in a good looking and balanced way but we have to start from somewhere.

The bigger issue now is that I just don't think it's a good idea from a balance perspective. You'd have to learn a whole new set of weapons. Cyborg weapons are designed for cyborgs, and have their quirks (such as being easier to angle up to hit air units)... It doesn't make much more sense than just sticking weight-restricted tank weapons on them...

I didn't say we have to keep the exact same properties as the cyborg weapons but rather that they are an easy base material to start with, as placeholder for further refinements if you wish.

As for balance... It seems to be a field where you deal pretty well with most issues. If this gets in imho it would at least feel refreshing to discuss a new feature balance instead of having a newbie popping up every once in a while asking to implement multiple turrets in game.

Also, nobody is asking to put it in the main campaign or something like that, just think about the potential for modders.

I still don't like rotation restriction...

I think the reasons leading to restrictions have been highlighted pretty well.
The only other solution would be a coaxial weapon but it has the major drawback to be hell to design properly as it would have to fit dozen of possible combinations.
That said, having the possibility of trying in game the various solutions would still be better than coming with theoretical discussions.

Finally, IIRC it was you that gave the dragon body the ability to carry 2 turrets in order to make it special in spite of all the drawbacks... Just think how it could be if you gave the artists a chance to make it look good and still be balanced.

All I can do here is just argue for it and post copy/paste sketch of possible arrangements but I think that the best way to test its feasibility is to try.
What can you loose? Worst case you can have a big sticky with this thread and "this is why there aren't multiple turrets in game" as a title.

[Olrox]

Yep, if we reach a no-go or the idea is approved, we at least can add that to the Frequently Propposed Ideas, classified as the outcome happens to be.

Limit it to the "light weapons"

I think that making the secondary weapons with lower accuracy and essentialy lower range would make them significantly nerfed, so that "invincible tanks" aren't a reality.

I agree that artillery would be too much to add in any way, but perhaps the MRA and SMRA could have smaller versions.

Getting back to the most recent questions, I think that it's crucial that we have a complete feasibility analysis before goingt any further with balancing problems. Balance can be achieved in any way, maybe it'll be hard as hell - I'm not underestimating the importance of balance in any means- but hopefully won't be too troublesome.

But it's unavoidable to know if it is possible or not.

Again - the angle restrictions would range between frontal angles, not side angles (as proposed in the "Lateral Weapons Topic") - for good reasons I may not bring forth here. Those would serve to further nerf the secondary weapons.

All those nerfing attributes I'm proposing should be many but slight - I don't think that a good balance is to be achieved in large steps, but rather many, many small ones, and I really think that many of you would agree.

It's pretty much like making a good texture (or many other good things): you won't have a good one if you use a small number of layers while working in your texture, but you should use many subtle ones to produce a good effect.

~Olrox

[Zarax]

That's my point as well.

In some other places balance was achieved by making a secondary weapon having a very low ROF or function as "first salvo".

If you put a 45° (as example, please do not take the values literally) frontal arch limit, lower damage and/or ROF then you have a justifiable light weapon that works in support of the main turret.

Fine tuning and lots of testing can help with balance until you have the feature smoothly integrated in the game.
It won't be simple but I believe it's a challenge that can be overcome.

[Olrox]

It won't be simple but I believe it's a challenge that can be overcome.

And it's worthy to be, I must complement

~Olrox

[Zarel]

It is (almost) impossible to stop the horrible clipping without it. Even if you make the weapons so small that they won't clip each other when facing each other, the one could shoot through the other and make things look really awful (it is not nice to get the muzzle graphics clipping into the other weapon either). If look at other games that have multiple weapons (eg SupCom), they have rotation restriction. What specifically do you not like about it?

Warzone is not SupCom. And for good reason. Do you know how many features of SupCom were removed in SupCom2, because the designers realized it was a bad idea? The "power flow" system was one of them, which is why I believe it should be removed from Warzone trunk, as well. I can't tell from the demo, but it seems the "weird angles" lateral weapons were removed as well.

As mentioned elsewhere, I am fine with a front turret being angle-restricted to the front 180°, but as I say, I draw the line at having a weapon that can't face forward... That's regardless of realism - a game that is fun is superior to a game that is realistic.

[Zarax]

Err, I don't think anybody ever asked for a weapon pointing anywhere else than forward...

And please, let's focus on the additional weapon slots, we have better threads for general balance

[Olrox]

Err, I don't think anybody ever asked for a weapon pointing anywhere else than forward...

And please, let's focus on the additional weapon slots, we have better threads for general balance

Hmm, warzonero recently did, and was already rejected due to obvious reasons. I agree with Zarel that if we're going to have angle limitations, they should be to frontal areas only - I guess that this wasn't specified here before, but think it's pretty much about what Zarax and me were thinking about.

That last phrase could also use complementation - "let's focus on feasibility of secondary weapons and slots limited to them" - If not what Zarax meant, let those be my own words

~Olrox

[Zarax]

Yep, if we want to do this better do it with our feet on the ground.

This is not meant to become a thread about anything else than making a very old feature request balanced and feasible in game.

[DuKe2112]

Hmm, I think part of the problem is that we are talking about two or thre different thing and once and mixing it up a bit.

I would split it up into these steps/parts:
1. - making it possible at all. (simple as that, even just for mods)
2. - Checking how current chassis and turret designs could be adapted to fit together.
3. - Balancing the stats to make it useable in skirmish.
4. - Deciding if and how to incorporate it into campaign.

1. - I'm not familiar with WZ engine and scripting yet, so I keep it general, one needs to be able to define the following:
- size for the turrets. Either scaled or just classified.
- several mount points with individual position, size and maybe(!) even tilt angle. Also rotation restriction.
- mount points should not be limited to chassis but also available to propulsion and maybe(!) even other turrets.
- GUI needs to auto adapt to the actual number of turrets.

2. For the chassis it would mostly be one low rotation restricted one in the front and one 360° one slightly elevated in the back, or similar constructions. If the graphics are so that all propulsion have a casing that is solidly attached to the side of the chassis, one can consider the total wide to place two turrets side by side.
The of course is the possibility of attaching it to the propulsion or on top of a flat headed canon turret. Even a heavy turret thats sole purpose is to support room for 2-3 light points.

3. Ok that needs more veteran players to do. But please don't start differing between weapon and support turrets, I like the idea of a not completely defenseless commander. An my favorite unit in moon project is the big Lunar 4 point chassis with one repair unit and three weapons.

4. No real idea, maybe just adding it to the tech tree and some more balancing.

[theArmourer]

My 2c.

Multi-weapon chassis should only be seperately designed, not modified from the game. For example:
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4890 The ones from the original game were designed to use one turret. It could be set up as an option in the skirmish game menu, a setting to turn dual-turret bodies.

[Olrox]

My 2c.

Multi-weapon chassis should only be seperately designed, not modified from the game. For example:
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4890 The ones from the original game were designed to use one turret. It could be set up as an option in the skirmish game menu, a setting to turn dual-turret bodies.

This body (nice one, btw xD ) was designed to support two turrets but in a way it won't look weird if only using one turret.

If we need smaller slots, it's even easier. As I said, we are remaking the bodies in AR, so making small slots on medium and heavy bodies won't affect the overall design too much. I already thought of a way to do exactly that.

If they are made not to look wrong when with a single turret, I don't see why not using the same models. But toggling the availability of secondary turrets would be interesting, if possible.

Secondary weapons could require research like super cyborgs do, but with the single prereq of having researched the standard version (unlike super HPV borgs, that require super heavy gunners to be available). Those could be called "<weapon name> miniaturization" or something like that.

What we need to know right now is if it's possible, so that we don't waste our times discussing wether it would be good or not, how should it be called, what's the best design options, etc.

We need to know if the following is possible, before going any further with discussions, IMO:
Is it possible to have a separate turret category (secondary weapons) for certain connectors assigned to the bodies? We can have that along with weight limitations (preferrably relative to the body's engine output), so that the player may choose only balanced combos.

Is it possible to limit the firing angle to the frontal 180° (maybe even 210°, covering a bit of the sides as well) for all those secondary weapons or for specific connector's weapons?

Can we make it so that the secondary weapons only fire automatically (will fire at nearest targets, won't necessarily fire at the targeted object)? That would be useful to control the main weapon to perform its main role and have the secondary weapons automatic, so that they can fire at other threats while the main gun fires at your designated target.

I thank anybody who can answer those questions insightfully, and also thanks those who understand that knowing this is essential to get into further details. I think Zarax agrees on that.

~Olrox