[Request] Advanced weaponry and variety (Stellaris)

[Lurmey]

Hiya, I've been using Combat Extended and RimmuNation to provide my weapons and while I can honestly say that I enjoy kitting out my soldiers with real military loudouts (normally the British Army equipment), I find that many mods just focus on existing weaponry and don't stray into the realm of science fiction (or science future) very much and it can get a bit samey.

The weapons I have in mind are along the lines of the weapons seen in Stellaris. Simply put, kinetic and directed-energy weapons.

I want several tiers of weapons in these categories à la Stellaris. Stellaris' primary energy weapons begin with the red laser and progress through blue, UV, Xray and finish on gamma. It also has plasma weaponry: plasma throwers, accelerators and cannons.

The kinetic weapons in Stellaris begin with the mass driver and progress through the coilgun, railgun, advanced railgun and finally the gauss cannon. It also has autocannons which are so similar to things like the minigun in the game that they're not worth bothering with and kinetic batteries which level into kinetic artillery and mega cannons which level into Giga cannons.

Some of these weapons would use different damage types that are pretty much unused in the game. Every weapon I see just fires bullets that deal sharp damage but there are other damage types like heat and electric damage that are largely ignored. The Arc emitter could deal electric damage, the other energy weapons like lasers and plasma throwers could deal heat damage. This would indeed mean that using only directed-energy weapons would be really effective as less-than-lethal weapons to incapacitate but not kill potential recruits. It would leave them horribly scarred with burns, though, and can still destroy whole limbs.

Kinetic weapons would:

• Tear through personal shields
• Have low armour penetration
• Have incredibly high damage output
• Be hard to aim/inaccurate
• Deal sharp damage
• Be long range
• Require ammo/reloading

Directed-energy weapons would:

• Deal no damage to personal shields and be totally blocked by them
• Tear through armour like it's butter
• Have low damage output
• Be incredibly accurate
• Deal heat/electric damage
• Be short range
• Not require ammo but have long cooldowns to well... cool down and recharge

They're basically opposites of each other. One falls into the role of close-range, accurate anti-armour and the other is long range, less accurate anti-shields.

Laser and mass driver weapons should be small-arms for colonists to carry. Kinetic batteries, plasma throwers and proton/neutron launchers should be launchers, not single use, but harder to wield and less commonly seen on the battlefield. Mega/Giga cannons, Arc emitters and lances should be permanent emplacements that can be controlled by a colonist like a mortar can be but does actually require line-of-sight to fire. Basically, any weapon marked with the "X" on the page below is a emplacement, any weapon which is only an "L" is a launcher and any that is either an "M" or "S" is a small-arms weapon.

You can find information about all the weapons in Stellaris on the wiki page below. This lists everything from kinetic and directed-energy weapons to missiles, strike craft and point-defense. Actually, if desired, you could implement a few of the point-defense turrets that could cause launcher projectiles to pre-emptively explode if hit by them, saving your colonists. That would be cool.

https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Weapon_components

The point of this is basically just to have a lot more variety, since Stellaris has such a nice weapon system with loads of variety and tactics, it seems like a good fit. I would totally use these in my colonies and I would love to see raiders using them, too. It would be even cooler if only a specific faction could use them and when that faction raids you, you get a warning before they attack which states what weapon types they're using so you can counter it effectively if you have the equipment. Oh, and a personal shield that you can fire through would be handy, it wouldn't be as strong as the vanilla personal shield and wouldn't allow you to use long-range weapons or launchers, just short-medium range weapons.

Edit: I forgot to mention that this should also be compatible with CE. It would only really require one or two types of ammo for the kinetic weapons since energy weapons won't use ammo at all. The mass driver weapons would use small steel rods while the larger launchers and emplacements, the kinetic battery and mega cannons, would use larger and heavier steel projectiles that deal more damage etc.

[Razzoriel]

Stellaris uses weapons for interstellar warfare of giant spaceships doing dogfights. Not very translatable to Rimworld. How are you going to make nuclear warheads pierce through shields?

[Lurmey]

Stellaris uses weapons for interstellar warfare of giant spaceships doing dogfights. Not very translatable to Rimworld. How are you going to make nuclear warheads pierce through shields?

You're thinking too literal. The aim of the request is for weapons that are different from the usual firearms that every mod adds to the game. I never suggested using nuclear warheads (rocketry weapons), just kinetic and energy weapons. I used Stellaris as an example of the kind of weaponry that could be created, not as a literal "take this from this game and put it in Rimworld". I thought I made that pretty clear in the original post.

Of course, they're perfectly translatable. If XCOM 2 can have railguns, Gauss and plasma guns then Rimworld can too. It's literally just a case of creating a weapon that deals a different kind of damage and creating a texture for it that isn't a boring old M4A1.

[Canute]

There are more then enough Weapon mod's with advance weaponry out there.
Some of these weapon let your boring old M4A1 look's like paintball gun.

Unless you are realy wanting a Stellaris weapon theme.

[Lurmey]

There are more then enough Weapon mod's with advance weaponry out there.
Some of these weapon let your boring old M4A1 look's like paintball gun.

Unless you are realy wanting a Stellaris weapon theme.

Well, where are they? All the weapon mods I see either add a lot of real weapons, like CE, RT's Weapons, RimmuNation and tons of others. I've seen the odd futuristic weapon in various mods here and there but those mods are more general, adding advanced content across the board, like Sparkling Worlds, which focuses on adding more glittertech to Rimworld in line with the core game.

On top of this, I've never seen a weapon added by any mod deal anything other than the normal sharp damage, which makes them no different from adding normal firearms. The gameplay is identical, the only difference is the looks and sounds.

I thought of Stellaris's weapons because the game has all the weapons I thought could fit in the game. Energy weapons that dish out heat damage, electric weapons that deal electric damage and railguns that deal sharp damage because that's the only one that makes sense for those. But not only do they deal different damage types, they'd also function differently than just the standard "pistols have short range and low damage, rifles can burst-fire at medium range, snipers are highly damaging at long range but slow". As I explained, they'd have pros and cons that make them function like a game of rock-paper-scissors instead of rock-rock...

The kinetic weapons would be a counter to personal shields but any decent armour would completely block them, for example. None of the weapons would alone be overpowered as they all have something that counters them. This is how Stellaris does it and it's why I chose to use Stellaris as the example.

[Canute]

Yeah, it is hard to find a weapon only mod.
But most mod deliver a faction/race as enemy too, so you superpower weapons have a proper counterpart.
Some of these weapon are that strong that 1 pawn can easyly destroy a tribe raid before lunch.

The best overall balanced are Rimsenal
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=11160.0
It is even divided into serveral mod parts, for weapon/armor  and extra factions.

But honestly, i don't encounter any weapon that will alter the gameplay that much that you notice any difference.
But you will notice a difference when a Raider faction is completly equiped with doomsday launcher.

To bad, the current rimworld design of shield belt don't made any difference to Range attacks. It blocks all incoming dangerous energy (don't forget matter is energy too).
Ohh now i bet you want say, like a famous physican at his shows, how can an energy field block all kind's of energy and matter at the same time.
And i answer, same like you can have handheld gauss/rail/plasma/Laser system. Do you know how much energy they need.

If you want something different try out some mod's that add abilities, Like Star Wars Force, Vampire,Werwolfs or
Rim of Magic
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=37161.0

[Razzoriel]

If anyone manages to find shields which can resist different types of damage types in different intensities, i'd be very interested in the code behind it.