Project Omega (WIP - Mature content - Chapter 1 done)

battery - each battery acts like a ammo clip in today’s guns …

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And they slice your enemies in half, someone else played Fallout2 back in the day I see. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
If you don’t want to provide one at the start (maybe they’re kind of new and very expensive) just keep them in mind for later on. They’d be a good fit for my tech-loving synth mc.

Uhm…for my mc the muscle upgrade wouldn’t be so much about combat efficiency as it would be about generally being stronger and looking even cuter. :grin:
Though I suppose being able to deliver quite a punch as an absolute last resort may not hurt in some cases, though my mc would prefer to avoid close quarters combat, whenever he can.

Like Eiwynn said, battery packs are usually the go to ammo for laser weapons, another couple ideas from Fallout are the solar charger (need to be outside in bright sunlight for the recharge) and some limited and (very) expensive breeder batteries that slowly recharge the weapon, but are bad at sustained or automatic fire.
Of course like in the real world, battery packs from one manufacturer may not be compatible with the weapons of another due to proprietary shenanigans.

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How would it influence the damage type though? From a reloading point of view I totally agree (but I’m avoiding reloading for now as , quite frankly, it’s annoying as hell) but I’m not sure how different batteries would change the damage type (beyond stronger battery = more power).

To give more details on the ammo types - I’m thinking armour piercing for heavily armoured (mechanoids), incendiary for organics, EMP based for synthetics etc.

Good point. Strength doesn’t have to mean combat efficiency. Going to have to put that my many notes!

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Yep, it would be about transitioning from a cute but skinny/lean body (what we have now, I imagine) to being cute with the body of young Arnie.

A couple of ways -
1st: different chemicals make different batteries… NiCad batteries can be (in your psudo-science) one type, Lithium Ion batteries can be another, so on and so forth

2nd: base it on real world lasers with different hardware in the construction (eg frequencies) do different things - the thing I don’t like about this is non-tech people will grow bored of such detail …

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WOW!

I like it! It is real action!

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If we’re talking about pure lasers, I may not be as well-versed in the actual science as some around here, but emitters in the green spectrum are generally best for use in planetary atmospheres.
Then there is the pesky fact that sci-fi writers gloss over mostly that a secondary function of real pure laser weapons would be blinding (temporarily or permanently) any human onlookers, though maybe the synth has the necessary eye protection built-in or can get it as an upgrade or you can ignore that pesky fact, like most sci-fi writers, a subtle tweak to make fiction more enjoyable than real-life.

Here’s a useful link about sci-fi weaponry and some of the science behind it, and why the real world will probably never be as cool as sci-fi fiction. :cry:

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Great stuff, can’t wait to see more

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Maybe one of the ways you balance lasers against traditional projectile weapons is that, while powerful, amazingly accurate, and effectively an instant hit, they can only cover a few types of damage and can’t do everything?

I could see an ultraviolet or X-ray laser giving good piercing, while an infrared does incendiary. Visible spectrum lasers may have more piercing than IR, but less than UV or X-ray… but more incendiary than those two as a balance. But if the laser can do everything, why use anything else? Maybe EMP can only be provided through special projectiles (EMP bullets? EMP shotgun slugs?) or portable generators (EMP hand grenades? EMP landmines or satchel charges?)

That’s a good point—laser energy will be both absorbed and scattered by any atmosphere it passes through. Certain wavelengths will pass through more efficiently, maintaining a greater percentage of their power at long range. Other wavelengths will lose power more quickly. Maybe a smokescreen can render a laser mostly-useless while projectiles punch straight through? Oh, neat, that article actually mentions smoke and weather as factors that degrade laser performance. I suspect any “lasers” I write would end up a bit more science fiction than science, but maybe I’m not as far off as I would have guessed. Fascinating article, by the way. I’m still reading through it. Thanks for linking it!

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MistakesAhead


unwanted inverted commas (")

It should be “Solemn”…

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I could see an ultraviolet or X-ray laser giving good piercing, while an infrared does incendiary. Visible spectrum lasers may have more piercing than IR, but less than UV or X-ray… but more incendiary than those two as a balance. But if the laser can do everything, why use anything else? Maybe EMP can only be provided through special projectiles (EMP bullets? EMP shotgun slugs?) or portable generators (EMP hand grenades? EMP landmines or satchel charges?)

My inner geek is grinning :smiley: But you’ve also hit the nail on the head, I don’t want anything to be TOO good. There’s also an issue that if you over specialize you’re left up with a battle where you can’t damage the enemy. If this happens too often it’s going to get very annoying for the player. My idea percolated a few months back and came to the conclusion that ammo types would provide a bonus against certain types but would still do a base level of damage to other targets.

There are some amazing ideas already about weapon tech (smoke and lasers - loving it), keep them coming please guys!

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Thank you AmericanShakespeare! Much appreciated :slight_smile:

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This is the exact reaction I wanted! :smiley: Glad you liked it!!

Lasers are also power hogs and if they are a relatively new form of weaponry in the world of your story they and their ammo battery packs would be more expensive then some of the other options. They may also fire fewer shots per clip, so with lasers you’d have to make each shot count (but when they do hit, yeah they’d be instant kills against most unprotected targets) then with some of the other options.
Despite their drawbacks I feel they’d be a good fit for my synth mc, and may also serve to underline that he isn’t quite who he used to be anymore.

I just did, woah most of those synth guys are very cute. :yum: If Olyvar (WIll Tudor) is the synth standard model I’ve really got nothing to complain about. Still some of those synths were designed to fill the shortage in caregiver and nursing jobs apparently, so maybe that strength upgrade (aside from making the mc really look like the Greek Adonis ideal) could have been indeed designed not for combat efficiency but to be able to easily and relatively effortlessly lift and carry overweight people for kilometers if necessary. Or of course move heavy furniture around, etc.

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Okay, I’m going out on a limb here and saying that you guys and gals REALLY like lasers. I’ll see what I can do :wink:

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Not only lasers but laser fitted mechas too with lots of lasers and electromagnetic shields.

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Don’t have much to say except that this game is super badass. Love the action. Keep it up!

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So more lore questions, how are synthetics and AI regarded in this society do they have full human (sapient, whatever) rights, or are they still regarded as just gadgets? If so it may not be such a good idea to reveal too much about our new, um situation. :sweat:

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Good questions! Synthetics have full sentient rights but they are always inhabited by a “human” rather than an AI. Full sentient AI requires extensive hardware requirements that would quite simply not run in such a limited processing unit.

AI systems do not have sentient rights. There are varying levels of AI, from the full on aware systems that govern parts of the city infrastructure (traffic, power etc) and that each corporation has, to the specialised adaptive programs that can evolve to a point on more limited hardware systems but would never acquire true sentience without a serious hardware upgrade (like the upcoming AI pets).

Further more there are hard coded restrains that stop a sentient AI from being able to just commandeer a synthetic system and control it from afar. Basically a sentient AI system requires hardware custom designed to its neural networks to be able to perform at sentient level. So the traffic AI can’t operate anywhere outside of it’s network because the infrastructure would not be tailored to match “the way it thinks”.

Hopefully that makes sense, it’s been a long day.

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