About mass battery: A complete overhaul of the weapon system - a secondary weapon slot

[proper ermine]

What do you think about a different approach to handle the "problem" of the dominance of the mass battery in most battle situations ?

Actually the mass battery is working best to handle different situations in (D)RS, BLS and WS:

• Small Cerberus hiding behind the massive stronger ships ? ➙ Mass battery
• Opponents' freighters covered by their battleships ? ➙ Mass battery
• Missiles and rockets everywhere ? ➙ Mass battery

A secondary weapon slot

You can choose the same system for primary and secondary weapon. To decide if this is a good idea you need to read further 🤪

Both weapon systems can fire at the same target if the target is in the range of both systems.

Primary weapon

• The primary weapon would almost work like the actual only weapon slot. But with a small but distinct changes.

• Every weapon would have an target switching delay. Maybe even a bit longer than it's now. Weapon system without an actual switching delay will get a delay. As a sidenote: The primary pulse should not fire automatically every twelve seconds: No enemy in range means it's in snooze mode. New enemies around and it's needing some time to power up before the first pulse.

• There would be a target selection option. Three buttons to choose from: attack closest or cull weakest or attack strongest.

• If the weapon is choosing its next target it's using the selected option. It doesn't automatically change the target between a dogfight.

• If your ships are already engaged in a battle a possible target better matching the selected criteria is highlighted

• Pressing again the already selected option causes the weapon to re-evaluate its possible targets. And it will attack the highlighted target.

• Therefore with the cost of the delay you can manually select a new target for the primary weapon. ( Lasers don't loose their power up due to this target switching. For a while they are firing into the void ).

• Pulse does only AOE damage without any selected target. So it doesn't have a targeting selection button.

• If two possible targets are equally weak or strong, the closest is chosen.

• If two possible targets are at the same distance, the weakest is chosen.

Secondary weapons

• The secondary weapons are weaker. Maybe only 2/3 of the damage output. In the case of rocket launcher or pulse it could be more decreased.

• They have a shorter range, too. Maybe 80% of its primary weapon cousin.

• They don't have a targeting selector option. They are choosing the targets like it's now: First come, first served. And closest first. No option to reselect a new target until the first is destroyed or out of range.

• In the case of chain ray, you can't support a single turret or ship with both slots at the same time. But you can support different friendly ships/turrets.

• The added damage and range by a secondary chain ray is of course smaller.

• A secondary pulse is able to fire every ten seconds ( instead of twelve ) for the cost of even more reduced damage. But it's able to pulse without snoozing.

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Other notes

• Suppress, weapon amplifier and solitude are only effecting the primary weapon.

• EMP is disabling both weapon systems. And furthermore EMP is causing the weapons to lose their target and is causing a weapon switch delay plus power up time for lasers and pulse.

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A quick and dirty mock-up of how it could look like ...

[oblique crow]

I would just buff other weapon’s damage/target switch delay significantly, until it makes sense to pick them over mass battery

I like this idea too, whatever will be implemented will be more interesting than now