Weapon Rework/Expansion - Version 0.8

[Arthanor]

A laser shotguns is a really weird concept. (It deflects the laser beam in a "random" direction?!) A high rate of fire, low accuracy weapon would be easier to conceive of.

Beyond that, there are plasma shotguns and sniper rifles, and a variety of extra laser weapons in the "Armoury Expanded" mods that you could use (as inspiration or to tweak).

[Dioxine]

A laser shotguns is a really weird concept. (It deflects the laser beam in a "random" direction?!) A high rate of fire, low accuracy weapon would be easier to conceive of.

Multi-barrel? Fires all at once?

[chaosshade]

A laser shotguns is a really weird concept. (It deflects the laser beam in a "random" direction?!) A high rate of fire, low accuracy weapon would be easier to conceive of.

Beyond that, there are plasma shotguns and sniper rifles, and a variety of extra laser weapons in the "Armoury Expanded" mods that you could use (as inspiration or to tweak).

I've sat and given this a lot of thought actually.  Like I said, I want to cater to a bunch of different play styles as the ultimate goal of this mod.  I know it needs A LOT of tweaking for the sake of balance but I feel like I should get all the weapon concepts together first before I sit down and finalize the project.

I'm aware there's a lot of weapons available in the Alien Arsenal Expanded mod, that, combined with this mod, is what gave me the drive to take over what Rockfish abandoned.  If he comes back I'll work to negotiate some kind of deal with him but until then I'll pick up where he left off.  I want to make a large weapon mod that's fun to play and makes the game more challenging.  Even on superhuman, I find the game isn't challenging enough for me, so why not change it up by giving the aliens a veritable fun-house of weapons?  I know some of these won't even penetrate the armour provided by the Power and Flying Suits, but that's half the fun isn't it?  I need to sit down and rework the game's deployment so that as you progress further into the game the aliens have more and more powerful weapons.

As for making a "laser shotgun" you can split a laser beam irl with a prism, so why not split it with a piece of Elerium as the prism?  As far as I can tell, Elerium is a [transparent] crystalline material of unknown properties, so why not use it as a splitting prism?  The Thermal weapons are actually shotgun-like weapons (although I think in the most recent iteration I have them set as single projectile weapons) and they're kind of interesting with how effective they are.

Call for help:
I need help from spriters, please contact me.  I've realized that my "skill" with spriting simply won't cut it for a project this massive, especially if I want to change out a large number of existing skins/sprites.

[Arthanor]

You can look through the XCom Armoury Expanded for some extra sprites. Many are the work of others (who are usually credited in the rulesets), some are by me. It might save you some time to use some of the work I have done there for XCom.

Regarding the laser shotgun, if you split the beam, you also split the power. The whole point of a laser is that it is coherent and focuses energy into a very small area. A kind of "scatterer" that takes one very powerful beam and divides it into a few weak beams could work, but the effort of creating one beam powerful enough to be split into multiple beams that are still be relevant seems counter-productive. Dioxine's option of multiple, spread out barrels of lower power makes a bit more sense. Whenever I read about a laser shotgun, it brings up the idea of a spread laser (much like shotguns are implemented by spreading ammunition), which is exactly what a flashlight is: not very good as a weapon.

[chaosshade]

That's why I'm suggesting splitting with an Elerium crystal.  The "unknown" properties of the material could serve to make the light beams more powerful.  I'd also like to point out that the entire point of a shotgun (at least in most video games) is to have a large damage count achieved by having having many smaller projectiles make contact.  You are certainly right that the point of a laser is to have a super concentrated beam of light hit all in one spot.  However, I'd like to point out that a flashlight is an ineffective "weapon" because it uses all the wave lengths of light at once (though tungsten filaments typically give off a slightly yellow hue) where a laser is typically tuned for the red (laser pointers,) blue (Blu-Ray,) or Green (laser pointers, military LTADS) wavelengths.  In game it's in the yellow range.

For those who are curious, here's a "table" that details the light wavelengths in relation to their colours... this kind of has nothing to do w/ the aforementioned argument, I just thought it was a fun piece of trivia.  These wavelengths pertain specifically to visible light and produce "true" colours.
Violet Light = 400nm
Indigo Light = 445nm
Blue Light = 475nm
Green Light = 510nm
Yellow Light = 470-489nm
Orange Light = 590nm
Red Light = 650nm

Notes:
Above 400nm is the ultraviolet, x-ray, and gamma ray spectrum (the wavelength decreases and the power increases)
Below 700nm is the infrared, microwave, and radio wave spectrum (the wavelength increases the power decreases)
489nm wavelength is noted in the yellow range because it's about the yellow-orange colour that sodium-fueled street lamps emit.

[hellrazor]

I want invisible and deadly Laser Beams, so the enemy can't see me

[chaosshade]

All right, I can see this getting me nowhere... hellrazor pointed out I should suggest a Scatter Laser instead of a laser shotgun.  In XCOM2012 (hereafter referred to as 2012) they used that as a laser shotgun and it has the same shotgun limitations.  The alien version is the Alloy Cannon but Warboy kind of covered that in his shotgun mod w/ the Reinforced Shotgun and the Alloy Ammunition.

[Warboy1982]

implementationally speaking it's a piece of cake, just make a shotgun with laser damage. canonically speaking, an elerium crystal may well have the desired effect, since it's our local equivalent of magic when it comes to the laws of physics.

[hellrazor]

implementationally speaking it's a piece of cake, just make a shotgun with laser damage. canonically speaking, an elerium crystal may well have the desired effect, since it's our local equivalent of magic when it comes to the laws of physics.

Yeah right, also it is possible to give the weapon a effective maxrange (i did this with the Taser Pistol), so you can not shot targets out of the weapons effective Range. You can still forcefire but probably will do no damage.

[chaosshade]

I thought regarding the laser shotgun.  I was playing Fallout New Vegas and picked up a tri-beam laser rifle and I thought "wait... THIS is technically a scatter laser" so Dio's "multi barrel" design would be how to make a "scatter laser."  I think that would work.  Rather than a large number of small projectiles, we go with multiple beams instead, although there would definitely be intense range and accuracy limitations just based upon the existing shotgun algorithm.

Opinion:
As I looked through the files more carefully, I found that many of the new alien weapons introduced by this mod can't be manufactured, only captured.  Along that vein, should I make it so the new weapons can only be captured or should I add in manufacturing rules so weapons and ammunition can be manufactured?

[chaosshade]

Okay, so this has finally been updated again.  I'm going to include the last version in addition to this update because I didn't post it on the forum when I did it.

*IMPORTANT*
THIS MOD IS NOT COMPATIBLE WITH OTHER MODS THAT CHANGE THE ALIEN DEPLOYMENTS!
*IMPORTANT*

Compatibility:
Hobbes Terrain Pack 3.4.1

Sprite Credit to Dioxine (Plasma Sniper Rifle and Alt Shotgun 4) and Bloax (Alt Plasma Shotguns 2, 3, and 5!)

You can click here for the mod if you wanna play it.

ChangeLog:
0.3
- Weapons rebalanced (again)
- New weapons added (Plasma Shotgun, Plasma Sniper Rifle)
- New sprites added
- Weapons now in correct order in the UFOpadia and Inventory
- Added Compatability for Terrain Pack Nightly
- Rebalanced Alien Deployments

0.2
- More bug fixes (all weapons should work now!)
- Special thanks to Warboy for his assistance on bug hunting.

[Bluedrake42]

Just FYI this doesn't seem to work with the nightly build, some of the sprites are mixed up. For instance the Battle Rifle is showing the Thermal Rifle sprites.

[Solarius Scorch]

Just FYI this doesn't seem to work with the nightly build, some of the sprites are mixed up. For instance the Battle Rifle is showing the Thermal Rifle sprites.

It normally happens when listOrder is above 1000. Is this the case here?

[Bluedrake42]

No idea honestly, just saying what I saw =/

[chaosshade]

I know what's causing that, I've already fixed it but I haven't posted the update yet.  I'll get right on that.

EDIT:  All fixed, delete the old version and install the new one.

*IMPORTANT*
THIS MOD IS NOT COMPATIBLE WITH OTHER MODS THAT CHANGE THE ALIEN DEPLOYMENTS!
*IMPORTANT*

Compatibility:
Hobbes Terrain Pack 3.4.1

Sprite Credit to Dioxine (Plasma Sniper Rifle and Alt Shotgun 4) and Bloax (Alt Plasma Shotguns 2, 3, and 5!)

You can click here for the mod if you wanna play it.

ChangeLog:
0.4:
- Updated to work with new file structure
- Weapons rebalanced (again)
- New Weapon:  Laser Shotgun
- More new sprites
- ALL weapons can be manufactured now
- ALL ammuntion can be manufactured now