so, I was reading the thread about lowering drone costs and dps. Personally, and I've said this on here before, I believe that the cost of weapons for other classes should be raised rather than considering a nerf of drones to allow lower costs, but these two ideas just popped into my head:


idea 1:
why not make some powerful, high end weapons have limited uses? Say a type of thorax that will fire 1000 shots and then it detonates (kind of like overloader fail, but with a guaranteed lifespan)? The cred sink potential is obvious - these weapons can be extremely expensive as long as the benefit/power is proportional to the expense.

idea 2:
Make weapons some weapons that operate at half capacity without a charge - perhaps a fee that is paid at AI bases to get them to "refuel" the weap? kind of like the way the lion tweak generator works for example, except with a more direct expense component.

Just thoughts, maybe terrible thoughts, but I was bored and drinking coffee and wanted to toss out a couple ideas I didn't think I'd seen before rather than reading rehashes of the same ones.

Clam

We already have a prototype mash-up of both of your suggestions: AI-base bought expendable overloaders. To my knowledge, not too many squads bring a stack of Titan Overloaders to Olympus and distribute to their DPS members as they pop. Until we see such behavior, there's no reason to expect anyone to use such as weapon as you describe in the first part.

I do like the idea of tweak generators that actually cost a fair bit to run. That strikes me as similar to fueled energies that use some exotic and expensive fuel (although that idea is out the window in my mind since the current endgame energies are already so broken).

I see why you choose to make the overloader comparison, but it's not at all the same. The type of weaps I'm talking about would have a high build cost but would have the potential of lasting more than 1 run. A Titan overloader dies within 5-10 minutes of combat. You'd only need to bring 1-2 of what I propose. I just said 1000 shots as a random example - I would imagine the easiest would be to have the display say % remaining and then simply have whatever number of shots would be required for at least a few hours of decent usage - this way the weapons can be more expensive.

Also, what I'm proposing could potentially make more powerful weapons than any overloader can be. The reason is that overloaders work with ANY damage type - these weapons would only do a single damage type, and therefore should be able to reach higher level of bonuses according to the balance sheet.

Basically, and this would be were devs come in, they should last long enough that they're not a total cash piss-pot, but last a short enough time that they require regular rebuilding.

Titan overloader dies with 20sec max .

Balancing disposable weapons so they are not stupidly broken, and make them expensive enough to be a sink. Or not broken because they are cheap as heck and deal less than spectacular damage... Pretty much guarantees they will not see the light of day. Or if they do they will go the way of disposable overloaders.

Its a good idea and you put some thought into it. But to balance it so the cost is worth the risk of being weaponless, or its actually worth using in the first place is just not gonna happen. Admins either make a weapon stupidly broken. And it has to be nerfed. Or they make a weapon that is underpowered and has to be beefed, or later falls into obscurity and is collected by weird people like yugioh who love odd shiny objects that sparkle.

Now the idea of having a charge.. Well that has been discussed a few times. And I still believe a set of railguns with special ones for gunner would be nice. With different types of ammo that can be built that determine damage, energy consumption and other effects like damage type or tweaks would be kickass.

But I don't know if that was ever going to go anywhere. I know its been suggested dozens of times too.