Weapon design question
 

I'm trying to figure out how to add some "sci-fi" weapons to the game.

Anyone have suggestions how to implement the following?
Laser: Essentially can hit whatever it can see quite easily, but its effects would be blocked by obscurants and performace degraded by weather effect.
My thoughts are to treat it as a HEAT weapon, with a small warhead size and high penetration.

Plasma gun: Essentially this weapon would have high damage/penetration at short ranges and then dissipate at medium/long ranges.
My thoughts are to use the AP weapon type and set a short range, but I don't think at longer ranges the penetration would suffer enough?

Re: Weapon design question
 

There is some discussion on Sci-Fi mods going on already on the old DOS SPMBT Yahoo! discussion forum.

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/SPMBT/

You may want to check that out, as they may already have a wheel available, so you don't have to re-invent it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif!

Cheers
Andy

Re: Weapon design question
 

For laser, I am personnally quite fond of one solution, which is a flame weapon (vehicle flame) with low warhead size and high HEK, which will animate just like an autocannon (small puffs) and set fire to the hex. If you add a custom sound (sharp, dry clack) you can make a good high-energy, burst-firing laser.
You can use the HE warhead as standard (that would prevent you from having messages like "firing laser gun with HEAT ammo"... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif) and set it to a high penetration. Anyway, a HEAT laser will be subjeced to ERA defence too...

As for having it subjected to wheather and smoke, the only way I can see is, as some already put it, to affect it to a low-vis unit which won't be able to target through smoke. Technically it could fire, but the result is just the same.