View source for Comm-Link:Weapons Mount Updates

Simple to play, difficult to master: it’s a well-accepted philosophy that forms the core of great game design. And with [[Star Citizen]]’s ships and their components, it’s a mission statement. The ultimate goal for [[Arena Commander]] (and ultimately a persistent universe) is that it will be simple for a player to pick up a ship, launch off into space and enjoy the experience. At the same time, we are building a customization system that allows for near-infinite complexity and a constant sense of progression. You don’t HAVE to drill down to specifics like weapons mounts or technology overclocking… but you can, and the game will reward you for it.

Balance is also a massively important issue in a skill-based combat scenario like Arena Commander. You need an experience with progression—players striving to earn a better ship, gun, reward—alongside the desire never to have a single ‘best’ endgame. Everyone should want to continue developing their ships, but no one should ever have a universal advantage for doing so. Over the past months, we’ve been studying the results of early iterations of Arena Commander, we’ve been observing matches, reading backer comments, following the endless ‘input type’ battles and more.

As the next stage in space combat evolution, in [[Star Citizen Patch V1.1.0|Star Citizen 1.1]], you can expect to see changes on how weapons and hardpoints will function. The idea of balancing gimbaled hardpoints has been in the plans since the beginning, and with 1.1 we’re introducing it into the wild. The end result is that players will have more choice over what weapons they can attach… but with more of an impact on gameplay resulting from those choices.

Why? Increased granularity in weapons makes for the best possible experience and a system that rewards skilled pilots for forgoing certain creature comforts is good for balance all around. We want to see players forced to make meaningful decisions about their loadouts in relation to their personal play style rather than simply having them pick the ‘best’ gun or missile. Expect to see further changes to this balance as other aspects of Arena Commander’s [[flight model]] come online; for example, gun functionality will be defined not only by size, but by aspects like their power requirements, electromagnetic signature and more.

== Weapon sizes ==

The first, simpler change relates to weapon size. In the past, weapons have been defined by a type (class 1, class 2, etc.) and a size (size 1, size 2.) This allowed us a certain amount of control over the base loadouts: you can’t put a huge gun on a tiny ship, you can’t put a missile where a gun is intended to go and so on. But this system has some issues, chief among them the fact that in addition to confusing new pilots, it doesn’t make natural sense; why is a missile rack class 3 or a turret class 4? Or even worse some weapon hardpoint classes were really for different sizes of the same type of item – class 5, 6 and 7 hardpoints were all for different sized manned turrets (from the Constellation to a [[Capital ships|Capital ship]] turret that you may see on a Bengal Carrier)

[[File:Comm-Link-design-mounts-Designweapons-Wildm50.png|thumb|right|The wild m50 stalks its prey]]

The old system of weapon hardpoint “classes” was invented before we had implemented the actual hardpoint system in the game code. The system implemented in the game, which everyone has been using since Arena Commander v0.8, is called the itemport system and classifies what can accepted on the port by a “type” (an itemport is able to have multiple types it can accept) and “size”. Every item in the game has a type and a size in its item definition. If the item type and size match what the itemport has for its allowed type and size then you can mount the item onto your ship at that itemport. This is universal for all items you can attach to your ship – not just weapons and turrets but thrusters, power plants, fuel tanks, scanners, coolers, avionics and so on. Internally there is no class X weapon hardpoint, so starting today we’re retiring the obsolete naming convention for weapon hardpoints!

Instead it will be a Size 1 Gun or a Size 3 Unmanned Turret, or a Size 2 Pylon or a Size 4 Manned Turret and so on.

== Weapon mounts ==

[[File:Comm-Link-design-mounts-Barrel Tips.jpg|right|400px]]

[[File:Comm-Link-design-mounts-Size 2 02.jpg|right|400px]]

So to clarify all items and itemports (think of this like a socket you plug the item into) are defined by three key pieces of information –

1) TYPE<br/>

2) SIZE<br/>

3) PIPE

We’ve talked about the concept of Pipes before – these are the connections between items and the ship that carry things like Heat, Data, Power, Fuel and so on. So for an item to be compatible with an itemport beside the size and type needing to match up the Pipe(s) need to match up – so if a Turret has an input for “Power” and “Data” (say for auto targeting) and output of “Heat”, the itemport will also need to have hookups for these three pipes.