Here's a strange idea for a new weapon... Hear me out, for it might pique on your curiosity.

I was thinking, with so many human-based weapons in BW, how could the Skrith win against the humans? We've only seen 3 Skrith-based weapons so far, so I think it's time to add to their much needed arsenal.

DESCRIPTION:
A "Mercury-Bow" - The Skrith equivalent of a Sniper Rifle/Railgun, only more alien in design and functionality.

Primary Fire:
The weapon compresses a capsule with a mixture of Freon and Frozen Mercury, firing an instantanious "beam" of intangible, freezing gas. As mentioned, this "beam" slows down targets (due to their limbs freezing on them) until they fully-recover from the "status effect" (either by grabbing a Health Pack or holding on for the whole 10-second duration of the effect) or get killed.

Clip Size:
2 or 3 capsules per clip, 2 clips per Ammo Pack, as suggested by fellow forum members.

Fire Modes:
1) As stated above - highly accurate, but induces tremendous chaos and recoil when fired. The fire-rate for this mode would be 1 per 3-4 seconds and its base-damage is about 40-45. It can pass through multiple targets, but it cannot penetrate walls.

2) Instead of compressing the capsule, this fire-mode "pours-out" its contents through the barrel, spraying the immediate area in-front of its user with freezing gas. Anyone caught within the radius of the gas-cloud gets slowed down until they find a way out of it. The gas-cloud has a radius of about 4 meters and lasts for 15-20 seconds.

Secondary Fire:
Toggles the scope for this weapon. This scope can "see-through" disruptive Plasma-readings and other visual hindrances (smoke bombs, gas-clouds, etc.).

SPECIAL FIRE:
This is where the weapon really shines... Pressing the Special Fire key plants a Plasma "Riot-Wall" Device on the ground (it cannot be planted on vertical surfaces, like walls, etc.). Once deployed, it emits a Plasma wall roughly the same height as its user and 6 times his/her width. This wall deflects any kind of solid matter (bullets, players, etc.), but lets intangibles pass through without harm. The energy of the Plasma wall depletes each time it deflects projectiles or lets them pass through, and, once fully-depleted, must be picked-up and recharged for 10 full seconds before it can be deployed once more. As stated, this "shield" lets intangible projectiles pass through, often with increased-damage bonuses:

1) Other Plasma projectiles (like the Skrith Handgun and Rifle), get no damage bonuses.

2) Gases (like this weapon's ammo) get increased damage, but lose their primary abilities. For this weapon's first fire-mode, its base-damage is increased to 500, turning it into a veritable "One-Shot, One-Kill" sniper rifle/Railgun. However, it loses its ability to slow-down targets. For the second fire-mode, instead of releasing a gas-cloud, the wall would turn it into a Plasma-cloud, giving 10 damage per second to people caught within its radius. Again, the drawback is that it loses the ability to freeze people.

3) Flames (like the Incendiary Grenade and the upcoming Flamethrower) get an increased damage, but their ability to deal "scorch damage" (to keep targets burning even when they move away from the source of the flames) is drastically lessened. Further more, the Plasma has a chemical reaction with the flames, turning them into dark-blue/violet, "Black Napalm"-esque flames.

4) Electricity (like my very-own "Nail-Gun") get a decreased damage, but they eat through the Plasma wall's energy faster than any other weapon, thus making them the perfect choice for an opposing player or team to deplete and take-down a Plasma wall quickly.

Whew~!!! That was a long one... what about it, folks...!?

whoa!! lotta ideas ey?

we do wanna do more Skrith weapons, once we have current developements done

BTW, Welcome!!

Heh. I kinda like weapons that take a bit of strategy to use.

Don't worry, I got a lot more where that came from!

Hmm. Maybe. There've been too many skrith sniper ideas, though. They're starting to make me nauseous. This one DOES have some merit, but I think weilding an instakil-gun from behind a forecefield is more than a little beyond overpowered. Usually overpowered is just making a weapon that slaughters people, but making the user practically invincible at the same time?

Still, maybe another superweapon. . .

I like the sounds of it, but being temporarily invincible would make it pretty powerful.
I suggest giving it a pretty slow rate of fire, and it really wouldn't be that bad. Maybe make so you could pretty much only fire one shot for the duration of the shield, maybe two if timed right.
If the timing for rate of fire and the shield was right, it really wouldn't be too over powered.

You wouldn't really be all that invincible when you're behind the Plasma wall... Remember, it's just a "wall"... Other players can still chuck grenades over it.

I forgot to add that the height of the wall is about equal to that of the player using it... and about 6 times his/her width... That's a pretty small wall...

I see. I think I must have misread it. It wouldn't be very overpowering at that hieght.
But still, I think maybe limit the amount of times you can fire in some way when the wall is out.

Its still an awesome idea, anyways. I hope it makes it into the game or something. It would be fun to use.

Maybe have firing through it overload the forcefield emitter.

To 2-3 shots tops...? Hmm... sounds viable...

That sounds like it'd be pretty balanced then. Even though you could throw something over the wall to hit them, that wouldn't always be an option. And if you can kill someone instantly without them having a chance to get a direct shot at you, that could be pretty over powering.

Would the wall only be able to stop so much before overloading, or would it only go out after the duration is over?

I was thinking that the wall could last 10-15 seconds, regardless of whether or not it deflects solid objects...

But I suppose it's also viable to have the shield deplete faster as it deflects bullets...

lets make the wall permanent, and give it some health. (350 health or something)
and lets make it look something like the force field in Unreal-2.

don't know what you guys think of it?

To form a forcefield, energy is needed. So wouldn't it be better to give it an infine health, but the energy deplets faster when shot at?

Um. . .the Unreal2 field doesn't look like it would stop bullets.

And I'm with bjossi. A battery that's drained when hit, like the Paladin tank in UT04 ECE, would be better.

Okay, then that's settled.

What I hadn't really taken care of is the clip capacity of this baby. Any suggestions?

What do you mean by clip capacity? Amount of energy?

I was thinking that the mixture of Freon and Frozen Mercury were stored in capsules, which would in-turn be stored in clips.

Not more than 1-3 rounds per clip would be my suggestion.

I editted the ENTIRE weapon description in my first post, to be more reader-friendly... plus I added a few more "improvements" to the weapon's tactical use.

N'joy!

Once again, intreguing. I would enjoy using this weapon as a sniper. In ONS I could think of clever ways of making it work.
Perhaps, for a 2nd specail funcion, why dont we switch it to a plasma charge that can freeze vehicals?

This thread's a bit old, you gotta watch out. That was almost a year-long bump.

Thats alright, he's new. Besides, would you really want a new thread for this?

that weapon sounds awsome but you should make the shield balanceed have the rail gun as the only weapon capable of penatrarting the shield and why dont you just stamp this one as a super weapon cuase cmon bw has no super weapons like the ur2004 does with the redeemer and ion painter

You don't consider the Lightning Gun and Minigun superweapons? They're certainly much more powerful than all of the other weapons (note to devs: please move them to superweapon spawns by default, not the Link Gun or UT Minigun spawns)

Quick question, Kaboodles:

Um... as someone who runs a server, don't you have the ability to change what spawn slots they take up?

Or does the defaults override what you do?

I agree that they probably do belong better in the super weapon spawns, but it just seems to me that whatever the defaults are shouldn't really make too much difference if you can easily change them.

Changing them is easy enough, but most people are either too lazy, don't know how to change them, or don't believe them to be superweapon-level simply because they spawn right next to the regular weapons. It would better reinforce their superweapon status if they replaced the Redeemer or Ion Painter or what have you.

Ah, gotcha. So simply as a way of getting the point across. Works for me.