Artillery cannon hotkey to fire option?

[lknanml]

WOW. It sure hits harder than the stats suggest. (I see the light/removed other post)
Since it takes so much power and is somewhat hard to gauge when it will fire can we get the option to fire with all weapons are set to a hot key fire only when pressed? It's to easy to overload all weapons in a fight. I don't hold fire down. I tap the fire button but when these heavy weapons go off it can overload fast or fire on a ship that already has low HP and other ordnance in route will destroy it.

[Walter Sobchack]

It would be nice to have some sort of 1-2-3 quick access to disable weapon slots, something not as intrusive as hitting the tab button and pausing the game to disable/enable weapons manually.

But I don't think there's enough regular numbers on a keyboard. There's, what, six slots for powers? Default ability, pulse, shield, cloak, nuke & hack. That leaves keys 7, 8, 9 and 0 for weapon slots, and that ain't enough for a lot of the ships. Maybe the alpha numeric keypad?

[lknanml]

Well it all depends on what people play with. Remap-able hot keys are always the best way to go to cover all players. Let the players figure out what key setup works best for them.
Some have mice with a crapton of keys. Some have macro keyboards. I have a "museum" of that looks like fun accessories.
AULA 30
RAZER Orbweaver
RAZER Tartarus
Belkin Speedpad n50
Belkin Speedpad n52
Logitech G13
And a ton nobody has ever heard of. LOL

I loved these things. For almost 30 years now I have played games feet up, laid back in bed or couch with a monitor arm, keyboard, keypad and DPI modified trackballs.
I have a museum of Logitech thumb ball mice. Most hacked up with other mouse parts.
Way back when I used to go to lans it was always fun to plop down a trackball and destroy people. You killed me with that? YEP!
Typical human stuff. Use something long enough and you get pretty good at it then mod it to get even better.
Honestly. FPS games are where they shine. Your only moving your thumb a few MMs and then it's head shot heaven.

Oddly I can't use a console controller for ♥♥♥♥ and my first console was pong. The Atari 2600 didn't exist yet. I've been around a while.....My last console was NIN64. Full time PC player.
Hand me a Xbox or PS controller and give me a min to change my name to target and when you find the guy shooting the air, ground, air, ground, the wall behind you and you've found me.

[ReaperLord]

Originally posted by Walter Sobchack:

It would be nice to have some sort of 1-2-3 quick access to disable weapon slots, something not as intrusive as hitting the tab button and pausing the game to disable/enable weapons manually.

But I don't think there's enough regular numbers on a keyboard. There's, what, six slots for powers? Default ability, pulse, shield, cloak, nuke & hack. That leaves keys 7, 8, 9 and 0 for weapon slots, and that ain't enough for a lot of the ships. Maybe the alpha numeric keypad?

Maybe the devs could use the F1-F10 keys, and then make use of a similar weapon selection system that Space Pirates and Zombies 2 uses.

[ufoara]

Hot keys to choose weapon systems would be great. Collapse shields first with plasma cannons then activate heavy Cannon.artillery

[Walter Sobchack]

Actually, that's a good point. You don't want to switch weapons on-off individually. What you want is a specific effect-on-target. That means toggling groups of weapons by category. Anti-shield, anti-hull, short-range, power-hungry, etc. That doesn't require nearly as many buttons.

And if they started at F1 it would be a lot more convenient to reach while in a fight. Hit a button, hear the captain say "Disengage safeties on heavy weapons" or hear someone report "Missiles are hot and ready to fire" or "Powering down energy weapons", and so on.

[Minnie]

Originally posted by Walter Sobchack:

Actually, that's a good point. You don't want to switch weapons on-off individually. What you want is a specific effect-on-target. That means toggling groups of weapons by category. Anti-shield, anti-hull, short-range, power-hungry, etc. That doesn't require nearly as many buttons.

And if they started at F1 it would be a lot more convenient to reach while in a fight. Hit a button, hear the captain say "Disengage safeties on heavy weapons" or hear someone report "Missiles are hot and ready to fire" or "Powering down energy weapons", and so on.

+1