I'd like to gauge peoples' interest in something.

In pretty much every Trek series, 'Set phasers to stun' is pretty much universal. Setting phasers to a wide beam is not as common, but we see it in TOS, TNG, and DS9.

So I'd like to know how many people are interested in the idea of multi-mode phasers, phasers that can do a normal shot, a stun shot, and a wide-angle shot, maybe a few other modes. Phasers do seem to be a jack-of-all-trades Swiss-Army (Swiss-Starfleet?) weapon. I'm not quite sure how it would work out, but it does strike me that it would be appropriate for phasers to have that functionality.

What do folks think?

If I am reading correctly, a phaser that has all the special shots from the various weapons would be a bit overpowered; would it not?

Absolutely it would. So there'd need to be some sort of balance. Perhaps less damage. Perhaps more expensive (though I doubt that'll be a real hinderance.) Perhaps longer cooldowns on the specials. Not quite sure; this is just the germ of an idea.

A phaser with different inter-changable packs for different types of shots maybe? Of course, the different packs will have to be earned/crafted/bought and could only be set-up before you beam down from your ship. Or maybe, be able to carry say, 1 extra pack in your inventory, that be switched on the fly (even while in combat). If you can throw down turrets during combat, you should be able to change the phaser pack.

There would also have be some sort of ship armorary that could store this packs and also other personal weapons with taking up space in your personal inventory. The armorary would only be accessable while on the ship and not on the ground.

I wish our ground weapons were more modular, like the rifle in Crysis.

Go into your ship's armory and tweak the settings (i.e. proc type, alter fire mode, etc.)

Phasers could also be set to overload, becoming crude (and annoyingly high-pitched) timed explosives. Using that function would, of course, consume the phaser.

A multi-function weapon could just come with abilities like kits that have variable timers (the overload would be a one-time deal). Just a thought.

Maybe some weapon abilities could be made dependent upon your character having another piece of gear, so you can mix and match your loadout to get different effects from the same core weapon.

And I'd like to see a photon grenade launcher attachment for some rifles. Even in 2409, blowing stuff up is cool.


Z

It makes too much sense and seems too cool for the devs to consider it.

Of course, I really want them to prove me wrong - so baiting them with a good idea might work.

I actually suspect this is where we may be headed with the ground combat upgrade.

Dstahl has mentioned several times that 'every weapon will have a purpose' - and there were hints at one point (though I don't believe it was ever said with any certainty) that the number of weapons may go down.

So while I doubt we'll see one phaser with ALL the functions, we may see something like:

Beam Rifle - Beam Attack, Split Beam, Stun Beam, Rifle Butt

Compression Rifle - Double-Tap Bolt Attack, Sniper Attack, Bolt Spray (AoE Cone Expose), Rifle Butt.

Beam Pistol - Beam Attack, Stun Beam, Wide Beam, Palm Strike


That kind of thing. That's pure speculation on my part of course; but I would not feel shocked if that's where we went <^_^> and I certainly wouldn't mind.

*edit*

I'll also add that if they let us customize our weapons visually, we could also do this ourselves to an extent. Equip a Sniper Rifle and a Beam Rifle of the same tier and switch back and forth - now you have bolt settings and beam settings. With the above suggestion, you can get even more elaborate.

That would be to customize the weaon visually. You could even add some perks to the customized weapon. Outfit your Compression Rifle with a scope and get a +5 critical damage and 100% Crit. (or something along those lines).

I pretty much support this, as I and several others back in the day came up with this exact same kind of thing! lol

But what I am the biggest fan of, in retrospect, is just merging the Wide-Beam Phaser function with the Stun Beam Phaser function, since everyone knows the hand phaser could do both.
Just generally adding more functionality to the weapons would be nice. Different settings and all that jazz.
Like, with the full-auto pulse rifles? You could have something like this going:
Pulse-Phaser Rifle: Rapid Bolt, Bolt Spray, Pulse Wave
Or merge the Arcwave Assault with the Full-Auto Assault weapons to get...
Phaser Rapid-Fire Assault: Rapid Bolt, Bolt Spray, Arcwave Shot
And then you get a Sniper Rifle going...
Compression Bolt Rifle: Bolt Shot, Stun Shot, Sniper Shot
And then maybe something like the Variable Setting Beam Rifle...
Beam Rifle: Beam, Multi-Beam, High Density Beam

I could literally go on like this. It essentially boils down to examining what weapons are kinda superfluous, and what weapons would benifit from being fused together, or having features added.