[Suggestion] Autofire: Volley

[BadBits]

Suggestion, Autofire Volley: Fire when all active weapons are ready.

Current autofire fires each active weapon when they are ready, for single weapon system ships that is fine when I get two (2) or three (3) weapons I like to fire them in volley for a big punch for max shield penetration and damage potential, with the heat of battle the level of management gets high (hull breaches, fires, repairs, boarding parties, etc) and many times I've forgotten the weapons "uuumm... how long have all weapon systems been green ??".

[curithwin]

I'm in the same boat... well space-craft that is. I tend to fight the harder vessels with volleys as well.

[icepick]

This is exactly the point of the game though. To force you to think about everything at once. I don't think trying to simplify the micro away is a good idea.

[Maze1125]

I rarely find that firing all weapons at exactly the same time to be the most effective strategy.

For example, if you've got lasers and a beam weapon, you want to fire the lasers and then fire the beam the instant the laser take the shields down.
If you've got a Burst Laser II and a Heavy Laser I, then you want to fire the Heavy Laser half a second after the last shot of the Burst Laser, to ensure that the Heavy Laser does 2 hull damage rather than simple taking down 2 shield.
If you've got a couple of missiles and you want to get past a defence drone, then you want to fire the missile on the back row of your ship a tiny bit sooner than the one of your front row, so they arrive simultaneously.

If you could set the weapons to always fire at once, I fear that it would be much easier for people to miss subtleties like those.

[ice]

Plus, it's much more fun to imagine Pickard screaming "FIRE EVERYTHING!" instead of clicking a button.