Marginally inspired by the ion spark weapons from Timothy Zahn's Icarus Hunt.
Concept is that a spark weapon slowly builds up an electrical charge in an area, until it massively overloads and fries various electrical equipment. So this is a odd variation of an ion weapon.
In game, it would operate as a basic weapon, firing an energy projectile (like standard weapons). If the shot impacts a shield, no effect. If it impacts a room with no subsystem, no effect. If it hits a room with a subsystem, then things get interesting. There would be no immediate damage. However, the room would be 'charged' by the spark weapon. You would need to build a sufficient charge up in the room (if it's an engine room with 3 bars, then you'd need to hit it 3 times). Basically, once you've hit the subsystem as many times as it has bars, then the subsystem will overload.
When a subsystem overloads, it is immediately destroyed (full red) from the flaring discharge of electricity. Further, there is a 25% possibility of the electrical charge jumping to nearby rooms. In effect, if our targeted engine room was next to, say, the weapons room, there would be a 25% chance of the charge jumping to the weapons system and overloading it as well (full red). This would also then also have a 25% chance of chaining into any nearby systems (and so on). Note that the charge does not pass through empty rooms (hull) as there are no electrical systems/components to carry the charge.
On tightly packed ships with lots of systems, and if you're lucky enough, you can cause a chain reaction, massive overload that will shut down every system and subsystem on the ship.
Pros: potentially very powerful, capable of crippling enemy ships.
Cons: no shield damage, no hull damage (unless it does the standard 1 hull damage when a system goes red). Shot down by lvl 2 drones. Long term weapon, which makes it harder against more powerful ships (more shields, more hits to actually trigger the spark overload). In certain battles this weapon can end up completely useless.
Weapon types: probably a standard one, then a faster firing one. Maybe a heavy one that builds up 2 spark per hit. Maybe a spark bomb (this might be too powerful).
Other things:
- If the spark charge is permanent (does not wear off for the battle), spark weapons should have long recharge times (15+ seconds). If there was a time limit on spark charges (say, 10-20 seconds), then it would need faster firing.
- Knowing how much of a spark has built up would require level 3 sensors. As you would be able to see the power levels of the enemy ship, every successful spark hit would create a little lightening bolt (or something) next to a power bar on a system. This would make level 3 sensors MUCH more important. Almost no one gets this upgrade, but it would be very important with spark weapons to determine which systems to go after.
Optional things:
- It would work better if the spark charge could only jump through rooms by doors. That is, if 2 systems are next to each other, but not connected by a door, the charge wouldn't jump. It can only jump to rooms with door connections. Make various ship designs more interesting.
- Likewise, upgraded doors should reduce the potential of a spark jumping rooms. Basic doors have no effect (25% chance), upgraded doors reduce to 20%, lvl 3 doors reduce to 15%. This would also make taking out the door system a priority with spark weapons.
- Zoltans are interesting with this. I think that if a Zoltan is in a room, powering a system, when a spark charge goes off, there should be no effect. This would be somewhat like fire weapons against rock ships.
- Perhaps if a system is not powered, no effect of a spark charge (maybe). This would allow the player to try to limit damage by a spark charge by power management. The AI could also try to do this. But this might pull the teeth on spark weapons too much.