My suggestion is stat themed siege weapons, reason for this is so there are more options than just mortars:
Arcanium powered torpedo (weapons and/or magic) It’s under a ship and takes up the siege weapon slot, and can be controlled from above via a lever. You can shoot a gunpowder? filled torpedo that goes straight in front of you, has a short range, but used to take ships by surprise.
Net launcher: Is like a mortar and is mostly for slowing down ships and damaging the crew rather than the ship itself (vitality)
Surge cannon: shoots arcanium shards in a way similar to the surge spell, and it uses ship magic storage. It itself is not an arcanium weapon, however it uses arcanium as ammunition. Intended for short range use (magic).
Giant bow: basically does the rain of arrows spell from a bow, massive damage to crew and sea monsters, has the biggest aoe but less range (strength).
Catapult: Has a slow firerate and aoe, but does devastating damage and slows down the ship for some time, kind of an alternate to a mortar (weapons).
A giant crossbow, shoots giant arrows, extremely effective against sea monsters, and it fires quickly (weapons).
A wrecking ball, if you miss you hit your own ship? This is so it’s not op, it could also take a long time to use, but does massive damage (strength)
A hook, Holds ships in place for a few seconds, could be cut which releases the ship (vitality)
A lot of these weapons could be better on the top of the mast or being supported by it such as the wrecking ball or hook, because it would make more sense for them to be on a place that’s already high up.
Prob won’t include stat scaling bec the npc is the one firing it but if the player is using it then it could be scaled?
This reply is made before the post’s 1st edit on January 23, 2024 at 8pm (UTC) and is outdated and inaccurate to the new suggestion.
Please don’t rate your own suggestion otherwise I’ll be very sad :(((.
Anyway, I’ll say this suggestion is pretty terrible. I have many issues with many of the ideas you have, and even the suggestion itself.
Please note that I am going to operate under the assumption that Arcane Odyssey takes place in the Middle Ages which is going to be important for a few issues that I have with this suggestion.
Issues with the weapon ideas:
If the weapons aren’t listed here then it’s either because I have no issue with it, or it’s an issue with the suggestion itself rather than the weapons.
For both catapult and giant bow. The catapult (1st idea) is just a howitzer but with less damage, the catapult (2nd idea) is just a heavy mortar, and the giant bow just shoots a rain of arrows instead of cannonballs and is scaled based on strength. What makes it any different from other siege weapons? Both of these ideas fulfill roles that other siege weapons that exist in-game already do.
About the wrecking ball. I know this is a game set in a world where magic exists, but it’s probably very absurd to see somebody thinking that a wrecking ball is viable as a ship weapon and install it onto a ship. Also, I don’t think there’s any evidence that wrecking balls existed in the Middle Ages lol.
Even then, the only use for this would be for ramming ships and nothing else, making this siege weapon not very useful outside of ramming ships.
As for “arcanium powered torpedo”, aside from the issues with the game’s environment setting (read: it’s in the Middle Ages, though the concept of it exists but was never an actual thing until the 1800s). Rams should be a “ship’s melee weapon” or close-ranged weapon that you use to attack ships by well… ramming them, and this “arcanium powered torpedo” is anything but close-ranged.
Did you know that an attachment called “Net Launcher” which is used to hunt sharks/sea monsters already exists? and even better is the fact that it’s scaled based on vitality.
Besides that, in my opinion, slowing down ships by using siege weapons sounds worse than simply damaging them. Also, causing damage to crew members is pretty nice to have but I doubt it’s going to be very useful because at the moment, killing ship crews doesn’t impact the ship itself.
Although I am not against having siege weapons being scaled based on stat. There is no justification for why siege weapons should also be scaled based on the player’s stat.
As this suggestion said, npc is the one firing the siege weapons/ship cannons and it wouldn’t make sense to have it scaled based on the player’s stat anyway. Also, ship cannons aren’t scaled based on the player’s stat so why should siege weapons also have stat scaling?
Now for the issues with the suggestion:
Many of the ideas here are thrown here just because why not? “A hook” and giant crossbow are probably the biggest offenders. There’s no thought being put into how these weapon ideas would work (or even how it’ll look in-game), and all that is left is for the readers to guess what the weapons do.
If you don’t even think about how the siege weapons would work then how are the developers going to implement your suggestion?
The structure and formatting of this suggestion is a complete mess. Readers like me are likely to get overwhelmed by the suggestion because you couldn’t think of separating the suggestion into multiple paragraphs. Also, it might sound unbelievable but did you know that the numbered list exists?
Every weapon idea in this suggestion lacks details on certain part. Such as “a small cannon on the top part of the ship” that supposedly shoots from above and doesn’t use a siege weapon slot? with nothing about how this will be liked or useful. Or surge cannon which uses a surge spell that’s “based on the metal conducted”, with nothing about the metal conducting part. All of this does is once again, force readers to guess what the part is about.
In conclusion, please improve your suggestion. Throwing a bunch of shit onto a wall isn’t going to help if somebody taking a look at the shit doesn’t even know what is the shit.
Adding onto here, how is a net exactly going to slow ships down? You need to be aiming for the sails but that would make its range practically useless since a net is quite heavy and you have to aim up to reach the sails
Once again, this is an issue with the suggestion itself. How the fuck am I supposed to know that these siege weapons are themed around certain stat instead of being scaled based on stat?
Also, there’s NOTHING about stat theme at any point in this suggestion.
A good suggestion should be clear and concise. And this suggestion is anything but that. The lack of information to the point that it’s forcing readers to guess what the suggestion is about is something that I (and the people who may consider implementing this suggestion) will have an issue with.
Not only that but adding unnecessary information will only serve to confuse the reader even more. Such as giant crossbow firing “regular sized arrows” would only be more confusing, because you will think that a giant crossbow will be firing “giant sized arrow” but apparently this is not the case.
You (as a suggestor) should be the one to justify your suggestion, this is not the job for the readers to justify YOUR suggestion by using their imagination and agree with YOUR suggestion.
most of these seem like reskins, but two i think could be revised are the Hook and Net
The Net launcher could possibly be changed to pretty much do a status effect to the entire crew or part of it, probably the latter depending on the length of the effect, but it could make them fire slower or not fire at all, giving a decent alternative to a mortar and the like to instead weaken the opposing ship instead of outright damage
The hook could be changed to be more of a tow hook, duability depends on your speed vs their speed, favoring you having a slower speed as that should give more foce if my physics memory serves me correctly(or ignore physics as magic) to try and control where they go and stop them from say, going to silverhold, this could also become a actual utility for quests or a profession instead too of towing ships into ports for repairs of salvage, and THEN at higher levels could be used in combat
maybe the catapult can be changed to be more of a trebuchet could be a earlier game alternative to magic siege weapons for things like incendiaries and basic bio weapons like the where back during those time, if we get magical siege weapons, and/or it could be used for a bit more direct and have a slightly similar firing guideline thing to cannons, just with an decent arc, making it good for when we get island building for besieging them, or even to fire into higher up caves in say, the dark sea if atleanians can spawn in them deeper into the dark sea
otherwise, possibly think of ideas that may not be in yet for weapons, how they could give their own bit of flavor to ship combat, maybe a idea for later on content that we dont have yet/cant easily do like the deeper ds ranges, maybe things like the hook that could be a util, and then become a weapon at higher levels, as i did see the hook and INSTANTLY thought of the towhook idea, and i got a basic idea from your net launcher, maybe even try to flesh out the ones i threw out a bit as ik they arent the best or completely thought out yet.
