Secondary Fire Key

[Little_Apple]

Imagine. you're playing Bitfighter having a blast when suddenly, you can't seem to shoot that guy that keeps hiding behind a corner like any human with cognitive thinking abilities would! so you switch weapons to burst and- BAM YOU'RE DEAD BECAUSE IT TOOK SO GOSH DARN LONG TO CHANGE WEAPONS. I propose a world where one could fire multiple weapons without clumsily fiddling with the weapon cycle key or pressing the 1 2 and 3 keys leaving yourself open to torrents of phasers. I propose the Secondary Fire Key. I guarantee it will change how you play, and how you live. Make the right choice. Choose the Secondary Fire Key.

You can just change the key bindings in the options menu of bitfighter to make cycling weapons easier.

[raptor]

If we had two weapons, say on the mouse buttons, where would the modules go? Aren't we constrained by a number of joystick buttons?

And wouldn't 2 weapons fireing at the same time be over powered?

seeker + burst >> phaser

[Little_Apple]

If we had two weapons, say on the mouse buttons, where would the modules go? Aren't we constrained by a number of joystick buttons?

I use L-shift and space for modules which I think were the defaults for Zap!. even then it would be completely rebindable. I'm not super sure what you mean by the second sentence. Could you elaborate?

And wouldn't 2 weapons fireing at the same time be over powered?

Only if you have unlimited energy. If you mindlessly sprayed out bouncer+triple it might be very deadly, but you would also end up with next to no energy and wide open to attack from anyone who used shield like a normal thinking human.

[raptor]

I don't own a joystick, but I thought we had already hit the limit of buttons we use on the joysticks. Adding another for a secondary weapon would put us over the limit (or so I thought). I don't know, which is why I asked the question.

[Little_Apple]

Are stick-clicks (I don't know the proper name) included in that?

Only if you have unlimited energy. If you mindlessly sprayed out bouncer+triple it might be very deadly, but you would also end up with next to no energy and wide open to attack from anyone who used shield like a normal thinking human.

This is a pretty crucial point, because firing two weapons simultaneously would be quite powerful, but only for the second or two it lasts for.

From a design perspective I think this feature is fairly logical. Ships can use two modules and one weapon simultaneously, but not two modules with two weapons at the same time.

To be honest I don't think switching weapons is all that intrusive. Rather than this being a problem needing to be solved, I do think it might enhance Bitfighter by emphasizing the different weapons Bitfighter has. Despite there being four projectile weapons, phaser is the only one used significantly by most players. This feature might entice people to use another weapon since they could still achieve the advantages of phaser while utilizing the advantages of other weapons. It'd sure be nice to see more than just purple dots on the screen!

problem is some weps have a low energy usage like a seeker so would we havef to rebuff all the weapons ?

Curious: how would the controls work for this?

Presumably there'd be an additional button that could be mapped to use this. I'm not sure how it'd work on joystick, but on keyboard this could easily be the right mouse button or left shift key.

I think one weapon key is better because unless the joystick problem is solved keyboard users would have a advantage over joystick users...

[watusimoto]

I'm not really in favor of this, personally... the controls are already pretty complicated for a "casual" game. Adding more complexity seems a step in the wrong direction (says one of the proponents of double-tap).

yeah unless key bindings can be simplified Its better to have 1 key.

Secondary weapons were, for me personally, a bit difficult to actually use in Escape Velocity

I am not a fan of this idea.

Problem is if you use 2 weapons to for like 5 seconds and zap all the players then they would be left defesnless im jsut concerened it would break maps as laser beams turrets ect would be more vurnable.