on a different thread I posted this http://forum.eternalcrusade.com/threads/eldar-in-the-new-trailer.29526/
The shuriken are 1 molecule thick, which would make more sense to me if they had armor piercing attributes. This way with high RoF / low damage they would still feel powerful because they cut through targets without armor or can still penetrate the more armored foes even with low damage. This way you still feel the gun being effective vs heavy armored infantry at lower damage, whereas in most shooters low damage weapons normally don't do anything or very little damage which would take a very long time to kill; which feels useless as a weapon. (Mass Effect 3 mp, taking an AP mod for a low damage gun makes a huge difference because you can at least now kill something with it and not take 10 minutes to do it) As well rifling wouldn't matter here, but the fact it is a flat disc at a molecule thick launched at high velocity should keep it very accurate. I don't know if the disc spins or not but this would increase range by a lot I would think. The shuriken are also listed as being able to have poisons / toxins added to them. I am guessing this is just a solid ammo core with the toxin mixed into the solid block. This would also be a good way to bring more use to the gun. (according to this link it is used occasionally) http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Shuriken_Catapult Dawn of War 2 Last Stand had what I consider the perfect Shuriken Pistol. I thought it sounded damn good, looks great and I could just imagine shooting a burst of that thing at unarmored foes like Orks/IG which would cut them into 100 pieces. The question about seeing projectiles veering off course after short range, well if the gun has low damage, short range and then seeing your shuriken fly all over the place I think would frustrate most as what would be the point in using this weapon? Especially when you can just go reaper launcher / fusion gun class or someone else without Shuriken (which isn't much option) that has a much more effective weapon. For balance the weapon has to stack up against the competitors standard battle gun, but how do you do that when everything you've listed short of RoF are inferior or vastly inferior and still make this gun fun to use? It need qualities like AP, DoT damage from toxins ext to feel you can kill with it. You could also use different toxin ammo which would offer a status effect. Hope my input helps.
i cant believe the tribe spinfuzor wasn't mentioned more, to me that was the first similar weapon i thought of (except no explosion and far sped up sound). the issue i have with low damage is more of a gameplay one (as well as inaccurate from afar). Taking planetside 2 as an example the NC scattermax is nigh useless unless your in a biolab fight (eg indoors) i feel a similar problem may appear from having low range weapon (and low damage would make it even worse) where you can basically be whittled down while trying to get in close, and when you do it's ALL about time to kill, if it takes my weak but fast rof 2 seconds to kill (say 20 shots at 5 dmg per shot) and it takes your bolter 1.75 seconds to kill (at 4 shots at 25 dmg a shot) the bolter will be clearly superior. usually if you have a low range weapon it tends to have high damage so that once you DO get close you can deal some damage, in my mind a low range AND a low damage weapon is pretty much useless, as it doesnt really help if i can shoot 100 shots by the time the enemy shoots 10 if he needs 4 to kill me and i need 20, as it is easier to hit 4 times than 20.
The shuriken catapult needs to be considered in relation to the Bolter and the Shoota, this being the kind of game it is. Whilst, granted, only one class in the current Eldar lineup actually uses (upgrade) catapults, they are nevertheless the 'line gun' for the race, and their relative balance against the Bolter and Shoota will no doubt impact the far more common pistol variants. We know that, over a timeframe of ~12s at least, all three weapons are roughly equivalent in lethal potential. Technically Shootas and Bolters are identical, but with 2/4 factions already using Bolters, I image they'll want to vary them somewhat, probably by slightly decreasing Shoota damage and increasing it's RoF. Relative to that I'd not be surprised to see a slightly further shift in damage/RoF ratio for Catapults. So, say, for Damage:RoF you might have Bolters being 1.1:0.9, Shootas being 1:1 and Catapults being 0.9:1.1. All result in similar DPS, normalised over a short timeframe. Where the Catapult is actually different from the Bolter/Shoota is range. The latter two are Rapid Fire, the former is Assault. Essentially this is Battle Rifles compared with Assault Rifles (I use that rather than SMGs since the stats suggest an equivalent round, as opposed to a rifle-pistol round comparison, though one could argue for the Bolter being a BR, the Shoota and AR and the Catapult an SMG). So we want the Bolter/Shoota to be superior at range, and the Catapult superior in CQB. Not "as good" in CQB, superior. The way to do this, typically, isn't by manipulating damage/shot or shots/second but by manipulating Accuracy and Stability. In a hitscan-based (as is a practical necessity) game like this, Accuracy is easy to model - lower accuracy = more shot deviation from centre-line aim, which translates to poor long-range accuracy. Stability is, functionally, recoil. Recoil per shot is actually irrelevant, what matters is recoil per second of continuous fire. This needs to be highest for the Bolter, low for the Shoota and very low for the Catapult. This will preserve it's role as a close-assault weapon (especially when coupled with the presumably superior speed of the Dire Avenger), while functionally limiting it's application at range. Certainly within the average TTK there should not be a wildly significant difference in damage/shot over the three core weapons, otherwise there will be serious issues at one end of the scale or the other. (Edit for accidental emoticon)
My assumption as well. I assumed the bladestorm effect was a simple facet of RoF: shoot so damn many disks that eventually an eye slit or an arm joint gets hit
To expand on this (not sure if it's already mentioned) the different disk types could possibly be implemented as an equivalent to hollow-point bullets and armour piercing bullets (or hellfire and stalker rounds as a 40k example) so that eldar get a choice of different ammo as to have a choice of advantages and disadvantages which they otherwise wouldn't have (pure disks have no damage/range etc increases but are most accurate and create the least noise; the spiked, tripple-pointed one could have the best armour piercing properties but least accuracy and moderate noise etc).
I'd like to see something that sounds more like this, but with a slightly higher pitch for shuriken canons and then higher pitched again for the shuriken cat. The guy goes full auto at 29 seconds.
When i think of the Shuriken catapults i imagine more of a Snap hiss type of sound. so there is a generally quiet but still audible Snap sound because they are cutting the shurikens off of a solid piece and the hiss as they are propelled by the catapult. Then if the gun is fired in full-auto you would hear the snap sound rapidly following each and overriding the sound of the hiss so you would only hear the hiss after the last shot in a mag or last shot you fire. there was a similar sound with the covenent sniper rifle in halo 3 if i remember correctly.
Okay, so, having browsed through all this, there are some great ideas (loved all the engineering lingo and physics calculations!). So here's my tuppence-worth: Realistic physics is all well-and-good, but we need a weapon which actually fits into the game and is fun to play. For that reason, I would prefer the weapon to make a decent amount of noise, but not as much, or even vaguely comparable to, any more traditional weapon. Given there is ammunition for shuriken weapons called 'shrieker' ammo, would it not stand to reason that regular ammo should make a noise something like a muted shriek? The closest analogue I can think of would be a swarm of cicada. Additionally, I would love for the shorter range to be offset by being able to bounce the stream off walls (as brought back to my attention by the person linking the video of the Ripper from Unreal Tournament. View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fdo9ewfOsdM
Oh god please no. I don't know how anyone would find that sound enjoyable, cool for a gun, or even good for any weapon design. Considering ShuriCats are our mainstay weapon I would go insane hearing it all the time and join Chaos to be free of such insanity. Luckily Warlock doesn't use one. Scorps not very much though the Hawks... I don't want the hawks nicknamed the Cicadas.
