Hello I am a bit of a halo fan boy and I have been reading over this topic and I have an idea as to the MAC slugs and the nukes for the UNSC ships excluding corvets..Is it possible to make it so the MAC is special ability and have each shot use 50 antimatter per usage? so a Frigate would have around 150 AM max..and just give them MAC a long cool-down timer say 15-25+ seconds. as for the shiva nukes they too would be special abilitys just without the auto use, so they become a tatical advantage but the player must manualy use it so you dont end up haveing all of your nukes lanched agains a single frigate because they would have a 45secons + cool-down timer for balance.. they just dont cost antimatter. when you get into the destoryer and marathon class you have the option to lanch multiple MACs at once, so destroyers would have around 200 am max so in 30seconds they can lanch up to four mac slugs and one nuke.. the lost am over slipspace jumps would be simmaler to how they have to be powerd up to so it rather colose to halo cannon..I know this has been descused a bunch and I gota lot of infulence from the others so this is just my summery of what could work..is it possible to change antimatter into "Charge" or "Power"?
This is great but the real problem i see with most ships is that a lot of them have both a MAC and nuclear warheads. Where as most ships have lots of MAC rounds (i think the smallest i ever saw was 3, but i think im wrong on that one) they only have a very limited amount of warheads, usually 3 at the most, maybe more for cruisers larger then the Pillar.
The question i keep asking and trying to figure out is, how do we make it so that we can have unlimited MAC usage (with a 20-60 second fire delay of course) and yet have only X amount of warhead usage?
And now that ive said that i think i actually have the answer!
Set the MAC abilities (we'll need different ones for different ships I'll explain below) to use 0 AM and give them somewhere between 20-60 second recharges. Have the Shiva warhead ability cost 50 AM with a 10 second recharge and no auto-cast. In addition make the warhead its own unit with a single burst trajectory (if you can, if not just make it a projectile)Then just give the ships 50 x # of warheads + 1 AM. This way ships can always fire their MAC cannons and will only have limited use of warheads.
This should work for ALL ships as the most it will ever take up is 4 ability slots.
Frigates would have say 101 AM meaning two shiva warheads and one MAC ability.
Destoryers would have 151 AM, 3 warheads and two MAC abilities
Pillar of Autumn type ships will have 151-251 AM and 3 MAC abilities (while it only had one MAC that MAC could fire 3 separate shots on a single charge though these rounds where different, they supposedly act like the shredder rounds in the MA5B assault rifle)
As for making shiva warheads their own unit, i got the idea again from the battle of Sigma Octanus 4, where Key's launches it early in the battle and detonates it remotely later. While not necessary it could lead to some cool booby trapping or just interesting fights. This could also go for Havok Warheads as well.
As for MAC rounds, i notice that a lot of the time captains tend to refer to "heavy round" when they say to load or charge the MAC cannon. Perhaps aside from the single tungsten shell and the shredder shell there are other types?
Finally as a support ship idea, perhaps an AI support ship, something that gives an accuracy and perhaps damage bonus to surrounding ships?
