Stars in Shadow: Weapons And Shot Effects

Artwork for the Stars in Shadow game project.

These are weapon assets for the Human fleet, and some shot effect concepts. 

In the game, you research technologies that unlock increasingly larger ship hulls and increasingly more sophisticated weapons. Each hull contains varying number and sizes of empty hardpoints, in which the player can place their choice of weapons that they've researched. Some weapons have heavy or point defense ("PD") variants. For a simplified view of the weapon tech tree see here

Each race will have its own set of weapon visuals, though some of the individual items may be recolors of this generic set. Some races will also have unique weapons.

Weapon Types Description

Weapon damage is classified into four basic types:

• Heat: basic beam damage type, can be countered by special conductive or ablative armor; damage decreases with range
• Kinetic: projectiles such as coilguns or railguns are shield-piercing weapons; damage is constant with range but hit chance falls off rapidly with range
• Explosive: missiles and plasma weapons have explosive effects that can splash across shields and damage armor
• Charged: electrically charged weapons like ion beams can cause additional internal damage

The damage types of different weapons and their placement in the tech tree can be seen at the bottom of this image.

Notes on Individual Weapon Systems (keeping in mind that everything is still subject to change):

Laser: basic tier 1 beam weapon
Turbolaser: advanced tier 2 laser; alternative to ion beam
X-ray laser: armor-piercing laser variant
Disruptor: causes additional crew casualties
Ion Beam: tier 2 charged beam
Neutron Beam: can cause crippling effects
Fusion Beam: advanced tier 3 beam weapon
Plasma Cannon: tier 2 heavy explosive beam
Hellbore: tier 3 advanced explosive beam
Force Beam: tier 3 kinetic beam weapon
Stellar Surge Beam: tier 4 ultra-tech doom star weapon

Atomic Missile: tier 0 explosive projectile
Coilgun: tier 1 kinetic weapon
Fusion Missile: tier 1 explosive projectile
Railgun: tier 2 longer-ranged kinetic weapon
Antimatter Missile: tier 2 explosive projectile
Pulson: tier 3 energy torpedo
Black Hole Projector: tier 4 ultra-tech projectile