Case for weapon upgrades

Most MMOs use a method where a player works to get a "uber" weapon. This method, however, is not the best way to go about it.... especially if the player had to work for weeks to get it, only to have to replace the weapon in a given number of levels where the said weapon will become too weak or outright unusable.

With the "Lego block" method we plan to implement in Iron Thunder, this would be a bit more fair in this regard -- it has the upshot where casual players could "cobble together" a decent weapon without having to throw in weeks of effort. On top of this, we can also keep crafters busy with the use of an upgrade system.

There are in essence two kind of upgrades -- temporary and permanent.

the temp ones are, in the simplest sense, "power ups"... a good example would be a silencer -- its mounted on the muzzle of a gun and is good for "X" number of shots before it "falls apart" and needs to be replaced. Power-ups can also have detrimental effects as well as beneficial ones.. in the case of our silencer example, the ports the bullet has to fly through could slow down the round if its not aligned correctly -- so it may make the gun quieter, but could also reduce range and accuracy a small amount as well...

The more permanent upgrades would be swapping out a component of a weapon for another that might fit the same slot in the "data core", but will do something better or something different altogether.

Lets say a player has a high-end sniper rifle, but he needs to use a higher grade of ammo and also wants more range. Rather than replace the gun completely, he could have a crafter swap out the firing chamber and the ammo port for the new ammo type, and replace the "standard" barrel with a "double-rifling" barrel (which would put a more faster spin on the round giving it more range along with a small amount of extra accuracy).

-Eiji