Unstable Weapons

Original Idea:
A little while ago I was reading the Warhammer 40k Codex and I got to the part on plasma weapons.
For those of you who are not familiar with them, they have a tendency to overheat and damage the model holding it.
This gave me the idea for weapons that are not entirely reliable, aka unstable weapons.

My idea can be done in 1 of 2 ways:
Way 1) The weapon is an imperfect version of another weapon you get from researching it but it has a random overheat or self-damaging effect.
Way 2) The weapon is more powerful but at a cost of stability making it prone to more energy usage (if it is an energy weapon) or blowing up in your face (does not destroy the weapon).

Other ideas/suggestions:
Rarely the weapon may go apocalyptic and cause a huge explosion that makes a large crater.

Giant experimental cannons that need to be cooled by water or some other form of coolant that can be attached to a players base.


Please give some feedback and/or additional ideas!

Credit:
Original Ideas: Me
Apocalyptic explosion & Giant Experimental Cannon: GlobularDuke

Edit 1: Added the apocalyptic explosion idea.
Edit 2: Mountable giant experimental cannons for your base.

 

love it and maybe once in a while it could have a HUGE failure aka big explosion
EDIT; I mean like make a rather large crater

 

That is a good idea.
It would be cool to suddenly see the weapon blink red before going apocalyptic!
And if I remember correctly explosions can displace dirt so it could make a crater!
Also do you mind if I add this to the first post?

 

Go ahead

 

And maybe in the "main building" you can charge up a "special move"
And maybe when it over heats you have to somehow "cool" it down

 

Do you mean like the plasma pistols from Halo that have to cool down after a fully charged shot?

 

Yes but in a larger one you have to like put it in some type of cooling think {water,ice}

 

Wait do you mean like a giant unstable energy cannon that you can add to your base that needs to be cooled with water or ice?

 

Yes

 

THAT IS AWESOME!
I'm adding it to the first post. Okay?

 

Sure

 

Also we could have a small tank that would carry a smaller version of it around but you would need to have to pump water in somehow to keep it cool

 

This idea can also fit into "Research and Development", i like it. Finding ancient technology and upgrading/researching it can fix this drawback.

 

Maybe.
I'm not sure how balanced that might be.
I was thinking the giant cannon would be for defense and mounted on a single location.

That is what I mean with the first way I think this could be used.

Also another idea:
Use way 1 for handheld weapons, ie: plasma rifles/pistols.
And use both way 1 and way 2 for the giant cannons because a giant plasma cannon is probably going to take a lot of energy, need a lot of coolant, and still be liable to blowup in your face.

 

from what i understood you would research a weapon you already own that you bought from some npc or loot from monster. different then finding a cite that has the original blueprints of it which can be used for research.

 

And maybe a satellite in LEO or GEO orbit would only once launch a HUGE plasma beam down making a Gigantic crater

 

Oh I see what you mean.
But if you reverse-engineer this weapon you would still have a unstable weapon, but you probably could fix it if you had the blueprints.

This could be possible considering the devs have said there will be orbital bombardments.

 

Yes i like it you could take any old gun and take some materials to make anything at all plasma

 

Actually plasma is just one type of weapon, when I say unstable it is not just plasma, it could mean a gun that is prone to jamming, a gun that's barrel get hot too quickly, or a gun that might backfire.

 

Trial and error. Incremental improvement on a type of weapon technology. Good suggestion.