How would you make a Doom Superweapon?

[Zulk RS]

A recent thread on Doomworld got me thinking about what Doom would be like if the BFG 9000 did not exist. I feel like even if we didn't get the BFG9000, we would get some kind of super weapon that is intended to play a similar role to the BFG: Mass destruction and getting out of hairy/extreme situations.

 

So... what kind of weapon would you make for Doom to replace the BFG9000? And what do you think Id Software might have made if they didn't use the BFG9000? For the latter question I think if the BFG9000 didn't exist, we'd have gotten the Beta BFG. The one that "Shoots Christmas"

 

As for what kind of Super Weapon I would make to replace the BFG? The "Blast Shotgun": The Chaingun Cannon: A weapon that absolutely devours bullet ammo like there's no tomorrow. It fires at the same rate and eats 5 ammo per shot. Each time it shoots, instead of shooting a single bullet, it shoots a spread of 10 pellets in a horizontal line. Each pellet does twice the damage as a single pistol shot.

 

P.S: This is the thread in question

 

 

[Ludi]

I really want some kind of way to make an Unmaker in classic Doom. I always thought that weapon was cool and really fun.

[CoolerDoomeR]

Maybe a Rotating SSG that shots explosive bullets would be cool.

[Ludi]

4 hours ago, Sr_Ludicolo said:

I really want some kind of way to make an Unmaker in classic Doom. I always thought that weapon was cool and really fun.

 

If anyone has any ideas for a wad that adds the Unmaker over the BFG, I'm all ears

[Redneckerz]

The search button. When used, it shoots queries to all hellspawn and vaporizes them to a premade post, to be clicked on send for consumption to the DoomWorld archives, becoming part of the Doom lore they otherwise never would have.

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

Rocket launcher is my all-time favourite gun so I'd make something ridiculous like super shotgun that shoots a volley of smaller rockets. Just with minimal self-inflicting splash to make it at all practical. I mean, who wouldn't have fun making things go ka-blamo a whole lot? And I'd call it the Earth-Shatterer.

[JustAthel]

Honestly, it'd be cool to see something akin to the Soul Cube from Doom 3 -- enough to one-shot most small tier enemies with the only caveat being that you have to kill fodder enemies to use it. That's technically a superweapon in its own right, right? 

[Captain POLAND]

Something like the Wraithverge from Hexen. Maybe it fires homing fireballs instead of ghosts.

[out_of_service]

A weapon that fires homing Cyberdemons.

[Graf Zahl]

48 minutes ago, Captain POLAND said:

Something like the Wraithverge from Hexen. Maybe it fires homing fireballs instead of ghosts.

 

The Wraithverge was a great concept for a super weapon - but apparently it was too powerful so it was heavily neutered against bosses and its ghosts got reflected offsome 'shielded' monsters, so in the end it was an exercise in pointlessness. It's one of those weapons that's far too dangerous to actually be used.

 

Other things that often tend to fail is weapons that hurt the shooter like many flamethrowers or the Sigil in Strife.

 

In the end, the only kind of super weapon that actually works is one that deals a lot of damage but requires skill to be used efficiently. Which brings us right back to the BFG which nailed this trait.

 

Edited March 26, 2022 by Graf Zahl

[Gez]

For fun I made myself long ago a mod that was basically all the sprites and sounds from all classic games (Doom/II, Heretic, Hexen, Strife) so that I could use the console to summon a friendly D'Sparil (if monsters manage to kill it, they all die) or other silliness like this. That included getting all weapons from all games when idkfa-ing. My verdict back then was that the best superweapon was the incendiary grenade launcher from Strife. Nothing like area denial in a game where the AI is too primitive to avoid walking into the kill zones.

[Zulk RS]

10 hours ago, HrnekBezucha said:

Rocket launcher is my all-time favourite gun so I'd make something ridiculous like super shotgun that shoots a volley of smaller rockets. Just with minimal self-inflicting splash to make it at all practical. I mean, who wouldn't have fun making things go ka-blamo a whole lot? And I'd call it the Earth-Shatterer.

 

Oh! What about a Napalm launcher. It shoots rockets that explode and light an area on fire that constantly damages monsters that enter and effectively stun-locks them.

[Lippeth]

All I can think of is something like the noisy cricket from Men in Black. Comically tiny, yet demolishes a room and sends you flying backwards.

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

43 minutes ago, Zulk RS said:

 

Oh! What about a Napalm launcher. It shoots rockets that explode and light an area on fire that constantly damages monsters that enter and effectively stun-locks them.

Yeah! And since it's Doom AI, you can totally make them get in the flames.

[Gez]

29 minutes ago, Lippeth said:

All I can think of is something like the noisy cricket from Men in Black. Comically tiny, yet demolishes a room and sends you flying backwards.

Syndicate had it beat by 4 years with its "Gauss gun" (not actually a coil gun) that looks ridiculously tiny but behaves like a combination rocket launcher/flamethrower. Most powerful, and dangerous, weapon in the entire game.

[Graf Zahl]

2 hours ago, Gez said:

For fun I made myself long ago a mod that was basically all the sprites and sounds from all classic games (Doom/II, Heretic, Hexen, Strife) so that I could use the console to summon a friendly D'Sparil (if monsters manage to kill it, they all die) or other silliness like this. That included getting all weapons from all games when idkfa-ing. My verdict back then was that the best superweapon was the incendiary grenade launcher from Strife. Nothing like area denial in a game where the AI is too primitive to avoid walking into the kill zones.

 

It surely is a great weapon - but read my post about "weapons that hurt the player". This one's a textbook example of it and combined with its bouncing behavior does not allow using it in close combat. Chances are you'll burn yourself.

 

[ReaperAA]

3 hours ago, Graf Zahl said:

The Wraithverge was a great concept for a super weapon - but apparently it was too powerful so it was heavily neutered against bosses and its ghosts got reflected offsome 'shielded' monsters, so in the end it was an exercise in pointlessness. It's one of those weapons that's far too dangerous to actually be used.

 

I kind of disagree that it is unusable. It is extremely useful against groups of low tier enemies and unlike Quietus or Bloodscourge, its ammo efficiency (mana needed per enemy) is really good (even better than the 2nd and 3rd weapons in certain scenarios). Even against centaurs/slaughters, it can be used provided they didn't had their shields raised before you shot them. Shoot them when their shields are down and after ghosts start 'circling/damaging' them, the shields won't be able to reflect them back even after they are raised.

 

It only sucks against bosses though no doubt in that.

 

3 hours ago, Gez said:

My verdict back then was that the best superweapon was the incendiary grenade launcher from Strife. Nothing like area denial in a game where the AI is too primitive to avoid walking into the kill zones.

 

In terms of pure DPS, sure. But I absolutely despise how clunky the grenade launcher is in Strife. The fact that the grenades don't explode on contact with enemies and yet explode instantly when I am touching the edge of a wall really annoys me. And then the fact that the weapon fires 2 grenades at a time instead of 1 is just insult to injury.

 

This is why the first thing I did in my unreleased WIP Strife balance mod is to fix/improve the grenade launcher.

[Solmyr]

4 hours ago, Captain POLAND said:

Something like the Wraithverge from Hexen. Maybe it fires homing fireballs instead of ghosts.

So, the Bloodscourge.

 

OT: A plasma cannon that fires a progressively stronger and bigger stream of plasma balls as the player keeps the fire button pressed; at first it fires a stream of red orbs more powerful than the plasma gun, then a stream of even more powerful yellow orbs that deal splash damage, and finally it fires large white orbs, these deal thrice as much splash damage than the rockets and the balls themselves deal damage that can one shot a revenant at worst, or one shot a baron at best. It would consume about 10 cells for the first volley, 20 for the second one, and 40 for the last.

Edited March 26, 2022 by Solmyr

[Graf Zahl]

2 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

 

I kind of disagree that it is unusable. It is extremely useful against groups of low tier enemies and unlike Quietus or Bloodscourge, its ammo efficiency (mana needed per enemy) is really good (even better than the 2nd and 3rd weapons in certain scenarios). Even against centaurs/slaughters, it can be used provided they didn't had their shields raised before you shot them. Shoot them when their shields are down and after ghosts start 'circling/damaging' them, the shields won't be able to reflect them back even after they are raised.

 

It only sucks against bosses though no doubt in that.

 

 

That was exactly my point. The situation where a strong weapon is needed most is a fight against a boss - and here the player is stuck with weapons that are far too weak against a boss with several thousands of hit points.

[Zulk RS]

7 hours ago, Graf Zahl said:

 

In the end, the only kind of super weapon that actually works is one that deals a lot of damage but requires skill to be used efficiently. Which brings us right back to the BFG which nailed this trait.

 

 

You bring up an interesting point. This reminded me of one obscure super weapon that I used in the GBA Serious Sam game, "Serious Sam Advanced". I have not played any other Serious Sam game so I don't know if there is a similar weapon in the other games. The U.M.T. It's a screen clear. Anything that the player can see while firing this thing just straight up dies. Does 0 Damage against bosses because I think it ignores damage calcs and just determines if something dies or not based on if it's a boss or not.

 

Honestly it wasn't too good of a weapon so maybe a BFG replacement could be something that just does a fixed amount of damage to everything that's in the player's line of sight? Like Doom 2 has LoS checks for the Archvile so maybe using a similar attack that hits everything in the player's vision for a fixed 1000 damage can work?

 

3 hours ago, Solmyr said:

 

OT: A plasma cannon that fires a progressively stronger and bigger stream of plasma balls as the player keeps the fire button pressed; at first it fires a stream of red orbs more powerful than the plasma gun, then a stream of even more powerful yellow orbs that deal splash damage, and finally it fires large white orbs, these deal thrice as much splash damage than the rockets and the balls themselves deal damage that can one shot a revenant at worst, or one shot a baron at best. It would consume about 10 cells for the first volley, 20 for the second one, and 40 for the last.

 

If they properly balanced the Beta BFG. I can see this being an alternate "Final version" of the Beta BFG instead of the one we got.

Edited March 26, 2022 by Zulk RS

[maxmanium]

22 hours ago, CoolerDoomeR said:

Maybe a Rotating SSG that shots explosive bullets would be cool.

 

Like Quake's Super Nailgun?

[BaileyTW]

Something both the plasma and the bfg have in common is there is some sort of safety drawback to their use. The plasma has the cooldown animation making it so you cannot shoot for a bit and the bfg has the chargeup, so I believe a superweapon has to have this in its design to somewhat balance its use, so something like a super chaingun or super ultra mega shotgun wouldn't do I mean at least for me.

 

This unsafety could come from having to use it up close as you often do for the bfg, denying the use of other weapons as the charge and cooldown do, danger through explosion damage which I think Struggle Antarisian Legacy does with its super weapon.

 

I think an unconventional (unconventional for doom at least) super weapon I would like to see is some sort of super hammer. I'm talking bfg levels of damage in a melee attack which does of course use up ammo as to not be too exploitable in that.

 

Another one is I think the beta bfg is a good superweapon design that does need some tuning for the damage, but it does have an unconventional use in that you are forced to commit to firing all the shots locking you into this action.

 

Another one is just ripping the Spartan Laser from Halo. That was a beam weapon you charged and then released a single high power hitscan beam. For use in doom the beam itself would be many high power beams (probably just bfg tracer beams to save time) so that it can punch holes into crowds. Now this weapon even if it did more damage than the bfg would actually be nowhere near as good cause if you punch a small hole it going to be filled instantly but I think it would still be neat if not for the idea that maybe lining up 2 cyberdemons could do enough damage to consistently kill both.

Edited March 26, 2022 by BaileyTW

[Lizardcommando]

A plasma minigun that shoots super fast piercing railgun projectiles that, when they explode on contact with non-piercing monsters, objects or walls, they explode with both rocket explosions and bfg blasts. Secondary function fires fast homing missiles.

[antares031]

A mega-super-awesome laser cannon. a.k.a. Gauss Cannon siege mode from Doom 2016.

 

Alternatively, Leichenfaust 44 from Wolfenstein 2009 would be also a nice option.

[Gaia74]

 

[URROVA]

Spoiler

 

Normal thread: exists

Redneckerz: THE SEARCH BUTTON

 

 

Maybe some weapon that charges absorbing monsters attacks and releases its energy as an op laser/ball, or as a spread of bullets like the beta bfg.

Edited March 26, 2022 by URROVA

[Archanhell]

I would have answered this differently if the question was aimed as something more 'general' and not just for Vainilla DooM, so this makes it a bit harder but also fun to answer.

So like, we have many examples of 'cool' superweapons across the series: Beta BFG, The Unmaker, The Soul Cube, the Crucible and that one weapon which could summon portals or something like that, no idea what its name was but looked hellish.

 

I can't go around and say "Oh yeah, I want a massive 10-barrel Super Shotgun-chaingun which shoots explosive shells which also explodes on BFG balls" because what I would love to see is something more fitting to the DooM universe and that either Hell or UAC WOULD actually make for logical reasons.

 

On that case, if we went for UAC Route (100% completed all endings), a weapon which absorbed the energy on its surroundings, charging up like the BFG but NOT shooting until you release the trigger to shoot a projectile depending on the energy it absorbed would be cool.

This would mean that whether you absorb thermal energy, demon's (Like what Hell Knights, Barons of Hell, Arachnotrons, etc shoot), plasma, and the like, it would shoot a different kind of projectile (Beams, balls, many lasers like some kind of chaingun, and more...), which would be fun to see.

 

How it would work on Vainilla Doom? It simply would not- It's complicated but it still sounds cool and fitting, hypothetically, maybe when there are many Imps shooting theri you would hold left click, absorbing all its fireballs and charging some kind of gauge, when it's full, you release the trigger and shoot it all.

You would not be able to absorb other kind of energy until the one you are using is depleted.

 

 

For a Hell-based weapon, maybe one which looks like a skeletical version of the Unmaker on its first phase, and let me explain this.

This weapon would only be usable if you are around many demonic corpses (Or probably also dead props), holding left click would raise the bodies and, through demonic energy, "chain" itself to all the corpses, pulling them towards the weapon and using their flesh to assemble the weapon itself, gaining enough mass, then it can start to shoot Hellblood, a special kind of ammo which manifests itself as a darker tone of blood, the weapon slowly losing mass until it goes back to its skeletical phase.

[Gez]

We have a lot of superweapons in various Doom mods. Stronghold, for example, has two: the devastator and the pyrocannon. But most of the other new weapons are also quite overpowered compared to the Doom baseline. ZDCMP2 has the soulrender. Skulltag's BFG10K is worth a mention. And, of course, The Sky May Be has the instant discharge cannon and the blessing cannon.

 

Generally a super-weapon will do either of two things:

1. Deal a ton of damage to one enemy
2. Deal damage to a ton of enemies

The genius of the BFG is that thanks to its weird tracer mechanics, it does both. Using it point-blank lets you inflict a ton of damage to a single enemy, while using it at range lets you whittle down large crowds of monsters.

[Jello]

~ Bind mouse2 "kill monsters" enter

 

Edited March 27, 2022 by Jello

[Captain POLAND]

22 hours ago, Solmyr said:

So, the Bloodscourge.

 

No, that only fires 3 fireballs that barely home. I mean it would fire tons of fireballs that home in and swarm around enemies like the ghosts from the Wraithverge. Just replace the ghost sprites with fireballs.