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Arcade Style Ion Cannon

This is a pure support weapon. It doesn't damage ships or stations, just disables components on them. It's also fairly well balanced, tested in multiplayer, and works in both survival and creative.

On the videos, any freezes you see are due to the fact that my computer is ancient. It's a 2.4ghz Core2 Quad with 7gb of DDR2 memory, and no SSD... Do not envy me. Basically if the world is saving, the game freezes momentarily on my computer... It's just that old.

BIG UPDATE! Is now a true energy weapon that needs no ammo.

I am completely retooling everything about Jonn18's ion cannon from the ground up, which I have permission from Jonn18 to do. Very little of his original mod remains here. Just the visuals for the shots and the large grid version of the cannon.

I have dramatically improved the ion cannon mod and given it so much polish you won't even recognize it.

I've retooled the projectile script to work far more consistently, and in a way that affects gameplay dramatically, both in how you build ships to defend against ion blasts, and in how you might prepare to board ships.

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Similiarities to Jonn18's...
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* Shuts off blocks in a radius around the point of the ship that was hit

* Large grid version of the cannon shuts off blocks in a wider area

* Reuses some but not all of his art assets (will be changing this as I get the hang of making models), and only a handful of lines of his code that frankly I'm not sure I would do it otherwise from scratch.

* Uses the same class and block names for now (will be changing this later, as I intend on having this be the first component in a comprehensive arcade style combat overhaul)

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Differences from Jonn18's
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* True energy weapon, needs no ammo. Builds up a charge slowly over time.

* Better, faster, more accurate block detection that will always detect blocks no matter the speed of the projectile

* More than ion one shot per cannon is able to be tracked

* Faster fire rate

* The ion blasts in code that disable blocks actually match up with the graphics you see in-game. They're still separate but I'm now matching up with them close enough that I dare you to tell them apart. So now, what you see get hit actually gets hit.

* Blocks affected by ion blasts have an electrical particle effect surrounding them. (Due to a bug in SpaceEngineers, this only works when close to origin, i.e. world coordinates 0,0,0. Too far away and they stop working).

* Shuts off blocks and forces them to remain off for a time limit, but does not turn them back on.

* Star Warsy sounding ion cannon sound inspired by and almost (but not quite) identical to X-Wing vs Tie Fighter.

* Small version only shuts off one block per shot, but it's a random block within a radius, so it CAN shut off exactly the block it hits, or it might even just shut off a random interior light inside the ship it hits. So small ships have to really harass a large ship to criple it to any major degree.

* Distance from impact does not affect forced shut off time (at this time, I may change that)

* Repeatedly disabling the same block refreshes the timer.

* Forcibly shuts down blocks for the duration (currently) and nothing can turn them back on until the time is up on that block.

* Blocks must be switched back on manually or by a programmable block or timer block, provided those haven't been shut off too... Basically NPCs that aren't programmed to automatically reenable their systems or whose automations are disabled are screwed and players will experience frustration at trying to reboot their failing systems if they don't have an automated way of doing it, or the automated way is disabled.

* Uses sphere instead of box to get list of blocks, which is easier on the physics engine, as all it needs to do is check distance instead of checking if blocks are inside of a volume. This also has the added benefit of having a consistent radius of what can get disabled.

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Things I have planned...
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* If a ship or station is equipped with energy shields, make the ion blasts deplete the shields BEFORE turning blocks off

* Ensure that only blocks that are on the grid that was hit get disabled.

* Make a better thumbnail image.

* Make it a true energy weapon that requires a separate block attached to the conveyor system to act as a capacitor (basically an ammo manufacturer that turns energy directly into ammo). Thus making it work more like in XWing vs Tie Fighter, where you slowly build up a charge.

* More but only as a part of the aforementioned combat overhaul.

Even as it is, when this mod is enabled and you know it's going to be used against you, it changes the way you design your ships... You'll want redundant systems... Also the more unnecessary blocks that can be turned off are in an area of the ship, the less likely it is to shut off something important. So interior lights are basically your friend at this point, they don't even have to be turned on.

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Things I need help with
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I'm a programmer, first and foremost. I stink at art work. If you're an artist, have experience with Space Engineers, and would like to help me out with some decent art assets, I would be most appreciative and give you credit where it's due.

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Notes
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* All known bugs, including cosmetic ones have been fixed.

How to reach me...

You can open a discussion in the mod here, or you can find me on Discord as Kallisti#2038.