Weapon
Weapon Purpose
Second Life supports the ability to damage an avatar intentionally with a tool. While any primitive can be used, this article focuses on complex objects intended to inflict damage on an avatar or group of avatars.
Weapon Types
There are hundreds of weapons in Second Life to choose from. They can be classified in several categories:
- Melee Weapons - Any handheld device that inflicts damage while remaining in the possession of the attacking avatar. This includes knives, clubs, swords and such. Beam weapons such as flame throwers, lasers, and dragon's breath are likely to be melee weapons rather than projectile weapons.
- Basic Guns - Devices that instantiate and move a physical projectiles to inflict damage on a remote avatar, while remaining in the possession of the attacker. Basic guns include slingshots, bows, crossbows, firearms, railguns, and siege engines: any object that flings projectiles that damage the remote target. In Second Life, projectiles generally die (self-delete themselves forever) when they strike a target. Projectiles or bullets generally can be stopped by "shield" systems invented for this purpose.
- Advanced Guns - Guns that instantiate and move intelligent, non-physical "tracking" bullets. Tracking bullets typically are set to seek a specific avatar by name or intelligently pursue an identifiable (visible) avatar. Trackign bullets cannot be stopped by any but the most advanced (and expensive) defense systems.
- Explosives - These range from basic explosives such as hand grenedes, to nukes (weapons that kill everyone within 96m of the detonation point in a damage enabled area).
- HUD Weapons - There are several quality HUD based combat systems available.
- Robots and Turrets - These can be remote controlled, or set to fire on certain targets automatically.
- Annoying Crap - Stuff like caging guns, anything that flings people into the air. Considered "noobish" and frowned upon by experienced combat people.
For more information, see Combat
Weapon Damage
Weapons in Second Life can inflict the following types of damage.
- Kill with one hit
- Partial damage from physical bullets
- Push
- Shieldbreaker
- Caging - can confine an avatar
Weapon Quality
Free weapons tend to be badly scripted such that they cause lag and other problems. Second Life weapons are a case where you really do get what you pay for.