trails would just look quite a bit cooler. rather than just a rain of what looks like but isnt MOPixels, we now have a rain of hell-scarey awesomeness. also, MOSParticles dont lag that much, especially if they have a short lifetime to keep the numbers down (think the smaller smoke particles)
maybe tiny explosions on landing would be cool, but i dont think thats the idea of these is it?

For the explosions, I don't think it is. I support the idea of trails though. Small smoky trails or fading acceleration trails.

Hm... could you make the flechettes tall enough they'd stick out of the ground after they land?

I could, but they don't always stick into the ground. On shorter maps (just tested zombie cave, and they have the same spread there as on grasslands) they sometimes hit rocks and just bounce.

How about this: a small glow attached, in the rough shape of a re-entry fireball?

you do know there is an easier way to fix that..
faster initial velocity, slower acceleration.
also, test on prom grounds.

Further testing of range and height.

Even at only about 2 clones above, the weapon spread to about 96 pixels, and was still quite lethal. The flechettes have rather high mass, I think I might lower it and increase velocity.

At around 300 pixels in height, the spread maximizes; there's no significant change from there to infinity.

Also, MOSrotatings do not like settling well in quantity. If you lengthen them, they collide with the same terrain and themselves at the same time. It goes badly. If you shorten them, the effect is significantly diminished.

Still waiting on what you guys think of the glow. I think I'll try it out myself and see if I like it.

Does this mean that they accsellerate downward at the same rate regardless of the gravity settings in the scene? If not how do the flechettes spread in very low or very high gravity?

Edit: If a reentery glow was applied, it might be nice to have the particles colored dark red to match. Not sure if such a thing is possible if they're objects without a sprite. But the heat glow would be a very good detail to add.

They would spread to the same amount, mostly. In a high gravity, the bunching would be somewhat tighter, unless they were dropped from a more significant height. In low gravity, the opposite would be true; they would spread out more with less height, but they would still move rapidly compared to the rest of the objects on the scene.

Also, on a high gravity map, depending on exactly how high, they could end up phasing out of the game due to velocity. But that's unlikely.

if you have variation in the glow (3 or 4 glows) and trails the aesthetic nazis among us will likely be appeased. good to hear about the spread working.
and phasing is rare.. objects approaching velocities like that usually just blow a massive hole out of the map or end up gibbing for no reason.

Hahaha, no, I don't mean leaving a hole.

I mean abruptly disappearing. Without a trace.

It happens when you mess with gravity. On a really large map, the (new) original kinetic might still do it, what with it going at 20x gravity.

And, adding extra glows would be easy. Again, trails could still lag; there's 150 of these created at the moment, although having them go in waves is not impossible. Trails could face issues, although I guess having a lengthened vertical sprite could account for emitters being slow.

i didnt mean leaving a hole either. i know what phasing is.

just use low lifetime MOSP for the trail.

as is i prefer flechettes. but the buckshot would be better with some tweaking. (replace the circle sprite with metalic gibs)

fletchettes look awesome.

I say both, it'll look cool.

whens the release?