I know that player owned and controlled Cap Ships are supposed to be coming soon. Apologies again if this has been discussed to death but I didn't really find a thread exactly about this.

I was wondering if there was any chance that Cap Ships would be faster and more agile than the current large ships. The current model seems to be like a Star Wars type of thing, where the bigger ships just kind of slowly float while the small ships are able to zip by.

I think it'd be cool if the larger ships behaved more like in Star Trek. They could be fast and fairly maneuverable. The gameplay I imagine is that once a player reached a certain level he or she would upgrade to these bigger, faster, and much more powerful ships. The endgame of VO would be dominated by these "crew ships" (cool name maybe?).

I'm not sure if the game engine allows for this kind of large ship speed and maneuverability or how actual real-world physics applies. Maybe the ships could be medium sized. I guess I just think that if I'm going to spend a million credits or more on a big ship, I want it to do more than slowly float in one direction while everyone else has all the fun zipping around.

I think how you handle the concept of crews will really be important to how good this gameplay will be. Can one person fly a cap ship by him or herself? Do you need a crew? We could have a crew system much like the current guild system, so many players could join a crew. Whenever the owner/captain signed on he could take a couple members of his crew that were also signed on.

One option is that a Captain or Pilot can fly a crew ship by him or herself, but at a severe disadvantage. Design the weapons so that they are extremely clumsy and inaccurate without a weapons officer. Other useful posts could be engineering or something else creative like that.

Maybe have multiple weapons officers, one to control energy weapons, one to control missles, one to control beam weapons (locking ala Star Trek), etc... You could make a system so if you only had one weapons guy, he'd have to arm the standard energy weapons post. If you had 2 weapons officers, the second would get missles. If you had all 3 weapons stations manned, one could use the treasured and extremely powerful beam weapons station. The purpose of this would be that you couldn't use the coolest weapon in the game without a full crew, thus encouraging cooperative gameplay.

Just my thoughts. Let the yelling about using the search feature and reading the sticky threads begin!

Why would you want them to be faster?

"I guess I just think that if I'm going to spend a million credits or more on a big ship, I want it to do more than slowly float in one direction while everyone else has all the fun zipping around."

Yeah... Imagine flying a ship slower and less responsive than a fully loaded Moth *shudders*. Well I duno... if they were to be faster then the smaller ships would become quite useless no?
That's what I used to like about the "Homeworld" series. Most of the times fregates or capships would get massacrated if they have no fighter support, since bombers are nimble enough to evade the big wepons.
Implementing that into a MMORPG? Well I really don't know if it is possible.

This is most induibitably a matter of opinion, but I like my capships slow. Why? Because otherwise there's no balance- no weakness to capships. Nobody would fly fighters anymore. As a MMORPG, we need to cater to all users. If endgame ships are in all ways superior to n00b ships, then we've lost one of our chief selling points- that a n00b with good reflexes can (using a low-level ship) kill somebody who's been playing for many years. So, [stamp of rejection]™

Saying that a noob with good reflexes can kill a player that has played for years is a mirage.
1) A noob can only use plasma and ion weps. Even in a Centurion or a Vulture you will last long enought to get out of the fire. And then toast him with your neutrons in his EC-88.
2) It all depends on your definition of a noob
3) Nothing beats practice, no matter how good a new player is, he must first learn how the game works, and only expereience can give him that.

But all that said I pretty much agree, fast capships would make it so that everyone runs a capship

The smaller ships wouldn't become useless. They would be for beginners. People with XP levels over 10 or 15 in all categories would be using the cap ships. A major advantage of the smaller ships would also be price. If your Cap Ship was destroyed, you probably couldn't afford to replace it, at least not countless times like the smaller ships. Plus, you can't fly a Cap ship effectively by yourself. It's a multiplayer thing. So players will still use vults and rags, etc... when they are alone.

I guess I don't see the point of Cap Ships the way they are now. Do they have amazing cargo holds for super-profitable trading? Even if you could make a million credits profit per trip trading with a huge cap ship, what would be the point? Who needs 50 million credits? It's very possible I'm just missing something as I am very new here but if I'm right and they're just super-traders essentially, I think that's pretty boring.

I think it'd be cooler to have ships we could call our own and that we valued. The way it is now, ships are expendable and players frequently change ships and weapon loads every few minutes. It's more fun to spend time deciding on a ship and spending money decking it out until it's just perfect for your tastes and then you value it and are proud of it (especially if it'd cost you 10 million credits to replace). If I were to get a ship like that, I'd want it to do more than slowly float across a sector with a few turrets while I depended on small fighters to defend me and let them have all the fun.

I don't like the idea of having many player in one ship, even in a game like WoW getting a 5 person party can be annoying. In VO it will be really annoying. Most of the times you have 40-50 players, thats like 10-12 fully manned capships...
Also while the pilot migt have fun I'm pretty sure that the gunner would often be bored.

I am not saying that your idea is necessarily bad, but I think it would be hard to implement. Not from the programming point of view but the actual players getting togheter.

"Saying that a noob with good reflexes can kill a player that has played for years is a mirage.
1) A noob can only use plasma and ion weps. Even in a Centurion or a Vulture you will last long enought to get out of the fire. And then toast him with your neutrons in his EC-88.
2) It all depends on your definition of a noob
3) Nothing beats practice, no matter how good a new player is, he must first learn how the game works, and only expereience can give him that."

No, it's not.

1) I frequently dominate other players using nothing but Phased blasters, and on rare occasion, ions. Phasers and Ions DO have an advantage over more advanced weapons in that their weight is significantly less, allowing the player to make better use of a light ship's maneuverability. Noobs don't fly ec-88s past the first moment they're able to buy something else. We can assume the average combat-interested noob is around lvl 2/2/1/1/- within the first 4 hours of gameplay. At that point, they can buy a Vulture or Cent (even an IBG), and with sufficient talent, compete with long-time players (obviusly not the top guns, but definately the average)

2) Of course it does. If we define noob as someone who's been playing for less than half an hour, you're absolutely right! I'd however suggest that the average player retains their noob status at least one week from starting the game... sometimes much longer.

3) Find me a former naval pilot whith absolutely 0 experience in VO but the interest to start, and I've got 500k that says he'll be kicking vets asses before the end of his 8 hour trial. If the noob has the talent, the aptitude, and the former learning experience of space or flight combat games, then They can become serious opponents long before they have the levels for top-end equipment.

The first week I played VO, I was fighting experienced players in a hornet II, and winning.

Fatstrat:

I disagree, and please read the follwing thereads where these issues have already been brought up and explained:
http://vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/13053
http://vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/13054

Thanks for the links Cunjo.

I guess I'm really suggesting a class of ships smaller than the current Capital ships. They'd be a little bigger than Behemoths but a little faster and more maneuverable. Maybe it's too far-fetched.

My weapons idea could still work for the current Cap Ship model (having to have mutliple players onboard to access the stronger weapons). Beam weapons would be really cool I think.

So I played for a bit and looked at some of the ships' sizes and speeds.

The Trident Light Frigate isn't too big. I don't know how maneuverable it really is because you can't fly it and the AI flies them in straight lines most of the time. Are they considered Capital ships? Will they be player owned as well soon?

Player owned ships around that size or a little smaller would be cool. They look like they could be pretty maneuverabile too. Then you could still have the bigger Cap ships do Star Wars star destroyer type slow stuff.

I don't think "crew ships" would just go around blowing up poor vultures and centaurs anyway. It'd be a whole new PvP style. Maybe crew ships could target eachother's main systems so you could knock out your opponent's weapons and then blow him up. Or maybe his propulsion system so he can't evade your fire.

It'd definitely make the game more complex and I think that'd be a good thing. You don't want newbs having the concepts of the game figured out in a few hours of play. Mystery and complexity help to make a game addictive. Adding new concepts won't necessarily destroy what's good about the game now, just add a new dimension so there are multiple ways to have fun.

I guess I'm really suggesting a class of ships smaller than the current Capital ships. They'd be a little bigger than Behemoths but a little faster and more maneuverable. Maybe it's too far-fetched.

My weapons idea could still work for the current Cap Ship model (having to have mutliple players onboard to access the stronger weapons). Beam weapons would be really cool I think.

Ok so now its just the small ones.
I can agree with that.
As long as they aren't dockable, that might keep them in a class of their own.

Yea. They'd be too big too dock in the current station docks. They'd have to moor outside a station (maybe there could be a cool energy beam that attached them).

I wasn't clear on my idea at first (in this thread or in my head). This class of ships would have to be somewhere between Behemoths and Tridents in size. They'd be more desirable than Capital ships, atleast for anyone interested in combat. They'd be more powerful and funner to fly. They obviously wouldn't have as much armor but they'd make up for that in almost every other way. Maybe these ships could even have a shield system?

I think Kix meant dockable *with*.

Besides, what you are suggesting are gunships, or possibly the equivalent of Wing COmmander III's Kilrathi corvettes, and those have been suggested quite a few times.

I still dislike the idea. You propose creating a ship class that is:

1) larger than current ships
2) more powerful than current ships
3) more maneuverable than corrent ships
4) more fun than current ships
5) more protected (shields?!?!?) than current ships
6) always superior in combat to current ships

No disadvantages... me no likey...

Again, the disadvantage would be the very high price (more expensive than Cap ships?) and the fact that you need a crew to really take advantage of the ship.

They wouldn't be more maneuverable than the current fighters. It would maybe feel like flying a big Rag or Taur.

Think of it this way; a fully manned crew ship would have maybe 4 or 5 people in it and would be matched in a fight against 4 or 5 fighters. There would have to be some sort of balance like that. They wouldn't be super-ships.

BAD IDEA. In most if not all points. Re-jected, for the tons of reasons people like tosh and Roguelazer pointed out.

lol, I can accept this mass rejection gracefully.