(I searched for something like this on the forums, since I KNOW it's been discussed before, but I could not find any results that talked about equipment ports or whatnot. So I must have entered something wrong, since everyone KNOWS that the Search function isn't broken.)

My new suggestion:

Instead of having just two sizes of ports, let's have types AND sizes.

1. Small Weaps
2. Large Weaps
3. Small Equipment (Scanners, Fee/Light/Med Batts, Radar extenders)
4. Large Equipment (Mining beams, Heavy, FC and UC Batts)

This would allow for the creation of decent mining ships without the danger that they become gun platforms.

Whaddya think?

Good idea.

Similar to this?

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/15276

Oooh yeah, gadget thread. (Funny, if you search for "gadget port" you get nuthin', if you search for gadget you do OK. I'll never understand how the Search Function works, I guess.) Anyway, That's the thread I was thinking of, but could not find.

Advanced port would do well, too. But, yeah, limiting what went into each port would prevent the "abuse" that would occur if we had a 3 L-Port Marauder. Not that it's really "abuse", but I'm positive we'd have whiners when there were 3 AGT's in one ship. Hehe.

Try searching for +"gadget port" instead.

what's with the plus? (Doesn't matter, I was searching for "equipment port" or "extra port" before anyway...)

It's the correct syntax for multi-word search terms when you want to find all the words in the term in that order.

There's a mile-wide difference between the 'gadget' port, and what Lexicon's proposing here. He's suggesting that we splinter the current port system into specific categories. He's not suggesting that we create an additional end-all port that seems to have uses for everything from scanning for asteroids to launching fighters... That was a very... sloppy idea, and I suspect that the sticky placed on the thread about Gadget Ports was stuck on there more as a means of catching first time posters repeating the same subject, as opposed to appreciation of the thoughts at hand. I mean, half of the post is them arguing whether Star Trek or Babylon 5 makes for better Sci Fi.

Let's not hesitate to post our thoughts about different port types in fear of mimicing what's already been said. It hasn't, both Strat's and Lexicion's are ones I've never heard or thought of before, and I've done alot of forum trol - er, *posting* lately. So anywho, a general concern popped up last night when somebody asked which version of the Warthog was 'best'. Obviously they all have their (slight) ups and downs, but one question that arose was why did the Mk III, Cargo Transport even hold a candle to the Mk II, Upgraded or Mk IV, Armored? Several of us concluded that the Mk III was the best overall choice, including myself, and one person even commented that the Mk II and Mk III were backwards in their stats, that Mk II had a higher max turbo and infiniboost making it the better for trading, while the Mk III had lighter weight and higher thrust, making for the superior combat vessel. Truth is that thrust makes the most difference in trading large amounts of weight, and that that Mk III is better than the Mk II, and the Mk IV beats the Mk III. All that aside...

It's my personal belief that the reason why there seems to be such limited personality and customability between differetn ranks of a ship is because of the boosting system, but also because of the all inclusive port system. As Lexicion pointed out, it's difficult to make a decent mining ship, because the same ports that are used for mining beams can be used for powerful weaponry. There are ways to balance this, but in the end there's not much wiggle room, and the game gets stale when you realize how very similar each ship is to the next. It also gets annoying when you see a Centaur, and wonder whether there's seeker missles, devastators, or heliocene mining beams loaded on there. As for my two credits, I think the addition of both advanced ports and equipment ports would be an excellent way to go. Remember that advanced ports are supposed to make a ship above and beyond in price and performance, where as equipment ports are for non combat situations, I suppose. Mines maybe?

It was my hope to deal with this, not so much by adding an another port type, but by placing further requirements on energy. Ie, more of a "hardpoint" concept based on the capabilities of the individual powercells. For instance, if a Heavy power cell had an "output" of 10 units of.. "energy", whatever, and you had a ship with 5 small ports, and equipped like 5 different weapons that used 4 energy-units apiece, only two of them would work (or perhaps, none of them?). On the other hand, mining beams might only require 2 energy-units? What powercells would be equippable on which ships would be another issue to deal with, but it could have interesting possibilities if you offered, say, a black-market battery that let people rig out more weapons on a smaller ship.. but also with a certain chance of unreliability, maybe disabling their ship sporadically or causing their weapons to malfunction.

The reason why I favor this, over equipment ports (which have been suggested many times.. to me personally at least, on IRC and in-game and I think in thread on here as well).. is that it gives, in my mind at least, a little *more* flexibility to what's possible. It makes it potentially possible for me to limit how a given ship can be equipped, but also let people mix and match more types of gear. This especially includes more recently-emergent types of addons, like scanners, radar extenders, and other non-weapon types that would make interesting tradeoffs.. placing the user in a position of having a weapon *or* a sensor addon. Is it better for a solo pirate to simply have a lot of weapons, or something that can see his prey at a greater distance in storm sectors? Or perhaps something specialized for disabling jumps within a certain area? Or perhaps a group of pirates has one ship completely loaded out with sensors to direct them, but in a fast enough ship that he can run if he needs to?

I've always been leery of specializing ships too much. I would like ships to be as flexible as possible, but obviously, that leads to problems if there aren't limiting factors in place. I know there will always be "mining" ships and "transport" ships, but I like the fact that some people fight in Atlases, and other wacky combinations. Otherwise, you specialize everything out by ship, and it becomes more about who can access what ship, rather than who has "invented" their own interesting combination. Does that make any sense?

Incarnate, your idea of keeping things flexible makes me think of `port space`. Each piece of equipment would occupy some amount of port space, and each ship would have only so much port space. You could combine any equipment with any other as long as the total port space required by the equipment does not exeed the available port space of the ship. It`s like cargo space, and more `equipment space` than `port space`.

In case ports in some form should be kept up, ships could have some ports like they do now, but the ports would be rated by the amount of equipment space they offer. You could put any piece of equipment into any port that had enough equipment space still unoccupied.

It`s similar to how they did it in Terminus. Terminus had different types of ports, equipment had some energy requirement, and the equipment produced radiation and heat you had to get rid of. More radiation made the ship more visible on radars, and to get rid of the heat, heatsinks had to be used that added weight to the ship. You could even fit different types of thrusters and engines that were different in price and power, and that went so far that you could get better results by combining several smaller engines or thrusters instead of using a single large one.

No doubt if advanced ports and equipment ports were in place to begin with, this thread would be about freeing up everything, and remodeling the game so that there were only two port types; Large and Small.

Hehe, I'll tend to agree with you, SMM.

The original reason for my post was to figure out a way to make the Marauder relevant in a universe full of Behemoths and Centaurs.

Since mining beams are all "L" port devices, the marauder is a poor choice when Centaurs and Behemoths have 2 L ports and more cargo space (well, except for 2 mauds)

Giving the Maud 2 L ports (or three!) in order to make it a decent mining ship would also immediately make it a great AGT platform, which would lead to a whole new set of threads about "BALANCE." <huuurk.. bleh>

So, in order to counteract this eventuality ingame, I suggested splitting the port usage to be specific to non-weapon and weapon ports. So that you could have a mining marauder that could equip 3 L-port mining beams, but not 3 L-port AGTs.

However, I like Incarnate's idea better. With a more detailed battery/engine/ship system, you could come up with batteries that allowed "X" amount of discharge at any given instant. Weapons are "quick-drain" equipment, and require draining more energy at once, while mining beams are a "slow-draw", meaning they power up, and then drain at a constant rate which does not deplete the battery much.

In general, I like the ability to be flexible in configuring your ship, so if this "discharge limiter" idea is easier to implement game-wise, then... kickass.

I very much agree with incarnate. One of the strongest points about VO is its flexibility with EVERYTHING.

I do like the idea of generic "space" though... How about this?:

Ships get an amount of internal space, a number of S & L hardpoints (how many things of what size can stick out of the hull), a base maximum usuable energy per second (EPS, static energy draw) and a base maximum usuable energy per instant (EPI, capacitor energy capability). [S port stuff should be able to stick out of L hardpoints].

Power cells get an EPI value in addition to weight, EPS output, and max energy storage. A ship can only ever have a single powercell.

All equipable items (including cells) get a space [internal size] value in addition to weight and port type. Some items may not need a port; most equipment should statically use some EPS (e.g. 16 EPS for a mining beam, 1-2 EPS for sensor stuff...).

Any unused internal space is automatically cargo space.

Add some equipment that enhances EPI, EPS, and storage values (e.g. extra wiring, enhanced capacitors...)?

This would actually give more variability to the current ships! :)

P.S. item "balance" is over-rated, but could still be done with this. E.g. make mining beams take 30 EPS and make the 60 EPS power cell have 10 EPI and weigh 1000kg.

Also, would it be possible to let certain powercells give a penalty (never a boost) to a ship's thrust?
Also, how about defining EPI as 1/10s - this would mean active/on, static drain equipment would lower a ship's effectively available EPI?

I know this discussion has progressed a bit, but in the thread called "PLEASE READ PRIOR TO POSTING A SUGGESTION" we have: "gadget ports other than weapon ports"

hehe, it has been discussed lots.

Not that bringing it up again is gonna hurt anything.