I think the bigist problems with capital ships stem from the legistics of having ships that are larger than some (if not all) of the existing space station. These ships would be able to boast an extreem level of fire power, be too large to dock at the currently desinged stations, and the questions regarding multiple players operating from one ship.

My solution would be to create a small number of extreemly large shipyards where capitale ships can dock and be purchased. These stations could require minimum standing and or license levels to dock, or they could be open ports like all other stations. Docking a capitale ship at a shipyard would be much the same as docking a fighter at a normal station but on a larger scale.

The capitale ships themselves would be operated largly from an interface like the one seen when docked at a station. One tab would allow access to direct controle over the ship (this tab would only be available to the ship's ouner). As i see it there are two posabilities for the controle of a capitle ship and i am uncertan which would be better. There could be a somwhat abstract tacticle display (something like a battleship board or the clasic war room displays). From there the player couls ste a coarse tell certan groops of weapins to fire, and launch ai fighters (player operated fighters would launch at the discression of their ouners). The other option is to have baisicly the same interface used for fighters. Except i have a hard time envisioning an efficent way to give a single player controle of movment, and firing several turreted weapons. Some weapons could be aimed by ai's (such as point defense turrets that automaticly target the nearest hostile fighter, or turrets that automaticly return fire when the capitle ship takes damage). Or otherplayers could have acess to certain turrets. Althoug that option bring up some complicated legisticle issues, that i think could be troublesome.

Other tabs would allow access to all ships, cargo, equipment, etc that the player using them ouns. The weapons groop tab would be used to set the level of ai controle over fighters and weapons on board the capitale ship. For example: you could set your small turrets to return fire if the capitale ship is attacked, but make your larger weapons fireable only by command. This lets your capiatale ship be secure enough that you could leave it for short times to use a fighter to transfer cargo to and from smaller stations. Or you could set all your weapons to fire by direct order only to keep yourself out of trouble in no-fire zones. Again each player can only set ai controle for fighter he/she ouns.

The sell tab would be used to give or sell your cargo to the ouner of the capitale ship. The details of this would need to be worked out, or this option could be completely ignored.

At present my sytem would allow anyone to dock with a capitle ship (provided they can get close enough and there is enough room onboard), wether they are a friend or an enamy of the ship's ouner. However they would only have acces to the equipment they oun and could not acces the ships controle systems (navagation, weapons, etc). Some level of "stow away" capabilities may make the game more interesting, but i think they would be more anoying than cool. Of coarse the ouner of the capitle ship should be able to "dump" anything onbard his/her ship without premission of the ouner of the ship/cargo being consulted (so as to prevent freeloaders).

I also think that players should have as much controle as is posable over the aperence of their capitale ship, as they represent a sisable investment and should be impressive to look at.

I think it should be posable to operate a capitle ship by yourself, but that their weapons should be less able to hit small fighters than a compotent pilot in a fighter. This encourages capitle ship ouners to recrute good pilots to fly cover and support operatins. Also if the ouner of the capitle ship logs off, while other players are onboard they should be able to choose what fighter (from among the ones onboard that they oun) they want to launch in and then they will be launched in that fighter.

I think capitle ships should be dificult if not nearly imposable to solo in a fighter of any kinde, but that a groop of good pilots in reasonably well equiped fighters should have a chance (with casualties of coarse). As such i am opposed to any damage reduction that makes it imposable for mid-level weapons to damage the ship. With weapons as they are i think damage reduction needs to max out at about 200. I also think that the umber of wapons on a capitle ship should be limited (between 1 and 3 anti capitle ship weapons, and between 2 and 8 smaller weapons used mainly for point deffence peropuses). These weapons would be more powerfull than any of the weapons available for fighters, and power drain should be a minimal problem if it is present at all. This would make it easier on ther server, and the players trying to fire the reapons, but still allow capitle ships to be a powerfull presence.

As for the number of hull desings, i think there should be a few (3 to 6) diferent hulls with varying capabilities and sise. There should also be no less than 2 special ships each for the indavidual races. The smaller ships should be able to carry a small number of fighters (2-5) and the larges should be able to carry a squadrin or more (14+).

I also think that stations should have some anti-capitle ship weapons, such as heavy missiles or ion cannons, to enforce their no fire zones, as i don't see a capitle ship falling to the current level of station guards.

And i think it would be cool if capitle ships could equip short range (100 to 300m) tractor beems that they can use to imobalise fighters. Probably the tractorbeem should subtract from the thrust the tractord ship is capable of generating, and any excess capacity would be used to reduce the target's speed. Thus if you had enoug enerta and press your thrust enoug you may be able to escape. An advance tractor beem could also drain energy from the tractored ship's battary (thus reducing the ability of the tractored ship to resist)

I like this. It seems the bulk of what you're proposing is basically a moveable, controllable station, with limits (ie. number of ships that can dock on it, items it can hold, cargo, etc.) In fact, I think that this could solve the station building dilemna. Leave stations as they are, and just implement cap. ships. Hell, i don't know what the source looks like, but I'd imagine it's all Object Oriented, and that means the devs could (in theory) just take a station object, and tweak it until it becomes a cap. ship object. Also, the AI fighters you propose are an excellent idea. They could be much like station defense bots. One could even have a repair beam and such, so you could in effect leave your cap ship out in space as it's own little station. Having the ability to home to it (owner only, since letting other players home to it would probably break docking limits) would be a good way to basically have players "go it alone", setting up trading stations and such. (Basically, gaining revenue for items traded or sold in their ship). I personally see a whole lot of potential in this! Thank you Lord Q.

http://screenshots.spenced.com/vendetta/thebattle
http://screenshots.spenced.com/vendetta/thebattle1 <- find the valk
http://screenshots.spenced.com/vendetta/thebattle2 <- the end

Step into my parlour gentlemen

that is what we have to look forward to in the future ;)

I think Capitol ships would be more of a mobile space station. And i do think space stations should be much much larger than they currently are.

haha, beautiful Spence...i especially like the one showing the comparison of valk to cap. ship....

gamejunky: i agree about the mobile stations, that's what I was saying, and I think Lord Q as well.

so THERE'S the valk.

try this on for size

http://screenshots.spenced.com/vendetta/vendetta12 <- that's a hog
http://screenshots.spenced.com/vendetta/vendetta15 <- underbelly, find the vulture, the valk is easy to see but there is a vult there too.

Is it just my computer or are others unable to load the screenshots.spenced.com ?

I've had this problem for a while, but I just assumed the site had moved or something...

the screenshots load just fine for me. :)

My thoughts: First I would go with the gradual implementation of capital ships. At first have them be a mobile space station were people can store—not sell—cargo, dock for repairs and reloads for missiles, but as a whole make the ship depend on loyal guild members to defend it at the start. I would go with the extremely large shipyard stations to buy and outfit them at. Make who docks at the capital up to the discretion of the owner aka a list, or just guild, or something, and make them extremely hard to kill but not impossible, as well as extremely slow and expensive, then get input from that for how to balance weapons (though I could foresee several aka >10 turrets but only with limited fields of fire. I would suggest that to keep capital ships from being used as a giant industructable cargo ferry making them extremely expensive to repair so they would only be taken out then they had a large number of guild members for protection. I would suggest much larger stations with more docking in general because they are way to small at the moment. Lastly I would use what will be learned from capital ships as the basis for guild controlled stations. I once this is started I would strongly consider adding player/guild controlled bots. To give the guild a way to pay for all this.

i think that is an intersting idea, but i would like to see at least some capitle ships that could feasably be ouned by indavidual players not just by large orginizations like guilds. Perhapes there could be some large battle crusers that are too expencive for the indavidual player to ever afford (or maybee even require some sort of guild afiliation to purchass) as well as small frigates, and corvets that are still capitle ships in desing but don't have as much fir powere and could be bought by an indavidual.

i also think that if capitle ships are to exist they will need some level of automated protection, simply due to the number of enemys they could engage at once. This could be ai fighters or automated turrets, or some combination of the two.

A general plan for introducing Capital ships:

Stage #1: 'Strike Fighters'
Introduce a new class of heavy attack fighter which can mount not one but 2 batteries. This introduces the feature of multiple mounts of objects normally considered singular and therefore tests the robustness of the 'ship' data structure.

At the same time, introduce 'armor plating widgets' which protect the ship against the first X damage of any particular hit. (see my armor thread here: http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/1416#15354)

A sample follows:

'Condor' Light Strike Fighter
Length: 18m
Hull Points: 18900
Cargo Capacity: 8
Weapons: 1L + 2S
Battery Slots: 2
Armor Slots: 1
Mass: 15600kg
Thrust: 800N
Max Speed: 70m/s
Spin Torque: 28.0 Nm
Turbo Max Speed: 200 m/s
Turbo Energy: 140

(Note that my turbo numbers assume that the problem of infinite turbo is fixed by increasing turbo costs for all fast ships. If not assume a turbo cost of 110 for the above ship.)

Stage #2: Gunships
Gunboats build on the strike fighter concept and introduce multi-player ships with independent turrets. (see my post on turrets: http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/2975#27300)

Sample:

'Predator' Light Gunship
Length: 24m
Hullpoints: 26700
Cargo Capacity: 14
Weapons: 1T + 1L + 4S
Battery Slots: 3
Armor Slots: 2
Mass: 32000kg
Thrust: 1500N
Max Speed: 75m/s
Spin Torque: 55.0Nm
Turbo Max Speed: 190m/s
Turbo Energy: 215

Stage Three: Patrol Boats
Patrol boats build on gunships and set the stage for a transition to capital ships by introducing VL weapon slots. Very large weapons slots have capabilities in extreme range, velocity, and maximum damage per shot not generally possessed in combination by smaller weapons.

Sample:
'Vigilance' Class Sector Patrolboat
Length: 48m
Hullpoints: 44500
Cargo Capacity: 40
Weapons: 1VL + 2T + 2L + 4S
Battery Slots: 4
Armor Slots: 3
Mass: 128000kg
Thrust: 5900N
Max Speed: 80m/s
Spin Torque: 215.0Nm
Turbo Max Speed: 180m/s
Turbo Energy: 285

By this point, we have all the tools necessary to begin seemlessly introducing capital ships.

heh. Go Celebrim!

Celebrim's plan looks like a good step by step way to add some of the aspects nesisary for capitle ships, but i still think that the sheer sise of capitle ships will provide some dificulty even with this plan.

Lord Q: We've had a 700+ meter ship in the game before. The difficulties with a larger ship (aside from those I've already addressed) are graphical in nature: explosion animations, ship model, textures, interaction with 'roids, etc.

i've seen the screenshots with that ship, but they didn't give me any sence of how it operated.

(interesting timing on this discussion, given the In Progress post I just made). Anyway.. not going to go into depth, but just touching on a few points where I agree with the 'gist here. I would prefer to introduce a few smaller to mid-range vessels (small freighters, heavy transports, a gunship or so). I anticipate that we'll need some stations at the nation capitals and major "cities" that can handle very large vessels. Larger ships in outlying regions will need to ferry items between themselves and the nearby station in smaller vessels.

The big barrier is really the creation of the graphics assets and the time to make them.

But anyway.. we're getting there :). Putting the old cap ship back into the game will give us a good testbed for solving some of the problems unique to this scale of ship.

that will be cool, i've been wanting to see that capitle ship in action since i first saw it in the screenshot lybrary.

It would be tough to get people to ferry cargo between the Cap Ship and the station unless you paid a bit, and that could get too expensive. Better idea would be to have a special station dock for cap ship, not inside, but outside, like how current shuttles dock with stations. I guess, though, you could have AI ships do the transfer. This dock idea would be even better as possibly stations gain more realistic size.... The stations do look awesome, though. I like the variety.

It sat still and shot at you from many turrets. At first, it had furies all around it, but when an update to the bot AI made them ram the ship to death every half-hour, they got the boot. I think that the friggy itself was gone after that too, but I'm not too sure. Anyway, it sat and shot at you without any small fighter cover for a while at some point. Since it couldn't move, a blind spot it had made it easy prey (which it was anyway, but killing it the other way included 'landing' on it which wasn't as easy as sitting still in front of it for a few minutes with your guns blazing.) It also served briefly as a station, which prompted lotsa fun wars all around it. Then it was just a rock for a while.

I think it's explosion was the coolest thing about it. Very pretty.