Forums » General

Capital Ship Conundrum....

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Apr 30, 2003 HumpyThePenguin link
Um...erm.....Devs? I know youve been saying that cap ships will be coming out soon under [NPC] control, but do you have any idea when they might be player controlled? And may I have an estimated price range, HP, maneurverability and the amount of turrets or docks?

In short I would like a pic of the cap ships that will arrive first, and stats and prices too :D

/me thinks that everybody shall fear him and his fleet :D
Apr 30, 2003 Arolte link
I asked Incarnate when we'll be seeing the capital ships, and he said we'll see an NPC controlled capital ship in a hidden sector before E3. This was asked before 3.2.2, so that huge gap in s15 may in fact hold the capital ship within the near future. Or maybe there'll be an s16 soon that will house it. Teaser shots of the capital ship are also expected before E3. No promises were made though.

Every ship but the special ships will be remodeled also. But these won't appear before E3 or anytime soon. I'd be willing to bet that we'd see him at around 3.2.7 or 3.2.8 at the earliest. But this is a totally random guess. Ohhhh, I'm sooo excited!!

=)
May 01, 2003 Renegade ++RIP++ link
E3 is when ?

end of june ???

"hopes hopes hopes :D"
May 01, 2003 Suicidal Lemming link
'soon'
=)
May 01, 2003 Arolte link
May 14-16
May 01, 2003 haywired link
2 weeks... :)
May 01, 2003 CrazySpence link
one of the devs when they were online said we'd see an ai controlled cap ship before the 14th and they also hinted it'd be guarding something cool...
May 01, 2003 Arolte link
Sector 13 will probably have another uncharted sector.
May 01, 2003 Nihm link
/me likes uncharted sectors


I WANNA BOMB A CAP SHIP PLEASE
May 01, 2003 Celebrim link
I really don't know what the devs will do, but I think Arolte has a good guess. In fact, I was expecting 15 to be linked to 13. It would have been symmetrical.

Maybe a Serco secret military base? Hmmm... that'd be sweet.

Anyway, since the devs probably aren't going to tell us, this would be how I would make the frigate.

Serco Frigate
Hull Points: 240,000
Max. Speed: 65m/s
Turbo Cost: 480 energy/second
Manueverability: Bad (4 steps worse than a Low!)
Power: 12,000 + 300/s
Weapon Systems: 1 360 Turret Mounted Beam Cannon
2 Avalon Torpedo Racks (20 torps each)
6 Turret mounted Advanced Gatling wt. Hemispherical firing arcs. (or 12 tacyons, I haven't decided which I like better)
Armor: 180 (each hit on the Frigate has its damage reduced by 180 to minimum of 0).
Shields: 300 (as armor, but costs Frigate 60 power/second. Can be doubled to 600 by paying 240 power/second, and tripled to 900 by paying 480 power/second)

Serco, you are charged with keeping the frigate alive! :) :D

But I really have no idea. There are just soooo many different approaches you could take here.
May 01, 2003 Nemesis link
I would like a 1 million HP frigate, if it is really expensive, you should not loose it that easily.
May 01, 2003 Arolte link
Ahhhh, sweet. Frigate versus frigate battles. I can just see it now -- frigates firing avalons at each other, just barely dodging each others shots. It would definitely have a more practical use than fighters or bombers launching avalons at each other.
May 01, 2003 Celebrim link
Nemisis: The converse of that is that no one player, no matter how wealthy should be allowed to dominate game play that exclusively. RPG's tend to be less 'you get what you pay for' than 'the more power you want to accumulate for yourself the more excessive of a penalty you pay to get it'.

That keeps everyone in the game.

And note that under my set up the armor and shields add _lots_ of effective hull points when facing something with fighter type weapons. Tachyon's could easily be made to bounce off the shields. Lighter hitting weapons (gatlings or ions) bounce even with minimum energy expenditure on shields.

The only thing beyond that I'd like to add to defend the frigate is a 'Ship's ECM field', that gave any rocket or missile a 50% chance of blowing up at 100m distance and another 50% chance of blowing up at 50m distance. This means that light rockets and homing missiles would generally get nerfed, but that the frigate pilot (whether human or AI) would have to choose between trying to dodge a torp (with its low prox radius and slow speed) and blowing it up from a higher distance knowing that he'd still be in the blast radius. And of course it would mean a choice between an additional power expenditure and risking more hits from fighter launched homing missiles, etc.

Between the beam cannon and reinforcing shields, one frigate could sit back and fight a million buses and never take a point of damage. As the Captain, you could go get a sandwhich while the fight was going on.

Of course, 10 rocket armed Valks or worse yet Avalon armed Promys would be an entirely different affair.
May 01, 2003 Cmdr. Freeman link
Capital ship battles always sux0r unless both sides have plenty of fighters to make things really interesting.
Who really wants to sit there on escort duty watching your frigate launch Avalons at another frigate that has no fighter cover protecting it?

Besides, when capital ships come out, warheads should become targetable, so fighters can shoot them down to guard their cap ship.
May 01, 2003 Celebrim link
Cmdr. Freeman: It is my considerate opinion that capital ships 'sux0r' because everyone has basically adopted the 'Star Wars' model of the capital ship for thier game play. This game play was designed to emphasize the role of the fighter in determining the outcome of capital ship engagements both because the capital ship was not player controlable and because the background material required that to achieve its flavor. It was 'Star Wars' computer games that introduced the 'shoot down the torps' model specifically to give the fighter a direct means of influencing an engagement involving a capital ship despite the fact that there is nothing in the source material to suggest that actually occurs. One of the results was that the capital ships in those games basically could not influence the results of the combats they were in and combat between them was a statistical to the point of exact predictability.

(As a side note, the reason for that is that all of the Star Wars space combat visuals were directly inspired by WWII fighter footage, including such anacronistic things as the speed of the crafts, the relative motion of the 'tracers', and the rate of turns. Lucas wasn't going for science, he was tapping into our myths and intuitive understanding.)

Why then should we be in a hurry to replicate that game play if we have technically receached the point where capital ship control - even if it doesn't make it on to the spec. sheet - is at least possible?

I point you to examples like 'Star Fleet Command' and 'Homeworld' as proof that capital ships can themselves be made interesting. All that is required to add to this is a first person interface that allows for some control over a sufficiently large portion of the capital ship that the player feels involved, but leaves enough of the control to AI (or down the road optionally other players) that the player doesn't feel overwhelmed. To me, the real debate isn't over how the capital ship should work, but whether creating an capital ship interface is sufficiently different and complex that it distracts from Vendetta's primary gameplay focus.

Homeworld has already shown that Capital Ships can move in a 'stately' fashion without having to be so unmanueverable that they can't particpate tactically. SFC has already shown that even the most extreme tactical detail can be compressed into a single interface - and that was with no real automation options. There isn't any reason I can think of to adopt Star Wars rather uninteresting model of capital ship warfare.
May 01, 2003 Renegade ++RIP++ link
Yeah, but that doesn't exclude the possibility to put in the ability to shoot down torpedo's or rockets or what not.

It just means that if it is armored enough it could take out fighters with the beamcannon or phasers or ions "so energy weapons". Even in Homeworld I've never seen a big ship take down a little ship "fighter" with a rocket, they basically use energyweapons for that. For instance , take the early fighter , it had a coannon and rockets, it was possible to shoot down the rockets with the cannon "equiuvalent of energyweapons anyone?". But it needed a lot of skill and a good portion off luck.

But we will see what the devs have in store for us, just never exclude things because you think that they are bad.

cheers
May 01, 2003 Celebrim link
No, it doesn't. It justs suggests that it isn't essential to include such a thing either simply because that is what we are all familiar with.

"Even in Homeworld I've never seen a big ship take down a little ship "fighter" with a rocket..."

Guided Missile Destroyer?
May 01, 2003 Cmdr. Freeman link
Celebrim, mabye I am tainted by the Star Wars model of fighting. I dunno what else to say though.
May 01, 2003 HumpyThePenguin link
Frigates Frigates Frigates.......Any other ships Devs? Id rather fly a Carrier than a Frigate :D

PS: Will we be able to give our Capital Ships names unto themselves?
May 01, 2003 Celebrim link
Celebrim is hoping for fully configurable strike fighters, gunships, patrol boats, sloops-of-war, naval cutters, monitors, patrol frigates, corvettes, frigates, destroyers, flottila leaders, destroyer leaders, light cruisers, protected cruisers, armed cruisers, battle cruisers, heavy cruisers, heavy battle cruisers, dreadnoughts....

Celebrim cleans the drool off the keyboard.

But I'll settle for a reasonable cross section of that. We don't absolutely have to have examples of obselete ship classes like monitors and protected cruisers. ;)