*drools* Me wants... Me wants... GIVE NOW!!! :P

Id like to see cloakers.

Mirage

Hull pts: 7500
Maneuvrability: Very High

Blah blah blah, 1 small wpn port blah blah blah

Anyway, to cloak takes a full battery and 3 seconds, upon which you become invisible to radar and HUD. You cant fire without cancelling the cloaking field- which fully drains your battery again, making you vulnerable for a few secs. This would be enough time for the alert pilot to flee, but...

You like?

My dream ship: Ultra Heavy Battle Cruiser, with 56 proms, 25 valks, 60 pizza cutters, and 9000 cargo space

Hull: 10000000
Weaps: 100 Fully automated adv gatling turrets, 60 avalon launchers (holding 20 torps each), 50 Player controled Adv gatlings, 50 docking bays
Batt: Ultra Heavy Fast charge ships batt (1000000e at 10000e/s)
Engine: 5 Ultra heavy efficient engines (Turbo draw each: 100e/s, max speed 70m/s, max turbo 500m/s)

*Drool*

UncleDave: It should be fairly easy to allow any ship to cloak if the devs wanting cloaking in the game. At some point I'd like to see ships with 'electronics' ports to add non-weapon equipment - cloaking devices, ECM generators, improved radar, etc. etc.

My cloaking device would work similar to the turbo. If cloaked, consume same ammount of power that the ship would use when turboing. Don't let the ship fire or use turbo when cloaked. Allow some minimum time between decloaking and cloaking. Bingo, any ship can cloak in a balanced fashion because being cloaked really isn't that much more advantageous than being able to turbo.

Humpy: Blah.

My dream ships are balanced. I don't want to play in your dream game.

:D But I want to win all the time :P
Its not Invincible ya know

How about an efficient cloak-engine combo that allows unlimited cloak time while not moving, with cloak time dependent on engine speed. :) No cloak ramming, but good spying! Good for capping too... Maybe make capping disengage cloak so you can sneak in but not out.

Not invincible? With 10 million hull points, 150 turrets, 60 avalon launchers, a top speed of 70 m/s (higher than a ship with a heavy battery), 10k energy/sec, 50 docking bays, and over 150 smaller escorts? How is that not invincible? Maybe if it had a top speed of 5 or 10 m/sec, with a turbo speed of about 50, 1 mil hull, 5 bays, 20 turrets, and 5 avalons. And even that would be a b*tch to take down, with that many turrets and avalons.

No turbo on Frigates. Please devs. No turbo. They are SLOW ships. We are so slow already, but that is because of the human reaction time. Anyhow, Frigates should (IMHO) have a TOP SPEED of 5 m/s, no turbo, about 750k hull points, 10-15 turrets, 5 avalon launchers and a huge battery. They should dock 10-20 ships. Remember, there will/should be bigger ships someday. Frigates are just a starting point. Remember the Assault Frigate in Homeworld 1? I'm thinking of a better version of that, but along the same line...

ARGH! Double Post doh!

Regarding turbo on Frigates: I think that in order for a capitol ship to be "engaged" it needs to be sub-turbo. This means that there should be no turbo for cap. ships as we know it now.

My thought: Cap ships can jump to an adjacent sector without using a warp-gate. They need full power to do this, and the process takes some time (so they can't just skip from sector to sector to sector).

This is a reasonable application of how turbo engines would apply to larger vessels. More of a "hyperspace" than the current "afterburner" type of turbo.

The only other balanced method I can think of is to have Cap's trubo so fast that they can't effectively chase anyone. But that has flaws too: If cap's can ouurun smaller fighters while shooting with massive amounts of weapons, they will dominate gameplay.

Giant Fighters?
*more drool*

I think frigates and capital ships shouldn't have any turbo. Just a cruising speed. I just can't imagine something that massive moving so fast. Some of those larger ships will have to be dockable too. Frigate and capital ship defense should be based on escorts, in addition to on-board turrets. They should never have to travel alone, if they have any intention of surviving.

They should be very, very slow. For one thing, it'd make cool teamwork, having escort squads for the frigates with 1000 cargo that can bring in millions in profit. (PS, I think a frigate when and if they are user-pilotable, should be at least 50 million credits, requiring team-buying and no people that shouldn't get them getting them). Also, if they're fast, what's the point? All you've done is made a really big uber fighter. They're supposed to be [barely] movable stations, IMHO.

"No turbo on Frigates. Please devs. No turbo. They are SLOW ships. We are so slow already, but that is because of the human reaction time. Anyhow, Frigates should (IMHO) have a TOP SPEED of 5 m/s, no turbo, about 750k hull points, 10-15 turrets, 5 avalon launchers and a huge battery. They should dock 10-20 ships. Remember, there will/should be bigger ships someday. Frigates are just a starting point. Remember the Assault Frigate in Homeworld 1? I'm thinking of a better version of that, but along the same line..."

Well, you just got dropped from my dream capital ship design team.

Frigates are by definition and mythological reputation _fast_ ships. They should be able to outrun bigger scarier ships. Lest that scare you, look exactly what I wrote and do some numbers. They are 4 steps less manueverable than a heavy fighter. Imagine how long it would take them to accelarate even using turbo. For an idea, get a heavy bomber and give it the free engine and imagine that the frigate is as much less manueverable than that as that is less manueverable than the Valk. Now look at how much energy they have to use to spend turbo power. What the turbo power gives them is a little bit of a chance to move out of the way of a torpedo shot from say 2km away. It gives them the ability to move in or out a few 100m relative to something chasing them or that they are chasing. It doesn't give them the ability to chase fighters, it gives them the ability to make tactical decisions.

And I wouldn't want turbo on anythign bigger than a frigate - just the frigates and corvettes.

You want to completely make it unfun to fly a capital ship. 5m/s max speed? A capital ship pilot (whether human or AI) would have no tactical ability at all. It's essentially a turret that can over the course of half and hour or so move from one sector to another. A grand mother in a wheel chair could get out of its way. There would be no manuevering the ship at all. It would be a sitting duck to anything in the game. You have Avalons? Fire them from 2km away. The frigate can't get out of the way. You have homing missiles. Streak by and fire them at any distance. The frigate is essentially stationary target.

It's so stationary, it would be pretty boring to fight too. And it would make for boring graphics.

In some ways, your ship is bigger than my frigate and yet you feel the need to inform me that 'there will be bigger ships someday'. Didn't you see my list? Don't you think I know a bit about naval history and terminology? My frigate only has 6-12 turrets. It only has two Avalon torpedo tubes. It has only a third of your hull points. It can only dock 4 fighters (without dropping weapons for fighter bays). I'm leaving LOTS of room for larger ships without killing the server with the lag generated by excessive weapons fire.

Yes, I do remember the assualt frigate. It was not nearly so slow relative to fighters as the ship you envision. It could manuever. You could watch it gracefully swooping about the screen as the fighters darted around it.

PS: 1000 cargo on a ship that can only move 5m/s and is incredibly expensive is pointless. It would only make 1 trip for every 30-40 (540-720 cargo) trips a Marauder would make with a whole lot less overhead and profit on the side of the much cheaper Marauder.

Fast Ships... when compared to larger ships! I mean, read the Star Wars books if you want to see something like that. Frigates are fastm but fighters are quite a few times faster by their very nature. Now, we only go 55m/s. So the frigate shouldn't have any turbo (it doesn't make ANY sense imho) and having a top speed of FASTER than a fighter is kinda, well, senseless. What happened to fast but lightly armed fighters and heavily armed frigates. As to your post about the speeds, well, that is very good. But I personally think that should be offset with the ability to warp from anywhere in the sector if said frigate has a full battery (something that would take say 4, 5 minutes to accomplish). That way it can still escape, but if it starts shooting it uses battery and loses the ability to hyperjump. Hence the fighters have to give it time to run away. That would also make a reason to dock at frigates instead of just docks.

I don't think they should be as slow as 5m/s, but rather have the same cruising speed as a bus. Which is what? 60 m/s? Less? That sounds like a reasonable maximum speed. It would be the equivalent of holding a flag all the time. To get an idea, just cap a flag and fly around from sector to sector with it. It's slow, but you still get around.

How far removed from current reality do you think the capital ship picture on Guild's site is? The really old one, I'm guessing?

The bus has a crusing speed of 35 m/s. Actually, I'd really love to see the one on the site... I love it... Must... Get... Poster... Must... Steal... File... And do uber-render...

roguelazer: "I mean, read the Star Wars books if you want to see something like that."

First of all, what makes you think I haven't? Second of all, why are we back to Star Wars? I thought I had already explained the reasons for that earlier in this thread. Star Wars combat is meant to be evocative of WWII combat. As such, you basically have a paradigm dominated entirely by fighters. Fighters are as much faster than capital ships as WWII fighters were than carriers. Carriers are basically vulnerable to attack by fighters. Fighters basically are the king of the battlefield. That's all well and good for a movie trying to create visuals using at the time limited technology and draw upon an audience that had grown up with WWII movies, but that doesn't mean that are gameplay has to in every way emmulate Star Wars.

The Star Wars paradigm has its good points and its bad points. The good points is that WWII fighter combat is relatively intuitive, involves reflexes within human norms, involves scales within human sensory ranges, involves speeds and distances within human comprehension, and tactics which can be accomplished by human level hand eye cordination by people with only a moderate degree of experience. That's why I don't suggest major revisions to how fighters work. But the downside of the Star Wars paradigm is that capital ships are as boring as all heck to interact with. They are destoryed by attrition. They essentially cannot manuever. As is the case with your 5 m/s frigates, the decisions of the captain don't really effect the outcome of the battle. The two ships just flail away at each other.

It doesn't have to be that way.

Read the Star Wars books? Please. Read CJ Cherryh or Iain M. Banks or Mary Bujold or Gordon R. Dickson or Peter Hamilton or some real science fiction and tell me capital ship combat has to be dull. Broaden your horizons for crying out loud.

In point of fact, in reality larger ships are FASTER than small ships. The only reason in game play to make them slower is that it is a good trade off for balancing large ships against small ships. (And in a game, thats a good reason.) The fastest ships in the US Navy are the big carriers, and that has been true since WWII. The fastest ships in the British Navy during the age of sail and cannon were the big 74 gun Ships-of-the-Line. It is an interesting story that I don't really have time to go into know how the 'frigate' came to be seen as 'fast' when in fact the Battleship is at battle speed faster, but nonetheless it is true that big ocean going vessels are all other things being equal faster than small ones. There is a reason that the Titantic was trying to break the transatlantic crossing record. The only reason real world fighters are faster than real world carriers is that they use completely different technologies. That is to say, fighters fly.

But in this universe, both ships travel in the same medium and employ the same technology to do so. It is entirely probable that in reality 'fighters' would be slower than bigs ships even on what passes for a tactical scale in space. The only reason for ignoring this is again to balance the ships against each other. But we can do that without taking all the gameplay and fun out of capital ships. We don't have to use 'unmanueverable' to mean 'stationary'.

65 m/s is exactly as fast as a fighter cruising with a heavy engine - not that many fighters just cruise. It is just as fast as a flag carrier, but being many times its size and much less manueverable it will be many times easier to hit. But if it is much less faster than 65 m/s it will be impossible to miss from extreme ranges. The slower and less manueverable you make it the less important any decision that is made while flying it becomes. At a certain point it becomes effectively stationary which is as boring of a thing as I can imagine both to fight in and against. If it begins turboing it might just increase its speed by barely 1 m/s (if that, I'd have to run some numbers) for the 50 seconds or so it has before it runs out of energy (which of course will need play testing to balance), for a top speed of maybe 115 m/s. And that's if it is going in basically a straight line. But it does have at least some tactical manueverability. And it will (assuming the rotation rate is balanced well) look very good and very impressive on screen, instead of looking like as you put it 'a barely movable station'.

"But I personally think that should be offset with the ability to warp from anywhere in the sector if said frigate has a full battery (something that would take say 4, 5 minutes to accomplish)."

But more to the point, warping from anywhere in the sector raises all sorts of new issues. For one thing it destroys the backstory of Vendetta. If you can jump from anywhere, what is the importance of the worm holes? Secondly, it creates interface issues. If you can warp from anywhere, where do you warp too? You need some sort of new destination selection interface. The more new interfaces you have to create the more Vendetta becomes like making two games instead of one, and the less worthwhile creating player controlable capital ships looks. It just seems to me that if there is a way to do it that involves using existing technology (both in the code and in the 'backstory') that that would be the first approach. And if that approach makes for more interesting gameplay, then all the better.

Quote: "In point of fact, in reality larger ships are FASTER than small ships."
Thank you! Polycon got it right... It's mainly because they can withstand more hull stress... They accellerate more slowly, but they can go faster...