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May 11, 2007 incarnate link
http://www.vendetta-online.com/h/news.html

Not the most exciting news, but keeping you guys up to date. Thanks to everyone who wished for my improved health.. I am feeling better, although it's been kind of slow going, this bug hit me pretty hard.

Anyway, in short.. station turrets, new missions, and a few other things coming soon. You'll see little bits and pieces of the various things I outlined in my "Removal of Friendly Fire" thread start to show up over the next month. Turrets, special newbie sectors, etc.. the needed content leading up to the major changes. The bigger changes will have plenty of warning, for the moment there's a lot of clearly defined "things that must be done first", which we're approaching one at a time. Some of them, like turrets, have all sorts of interesting future possibilities.
May 11, 2007 upper case link
station turrets will be a nice addition.

will stations eventually have shields? i mean, bad-ass shields: they ought to be much more powerful than cappy ones.

one problem i've pointed out before about turrets as n00b protection, though, is their range. it's rather easy to dodge turrets. i can usually manage to stay within 200m of a cappy under heavy fire and still deliver charges after charges.

to assist the turrets, stations would need faster (and i dont mean 10m/s faster--i'm talking f1 ferrari faster) strike force. even with low fire power, this would make a greater deterrent than just turrets.

unless those turrets would be long-range super rails (oh... drool)
May 11, 2007 toshiro link
Will those turrets be mannable by users?

Otherwise: Way to go! Keep on doing what you're doing.
May 11, 2007 Ghost link
I wonder if it might be alright for stations to have a version of the uber beam turrets that cappies used to have. Or maybe just certain stations such as barracks.
May 11, 2007 Grzywacz link
Glad to hear that, I may even come back when more content becomes available. 8)

-- Bus Tour
May 11, 2007 roguelazer link
Hey inc, are we talking about the old flag def turrets, or capship-like turrets?
May 11, 2007 FatStrat85 link
After that post, I have high hopes for this summer. Go devs!

I was thinking, regarding upper case's post, that eventually player/guild-owned stations will be destructible. To fit with that, it'd be cool to give all stations, even normal ones that are not able to be destroyed, shields. Those shields would be far more powerful than player-owned ones and essentially infinite. The stations would not be able to be destroyed, but at least there would be some consistency between all the stations.
May 11, 2007 Dr. Lecter link
The SF is already cheating. A SF "vulture" will gain on a Hog Mk II with locked turbo... even after falling dead-astern.
May 11, 2007 Phaserlight link
heh... beam turrets, those things were impossible to escape.
May 11, 2007 moldyman link
Beam turrets with 1,000 meter range like the old cappy ones. This protects the No Fire Zone. Make them newbie station only.

My two cents.
May 11, 2007 Phaserlight link
hey, this sounds interesting:

"after all, the whole faction/FF mess has to be put in place and sorted out, not to mention a lot of other groundwork that's been waiting in the wings for some time (station cargo limits, added energy-based parameters for ships that allow more interesting ship/weapon types without causing grave imbalance, and so on)."

I wonder what that could be.
May 11, 2007 incarnate link
I'm not sure exactly what weapons loadout the turrets will have. Yes, this is like the old flag def turrets, or the old station turrets for that matter.. floating autonomous weapons platforms. They won't be user-controllable in the near term. We may also have capship-like turrets as well, but for the moment we're focusing on just getting the old floating turrets back in the game.

I know they won't be terribly effective with a "normal" weapons config. I've kicked around a few ideas, from hard-hitting railguns to much scarier homing/swarm missiles. Anyway, we'll see, it'll probably require some testing. I'd like to make them well defended without making it totally ridiculous, like giving them insta-kill beam weapons would probably be a bit.. dumb. But, who knows, maybe we'll resort to that for the newbie training sectors.

Station conquest will probably work by people knocking out defenses and then docking with the station.. perhaps with some sort of "boarding party" that takes a lot of cargo space (like requires a Behemoth XC). Same deal for taking over capships (also something desired). But anyway, both of those are a ways out. Shields for stations are a possibility. We'll see how it all fits together.

Glad you're all excited about this, I am too :). We're making it happen as quickly as we can.

PS, the "energy-based parameters" thing is a reference to the "hardpoint" system I've referred to on the suggestions forum from time to time. Defining the loadout "energy" that a powercell can support, and then the equipping-time "energy requirements" of weapons, analogous to voltage, perhaps. A way of letting me make a powerful small port weapon that can't be quad-mounted on a hornet, necessarily, and so on. Overload the powercell and nothing works. Etc. Will post in more detail down the road.
May 11, 2007 Dr. Lecter link
But, who knows, maybe we'll resort to that for the newbie training sectors.
Yeeeessss... give up on your vision of realism. We all knew it would happen sooner or later.

In a related vein, Inc, you want to explain why, currently, a SF flying a "vulture"* can sloooowly overtake a Hog Mk II with a FC powercell? What tweaked ship did ya'll give the defense bots?
May 11, 2007 Lord~spidey link
oh this is going to be fun i cant wait

i really like the idea of swarm launchers on stations
same with the rail turrets
May 11, 2007 Dr. Lecter link
Laaaaaaaag fest.
May 11, 2007 who? me? link
well putting super swarm launchers on stations to defend newbs will be abused. people will pilot right up to the newbs, avoiding the swarms until then, and then the newb will be killed by the splash damage. i can see it already.
May 11, 2007 incarnate link
Lecter: I'm honestly not sure, I thought strike forces used standard user-type ship variants. But, if they don't, there might be a specific vulture that has the pre-nerf top speed.

I will not give up the idea of realism easily, or lightly. We'll see. I'm not too worried about people abusing high-powered seeker missiles against newbies. We can make them extremely effective, and place the launchers far from where the newbies learn (closer to a point of sector entry). Anyway, let's not jump to too many conclusions, there are a lot of possibilities for how this will all balance out. Having floating turrets will at least make some options a *possibility*.
May 11, 2007 Scuba Steve 9.0 link
Awesome. I really like the sound of that hardpoint system. Classic turret bots are cool as well.

Too bad I deleted [NPCDEF] Flag 1 =/
May 11, 2007 mdaniel link
ok incarnate, all great ideas and I am looking forward to all those things. Thanks for the newspost, keep making our mouths watery, love it. Specially the preparations for the possibility of conquering pirate stations, fun stuff. Station turrets should be really, really powerfull and shield protected.
May 11, 2007 upper case link
<horshack>

oh! oh! oh! oh!

i so much want to tow a floating turret platform around!

</horshack>