Forums » Suggestions
how about you scrap tracking for lazer turrets, turn them to 2500 range, and keep the current dmg? tha'td work best.
No tracking at all? Maybe for some of the main anti-capship beams, but most turrets need to be able to track, or else they're pointless. For the beams that have no tracking, I'd say they need a good bit more damage than the beams we have now.
Here is my two cents on capital ship weapons:
1. Flak is used as a deterrent. It should not be targetable, the range should be short >1000m. I think large splash iceflares would suffice. Or maybe some sort of directional concussion mine.
2. Beam weapons should be limited to capital ships because of the massive energy drain. The beam should be limited 5 seconds on, 5 off. Damage should be severe: 1500-2000 per second of contact. Range should be medium, ~2000m. Tracking should be limited as to only be effective on slower assault type ships while being easily avoidable by fighter pilots paying attention.
3. Charged pulse cannons should have the longest range: 3000-4000m. Damage should be highest, 2500-7500 per hit. They should be limited to 2 per capital ship, say either dorsal-ventral (Itani), fore-aft (UIT), or starboard-port (Serco) depending on the faction of the ship. They should be larger targets, because fighter would need to have them as a priority target. Tracking should be better than the beam weapons, but slower than the point defense systems. Maybe a new XL weapons port class just for Capital ships and only these cannons and large beam weapons should fit in them.
4. Point Defense systems should be different flavors, mix it up: AGT's, flechettes, AGC's. Fast tracking beam weapons should have a low rate of fire (2 seconds on, 2 off), medium damage, 1000-2000 per second. They shouldn't track as well as the AGT's.
5. Missiles. I am torn on this one. To say that capital ships can't have them while fighters can is unrealistic in the current game universe. An XL port for a limited number (5?) of Avalon torpedos perhaps. These should be slow and players should be able to target them or ram them to prevent detonation on capital ships Range: 3000m; Speed: 75m/s; Damage ~10000-20000. Should they have other current missile systems for point defense? I think so. They should be a deterrent as well even if they are easily dodged. Capships are sitting ducks for fighter dispatched missile swarms if they can't retaliate in kind. The number carried should be limited by turret. However, a skilled figher pilot should be able to lead missiles back to the capital ship for detonation. Could capship missile systems get messy and expoited? Definitely.
1. Flak is used as a deterrent. It should not be targetable, the range should be short >1000m. I think large splash iceflares would suffice. Or maybe some sort of directional concussion mine.
2. Beam weapons should be limited to capital ships because of the massive energy drain. The beam should be limited 5 seconds on, 5 off. Damage should be severe: 1500-2000 per second of contact. Range should be medium, ~2000m. Tracking should be limited as to only be effective on slower assault type ships while being easily avoidable by fighter pilots paying attention.
3. Charged pulse cannons should have the longest range: 3000-4000m. Damage should be highest, 2500-7500 per hit. They should be limited to 2 per capital ship, say either dorsal-ventral (Itani), fore-aft (UIT), or starboard-port (Serco) depending on the faction of the ship. They should be larger targets, because fighter would need to have them as a priority target. Tracking should be better than the beam weapons, but slower than the point defense systems. Maybe a new XL weapons port class just for Capital ships and only these cannons and large beam weapons should fit in them.
4. Point Defense systems should be different flavors, mix it up: AGT's, flechettes, AGC's. Fast tracking beam weapons should have a low rate of fire (2 seconds on, 2 off), medium damage, 1000-2000 per second. They shouldn't track as well as the AGT's.
5. Missiles. I am torn on this one. To say that capital ships can't have them while fighters can is unrealistic in the current game universe. An XL port for a limited number (5?) of Avalon torpedos perhaps. These should be slow and players should be able to target them or ram them to prevent detonation on capital ships Range: 3000m; Speed: 75m/s; Damage ~10000-20000. Should they have other current missile systems for point defense? I think so. They should be a deterrent as well even if they are easily dodged. Capships are sitting ducks for fighter dispatched missile swarms if they can't retaliate in kind. The number carried should be limited by turret. However, a skilled figher pilot should be able to lead missiles back to the capital ship for detonation. Could capship missile systems get messy and expoited? Definitely.
Also see my other rant:
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/10661#123078
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/10661#123078
I dont agree with people who say that beams should be limited to capships. Instead i would suggest somthing like this.
Blue Beam - Range 1000m, Damage 50000, Speed 1 sec delay, XL port, Energy Usage 1000.
Capships have this in spots that are in places that are more than likely to be attacked by other capships .
Red Beam - Range 750m, Damage 2500, Speed .75 sec delay, L port Energy Usage 500.
Can be used in a capship and Any Heavy Fighter capable enough to carry it. Mainly used on a capship for destroying pesky Bombers.
Yellow Beam - Range 500m, Damage 1250, Speed .5 sec delay, M port Energy Usage 250.
Used in Medium Fighters and also traders.
Green Beam - Range 250m, Damage 625, Speed .25 sec delay, S port Energy Usage 125.
The Weakest Beam of them all. Mainly used by n00bs to learn how to duel and fight. Is also great for disabling NPCs.
Blue Beam - Range 1000m, Damage 50000, Speed 1 sec delay, XL port, Energy Usage 1000.
Capships have this in spots that are in places that are more than likely to be attacked by other capships .
Red Beam - Range 750m, Damage 2500, Speed .75 sec delay, L port Energy Usage 500.
Can be used in a capship and Any Heavy Fighter capable enough to carry it. Mainly used on a capship for destroying pesky Bombers.
Yellow Beam - Range 500m, Damage 1250, Speed .5 sec delay, M port Energy Usage 250.
Used in Medium Fighters and also traders.
Green Beam - Range 250m, Damage 625, Speed .25 sec delay, S port Energy Usage 125.
The Weakest Beam of them all. Mainly used by n00bs to learn how to duel and fight. Is also great for disabling NPCs.
During WWII, The B-17 Bomber accounted for %75 of all german fighter casualties.
Who says a bomber shouldn't be able to defend itself?
Who says a bomber shouldn't be able to defend itself?
but it was not a single man piloting the bomber, it was a crew of people. Which is no biggy, we just need multi-player bomber ships. hint hint!!
In my opinion, the beam weapons were vastly overpowered. They were insta-kills that made fighter-capship combat completely one-sided. This combat is very important because my 5-year-old cousin can do just as good a job as me shooting beams at another capship. Fighters are where skill is involved. I never was in a good capship battle with the GT's but they had a very big "wow" factor from what i saw in _Ghost_'s movie.
My suggestion: one or two uber-laser cannon on each broadside. This would need some charge time before, which would be visible and really cool, and have a range of bout 2000m and do significant damage to a capship. These would be the capship-capship weapons, but these laser cannons somehow could not disable each other (I don't know how). Fighters would be the most reliable way to destroy these cannons (but it would still take a while). The cannons would also have 2-3 GT's around to guard them from fighters. Also, the cannons could "rebuild" themselves over time.
Another idea would be a sustained laser that would do 800 damage/sec. It would have bad tracking when being used, but otherwise fairly fast.
My suggestion: one or two uber-laser cannon on each broadside. This would need some charge time before, which would be visible and really cool, and have a range of bout 2000m and do significant damage to a capship. These would be the capship-capship weapons, but these laser cannons somehow could not disable each other (I don't know how). Fighters would be the most reliable way to destroy these cannons (but it would still take a while). The cannons would also have 2-3 GT's around to guard them from fighters. Also, the cannons could "rebuild" themselves over time.
Another idea would be a sustained laser that would do 800 damage/sec. It would have bad tracking when being used, but otherwise fairly fast.
I'm just curious of the devs actually did any research into how beam cannons have been used in other sci-fi products like TV shows, games, stories, before they sat down to create them. Reason I say that is that I sat down and watched a few movie clips I have of space battles and it was clear as day how a beam cannon should work. I'm planning to make a few streaming videos to make my point, but until then I'll hold off my opinions, but to me, the beam cannons as they are now are extremely beta and are in need of serious retooling
Yes! But didnt you see i added Delay Time?
For now I think it's fine as it is, but eventually I'd like to see more carrier oriented capships, with less weaponry but lots of space to carry fighters. When that happens, I think the HAC should have the number of fighters that can dock with it significantly reduced, to about 2 or 4. But, that would also require some other way for players to board the capship so that they could crew the turrets, without taking up a docking bay slot with their ship.
What about Docking like the Millinium Falcon did in Star Wars Empire Strikes back at the very end?
Yeah, something like that, only I think it would be easier for the capship to link with a station, rather than two ships linking together.
Having used the beam weapons now, I can tell that they are a work in progress. For one thing, the beams need to be thicker, they are almost invisible. And yeah I know it is space and all and there shouldn't be visible light beams, but this is sci-fi and I want thick bright laser beams dammit. :)
They should be going at the speed of light though, so they should appear when they are on and disappear when they are off. Dodging them should only occur when they are on and they shouldn't have a fast range of movement like AGT's. See rant link posted above for more on this.
They should be going at the speed of light though, so they should appear when they are on and disappear when they are off. Dodging them should only occur when they are on and they shouldn't have a fast range of movement like AGT's. See rant link posted above for more on this.
My personal opinion on beam weapons is as follows.
there should be 2 types.
Point defense. The anti fighter beams, scattered about the hull of capital ships and maybe on a few of the heaviest of our current fighters, (the rag, the centaur, the prom) These beams are low to medium damage, instant hit very short range weapons, (300 meters on cap ships, <100 meters on a fighter) They would have a refire rate of .4 meaning 5 shots every 2 seconds, and a damage of around 500-1000 a hit.
They WOULD have good autotargeting, about 3/4 the arc of an AGT. the limit is that they are close range weapons, literally point defense.
Main Beam - These are capital ship class beams they are mounted only a few to a capital ship and they have; no autoaim, very long refire time (5-20 seconds depending on variant), with a .5 second firing delay to make them hard to use against fighters. (the weapon actually fires half a second after you press the trigger)
Range and damage would be determined by the ship they are on, some possible examples below:
Light Beam. - range:1200 meters, damage: 9000 ., refire time 5 seconds. mounted on frigate and carrier class ships as main guns
Medium Beam - range:2000 meters, Damage: 16,000, refire time 10 seconds. mounted on destroyer class ships as main guns
Heavy Beam. - range:3000 meters, Damage: 30,000, refire time 15 seconds. mounted on light assult cruiser class ships as main guns
Massive Beam- range:5000 meters, Damage: 75,000, refire time 20 seconds. mounted on Heavy Assult Cruiser class ships as main guns
obviously there could be other in betweens, and there could be different variants of the above.
Capital ships should have missiles as well,
for point defense- gemini's and swarms as they are now would be good, give them unlimited ammo but set them up so that each turret has a "ready" magazine that carries the same number of shots as our fighers do. when that magazine is empty, it takes say, 45 seconds to reload before the turret can fire again.
For long range capital ship to capital ship weapons, a missile similar to the avalon torpedo but with very minimal guidance would be good. a similar setup to the point defense turrets, however choosing one of these launchers would mean giving up a main beam weapon.
Last there are the regular energy weapons,
for point defense once again the ones we have now are ok, but the speed on the shots need to be increased by about 150 m/s on all weapons. at present shooting from a stationary turret the shots dont have enough velocity to be a real threat to fighters.
For main battery class weapons, the small ones can just be beefed up in damage, have a much larger increase in shot speed, (up to around 500m/s+ so that long range capital ship class duels become more interesting, and have thier refire rate increased dramatically so that they are slow to fire. as with the beam weapons the main energy weapon wpould have a delay between the time the trigger is pressed and the time the shot is fired, making htem all but useless against fighers.
there should be 2 types.
Point defense. The anti fighter beams, scattered about the hull of capital ships and maybe on a few of the heaviest of our current fighters, (the rag, the centaur, the prom) These beams are low to medium damage, instant hit very short range weapons, (300 meters on cap ships, <100 meters on a fighter) They would have a refire rate of .4 meaning 5 shots every 2 seconds, and a damage of around 500-1000 a hit.
They WOULD have good autotargeting, about 3/4 the arc of an AGT. the limit is that they are close range weapons, literally point defense.
Main Beam - These are capital ship class beams they are mounted only a few to a capital ship and they have; no autoaim, very long refire time (5-20 seconds depending on variant), with a .5 second firing delay to make them hard to use against fighters. (the weapon actually fires half a second after you press the trigger)
Range and damage would be determined by the ship they are on, some possible examples below:
Light Beam. - range:1200 meters, damage: 9000 ., refire time 5 seconds. mounted on frigate and carrier class ships as main guns
Medium Beam - range:2000 meters, Damage: 16,000, refire time 10 seconds. mounted on destroyer class ships as main guns
Heavy Beam. - range:3000 meters, Damage: 30,000, refire time 15 seconds. mounted on light assult cruiser class ships as main guns
Massive Beam- range:5000 meters, Damage: 75,000, refire time 20 seconds. mounted on Heavy Assult Cruiser class ships as main guns
obviously there could be other in betweens, and there could be different variants of the above.
Capital ships should have missiles as well,
for point defense- gemini's and swarms as they are now would be good, give them unlimited ammo but set them up so that each turret has a "ready" magazine that carries the same number of shots as our fighers do. when that magazine is empty, it takes say, 45 seconds to reload before the turret can fire again.
For long range capital ship to capital ship weapons, a missile similar to the avalon torpedo but with very minimal guidance would be good. a similar setup to the point defense turrets, however choosing one of these launchers would mean giving up a main beam weapon.
Last there are the regular energy weapons,
for point defense once again the ones we have now are ok, but the speed on the shots need to be increased by about 150 m/s on all weapons. at present shooting from a stationary turret the shots dont have enough velocity to be a real threat to fighters.
For main battery class weapons, the small ones can just be beefed up in damage, have a much larger increase in shot speed, (up to around 500m/s+ so that long range capital ship class duels become more interesting, and have thier refire rate increased dramatically so that they are slow to fire. as with the beam weapons the main energy weapon wpould have a delay between the time the trigger is pressed and the time the shot is fired, making htem all but useless against fighers.
beem cannons should NEVER be used as long range weapons. and here is why:
they have no tarvel time. that prohibits doging. perjectile weapons can be doged better at long range but beam cannond can't. in fact because you can't see the cap ship as well at long range it makes doging beam weapons even harder at long range.
the cap ships should have long range weaons (thats 10km max range not the pathetic 2km i've herd sugested every now and then) but those should be soly perjectile, missile or rocket based weapons.
the cap ship should also have i think 2 times as many turrets as it has now (most of the added turrets shouls be on the broadsides) and no more than 1/3 of these turrets (that's 2/3 of the current turrets) should be point deffence weapons (beam cannons and AGTs with a max range of around 1km). This makes most of the HAC's weapons desined for assaulting large targets (other cap ships)
Yes, cap ships can camp a wormehole, but pirates do that now!! And desides this can be reduced by having NPC cap ships roam the galaxy just like that atleses do now. Also one of the most inportant roles of capitle ships is to blocade ports, so they should be able to camp a wormehole with some efectivness.
as for stations: just put guns on the stations, then cap ships will have a harder time camping stations.
as for the issues about combat landings:
i don't realy see the HAC as a carrier. it's docking bay isn't realy desined for mass fighter operations. A carier would have a huge docking bay (at least 4 times the size as the ones on stations) and a seperat launch bay. this would allow conviniant combat operations. the HAC is analougus to a battle ship. it's weapons are it's guns not it's fighters.
also i'd like to say that while i've had some trouble with combat landings (i botch about half of them on average) i have never had more trouble than i would expect concidering the manuvers involved.
i'm goign to end this post now because i'm ranting more than i intended
they have no tarvel time. that prohibits doging. perjectile weapons can be doged better at long range but beam cannond can't. in fact because you can't see the cap ship as well at long range it makes doging beam weapons even harder at long range.
the cap ships should have long range weaons (thats 10km max range not the pathetic 2km i've herd sugested every now and then) but those should be soly perjectile, missile or rocket based weapons.
the cap ship should also have i think 2 times as many turrets as it has now (most of the added turrets shouls be on the broadsides) and no more than 1/3 of these turrets (that's 2/3 of the current turrets) should be point deffence weapons (beam cannons and AGTs with a max range of around 1km). This makes most of the HAC's weapons desined for assaulting large targets (other cap ships)
Yes, cap ships can camp a wormehole, but pirates do that now!! And desides this can be reduced by having NPC cap ships roam the galaxy just like that atleses do now. Also one of the most inportant roles of capitle ships is to blocade ports, so they should be able to camp a wormehole with some efectivness.
as for stations: just put guns on the stations, then cap ships will have a harder time camping stations.
as for the issues about combat landings:
i don't realy see the HAC as a carrier. it's docking bay isn't realy desined for mass fighter operations. A carier would have a huge docking bay (at least 4 times the size as the ones on stations) and a seperat launch bay. this would allow conviniant combat operations. the HAC is analougus to a battle ship. it's weapons are it's guns not it's fighters.
also i'd like to say that while i've had some trouble with combat landings (i botch about half of them on average) i have never had more trouble than i would expect concidering the manuvers involved.
i'm goign to end this post now because i'm ranting more than i intended
These beams seem like they technically should be EXTREMELY expensive. Maybe only 2 or 3 per cap ship. 1 on each side, and 1 on top and/or one on bottom. Those few beam turrets would be targeted first. And the beams can stay the same. The cap ship should also have about 4 missile turrets, with the same ammo as we can hold, but auto refills every 5 minutes. Most of the rest should be super gats with enough tracking and speed to be able to hit well at targets <250m and provide cover up to 500m. As for the main gun, the fixed weapon up front of the ship to fight other caps, or whatever cap ships kill (stations? hehe), iunno. A large charged beam? A charged mega gauss that as you charge, more shots with more dmg are shot per burst of charged fire?
And I have nothing to complain about cappy armor if you bring back avalons. I stood on top of a turret and smashed 64 flares into it with little effect. I was disappointed.
Please note our HAC caps only have 1 dock. It is NOT a carrier. If the devs do want to make a carrier, it should have short range defenses, as fighters are it's long range. Also, it would need many many docks.
(Is there a limit on how many people can fit in one HAC cap ship? I'd like to see it be figured out the hard way)
And I have nothing to complain about cappy armor if you bring back avalons. I stood on top of a turret and smashed 64 flares into it with little effect. I was disappointed.
Please note our HAC caps only have 1 dock. It is NOT a carrier. If the devs do want to make a carrier, it should have short range defenses, as fighters are it's long range. Also, it would need many many docks.
(Is there a limit on how many people can fit in one HAC cap ship? I'd like to see it be figured out the hard way)
yeah, but not have tracking, or not much. those beams have the tracking of GAUSS at the moment. you can hit anything in range, all you need is little tracking (the tracking of rail guns) and longer range. then how much do you have to change? nothin' you can zoom to look at a far away target, so, moo.
@zamzx zik: Do you mean tracking (the turret can change the angle it is firing), or autoaim (the computer automatically calculates the angle to fire, within a certain angle from where the gun is pointing). You say tracking, but from the context I think you mean autoaim.
I think (most, at least) beam weapons on cap ships need to be able to track, but I think they should have little or no autoaim.
I think (most, at least) beam weapons on cap ships need to be able to track, but I think they should have little or no autoaim.
Beams to me have always been extended fire time, medium range, blades, simply because you can hold the beam for a time, and slice ships up with it (damage/sec for say 3-5 seconds). So it should have no auto aim, slow moving so you can't track a light fighter, but perhaps a medium or bomber. Primary use is for attacking other capital ships. Turrets are missle are for defending against attacks from smaller ships.