A few ideas on ports. Currently there are only two types of ports in the game, small and large. Capital ships are under development and presumably will have some large weapons. The genesis of this idea came from this simple thought: A large port on a fighter should not be the same as on a capital ship. I'm also not a fan of the current battery arrangement. I'll explain the ideas I have on ports and what you can do with them.

1. All current "large ports" should be renamed "medium ports" and the weapons renamed accordingly.

2. The *new* Large ports should be LARGE PORTS and only able to accomodate the large and powerful beam, rocket and other weapons that will presumably come with the capital ships.

3. Ditch the "powercell" port and replace it with a small port. Make all current batteries "small port" compatible and of course, create some more powerful medium and large batteries (for the bigger fighters and capital ships). This then allows for some custom load-outs and decision making along the lines of "less power, more weapons and fire less often" or "more power and fewer weapons firing more often". I think it would make power management a wee-bit more involved process (which it really needs to be). Your choices at the moment are between "big battery" and "bigger battery". Tweak the batteries storage and recharge rates accordingly.

4. Batteries should add to max speed and rate of acceleration. Say +10 to max turbo speed and +5 to acceleration. A Hornet with 4 "power cells" should be able to outrun (on turbo) a Hornet with one power cell.

5. Ditch the batteries altogether and have (or keep them and aditionally add) things like "solar panels", "fusion power regenerator", "magnetic power whats-it thingy which is a power source". (As a newb I'm a bit miffed as to why my super-cool fighter is powered by a Heavy Duty Duracell. :) ) A range of options can become available such as solar panels being quick to regenerate (even quicker if in a system near a sun and painfully slow if far away from a sun) but not be able to store much power. A "fusion thingy of some sort" might re-generate painfully slow but store more power. A combination of "power cells" could lead to some interesting fit-outs and good results (solar panels for re-generation, fusion for storage or something).

6. (Repeat of a post I just made in the "limiting newbs" thread) Create a "warp / wormhole / jump drive" that can only be bought at trade level 1. Without this drive, you can't jump through wormholes. Ships would need an extra small/medium/large port to accommodate this (perhaps a range of drives for different ships - EG: A large ship needs a large jump drive or a large jump drive allows you to jump sooner, say 1000M before you actually get to the wormhole). Making it a port would also allow for the implementation of the "short-range fighter idea" and allow players to ignore the drive and instead equip an extra weapon (or perhaps a battery) in that port, so they can act as capital ship / station defense fighter for their system.

A forum search hasn't turned up anything similar to this idea (I may have missed it though as there's only so much scanning I can do) but as always, apologies if it's been suggested before. The basic premise is to: Make the capital ship weapons proper "large" weapons and make power management a bit more interesting - allowing for variety in ship load-outs without making things too complex.

Plus: Can we get a preview button in the message system, please?

Wow. I finally found a post that I disagree entirely with. Bravo!

Roguelazer, did you actually read that entire post and formulate an educated opinion in less than 2 minutes?

1. All current "large ports" should be renamed "medium ports" and the weapons renamed accordingly.

This is a matter of aesthetics, and doesn't really have any bearing on gameplay. I don't think fighter-class ships are going to be able to equip anything larger than the weapons we have now, so I don't see the problem with labling the ports "small" and "large."

A third "medium" class port on fighters would indeed be interesting and has been suggested many, many times.

As far as cap ships go, I think their ports would follow an entirely different naming scheme. Something along the lines of "Small Turret" "Medium Turret" "Large Turret" "Centerline Port" etc...

2. The *new* Large ports should be LARGE PORTS and only able to accomodate the large and powerful beam, rocket and other weapons that will presumably come with the capital ships.

Same as above.

3. Ditch the "powercell" port and replace it with a small port. Make all current batteries "small port" compatible and of course, create some more powerful medium and large batteries (for the bigger fighters and capital ships). This then allows for some custom load-outs and decision making along the lines of "less power, more weapons and fire less often" or "more power and fewer weapons firing more often". I think it would make power management a wee-bit more involved process (which it really needs to be). Your choices at the moment are between "big battery" and "bigger battery". Tweak the batteries storage and recharge rates accordingly.


This is an interesting idea, I don't believe I've seen it suggested before. Are you proposing that ships have the ability to equip multiple powercells in weapon ports? Seems a little counter-intuitive, that you could equip something that generated power in a port that normally draws power.

I wouldn't be opposed to having multiple battery ports on some ships, however.

Also, even though I agree that we could use more battery types I'm assuming you haven't yet seen the "fast charge" battery.

4. Batteries should add to max speed and rate of acceleration. Say +10 to max turbo speed and +5 to acceleration. A Hornet with 4 "power cells" should be able to outrun (on turbo) a Hornet with one power cell.

I like this idea! Batteries that change the performance of your ship. We could have special "boost" batteries that added 10 m/s to your top speed, or "plasma" batteries that increased the rate of fire by 10% on all energy weapons. The possibilities are endless.

5. Ditch the batteries altogether and have (or keep them and aditionally add) things like "solar panels", "fusion power regenerator", "magnetic power whats-it thingy which is a power source". (As a newb I'm a bit miffed as to why my super-cool fighter is powered by a Heavy Duty Duracell. :) ) A range of options can become available such as solar panels being quick to regenerate (even quicker if in a system near a sun) but not be able to store much power. A "fusion thingy of some sort" might re-generate painfully slow but store more power. A combination of "power cells" could lead to some interesting fit-outs and good results (solar panels for re-generation, fusion for storage or something).

Same as above. Also, naming is a matter of aesthetics.

6. (Repeat of a post I just made in the "limiting newbs" thread) Create a "warp / wormhole / jump drive" that can only be bought at trade level 1. Without this drive, you can't jump through wormholes. Ships would need an extra small/medium/large port to accommodate this (perhaps a range of drives for different ships - EG: A large ship needs a large jump drive or a large jump drive allows you to jump sooner, say 1000M before you actually get to the wormhole). Making it a port would also allow for the implementation of the "short-range fighter idea" and allow players to ignore the drive and instead equip an extra weapon (or perhaps a battery) in that port, so they can act as capital ship / station defense fighter for their system.

I like this idea also. Having "short range" fighters without jump capabilities is a hot topic on the forums these days (both with those for it and those against it.) Perhaps this could be worked together with your "special battery" idea, namely some power cells have the capability of activating wormholes, others don't.

More customizability is always a good thing, so I agree with the general direction of your post, if not with some of the details. I think this is the direction the devs want to move in. There could also be some "missions" to upgrade normal powercells to special powercells. "I can retro-engineer that fast charge battery of yours with a wormhole activation kit... it will get you through wormholes but might be a little unstable, there will be a 5% chance it will explode after a wormhole jump. Now let's talk price and parts...."

;) Nice post.

I suggested something sorta like this recently.

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/10585

I basically think that ships themselves ought to somewhat limit your weapon choices through virtue of what role they were designed for. For example, a small ship would be able to take really light weapons only, and a certain selection of missiles (by no means any of the current heavies), and so on. Ports should also be split into 3 catagories to facilitate this, Heavy, Medium, and Small. I like your idea of having a "jump drive" port, though I think that we ought to only have one or two battery slots (maybe one for fighting, one for boosting?).

We also should have a (few) widget slots, with a variety of upgrades. woo. That would be way too cool.

roguelazer: You don't even want a preview button in the messageboard? I'd like to know why you disagree with it all so completely though.

Phaserlight: This is a matter of aesthetics, and doesn't really have any bearing on gameplay. I don't think fighter-class ships are going to be able to equip anything larger than the weapons we have now, so I don't see the problem with labling the ports "small" and "large."

There is a deeper "gameplay" reasoning behind it which I didn't elaborate on. Simply put, the large ports will be able to hold weapons like the beam weapons (or avalanche torpedo type weapons). These weapons are "anti-capital ship" weapons, the type you'd use for taking a capital ship out. By putting a large port on say a Ragnorak, all of a sudden a Ragnorak can "do some damage" to a capital ship. It's only 1 large port, so it's not really got much of a chance but a squadron of 50 could take out a capital ship, with enough pounding. I agree with the view that capital ships should be uber but on the same hand, a group of "bombers" need to be able to take it out with some solid teamwork. I think it would make a fighter escort for the capital ship more worthwhile as well as making the role of the "bomber" a reality. Of course, this will need to be balanced appropriately with testing.

This is an interesting idea, I don't believe I've seen it suggested before. Are you proposing that ships have the ability to equip multiple powercells in weapon ports? Seems a little counter-intuitive, that you could equip something that generated power in a port that normally draws power.

Well, only if you view them as weapon ports. :) I viewed them more as simple "compartments" where objects can be placed. It's just that some of them happen to be on the outside of the ship which yes, is problematic for a ship but I think the idea adds much more strategy then simply including more powercell points. More powercell points simply means "more powercells". A ship with two powercell points and 2 small ports is going to have 2 powercells and 2 weapons - where-as a fighter with 4 small ports might have 1 power cell and 3 weapons or 3 power cells and one powerful weapon which is being rapidly re-charged or 4 power-cells for a rapid escape trading vessel.

;) Nice post.
Thanks. :D

You know what, I really like this. Almost all of it, actually. The only reason i'm not giving the STAMP OF APPROVAL (tm) is because this is so complex, it might turn out to be problematic in some detail we didn't think of.

But first of all, one reason i like your battery loadout is that it makes ship-balancing (almost) the player's job, not the Dev's job. The hornet wouldn't be as obsolete, i. e., because the player can place a number of battery-like widgets that could cover the ships inherent weaknesses. Customizability is expanded to a much larger range, and so it's more important about having the "uber loadout" instead of the "uber ship", which in my opinion puts more skill in the game, and makes the oh-so-loved levelling activity a little less important.

As for name aesthetics, I would say it's more about classification and knowing what's-what, rather than just aesthetics. The size of the port is determined roughly by the mass of the ship, and so small, medium, large ships have respective ports (and maybe some below their standard—ie a medium ship could also have small ports, like the Rag). For the sake of continuity, which *is important*, capital ships should have L ports, not "capital ship ports", while the Rag has an L port. It's detailish, yes, but details can make all the difference in complex systems like this.

Solar panels and such would also be nice. Again, makes the uberness of a player and their ship more about their skill in loading it out, rather than the ship itself.

A preview button would be nice, though I tend not to use them much. ^_^

I like these ideas. Any loopholes we're missing?

The complexity of the ships is one of the main things that needs to increase - ships need to be much more pimpable! Take a page from Escape Velocity in this reguard - and then get rid of all the Mk varients... or not.. but anyway.... Take a page from EV and have cargo and equip space, and the ability to convet between them.

I think weapon ports need to stay stable, much like they are now, with a clear, set max load. But i think the whole power thing needs to be revamped, basically by adding engines, in addition to batteries. Batteries would still be used to power energy weapons and turbo, but bigger ones would take up much more equip space, as would engines. What would happen is that the engines would put out X amount of power (what recharges the batteries now anyway?) and adding equipment would subtract from that... perhaps an example:
Ship X
2 small weapon ports, 20 cu for equip, 20 cu for cargo.
I get a Small Generator for @ 5cu and a med Batt @ 5cu 0 - my med batt holds a charge of say 250 and my small gen puts out say 150/sec. Full speed forward in ship X requires 65/sec, which mean my batt recharges quickly, at 95/sec. Add a scanner, which takes up 3cu in equip, and requires 10/sec, and now my batt recharges at 85/sec....

you get the idea...
I think the idea of having to balance and manage your power and battery and so forth makes the game much more intresting. As an only so so pilot myself, I'd like to be able to geek out on my ship's config a bit more. The current ship designs should be shells only....

This is the kind of model you need to support sheilds, which I hope will come in the future, and more cool devices... anti-missle chaff, better ranged scanners, better turbos, tractor beams!, auto docking computers, repair droids, advanced navs that let you plot several jumps, gravity scanners that indicate which way to go to reach the 3k jump barrier, cooling systems for miners, thicker armor, cloaks!, scanner jammers, IRC jammers (outgoing only), signiture spoofers (pirates appear friendly), and so forth...

right now I find it limiting that you can basically only add guns to your ships, with the exceptioon of the mining and repair stuff.. again, generalize the system a bit and you get a lot more options...

Not that I don't enjoy the game in it's current state, I do very much...
:)

chaos, I had this idea just recently to. Maybe I'm taking it a little farther than you are, I don't know, but think about this:

If you stripped down a ship so it was just the hull and no ports, it has a certain mass. Let's make mass the requisite for how many/what types of ports you can get. EV did this with "weapons space", and the larger your ship, the more space you had—still a turret was 20 tons more than a simple laser cannon. The player had to decide which weapon to get, and it made ships a much more maleable thing (however, there were restrictions about how many laser cannons and turrets you could place on a ship, but other widgets were free game).

In Vendetta, we have the port system, which makes the ships much more pre-set. This is why we have names like "tri-flare valk" and "AGT Prom", because the configurations on these ships become so common (and causes balancing issues). I think, if we reformed the port system, this can change entirely. And this is the reformation I (and chaoswarrior, I think) are making:

Every ship in Vendetta has a mass, and that mass *allows the player to determine how many and what kind of ports to put on their ship*. This only happens in backwater worlds, however (gray space, border UIT space), where a player can find a stripped-down ship that isn't from a "designer shipyard" (there could also be an outfit to strip your ship, perhaps). Then, you purchase which ports you want on your ship. A Ragnorak can turn from 3 S ports and 2 M ports—its present config in the game (as following a "small, medium, large" designation; read first post on the thread), to a 2 S and 1 L config, 5 S and 1 M, or 1 M and 1 L. We could have an "AGT valk", but it has only 1 S port left over from the AGT's rebuilt M port. Maybe even none at all.

And to make sure a Capital Ship can't get a 100 S ports, we put dead-set restrictions on the ship (i. e. "hull integrity", sci-fi explanations like that), just as EV ships controlled turret and cannon numbers.

There's a romance in this too, depending on the rarity of these stripped-down ships: custom-built, specialized ships. We've got it in Star Wars, for example, where Boba Fett finds an outdated ship, the Firespray-3, but then strips it, rebuilds it, and names it Slave 1. Ships become more like the player, and conform to their playing style and allow for deeper and deeper of levels of strategy.

Engines and manuverability could be modified by various widgets, which also take up mass in the ship's chassis. Hence you have to balance weapon ports with the possibility of added manuverability, speed, and all that stuff. We gain heavy-duty, custom bomber ship, but also allow the same chassis to be used as a hotrod-racing vehicle.

This makes more sense for naming ships too. Otherwise, we're more or less all flying stock vehicles, and naming them is kind of pointless. There's more sense to giving a uniquely-built ship a unique name.

Again, this all outside of your "dealer" ships, which already have their ports and engine specs pre-set, and are sold everywhere but in fringe systems and gray space. Perhaps gray space, except for a few high-class trading stations, should ONLY sell stripped-down ships, adding that more of that rustic, lawless feeling of gray space..

This new port system adds new dimension to the player skill too, which is already touted as one of Vendetta's strengths. Now players can have truly custom ships, and can brag about their l33t mercenery, hotrod, or even trading ship. Just wait if we ever get custom decals.

Lots of possibility here—critical possibility, I'd venture to say.