Beloach is correct, and yet the Agresso is still the best mining craft in the game currently.

/me has mining 8

ananzi, why does ANY mining craft need infiniturbo? Most of the time I mine, I am either not moving or relatively slowly (never turbo) orbiting an asteroid (due to the A.I. collectors' brilliant aiming ability if I move). I wouldn't mind if NO mining craft had infiniturbo.

/me has LL 11 mining.

the aggresso is not a real taur. its only available in 2 stations.

also some nice cluters are 10k from warp-in and some roids are 40k from warp-in (though they are not high price ore usually).
why shouldnt the good mining ship be able to get tehre without waiting for a battery recharge. the ideal mining ship. the ship that actually has 'mineral' in its name.

to travel 10k in an agresso with a FC batt, you only need to pause for a total of 5 seconds or less to recharge - it goes a LONG way without depletion at 55 drain; it may not be infiniturbo, but it's close enough to travel fast and far with ease.

thats 5 seconds i could be pwning n00bs!

ok i have to admit im completely wrong about this particular point.

however i think they should change the name of the tunguska mineral marauder to the tunguska marauder nonaggresso
because its basically good for just about nothing.

Ok, noted, I need to make the mineral marauder slightly more interesting somehow, without unbalancing it from a combat standpoint. Will ponder and re-read this thread when I get a chance to redo some more ship stats.

I'm pretty sure the problem here lies, once again, in the lack of a utility slot. Without this, there's just no way to make a ship better at utility tasks without simultaneously making it better at combat. With the advent of such a slot (or several slots), civilian ships could be irreversibly specialized, resulting in more complex and engaging gameplay.

This gets into a philosphical debate.. but.. I could also just specialize ships to the point where they just come with all the addons, then they'd definitely be specialized (and much easier to balance). The basic idea of our addon slot scenario (flawed as it may be) was that users would be able to come up with combinations and uses that *hadn't* been forseen. Of course, that's a balancing nightmare (and we don't really have enough addons to make it interesting), but I find it intriguing from a gameplay standpoint.

Given the choice, I would prefer to keep addons as generic as possible, but create additional requirements. Such as, only certain powercells have sufficient power to make use of three gatling turrets at the same time, and so on. Some independent operand that has an impact on *all* addons, and allows more interesting tweaking of variants. If I just start making more categories of fixed addon ports.. well, there won't be much point to doing *anything* but mining in a mining marauder, and the original idea was that ships would be flexible. Some more than others, but still retaining that concept of multi-talened flexibility. A Ferrari Enzo or a Unimog U1300L are pretty ridiculously specialized in their respective areas, but both can still be used as a daily driver, getting groceries or whatever. I know that say.. fighting in a Behemoth is already pretty hilariously undesirable, and that ships *are* specialized, but I started out this project with a flexible "who knows what they could come up with" ship model in mind, and I'm not ready to abandon it as of yet. Even if it is a bit of a headache from a balance perspective.

There are pros and cons both ways. Adding a utility slot (from a logical standpoint) is simpler, but I'm not entirely onboard with that solution at present.

The problem with generic slots for every ship is that it's boring. There will always be a "best" configuration, and a single best way to reach that configuration. Ships become a commodity, with linear progression from one ship to the next-best ship to the next. Multiple types of slots avoids this. The trick is to not specialize too much.

I don't want, say, a "mining slot" and a "cargopod slot" and a "fuel can slot", just a separation between combat and utility mounts. Ships could have one slot to specialize, or multiple to generalize. I could see for example, a Maud with: 3 large utility slots and 1 small combat slot. That would let it mount:

3 large mining beams & a small cannon, (quick mining, repeated trips home), or
2 large mining beam, 1 cargo pod & a small cannon (more remote roids, fewer trips home), or
3 cargo pods & 1 small weapon (heavy hauler)
etc.

Ships like the Cent and Vult would have 0 utility slots, being combat-only ships.

Believe it or not, people do use the Behemoth for combat, simply because it has two heavy weapons slots and loads of hull. With differentiated mounts, the Behemoth could be kept out of combat not due to any fudging with their maneuverability, but due to the fact that they can mount only a single small weapon, yet can still equip heavy industrial mining beams.

I totally agree with ctishman. Well put. However, I would take this a step further, and say that these weapon ports should be broken up into missile/rocket and energy ports (compensating by making ammo dependent on the carrying capacity of the ship, and giving more total ports).

So a ship like the Hornet might have 2 energy, 2 missile, or variations based on the revision of the ship. A ship like the Cent might only have 1 energy, and 1 missile port. The Valk might have 2 energy, and 1 missile. And so on.

I talked about this pretty extensively here: http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/12144

And yes - the Behemoth is used in combat for a number of things. It's even considered a good cap ship bomber because of it's high hull armor, and 2 L ports.

Overall, I agree heartily with what ctish said. :)

/me applauds suggestion

Now to go yet again one step further, I'll try to add a simple hierchy of limits to HS's limits. As such to

Max Total Weapons: #
Max Energy Weapons: #
Max Non-Energy Weapons: #
Max Guns: #
Max Turrets*: #
(Max Mining Beams?)

*currently this only applys to the AGT and the Über-Beam on HAC's, but maybe in the future rear-quadrant or side-panning turret-mounts can be added to smaller ships.

I know the Behemoth is used for combat, the point was that it was on the outside edge of specialization. The fact that it's used for combat is a *good* thing, not a bad thing. That was my.. point. I don't *want* to necessarily force particular types of ships to "have" to be used for their cookie-cutter defined usage.

Secondly, you are much more likely to have an easily determined "best" configuration if you have a more limiting port design. That's just.. well, that seems pretty obvious. It's mathematically obvious, the number of possible configurations is less the more limiting the port implementation. The only reason why our ships have very well-known "best" configurations is due to a lack of tuning among the existing addons, along with the fact that we just don't *have* very many addons. Our existing addons have had little tweaking or adjustment, even of their already-configurable parameters (such as say, mass, which was added long after most of them were created, and has only been used halfheartedly).

There's nothing about the inherent design that makes it more "boring". The point is, I favor adding generic tuning factors that impact all addons across the board, like power draw and the like, which make use of existing subsystems (powercells) and adds more tunable parameters, rather than limiting the ports themselves.

For what it is worth, I agree with incarnate. I would much rather see variety and allowed stupidity (e.g. mining with a Hornet; because best is hard to define; because the "wrong" thing can be fun AND useful in a creative way) than simple restrictions.

A maximum power draw component on ports and/or powercells, used in conjunction with equipments' calculated EPS usage, could be cool and add another dimension to configurations.

I used to want a utilities port, but I'm not sure anymore. for the mining maud we might just settle for large cargo space (75cu?), low spin torque, low thrust, 2L, 2S, very high turbo thrust, low hull (<10K), non-infiboost. hard for combat (turns like crap, but yeah, you can spam with it...) and annoying for trading (no infiboost).

repeat this procedure with the Valent maud, give it 85cus, low thrust, low spin torque, 3s, high turbo thrust. it's a trade vessel that can't mount mines... maybe you want to get some escorts?

with "very high" I mean, "able to run" for the Valent and "able to move the ore" with the Tung maud. they'd both be left behind by a moth with the same cargo loadout.

That's close to what I was about to suggest Alamar, though I'd leave the mining Maud with 2L, 1S. I can't see what the second S port would be used for.

I can't see any Marauder having more than a total of 3 ports. For the MMaud, 1S 2L would work, but I'd rather it had 0S 3L, which would give it the best potential extraction rate of any ship. Then you'd have a reasonably varied choice of ships: Centaur for scanning and mining, Behemoth for mining as much as possible in a single trip, or MMaud for best extraction rate.

I agree w/ terjekv that the Valent "Increased Hold" Maud should have more capacity than the MMaud, but I wouldn't say the MMaud needs any more than it has now. I might even say it could stand to lose a few cu.

the second S was a typo. :-)

the problem with giving the MMaud 60cu or less is that people *would* use the moth. we need to make it a choice that gets thought over, not just defaults to moth every single time.

For me, I'd take the better extraction rate over capacity, the majority of the time. Which is the big problem I have with the MMaud right now: both the Centaurs and the Behemoth have twice its potential extraction rate. Giving it 1S 2L would at least match the others, but then I'd still go with a Behemoth, since I don't usually mine where the MMaud are readily available (and even if it had the same extraction rate, it'd still lose to the Moth on capacity). If it had 3L ports, though, I'd consider grabbing one and taking it up to where I mine, as I'd see the better extraction rate being worth the time to go get it.

to be honest i'm not happy with the ports on all the mauds, the 3S setup makes it basicly a cheep Valk knock-off. it can't fight as well as a valk, and as a cargo hauler it has no advantages over the comparable cargo ships

personaly i'd like to see all mauds have 2L and 1S ports (or perhaps just 2L). And a 3L mineral maud dosn't seem too out there to me, just make certain it can't infiniboost and spaming should be kept in check about as well as it is now.

i'd also like to see the centaur hav it's ports changed so that it doesn't compeet directly with the maud (perhaps 3S?) but i expect that to be an unpopular sugestion and it isn't my main point.

so to sumerise:

ideal world:
all amuds get 2L 1S except the MMaud (3L, and high turbo drain)
all centaurs get 3S (or perhaps 2L and +5 cargo capacity)

good enough world:
all muds get 2L 1S except the MMaud (3L, and high drain)
centaurs left alone

minimalistly beter world:
MMaud gets 3L and has a high drain

I was tempted to suggest 3L but was worried about people using it with tri-jacks or swarms. However if it was useless in combat then that could be a possibility.