Forums » Suggestions
Mass and its ramifications.
I'm perfectly sure this has been brought up before. But I couldn't find any thread in the more recent past referring to this explicitly, so I took the liberty of creating a new one.
(Absolute) mass is an important factor in Vendetta Online when it comes to gameplay. Ships with a high loadout and cargo mass take ages to accelerate and decelerate, and are about as gracious as a drunken cow. That's fine, since it allows for more nuances in game balance, i.e. piracy, 'dogfights', and, hopefully, later on, capital ship combat. Bigger asteroids heat up slower than small 'roids, in accordance to what thermodynamics tells us is correct, and that's fine, too, since it allows people to go and search for the holy grail of the roids.
I would like to suggest taking that a little further.
First off, the sensor equipment should be tuned to the importance of mass.
In my opinion, the mineral scanner should receive an additional readout telling us the absolute mass of the currently targeted rock in metric tons, precise to the second decimal. This would be available at a range half that of the normal scan, i.e. about 250m.
Secondly, with ships as large as the Behemoth and as small as the Centurion, weight distribution comes into play. Regardless of ship type, if it has multiple cargo compartments (the Behemoth logically would have more than one, separately accessible, as would most other heavier ships), influence on cargo weight distribution should be accessible to the player, to reduce the torque of inertia of the ship (in the Centaur, you'd want to put it as close to your ship's axis as possible, seeing that the cargo bays are at least partially located in the wings, judging from what I saw in-game).
Thirdly, weapons that have an actual payload should benefit from being empty.
Until now, a starflare rocket launcher weighs .6 metric tons, regardless of whether the tubes are full or not.
I assumed that the launcher makes up about a quarter of the total mass. That would give every rocket about 32kg. Considering they're dumb-fire, that's not too far off from such weapon systems nowadays. Similar calculations can be done for every weapon with an ammunition count.
My proposition here is obviously this: With every rocket, missile, mine or pellet (railgun) you fire, you reduce the mass of the launcher, and thus the ship's.
That way, you still have drawbacks if you mount, say, a neutron mk2/3 and two iceflare launchers on a Valkyrie, but as soon as you're empty, the high thrust of the ship can really play out its trump card.
I believe that would also make the such ships as the Hornet more worthwhile to fly.
[edit]Spelling errors corrected. Arrogance slightly reduced.[/edit]
(Absolute) mass is an important factor in Vendetta Online when it comes to gameplay. Ships with a high loadout and cargo mass take ages to accelerate and decelerate, and are about as gracious as a drunken cow. That's fine, since it allows for more nuances in game balance, i.e. piracy, 'dogfights', and, hopefully, later on, capital ship combat. Bigger asteroids heat up slower than small 'roids, in accordance to what thermodynamics tells us is correct, and that's fine, too, since it allows people to go and search for the holy grail of the roids.
I would like to suggest taking that a little further.
First off, the sensor equipment should be tuned to the importance of mass.
In my opinion, the mineral scanner should receive an additional readout telling us the absolute mass of the currently targeted rock in metric tons, precise to the second decimal. This would be available at a range half that of the normal scan, i.e. about 250m.
Secondly, with ships as large as the Behemoth and as small as the Centurion, weight distribution comes into play. Regardless of ship type, if it has multiple cargo compartments (the Behemoth logically would have more than one, separately accessible, as would most other heavier ships), influence on cargo weight distribution should be accessible to the player, to reduce the torque of inertia of the ship (in the Centaur, you'd want to put it as close to your ship's axis as possible, seeing that the cargo bays are at least partially located in the wings, judging from what I saw in-game).
Thirdly, weapons that have an actual payload should benefit from being empty.
Until now, a starflare rocket launcher weighs .6 metric tons, regardless of whether the tubes are full or not.
I assumed that the launcher makes up about a quarter of the total mass. That would give every rocket about 32kg. Considering they're dumb-fire, that's not too far off from such weapon systems nowadays. Similar calculations can be done for every weapon with an ammunition count.
My proposition here is obviously this: With every rocket, missile, mine or pellet (railgun) you fire, you reduce the mass of the launcher, and thus the ship's.
That way, you still have drawbacks if you mount, say, a neutron mk2/3 and two iceflare launchers on a Valkyrie, but as soon as you're empty, the high thrust of the ship can really play out its trump card.
I believe that would also make the such ships as the Hornet more worthwhile to fly.
[edit]Spelling errors corrected. Arrogance slightly reduced.[/edit]
Great idea. Tri-flare valks will unload 12 sunflares on you and then can run away at a fraction of their weight and there is no way to catch them. Count me out on this one.
I dunno, seems fine if the flares recieve a slight nerf. Drop the speed a bit. Should be fine.
I see what you mean, andreas.
My idea would of naturally have drastic consequences for the ammunition-based weaponry, e.g. the reduction of the number of shots per launcher and, like Shapenaji said, a slight reduction of flare effectiveness per shot, although it need not be speed at all cost, at least not in my opinion. Others come to mind, but I'm not going to delve to deep into that topic.
That would result in very quick bouts for flare-only players, leaving them only with the choice between running or dying. That seriously stunts your value in group efforts, where one's usefulness depends on how long s/he can act independently from a station/cap ship. People who use combined arms will also have an advantage over purists in dogfights, which, I think, increases diversification in the game.
Also, the mass of ammunition was not the only thing I mentioned, so please don't discard my post in its entirety when you openly disagree with only part of it. Of course these ideas can be implemented independently from each other, it's just that I thought they could be attributed to the same general topic, which is mass.
My idea would of naturally have drastic consequences for the ammunition-based weaponry, e.g. the reduction of the number of shots per launcher and, like Shapenaji said, a slight reduction of flare effectiveness per shot, although it need not be speed at all cost, at least not in my opinion. Others come to mind, but I'm not going to delve to deep into that topic.
That would result in very quick bouts for flare-only players, leaving them only with the choice between running or dying. That seriously stunts your value in group efforts, where one's usefulness depends on how long s/he can act independently from a station/cap ship. People who use combined arms will also have an advantage over purists in dogfights, which, I think, increases diversification in the game.
Also, the mass of ammunition was not the only thing I mentioned, so please don't discard my post in its entirety when you openly disagree with only part of it. Of course these ideas can be implemented independently from each other, it's just that I thought they could be attributed to the same general topic, which is mass.