This is another long term suggestion as I know new ships aren't priority right now. I wanted to get this out there before they become priority though.

The reason the implementation of the TPG Raptor failed was because it was placed in a role that is already filled by a variety of fighters. What is needed are more ships that don't fill this common role. We need ships that have turrets in different spots. Ships that might not be great with certain weapons but excell with others. We need a great deal of specificity. Missile boats, flare platforms, things along those lines that might not be viable in 1 on 1, but can be great in a support role.

If this game is going to expand, it needs to expand on its arsenal and create more specified ships.

I always thought that the Raptor needed two large ports, instead of two small, and handle like a heavy ship. How's that for a missle platform?

the mineral marauder now makes an interesting missile platform.

I had a daydream a few weeks ago.. supposing there was a light ship with a single, large port? That is a role as of yet unfilled.

but it's a role that is so unbalanced that it would never be considered.

i'm wondering though ghost, could you provide some stats for a ship that might excel at flares but nothing else? im having a hard time imagining a way to design a ship that fits well into only one role and badly into many others.

I'm with who? me? on this one. When considering weapons for a given ship to be effective only weight seems to matter, both of the weapon and the battery if it's energy. A ship that would handle very well with the heaviest flares (sunflares) is going to still handle very well with any weapon that is lighter, energy or not.

What if you make the we ports far from each other? Wouldn't that be better for a dualflare? giving you a better spread. but with energy weapons it would be just like the other ships, but a bit more annoying to aim?

My thinking is pretty much what Zed said. A ship with ports that are spread wide apart from eachother would be very effective with flares and not very effective with energy weapons due to the inability to train both weapons on the same target at the same time.

Not a serious suggestion, but just for an example: think about a ship that had five ports. One at each extreme corner of your screen and one in the very middle. Now what if we disable any sort of auto-aim on this ship. And now imagine flares firing from each one of those ports. You'd get a great spread.

Now imagine a "Rail Platform" which would be exactly the opposite. Imagine 4 or 5 ports that are organized entirely in a straight line. So when you fire, you get 1 long rail that does a heck of a lot of damage.

Things along these lines.

/me drools over ghost's last post.

Yes good ideas, Ghost.
Now get to work on those ship models, they're not gonna design themselves!

Once the goddamn AGT is confined to its proper port ("turret" ports), the 1L port version of things like Valks can happen, Who?Me?

X-1 with a megaposi? Hellz yeah.

Other things to think of are hardwiring certain ideas for "add-ons" into new ships. So instead of a S port device that increases your radar range, why not have a special ship that is equipped with increased radar range. Plenty more ideas to be explored along these lines.

Yea, kindof like my weapons idea thread, I didn't go into huge details about ship-specific add-ons, but I did try ship-specific weapons...

You know what wuld be frikkin awesome? a box w/ an engine. no ports but it wuld be leik... rly light, excel a max turbo speed of 300m/s and excel a normal max speed of 120m/s and the energy per sec fer turbo would be leik... 10 and it wuld have no ports, no radio, it wuld be like.... a cardboard box w/ a jetpack ducttaped to the roof. That's a ship I would fly. also it wuld only have 1 cu which wuld be like, on ur lap er sumthing LOL. and leik...only 3000 hp only that wuld be hillarious lol. just be leik ZOOOOOOOOOOOOM then sum pirate's leik WTF! and u wuld just fly it to annoy the hell outta griefers ekekeke. but actually i dun thin the pirates would care anyways. but sometimes the ducttape would fail and the engine would do doughnuts in space while you drift in a cardboard box until sum1 has the heart to pk u, it wont even have enough room for a self destruct mechanism. i wuld TOTALLY fly that thing...... also the comm would be rly crappy, so 99% of the words u say in general chat would end up coming out as "*STATICLOLZK?*"

also it would only be purchaseable in this leik, 9 yr-old's station where leik, the satellites wuld be drawn onto pieces of earth paper duct taped to some stacked tires floating in space, and u cant use credits, only "pretend moneys" and the missions in the station wuld be leik "ok, go and kill 200 arklan guardians" then when u do it finally, it wuld be leik some sort of 2nd grade humor leik "made'ya-do-sumthing-completely retarded for nothing XP" then your faction standing w/ the annoying 9-yr-old would become "LAME"

and trading mission text wuld be sumthing impossible like "Delivery > 1cu crayons to up my butt and around the corner (17 wormholes)"

best... faction... ever...

Ah, port placement; that makes a lot of sense. You say the idea is for new ships, but what about first trying it out on the existing one? Many people want the Vult guns to be in the wings, for example, and I for one find the position of the taur's L-ports baffling (as they are now, and if look... no hands got his wish and L-port rails were added...) Re-arranging the ports on the existing ships could lead to more variants (say, a valk with ports aligned for energy and another with the ports aligned for flares). I wonder how hard it is to do?

For ships that already have physical "guns" that one can see on the models, it'd be difficult to make it look right (the old Mineral Mauds, anyone?), so the three top-end nation specials wouldn't work well with it, nor would the Behemoth, but the other ships would definitely work.

"i'm wondering though ghost, could you provide some stats for a ship that might excel at flares but nothing else? im having a hard time imagining a way to design a ship that fits well into only one role and badly into many others."

Oh that's easy... it was the raptor. Until the ports were moved away from the wingtips anyway. A wide port configuration makes a great rocket platform, but is less useful with energy, especially weapons that don't have a wide arc of auto-aim.

EDIT: Missed the post by Ghost....

"Not a serious suggestion, but just for an example: think about a ship that had five ports. One at each extreme corner of your screen and one in the very middle. Now what if we disable any sort of auto-aim on this ship. And now imagine flares firing from each one of those ports. You'd get a great spread."

Or better yet, give the ship five corners... seriously. Space is 3D, and it's really, really dull to have almost every ship in the game confined to two dimensions. All the ships currently are symmetrical on exactly two axis. Why shouldn't some ships be symmetrical on one axis? three? five, or even none? We need more variance in ship design, so we're not confined to the planetary design of a fuselage with flat wings.

I personally think a fighter with a large cross-section and either 3 or 4 wings, each with a wingtip weapon would be very welcome, and make a great rocket platform.