Forums » Suggestions
externally docked ships
Disclaimer: This has been suggested before, especially for capital ships outside "minor" stations, but I think the suggestion to use it for all/most docked ships is new. It is partly inspired by the many current suggestions to separate cargo and docking.
The suggestion is to dock ships on the outside of capships rather than inside. Make it so they connect to a beam or port "turret". Some visuals:
http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/mt/flightglobalweb/blogs//hyperbola/Dreamchaser%20ISS%20DOCKING.JPG
http://www.starwars5.com/star-wars-the-empire-strikes-back/pictures-photos-picture-photo/swep5/72-millennium-falcon-cloud-city-bespin.jpg
http://www.amvets.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Refuel-jet.jpg
RP/immersion argument: A gaping hole in your armor is an enormous vulnerability. If a fighter can fly in,so can a missile, Moreover, for most purposes (reload/refuel/gunner) it is not needed to enclose the ship within the structure, it can just be attached and fly together with the bigger ship. It would add to weight, but not to cargo capacity (since it is external, not in the bays).
Gameplay arguments and considerations: Currently, docking is all or nothing. If you manage to dock, you become invulnerable and can be automatically r&r'd within a second. If you dock on the outside of a ship, an enemy can (1) see who is docked and (2) attempt to destroy the docked ship or even the turret that allows the docking. If the docking "port" is inside the shield, a docked ship still gets a lot of protection, but is no longer invulnerable. A player would need to stay docked for a short while to get repairs/reloads, and obviously if you do less damage/second than the repair rate you are not killing the docked ship. If a docked ship is destroyed, the docked player is considered killed and respawns in the home station. Splash damage is also applied to docked ships in the splash range, assuming the shields are down. Ships can still be transported as cargo, but need to be loaded/unloaded like commodities. Commodities (and "boxed" ships) can be transfered between docked ship and host.
Capships docked with stations without capship docks would work the same, and the smallest stations might even be too small to handle e.g. moths internally.
The suggestion is to dock ships on the outside of capships rather than inside. Make it so they connect to a beam or port "turret". Some visuals:
http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/mt/flightglobalweb/blogs//hyperbola/Dreamchaser%20ISS%20DOCKING.JPG
http://www.starwars5.com/star-wars-the-empire-strikes-back/pictures-photos-picture-photo/swep5/72-millennium-falcon-cloud-city-bespin.jpg
http://www.amvets.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Refuel-jet.jpg
RP/immersion argument: A gaping hole in your armor is an enormous vulnerability. If a fighter can fly in,so can a missile, Moreover, for most purposes (reload/refuel/gunner) it is not needed to enclose the ship within the structure, it can just be attached and fly together with the bigger ship. It would add to weight, but not to cargo capacity (since it is external, not in the bays).
Gameplay arguments and considerations: Currently, docking is all or nothing. If you manage to dock, you become invulnerable and can be automatically r&r'd within a second. If you dock on the outside of a ship, an enemy can (1) see who is docked and (2) attempt to destroy the docked ship or even the turret that allows the docking. If the docking "port" is inside the shield, a docked ship still gets a lot of protection, but is no longer invulnerable. A player would need to stay docked for a short while to get repairs/reloads, and obviously if you do less damage/second than the repair rate you are not killing the docked ship. If a docked ship is destroyed, the docked player is considered killed and respawns in the home station. Splash damage is also applied to docked ships in the splash range, assuming the shields are down. Ships can still be transported as cargo, but need to be loaded/unloaded like commodities. Commodities (and "boxed" ships) can be transfered between docked ship and host.
Capships docked with stations without capship docks would work the same, and the smallest stations might even be too small to handle e.g. moths internally.
+1
I like the idea for capitol vessels, tho
I like the idea for capitol vessels, tho
+1 also. This seems like it would alleviate the complaints of several groups of people simultaneously.
Especially +1 for allowing this with small stations -- it did always seem odd to me that you could fit a moth inside a Ceres station...
Especially +1 for allowing this with small stations -- it did always seem odd to me that you could fit a moth inside a Ceres station...
+1 very good idea
Doing this for capships could be possible, but I think there's a good chance it would look rather stupid. You would definitely have different ship models poking through the shields and so on, and z-fighting at a distance. Graphical artifacts we go out of our way to avoid.
Doing it for stations would probably be a bad idea, in terms of scalability during usage spikes (iOS rollout type stuff, etc). If every docked user's ship is exposed externally, that's a lot of extra primitives and assets that everyone else has to render. Then there's the question of NPCs, who sometimes number in the hundreds of thousands (galaxy-wide).
Small stations will have "anchorages". I would link to some nice online resource, but some quick Googling and checking Wikipedia yielded zero. The concept in boating is basically a "protected location" where a boat can be moored with some margin of safety. This is true in large-vessel shipping as well: the QE2 and the USS Theodore Roosevelt (to cite a couple of examples) were/are too large to fit in the rather large harbor of Nassau in the Bahamas. So they would anchor offshore and bring people in on runabouts. I'm looking at a similar concept for the game, although there may be some some sort of "near-distance" trade mechanism for anchored vessels at some point.
Doing it for stations would probably be a bad idea, in terms of scalability during usage spikes (iOS rollout type stuff, etc). If every docked user's ship is exposed externally, that's a lot of extra primitives and assets that everyone else has to render. Then there's the question of NPCs, who sometimes number in the hundreds of thousands (galaxy-wide).
Small stations will have "anchorages". I would link to some nice online resource, but some quick Googling and checking Wikipedia yielded zero. The concept in boating is basically a "protected location" where a boat can be moored with some margin of safety. This is true in large-vessel shipping as well: the QE2 and the USS Theodore Roosevelt (to cite a couple of examples) were/are too large to fit in the rather large harbor of Nassau in the Bahamas. So they would anchor offshore and bring people in on runabouts. I'm looking at a similar concept for the game, although there may be some some sort of "near-distance" trade mechanism for anchored vessels at some point.