Forums » Suggestions
larger ships and a mass system.
Well, I've been doing a lot of thinking about ships larger than what we currently have lately, and I've finally managed to get my ideas more or less squared away. For the moment I'm going to post my ideas on WHY I think we need a mass system added to the game without trying to apply the system to the craft we have now. After thinking about it I dont believe that there would be a significant difference created by the mass with our current ships. Even adding a few eqiupment ports wouldnt drastically alter the customizability of them with a mass limit.
First of all, the way I see it as we get into larger and larger ships there are two ways the devs can go with providing us a large variety of roles for our larger ships to use.
1. They can design and balance 6 to 12 ships in each size category, carefully assigning ports to each ship depending on what they want it to be able to do. To me this is a viable approach, provides a lot of nice artwork and ship variety, and allows for easy identification of what you are up against. On the downside I feel that having each ship more or less pre-designed reduces some of the customization and leaves us with what the devs give us. (not neccesarily a bad thing, they are doing great so far, but it takes up time)
2. They can create a 1 to 3 generic hulls for each size group, each with enough ports that it can perform a wide range of jobs depending on what you mount on it, then provide a limit other than the number of ports to restrict what the ship can do. This leaves more customization options and takes some of the design load off of the devs, allowing them to work on missions and the like without worrying exactly how each hull balances and what "niche" it is designed to fill. The downside is, a whole new set of balances need to be figured out, also with only a few ships ther are fewer distinct ship graphics and less eye candy.
The devs used approach #1 to create the fighters that we have now, and some unexpected problems cropped up. Weapons that were directly balanced became unbalanced when mounted in certain combinations or on certain ships.
For a moment i'd like to look at approach #2 in regards to a small "capital" ship. A vessel around 50-75 meters in length, something designed to do a fairly wide range of jobs. A support craft along the lines of the frigate hulls from the homeworld games.
Our Hypothetical hull has the following:
A length of 68M
Engine and power ports
A mount for a Shield
2 slots for mounting additional armor.
4 ship Equipment slots*
Space for 250 cargo.
Space for a 2 fighter Docking bay.
Weapons laid out in the following arrangement.
Station 1: (pilot view, forward firing)
3 weapon equipment slots*
1 Small weapons ports
6 Large Weapons ports
4 V-Large Weapons ports
Station 2: (Dorsal turret, upper hemisphere targeting arc similar to the top ball turret on a WW-2 B-17)
2 weapon equipment slots*
4 Small weapons ports
1 Large weapons Ports
2 V-Large weapons ports
Station 3: (Ventral Turret, same as station 2 but on the "bottom" of the ship)
2 weapon equipment slots*
2 Small Weapons Ports
2 Large Weapons ports
2 V-Large Weapons ports
* I've split up the equipment slots into ship and weapon subgroups, a weapon equipment would be similar to something that increased a weapons field of fire (+5% radius on targeting cone) where a ship equipment would be something like improved radio's, better radar, etc.
Now, if you fill every port on the above ship, it becomes very powerful, if however you balance it with another limit, such as having a maximum amount of mass, you can set it up as follows. We'll give it a maximum mass of 1000 just to use a round number. All the other numbers are based off of the 1000.
The engines and power supply take up anywhere from 1/3 to 2/3 of the availible mass. so a light engine and a light battery together use 333 mass. Heavy/Heavy would take up 667. Keep in mind these are not the fighter engines we have now, but larger versions of the same.
Installing a Dock for 1 fighter takes up 1/8 (125) of the availible mass, since you can install up to 2, potentially you have 1/4 (250) of the mass taken up.
Fully filling all 250 cargo takes 1/4 of the mass.
I figure the average mass of a small weapon would be around 10, a Large weapon would average approx 20 and a V-large weapon avg 40. Thus filling all the small/Large weapons ports for anti fighter operations would take up 1/4 of the mass, and filling all the V-Large ports for anti-Cap ship operations would take 320 mass, or almost 1/3 of the availible mass.
The armor belts could average anywhere from 50-150 mass each (i'm thinking for 50 mass you absorb the first 100 damage off of each shot, for 150 mass you absorb the first 300 damage, but armor is a different thread) so with 2 potential layers of armor it could take up anywhere from 50-300 mass, or none if you dont add any armor to it.
The shield i would imagine being similar in mass to a V-Large weapon, and theequipment being approximately in the same range as a Small or large weapon.
Obviously the weapons, armor, shields, fighter bays and equipment could be mounted first, with any leftover mass being your cargo capacity. This hull could then be
a Fast Freighter, (Medium engine/battery, a few guns and an armor belt, leaving plenty of room for the cargo),
a Scout Carrier, (powerful engine, low power generation, a few Large port point defense weapons (adv gat turrets) with 2 fighter bays),
an anti-Fighter ship (all small and large ports equipped with seekers/adv gat turrets, and powerful engines),
a strike ship, (powerful engine, fill all the V-Large ports with anti-Cap ship weapons)
a secure transport, (light engine, fast power supply, best shield, max armor, a few anti fighter weapons with some cargo space remaining)
And probably many combinations of the above.
Obviously all of the above combos would have a few gizmos to adjust/tweak their effectiveness.
This type of system would allow the devs to create only 2 or 3 ship models for each "size" group, and leave customizing the ships to a certain job to the players. The agility of each ship would be determined by the amount of the mass used, obviously a hull with only a heavy engine and a light power supply, (uses maybe 500 of the total mass) would be more maneuverable than a hull with a heavy engine that was using all 1000 of the mass. At best I would see ships of this size accelerating at approximately the same rate as a Centaur equipped with a free engine, however I would suggest a top speed of 60-90 (depending on the engine used) with no higher turbo speed. Turbo could then be used to double the acceleration at the expense of a large amount of energy.
As far as control goes for the hypothetical ship above, I envision weapons stations 2&3 being controlled by a human passenger or an AI if no humans are availible/interested. The pilot could also set a course from the pilot station (1) and then switch to the other stations to fend of attacks if he wanted (tho obviously he cant then change course without switching back)
First of all, the way I see it as we get into larger and larger ships there are two ways the devs can go with providing us a large variety of roles for our larger ships to use.
1. They can design and balance 6 to 12 ships in each size category, carefully assigning ports to each ship depending on what they want it to be able to do. To me this is a viable approach, provides a lot of nice artwork and ship variety, and allows for easy identification of what you are up against. On the downside I feel that having each ship more or less pre-designed reduces some of the customization and leaves us with what the devs give us. (not neccesarily a bad thing, they are doing great so far, but it takes up time)
2. They can create a 1 to 3 generic hulls for each size group, each with enough ports that it can perform a wide range of jobs depending on what you mount on it, then provide a limit other than the number of ports to restrict what the ship can do. This leaves more customization options and takes some of the design load off of the devs, allowing them to work on missions and the like without worrying exactly how each hull balances and what "niche" it is designed to fill. The downside is, a whole new set of balances need to be figured out, also with only a few ships ther are fewer distinct ship graphics and less eye candy.
The devs used approach #1 to create the fighters that we have now, and some unexpected problems cropped up. Weapons that were directly balanced became unbalanced when mounted in certain combinations or on certain ships.
For a moment i'd like to look at approach #2 in regards to a small "capital" ship. A vessel around 50-75 meters in length, something designed to do a fairly wide range of jobs. A support craft along the lines of the frigate hulls from the homeworld games.
Our Hypothetical hull has the following:
A length of 68M
Engine and power ports
A mount for a Shield
2 slots for mounting additional armor.
4 ship Equipment slots*
Space for 250 cargo.
Space for a 2 fighter Docking bay.
Weapons laid out in the following arrangement.
Station 1: (pilot view, forward firing)
3 weapon equipment slots*
1 Small weapons ports
6 Large Weapons ports
4 V-Large Weapons ports
Station 2: (Dorsal turret, upper hemisphere targeting arc similar to the top ball turret on a WW-2 B-17)
2 weapon equipment slots*
4 Small weapons ports
1 Large weapons Ports
2 V-Large weapons ports
Station 3: (Ventral Turret, same as station 2 but on the "bottom" of the ship)
2 weapon equipment slots*
2 Small Weapons Ports
2 Large Weapons ports
2 V-Large Weapons ports
* I've split up the equipment slots into ship and weapon subgroups, a weapon equipment would be similar to something that increased a weapons field of fire (+5% radius on targeting cone) where a ship equipment would be something like improved radio's, better radar, etc.
Now, if you fill every port on the above ship, it becomes very powerful, if however you balance it with another limit, such as having a maximum amount of mass, you can set it up as follows. We'll give it a maximum mass of 1000 just to use a round number. All the other numbers are based off of the 1000.
The engines and power supply take up anywhere from 1/3 to 2/3 of the availible mass. so a light engine and a light battery together use 333 mass. Heavy/Heavy would take up 667. Keep in mind these are not the fighter engines we have now, but larger versions of the same.
Installing a Dock for 1 fighter takes up 1/8 (125) of the availible mass, since you can install up to 2, potentially you have 1/4 (250) of the mass taken up.
Fully filling all 250 cargo takes 1/4 of the mass.
I figure the average mass of a small weapon would be around 10, a Large weapon would average approx 20 and a V-large weapon avg 40. Thus filling all the small/Large weapons ports for anti fighter operations would take up 1/4 of the mass, and filling all the V-Large ports for anti-Cap ship operations would take 320 mass, or almost 1/3 of the availible mass.
The armor belts could average anywhere from 50-150 mass each (i'm thinking for 50 mass you absorb the first 100 damage off of each shot, for 150 mass you absorb the first 300 damage, but armor is a different thread) so with 2 potential layers of armor it could take up anywhere from 50-300 mass, or none if you dont add any armor to it.
The shield i would imagine being similar in mass to a V-Large weapon, and theequipment being approximately in the same range as a Small or large weapon.
Obviously the weapons, armor, shields, fighter bays and equipment could be mounted first, with any leftover mass being your cargo capacity. This hull could then be
a Fast Freighter, (Medium engine/battery, a few guns and an armor belt, leaving plenty of room for the cargo),
a Scout Carrier, (powerful engine, low power generation, a few Large port point defense weapons (adv gat turrets) with 2 fighter bays),
an anti-Fighter ship (all small and large ports equipped with seekers/adv gat turrets, and powerful engines),
a strike ship, (powerful engine, fill all the V-Large ports with anti-Cap ship weapons)
a secure transport, (light engine, fast power supply, best shield, max armor, a few anti fighter weapons with some cargo space remaining)
And probably many combinations of the above.
Obviously all of the above combos would have a few gizmos to adjust/tweak their effectiveness.
This type of system would allow the devs to create only 2 or 3 ship models for each "size" group, and leave customizing the ships to a certain job to the players. The agility of each ship would be determined by the amount of the mass used, obviously a hull with only a heavy engine and a light power supply, (uses maybe 500 of the total mass) would be more maneuverable than a hull with a heavy engine that was using all 1000 of the mass. At best I would see ships of this size accelerating at approximately the same rate as a Centaur equipped with a free engine, however I would suggest a top speed of 60-90 (depending on the engine used) with no higher turbo speed. Turbo could then be used to double the acceleration at the expense of a large amount of energy.
As far as control goes for the hypothetical ship above, I envision weapons stations 2&3 being controlled by a human passenger or an AI if no humans are availible/interested. The pilot could also set a course from the pilot station (1) and then switch to the other stations to fend of attacks if he wanted (tho obviously he cant then change course without switching back)
If it would work for anti-valk, i would love it... Then everything would have a counter:P
Excellent post, very well covered. Although I think that the pilot probably wouldn't have much use for a small weapon, but hey, it was a hypothetical ship.
There's also issues like repairing and ammoing in the docks. If you dock with me and buy 10 pieces of ammo costing 500c each, do I get the 500c? If I logoff and you're docked in me (not homed, since you wouldn't be able to home in a ship unless it was very, very large), do you just get ejected into space?
And how about docking anyhow? Does ammo and cargo get transferred by delivery ships? Do I logoff in space? I just don't know...
And the armour? Blocking the first 300 would be useless. However, if the armour functioned so that, say, any shot under 1400 damage were ignored, then fighters wouldn't take out cap ships, and bombers would be backi n business....
And now I turn this thread over to Celebrim for analysis.
There's also issues like repairing and ammoing in the docks. If you dock with me and buy 10 pieces of ammo costing 500c each, do I get the 500c? If I logoff and you're docked in me (not homed, since you wouldn't be able to home in a ship unless it was very, very large), do you just get ejected into space?
And how about docking anyhow? Does ammo and cargo get transferred by delivery ships? Do I logoff in space? I just don't know...
And the armour? Blocking the first 300 would be useless. However, if the armour functioned so that, say, any shot under 1400 damage were ignored, then fighters wouldn't take out cap ships, and bombers would be backi n business....
And now I turn this thread over to Celebrim for analysis.
Twenty-three weapons slots? How quickly do you expect one of these ships to blow up another ship of the same class? If you boost the hull points up into the hundreds of thousands, what is fighting one with a fighter going to be like? Moreover, if you put these ships (68m is only about 10th as long as the 'Frigate') in the price range of players, how much additional lag are you creating with your 23 weapons spamming out vectors?
While I agree with the philosophy to a certain extent, I'm not sure I can endorse any of the particular numbers.
"And the armour? Blocking the first 300 would be useless."
Let's say a ship has 24,000 hull. Armor that blocked the first 300 damage would raise the number of tachyon hits it could take from 40 to 80. It would raise the number of Advanced Gatling hits it could take from 53 to 160. It would raise the number ion bursts it could survive from 69 to 480. I believe it would give complete immunity to flechette rounds as they exist now. Even against hard hitters like sunflares, it raises the number of required hits from 16 to 20. That's hardly useless. I could stand being hit by 16 Sunflares and instead of being dead still have 4800 hull points left.
Something like 1400 armor would definately need to be limited to the largest classes of capital ships since it would give complete immunity to almost all weapons, and practical immunity to virtually everything but Avalons.
While I agree with the philosophy to a certain extent, I'm not sure I can endorse any of the particular numbers.
"And the armour? Blocking the first 300 would be useless."
Let's say a ship has 24,000 hull. Armor that blocked the first 300 damage would raise the number of tachyon hits it could take from 40 to 80. It would raise the number of Advanced Gatling hits it could take from 53 to 160. It would raise the number ion bursts it could survive from 69 to 480. I believe it would give complete immunity to flechette rounds as they exist now. Even against hard hitters like sunflares, it raises the number of required hits from 16 to 20. That's hardly useless. I could stand being hit by 16 Sunflares and instead of being dead still have 4800 hull points left.
Something like 1400 armor would definately need to be limited to the largest classes of capital ships since it would give complete immunity to almost all weapons, and practical immunity to virtually everything but Avalons.
celebrim, I think you missed 1 small detail with the # of weapons ports. In order to fill them all you have no way of putting anything except weapons and the worst possible engine/battery on it, Great you get one volley and then you are out of energy, or you spam out a lot of guided missiles and you are then out of ammo, you have no armor belt to boost survivability, and you have no shield, no cargo no gizmos, and with a piddly engine you cant even run.
The ship is roughly balanced by the mass (and i do mean roughly at this point) to have approx 10-16 weapons. Even if you fill ALL the ports, 8 of them are V-Large, i dont see any V-Large weapon having much use against fighters, and i dont see the small/large weapons having a tremendous use against capital ships. (if the cap ship is using the armor of course)
Finally on this point with the 3 distinct fields of fire, i dont forsee all the weapons being able to bear at once.
As to the numbers themselves, i picked them to give an idea, a rough picture of how the system would work, not to be indicative of any specific values. I grabbed the 1000 mass to be a nice round number, and the number of ports/cargo etc was based roughly the ship having dimensions of 68 long, approx 25 wide and 20 high. Obviously the numbers would have to be balanced more thourouhly. I dont see the ships outfitted for battle being affordable by players as much as guilds. And with the slow maneuverability and high expense if lost I dont forsee a lot of players wanting to fly them all the time.
I would personally want the Hull to be around 40-50k, with 2 300pt layers of armor that means gauss could still damage it, killing it in approx 75 hits, but i dont see the ships this size getting close enough to each other to spam gauss at each other. i would envision a few of the V-Large ports engaging at 500 to 1500 meters with something along the limes of a guided avalon torpedo if the target is stationary or just starting to move (same damage as a basic avalon, speed of 70, fuel for 40 seconds, LOW agility) or an energy weapon with a speed in the 250 range, same autoaim as the railgun, doing about 4000 damage a shot and a firing rate of once every 2 seconds. I see the Pilot having the guided weapons since the ship isnt overly maneuverable, and the turrets having the energy weapons.
the idea was to have one hull that could be anything from a lightly armored/armed bulk cargo carrier to a multi-utility warship. Obviously a 45000 HP freighter with no armor is going to go down in a hurry, but wouldnt be too expensive too lose, maybe 250,000 credits in our current economy for the hull and another 150,000 for a medium range engine/powersupply, i figure on the V-Large weapons / the fighterbays being the bulk of the cost of any hull in the future. I base this on the cost of the Adv Gat turret and the Swarms, the best L-port weapons we have now, each of which is more expensive individually than most ship hulls. I would expect a V-Large weapon to cost in the 100k-300k range. I would also like to see the current relative costs of the weapons we have now go up some.
The ship is roughly balanced by the mass (and i do mean roughly at this point) to have approx 10-16 weapons. Even if you fill ALL the ports, 8 of them are V-Large, i dont see any V-Large weapon having much use against fighters, and i dont see the small/large weapons having a tremendous use against capital ships. (if the cap ship is using the armor of course)
Finally on this point with the 3 distinct fields of fire, i dont forsee all the weapons being able to bear at once.
As to the numbers themselves, i picked them to give an idea, a rough picture of how the system would work, not to be indicative of any specific values. I grabbed the 1000 mass to be a nice round number, and the number of ports/cargo etc was based roughly the ship having dimensions of 68 long, approx 25 wide and 20 high. Obviously the numbers would have to be balanced more thourouhly. I dont see the ships outfitted for battle being affordable by players as much as guilds. And with the slow maneuverability and high expense if lost I dont forsee a lot of players wanting to fly them all the time.
I would personally want the Hull to be around 40-50k, with 2 300pt layers of armor that means gauss could still damage it, killing it in approx 75 hits, but i dont see the ships this size getting close enough to each other to spam gauss at each other. i would envision a few of the V-Large ports engaging at 500 to 1500 meters with something along the limes of a guided avalon torpedo if the target is stationary or just starting to move (same damage as a basic avalon, speed of 70, fuel for 40 seconds, LOW agility) or an energy weapon with a speed in the 250 range, same autoaim as the railgun, doing about 4000 damage a shot and a firing rate of once every 2 seconds. I see the Pilot having the guided weapons since the ship isnt overly maneuverable, and the turrets having the energy weapons.
the idea was to have one hull that could be anything from a lightly armored/armed bulk cargo carrier to a multi-utility warship. Obviously a 45000 HP freighter with no armor is going to go down in a hurry, but wouldnt be too expensive too lose, maybe 250,000 credits in our current economy for the hull and another 150,000 for a medium range engine/powersupply, i figure on the V-Large weapons / the fighterbays being the bulk of the cost of any hull in the future. I base this on the cost of the Adv Gat turret and the Swarms, the best L-port weapons we have now, each of which is more expensive individually than most ship hulls. I would expect a V-Large weapon to cost in the 100k-300k range. I would also like to see the current relative costs of the weapons we have now go up some.