one thing I really miss is batteries that fit to ship sizes. maybe batteries should start to weigh something, and quite a bit as well.

okay, I currently love my Ragnarok, but I can't _arm_ it with any energy weapons since I can only fit the same battery into it as I could in a once-S-slot-Centaurion. it might just be me, but I find that somewhat odd.

maybe one could offer an extra battery that fits into a S-slot? this could make the heavier ships be a lot more useful. I_don't_ think the extra battery should give much extra charge (maybe 5/sec or so, if anything at all), but it should be able to store quite a bit of energy, maybe 500 or so. with ~1K of battery life, a Ragnarok or even a Centaur could keep a steady stream of fire to compensate for not being able to move well enough to aim that well. and, combine that with the number of slots, the heavier ships might actually become a threat.

today, they're great against bots, but even in a convoy, they're not that useful.

also, could we store ammo as cargo, with a long (15-20s?) delay for "getting clips from the storage hold"? ammo might also be heavy, making it again something for the heavier ships. one could stock up on missiles and other ammo types in a 'Rok and actually be a support vessel, not just a slow sitting duck.

one could drop ammo-cargo-crates and have other people pick it up for refitting in mid-air and stuff. that'd be _neat_ and very useful, without (in my view) changing the dynamics of combat much.

I can't really see these changes doing much except promote a good mix of ships in a convoy. a 'Rok could become a portable missile base, but as we know, that won't by itself stop a good pilot in a light fighter, who can just dodge rockets "forever". add two or three fighters for protection, the extra heavy ship would be really useful, and of course, a great target.

I like to think of it as "Capital ships light".

I very much agree with you. Ragnarok *definitly* needs more batteries than a Centurian. Possibly also the Hornet, but I'd not be so keen on the Centaur having extra batteries, as the main use for batteries is combat, and the Centaur isn't meant for combat. Personally, I'd rather see multiple battery slots in some ships rather than a S-port battery. One place that I disagree with you though is on the recharge. If it's only a larger capacity without a higher recharge as well, it becomes pretty pointless once the battery is empty. And remember that jumps & WH use all of your batteries. And even without the jumps emptying the battery, eventually you will drain it in combat, and will very much want a faster recharge then. But any recharge from extra batteries needs to be seperate from the engines, or else we'll end up with infiniturbo when we shouldn't.

A previous discussion on batteries: http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/8118

Storing extra ammo as cargo that can be reloaded mid-flight would be cool. Before that though I'd like to see firing ammo based weapons lower your ships mass a bit.

centaur is not meant for combat, but it should be able to defend itself properly...

which is what the battery helps with. For all I care you give the ragnarok in stead of 1k like a centaur, 2k. And up the drain slightly of the large slot weapons to compensate.

It will however be another way to balance high acceleration with infiniboost. Since you could say that the infiniboost needs more time to load up its batteries once it is depleted then if you have a high acceleration once. And if a 2k battery is empty, im sure it will take a little while before it is filled so you can actually jump. It will however make big ships even more at a disadvantage, but it can help in making the corvus vult able to actually fight and be able to catch up to a centaur or marauder before it can jump out of the sector.

cheers

Perhaps there is no good reason to have player-selected batteries in the game. It doesn't really make sense. From a "reality" standpoint, a given ship variant would have a built-in battery -- it would be part of the design of the vessel. From a gaming standpoint, no one chooses to use anything other than heavy or fast charge, and in a given ship variant only one of those two usually works.

So why not get rid of battery choices, and instead design capacity/regen rates right into the ship? That would make balancing much, much more flexible and would allow things like the Ragnarok having a massive capacity without unbalancing the other ships.

I disagree, wylfing. "no one chooses to use anything other than heavy or fast charge, and in a given ship variant only one of those two usually works." I usually use the F/C battery, but I *do* use the heavy battery at times in the same ships that I use the F/C in.

And let's look at the Ragnarok. With energy weapons it pretty much has to have the heavy battery. But if I load it up w/ swarms & missiles, I'd rather use F/C.

And lastly, even if it's fake, I like having the feeling that I'm customizing my ship.

I've had to buy a cheap battery when I've been poor and wanted to use the extra cash to buy more cargo. Those were slow journeys, but I got the cash to buy a better battery at the other end.

I'm not convinced by either of those arguments.

> I usually use the F/C battery, but I *do* use the heavy battery
> at times in the same ships that I use the F/C in.

I didn't suggest doing away with that kind of performance difference. I suggested hard-wiring it into ship variants. You want a faster charging battery? Switch from a MkII to a MkIII. (Actually, what would make the -most- sense is to replace the battery slot with a gadget slot and make available a battery extender gadget.)

> I've had to buy a cheap battery when I've been poor and wanted
> to use the extra cash to buy more cargo. Those were slow
> journeys, but I got the cash to buy a better battery at the
> other end.

I don't see the benefit of this over buying a cheaper ship. Certainly nothing that would offset the huge gain in ship design flexibility granted by hard-wiring the battery.

Basically you're suggesting more ship variants, instead of tweaking each variant slightly w/ selecting its batter{y|ies}, right wylfing? IMO there's two (minor) problems with that still. First, even though it doesn't really have much different an end result than buying batteries seperate, it *feels* (at least to me) like I have less control over designing my ship. Second, in order to match the current number of ship design possiblities, it would need to have an incredible number of ship variants available. It wouldn't be nearly as easy at making the MkII w/ a heavy batt & the MkIII w/ a F/C (or vice-versa). Take the Wraith for example, the MkII is a better trader, the MkIII is a better fighter. Traders generally want the F/C, but if they're also wanting to be able to fight pirates with certain weapon loadouts, they may want to use the heavy. Likewise with fighters using the MkIII, depending on their weapon loadout they may prefer one battery over the other. So you really would need at least twice the number of ship variants. Three times as many, if you want some using the new ultra-charge battery. *Many* times more, if you want to retain license requirements similar to what we have now (which I think is a good thing).

Having a 'gadget' slot addresses both of those problems to some extent, but there's no reason we can't have gadget slots & battery slots, which would totally eliminate both problems.

The result of my suggestion would be fewer total ship variants -- keep the existing number of ships but hard-wire their batteries. I know that cuts down on customization possibilities, but what is gained is the ability to balance ship performance much better. With the current battery system there is no way to adequately address the OP's issue of powering a 5-gun Ragnarok without causing many, many follow-on problems that also have to be solved. And those solutions will invariably involve restricting battery choices, so we'd end up with what I suggested anyway.

Having a battery slot -and- a gadget slot capable of affecting battery performance would be a balancing nightmare, and still would not solve the OP's issue.

I still think that hardwiring the power generation to the ship variant, but having power storage as a customizable part is a good idea.

If each ship had its own "powerplant" built in, (eg this ship variant generates 50 energy/second) and all ships had a power storage of 200 (make that the amount needed to use a wormhole), then you could have different size batteries, that did nothing but store power. larger batteries would have more mass, and you could then add a extra battery slots to the larger ships, giving them a larger power reserve.

For that matter it would allow more tweaking of the smaller combat ships as well, Imagine a valk variant with a power generation of 75 e/s, and a turbo drain of 90. It would perform the same as our current valks would with a drain of 65 as far as turbo, but would have more juice for combat because it charges its guns faster.

The same could be done for rangaroks and prometheous class ships. Players would be able to customize how much energy reserve they had by adding larger batteries (and adding mass as a tradeoff), but power generation would still be balanced against turbo usage.

well, I would be all in favor of storage mods, if they took away the handicap of having to fully charge a larger battery to jump a wh.

I mean, these wh's are really wierd, they seem to "know" what battery you have, and then require that amount of energy. Either that, or some electromagnetic effect causes the battery to discharge, but if that's the case, how the hell is life support shielded from this effect. Again, very odd.

A tradeoff between battery capacity and mass is a good step. (That's why I suggested using a gadget slot as the only battery modifier, because it would require you to make tradeoffs between battery performance and something else, such as enhanced radar.) It would completely solve the Ragnarok issue, and there would be no need for additional battery slots -- it just needs a series of ever-heavier batteries. Assuming the mass/engine scale of the Ragnarok is raised, a 5000 kg monster battery would mean little. But no Centurion pilot is going to install it.

It also makes much more sense for battery regeneration to be a feature of the ship, not the battery. In fact, the way it is now is kind of bizarre.

I also agree that jumps should take a set number of energy units, not simply "all of them."

Shapenji, you obviously haven't read your pilot's manual in a while. It clearly states that if you attempted travel in a wormhole with a partially charged battery of ANY size, the battery would become unstable and begin to spike. These spikes of energy are reported to have destroyed many an internal electrical system in a ship, including life support systems. This is why a safety feature has been installed in just about every ship available today that prevents a careless pilot from jumping without allowing batteries to safely recharge first.

Now don't I feel like the noob, spouting off from a manual that should have lots of dust on it by now...

I actually like the WH jumps completely draining the battery. The pseudo-science babble about the WHs makes it make sense, and IMO it adds interesting aspects to the gameplay. In system sector-to-sector jumps, on the other had, I would like to see just drain a certain amount of battery, somewhere in the range of 100-200, possibly determined by the mass of your ship.

Love the ammo storage part. and now

I read this thread and wonder something, it seems the base of it is that everyone wants the ships to be ballanced,, why? You take a VW, a ford truck, a corvet and a dragster and have a compitition each one will excell in its own area, its just a fact, gas milage, cargo, handling, speed,, respectivly.

These ships are the same, some have great handling, some sustained fire power, and others withering firepower for a short period, the key is to LEARN your fighting style and choose the ship that best matches it, just as no two martial artists of different styles will ever be fairly matched up, it always comes down to two things, experiance and a little luck at the right moment. If your ship does not fit your fighting style, then its time to try a new ship.

have to agree with wr4ith here about fighting style, allthough i do think, from my point of view then, that the hornet and especially the beautiful ragnarok are a litle but useles at the moment. I could be wrong tho, cause a rag and 2 fighters could set up a hell of a trap.

think of the Rag in one of two modes in battle, 1 missile boat, 2 load up with beams, wait till a 1 on 1 dog fight starts in the distance, slip up and let it all fly, one huge withering blast, your batteries dead yes, but so is the bad guy. ;)