Forums » Suggestions
Ships
I hate to compare VO to another game but I happened to get a copy of Homeworld 2 over the winter break and I have to say that they have the best ship devisions and variety I've seen yet, though I do not have access to all the games that the pc's do. It breaks them up into Fighters, Corvettes, Frigates, Capital Ships and Mother Ships. When comparing HW2's ships to VO it was painfully clear that VO only has fighters. And while I know that the devs are working feverishly to add new and interesting things to the game along with fine tuning what is already in the game, I really think they need to rethink there time line on new ships.
Fighters-
The fighters were all primarily based on a single style of weaponry, either ammo based guns, energy based beams, or missles as bombers.
VO equivilent - Vulture, Centurian, Warthog
Corvettes-
These ships were a bit larger and had a bit more damage, using more energy and ammo based weapons.
VO equivilent - Maud, Valk, Prom, Rag, Centaur
Frigates- (would love to see these in VO!)
These pretty much looked like flying submarines with heavy weapons that delivered devistating attacks on the smaller ships and were useful in tickling the larger ships. There were three types, missle, energy, and ammo based.
Capital Ships-
While this is already planned for VO, homeworld has a much larger selection. You could build Carriors, Shipyards, Destroyers and Battlercruisers. The Shipyard fell under the catagory of a "Mothership" since it can build everything else in the game other then a true "Mothership" which was something else in the game entirely. Though I don't expect to see mother ships or shipyards for players, it would be nice to see a shipyard in a capital system near a main base. Battlercruisers and Destroyers are more what I expect, and the current model of the Capital Ship is a great model for a destroyer, something a little bigger would be needed for a battlercruiser. Carriors would be great for guild use along side the CS as a place for there fighters to dock. Ships that allowed docking were Battlecruisers and Carriors, plus Motherships and Shipyards of course.
Here's my point to this whole thread. Right now, the variety of ships is all about the fighter. And while this is great and the game is fun, we've been forcing aspects of things that should not be put onto the fighter ships style. Point in case, the mining warthog and maurader. These ships should be completely different. And although I like being able to use heavy weapons on a small fighter, I don't really think it's realistic to see. Instead of diversifing ship designs, we've come up with 10 small fighters and given them big ship characteristics. By doing so we have lost the best way to encourage group style play. By overspecializing a ship you make them useful only in groups. And while I like being able to do my own thing no matter what, some times its nice to be needed. Creating special gun ships and missle ships and energy beam based vessles would set a stage for more dynamic confrontations between small squads of ships, which is what everyone wants I think. More combat right?
I know all this takes time but honestly I dont see it happening, or the devs just want to keep that kind of info to themselves. Introducing a single style of cap ship, for the sole purpose of border skirmishes is not going to change the game that much, and will probably just become another CtC mission that gets boring really quick. Take the time, come up with a few more ship styles, maybe even just one of each level of ship and then do what you've already done by creating "varients" of them for different purposes, just so that you get it into the game. Then you can go back and come up with different models when you have the time and the bugs are worked out. As it stands now, by the time you get the bugs worked out of the "fighters" the game will be 10 years old and someone else will have swooped in, come up with something better and the populous of VO will have left. Ok, I'm exagerating there but you get my point.
Fighters-
The fighters were all primarily based on a single style of weaponry, either ammo based guns, energy based beams, or missles as bombers.
VO equivilent - Vulture, Centurian, Warthog
Corvettes-
These ships were a bit larger and had a bit more damage, using more energy and ammo based weapons.
VO equivilent - Maud, Valk, Prom, Rag, Centaur
Frigates- (would love to see these in VO!)
These pretty much looked like flying submarines with heavy weapons that delivered devistating attacks on the smaller ships and were useful in tickling the larger ships. There were three types, missle, energy, and ammo based.
Capital Ships-
While this is already planned for VO, homeworld has a much larger selection. You could build Carriors, Shipyards, Destroyers and Battlercruisers. The Shipyard fell under the catagory of a "Mothership" since it can build everything else in the game other then a true "Mothership" which was something else in the game entirely. Though I don't expect to see mother ships or shipyards for players, it would be nice to see a shipyard in a capital system near a main base. Battlercruisers and Destroyers are more what I expect, and the current model of the Capital Ship is a great model for a destroyer, something a little bigger would be needed for a battlercruiser. Carriors would be great for guild use along side the CS as a place for there fighters to dock. Ships that allowed docking were Battlecruisers and Carriors, plus Motherships and Shipyards of course.
Here's my point to this whole thread. Right now, the variety of ships is all about the fighter. And while this is great and the game is fun, we've been forcing aspects of things that should not be put onto the fighter ships style. Point in case, the mining warthog and maurader. These ships should be completely different. And although I like being able to use heavy weapons on a small fighter, I don't really think it's realistic to see. Instead of diversifing ship designs, we've come up with 10 small fighters and given them big ship characteristics. By doing so we have lost the best way to encourage group style play. By overspecializing a ship you make them useful only in groups. And while I like being able to do my own thing no matter what, some times its nice to be needed. Creating special gun ships and missle ships and energy beam based vessles would set a stage for more dynamic confrontations between small squads of ships, which is what everyone wants I think. More combat right?
I know all this takes time but honestly I dont see it happening, or the devs just want to keep that kind of info to themselves. Introducing a single style of cap ship, for the sole purpose of border skirmishes is not going to change the game that much, and will probably just become another CtC mission that gets boring really quick. Take the time, come up with a few more ship styles, maybe even just one of each level of ship and then do what you've already done by creating "varients" of them for different purposes, just so that you get it into the game. Then you can go back and come up with different models when you have the time and the bugs are worked out. As it stands now, by the time you get the bugs worked out of the "fighters" the game will be 10 years old and someone else will have swooped in, come up with something better and the populous of VO will have left. Ok, I'm exagerating there but you get my point.
Ok first off in hw2 the fighters do not have missiles. The Corvettes do tho. Also it's a COMPLETELY different game john... hw2 is a strategy game that is played more like chess. Though I would like to see bigger ships in VO. VO will always have fighters play a main role in combat, because vo is a fighter ship game. It's not EVE or EnB where once you get to a certain point someone who is in a ship that is worse than yours stands absolutely no chance. With eve someone can be in a bus and still kill you in a valk if all you've shot down are bots for your whole gaming existence. Therefore to have them impliment this kind of range in ships would kill the fighters.
Course the only way they could do this is by making the next level ships much more expensive. Unfortunately though with this game ships die quite often. . . if anyone has done any ctc they know this. So suppose I just spent 100k on a frigate and 5 bombers just hit me from behind and blew me up... I personnally can only buy around 15 more frigates, and I don't want to trade!
Capital ships (supposing we are going by the hw2 scale) would be completely worthless against fighters and devastating to ONLY frigates, and capital ships. Though this is not how it has to be with VO. I have no idea how much a capital ship would cost but supposing it was 1 million credits, this would be okay. As long as it was very hard to destroy.
So basically what I'm saying is that this amount of ship variants in VO would be hard. I mean how do you balance it when currently players die ALL the time. It's just something you accept. The reason we can deal with this is because there's no ship customization (in my opinion). At least compared to EnB or EVE. (my opinion only encompasses past occurances with those 2 mmorpg's) In EnB you never lost your equipment. You got to customize your ship color, hull types, weapons, devices, reactors, shields... So far we have (4) reactors and weapons. Once the devs start adding content, all of a sudden the ship you just traded for an hour to get, means something....
So since I am in a suggestions forum let me suggest something for all that rubbish up there. (points to paragraphs) Make the corvettes and/or frigates SLIGHTLY more powerful than fighters and not too expensive. Make Capital ships powerful but weak against fighters... this way fighters still play a role in this game (which they always will). Basically everything everyone knows.....
/givemoney Devs 2c
Course the only way they could do this is by making the next level ships much more expensive. Unfortunately though with this game ships die quite often. . . if anyone has done any ctc they know this. So suppose I just spent 100k on a frigate and 5 bombers just hit me from behind and blew me up... I personnally can only buy around 15 more frigates, and I don't want to trade!
Capital ships (supposing we are going by the hw2 scale) would be completely worthless against fighters and devastating to ONLY frigates, and capital ships. Though this is not how it has to be with VO. I have no idea how much a capital ship would cost but supposing it was 1 million credits, this would be okay. As long as it was very hard to destroy.
So basically what I'm saying is that this amount of ship variants in VO would be hard. I mean how do you balance it when currently players die ALL the time. It's just something you accept. The reason we can deal with this is because there's no ship customization (in my opinion). At least compared to EnB or EVE. (my opinion only encompasses past occurances with those 2 mmorpg's) In EnB you never lost your equipment. You got to customize your ship color, hull types, weapons, devices, reactors, shields... So far we have (4) reactors and weapons. Once the devs start adding content, all of a sudden the ship you just traded for an hour to get, means something....
So since I am in a suggestions forum let me suggest something for all that rubbish up there. (points to paragraphs) Make the corvettes and/or frigates SLIGHTLY more powerful than fighters and not too expensive. Make Capital ships powerful but weak against fighters... this way fighters still play a role in this game (which they always will). Basically everything everyone knows.....
/givemoney Devs 2c
Kix, I totally agree with you that HW2 and VO are completely different in there game styles. I mearly referenced the ship varients, not the game play. And your right. If there were that much variation in ships the fighter would not be the uber ship that it is now. Thats kind of the point. Right now all we have are these super tricked out fighters planes that do EVERYTHING, which to me is rediculous. And to say that the fighter would become useless is wrong. Fighters are the most important thing to have when you have larger vessels like cap ships and frigates because they do not move very fast and must have lots of small fighters ships to protect them. They are the sharp tip to any good fleet. Fleet battle in VO I think would be everyones wet dream. Image two guilds with there battle cruisers and other cap ships all in one sector with a few frigate and a but load of fighters dooking it out. The battle would be glorious. And with cap ships you would not have to go to a base but would respawn in your cap ship and just get right back in the battle.
I will conceed though that with the current population on VO at any given time that the larger vessels would probably only hinder game play, but, perhaps if there were more to choose from there would be a bigger draw to the game. As it is now if you don't like to fight figher to fighter then your SOL. Me personally, I would be a frigate or cap ship pilot/turret style player, more my style and yes that does not fit the current VO model which is why I trade mostly.
I would love to hear from the devs on what they are planning in the way of LONG TERM plans for the game, I haven't seen an update to the "In Progress" section of the website in a while and the "news" is only about the latest update.
[edit] Just read the "In Progress", still no long term goals listed but at least it got updated.
I will conceed though that with the current population on VO at any given time that the larger vessels would probably only hinder game play, but, perhaps if there were more to choose from there would be a bigger draw to the game. As it is now if you don't like to fight figher to fighter then your SOL. Me personally, I would be a frigate or cap ship pilot/turret style player, more my style and yes that does not fit the current VO model which is why I trade mostly.
I would love to hear from the devs on what they are planning in the way of LONG TERM plans for the game, I haven't seen an update to the "In Progress" section of the website in a while and the "news" is only about the latest update.
[edit] Just read the "In Progress", still no long term goals listed but at least it got updated.
I think mid-sized and capital ships are in the works.
yes a cap ship, a single varient, is in the works, and will first arrive as a mission to defend it for border skirmishes. And probably a month or two after that for guilds to purchase. I'm looking for much more then that.
johnhawl218,
i think we all are looking for more than that, but the devs have to take small steps. I personaly have worked on a game that involved both fighters and capitle ships, and it isn't easy balancing ships that are so different in size and function.
I think the devs are working on cap. ships and that before we see player ouned cap. ships we will see a number of mid sized corvets and frigates.
i think we all are looking for more than that, but the devs have to take small steps. I personaly have worked on a game that involved both fighters and capitle ships, and it isn't easy balancing ships that are so different in size and function.
I think the devs are working on cap. ships and that before we see player ouned cap. ships we will see a number of mid sized corvets and frigates.
I guess for me it's one thing to buy a game and expect updates and another to buy a game pay a monthly fee and still feel like I'm participating in beta developement. The content is just not here and I dont see it on the horizon. I think "balancing" the differences between ships would be easier if you actualy had the ships to balance, instead of taking a single type, fighters, and making it behave like the formentioned ships types and balance them. Two different schools of though.
I would love to see gunship/corvette style ships in VO
of course the requirements would have to be higher, and probably be based on something other than liscense points, because it's just way too easy to reach those high levels.. I think a point system basedon player kills based on the skill of the player that you killed would be good.
The corvette/gunships would have to be much larger and capable of bearing auto-aiming turrets, because a single front mounted gun on a heavy ship wouldn't stand a blink of a chance against a faster fighter craft.
of course the requirements would have to be higher, and probably be based on something other than liscense points, because it's just way too easy to reach those high levels.. I think a point system basedon player kills based on the skill of the player that you killed would be good.
The corvette/gunships would have to be much larger and capable of bearing auto-aiming turrets, because a single front mounted gun on a heavy ship wouldn't stand a blink of a chance against a faster fighter craft.
Raise the price of corv and such-from 3000 (i think the highest ship cost) to say 15,000 that way people are just throwing it away if the need to get back home some and others won't buy them just to "see how they feel" not only that but they could enlist fighter protection, (say the cargo corvette) it has 100 cargo space, turns like sh*t and has only 2 turrets one on top and one on bottom with a max range of 500.
oh i cant get the PDS mod or the warlords mod to for for HW2 mac any thoughts?
there thats my 2¢
oh i cant get the PDS mod or the warlords mod to for for HW2 mac any thoughts?
there thats my 2¢
@Knight
In regards to "cargo corvettes", I would personally, design a whole slew of other ship types that are based on barges that would be for mining and cargo. We need to get away from the mentality of taking a "fighter" style ship and making it a "cargo" style ship. They are different and would look different. Not to say that there would not be a fast cargo ship or a fast heavily armored mining ship (warthog mining varient) but that they would not look like the fighter ships. =)
@Apex
Requirements to get the vessels is up in the air, and I wouldn't care if it was uber hard to do, but just to be able to get them at all and to see them around in game would be awesome. And as for auto-aiming turrets due to faster fighters, that's how they instigate group dynamics. Someone who wants to fly something that size is undoughtedly going to need backup. Hopefully, if this was ever instituted, it's what would bring guilds closer together and spawn much more interesting combat on many scales. But your right, and the GT's already do that anyway. I would just invision them having a few more slots then current models. =)
In regards to "cargo corvettes", I would personally, design a whole slew of other ship types that are based on barges that would be for mining and cargo. We need to get away from the mentality of taking a "fighter" style ship and making it a "cargo" style ship. They are different and would look different. Not to say that there would not be a fast cargo ship or a fast heavily armored mining ship (warthog mining varient) but that they would not look like the fighter ships. =)
@Apex
Requirements to get the vessels is up in the air, and I wouldn't care if it was uber hard to do, but just to be able to get them at all and to see them around in game would be awesome. And as for auto-aiming turrets due to faster fighters, that's how they instigate group dynamics. Someone who wants to fly something that size is undoughtedly going to need backup. Hopefully, if this was ever instituted, it's what would bring guilds closer together and spawn much more interesting combat on many scales. But your right, and the GT's already do that anyway. I would just invision them having a few more slots then current models. =)