With new ships hopefully appearing in the near future, I think that it’d be a good idea to make fighters less “all around,” and more specialized.

The way I see it, there are basically five roles for fighters that can be fulfilled. Interceptor, multi-role, assault/fire support, and transport.

Interceptor: these are the lightest, fastest fighters. Their main role is to head out and intercept hostiles before they can get in range of their targets. Interceptors sacrifice everything in the name of speed, often compromising hitting power. In Vendetta, these ships include the EC-101, the EC-107, the Centurion, the Vulture, and the Valkyrie.

Assault/Fire Support: these are the slowest, heaviest fighters. Their main role is to carry lots of heavy weapons, often composed of a mix of guns, missiles, and rockets, into battle to unload against either large capital ships, or to launch against enemy fighters already engaged with friendly forces. In Vendetta, these ships include the Centaur, Ragnarok, and Prometheus.

Multi-Role: these fighters are the jack-of-all-trades, but masters of none. They lie in the midrange (in weight, speed, and armament) between interceptors and assault fighters, and are intended to fill either role, though they cannot be as effective as a more specialized fighter. In Vendetta, these ships include the Warthog.

Transport: these fighters sacrifice weapons and armor for large cargo holds. They aren’t terrifically fast, and have small armaments, but they are able to move necessary cargo around the universe. In Vendetta, these ships include the EC-88, the EC-99, the Wraith, the Atlas, and the Marauder.

Obviously, the EC series are midrange between interceptors and transports. There also have to be minor changes to certain ships to specialize them further. All interceptors (except for the EC series) need to have little to no cargo space so that while they can catch and kill large ships easily, they cannot carry away cargo as well. The Marauder is an interceptor/transport, but I think that its turning should be reduced so that it’s quick in a straight line, but can’t mix it up with the “real” interceptors. The Prometheus really needs another L port to bring it to 2 S ports and 2 L ports so that it can become a true assault ship. With the single L port and 2 S ports, it can’t do the damage to make it really effective. Smaller ships can outturn it easily, but if they make a mistake, the Prom has a tough time doing the damage so that they really regret it.

A lot of people are complaining about turbo boost speeds compared with drain, and I have come up with a new system that would work to serve many balance purposes: Variable boost engines.

The basic concept is that engines have a maximum boost speed and a maximum boost drain, but some people may not want to go at those speeds with that drain, so they can adjust how much the engine drains and how fast their boost maxes out at.

The system has two ways of adjusting this. You can choose your boost drain, which in turn, automatically adjusts your boost speed, or you can change your boost speed, and the system accordingly decides how much you get drained. For instance, if a ship has a max speed of 240 m/s with a drain of 70 e/s, the player can lower the drain to 50 e/s (and thus be able to infiniboost), but they max out at 200 m/s. If they lower their drain to 40 e/s, they lose more speed (maybe to 170 m/s), they can infiniboost on all batteries, and retain energy to shoot. The disadvantage, of course is that they’re a lot slower than a ship infiniboosting on a fast charge.

What about ships that already infiniboost at or below 200 m/s? They can adjust their settings lower, but not higher than that. They do, however, have an overdrive option that doubles the thrust of their engine (and accordingly, increases their acceleration) at the cost of a lot of energy. This option cannot be deactivated until the battery is drained, and the ship can neither boost nor overdrive for 30 seconds because of the strain and heat that the overdrive subjects the engines to. However, it is good for a quick boost to the 3000m limit when they’re full of cargo, or it gets them to the wormhole quicker.

I like your idea of the variable trust engines, I've been trying to come up with a good way to do that myself. I'll second the concept. As for your ships, I've been saying that for weeks now, but you've outlined it quite nice, though I still think there needs to be a next teir of ships that are bigger and stronger, yet smaller then the cap ships. Good post! =)

i also really like the idea of adjustable max turbo speed, and relating it to drain. For long distance cruising you could set it so that infiniturbo would work, but the max attainable turbo speed would be less. But for close up fighting or whatever you could reset it so infiniturbo doesn't work, but you can go turbo faster for a few seconds.

I really feel sorry for the Corvus Vulturis people, having to let up off 'turbo' and wait for it to recharge as they fly between wormholes. It is also really annoying in the EC-88 to have to sit there and wait for recharge.

It would be better if you could just set the free EC-88 to go 100 m/s infiniturbo, but if you got in an ion storm or whatever to change that up to 150m/s with non-infiniturbo to get away from bots.

Oh yea, it's also partially Shape's idea. We were talking about it last night... in between the fights, that is.

I personally am against the idea of a variable turbo. Part of the reason is that I feel that fighters should have a limited range in comparison to the heavier ships. The range you can turbo makes a significant difference in balance. And if infinite turbo is significantly slower than ships without it there is more specialization in the ship choice. Here's how I see the ship classes breaking down crippled.

fighter: valk, vult - these ships have good weapons and medium armor. They have low turbo endurance (drain of 60+), with correspondingly higher speeds (75-80/240-250) and very good acceleration. little to no cargo.

Interceptors: centurion, hornet - These ships are not as good as fighters for various reasons. In the case of the hornet, it's less agile, and the centurion has less firepower/armor. Both have much better turbo duration (but not infiniturbo, drain of around 55), giving them longer legs, in exchange they have less acceleration and lower overall top speeds (65-70/210-220). cargo varies, on the faster cent, almost none, the hornet would have a bit more.

Heavy attack ships: prom, rangarok, wraith - these ships have low top speeds (55-65/190-210),they have low acceleration, but massive armor and heavy firepower. They can turbo indefinitely. moderate cargo capacity.

Transport craft: Atlas, Centaur, Marauder. these ships have good acceleration, but the lowest top speeds. (55-65/150-200) They have moderate weapons loadouts, and decent armor. They carry the most cargo.

Multi-Role craft: the hog. these take attributes from all the ship types, they do nothing well, but they have no real disadvantages either. Good cargo, good turbo drain, (55 prolly) top speeds in the 60-70/200-220 range, better weapons and armor than the interceptors and fighters, more accel than the heavies. this is the class that is hardest to balance.

The idea is that the most agile ships in combat be the least able to run away, The idea obviously needs tweaking, but I think it would add more depth to the game.

the way I see it physically, for this to make sense, the new drain should go as:

A*(v^2/vmax^2)*MAXDRAIN

where "A" is a factor determined by the change of mass of a ship (due to cargo, for example). Since the "drag force" of space, seems to remain a constant for a particular ship. (try it out, get up to 200 m/s in a fully loaded maud, and get up to 200 in an empty maud,
the empty maud will accelerate faster and decelerate faster than the fully loaded one)