Land vehicles ideas

[Wolverines527]

This is more over what we should have for vehicle movement wise
Each with pros and cons to give variety

Wheels:
Pros- should allow fast movement on solid surfaces for scouting or exploring
Cons- will have trouble with rough environments and limited to light armoring or the wheels will break.

Treads: are for heavy assault or mining craft

Pros- can move on most terrain and carry heavy weight without breaking.

Cons- slow and hard to control.

Hover block: the highest tiered form of locomotion for a ground vehicle.

Pros: very fast can traverse any terrain can have any amount of armor based on the number of hover blocks.

Cons- hard to control so be prepared to stop well ahead of time, easy to spot and target.

 

[Crimson-Artist]

I would love to start making tanks and such but planets will need to get much larger for vehicles to be even remotely viable not to mention there needs to be a reason why we choose to jump into a ground vehicle rather than a ship.

 

[Dellexe]

I would love to start making tanks and such but planets will need to get much larger for vehicles to be even remotely viable not to mention there needs to be a reason why we choose to jump into a ground vehicle rather than a ship.

Exactly this. There would be no reason to use ground vehicles over ships unless they're extremely unbalanced. I like to read/participate in fiction debates a lot and one giant constant is that whoever wins the space war wins the ground war by default. The Covenant (Halo) VS Goa'uld (Stargate) is a great example of this.
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Spoiler: Going off on a tangent on Goa'uld V Covies

The Goa'uld ground forces and tactics suck. With the exception of a couple types of soldiers that are few and far between, their infantry is very lightly armored, not capable of long-distance engagements, and tends to use "rush in a big crowd" style tactics. By stark contrast, the Covenant have highly advanced alien soldiers in shielded suits, fast soldiers with energy shields, and tons of Grunts. They have a variety of ground-war vehicles and have demonstrated a variety of effective tactics.
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But in pretty much every conflict possible, the Goa'uld would wreck the Covenant. Why? Because Goa'uld ships are ridiculously superior to Covenant ships. I think someone calced it as taking several days to weeks for a covenant Cruiser to break through a Ha'Tak's shields, whereas the Ha'Tak's main weapon could instantly spear through several stacked Covenant Cruisers. The Goa'uld lose the ground war badly, but because they're superior in space, they would win any war through precision strikes and orbital bombardment.

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In addition, unless atmosphere friction is added or ships can't function at all well in a planet's sphere of influence, they will always be faster than a ground vehicle. And wheels take up more space than thrusters, so they'd be less space efficient too, unless wheels would be really unbalanced.

 

[Zyrr]

More of a case of "it'll be here eventually" than "new idea". As previously stated, planets just aren't viable for any sort of ground combat (but I can still dream, ungh). When bigger and more optimized planets roll around I can guarantee you player character combat as well as ground combat will be a thing. Just, ah, don't hold your breath. Schema takes his time.

 

[Crimson-Artist]

Exactly this. There would be no reason to use ground vehicles over ships unless they're extremely unbalanced. I like to read/participate in fiction debates a lot and one giant constant is that whoever wins the space war wins the ground war by default. The Covenant (Halo) VS Goa'uld (Stargate) is a great example of this.
-

Spoiler: Going off on a tangent on Goa'uld V Covies

The Goa'uld ground forces and tactics suck. With the exception of a couple types of soldiers that are few and far between, their infantry is very lightly armored, not capable of long-distance engagements, and tends to use "rush in a big crowd" style tactics. By stark contrast, the Covenant have highly advanced alien soldiers in shielded suits, fast soldiers with energy shields, and tons of Grunts. They have a variety of ground-war vehicles and have demonstrated a variety of effective tactics.
-
But in pretty much every conflict possible, the Goa'uld would wreck the Covenant. Why? Because Goa'uld ships are ridiculously superior to Covenant ships. I think someone calced it as taking several days to weeks for a covenant Cruiser to break through a Ha'Tak's shields, whereas the Ha'Tak's main weapon could instantly spear through several stacked Covenant Cruisers. The Goa'uld lose the ground war badly, but because they're superior in space, they would win any war through precision strikes and orbital bombardment.

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In addition, unless atmosphere friction is added or ships can't function at all well in a planet's sphere of influence, they will always be faster than a ground vehicle. And wheels take up more space than thrusters, so they'd be less space efficient too, unless wheels would be really unbalanced.

the only way that I think this could work within starmade is that special planetary shielding is added that either heavily or completely negates ship born weapons. Only weapons mounted to "Vehicle Cores" and astronaut weapons will deal damage to the planet

 

[Wolverines527]

Well this was meant toward for when vehicles start becoming a thing and planets actually become bigger then the ones we have right now plus i would like to make stuff i could probably use some time that where the fun is in building something for that purpose and then blue printing for mass producing add an ai and you have a tank army

 

[Nauvran]

If our planets worked somehow as in that Empyrion game where we need to go through and atmosphere then we might be able to get land vehicles.
Of course we would say that the atmosphere would only allow ships under a certain size to land and a minimum size or thrust ratio to get the ships off the planet again.
Mining operations could then be established on the planets and somehow be captured by opposing factions. This would give a need to make a base on a planet and a reason to have some sort of planes and land vehicles as well as defences.

 

[Wolverines527]

If our planets worked somehow as in that Empyrion game where we need to go through and atmosphere then we might be able to get land vehicles.
Of course we would say that the atmosphere would only allow ships under a certain size to land and a minimum size or thrust ratio to get the ships off the planet again.
Mining operations could then be established on the planets and somehow be captured by opposing factions. This would give a need to make a base on a planet and a reason to have some sort of planes and land vehicles as well as defences.

Could make it to where space to ground is incredibly nerfed so it takes a million cannon bolts to kill a player or a block or make it an un spoken rule no orbital bombardments till enemy ground forces are destroyed if ignored your fame level drops or you bring the wrath of other players onto you type of thing
[DOUBLEPOST=1439737024,1439736559][/DOUBLEPOST]If not then build enough defenses to ward off a titan or duse class ship making it necessary to invade to take them out ive seen some pretty neat defensive turrets that could hit a sector wide area from a planet duse in half if the player foolishly charged in

 

[Valiant70]

EDIT: This post was huge and sort of its own topic so it really needed its own thread. http://starmadedock.net/threads/planetary-shield.20397/

 

[Wolverines527]

We do need something like that. Such a shield could motivate a ground attack. Once the shield were disabled, ships could fire on the planet to support ground troops, or ground troops could be evacuated and the planet blown apart. Before someone starts screaming about balance, remember that planets are really not very useful right now, and that such a shield is necessarily going to be severely (even brokenly) overpowered compared to ship weapons and shields in order to encourage ground warfare.

I haven't come up with any good numbers yet (too early in the morning!), but here's an idea of the shield's effect.

• Mechanics: A dodecahedronal shield encompassing the entire planet and providing absurd defense.
  • The shield is rather expensive per block, but uses grouping effects similar to power reactors.
  • There may be one shield grouping per plate. Groups across all plates contribute to a single, planet-wide shield pool.
  • The shield itself behaves similarly to planet HP. It regenerates rapidly even under fire, requiring a strong, sustained bombardment to break.
  • Rather than stopping shots when they hit the surface, the shield stops weapons fire high in the atmosphere to protect ground vehicles and troops.
  • It is possible for small craft to fly through the shield, although it has some harmful effects. The goal is to make it impossible for large ships to do anything of note inside the shield, while allowing fighter-bombers and dropships to pass through.
    • On contact with the shield, weapons are disabled for a few seconds. Scifi excuse: Shield energy briefly overloads targeting systems. This applies to hostile and friendly alike.
    • For enemy and (optionally) neutral: Shields are drained rapidly every tick a ship is in contact with the planetary shield (i.e. while passing through the shield or skimming its surface). It takes one second for a ship shield to fail completely regardless of size. A small craft can get through in a fraction of a second, but a larger one that tries to do the same may wreck into the planet or fail to get through in time.
    • An unshielded ship in contact with the shield takes armor and structure HP damage every tick. The magnitude of the damage scales with the max capacity of the planetary shield. Block destruction could happen but isn't necessary IMO. Battles are CPU-heavy enough without an energy field rapidly eating thousands of blocks.
    • For Pete's sake keep your Titan's nose OUT of the shield!!! It's overpowered for a reason.
• Balance: A planetary shield should be many times easier to build than a ship capable of overwhelming it.
  • Scenario: Newbies land on a planet. Within a matter of hours, they've built a mining ship, flown off, mined asteroids, and build a shield virtually impermeable to a 5000 mass ship.
  • Scenario: A mature faction lands on a planet to establish a forward base. In under an hour, they've installed a shield too strong for even a Titan to pierce.
  • An enemy faction launches a combined ground and space assault in attempt to take a fortified planet, but the ground troops fail to disable the shield so the space assault is useless.
  • An enemy faction assaults a planet with a ship comparable to the Death Star, nearly half the size of the planet under attack. The shield is gradually brought to its knees by the super-Titan's weapon system and finally fails after a 30 minute bombardment. Less than a minute later, the planet gets fragged. Hmm... might have been more fun to launch a ground assault.

A mechanic like this could eventually replace home base invulnerability, simply because a truly invulnerable base would no longer be needed.

This would also fix some complaints about small and large ships. Small ships could do something Titans will never be able to: fly in below a planetary shield to attack things.

Ground assault vehicles could be usable on the surface if only small ships could be used inside the shield.

Just a thought: should I copy this post into its own thread so it gets more attention?

That is quite honestly the smartest idea anyone could think of and yes it should have its own thread this needs attention brought to the devs

 

[Lord Daro]

Planetary shields sound kinda fun, but i think people would then hop in fighters and bomb facilities from within the atmosphere or take their time and wait until the capital depleted the shields from relatively safe distance. So it's not exactly an alround solution.
to greatly buff ground vehicles doesn't seem to apealing aswell. They don't need lots of energy to power thrusters like spaceships do, but they still operate on the same basic level of technology.

Maybe it's better to give players a reason to board or land facilities. Some kind of reward.
If mines/ refinement facilities are pretty damm expensive and cargo in crates gets blown up with it, when destroyed by weapons it could be a motivation to go down in person.

People could still simply rip the place apart, but they would not gain much by it, while Capitals could still be used to weaken the defences. (No one wants to battle a 200m turret on top of a builing with the handgun)
Vehicels bercome then more of a personel shield (im thinking here mostly of tanks) and some more firepower without going totaly overkill.

EDIT:
I am also to 100% behind the idea of getting bigger and optimized planets.

 

[Wolverines527]

Planetary shields sound kinda fun, but i think people would then hop in fighters and bomb facilities from within the atmosphere or take their time and wait until the capital depleted the shields from relatively safe distance. So it's not exactly an alround solution.
to greatly buff ground vehicles doesn't seem to apealing aswell. They don't need lots of energy to power thrusters like spaceships do, but they still operate on the same basic level of technology.

Maybe it's better to give players a reason to board or land facilities. Some kind of reward.
If mines/ refinement facilities are pretty damm expensive and cargo in crates gets blown up with it, when destroyed by weapons it could be a motivation to go down in person.

People could still simply rip the place apart, but they would not gain much by it, while Capitals could still be used to weaken the defences. (No one wants to battle a 200m turret on top of a builing with the handgun)
Vehicels bercome then more of a personel shield (im thinking here mostly of tanks) and some more firepower without going totaly overkill.

EDIT:
I am also to 100% behind the idea of getting bigger and optimized planets.

That could work also

 

[EMC007]

Vehicles don't necessarily need to be only for planets though, if some stations got big enough they might need vehicles too, of course there are always trams that you can build with rails now, but who doesn't want to have a giant highway with vehicles that you can build how you want, and control how you want, in your own station, right? And if there were to be battles with vehicles, think of it like the Death Star, where there can be huge hangar bays for vehicles to fight in, or on that one level in halo 4 where you drive that robot throughout the infinity. Maybe even build arenas in some stations to decide who is the better driver or better design, or even races. There are soo many different ways to use vehicles than just planetary invasion.

However, I'm not too sure about adding hover vehicles as that seems a bit too similar to small ships with stop effect modules, but that's just my opinion.

 

[Wolverines527]

Vehicles don't necessarily need to be only for planets though, if some stations got big enough they might need vehicles too, of course there are always trams that you can build with rails now, but who doesn't want to have a giant highway with vehicles that you can build how you want, and control how you want, in your own station, right? And if there were to be battles with vehicles, think of it like the Death Star, where there can be huge hangar bays for vehicles to fight in, or on that one level in halo 4 where you drive that robot throughout the infinity. Maybe even build arenas in some stations to decide who is the better driver or better design, or even races. There are soo many different ways to use vehicles than just planetary invasion.

However, I'm not too sure about adding hover vehicles as that seems a bit too similar to small ships with stop effect modules, but that's just my opinion.

There are many possibilities im even adding space for vehicles on my capital ship which could also be converted into a fighter bay
[DOUBLEPOST=1440091968,1440091770][/DOUBLEPOST]

There are many possibilities im even adding space for vehicles on my capital ship which could also be converted into a fighter bay

Its also out of saving time from any useless space

 

[Wolverines527]

The classes of vehicles are as follows

Light scout 100-120
fast and agile not meant for heavy fighting .

Light tank 150-175
for infantry support and Calvary.

Medium tank 200-300
Infantry support, infrastructure destruction and destroying other tanks

Heavy tank 300-500
Infantry support, bunker busting, infrastructure destruction devastating other tanks below its class

Titan tank 600-
Devastate anything in its wake

 

[Snowfox1337]

I see a bit of an issue with that rating system...there will probably have to be a class lower than light scout. Either that or boarding would be limited to only big ships with large corridors...or vehicles would need to have the blocks they are made of be significatly smaller. Tbh...i vote for the third one...afterall i can barely build a decent weapon thats not 30 blocks by itself. Not to mention the power, treads/tracks, shielding, and drivers seat. With all that its easily over 100 blocks for a decent one...which means it will not fit through most corridors. I tend to build mine as 3×3s so a scout vehicle would have to be 3×3, just under 11 blocks long, and have a great precision driver to have a hope of getting down it...then once it makes a 90° turn there goes your chances at a boarding vehicle.

 

[katCrusader]

Of course we would say that the atmosphere would only allow ships under a certain size to land and a minimum size or thrust ratio to get the ships off the planet again.

You could always have the game automatically assign an "escape velocity" thrust/mass ratio based off of the planet's radius :p
(Also this would be great with varying levels of gravity)

Could make it to where space to ground is incredibly nerfed so it takes a million cannon bolts to kill a player or a block or make it an un spoken rule no orbital bombardments till enemy ground forces are destroyed if ignored your fame level drops or you bring the wrath of other players onto you type of thing

Have projectiles drastically reduce in range/damage the longer they travel through an atmosphere, w/ a slightly less powerful debuff applied to weapons fired within said atmosphere :D

 

[Wolverines527]

Have projectiles drastically reduce in range/damage the longer they travel through an atmosphere, w/ a slightly less powerful debuff applied to weapons fired within said atmosphere :D

More or less lol
[DOUBLEPOST=1450617609,1450617477][/DOUBLEPOST]

I see a bit of an issue with that rating system...there will probably have to be a class lower than light scout. Either that or boarding would be limited to only big ships with large corridors...or vehicles would need to have the blocks they are made of be significatly smaller. Tbh...i vote for the third one...afterall i can barely build a decent weapon thats not 30 blocks by itself. Not to mention the power, treads/tracks, shielding, and drivers seat. With all that its easily over 100 blocks for a decent one...which means it will not fit through most corridors. I tend to build mine as 3×3s so a scout vehicle would have to be 3×3, just under 11 blocks long, and have a great precision driver to have a hope of getting down it...then once it makes a 90° turn there goes your chances at a boarding vehicle.

Its a work in progress i tend to under power stuff for it to work but i get what you mean

 

[Snowfox1337]

You could always have the game automatically assign an "escape velocity" thrust/mass ratio based off of the planet's radius :p
(Also this would be great with varying levels of gravity)


Have projectiles drastically reduce in range/damage the longer they travel through an atmosphere, w/ a slightly less powerful debuff applied to weapons fired within said atmosphere :D

Better idea...one that was actually spawned by this thread. http://starmadedock.net/threads/planetary-shield.20397/ Basically a temporary disabling of a weapons abilility of gound based and spaceborn weapons to reach eachother til the shield is down. That would force a attack that would most likely require these vehicles to be successful.

 

[nightrune]

The classes of vehicles are as follows

Light scout 100-120
fast and agile not meant for heavy fighting .

Light tank 150-175
for infantry support and Calvary.

Medium tank 200-300
Infantry support, infrastructure destruction and destroying other tanks

Heavy tank 300-500
Infantry support, bunker busting, infrastructure destruction devastating other tanks below its class

Titan tank 600-
Devastate anything in its wake

No arbitry classes, we don't have this for ships, asteroids, stations or Planets, we won't need it for ground vehicles.