A vision of what could be

[GRHayes]

I was thinking about building a station that could bring some fun back into this game and encourage some co-op play.

Here is what I can build I can build a station with a shit ton of power, with pretty massive shielding.
I can even fix it so that a person could get access to the facility and have to fight their way past some internal security and get to a point the could detonate a war head attached to a ship core and destroy a connection point to cut power to said shielding. Thus making the base vulnerable to attack easier.

The problem is this game has shielding regen so nerfed no matter how large I make that shielding it is pointless because with combat conditions in place and enough ship power the shields can be by warn down in short order so there is no need for a sabotage team to go in.

Lets say all weapons did X amount of damage/time/power. Shields using the same amount of power should be able to block that attack indefinitely.

It would be nice if they put in a power routing system similar to the thrust control that would allow routing power to shields, weapons and thrust the purpose of which would be to give a bonus on while sacrificing some on others.

Now you probably are thinking this might screw up single player play. You are wrong. The fact is if a single player could still do this mission. He would build his fleet move it into the area just out of range. Use a stealth ship go in fight his way past everything. And once he completes the task signal his fleet to attack.

This game could be a lot of fun if the focus was on giving purposes and bonuses of various types of different ships sizes. Rather than try and balance them. Make them less equal and give them better roles to play at various sizes.

Example:
Small ships could have better cloaking, speed, be used for recon, interceptors, bombers, precision targeting, boarding.
Capital ships could handle capital ships weapons and power systems, do fleet jumps(pull entire fleet in jump)
Mid size ships could handle various roles, support putting up a shield to help protect cap ships, or artillery with long range precision, ...

They could assign these roles by putting various computers on the bridge to get the bonus from them. Put a limit of say using two or three of the bonus computer systems. That way the person can designate what the ship is and its role. Sure it can still perform other functions but only 3 it gets the bonus in. Of course the player could change the role of the ship at some point by swapping the computers out.

That would eliminate the need for putting power caps on stuff. That type of balance wouldn't be needed.
In fact the only balance needed would be one that all weapons equal out the damage over time per power and that shields matches that.

The only balance that would be needed after this would be. If all blocks are equal any two weapon systems should equal each other when compared damage/time/power (required). Shields should be able to match the systems with the same number of blocks and power usage.

Then rather than trying to fill a ship up with blocks trying to get around every negative thrown at you, players could focus on what roles the ship is supposed to play.


Anyway. Back to the base. I am also currently limited in how powerful I can build the base by two factors. I could simply dump in massive numbers of blocks or I could save and build a reverse power supply for the base. The reverse power supply is limited in the fact docked objects are stored in directories currently. Plus the lag issue if the break free. I can minimize the potential of it breaking free and even fix in some contingencies to pretty much force it to reconnect after the 5 second time. It would be a million times easier to solve if they got rid of the push off force when undocking though or at least allow people to turn that on or off.

 

[NeonSturm]

Small ships could have better cloaking, speed, be used for recon, interceptors, bombers, precision targeting, boarding.

If jamming/cloaking strength would be a time-delay on ship-position updates and accuracy, big ships would suffer more from it because their speed is smaller compared to their own size.

Capital ships could handle capital ships weapons and power systems, do fleet jumps(pull entire fleet in jump)

Yes, Carriers are awesome.

Not only have many tiny fighters more evasion against slow bullets or take overkill from too many turrets targeting them, …
… they also safe money when they die because the jump-drive doesn't die with them if it is on the carrier.

They don't have to carry that jump-drive or even a reactor once we could command AI to target low-power drones through a wireless module with a supply-beam. Once it's possible to do, I can write the script for it (some Pythagoras here, some target priority handling there, but SM has to be play-able for me too).​

Mid size ships could handle various roles, support putting up a shield to help protect cap ships, or artillery with long range precision, ...

I agree, but why can mid-sized ships do what small/big can't?

It seems you want to encourage multiple mid-sized ships for their different roles which a single large one cannot fill (as efficiently).

But dividing shield among more entities makes it more difficult to manage power-routing between weapons/shields and to support other entities.
If power/weapons/thrust is expected to be 1/3 each, a ship could stop chasing/firing so that it survives while the others deal damage. But with 8 ships, you can only use 3/8 for shielding that entity and if a ship doesn't use thrust, the enemies can choose the engagement distance and formation at will.

It also raises an unanswered question about engagement distance: Different weapon distances do not all have a 1:1 power relation to shields, or not?​

 

[GRHayes]

If jamming/cloaking strength would be a time-delay on ship-position updates and accuracy, big ships would suffer more from it because their speed is smaller compared to their own size.
​

Yes, Carriers are awesome.
Not only have many tiny fighters more evasion against slow bullets or take overkill from too many turrets targeting them, …
… they also safe money when they die because the jump-drive doesn't die with them if it is on the carrier.

They don't have to carry that jump-drive or even a reactor once we could command AI to target low-power drones through a wireless module with a supply-beam. Once it's possible to do, I can write the script for it (some Pythagoras here, some target priority handling there, but SM has to be play-able for me too).
​

I agree, but why can mid-sized ships do what small/big can't?

It seems you want to encourage multiple mid-sized ships for their different roles which a single large one cannot fill (as efficiently).
But dividing shield among more entities makes it more difficult to manage power-routing between weapons/shields and to support other entities.

If power/weapons/thrust is expected to be 1/3 each, a ship could stop chasing/firing so that it survives while the others deal damage. But with 8 ships, you can only use 3/8 for shielding that entity and if a ship doesn't use thrust, the enemies can choose the engagement distance and formation at will.


This raises an unanswered question about engagement distance: Different weapon distances do not all have a 1:1 power relation to shields, or not?​

If you look at my suggestion on turning allowing turning shields off an follow it. There is a real reason cloaking would be less effective on a large ship. Light refraction around a large object is greater and thus harder to put a beam back together to make a perfect image. In short while a small object can be cloaked the larger objects light waves would be split partly going around it and create sort of a 3D movie effect. You know the red blue movies of 3D. Now image you look in space and you start seeing stars with a bit of distortion and duplication of red and blue. That would be the real effect of cloaking a real large object. Also it would create a larger spacial distortion wave and be even more visible when it moves.

This game has one thing tremendously backwards from reality. Small ships are slower in reality when based on the same tech. The primary reason has to do with efficiency of power systems and so on. They also would have greater structural integrity to deal with their own internal force stresses of pushing to get to that speed. However if you have a change in tech then a smaller craft can be faster. Which is why project daedalus is very large vs io9 is vastly different in comparison.

In reality ship size also determines stability when it comes to vessels. While you can fire a missile of pretty much any platform capable of holding it you can't say the same about cannons and even if you can fire something doesn't mean it will be as effective or accurate. Take a look at how much a battle ship moves when it fires its guns. Now in space you don't even have water resistance. Your ship is also more prone to getting pushed around by enemy shots also the smaller it is.

If you could redirect your shield strength as in movies and other games you could make the side you are taking hits from strong enough to survive longer also.

Well in space a bullet fire out of a cannon at you is going to pretty much reach you with the same force it left the barrel. unless some gravity is countering it. There really isn't much particle resistance like air in space unless you near atmosphere.
Lasers energy is lost do to traveling through air also hitting particles and its beam spreading out. However more precise the beams focus is the less it looses. For the games purpose it would be simpler to assume that range in space doesn't effect damage level. Really it comes down to what level of technology you want to emulate. Take a look at telescopes and how well we can focus today because of advancements like artificial stars.

 

[NeonSturm]

In reality ship size also determines stability when it comes to vessels. While you can fire a missile of pretty much any platform capable of holding it you can't say the same about cannons and even if you can fire something doesn't mean it will be as effective or accurate. Take a look at how much a battle ship moves when it fires its guns. Now in space you don't even have water resistance. Your ship is also more prone to getting pushed around by enemy shots also the smaller it is.

Nice point. But SM does not have recoil mechanics as of now.

Recoil would change the game completely - especially when you try to chase someone shooting at you and are shooting at him yourself it could be near impossible to catch up.​

Lasers energy is lost do to traveling through air also hitting particles and its beam spreading out. However more precise the beams focus is the less it looses. For the games purpose it would be simpler to assume that range in space doesn't effect damage level.

You could refract them with gas-clouds placed between the target ship and gun.

It also depends on the material the beam hits

1. it can be ablative, evaporating to keep the hull cool.
2. it can be cooled, taking away heat from a too unfocused beam while a focused one would cut the material faster than it could be cooled.
​

But back to topic, you just give us another reason to build bigships+drones rather than mediumships+fighters if we had stability/accuracy issues.
What do you say about weapons with 2km range vs weapons with 500m range? Can they all be 1:1 with the power-efficiency of shields or would it be imba?

 

[GRHayes]

Nice point. But SM does not have recoil mechanics as of now.

Recoil would change the game completely - especially when you try to chase someone shooting at you and are shooting at him yourself it could be near impossible to catch up.​

You could refract them with gas-clouds placed between the target ship and gun.

It also depends on the material the beam hits

1. it can be ablative, evaporating to keep the hull cool.
2. it can be cooled, taking away heat from a too unfocused beam while a focused one would cut the material faster than it could be cooled.
​

But back to topic, you just give us another reason to build bigships+drones rather than mediumships+fighters if we had stability/accuracy issues.
What do you say about weapons with 2km range vs weapons with 500m range? Can they all be 1:1 with the power-efficiency of shields or would it be imba?

Actually, no because big ships wouldn't be able to do everything under what I was saying. You would make a ship to a certain size to fill a certain role. In short you would bring in the kind of fire power to match the fire power of what you are going against. rather than run the risk of loosing the bigger ship.

The game would get to the point you wouldn't want to jump into an area with your fleet without scouting it out and making sure something larger isn't sitting there waiting on you either in mass or number. Given the ability and role of small ships having what I listed they could work in a group the large ships would have a very hard time targeting them for the few seconds they decloak and attack. The risk of having the ship breached and boarded would be real options rather than simply trying to destroy one another.