Lately I've been contemplating how to create a system for weapons and defenses that would be diverse and interesting and where every kind of weapon would be useful and interesting.
Take your time, you wont read through this in one go.
Defense
First of all I'll start with defenses, since theese are the most lacking. Currently you have 2 ways to defend yourself: Stacking Hull and hardened hull and stacking shields. While these are more then enough for the alpha, I'd like to see the options in the full game expanded, by alot. I've been thinking of a lot of different systms both with their pluses and minuses. Here they are Cheapest to costliest.
1. (Ablative) Armor plates
These are bolted on top of your external hull, much like redstone is put on top of blocks in minecraft. The way they work is that they cannot be destroyed and transfer only 50% damage to the parent block (this 50% reduction stacks comulatively with 25/50% reduction forn hull/hardened hull thus reaching 62.5/75% reduction form damage with hull/hardened hull), but only form the direction of the armor. this means if the target block is exposed form 5 sides you will have to put 5 pieces of armor plating on it. This also means that they offer surface protection only and one you're through the durfacr bloccke the blocks underneath are unprotected. When combined with shields the shields take 100% damage and armor reduction does not apply.
Pros and cons:
+Power Free
+Great for small craft
-Surface only
-Direction based only
2. Hull Polarization
This defense is a mixture between shields and armor plating. Much like the shields it is autmatically applied to every block on the ship regardles it it's exposed or not and like the shields it does have a pool of artificial hitpoints. However unlike the shields (and like the armor plating) it does not fully stop the damage, it takes 25% of damage onto itself reducing its hitpoint pool, but lets 75% damage sip through (with hull/hardened hull this is 37.5/62.5%). Additionally it must be recharged manually by droping (turning off) the protection, but recharge rate is very high.
Pros and cons:
+Low Power drain
+Protects every block
-Not a full protection
-Must Be dropped to recharge
3. Radar Jammer.
They need a rework so here we go. A radar jammer does not protect you directily but rater indirectily by jamming the IFF and radar of neurtral/enemy ships. Outside its range it removes radar signatures of every object inside it, while inside it's range it changes the IFF status of all ships to neutral making it very difficult for the enemy to track you as well as scrambling primarily heatskeaking the misiles by making them target any ship rather then just enemy. It is activated manually, but has a moderate power drain and can be maintained infinately and it uses the same system as Docking modules to increase it's size.
+ Stealth - if enemy doesnt see you it wont attack you
+ Potects multiple ships
- Must be activated manually
- Does not reduce/negate damage
4. Shields
They are in the game, but could use a HP buff and regeneration nerf as well as increase in the time they need to come back online form 15 sec to 30 sec.
Pros and cons
+Protects every block
+Full protection
-High power requirements
-When dropped they leavy you vulnerable for extended period and do not come vack online fully charged.
5. Cloak
Unlike Radar jammer this is a personal protection only. It renders your ship fully invisible both visually and by radar. It is still a passive protection as it does not reduce or negate damage. It drains a lot of power and it's use is resticted to 15 seconds per block.
Pros and cons
+ Invisibility
+ Stealth
- Huge power drain while active
- Does not reduce/negate damage
6. Force Field
This is my final defense suggestion: What this does is it creates a sphere (or rather a square since this game is voxel based) of energy with artificial HP that does not regenerate while active. This field takes all the damage on itself and when overloaded it drops to recharge, much like shields. But since it is a field it can protect vessels other then itself and it can be bypassed by vessels that come inside it. It drains a lot of power both when it's active and when it's recharging and does not come online untill fully charged. It would also use the same system as docking modules ot increase it's size.
Pros and cons
+ Full protection
+ Protects allied ships
- Can be bypassed and has huge recharge times
-Huge energy drain
The order they work in if all the systems were implemented on one ship is:
1. Force field
2. Shieds
3. Hull polarization
4. Hull plating
Radar jamming and Cloaking are outside this as they do not directily portect form damage.
Attack
I quite like the current selection of weapons. Sure they need expanding, but they are quite substantial for an Alpha and I like the direction they are going in - lots of utility weapons. I would only like to add the following:
1. Add a damaging beam weapon, much like the salvage beam, that works kinda like AMC does now. More blocks you add the longer the beam lasts and the greater damage it applies. It has a moderate power drain, but it's good at takinf out shields. By increasing the number of blocks you get an duration/damage/range increase for greater power drain.
2. Change the Function of AMC from rapid fire machinegun to Heavy cannon. Rather then increasing then increasing rate of fire/range/damage per number blocks, the AMC is a hull puncher - it's penetration increases. This means that when a Shot of AMC Hits a block rather then being nullified by one block no matter the damage of AMC it's dtrangth is only reduced my thre amount reqired ot destroy that block (for example: AMC shot does 500 damage. It first hits a hull block and destroyed it - it's damage is now reduced to 375, it now hits a hardeden hull bock - that's another 150 down, now at 225, it now hits and destroys 2 engine block both taking 100 of it's power that's it's now at 25 strength and it hits anotehr engine block damaging it for 25 damage).
3. I'd like to see misiles do atleast 25% of thir damage to the shields/force field.
4. Disintergrators should do 100% damage to everything and I'd like to see them get buffed in damage and AOE to allow us to create guided torpedoes. I would also like to see them get and arming system so you don't accidentally kill/damage your ship if you are clumsy or the game buggs out.
5. Tractor beam: A weapon that holds the ship in place/slows it down.
I'd alos like to see a seperate system selection box for LMB/RMD (just bind one to mouse wheel up and other to mouse wheel down) so we can controll 2 systems at a time.
Movement
Not much to add here. I'd like to see huge spaces (the size of one system) of nothing between void systems and star systems (call them deep spacesystems) and some use of FTL. Maybe this can be done with instancing. Different FTL dives would be:
Ships:
Jump - like BSG, has a long cooldown/recharge time but can instantly teleport you to any system in range, the grater the range the longer recharge. The range increase with number of blocks a, but also longer recharge time.
Warp - increases your speed, but drains power as you travel. More blocks = more speed adn greater power drain.
Subspace - Opens a gravitaional wormhole to a sort of lobby system. For every 1 Km traveled there you travel 5-10 in real world after a certain time you are thrown into normal space via a similar graviotational worm hole. The amount of time is tied in with the amount of blocks, thus if you are pulled in by someone else as a part of a trap and you wont stay in for more than a couple of seconds. This lobbs space cannot be build in.
Stations:
Stations produce FTL for other ships, rather then for themselves. Those ships behave the as if they produced the drive themselves.
Teleporter = Jump for other ships
Accelerator = Warp
Gate = Subspace.
Now for the actual movement. I'd like to see Thurster and engines to be seperated as well as both get the same diminishing returns table as power generators and storage.
Engines: Moderate power drain, large thust power. They add 100% forward speed and 50% reverse and only 10% increse to turning/rotation.
Thrusters: No power drain, low thust power. They give 100% inrcease in turning and rotation, 50% increase in strafing speed and only 10% in forward/reverse speeds.
(Thrus power Engines vs Thusters = 5:1)
This will allow you to increase maneuverability of larger ships but only to a certain degree. You will be able to create maneuverable and fast and big, but only woth huge thursters/engines and to some degree.
Combining the systems
Now to reduce creation of ultra maneuverable and impenitrable ships of unpresedented firepower I reccomend the folowing system:
Each ship/station has 6 slots: 2 offensive, 2 defensive and 2 neutral as well as 4 additional and one FTL slot. these slots are filled by putting one apropriete block in them (shield block/armor plate/AMC block/KB missil block, etc). Only the systems whose blocks are in the slot will work 100% For every system you add pass original 6 systems all the other sysrtems take a 20% (additive) hit to strength meaning that once you reach 10 systems you overall functionality is 20% per system (this means taht 100 blocks of that system function as if you only had 20 blocks).
-In the offensive blocks you can only place weapons weapons and thrusters/engines.
-In the neutral you can place any blocks.
-in the defensive you can only place defende systems and thrusters/engines.
- FTL slots are self explanatory.
Ideally you wuld place 2 weapon systems in attack, Thursters and Engines in neutral and 2 defensive systems in defense, but you could go as far as having 4 different weapon, 4 defense systems, engines and thrusters, but with a penalty.
This system allows you to do almost everything you want but it also balances it. Turtle ships will be slow and undergunned. Attack ships will lack protection. All around ships will be te golden middle and complex powerhouse ships with lots of systems will be very inefficient.
Turrets and docked ships?
Turrets do not count towards the system of parent vessel as they are their own ships, they however do follow the same system themselves.
I know this is a lot and it will probably a bit annoying, but remmember that I only do this becuse I love the game.
Take your time, you wont read through this in one go.
Defense
First of all I'll start with defenses, since theese are the most lacking. Currently you have 2 ways to defend yourself: Stacking Hull and hardened hull and stacking shields. While these are more then enough for the alpha, I'd like to see the options in the full game expanded, by alot. I've been thinking of a lot of different systms both with their pluses and minuses. Here they are Cheapest to costliest.
1. (Ablative) Armor plates
These are bolted on top of your external hull, much like redstone is put on top of blocks in minecraft. The way they work is that they cannot be destroyed and transfer only 50% damage to the parent block (this 50% reduction stacks comulatively with 25/50% reduction forn hull/hardened hull thus reaching 62.5/75% reduction form damage with hull/hardened hull), but only form the direction of the armor. this means if the target block is exposed form 5 sides you will have to put 5 pieces of armor plating on it. This also means that they offer surface protection only and one you're through the durfacr bloccke the blocks underneath are unprotected. When combined with shields the shields take 100% damage and armor reduction does not apply.
Pros and cons:
+Power Free
+Great for small craft
-Surface only
-Direction based only
2. Hull Polarization
This defense is a mixture between shields and armor plating. Much like the shields it is autmatically applied to every block on the ship regardles it it's exposed or not and like the shields it does have a pool of artificial hitpoints. However unlike the shields (and like the armor plating) it does not fully stop the damage, it takes 25% of damage onto itself reducing its hitpoint pool, but lets 75% damage sip through (with hull/hardened hull this is 37.5/62.5%). Additionally it must be recharged manually by droping (turning off) the protection, but recharge rate is very high.
Pros and cons:
+Low Power drain
+Protects every block
-Not a full protection
-Must Be dropped to recharge
3. Radar Jammer.
They need a rework so here we go. A radar jammer does not protect you directily but rater indirectily by jamming the IFF and radar of neurtral/enemy ships. Outside its range it removes radar signatures of every object inside it, while inside it's range it changes the IFF status of all ships to neutral making it very difficult for the enemy to track you as well as scrambling primarily heatskeaking the misiles by making them target any ship rather then just enemy. It is activated manually, but has a moderate power drain and can be maintained infinately and it uses the same system as Docking modules to increase it's size.
+ Stealth - if enemy doesnt see you it wont attack you
+ Potects multiple ships
- Must be activated manually
- Does not reduce/negate damage
4. Shields
They are in the game, but could use a HP buff and regeneration nerf as well as increase in the time they need to come back online form 15 sec to 30 sec.
Pros and cons
+Protects every block
+Full protection
-High power requirements
-When dropped they leavy you vulnerable for extended period and do not come vack online fully charged.
5. Cloak
Unlike Radar jammer this is a personal protection only. It renders your ship fully invisible both visually and by radar. It is still a passive protection as it does not reduce or negate damage. It drains a lot of power and it's use is resticted to 15 seconds per block.
Pros and cons
+ Invisibility
+ Stealth
- Huge power drain while active
- Does not reduce/negate damage
6. Force Field
This is my final defense suggestion: What this does is it creates a sphere (or rather a square since this game is voxel based) of energy with artificial HP that does not regenerate while active. This field takes all the damage on itself and when overloaded it drops to recharge, much like shields. But since it is a field it can protect vessels other then itself and it can be bypassed by vessels that come inside it. It drains a lot of power both when it's active and when it's recharging and does not come online untill fully charged. It would also use the same system as docking modules ot increase it's size.
Pros and cons
+ Full protection
+ Protects allied ships
- Can be bypassed and has huge recharge times
-Huge energy drain
The order they work in if all the systems were implemented on one ship is:
1. Force field
2. Shieds
3. Hull polarization
4. Hull plating
Radar jamming and Cloaking are outside this as they do not directily portect form damage.
Attack
I quite like the current selection of weapons. Sure they need expanding, but they are quite substantial for an Alpha and I like the direction they are going in - lots of utility weapons. I would only like to add the following:
1. Add a damaging beam weapon, much like the salvage beam, that works kinda like AMC does now. More blocks you add the longer the beam lasts and the greater damage it applies. It has a moderate power drain, but it's good at takinf out shields. By increasing the number of blocks you get an duration/damage/range increase for greater power drain.
2. Change the Function of AMC from rapid fire machinegun to Heavy cannon. Rather then increasing then increasing rate of fire/range/damage per number blocks, the AMC is a hull puncher - it's penetration increases. This means that when a Shot of AMC Hits a block rather then being nullified by one block no matter the damage of AMC it's dtrangth is only reduced my thre amount reqired ot destroy that block (for example: AMC shot does 500 damage. It first hits a hull block and destroyed it - it's damage is now reduced to 375, it now hits a hardeden hull bock - that's another 150 down, now at 225, it now hits and destroys 2 engine block both taking 100 of it's power that's it's now at 25 strength and it hits anotehr engine block damaging it for 25 damage).
3. I'd like to see misiles do atleast 25% of thir damage to the shields/force field.
4. Disintergrators should do 100% damage to everything and I'd like to see them get buffed in damage and AOE to allow us to create guided torpedoes. I would also like to see them get and arming system so you don't accidentally kill/damage your ship if you are clumsy or the game buggs out.
5. Tractor beam: A weapon that holds the ship in place/slows it down.
I'd alos like to see a seperate system selection box for LMB/RMD (just bind one to mouse wheel up and other to mouse wheel down) so we can controll 2 systems at a time.
Movement
Not much to add here. I'd like to see huge spaces (the size of one system) of nothing between void systems and star systems (call them deep spacesystems) and some use of FTL. Maybe this can be done with instancing. Different FTL dives would be:
Ships:
Jump - like BSG, has a long cooldown/recharge time but can instantly teleport you to any system in range, the grater the range the longer recharge. The range increase with number of blocks a, but also longer recharge time.
Warp - increases your speed, but drains power as you travel. More blocks = more speed adn greater power drain.
Subspace - Opens a gravitaional wormhole to a sort of lobby system. For every 1 Km traveled there you travel 5-10 in real world after a certain time you are thrown into normal space via a similar graviotational worm hole. The amount of time is tied in with the amount of blocks, thus if you are pulled in by someone else as a part of a trap and you wont stay in for more than a couple of seconds. This lobbs space cannot be build in.
Stations:
Stations produce FTL for other ships, rather then for themselves. Those ships behave the as if they produced the drive themselves.
Teleporter = Jump for other ships
Accelerator = Warp
Gate = Subspace.
Now for the actual movement. I'd like to see Thurster and engines to be seperated as well as both get the same diminishing returns table as power generators and storage.
Engines: Moderate power drain, large thust power. They add 100% forward speed and 50% reverse and only 10% increse to turning/rotation.
Thrusters: No power drain, low thust power. They give 100% inrcease in turning and rotation, 50% increase in strafing speed and only 10% in forward/reverse speeds.
(Thrus power Engines vs Thusters = 5:1)
This will allow you to increase maneuverability of larger ships but only to a certain degree. You will be able to create maneuverable and fast and big, but only woth huge thursters/engines and to some degree.
Combining the systems
Now to reduce creation of ultra maneuverable and impenitrable ships of unpresedented firepower I reccomend the folowing system:
Each ship/station has 6 slots: 2 offensive, 2 defensive and 2 neutral as well as 4 additional and one FTL slot. these slots are filled by putting one apropriete block in them (shield block/armor plate/AMC block/KB missil block, etc). Only the systems whose blocks are in the slot will work 100% For every system you add pass original 6 systems all the other sysrtems take a 20% (additive) hit to strength meaning that once you reach 10 systems you overall functionality is 20% per system (this means taht 100 blocks of that system function as if you only had 20 blocks).
-In the offensive blocks you can only place weapons weapons and thrusters/engines.
-In the neutral you can place any blocks.
-in the defensive you can only place defende systems and thrusters/engines.
- FTL slots are self explanatory.
Ideally you wuld place 2 weapon systems in attack, Thursters and Engines in neutral and 2 defensive systems in defense, but you could go as far as having 4 different weapon, 4 defense systems, engines and thrusters, but with a penalty.
This system allows you to do almost everything you want but it also balances it. Turtle ships will be slow and undergunned. Attack ships will lack protection. All around ships will be te golden middle and complex powerhouse ships with lots of systems will be very inefficient.
Turrets and docked ships?
Turrets do not count towards the system of parent vessel as they are their own ships, they however do follow the same system themselves.
I know this is a lot and it will probably a bit annoying, but remmember that I only do this becuse I love the game.
