Creating more complexity to ships

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    At the moment ships are designed all the same for their interior, giant masses of energy, thrusters, shields and guns. For me its abit too basic having just 4 genre's of used blocks when there could be much more complexity added to their interiors, there is the problem which that the way of building is to just slap on more blocks to get the best effect.

    There should be more variety so you could further personalise your ships..

    Specialised blocks should be implemented like a enhanced reactor that could output more power than the standard blocks but requirements for a cooling system and requireing a space of empty blocks so that there may actually be need for a room to house the power core. It should still be able to be expanded but requires the cooling system to be expanded and a formula so the bonus cuts off at a certain size so that there may be need for multiple power cores on large ships and titans.

    Similar to the power core idea there can be shield generator rooms but not requiring as much cooling and less the volativity as the power core and not as limited for size due to the fact that hulls are useless and you need sheilds to keep you alive..

    I was thinking that the default generation of the specialised blocks could be either at a rate of 2x or 5x the normal blocks and then the addition of the efficiency formula on top of that, which would be similar to the current but upgraded corresponding to the increased rate. Yes this is a buff for big ships but thats why you have anti-cap weapons to counter the behemoths :p

    The specialised shield generators should increase by 5x or 10x respectively, or suggest another rate? just putting it out there.

    Anti-Capital weapons will increase the effectiveness of smaller ships such as frigates, cruisers and bombers.

    Long Range Torpedos. Having a longer cooldown but a enhanced damage and area of effect for when the shileds are down to inflict notable damage to the ship and its systems.

    Rail-guns. Again having a moderate cooldown, high power consumption, long range and high damage output.

    There can be more weapon types but slow but strong weapons is the idea of it, useless against small ships but effective against the titans and capitals. Having high power consumption for these anti-cap weapons will consume more power so it will require the advanced power cores making it especially vulnerable to fighters, once the core is hit the ship will have recieved serious damage. Yeah the anti-capital weapons can be used on other capitals but thats the good part :) requiring the ship to have a larger array of weaponry and capital fights being more interesting and introduce a need for variety and strategy rather than spamming AMC's in a match of whos got the bigger AMC's.

    I'd like this to become implemented into the game or provided as an option >.> Share your ideas too
    because the game would be more interesting with more personalised ships and each ship possessing different functions. I'm sure you'll all want to add more personal touches in building your ships rather than spending hours creating the hull for a frame and just cramming everything inside it.
     
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    CyberTao

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    Reminds me of the Upcoming Weapons update

    (The Next Large and upcoming update)

    The Problem with Multiple Reactors like that is Large ships will become OP, just on the basis that. although the "Anti-cap" weapons would be useless on the Large ship itself, it would have dozens upon dozens of Turrets.
    If a Large should could easily gain more shields and Regen by getting bigger, it feeds Gigantic-ism. The current system of diminishing returns for regen and power are an attempt to Balance Large and small ships (The code only view either as "ships", Large ships are a Player creation)
     
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    Yeah I just remembered.. but they still need to be implemented and hopefully they are configured to have anti-capital capabilities.

    Yeah they may become OP thats why you have specialised weapons to target the bigger ships. yeah the turrets would be a problem.. was thinking that having more range on the weapons would help but in reality you wouldn't be able to sit back far enough because of limitations to your computer and how far it can load.

    Hmm perhaps scrapping that idea for regen and shields..
     

    CyberTao

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    The problem with "specialized to take Large ships" is the Game does not understand it :u There is no Large, There is no small, only "Ships".

    The only way you can get around that fact is to make a weapon deal damage depending on the Block count of the ship it hits. Say like 0.1 damage Per block for example. But I assume that such a feature would cause Lag (Dunno if it would or not) since it would have to check the Block count of the entity it hits.

    As for the Shielding Boost, there was a HP system in the works somewhere, and core drilling will be eliminated at some point, so while shield might be heavily dependent on now, they wont be as much later. I dunno :p but shields are more or less Fine as they are now imho.
     
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    yeah thats true, perhaps if it could be recognised there can be different formulas and such so that they aren't so over powered because they are on the same playing field as the small ships just has a craptonne of extra blocks expanding it power.

    well you have the total block count, can go off that, but more likely be 0.001 or less because would do way too much dmg on a 500K block ship :p probably less than that if such a weapon is added..

    Yeah I hope so, because paper thin hulls isnt realistic or useful haha. Well yeah shields are fine as they are, I was just suggesting the ideas to add weapons that could actually do damage on "large ships" from smaller class ships that would otherwise be useless. Also to breakup the structure for large ships abit, for a small ship such as fighters and corvettes it wouldn't be practical because they need as much as they can get haha, just to add more complexity to the big ships, just in the hope that systems on a ship could be created that serve different functions and can introduce more systems and mechanics, so that big projects you would actually put personal touches on it and customise it for how you like to play to best suit you. So you dont just have to think about, where do I put this chunk of blocks and where do I put that chunk?

    Some actual structure to the blob :P
     
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    Hmm perhaps I am wanting too much from the game, would be hard to change it from how it is, I can just make a ship how I would like it, perhaps just save 2 copies haha, one for solid ship and another for aesthetics and just flying around, not really combat worthy, civilian titan haha

    but instead of changing the structure, would be nice to get some customisation by creating more blocks that could serve different purposes and functions so you still get a personalised loadout on your ship such as weapons, utilities, perhaps economical, communications and sensory enhancers, logistics. To give the opportunity for more variety and complexity to the game.
     
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    If you want the number of blocks in a ship, you need only refer to the mass. Certainly an effect that causes damage to be mass-based might be interesting, but might not be balenced.
     
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    Yeah doing that is easy, just use the mass that is already calculated for you. It would have to scale pretty low so it would do average dmg against a 200K block ship then starts increasing more from then on, even so.. not sure what this weapon would look like or the effects or if theoretically possible >.> I dont know >.>

    But there are plenty of weaponry that can be added that is made to deal damage to larger ships: Rail-guns, Torpedoes, ion cannon, plasma cannon. This is all I can think of right now but there is plenty more in the sci-fi world :P
     

    CyberTao

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    Well, I think the only real different between a Railgun and a Mass Driver is the name its called :p Align the outputs and add some detailing to the ship, yes?

    And the Reason I said 0.1 per block is cause on a 1million block ship (which isnt too uncommon), it would only do 100k to shields per shot (never said it was rapid fire either :p).

    And the issue with using Mass is most people use Ice Crystal on their ships, and Ice Crystal (like all other Terrain blocks) are 0.2 Mass each, double what a 'Ship' block is (0.1)

    I dunno :p was just an idea I thought up while reading this, The concept was very bare really, But Weapons with damage based on Ship mass might be an interesting feature *^* Vanilla or Modded
     
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    Would you really want small ships to be able to take on bigger ships? a bunch of small ships is okay,but 1 really small ship being able to take on a ship 6 times it size? what would be the point in building a large ship? why spent all that time and effort building a large ship, just to be wrecked by a guy who spend 15 minutes building his ship? why should the smallest ships have the most powerfull weapons?
    I just don't get it.

    (sorry for my english, in the netherlands)
     
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    therimmer96

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    I am probably one of few who thinks it, but I like big ships crushing little ships. Thats the way it is. Big ships have more space for power, defenses, framework, weapons, where as a fighter just doesn't. If a single fighter attacks a aircraft carrier IRL, does it sink the carrier? no, it dies very quickly. it is the same here. If there was a load of them, and they are working as part of a fleet to support the bigger ships, by say, removing the turrets, they wouldn't be destroyed with such ease. Yes the AI is too dead on, but that is one of few issues I see with ship scale.

    A crew for larger ships however is something that i support strongly,
     
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    Ithirahad

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    When I read the first part of the topic, I thought that you'd start talking about actual new types of systems and mechanics... Only to find that you're just talking about neat new weapons and enhancers for existing systems. The explosive reactor idea isn't bad, and most of the other stuff is okay too, but... All of this is has been suggested before. :\
     

    Lecic

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    Would you really want small ships to be able to take on bigger ships? a bunch of small ships is okay,but 1 really small ship being able to take on a ship 6 times it size? what would be the point in building a large ship? why spent all that time and effort building a large ship, just to be wrecked by a guy who spend 15 minutes building his ship? why should the smallest ships have the most powerfull weapons?
    I just don't get it.

    (sorry for my english, in the netherlands)
    I am probably one of few who thinks it, but I like big ships crushing little ships. Thats the way it is. Big ships have more space for power, defenses, framework, weapons, where as a fighter just doesn't. If a single fighter attacks a aircraft carrier IRL, does it sink the carrier? no, it dies very quickly. it is the same here. If there was a load of them, and they are working as part of a fleet to support the bigger ships, by say, removing the turrets, they wouldn't be destroyed with such ease. Yes the AI is too dead on, but that is one of few issues I see with ship scale.

    A crew for larger ships however is something that i support strongly,
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_battleship_Bismarck

    "Bismarck was attacked by obsolescent Fairey Swordfish biplane torpedo bombers from the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal; one scored a hit that rendered the battleship's steering gear inoperable."

    Smaller ships should not have stronger weapons. However, they should be able to do SOME damage to a larger ship. A fighter is absolutely useless in the game right now, except against corvettes and light battleships with few or no turrets. A massive swarm of fighters might be able to do a little damage to a bigger ship, but in the end it doesn't matter at all, because every single one of those fighter pilots will end up dead or forced to flee with heavy injuries.

    AI being dead on is one of the BIGGEST problems with ship scale. I'm not sure how you could think otherwise. How is a small ship supposed to do anything when it gets cored in .3 seconds by a turret 5x the size of it.
     
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    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_battleship_Bismarck

    "Bismarck was attacked by obsolescent Fairey Swordfish biplane torpedo bombers from the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal; one scored a hit that rendered the battleship's steering gear inoperable."

    Smaller ships should not have stronger weapons. However, they should be able to do SOME damage to a larger ship. A fighter is absolutely useless in the game right now, except against corvettes and light battleships with few or no turrets. A massive swarm of fighters might be able to do a little damage to a bigger ship, but in the end it doesn't matter at all, because every single one of those fighter pilots will end up dead or forced to flee with heavy injuries.

    AI being dead on is one of the BIGGEST problems with ship scale. I'm not sure how you could think otherwise. How is a small ship supposed to do anything when it gets cored in .3 seconds by a turret 5x the size of it.
    Well, that wasn't really a fair fight now, was it? the Bismarck was a ship and was taken down by a plane, totally on a differend level. If you were to compare tanks then you would see that it took the russians 4 tanks to take out 1 tiger tank (since the tiger had a much farther range with the anti-air gun that was mounted on it). The Tiger tank of the germans was bigger and meaner than the medium tanks of the russians (im not talking about the KVs or the IS tanks since they are heavy tanks), but the russians did manage to take out some Tiger tanks by superior numbers.

    And i'm fine with that, i just don't want a small ship alone to blow up a death star or sink a Bismarck, if you get what i'm saying. Attacking a ship 10 times your size alone should be suicide. attacking a ship together with friends should be do-able.I do agree that turrets shouldn't be 100% acurate.
     

    therimmer96

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    I have no problem with fighters doing damage to a big ship, the issue is people want them to go through shields with ease. It should take a big ship or a fleet to lower the shields, then you send in fighters to do damage over a wide area and take out turrets. Yes turrets are too accurate right now, but this is actually a bug, it is either they land nearly every shot or not, the AI accuracy setting is bugged.
     
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    Ok, I'm totally kidding about this.... Oh... Actually.... this might work??
    Currently, structures lose any power bonus over 1 million. What if a structure could expand that envelope through the installation of "thermal exhaust ports", which only function when placed on the exterior surface of the ship, and translate damage directly to the core?
     

    CyberTao

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    Ok, I'm totally kidding about this.... Oh... Actually.... this might work??
    Currently, structures lose any power bonus over 1 million. What if a structure could expand that envelope through the installation of "thermal exhaust ports", which only function when placed on the exterior surface of the ship, and translate damage directly to the core?
    Well at first it might seem like an idea, but Greatly adds to the "Bigger is better", as It might be hard to tell if the Vent is truly expose (Imagine a plate being placed overtop with a few blocks gap)

    Whats more, there seems to a HP system being thought up, so Core Drilling/damage will become less relavent o -o
     
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    Yeah I intended this thread to be about new systems but the problem is that it would only boost capital ships further.. I'd prefer ships to have more complexity to them but the issue with that is smaller ships would be further put to an disadvantage. Yeah I get that bigger is better but what you would notice in every strategy game, the oversized units have a counter that could take them on in numbers.. Cruisers would never be able to output enough damage to do anything, so it comes down to who has the biggest ship..

    I'm not intending that 10 ships could do it with ease, with enough time it could eventually bring down the shields.