Discussion: perks for smaller ships

[BeefBacon]

If there's one thing that I've noticed it's that bigger is better. The bigger your ship is, the more powerful its weapons are; the shields are stronger and the ship is faster. It feels as though smaller ships easily get shoved out of the way and any prospective battlefield is dominated by the leviathans. Smaller ships are outclassed in every way. It'd be nice if there was a way to make smaller ships more powerful in their own way; granted they're slightly more maneuverable and maybe a little harder to hit, but they certainly don't have the firepower to defeat larger ships that are 60% shield dispenser.

One could argue that the larger ships deserve to be more powerful, and they'd be right, but I think that having a larger ship should have some serious drawbacks.



The following are suggestions. I don't necessarily agree with any of them, but they're there anyway.



-Cap shield strength?

-Cap weapon damage? rate of fire?

-Limit the number of weapon blocks per-ship? Would force players to make decisions as to what weapons should go on their ship. Perhaps link weapon blocks to ship mass, so more mass means more weapon blocks.

-Have ship mass more drastically affect ship movement speed and turning speed?

-With more weapons likely coming later, have certain weapons be more effective against certain ship types, dependent on mass? For example, weapon A is more damaging to ships with a large mass and weapon B is more damaging to ships with a smaller mass.

-Have it so that larger ships require a shipyard when they're spawned in? Ships spawned with a shipyard take time to spawn, dependent on the mass of the ship. Shipyard should also be a fairly expensive structure.

-Decrease shield recharge rate.

-Longer missile locking times for smaller ships?

-Different engine types; the default 'free' engine and a new, much more powerful, engine that requires fuel? Larger ships would need to use the more powerful fuelled engines over the less powerful unfuelled engines. See Danjal's' comment.

Discuss.

 

[pokefan548]

I am in support :P

 

[phongodox]

Not a fan of the shield and weapon caps, as a player should be able to place as much of these as they want as long as they have the power.

• Weapon effectiveness against certain types.
• Movement and turning speeds dependent on ship mass.

However I do agree with the above two points. It doesn\'t affect player choice as directly as the shield and weapon caps.

 

[Minecraftian]

I approve of shield caps correlated to mass and movement and turning speeds more drastically changed by mass, especially the former, as having enough shields renders the vessel indestructable, not only from sheer strength, but a regen speed too fast to be overtaken by the most powerful weapons



.....and since it\'s my favorite emote =3

 

[Arclight]

I think the way it is designed now is pretty sound. Consider this:

A huge space battle erupts, the capital ships duke it out and finally their shields go down. Time for the fighters and frigates to shine! In they come with rockets and antimatter weaponry, blasting holes in the hull of the massive ship, knocking out engines, turrets and power until the ship is crippled and unable to regen shields.

That seams like the kind of space battle I want to see in this game, sign me up!

It does suck for people just starting out when all you can build is a dinky box with a gun, but at least you can avoid pirates with big frigates.

Edit:

I do think weapons should be tweaked, but powerdrain is really meant to be used on those bigger ships. Burn their power and their shields cant recharge. (they completely ignore shields, so you just need a couple power drainers in your fleet and suddenly those shields aren\'t so godly. That is, if they work correctly)

 

[OSTN]

I dont think the problem lies with the ships themselves i think the problem lies in the fact that large ships are very easy to obtain due to low costs for certain items/blocks in shops and the fact that credits are easy to get. If credits were balanced i dont think there would be a problem as larger ships and the weapons they hold would be more difficult to obtain but they would still be very powerful (as they should be).

I would also suggest that sheilds be incapable of recharging (or at the very least slower) while underfire so they can still be incredibly strong but not impossible to overcome due to regen speeds

putting any hard caps/limits on ship building would take away some of the creativity

Remember . . . Alpha is Alpha

 

[Lutaris]

Perhaps shields should be able to go above and beyond, but have a seperate regen block?

Notice the capacitors (1.3) and Energy generation blocks (3.4) One gives more energy, while the other increases the regen.

If there is one thing I\'ve noticed, it\'s that shields don\'t matter much if you can\'t regen them fast enough. I made a formidable size ship (40x 18y 38z)[Z being depth, not height] and added a LOT of shield modules. I expected these things to last a while. They did so, yes, becuase of the 1k/sec regen on them. Perhaps shields should be more powerful, but have a nerfed regen speed/designated regen block?

Just a proposition based on my observations.



Edit: Yes, I also believe there should be more benefits for smaller ships. And if you\'ve never made a large ship, those things turn very slowly. I usually rely on my homing missles or turrets, if I\'ve got them mounted (Which can be a problem because SD KB missles will lock onto those) But weapon strength should be defined by something else, not just the amount you have of them (perhaps different weapons that cost more energy/credits) or what you proposed; specific weapon types for use on different mass/size/type of ship. That seems like a really solid idea.



And like OSTN said \"Alpha is Alpha\"

 

[SilverBack]

I think the real problem here is the ease of replaceability of these huge ships. Instead of just spawning things for a price and having them magically appear. I suggest that any ship over 100k - 150k worth of credits need a shipyard to spawn from with a scaleable construction time.

This would also include a new shipyard block which would be placed in either a large ship hangar or outside of a station. The number of blocks would determine how expensive of a ship you can spawn and would also determine how fast ships could be constructed. There could even be a line of upgrade blocks for efficiency of materials/credits. In my opinion credits or either raw materials should be used to pay for anything out of a shipyard.

To make things even harder it could also be that these shipyard blocks would only be craft-able. This system would limit giant ships from spawning right on 222 though would leave them more or less the same on single player. Besides, who doesn\'t use admin commands on single player?

Ofcourse you\'d still see gigantic ships wiping out squads of smaller ships, but at a much higher risk. If they where to be destroyed they\'d either have to wait for a new ship to be constructed, or already have one parked somewhere begging to be stolen. They\'de also be wary of just launching them willy-nilly into any old fight as their price tag would have risen considerably.

I don\'t believe in hard limiting or \"capping\" any stats at a certain number. Any stat should have unlimited potential as-well as unlimited drawbacks, power, space, mass etc... For now though, stop trying to sit infront of a huge 4000 mass ship with ur tiny 50 mass laser magnet and expect to win. If you think about it he\'s 80 times bigger, and rightfully, 80 times stronger.

 

[EspiOwnage]

Capping anything would cap the game entirely, and I am definately not for this. There has already been discussion about what a small ship can do against a big ship, and there are many things a small ship can do, that a big ship cannot right now.

Small ships can turn faster and accelerate faster, making them highly evasive and manuverable. A small ship can out flank a large ship nearly every time, it litterally takes my large ship over 30 seconds to preform a 180 turn.

Small ships are able to have very expansive cloak capabilities, making them the perfect ambush ships in a fight. I was able to make a small ship that could infinately stay cloaked why moving and fireing at the same time.

I hear you guys when you say you want small ships to be more powerful, but putting caps on the building limit really limits the creative mind of the builders who are expecting to be able to build their 100,000 mass ship.

I do not think we should give a small ship the capability to destroy a large ship though, no. That would ruin the point of bigger ships. I do however beleive smaller ships should have capabilities that larger ships don\'t, such as EMP weapons and stealth perks, but they should only be able to play as a support when it comes to taking down a large mothership, not the killers.

 

[xXSnowyXx]

+1 to shields not recharging while under fire. At this point it\'s possible to have ships attacking eachother non stop without any possibility of either\'s demise.

Also perhaps shield power should be dispersed over the entirety of the ship i.e. 10 shield blocks on a small ship is more effective than 10 shield blocks on a large ship. Or perhaps adding a separate \'shield\' attribute to blocks in addition to HP as opposed to a single unify shield so that concentrated fire can be more effective.

 

[danjal]

1 - Have a more significant penalty for larger mass ships - this would especially come into play when higher speeds would be allowed or if the turning of a ship would be reduced by larger mass.
This in turn would make the stationary guns on a large ship less usefull against smaller, more manouverable ships.
However as with most large space vessels this could partially be countered by having rotational turrets on the larger ship.

2 - Processing power, instead of capping weapons and shields perhaps its an idea to tie in processing capacity, A larger ship stacked with weapons and shields is great, but this *should* require more processing power. Being required to add more processing power would in turn increase weight and reduce manouverability.


If you look at EVE online this is a good example, even against the monstrous capital ships the smaller ships have their uses - and they need \'smaller\' ships to protect them aswell because their insane bulk makes them vulnerable at the same time.
Course a very large ship would also emit a very large heat signature... Making it override other closer targets should someone be using the heatseaking missile variety.

The possibility to instantly replace very large ships is also a factor indeed, but thats a matter of rescaling the accessibility of resources and money. Something i\'m sure is already being worked on.

*EDIT*
A thought I had when looking at the warp topic, add another type of engine.
Have the current engine \"capped out\" at a certain point, perhaps by diminishing returns and require a stronger engine for medium sized ships that require more power. (But maintain some manouverability.)
Have this cap out in turn again using dimishing returns and add another tier of engines which instead of just power would require a fuel-source.

This would make using insanely large ships come at a cost - sure you bring tremendous amounts of firepower to a battlefield, but you would be required to explore and exploit the environment to find (or make) fuel to keep flying it.

It would also make ship design a more interesting concept as larger ships would require more expensive modules to stay viable. And if you make these modules crafted only you also remove the option to \"insta-buy\" a new one - instead you would add the requirement to harvest and process the materials.

 

[Dr_Freeman99]

Well, I don\'t agree with the cap limits, since a larger ship in EVERY canon, fandom, and universe means more power, more shields and more firepower. However the manueverability I agree with wholeheartedly, as well as the weapon classes, although certain weapons should, by necessity, be needed to be mounted on larger ships. For instance, I doubt you would find a planetary destruction-type weapon on any fighter, besides a large bomb, whereas a large enough levaithan or titan would most certainly have that firepower.

Adding the maneuverability and other such things would also allow for the larger ships to carry payloads of fighters, allowing for more sci-fi battle scenarios. So yeah. No cap limits, but certainly the other ideas make sense.

 

[jakeman20]

I think that when ships are bought a construction platform should appear that slowly builds the ship. This way larger ships have a wait time before they appear. Also as the physics is improved I think that smaller ships will have the advantage of going faster than the big ships in a fight, but for now with server crashes deleting all ships the ease of replacing them is necessary.



Perhaps some balencing in the difficulty of hitting small ships with missles (IE longer locking times for large ships targeting small ships, and shorter locking times for small ships targeting large ships)

 

[Otto von Hartvich]

Concerning Danjals comment I find fuel a very interesting idea and I thought of having hydrogen \"fusion\" engines which would require water+energy to run. Meaning that Ice etc. would have an interesting use.

 

[Otto von Hartvich]

It seems like the shields seem to be the most debated issue, so perhaps some sort of shield piercing bombs/missiles could make small bomber-fighter ships more viable.

PS: The ship system in Star Wars empire at war, is worth checking out, the mechanics in that game are insightfull to this topic

 

[Sanqk]

I think the max shield amount should be increased x10 but regen should be decreased to something like 1/5 of what its now.

 

[BeefBacon]

I very much agree that capping shields/weapons would limit creativity. Some very interesting ideas, shall add some of them to the first post for those that don\'t want to read the other comments.

I especially like the shipyard idea. Stands to reason that players with the credits to purchase a dreadnaught should have the credits to build a shipyard, and the time penalty is a definite plus. Can\'t tell you how many derelict Battlestar Galacticas I\'ve seen floating around because some rich player decided to spam them.

Keep the ideas coming.

 

[diggerman111]

I like the idea of having fuel. It requires the bigger ships to not be able to roam for an infinite amount of time, harassing weaker players. Small ships would also require fuel, but maybe a type you could refuel from anywhere as long as you have a fuel ca n in your inventory?

 

[Traxie21]

Small ships can do major damage to big ships using docked disintegrator ships as missiles.

 

[Charlie_]

Shields you say?

BOARDING CRAFT.
Something fast and expendable, and possibly equipped with a radar jammer to disapear just long enough to reach its massive target.

Now, with such a massive ship... How much damage can you do while its owner comes around to find you? (or, since this still isn\'t fixed so far, until you\'re warped out of the moving ship and left in space)
And how will his ship still fully functions properly if he\'s not piloting it?

Note: Even more effective with friends!

I think that when the ability to move with a ship when inside of it, while it\'s moving (So basically, being a passenger without needing to \"man\" a computer) will reallly work, things will get real interesting and defending a giant will become much more difficult, because of tactics like the above.