Hardpoints

[Viridis00]

Hardpoints are pretty prominent in a good amount of sci-fi and it's a real life feature for aircraft. I think we should have something like that. For those who don't know, hardpoints are basically mounting points for optional armaments and equipment.

For Starmade, they could work exactly like docking modules and turrets, except the attached entity is basically a part of the ship itself, and fixed in direction. You'd be able to pilot your ship as usual, but the weapons systems are usable while not in the attached part's core. Any shields, thusters, power, etc give their bonuses while attached (maybe at a fraction of the usual rates) and mass is applied. They would be able to be ejected just like a turret or docked ship.

We could see a lot of cool things come out of this. Ships built as weapon systems instead of having onboard guns, which could lead to fast refitting and repair for optional parts. Large boosters that can be ejected when no longer needed, similar to multi-stage rockets. Finally, additional modules for energy or shields if someone wanted to make them modular for any reason, like shields hogging power after a lot of energy blocks are destroyed.

When we get FTL, depending how that is implemented, you could have something similar to a hyperspace ring like in Star Wars that the Jedi Starfighters use because they don't have the power alone to go into hyperspace, or you can have your eject-able warp core like in star trek.

 

[Jonj57]

Large boosters that can be ejected when no longer needed,

I've already done this one, actually.

I remade the Jedi starfighter with a warp ring. The fighter is just that an ordinary fighter, but you can dock it to the ring that is stuffed with thrust blocks and overdrive modules for a quick getaway or for longer travels. It's capable of going twice the speed limit of the server limitations that I play on (before the new thrust changes anyways).

Here's 2 picks if you're interested
http://gyazo.com/550347d36e7d41d5589f00415d1d7620
http://gyazo.com/68019020e7f002fb8ad99e4d0c19f633

On topic: I'd REALLY like hardpoints, quickly changeable or reconfigurable armaments could save a ton of time should you need to re-purpose a ship or maybe keep a stockpile of interchangeable pieces to speed up the repair time when the economy hits. There was also a guy in Space Engineers who made a bunch of connectable pieces so he could quickly make entire ships with any purpose of any size by simply connecting the "Blocks". That could be interesting to see as well.

 

[CyberTao]

Its an interesting idea, but seems easily abuse-able in some ways, such as mass docking Regen blocks to escape power Cap limitations easily (Method listed lower has a bit of a Trade off).

But Honestly, some of that can sorta already be done;

You can create a Large block of Power regen (into a reactor form), and then fire Power Drain beams at it. Boosted Regen at the cost of not being able to use your main weapons for a while (Support for this was broke at one point, but it seems to work again iirc)
You can build "Ships" that consist of Shields and weapons only, and then Dock them to fixed docking with AI set "Type:Ship" and active. The result is a forward firing automated weapon, which could also be embedded into the main ship in such a way to take advantage of its shields (I call them Assist Weaponry Cannons/Casings -AWCs-).
Modular Shield - docked 'plates' that primary house shields and little else. Not quite the same as your idea, but honestly Docking a block of shields to a ship to gain shields.... doesn't really make sense to me o -o

I like The idea of Modular thruster bits, but overall it seems like something that could be mimicked with current ingame mechanics and a little RP (Aside from the thruster bits).

I like the idea of adding additional Thrust modules though o -o Even though Thrust was put on a curve (x^0.95 iirc), I think it would be nice to be able to add the Thrust of docked items to the Main ship as well. Since those parts would require their own shields and maybe power, I think its balanced with the slight exploit of going around the Curve in ThrustperBlock....

I dunno~ twas just mt 2 cents worth *^*

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

We sort of already have hard points, although not all the functionality is there. Regular docks with ai will shoot so I've been using hard point guns for a while now. I would like to see the functionality expanded though.

 

[SkullCollector]

What disturbs me about the current turret docking implementation is that AI is forced upon you if you want to make use of turrets.
As it stands now, capital ships are bricks with guns, so turning so as to aim with primary weapons takes time, lots of it. Turret accuracy is a joke, especially against smaller craft. So having rapid-firing turrets to fend of critters turns out to be a mere scare-away.

I'd like a turret control mode, or something similar, that, instead of steering the ship, sets up turret aim. This could also be implemented as a special computer, or into one of the existing, to encourage cooporation on capital ships. Because, frankly, we are no capsule pilots.
To expand, each control module could have a limit of linked turrets, so that ships with very high turret coverage or multiple kinds of guns (for example, main guns and anti-fighter guns) can split their DPS intelligently, and to prevent OPness. It would also make built-in ship weaponry actual superweapons and therefore yawing towards the target a valuable effort which the opponent should avoid.

Also, broadsides. They look cool enough to be a reason on their own.

Surely this has been discussed before, though.