Basic Concept (tl;dr) - A tiered system for "ranking" your server's pirate ship blueprints in such a way that only certain combinations and numbers of certain blueprints will spawn togeter in a wave as to prevent pirate under/overpoweredness.
Detailed Concept - The issue I'm confronted with is that pirates (it seems to me) should fly an assortment of ships of different sizes and powers, but with the game's current system, if I were to upload various sized ships with varying power, and enable them for NPC/pirate use, there's no telling what will spawn. This poses an issue when it comes to newer players, NPC congenstion in protected areas, etc. So, I thought up this idea of having a way to rate each pirate blueprint so that the waves that spawned would be somewhat balanced, and add diversity to the pirate waves without it ever being too easy or too hard to deal with them. Here's an example of how the system would work:
Tier Blueprint Size/Power
With these tiers set up, you'd also have some basic settings in play, dictating what tier of ships would spawn with others, and how many would spawn depending on which tier they're in.
Example Waves:
6 tier 4's 4 tier 3's 2 tier 2's 1 tier 1
with some variations:
1 tier 1 with 4 tier 4's 1 tier 2 with 2 tier 3's and 2 tier 4's
etc ...
Finally, to make this work, there would have to be another button in the ship catalog next to the others (where you choose if a ship can be used by NPC's) that allows you to denote which tier a particular blueprint belongs to.
So, this way you could have a nice big pirate capital ship in the catalog for an option for pirates to fly, without the fear that a wave would spawn including 6 of these monsters and just demolish the hell out of anything they come across.
* I'm no java coder, and I know Schema has plenty to deal with and plenty of his own ideas in the works that take priority over any and all suggestions. I also understand that fleshing out a concept like this, the way I have done, is infinitely easier than actually making it happen. Please don't reply to this suggestion citing any of those facts as a reason why it shouldn't be done or can't.
Thanks for reading, please respond if you like this idea and add your own suggestions. I'm gonna work on making a few pictures to go along with this concept to better illustrate what these waves would look like!
Detailed Concept - The issue I'm confronted with is that pirates (it seems to me) should fly an assortment of ships of different sizes and powers, but with the game's current system, if I were to upload various sized ships with varying power, and enable them for NPC/pirate use, there's no telling what will spawn. This poses an issue when it comes to newer players, NPC congenstion in protected areas, etc. So, I thought up this idea of having a way to rate each pirate blueprint so that the waves that spawned would be somewhat balanced, and add diversity to the pirate waves without it ever being too easy or too hard to deal with them. Here's an example of how the system would work:
Tier Blueprint Size/Power
- Really big, Carrier or Capital sized ships with high power
- Destroyer/Cruiser class ships with medium to high power but lower defenses
- Corvette/Frigate class ships with lower power ratings
- Fighter/Drone sized ships, negligable threats.
With these tiers set up, you'd also have some basic settings in play, dictating what tier of ships would spawn with others, and how many would spawn depending on which tier they're in.
Example Waves:
6 tier 4's 4 tier 3's 2 tier 2's 1 tier 1
with some variations:
1 tier 1 with 4 tier 4's 1 tier 2 with 2 tier 3's and 2 tier 4's
etc ...
Finally, to make this work, there would have to be another button in the ship catalog next to the others (where you choose if a ship can be used by NPC's) that allows you to denote which tier a particular blueprint belongs to.
So, this way you could have a nice big pirate capital ship in the catalog for an option for pirates to fly, without the fear that a wave would spawn including 6 of these monsters and just demolish the hell out of anything they come across.
* I'm no java coder, and I know Schema has plenty to deal with and plenty of his own ideas in the works that take priority over any and all suggestions. I also understand that fleshing out a concept like this, the way I have done, is infinitely easier than actually making it happen. Please don't reply to this suggestion citing any of those facts as a reason why it shouldn't be done or can't.
Thanks for reading, please respond if you like this idea and add your own suggestions. I'm gonna work on making a few pictures to go along with this concept to better illustrate what these waves would look like!
