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I can't steal the manifesto tag-line from Keptick, so I'll just throw this text wall into general and see what comes out, eh?
Right now, max speed for all ships is pretty standard. Put big enough engines on it, and no matter the mass, your ship could accelerate as fast a fighter does. So long as you keep the thrust ratio above 1.0, you can hit max speed. This leads to some fairly game-breaking situations, especially in combat. For example, ships will spiral around each other, attempting evasive maneuvers while also toeing the range line. Suddenly, one or both of the ships will decide to surprise the enemy by bumrushing them in a (usually) vain attempt to gain an angle on a turret or their core. This can lead to painful collisions that often leave the server reeling, sometimes killing it.
In an attempt to both encourage creative ship building on a smaller scale and prevent high-speed, high-mass collisions, let's make a ship's max speed a factor of their mass.
Here's how this will work:
The admins of the server will set a value in the config to be the highest maximum speed (smaller ships), then adjust another value, the mass multiplier. Essentially, that number will determine the slope of the speed-mass curve. If it is negative, speed increases with mass, but if it is positive, speed decreases with mass.
The admins could also be given a lowest maximum speed, so as to prevent a 600k mass ship having a speed of, say, 10 or 5 or something insanely small that renders the ship useless. There could be an endpoints value as well. This would allow the admins to set the beginning and end of the speed-mass curve.
Why is this a good idea?
First off, capital ships shouldn't be able to accelerate to high speeds like a fighter can. It takes away a significant advantage from fighter- and frigate- class vessels. By adding in harsher speed limits for larger ships, you encourage fleet play and mixed fleets, instead of just *the largest ships we got.*
Also, soon we will be getting fleet control, and I am willing to bet that someone is going to come up with a fleet made of huge, fast moving vessels with lots of turrets that cannot be killed because they cannot be outmaneuvered.
Second, it gives the admins the tools to enforce size limits. Essentially, you could just set the speed of all ships above a certain mass to zero by making it an endpoint and adjusting the formula accordingly. It's usually fairly easy to spot ships over the size limit, but sometimes being preemptive is a better choice.
It also gives admins the tools to be more flexible with the size limits. If that big battleship of 500k mass cannot move more than 20km/h, why would you be worried about it crashing into anything at high speed? You could allow ships of that size, they just wouldn't move very fast.
Third, Overdrive would still give ships the x2 speed bonus it does now, so the limit is semi-flexible. You can still build a *fast* flagship - it just wont be as fast as the frigates or fighters.
What could go wrong?
Ship battles will probably take longer as a rule, since the bigger ships will take more time to get there and start shooting. Interdictor fields would be really nice to have here
I'm pretty biased here, as I've been mulling this over for about a month now. What else could be skewed about this idea?
Right now, max speed for all ships is pretty standard. Put big enough engines on it, and no matter the mass, your ship could accelerate as fast a fighter does. So long as you keep the thrust ratio above 1.0, you can hit max speed. This leads to some fairly game-breaking situations, especially in combat. For example, ships will spiral around each other, attempting evasive maneuvers while also toeing the range line. Suddenly, one or both of the ships will decide to surprise the enemy by bumrushing them in a (usually) vain attempt to gain an angle on a turret or their core. This can lead to painful collisions that often leave the server reeling, sometimes killing it.
In an attempt to both encourage creative ship building on a smaller scale and prevent high-speed, high-mass collisions, let's make a ship's max speed a factor of their mass.
Here's how this will work:
The admins of the server will set a value in the config to be the highest maximum speed (smaller ships), then adjust another value, the mass multiplier. Essentially, that number will determine the slope of the speed-mass curve. If it is negative, speed increases with mass, but if it is positive, speed decreases with mass.
The admins could also be given a lowest maximum speed, so as to prevent a 600k mass ship having a speed of, say, 10 or 5 or something insanely small that renders the ship useless. There could be an endpoints value as well. This would allow the admins to set the beginning and end of the speed-mass curve.
Why is this a good idea?
First off, capital ships shouldn't be able to accelerate to high speeds like a fighter can. It takes away a significant advantage from fighter- and frigate- class vessels. By adding in harsher speed limits for larger ships, you encourage fleet play and mixed fleets, instead of just *the largest ships we got.*
Also, soon we will be getting fleet control, and I am willing to bet that someone is going to come up with a fleet made of huge, fast moving vessels with lots of turrets that cannot be killed because they cannot be outmaneuvered.
Second, it gives the admins the tools to enforce size limits. Essentially, you could just set the speed of all ships above a certain mass to zero by making it an endpoint and adjusting the formula accordingly. It's usually fairly easy to spot ships over the size limit, but sometimes being preemptive is a better choice.
It also gives admins the tools to be more flexible with the size limits. If that big battleship of 500k mass cannot move more than 20km/h, why would you be worried about it crashing into anything at high speed? You could allow ships of that size, they just wouldn't move very fast.
Third, Overdrive would still give ships the x2 speed bonus it does now, so the limit is semi-flexible. You can still build a *fast* flagship - it just wont be as fast as the frigates or fighters.
What could go wrong?
Ship battles will probably take longer as a rule, since the bigger ships will take more time to get there and start shooting. Interdictor fields would be really nice to have here
I'm pretty biased here, as I've been mulling this over for about a month now. What else could be skewed about this idea?
