turrets and drones

[Calbiri]

I wanted to start off by thanking you for making the game I always wanted in a space game. I look forward to seeing this game reach full release and beyond!
That being said, I thought I would throw in my two cents in hopes you might find these ideas helpful to the game.

-Turret Shield shared from the Primary ship the same way power is shared

-Turrets firing Antimatter cannons currently hit the Primary ship, same with hitting additional turrets linked to the same Primary (this may count as a bug). A non-collision (like missiles) or null damage against the primary/sibling turrets would be nice.

-AI drones, if these are an intended feature (making use of the AI/docking combination) a command usable in the hotkey bar with a Undock/Return To Dock function would be amazing

-AI drones, a similar enhancement is a set of commands for your linked drones (from you docks) to have a Follow/Stay function in regards to the Primary/Mothership (this could include sector to sector following, or exclude it, forcing docking before sector crossings, both could enhance gameplay)

 

[Varacka]

I second the drone idea.
However i think a limit on drones per person would be a good idea.

 

[MichaelSeph]

Well, direct drones usage could consume much energy, or need various CPU blocks on the main ship / mothership to control a single drone, so this way no one can use many, but on huge stuff it could work out to have some more drones.

 

[Zyrafyr]

I third the ideas brought fourth by Calbiri. lol. However I reject the limit of drones per person. I think a good limit is one of credits. I would make turret blocks and docking blocks more expensive including the extensions. About the same cost as it would to buy all the blocks to build a ship to fit in the turret/dock area. Yes I know its currently easy to make money right now, but the game is still in development, I am sure that aspect will be tweaked eventually.

 

[Calbiri]

Drones are already in the game, just a small ai controlled ship, only they are 1 time uses, as they don\'t follow or easily redock (must redock each manually)

 

[Calbiri]

Maybe these have already been mentioned, but i haven\'t seen them after looking through the lists.
-Passenger Item, have every station sell some passengers for \"free\" then you carry a number of them (limited by a passenger block?) to another station and sell them for their \"travel fee\'s\". I think it\'d be cool to see something encourage the building and use of passenger ships, imagine making a profit for running a large cruise liner
-Docking enhancer, a note on these, is there a point in having these only increase the docking area by 1/2 a block on each side? since you cant offset the core that attaches to it, the 1/2 is essentially a way of making you add 2 enhancers to increase the available block space per side by 1 block.
-Docking, also, this may already be fixed or a bug, but docking enhancers should not be shared ship wide, 2 enhancers should not increase every dock size by 1 block

 

[Calbiri]

-Faction Ship Shop
-Making each faction have its own ship shop block (maybe as part of the faction block) this will cause unique faction desgined ships, reduce clutter on ship lists, and prevent opposing factions from flat out buying a copy of your ship
-Possibly add in a +/- star rank system, so if a ship is ranked 5 stars by other players, you know its good
-An option by the creator (original ship saver) to delete or update a saved design (thanks to michaelseph for that)
-How about converting shops to a type of trade ship instead of a station, this would allow spawning/despawning to allow fresh stocked ships

 

[Calbiri]

Wouldnt it be great if the plant and other decorative/resource blocks cloud be placed in different directions based on the placement arrow in build mode? Imagine having a fungal growth under the engines of that junky X-wing you found in the swamp....

 

[Calbiri]

a drone concept i came up with in chat
-By adding a suicide bomber sort of option to the bobbi\'s, you could essentially make possible exspensive torpedos,
just release the torpedo/ai ship from dock, and it chases your focus target until it collides (even across sectors? so no fleeing from it) and sets off its explosive block/s! An exspensive/limited weapon, but high cool and utility factor

 

[Calbiri]

Turret Cloaks and radar jam, just like shields, these functions are not shared from the primary ship to the turrets, this should definetly be addressed, im also think that standard docking blocks should also benefit from these traits

 

[Jynx_En_Darie]

I agree,

Drone Turrets would be a great option, maybe the enhancers would increase the drone range and maybe the amount within the area,(just thinking about drone fleets on stations)

 

[marineten]

i was thinking the same thing

 

[rennzen]

-\"Turret Shield shared from the Primary ship the same way power is shared\"
-- Yes please! Though their definitely should be some sort of limit to turret shielding, perhaps a % less shields for turrets, so that it is viable to engage turrets on big ships with a rediculous amount of shield.



-\"AI drones, if these are an intended feature (making use of the AI/docking combination) a command usable in the hotkey bar with a Undock/Return To Dock function would be amazing\"
-- Yes please!



-\"AI drones, a similar enhancement is a set of commands for your linked drones (from you docks) to have a Follow/Stay function in regards to the Primary/Mothership (this could include sector to sector following, or exclude it, forcing docking before sector crossings, both could enhance gameplay)\"
-- Yes please, but i would prefer having them force dock before entering a new sector.



-\"However i think a limit on drones per person would be a good idea.\"
-- Drone limits should be set by server.



-\"Passenger Item, have every station sell some passengers for \"free\" then you carry a number of them (limited by a passenger block?) to another station and sell them for their \"travel fee\'s\". I think it\'d be cool to see something encourage the building and use of passenger ships, imagine making a profit for running a large cruise liner\"
-- A spaceship seat would do, and as for the passengers he could make that system be automatic, buying free passengers would be silly. For example Simply show on the incoming galaxy map where there are passengers at appropriate places, like space stations and planets. Get close enough / dock and if you have \"take passengers\" activated on perhaps a bobby ai module it will board passengers and you will be payed once you deliver them to the destination(s) in the galaxy map.



-\"Docking enhancer, a note on these, is there a point in having these only increase the docking area by 1/2 a block on each side? since you cant offset the core that attaches to it, the 1/2 is essentially a way of making you add 2 enhancers to increase the available block space per side by 1 block.\"
--I would like a menu for it, similar to the weapon stat menu, in which i simply upgrade the docking dimension size of a docking module by paying credits. The cost will increase as well so you can\'t just easily have huge docks. Also maybe have a requirement for more docking modules every X size of ship, since it would be silly to have a huge ship docked to a 1x docking module. Alternatively this could be done by the player for aesthetics without a requirement.



-\"-Faction Ship Shop\"
--Player made shops are planned, This could be added to faction module or hub maybe?



-\"-An option by the creator (original ship saver) to delete or update a saved design (thanks to michaelseph for that)\"
--God yes.



-\"-By adding a suicide bomber sort of option to the bobbi\'s, you could essentially make possible exspensive torpedos, \"
--Yes please!



-I would like to remote-control ships / drones with a SD-cockpit or something. There can be any appropriate limitations, i just want to remote control missiles and guide them towards targets with out endangering my life lol. (The missiles could be exploded relatively easily, as they could be OP if not)



-Weapon Control Block. Links the power of a group of weapon blocks to a turret docking unit and/or weapons computer and/or ship core. (The ship core that is acting as a turret on the surface of your big space battleship)

The link of this added power would be severed if the turret docking unit, ship-turret\'s core, weapon computer, or weapon control block were destroyed.

This would allow for aesthetically pleasing smaller arrays of ship-turrets on the surface of your space battleship that are viable in dmg. (Think star destroyer, or battleship)

I detail it extensively in the post here http://star-made.org/content/weapon-control-block-suggestion

 

[Darkzellz]

I like the drone ideas (especialy redocking, hate having to \"swim\" out to them all and drag them back, or make all new ones [even with blueprints]), and their is also preventing pirate\'s from having them ... dont want no lag from pirate drones, also, I think an option to target allies to the drone/turret (for repair drones/turrets) that would rock! then I could make my repair bays! :D

 

[Keptick]

Calbiri is now a dev (kinda), he does part of the theorycrafting.

 

[War Dog]

Standard doctrine of fleets of smaller craft attacking a larger vessel is to neutralize the turrets before whittling down the ship. Having turrets share their ship\'s shields would make that more or less impossible.

Having turret fire ignore the ship would allow me to dock turrets internally; completely negating the need to provide any sort of turret protection. You think a 100k mass turret is hard to beat? Now make it completely out of AMCs/Power docked inside a ship with 11 million shield and try again.

 

[stm91]

I completely agree with you. I\'d much rather see turrets firining by line of sight, so they just stop shooting if there is something friendly in the way.



Having the shield of the ship fully extend to the turrets seems like a really bad idea to me.

 

[lupoCani]

In my opinion, the fact alone that drones need suggesting is an indicator of amuch more fundamental flaw- Our capitals don\'t have command centres, they have joysticks and \"fire\" buttons.

And fixed-forward cannons. And thrusters allowing them to dodge around like nothing. And pretty much nothing besides their size to set them apart from fighters.

 

[lupoCani]

The answer to your first paragraph- Shield leaking. Would open for some interesting hull mechanics as well.

 

[ltmauve]

Few points in opposition to your concerns:

First, if turrets that are larger in proportion to the mothership draw more shields than they get (so my mothership loses 10,000 shields to replenish 5,000), this could actually make ships with large turrets more vulnerable, as the mothership loses lots of shields as the turret gets hit. In other words, you make your turrets independent, or hope you don\'t get hit too hard.

Second, having turret fire ignore the ship isn\'t the problem, it\'s that turret can aim at targets through the ship. A prefered alternative is that the turret can\'t shoot at an angle to where it is pointing, it can\'t turn through the ship, and it will loose targets shortly after they pass behind the body of the mothership. Given something like this being implemented, this means that we don\'t have any problems with turrets clipping into ship bodies, and turret coverage actually matters.