- Joined
- Jun 29, 2013
- Messages
- 245
- Reaction score
- 68
Armor
It needs a buff to make it worthwhile for anything more then stopping a single shot from anything larger then a 50k fighter ship (or for just making a ship look good).
Weapons (missiles).
These could use a bit of an overhaul. To start with, they tend to be both too powerful (against unshielded things) and too slow (even if you don't increase the speed limit past 50).
Torpedo: Slow, unguided, has the largest explosion radius. Replaces current dumbfire, and has slightly greater radius then current missiles, per weapon block.
IFF missile (or just call it heat seeking still): Should be very fast and deal a good bit of damage. However, it has short range and very low explosive radius, so if it hits an unshielded ship (assuming it is launched by a large fighter sized ship) it only takes out blocks in a radius of 2 or 3. Targets only the ship that is currently targeted, and stops homing if the ship moves out of say 20 or 30 degrees of the missile's direction.
Lock-on missile. Not too much different from current, but increase the speed a bit. Does a decent bit of damage and is very long range. Has larger explosive radius then the IFF missile, but still not as much as it currently has.
Other options: Once the basic missiles are sorted, we can consider looking more at new types. Lets get the current missiles properly dealt with though first.
Weapons (guns):
First off, an "alternate fire" mode of sorts could be an interesting idea to play around with. I'll go into what this could entail for each gun, but its important to note that these weapon ideas do not actually need it. Perhaps toggling it by hitting a button or right clicking or something. Also, accuracy is something required for these ideas to function properly. Current guns are 100% accurate, with no firing error angle whatsoever. They go where you point exactly.
Railgun: Hull damage: 200%. Shield damage: 50%. Long range, moderate projectile speed, high damage, slow refire. Other attributes: more powerful ones have an explosive radius. A large capital ship's main cannon may have an explosion with as much as a 3 block radius.
Alternate fire: toggles sniper mode, which loads blocks further in the distance then normal, increases projectile speed, and refire delay greatly, and damage to a lesser extent.
Blasters/fusion cannons. In other words, this is a renamed AMC (I just don't like the name personally, feel free to flame me). 100% shield and hull damage. Medium range, low damage, high refire rate, and medium-low accuracy. Has a fast projectile speed. A standard gun for a standard ship. Special attribute: 1% of weapon damage passes through shields (partly because we need an excuse to actually make repair ships and partly because it lets a tiny fighter leave a few smudges on a large warship's armor which is just cool).
Alternate fire: Greatly increases power consumption and refire rate, but also greatly increases the firing error, to the point where you literally might not be able to consistantly hit the broadside of a barn (or barn-shaped spacecraft).
Ion Cannon. 200% shield damage, 50% hull damage. Medium range, medium damage, medium refire rate, medium-high accuracy. Special attribute: hits to the hull cause a debuff to energy regeneration for a few seconds, and also deal some damage to the current energy pool.
Alternate fire: charges for 1 or 2 seconds, then fires a large, very slow moving ion blast. This blast does increased damage, and will completely disable weapons and engines of the target for a time calculated based on the cannon's power and the target's size, and regardless of whether shields are up. A fighter attacking a large ship won't even stop it for a second. A massive main ion cannon on a large ship could leave the fighter kaput for 10-15 seconds though if it were somehow able to hit it. Once the ion cannon uses this mode, it overheats and is unable to be fired again (even normally) for a short time, as if it were a missile reloading.
Plasma Beams (yes, I am a Freespace 2 fan, and yes this weapon will be quite similar). These weapons would seem overpowered at first glance. They travel to a target instantaneously, hit it very rapidly, and pass through shields, completely ignoring them. The downsides: Prior to firing, it must charge several seconds. It then fires continuously for a short time. Then, it must cool down ("reload"), before it can be charged again. Additionally, it has short range, high energy requirements and does quite low damage. At least compared to a different gun of the same size. The size you could mount on a fighter might burn through 1 block at best (if you could keep it focussed on that one block for the entirety of its firing period).
Alternate Fire: Greatly overcharges the weapon. Damage and range is increased a good bit. Weapon will not stop firing until you either release the button, run out of energy, or the weapon is destroyed. Speaking of which, while using this alternate fire, the weapon's blocks, along with any blocks in the general vicinity of them, will rapidly and randomly take damage as if you had flown into a sun. So while this is very powerful, it also can hurt you quite badly (and even if you design a ship purposely for "safe" use of it, you may not be able to fire it at full power more then once).
System Debuffs: Effectively something to better encourage the use of armor or better positioning of internal components (and use of armor, period, especially if armor gets buffed as the first suggestion asks). Put simply, if a system block is destroyed, that system suffers a temporary failure. This temporary failure only affects the group the block was part of, so if you have three seperate "engines" and lose a block in one of them, only that one engine stops working for a second or two. The other two engines still function and supply their thrust for the duration the damaged engine is offline (some fraction of a second per block destroyed in that block-group).
Suggestions for a better "debuff" system would be appreciated. The basic idea is to make aiming for a subsystem something to go for. As well as encouraging people to design a ship to be more redundant, or at least not block everything together in a single bunch.
Warp/Jump drive: Yes, the idea that gets brought up every single day by people. Its pretty much guarenteed that we will get it eventually, so here are some ideas on implimenting it reasonably.
Useage: input sector coordinates into the nav menu, and engage the jump drive. You will teleport there instantly if its in range. Well, instantly after the drive is powered up. When you engage the jump drive, you must first charge the jump drive. During this period of time, your engines, shields, manuevering, and weapons are disabled. For a typical non-specially-designed ship, this will be anywhere from 5-20 seconds, taking longer the larger the ship is. The idea is that it would make it a bad idea to perform a jump in combat, unless you were pretty certain to die if you fought regardless.
Charge time is based upon how many jumpdrive/warpcore (whichever you wish to call it) blocks you have, scaled against the size of your ship. Range of your jump system is based upon how many jump/warp blocks you have, but is NOT scaled against the size of your ship (it may incur some diminishing returns though). The idea here is that a large ship can intrinsically jump farther in one go then a small warp-enabled fighter, making a large jump carrier, or perhaps a "hyperspace ring" ship with a docking port for a fighter, a good way to move ships around.
Warp in general will also encourage people to not fuss over the relatively slow speed limit of space currently. It would also let people meet up MUCH easier. Particularly considering their tendency to go "minecraft style" and build their base 50 sectors from spawn out of fear of it being trashed. Yes, this is a problem. You rather rarely see on a typical server people actually being able to get together very easily, aside from a faction's members just building ships at the same base, or being able to find some nuts looking for a fight near spawn.
Well, there they are, my variation on several suggestions (at least two of which have been suggested in some form a good deal, even if the details weren't usually as fleshed out). Critize me to hell.
It needs a buff to make it worthwhile for anything more then stopping a single shot from anything larger then a 50k fighter ship (or for just making a ship look good).
Weapons (missiles).
These could use a bit of an overhaul. To start with, they tend to be both too powerful (against unshielded things) and too slow (even if you don't increase the speed limit past 50).
Torpedo: Slow, unguided, has the largest explosion radius. Replaces current dumbfire, and has slightly greater radius then current missiles, per weapon block.
IFF missile (or just call it heat seeking still): Should be very fast and deal a good bit of damage. However, it has short range and very low explosive radius, so if it hits an unshielded ship (assuming it is launched by a large fighter sized ship) it only takes out blocks in a radius of 2 or 3. Targets only the ship that is currently targeted, and stops homing if the ship moves out of say 20 or 30 degrees of the missile's direction.
Lock-on missile. Not too much different from current, but increase the speed a bit. Does a decent bit of damage and is very long range. Has larger explosive radius then the IFF missile, but still not as much as it currently has.
Other options: Once the basic missiles are sorted, we can consider looking more at new types. Lets get the current missiles properly dealt with though first.
Weapons (guns):
First off, an "alternate fire" mode of sorts could be an interesting idea to play around with. I'll go into what this could entail for each gun, but its important to note that these weapon ideas do not actually need it. Perhaps toggling it by hitting a button or right clicking or something. Also, accuracy is something required for these ideas to function properly. Current guns are 100% accurate, with no firing error angle whatsoever. They go where you point exactly.
Railgun: Hull damage: 200%. Shield damage: 50%. Long range, moderate projectile speed, high damage, slow refire. Other attributes: more powerful ones have an explosive radius. A large capital ship's main cannon may have an explosion with as much as a 3 block radius.
Alternate fire: toggles sniper mode, which loads blocks further in the distance then normal, increases projectile speed, and refire delay greatly, and damage to a lesser extent.
Blasters/fusion cannons. In other words, this is a renamed AMC (I just don't like the name personally, feel free to flame me). 100% shield and hull damage. Medium range, low damage, high refire rate, and medium-low accuracy. Has a fast projectile speed. A standard gun for a standard ship. Special attribute: 1% of weapon damage passes through shields (partly because we need an excuse to actually make repair ships and partly because it lets a tiny fighter leave a few smudges on a large warship's armor which is just cool).
Alternate fire: Greatly increases power consumption and refire rate, but also greatly increases the firing error, to the point where you literally might not be able to consistantly hit the broadside of a barn (or barn-shaped spacecraft).
Ion Cannon. 200% shield damage, 50% hull damage. Medium range, medium damage, medium refire rate, medium-high accuracy. Special attribute: hits to the hull cause a debuff to energy regeneration for a few seconds, and also deal some damage to the current energy pool.
Alternate fire: charges for 1 or 2 seconds, then fires a large, very slow moving ion blast. This blast does increased damage, and will completely disable weapons and engines of the target for a time calculated based on the cannon's power and the target's size, and regardless of whether shields are up. A fighter attacking a large ship won't even stop it for a second. A massive main ion cannon on a large ship could leave the fighter kaput for 10-15 seconds though if it were somehow able to hit it. Once the ion cannon uses this mode, it overheats and is unable to be fired again (even normally) for a short time, as if it were a missile reloading.
Plasma Beams (yes, I am a Freespace 2 fan, and yes this weapon will be quite similar). These weapons would seem overpowered at first glance. They travel to a target instantaneously, hit it very rapidly, and pass through shields, completely ignoring them. The downsides: Prior to firing, it must charge several seconds. It then fires continuously for a short time. Then, it must cool down ("reload"), before it can be charged again. Additionally, it has short range, high energy requirements and does quite low damage. At least compared to a different gun of the same size. The size you could mount on a fighter might burn through 1 block at best (if you could keep it focussed on that one block for the entirety of its firing period).
Alternate Fire: Greatly overcharges the weapon. Damage and range is increased a good bit. Weapon will not stop firing until you either release the button, run out of energy, or the weapon is destroyed. Speaking of which, while using this alternate fire, the weapon's blocks, along with any blocks in the general vicinity of them, will rapidly and randomly take damage as if you had flown into a sun. So while this is very powerful, it also can hurt you quite badly (and even if you design a ship purposely for "safe" use of it, you may not be able to fire it at full power more then once).
System Debuffs: Effectively something to better encourage the use of armor or better positioning of internal components (and use of armor, period, especially if armor gets buffed as the first suggestion asks). Put simply, if a system block is destroyed, that system suffers a temporary failure. This temporary failure only affects the group the block was part of, so if you have three seperate "engines" and lose a block in one of them, only that one engine stops working for a second or two. The other two engines still function and supply their thrust for the duration the damaged engine is offline (some fraction of a second per block destroyed in that block-group).
Suggestions for a better "debuff" system would be appreciated. The basic idea is to make aiming for a subsystem something to go for. As well as encouraging people to design a ship to be more redundant, or at least not block everything together in a single bunch.
Warp/Jump drive: Yes, the idea that gets brought up every single day by people. Its pretty much guarenteed that we will get it eventually, so here are some ideas on implimenting it reasonably.
Useage: input sector coordinates into the nav menu, and engage the jump drive. You will teleport there instantly if its in range. Well, instantly after the drive is powered up. When you engage the jump drive, you must first charge the jump drive. During this period of time, your engines, shields, manuevering, and weapons are disabled. For a typical non-specially-designed ship, this will be anywhere from 5-20 seconds, taking longer the larger the ship is. The idea is that it would make it a bad idea to perform a jump in combat, unless you were pretty certain to die if you fought regardless.
Charge time is based upon how many jumpdrive/warpcore (whichever you wish to call it) blocks you have, scaled against the size of your ship. Range of your jump system is based upon how many jump/warp blocks you have, but is NOT scaled against the size of your ship (it may incur some diminishing returns though). The idea here is that a large ship can intrinsically jump farther in one go then a small warp-enabled fighter, making a large jump carrier, or perhaps a "hyperspace ring" ship with a docking port for a fighter, a good way to move ships around.
Warp in general will also encourage people to not fuss over the relatively slow speed limit of space currently. It would also let people meet up MUCH easier. Particularly considering their tendency to go "minecraft style" and build their base 50 sectors from spawn out of fear of it being trashed. Yes, this is a problem. You rather rarely see on a typical server people actually being able to get together very easily, aside from a faction's members just building ships at the same base, or being able to find some nuts looking for a fight near spawn.
Well, there they are, my variation on several suggestions (at least two of which have been suggested in some form a good deal, even if the details weren't usually as fleshed out). Critize me to hell.
