Capital Ships

[PlasmaJedi]

You MUST be speaking of a beta build we don't have, because if YOU, the evil demonic rubber abomination can kill me, and I can sneeze at a cap ship in the current build and win, you must somehow suck.

Since that isn't likely, I'd be glad to see them improved! I just hope they are still beatable. It's easy to just turn up the damage ratings, but to make a real challenge, is art!

Player cap ships will need to be a team effort takedown, or they will be pointless.

[Nubarus]

[Edited on 3-15-2013 by Nubarus]

[Edited on 3-16-2013 by Nubarus]

[Rubber Chicken]

Can't recall at the moment if the Cap ship toughness changes are in the current release or yet to be released. If it's yet to be released then sorry for jumping the gun.

Every effort I've made to take down a Cap was with a Von-C perhaps it's different with the Human faction ships...

And I disagree that Caps need to be strictly teamwork kills. It should be easier with teamwork, but not mandatory. I already can't stand it when friendly AI vulture my fighter kills at a waypoint. I'd really only be up for co-op mission / cap ship killing 2% of the time I'm running contracts / Killing Caps to begin with.

[hank]

No doubt I suk. I can only kill a Vonari cap ship with a FT ... that is if I hit it just right. Last night I was able to get the shields to drop after hitting one with a Lynx and Rage but by the time I get to the point of destroying it I start to get pounded. I'm flying either an Avenger, Shrike or Chimera and with high yield beams and cannons.

I just suk as a cap ship killer. I may try a humanoid cap ship today to see if they're any different.

Oh, one thing I'd like to see is an accounting of how many cap ships a pilot kills. Granted, my score would be about "1" ... the cheatin' way. But if I get better at it, it would be nice to keep track.
Plus, I would think if you kill a cap ship you'd get a bigger boost to your ranking than just killing measley fighters.

Have a nice day

[PlasmaJedi]

I meant player cap ship should be a team effort, or at least have something to make them not as easy as Ai caps.

Rubber Chicken, unless there was a very recent update, cap ships in the current release are very easy to kill if you do it right. The biggest threat is the escorts, but once they are gone, I can just shift balance slightly towards shields, and shoot every missile my AMS doesn't, and the cap ship just dies after a few seconds of particle beam pounding.

I haven't played EM in a while, but steam hasn't updated it since I last played, so you must be using a beta build. I heard the gravity got changed to be more realistic in the beta, do you have that? I can't wait till it goes public!

[-splosives-]

The cap ship changes are already released, and I must admit that even I have some trouble with them. I did find a very effective way to get through the shields in one sweep.
I don't believe that you have fought cap ships in the current build, plasmajedi. From what I've seen, you can't kill a cap ship in a few seconds anymore.
Try it again and tell me what you think.

The gravity thing has also been released.

[Edited on 3-17-2013 by -splosives-]

[PlasmaJedi]

Really??? Why has steam not updated it yet??? At least if it did, I missed the message.

I'll have to go check, sorry for the apparent ignorance, my friends!


EDIT: Holy Chunks! It was indeed updated! Wow! I like! I'm gonna work on an orbit tutorial!

Thanks VICE!

[Edited on 3-17-2013 by PlasmaJedi]

[primedragoon]

I'm not to sure what else I can do to encourage this, though I like the idea that you can put yourself into an orbit now. And it presents a new idea for dealing with inactive capital ships, just put them in orbit when you don't need them. Providing it isn't just a larger primary ship. And you could put it into the orbit of a moon or a remote planet if you wanted to keep it hidden. I did go over a few specific idea's for how gameplay would work, and they were for the most part aimed directly at questions you asked before Vice.

But yeah, I'm all encouragement over here no matter what. I'd love to see active player controlled capships. However, with the exception of battleships and carriers, I do think they should be fast enough and maneuverable enough not to be massively frustrating to the player. I don't know, I can only pitch so much with limited information eh? I'm not sure how you're limited in your coding and such.

But, as I said in my last post (make that post before last post), I'd be more than glad to participate in/and/or beta test capital ships. And I'd really love to see the mercinary ship building system included for capships, though more like 1/3rd of a carrier or destroyers size.

[Dingo]

The idea above about smaller cap ships is the only way I can see it being feasible and maintaining game balance. Something like a corvette class or gunboat of some kind. It should be expensive though, and there needs to be some carefully thought out trade-offs between that kind of ship and the ships we have now.

[PlasmaJedi]

I like the corvette idea, a lot more practical! Can still have some features of the big guys, but just fewer, and a more reasonable balance.

[primedragoon]

Yeah if you check my post on the second page, the completely monolithic one, I actually fleshed out the idea for sort of smaller frigate/corvette/gunboat/destroyer type idea's, using the civilian ship building system sort of framework. Just with a couple more expensive parts added into the mix to cover say extended sensor range, multiple tractor beams and having turrets.

As an example, say you have a jumpdrive. You want capitals to have a better range, so you give it a "Magnetic Fusion Module" to provide backup power for longer jumps, and it would essentially extend your jump range by a factor significant enough to allow for inter system jumps. So, you wouldn't need warp gates. As for weapons, you could add something like a "Weapon Bank" with various predetermined configurations which decide your weapon 'hard points', or where your beams or cannons would fire from. So you still only have one cannon weapon and one laser weapon, assuming the lasers are kept, but they can be emitted from multiple points facing the enemy ship.

If you want to say make it a stardiver (which is an awesome concept I would highly encourage and pray for frequently from vice) you could equip it with a shield hardener module, this would need some strong negative effect to balance out how powerful your shields would need to be to survive in the sun. But I still think it would be beyond dope. And maybe we could build antimatter production stations inside the stars or in low orbit. It'd be sweet to have a sort of lucrative money making option like that.

[Calvin]

I like flying the big pots in games like vegastrike, where they are rather slow, hard to steer, but its nice for style and trade, if you manage not to explode in the next obstacle that shows up infront of you, dunno remember exactly but i think it was about 5 or 15 km stopping distance on slow speed
Turningspeed should be very slow too.

nice would be, when capships would get something like the front cannons in babylon 5, with no autotarget.
hardpoints maybe automated missile turret defences(3 on the sides, 1 on op/bottom) and assembly point turrets you can place(would like at least 13with the last one beeing a rear turret, like prior to last on: 4 on the sides and 2 on top/bottom), for other players(no autotarget than) to sit in, or automated too if noone is docked and using the turret.

for landing on a planet maybe its possible to set some numbers, that you need at least rank 5 thrusters and wings, to be able to not just be pulled in to the planet, and fall like a stone to the ground burning up in the atmosphere, or to launch from it(with ids 1, not making it impossible just very hard/timeconsuming with cheaper equipment), including some landing gears that you have to put capacity/assembly points into.

Turret count should be variable too, same with cargo slots.

In general i think the balance could be solved for capships with using the capacity and assembly points and for diversity purpose too.

getting resources in and out its kinda easy, your docked ship, that gets autodocked inside it, when you buy it/dock with it.
no tradeins, only capship for capship, so you can change form options.

Capships should be saved like stations, when the last one undocks/logs out, and stay ingame(players that logout still docked to a ship and log in, with the ship moved to somewhere else or destroyed, should be on the same position the capship was, but in their own ship(if possible)).

[StormWolf]

I think that capital ships would be a wonderful addition to the game. However they would function differently. In a couple of ways
First of all, they have to be able to be defeat-able by at least 2 pilots, the reason for this is to maintain balance. The main con of the cap ship would be that without a nav system, MDTS is useless, meaning that if a fighter brings your navigational system to critical level, you will be unable to lock onto enemies with missiles, turrets, whatever it is that the ship is armed with. The cap ship should be able to dock somewhere like at the bottom of a space station, and (I highly recommend this) should be invulnerable while at the bottom, and if it has to be lore friendly I would say it has reinforced shields. The reason is for this is because of the "fat ninja" tactic, where a smaller ship can dodge around while the owner of the cap ship is refueling, repairing, etc etc. The crew system should work as it does with normal ships, fee's wages, and they all have normal effects. The ship should NOT be able to strafe (IE, it can't move to the left or right, but instead must make a full turn). The inertia system would, however, have small effect with what is stated above, and could mainly be used for saving fuel, which would be important with cap ships. Another aspect, which would really boost the popularity of using one would be portable repairing for other ships and the selling of captured cargo. It could use the same programming as maybe a carrier where a player docks in the ship and is able to use such services. This would open up a whole new mechanic for players to use, setting their own prices and effectively making "trade routes" where they fly from one place to another gathering cargo and selling it to those they meet nearby. However, the ship SHOULD have imposed limitations while in combat, like maybe no small fighter repairing while in combat (maybe because the repair system is busy maintaining the ship?) Or maybe only one can be docked at the ship at a time? As stated previously the ship SHOULD have AI controlled cannons by default but should be able to be micromanaged by the player, every cannon should have a blind spot for balancing reasons, and maybe another cannon could cover that spot and if the other cannon is pre-occupied with a fighter that could present an opportunity for other fighters to get shots at the ship. I also think that there SHOULD be a military and a civilian set for both, as a beginning for cap ships I think it should be a military frame system so that everything is preset, then evolve it from there as you see fit.

I STRONGLY support the addition of cap ships and this is my take on it.
Thanks vice for all your time spent on the game and all your hardwork

[Busch]

Have always supported the idea of a Corvette-class, next-gen ship category. Haven't as yet come up with a game-balance and fairness determination, let alone applicability purpose that's not eventually an exploit. Trying not to loose sight of the fact that there's only just so much a solo pilot can do with so much of a ship and more probably, vapor-ware assets.....SP or MP scenarios not withstanding. Any code freaks out there ? What would be the game/server platform "overhead" for something like this Corvette-class mini-cap ship idea, in a broad-base, multi-game server platform, "global/applies every where-all-the-time" game-centric environment ? What's the profile "load" ? Where in the story line of the Evo-verse genre would it fit ?

[Marvin]

Where in the story line of the Evo-verse genre would it fit ?

Admiral.

[DaveK]

I wonder if Vice, in all his free time would write a third game: AA-II (Arvoch Admiral)

It would of course be absolutely nothing like the rest of the Evochron series of games, which is based around solo pilots (OK - you can have up to 4 crew who you don't get to order around!!) But it would be set in (at least part of) the Evoverse

Perhaps not

[Maarschalk]

Now that Capital ships are tougher to destroy is any one still doing the 5 waypoint missions that includes killing each CAP ship at each Way Point?
I stopped doing them because it is a waste of time and energy by your self. I think players who do not have the resources and or time in SP or MP will not do these missions any more!. The pay is less per Way Point for the resources needed. I can do the 3 Way Point missions/contracts some times with a lot of effort and loss of time and waste of credits, which I do not have much time and energy for to enjoy the game doing the Multi Waypoint missions. I have been sticking to the single Way Point Combat missions, they pay more and you need less resources per Way Point!......Maybe there could be some Multiple Waypoint patrol missions in the Warzones without Vonari Cap Ships!....

[-splosives-]

I've never seen a 5 waypoint mission with cap ships before, but I like to take out a cap ship every now and then, just because I can.

[Edited on 4-11-2013 by -splosives-]

[Marvin]

I only do the harder contracts when forced to. Lately, it's been SeeJay who forces me.

[Maarschalk]

I've never seen a 5 waypoint mission with cap ships before, but I like to take out a cap ship every now and then, just because I can.

[Edited on 4-11-2013 by -splosives-]

Try Arvoch Warzone of of Pearl System! There you regularly get 3 or 5 Waypoint missions which require you to kill each Vonari Cap ship at each Way Point before you can move to the next waypoint. I think the persons voting for tougher Cap ships never or seldom ran Multiple Way point missions involving destroying Cap ships at each Way Point! I used to run these missions all the time before the change to tougher Cap Ships, but now not any more!......

[DaveK]

I only do the harder contracts when forced to. Lately, it's been SeeJay who forces me.

[Maarschalk]

I only do the harder contracts when forced to. Lately, it's been SeeJay who forces me.

You don't have to do the Quests ya know!.....:P:P:P:P:P

[Marvin]

SeeJay uploads all my stuff to his website and, in return, I puzzle out his quests. Win-win all around.

[SeeJay]

SeeJay uploads all my stuff to his website and, in return, I puzzle out his quests. Win-win all around.

And I can't tell you enough how much I appreciate your help mate.

[INKED MICHAEL]

I've Just Started 4 WP MISSIONS From MY STATION IN TWZ (SP). EACH ONE HAS A VON CAP SHIP. It's Not like the Old Days When You Could just Park Behind the Thing out of FLAK RANGE and Target the SINGLE MISSILE TUBE At The Rear until You Destroyed The CAP SHIP.

I've Tried Getting Between the ENGINE NAY CELLS And Going GUNS, GUNS, GUNS but I'm Lucky if I'm able to get to the Third WP.

Usually I'm Killed Off by the CAP SHIP at WP 2, though I Must Say the AI WINGMAN Will Soften It Up if You Give them Enough Time.

Anyone know of a "Sweet Spot" to Sit and BLOW THE VON CAP SHIP OUT OF THE SKY or Has That Been Removed?

Any Help in Killing These Things would be GREATLY APPRICIATED! lol.







[Edited on 5-16-2013 by INKED MICHAEL]