Ship builds suggestion

[verbosity]

I had an idea the other night, I don't think this could be applicable for legends, and it might change the 'gamplay' of the game to much as it stands at the moment, but here it is:

Currently all ships have 5 crew quarters ( including your own quarters) . 5 equipment slots. Even a scout ship can have 5 cargo bays. and missile bays range from 2 to 8.

Why not have these as variables that you can change in the ship yard, for instance:

1 extra cargo bay = x assembly points
1 extra crew quarters x assembly points
etc etc.

Then you could have a talon with no crew quarters, very little cargo space( one or none) and say 4 equipment slots and 8 missile slots, of course this would also depend on your ship loadout.

This would also mean that you could have more 'tricked out options. Imagine a pheonix with 2 crew quarters ( for engineer and weapons) no cargo space, 8 missile bays and 7 equipment slots.

or a leviathian that can carry 10 cargo items?

This would give a greater ranges of ways to fit out your ship, but would also change the gameplay, which is why it might not be good for legends

[tha_rami]

I actually remember saying something about that. I'd love to see that. Remember my post in S.O., way back, about how I'd love to see the ship construction? We're getting close, tho'!

[mcmad]

a good idea, i like it.

[verbosity]

Originally posted by tha_rami
I actually remember saying something about that. I'd love to see that. Remember my post in S.O., way back, about how I'd love to see the ship construction? We're getting close, tho'!

I think I remember that, you suggested a few other things too iirc, I'm still not sure of being able to shoot chickens though........

[spelk]

I do like this idea, if it can be implemented in a balanced way. Its another level of customisation that would certainly expand the range of ship classes you could build.

Single fighters through to massive cargohold mining or trading barges.

[Edited on 21-2-2009 by spelk]

[Accountant]

I like this idea! It would be a nice way to get rid of the extra 10 assembly points I always seem to have. Not to mention that I would like to have more equipment slots and fewer crew stations (I don't really use crewmembers).

[Tucker]

I'd like to see extra hardpoints for X number of assembly points. I'd have stayed in the light civilian craft because I liked how they hanled but I needed more hardpoints

[Wasp89]

This evokes images of a certain highly modified YT-1300 freighter...

I think it's a great idea. It would certainly allow for higher specialization of current craft, and seem just the kind of thing that an engineering-savvy mercenary might do.

[Zenith]

I like the idea too, it would certainly broaden our customisation options and enable us to build a ship exactly suited to the role we have in mind.

[WeirdWill]

I really like the idea if the balancing could get well done. In addition the number of crewmen could possibly restricted to a specific frame class e.g. military 0, talon + pulsar 1, saber + raven 2 etc. to help balancing.

[tk7223]

I'm always in for more ship customization!...now where did I leave that hydrospanner....

[wolis]

Count me in as a vote for this.

If I were running a ship and had a vacant cabin for a weapons officer, I would cram it full of diamonds.

[reaper2040]

Great idea!

[MMaggio]

Gotta' admit, I like this one too.

[Cougar_DK]

What a great idea, that way one could make the ship a more personal/mission specific ship.

[mcmad]

any thoughts on this idea Vice?

[tha_rami]

Vice is most likely waiting for someone to throw in a counter-argument, to see if the resulting discussion leaves some interesting viewpoints. Either that, or he's working on the hangar/template thing first .

[Hopsalot]

I like it! It adds a bit of "Soloness". Visions of very nasty little ships are dancing in my head.

[Zenith]

Originally posted by tha_rami
Vice is most likely waiting for someone to throw in a counter-argument, to see if the resulting discussion leaves some interesting viewpoints. Either that, or he's working on the hangar/template thing first .

Vice is going to have his work cut out for him, the past few days have seen a veritable torrent of good ideas.

[verbosity]

Originally posted by tha_rami
Vice is most likely waiting for someone to throw in a counter-argument, to see if the resulting discussion leaves some interesting viewpoints. Either that, or he's working on the hangar/template thing first .

I think thats part of it

But I think its more this would/could/should not be something that be implemented in Evochron Legends, its such a big change it'd be near impossible to implement without disrupting the gameplay balance.

[tk7223]

Well, Vice seems to be a pretty clever programmer, I'm sure if he wants to put this in-he'll find a way. I'll be patient until he responds..he's got a lot on his plate right now from the looks of the forums.

P.S. Han Solo didn't build the Falcon, but he did mod it after he won it. He says so in SW ep4 ANH. Sorry, I'm a Star Wars fanatic.

[Vice]

Couple of points on an idea like this:

- Such a change would require a different profile template. Some changes like this are significant enough that a legacy system isn't very feasible. So players would have to start over on a profile to use the new design, something most players are probably not willing to do. So this pushes it more toward the direction of a sequel where such changes would not impact current players.

- Exceeding the current limits as an option for equipment or cargo means the current inventory console would no longer work. It would either need to be redesigned to support the higher and/or lower limits or have functions like slider bars added to categories with different range limits. Not something I would have much time for currently for such a fundamental change in UI operation.

- Yes, it would change the rules of the game in some ways, but I don't necessarily discount an idea because of this (certainly have had some ideas flamed for rule changing, such as weapon swapping in space, yikes! lol). What indicates if such changes would be good or not can be determined by the positive and negative effects it/they may have on gameplay overall. And at this point, that still seems to be a bit difficult to determine (see below).

- True benefits to gameplay seem fairly vague and as pointed out, does raise concerns of balance issues. Generally, such changes seem to trend toward just being able to do things like make a small ship into more of a missile boat or stacking more cargo (reducing the need for travel and reducing frequency of docking/inventory/market interaction). Such changes could also reduce the concept of design compromise with minimal sacrifice. For example, giving up a few crew slots to get a few more equipment slots lets you build a ship that can effectively do any equipment function... no more need to prioritize for stealth, repair, scanning, shielding, tractoring, or gunfire (keep in mind that you need one for a jump drive)... you could do all of it with one ship by just leaving out crew quarters. The 5 limit with more than 5 possible configuration options keeps prioritization in the design with potential role focus rather than scaling one category for another, which some players might view as unrelated factors anyway (see below).

- Getting a weapon hardpoint in exchange for a crew compartment (and vice versa) may be viewed as 'unrealistic' ship design. If a player could stuff a crew member in a missile tube, they probably would. But changing one for the other means the entire design of the ship becomes merely a transforming shell rather than a ship with purpose built systems in its design. Assembly points are designed to manage the space a ship offers for modular components, but not as a value for empty space inside a shell that can be transformed to do anything (and everything as the case may be in one or more categories by changing unrelated systems/capacities).

So those are a few issues that come to mind with such an idea. Still trying to work out concrete results for positive and negative gameplay, along with functional change requirements, for such alterations. I haven't commented before since I'm still trying to explore the idea from a variety of different angles and listen to comments from others about it.

[Tucker]

Originally posted by Vice
-
-
- Getting a weapon hardpoint in exchange for a crew compartment (and vice versa) may be viewed as 'unrealistic' ship design. If a player could stuff a crew member in a missile tube, they probably would. But changing one for the other means the entire design of the ship becomes merely a transforming shell rather than a ship with purpose built systems in its design. Assembly points are designed to manage the space a ship offers for modular components, but not as a value for empty space inside a shell that can be transformed to do anything (and everything as the case may be in one or more categories by changing unrelated systems/capacities).

.

Vice just to be clear I was never suggesting trading hardpoints for crew. I agree that would be unrealistitic. I envision the crew quarters as in the basic frame so I would not even have issues with smaller frames having fewer crew members so you had to choose which crew to have in beginner ships .I would also have no issue to having to have an empty crew quaters to take on a passenger as the interior of the ship would only have so much room and I may or may not be able to carry passengers in the cargo bay ( if I could they certainly would not pay as much to ride there )

I would be in favor of changing hardpoints for assembly points or an equipment slot. To me this would balance as I would have top have a say lower class engine or shields to make up the assembly points. the balance of course would have to come from the number of points it would take. From there its really an issue of weight/balance and structural hardpoints . And the weight issues of course would only be an issue in gravity. The amount of stress in space put on a hardpoint by a missle would be signifacntly less than the stresses of manuevering thrusters and engines that move the mass of the ship put on a frame. The inertial stress of a missle pod would also be significantly less than that of items with larger mass like a cargo bay bolted to the ship. In truth I am surprised that small frames do not have a peanlty for having many cargo bays and would not expect a samll fast ship with 4 or 5 crrgo bays to be able to be also heavily armed I could see a fast single cargo bay or even half sized cargo bay, heavily armed ship having uses. thats not an option and so this game still has no frame that makes a great small well armed courier for messages or small cargos that absolutely have to get somewhere fast or even a good light fast heavily armed smugglers ship. I enjoyed being a smuggler in privateer and trying not to be close enough to the law that they could scan my cargo and come after me. I am hoping verb will have some contraban/smuggling missions on his server

Having it take an equipment slot in my mind would be the same thing If I traded a shield boost or a repair system for more firepower it could be balanced . Equuipment slots do seem to be inside the ship and that may be problematic from a realism point of view and so I may well lose that argument. Assembly points are outside the ship as I can see the shields, fuel tanks, wings etc as they are added to the outside of the basic frame.

We've had the discussion before and it comes down to how people envision the missles. Some see thame as mounted on the wings like atmospheric aircraft. If that is the case you could even tie number of hardpoints to certain wings and make a balance. I have always seen it more as torpedo tubes on a submarine So I throw out the wings as brainstormng only. Though I cannot really see how they both could not work on the same ship with tubes on the frame and on the wings. As was decided in renegades missles could not be reloaded in flight either way ( ,as you mentioned many will remember the long renegades thread on if we should be able to take missles out of the cargo bay and put them into use as a weapon . I did not bring it back up but since it was brought up I will comment on it I was one who argued that they should be able with a fair time penalty to be reloaded just as a submarine could reload tubes. the only way I could rationalize not being able to do that was if the cargo bays were external and not accessable from the ship in flight or the tubes were externally loaded only and not accessible in flight which would be a plausible design flaw. both of these actually support the plausibilty of trading one outside non accessable from the inside component for another at a repair station)

Human nature as it is I could even see people overloading thier ships capacities ( how many of us have seen a car so heavily loaded the front wheels almost come off the ground) and that causing random unpredicted breakdowns or even casuing a system or component to be damaged to the point of not being able to be repaired. I am not sure that would ever be possible to program into a game. But its an interesting concept. I cannot help hearing Malcom Renyolds voice here saying "did something just fall off my ship, was that the primary buffer panel ?" It would be interesting to have certain illegal or unapproved modification only be accessible in certain places by unscrupulous bases that you had to earn faction with bwefore they would even consider working on your ship but again thats probably a programming nightmare.

I fully understand though if none of this is practical to put in this game and I agree completely that I would not want to have start a profile over unless there were clear earthshattering benefits.

Even without any of these changes I enjoy and will continue to enjoy legends its a great game, and in legends the availablitly of military ships has filled a void that I personally felt in renegades with the limits on civilian ships thaty was to have a fast light well armed ship. I am flying and avenger now to see how it does but I fully expect I will go back to the evoch c as it fits my personal style most. And I thank you for all the hard work you do on the game and your constant fixes and updates



[Edited on 2-23-2009 by Tucker]

[mcmad]

i have already voiced an affirmative to this but now i feel i need to say a little bit more.

first of all, respect to Vice for 1. creating this, 2, allowing us to influence it, 3, coming up with a reasoned arguement and details of the implications.

i liked this idea because the thought of trading some assembly points (and therefore speed/agility) to put an extra equipment slot in (or two) . or maybe cargo slots.

typically i expect the usual loadout to be
shield boost
canon relay
repair module
tractor beam
engine

a cargo loadout could lose some of these for extra cargo slots, and lose some assembly points to gain even more. the resulting ship could carry more cargo , but slower, less agile, with weaker shields, no repair module.

a speed layout could lose some slots and gain assembly points for a better engine

a fighter wants the best of both worlds and may tweak his slots to lose the tractor beam in order to gain that step-up in engine/wing.

a pirate would want to gain a cargo scanner

an explorer wants to refuel and repair miles from anywhere, and have a huge fuel tank. inertial speed isnt the issue, jump distance is.

I am not sure about trading crew slots, but passengers in cargo bays is a well-visited idea.

my thoughts would be to fix 1equipment slot=x assembly points and allow the total exchange to be no more than 25-30% of standard assembly point level

a lot of people talk about balance and that is a good thing. but sometimes the reality is your cargo hauler doesnt stand a whelk's chance in a supernova against the battle-optimized.

[verbosity]

Originally posted by Vice
So this pushes it more toward the direction of a sequel where such changes would not impact current players.

yeah maybe I should have more clear in my first post,

Generally, such changes seem to trend toward just being able to do things like make a small ship into more of a missile boat or stacking more cargo (reducing the need for travel and reducing frequency of docking/inventory/market interaction). Such changes could also reduce the concept of design compromise with minimal sacrifice.

I agree with that, but shouldn't a leviathian be able to carry more cargo than a talon can? and would being able to have a couple extra missile hardpoints on a saber be such a bad thing if there was a cost attached in both credits and equipment?

For example, giving up a few crew slots to get a few more equipment slots lets you build a ship that can effectively do any equipment function... no more need to prioritize for stealth, repair, scanning, shielding, tractoring, or gunfire (keep in mind that you need one for a jump drive)... you could do all of it with one ship by just leaving out crew quarters.

hence my balancing point. maybe 1 crew quarter could equal a cargo bay, but it would take 4 for an aditional equipment slot. I would think that if balanced properly it would be possible to have such a ship, but not by just removing crew quarters, something like that would need a large frame, and other sacrifices ( reduced missile capacity for one).


maybe an alternative option could be a larger range of ships in the shipyard which had these changes built-in, this would allow the additional flexibility yet restrict it in a way to reduce any negative effect on gameplay.

[Edited on 2-23-2009 by verbosity]