I don't know if anyone is currently working on a mod to get played controlled Capships, but I certainly hope someone is. Is it possible with the Legacy Engine? I do recall asking Vice about this before with Mercenaries, kinda sad not to see it make it into the game, though I'm pretty stoked about the groundside base building. Any chances of a first person/EVA mod to walk around our base babies? Terran Walker always seemed a bit of a clunky option.
If the question is how to implement, unlocked third person camera with the current interface, turrets track towards the designated aimed area, ship follows for steering. And instead of worrying about docking the things with stations, why not player ships dock with the capital ships, and assume control in that manner. Fuel and cargo could also be transferred in this manner, trading between your cap and your 'fighter' ship. And for more expedient transfer, perhaps the capital ships mining beam can suck fuel out of stations.
Hey on the sucking fuel out of stations note, can we get that for fighter ships too, and make it an act of thievery if you aren't allied to the station in question. No no no, stay on topic, cap ships! Maybe multiple people docked to one capship allows them to control weapon/shield power and shield power balance, and afterwards automatically assigns turrets?
And their purpose? Deep space exploration. Right Vice? There's stuff out there beyond all the known mapped stuff right? I mean if no then I say focus on making the capship combat fun, and make them a money/fun time sink. But honestly? Given the planet side bases and such, I mean, do those have defences? Can we blow them up? Can we make capitals that raid/assault enemy or player bases, and then a small range to protect them?
So maybe, Exploration Capital.
Carrier Capital
Cruiser Capital
Destroyer Capital
Frigate Capital
Or just make it a modular system like that that already exists, and 'class' them by which modules they have fitted.
The only real problem with em is for them to be balanced against ships as they currently exist, they'd have to be glass licking slow, and their weapons fire would have to be pretty slow, otherwise they'd be the modus apparandi for taking out other players in their 'normal' ships. So they'd have to be slow enough that chasing such a ship would be pointless, and well shielded enough that a single player couldn't hope to take it out as a target of opportunity. They'd need to well outfit some sort of bomber style of ship to shieldbust it and get to the meat of the hull, or roll in a group bringing enough torpedo type weapons to shield bust it between them, and manually lasercut it into chunks of oblivion.
Also capable of jumping between systems without the need of the warp gate in a reasonable number of jumps.(10?) (Using whatever wholley unreasonable amount of fuel that would actually take?) Mayhaps give them the ability to fit a module like the scanning satellite already ingame, though geared towards finding larger sources than other player ships. (Other normal class player ships.)
Realize I'm necroing myself a but, but I've seen some players punting the idea around in other topics, so I thought I'd give it an official home again. If you have idea's, or full systems to contribute, then please post them here. It does look like there are working tools again to get models into the game, so I may make a few modular pieces and throw together an example of a modular capship idea.
I very much doubt that it would be possible to mod the game so you can fly a cap ship.
I think that Vice's creative dedication is to single pilot small ships - cap ship control would be a whole different game - literally
You've already hit upon a major issue - how to prevent a cap ship from being an unstoppable killer; if you neuter them too much then they really aren't cap ships any more ... just very big merc ships
Have you looked through the forum for the previous discussions about player controlled cap ships? The suggestion comes up quite frequently and usually follows a similar path to reach the reason why there aren't player flyable cap ships in any Starwraith game. IF Vice is to be persuaded I suspect you would need to come up with some fresh reasons, rather than it'd be cool to fly a cap ship with a bunch of friends I'd be interested to hear new ideas, though.
I did provide some suggestions, it doesn't really help me through if a global moderator hops into my topic, acts dismissive and as though I have no brain and have no rational thought process to present. Did you even read the idea's I presented? Your post certainly gives me the impression you didn't. As for how to balance them against normal small merc ships, I'd link their weapons capacity to drive class, and between those two it'll decide the type of ship you were building if it were a modular system.
A frigate would have the weakest weapons, however the weapons speed would be high enough that it'd be a threat to fighters. Escort ship. A Cruiser and on upwards, would have stronger slower weapons linked to their more powerful drive reactors. Destroyers would serve the same purpose that do IRL essentially, lightly armored and not quite as fast as a frigate, they'd have the largest slowest capital type weapons, and be aimed at combating large ships specifically.
I think the acceleration for small ships might need to be retuned. (Increased acceleration by 20-30% across the board.) To make room for the Capships to be fast enough to not bore you to death while you're trying to get around.
Capital ships weapons, for the record, as well as their speed and maneuverability, would need to be carefully handled. The weapons would need to have a projectile speed slow enough that fighters can just dodge, while other capital ships trying to dodge or maneuver find it a challenge to avoid the fire. Only something like a Frigate would be dangerous towards a standard commander really, because its weapons fire would specifically be halfway between capital ship projectile speed and fighter ship projectile speed. Making them the 'escort' ships, with comparatively lighter shielding than any capital ship, save for the Destroyer.
As for purposes, I included two in my post. Base Defence/Assault, against other player bases. As a raid to fill up your capship with whatever resources, or to fight for territory. If there's a lot of value to be had in raiding in this manner, then hopefully we'd see it happening. And have a few commanders come in in standard fighters to try to stop you, probably with some type of torpedo spam that would actually threaten an assaulting capital ship. Though, if they tried to assault with only a Destroyer or Frigate, you could probably skip those and just endure skillfully until you secure the win.
The second one I mentioned, was Deep Space Exploration. Give them the ability to use a module or scan tool similar to the deployable station one, and thus they become the most ideal platform for exploring deep space. It'd also be an excellent respawn point in multiplayer, if you had extra ships stored on it. At which point, it would simply be defending a specific area you define as a respawn point. And I'd love to see them intrasystem jump capable. Let me jump between systems in a capital ship, say 10-15 jumps worth between systems for a capship. This would also give the ability to get some encounters going in the deep space between systems, or the deep space outside of the known galaxy.
Running across an alien battlecruiser smashing a tourist vessel to bits, saving it, taking on its 400+ passengers and taking them back to civilized space for a rescue fee from their government would be cool. Likewise the military spec ones could be used in civilized space to look for things like alien listening posts, or enemy listening posts, and move to and destroy them. Or to find and destroy fleet resources outside of a system in active combat.
Heck we can't destroy stations, make them station destroyers, capable of modifying the game universe itself in multiplayer, to really push some player vs player war to the ultimate front. Also, I really wouldn't mind the whole station building and base building on planets thing, be a capship reliant endeavor. Should need a capital constructor to make that stuff, not just a construction module. But, as with this entire post, that's just my opinion.
primedragoon wrote:I did provide some suggestions, it doesn't really help me through if a global moderator hops into my topic, acts dismissive and as though I have no brain and have no rational thought process to present. Did you even read the idea's I presented?
Every member of the forum has the right to make comments on any proposition, as long as those comments don't violate Board rules. And it's not as if Dave thought you have no brain ... it's more a question of whether or not you realize just how difficult it would be, programming-wise, to implement most of what you propose. Especially since Vice has, on a number of occasions, stated (as Dave mentioned above) that Evochron games are intended to center on the piloting of smaller ships.
Also, when 'gimme' threads are posted, there will often be a point/counter-point and pro/con discussion that takes place. Especially if it's on a topic that's already been discussed a lot in the past (those past reasons/points will often be brought up again in a renewed discussion/debate). It doesn't mean anyone is claiming you have no brain or rational thought process. Discussions/debates should be kept civil, on topic, and relevant.
I was going to write up a big post, then realized it was completely unnecessary.
By far the biggest question that requires a compelling answer for this to consider becoming a real thing outside of settling all the minutae (of which there is a LOT), is does adding capital ships allow players to accomplish or do things that they currently cannot with the existing game mechanics?
For exploration, the answer is no.
For general combat, the answer is no outside of adding new mechanics (raids), which have questions of their own that require answers.
For simulating space flight, not really. If I drove a capital, I'd jump everywhere to save time.
For PvP/territory play, no. You can most definitely destroy stations right now and I'd heartily argue that the main issue is a lack of players, not firepower.
For trading, mining, running contracts and other peaceful activities, no unless you allow for massive cargo holds. That'll open up a lot more balance questions.
I do understand why you'd want to see capitals become flyable: because they're big, powerful and cool looking. Unfortunately, I personally can't see any solid reason for looking at the idea again right now. I can, however, get behind modifying the NPC capital ships to better suit a specific tactical role in the wide world as I figure they're a little same-y currently.
Oh no no, that's exactly the kind of discussion I'd love to have Vice. The only issue I had with the opening sentence of my retort was his post was worded as though I hadn't already provided some suggestions. That makes it sound to me like he read the first two lines of the post, said in his head 'yeah I've seen this before, encourage him to give up and move on' made his post and moved on. Sorry if you two object, but being dismissive in that manner when you're in a position of commonly recognized authority is rude, and usually also quite effective at curbing the first individuals point/purpose/or desire. This isn't a 'gimme' thread either. This is a 'This would be terribly nice and I'm not the only one who'd really love to see it', and if Vice doesn't put it into the game I'm not gonna go all up in arms and stop playing. I'll keep looking for a game to eventually feed my need to pilot -any- navel vessel in its network, hopefully with and against other players. Which, again, doesn't necissarily mean I'd stop playing Evochron, or that its a requirement for me to continue to exist in this dimension. I'll slowly probably outfit a exploration ship and explore the Evoverse as much as a can, that's its best value to me at the moment.
Elite has much better dogfighting combat to satisfy that itch for me, its real issue is its pretty crazy empty universe when you actually go out to explore. Most of the push of exploration is finding stuff that doesn't exist yet ingame. So, I'm betting that the exploration here will help me scratch an itch that jumping into a system and honking my horn doesn't. And I won't back down from a fight, but I'm not gonna go looking for one with other players either. There isn't really any reason I could think of to do so. Cargo space is pretty limited and I doubt people would just stay online all the time mining valuable resources and such. If they're online, they're probably tooled up to explore with buddies, and prepared to deal with a fight. So, piratey pirate isn't pirating there. As a general rule they tend to try to attack the weak and helpless, and take their stuff. (Preferably without killing them so I could do it again.)
I'd like to see capitals attacking and destroying other installations, especially online, because it would create a fun dynamic that forces you to fight to defend valuable systems and your own valuable resource stations and bases. I'd love to see the war interaction of Capitals, Fighters, Bases, and Stations. That'd be awesome, honestly I think quite a number of people are looking for that right now. Elite Dangerous has been flooded with new players who are sadly leaving just as quickly, because the game has less exploratory depth than NMS does. And its failure is what prompted the boost in numbers.
I do realize that there'd be a good deal of work involved with capital ships. Wish I could help. If he decides to do it, then I freely volunteer to provide ship models for whatever classes he decides to include, or modules if he decides to implement a modular system. Sadly I have zero programming experience, and I doubt he'd want me to touch his baby if I did anyways, so that's the best I could offer.
And if you want to give a list of counterpoints for 'why this should not be' I'm pretty sure I can field solutions for them. Or at least potential solutions.
Can't buy a capship because it won't fit out of the dock? Capship constructor module!
Can't refuel the capship because its to big to dock? Mining beam gas harvest from the station!
Can't trade with the station because its to big to dock? Trading window! Like ship to ship type, but capship to station?
Can't think of a purpose? Base Assault, Deep Space Exploration, Carriers of extra ships for players!
Deep space encounters for cap ships jumping between systems!
Can't think of how to add them? Modify the modular ship system!
Create a second instance that allows you to build a modular capship in the stations shipyard, then uses the constructor to place it in space.
Replace beam weapons with a secondary kind of anti fighter pulse weapon. Put emission points for said weapons on the 'hull' of the ship, requiring these to remain clear to fire at targets.
The pulse weapons would be the anti capital ship weapons.
How fast each of these would move would depend on the engine type the ship fitted. Larger engines/reactors provide more power but slower packets.
The frame type would define the class and base armor.
The 'wings' would likely become an armor grid, for which the class and mass would effect your maneuverability and bonus armor.
And the Reflector would work based on the overall mass build of the vessel, making the largest heaviest vessels the most soaky and the lightest the most boomy.
Regardless, they shouldn't be hard for a Commander to just run away from if they aren't outfitted to deal with it. And if they are outfitted to deal with it, then it should be highly challenging for something like a Cruiser or a Carrier, though only because you'd need to be fully outfitted with Torps to bring the shields down and then take half and age to evaporate their health. For a Frigate like, half or less the amount of torps. For a destroyer, a quarter, and you could bring its shields down and destroy it with determined skilled fire. The frigate would be the most technically challenging, since it would be the only one with turrets with really speedy enough projectiles to make more than occasional passing contact.
Not saying that anti fighter defences should be useless on the other classes, but more appropriate for fending off lower class frames. Also, if at all possible, effective ranges in atmosphere for capital class weapons should be reduced to basically knife fighting ranges. So you'd have to get real close to assault a base that's planetside, and it'd be an even more fun and dynamic dogfight in atmosphere because of the capship there taking up space, its proximity to the player base, as well as whoever all if flying around trying to defend this thing.
As a side note, being able to hire NPC fighters and assign them to defend these things would probably be a good idea were this implemented. Otherwise all people be up n setting capships to defend their bases. (Not that that also wouldn't be a cool target to take out with a fighter/bomber wing before bringing in the heavy base cracking stuff getting guns.)
EDIT - A lack of players is a lack of firepower. If you don't have enough people, you put more guns on one thing to accomplish it. Tanks are a good example of this evolutionary concept.
For exploration, the suggestions I'm making would imo make exploration more accessible and fun. As for jumping it around system all the time, to save time, how is that different from what we already do? More-over jumping for capitals would either work differently, or just be OH MY GOD more expensive due to the amount of fuel to mass ratio for a jump no? So you might even want to 'not' jump casually around in it.
In reference to the raid mechanics you mentioned, the current inclusion of capital ships in the game is kinda weak as it is. I'd love to see them diversified and see some more dynamic combats between humans and aliens. I'd actively advocate doing away with most things currently involving a capital ship and replace and enhance the new options with the modular or militaristic systems.
As it is currently, you seem to either be saving or destroying a capital ship. With a modular system, there could be missions to repair them as well, missions to install new components potentially. To remove and transport experimental components, which you could then potentially steal to get someone real mad at you.
For trading and mining, I don't see why the capital ship can't be a storehouse and you ferry goods or mine materials and use it as a mobile storage platform. Heck, you could even make trading and mining more exciting, by including the possibility of an enemy capship or pirate attempting to take all your swag booty mineral loot or trade goods, while you're trying to ferry them or mine from the belt and your ship is maybe not in such a great position to be maneuvering around an asteroid field.
And for the territory comment, I refer back to my more firepower comment.
To make a man better than a bowman, we made rifles. Called em riflemen.
To give a man the power of multiple rifle men, we gave him an automatic rifle. Now that one man has the firepower of many men.
So, pass us some nukes to take out those stations, or maybe some cap ships?
But if numbers currently make it unattainable or uncommon, then we should simulate more power. MOAR POWER!
Could you hire a big enough NPC wing to take one of these on solo? I have no idea, I would say probably but I've no idea how many NPC's you can have winged on you.
You bring up some important points relating to capital ships that kind of illustrate both the potential challenges as well as the potential relevancy problems associated with the concept (as touched on earlier). Aside from the biggest obstacle (that is a design preference/focus of mine for my game), what you list follows a similar pattern as with past discussions. That is, capital ships must be something bigger and grander than just having them for the sake of flying them. For example, they also need to function as small ship ferry tugs, cargo haulers, storage bases, multi-crew starships, station assault platforms, vast turret arrays, modular/piece construction systems, etc... just to list a few things. And once things start to go in those directions, it often ventures way outside of what I want Evochron to be. If flying was the main/only interest, it might be an ok fit to at least be able to dock with one and take flight command of it, just for the space flight sim element of it. But when all of the other nuances and gameplay aspects are expected, it tends to become something very different likely better suited to a different space game approach.
Out of curiosity, have you seen and played Fractured Space? If so, what do you think of its flight and combat gameplay mechanics specifically for capital ships?
Yeah I own fractured space actually, and I do enjoy its combat mechanics, though I seem to recall a lack of ability to roll the ship, which is annoying. Especially since those vessels do take location based damage, like having weak underhull armor, or weak side armor. So you really do want to roll, but it forces you to position yourself over, under, or to the side of your target manually. That one gripe aside, it is a lot of fun.
What I started playing it I wanted to compare it to Dreadnaught right away, but sadly it lacks the component wherein your main ship getting taken out more than 5 or so times sticks you into a fighter, to help as best you can in a fighter role. Another similar system to Fracture Space and Dreadnaught is Star Conflict. It essentially works the same way, but you have the ability to roll. Its basic ship classes are also Interceptor, Fighter, and Frigate. Where-as Fractured Space focuses more on the Capital Content, and Star Conflict has about 2 destroyers per race, so I think 6.
If we're talking acceleration and manner of flight for capital ships, Fractured Space would be a better fit, though obviously you'd need to be able to roll. The Frigate from Star Conflict would be a good example of the gap bridge between the small ship and capital ships, and a good Escort ship that itself is prey to Interceptors. Their are some aspects I do take issue with though, like capital ships with laser mounted repair beams repairing other capital ships from kilometers away. That stuff is just crazy. I'd love to see a repair beam on smaller craft for such things though, it'd made more sense for a small maneuverable ship to repair another ship in close range.
" For example, they also need to function as small ship ferry tugs, cargo haulers, storage bases, station assault platforms, vast turret arrays, modular/piece construction systems, etc"
Store ships in the cargo slots, double clicking on it deploys it with you as the pilot? Works together to combine the workload of cargo hauler and carrier? I assume some bases can already store stuff for you, but the capital ship could do that just by having cargo space right? As for station assault platforms, and vast turret arrays, well I for one don't expect a crazy vast turret array. I'd want a small number of weapons effective to their purpose. Tracking a hail of fire is crazy, plus wasteful in space. I'd probably say have it basically the same as it is for the fighters. Just, instead of I can only fire two weapon types forwards, there'd be emission points on the frame.
Say for a frigate, one on top, one on the bottom, on on the front, and one on the back. So at any time, the frigate can fire from which-ever emission points have a line of sight on the target, and most commonly there'd probably be 2. And with a cruiser maybe 4, carriers splitting the difference and Destroyer frames having forward style mounts like they are currently.
Admittedly though, this is a lot of work that I totally can't expect you to do if I can't get your intellect hooked into enjoying solving the 'Capship Problem'.
And if you're wondering why I'm not just playing either of those games, well, They're very confined. Only Star Conflict has an open world of any type, and its so railrod hard difficult its obvious they're trying to force you to buy premium ships. And Fractured Space, which I picked up on a whim, is going to be a FTP game, if it isn't already, that will likely ultimately have a similar pay to win dynamic present.
You have like everything except capital ships. The only thing aside from that you don't have is first person combat against other marines planetside. I'm not terribly fussed about that. As cool as it would be, I suspect that Elite Dangerous is going to get around to some gun slinging eventually. What Elite Dangerous is not going to be getting is capital ships. We have a hard enough time getting more ships. Ascent - The Space Game is another pretty cool little offering by a one man developer recently. I'd check that out, might give you some idea's.
Pay attention to the gas giant skimming! I was so happy! A game that finally had a feature I've always griped about! More interesting stellar body interactions! Pass me some stardiving next! Hehe, maybe. You can get out of your ship and walk around in that game on planets and such as well, though that feature is a bit lackluster at the moment and I can't look up and down in first person.
Docking with capital ships (acting like a station with just a whole lot less stuff onboard) and being able to hire them as part of a fleet for offensive or defensive missions would be quite cool...especially for a station assault.
There is a pretty big lack of defending or assaulting stations....and now that they are so strong, no real weaponry to take them out.
The increase in station resilience made sense......but that was on multiplayer servers where people were unimpressed with building in vain. Now we have a situation where multiplayer has died off considerably......so the gameplay impact to their destruction would be minimal.
primedragoon wrote:I did provide some suggestions, it doesn't really help me through if a global moderator hops into my topic, acts dismissive and as though I have no brain and have no rational thought process to present. Did you even read the idea's I presented? Your post certainly gives me the impression you didn't. As for how to balance them against normal small merc ships, I'd link their weapons capacity to drive class, and between those two it'll decide the type of ship you were building if it were a modular system.
A frigate would have the weakest weapons, however the weapons speed would be high enough that it'd be a threat to fighters. Escort ship. A Cruiser and on upwards, would have stronger slower weapons linked to their more powerful drive reactors. Destroyers would serve the same purpose that do IRL essentially, lightly armored and not quite as fast as a frigate, they'd have the largest slowest capital type weapons, and be aimed at combating large ships specifically.
I think the acceleration for small ships might need to be retuned. (Increased acceleration by 20-30% across the board.) To make room for the Capships to be fast enough to not bore you to death while you're trying to get around.
Capital ships weapons, for the record, as well as their speed and maneuverability, would need to be carefully handled. The weapons would need to have a projectile speed slow enough that fighters can just dodge, while other capital ships trying to dodge or maneuver find it a challenge to avoid the fire. Only something like a Frigate would be dangerous towards a standard commander really, because its weapons fire would specifically be halfway between capital ship projectile speed and fighter ship projectile speed. Making them the 'escort' ships, with comparatively lighter shielding than any capital ship, save for the Destroyer.
As for purposes, I included two in my post. Base Defence/Assault, against other player bases. As a raid to fill up your capship with whatever resources, or to fight for territory. If there's a lot of value to be had in raiding in this manner, then hopefully we'd see it happening. And have a few commanders come in in standard fighters to try to stop you, probably with some type of torpedo spam that would actually threaten an assaulting capital ship. Though, if they tried to assault with only a Destroyer or Frigate, you could probably skip those and just endure skillfully until you secure the win.
The second one I mentioned, was Deep Space Exploration. Give them the ability to use a module or scan tool similar to the deployable station one, and thus they become the most ideal platform for exploring deep space. It'd also be an excellent respawn point in multiplayer, if you had extra ships stored on it. At which point, it would simply be defending a specific area you define as a respawn point. And I'd love to see them intrasystem jump capable. Let me jump between systems in a capital ship, say 10-15 jumps worth between systems for a capship. This would also give the ability to get some encounters going in the deep space between systems, or the deep space outside of the known galaxy.
Running across an alien battlecruiser smashing a tourist vessel to bits, saving it, taking on its 400+ passengers and taking them back to civilized space for a rescue fee from their government would be cool. Likewise the military spec ones could be used in civilized space to look for things like alien listening posts, or enemy listening posts, and move to and destroy them. Or to find and destroy fleet resources outside of a system in active combat.
Heck we can't destroy stations, make them station destroyers, capable of modifying the game universe itself in multiplayer, to really push some player vs player war to the ultimate front. Also, I really wouldn't mind the whole station building and base building on planets thing, be a capship reliant endeavor. Should need a capital constructor to make that stuff, not just a construction module. But, as with this entire post, that's just my opinion.
Please accept my apology ... I was posting in my capacity as a player who has enjoyed the discussions and suggestions aired on the forum over the last 7 years and enjoyed the result of many being instigated by Vice. I certainly didn't mean to sound dismissive.
I did read your post and enjoyed it. I was only saying that I don't think the modding system is able to create flyable cap ships and that requests for flyable cap ships is raised fairly regularly and has been since I first discovered Legends. I was suggesting - due to experience of being part of many discussions about 'things we'd like to see' - that Vice can be persuaded to change his mind if new perspectives are offered. One that springs to mind is the IND faction.
I've just browse through this interesting topic.
Sorry in advance If I tell something already told.
Having the possibility to control a capital ship could be very cool ^^.
To me, the interest of controlling a capital ship could be to evolve the role of the player in the game. He or she will become like a commander more than a captain or a pilote, using some mechanics of the actual gameplay but on another scale.
He could need to hire a number of specific crew to be able to control a capital ship, and the variables of the capacities of the crew influence your performances to control the ship. Due to the size of a C.ship, I think we can't pilot it like the other ships. So the player role might be more to lead and give orders/priorities to drive it and he could transport and lead smaller ships. The interest could be to have a role more "strategic ".
the other interest could be a multicrew gameplay, like in Artemis spaceship bridge simulator for the multiplayers. but this is another story ^^
Can we make capitals that raid/assault enemy or player bases, and then a small range to protect them?
