Sticking to one ship is a missed gameplay opportunity

General discussion about anything related to Transcendence.
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I had thought about this simply in terms of switching between the existing playerships at different points in the game. In my view:

If players are given the option to switch ships at any point in the game, there should be a compelling reason to do so. Since right now the ships are balanced to be fun and playable, this would require a gameplay system wherein certain stretches of 2-4 systems have conditions that favor a certain kind of ship over others, and method whereby the player can get advance knowledge of conditions in the upcoming systems, either directly (e.g. Anton Nasser says "The next two systems are a war zone! The Dwarg have launched a major offensive against the Sung and so far only fast gunships that can outrun cnidocyst blasts and wind slavers have been able to get through the fighting!") or indirectly (upon entering the system you see a huge and busy Korolov facility and extensive cargo handling infrastructure, clearly this region of space is a major trading hub where a freighter pilot could make big profits.)

It should be possible to complete the game with any ship type, easier by making a few switches now and then, and easiest using only the starting ship types. "Unlockable" ships should present an additional challenge and be less conventionally "good" than the starting ships, rather than being upgrades. The Constellation is a good example- the playstyle is not something that would immediately intuitive to a new Transcendence player, and consequently it's only available to CC buyers, e.g. people who already understand the game well enough to pay money for an expansion.

I don't think there should be paid unlockables in the main game, though; only as expansion content. Anything that can be unlocked in Stars of the Pilgrim should be available to any player once unlocked.
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By late game the player flies a capital ship in all but sprite appearances though.
Heavy plasma cannon, ions turrets, thermo missiles, 400hp shields and armor, are basically what goes on the game's dreadnaughts and cruisers.
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sun1404
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The player do not have the advantages of real capital ships though: No linked-fire weapons, only four armor segments and not thirty-six, and less device slots. If they have also those, they'd be very overpowered.
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sun1404 wrote:…only four armor segments and not thirty-six…
 Also, no interior compartments to hold you for a little longer once the armor goes down. Granted, there aren’t currently any methods in vanilla for repairing interior damage, either, which makes having an actual capital ship something of a liability the longer you have it — particularly given that there are no current ways in vanilla of seeing how much damage the interior of a playership has been taken, either. I did recently cobble a mod together to add in a few items that can do interior repairs, including a patcher-arm-esque device, but even those mostly stopgap measures since I didn’t add interior repair capabilities to stations that can perform armor repairs which I should probably do at some point.
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AssumedPseudonym wrote:
sun1404 wrote:(...) interior repair capabilities to stations that can perform armor repairs which I should probably do at some point.
Interior compartments repair could finally set shipyards apart from regular stations

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pixelfck wrote:Interior compartments repair could finally set shipyards apart from regular stations
 …That’s bloody brilliant.
 Another possible shipyard-only feature, assuming ship transfers get green-lighted into vanilla, could include device/armor transfer from the old ship to the new one.
 While this might all seem somewhat off-topic from the original post, there definitely needs to be some infrastructure in place to take into account some of the issues involved with changing ship, including the possibility of capital playerships — particularly given that George himself weighed in a couple of pages ago expressing interest in the possibility.
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Currently, there is no way for a player to pilot a capital in standard game. If a mod adds capital ships for player to pilot, it should add some way to repair interior. (I added interior repair to shipyards in PSD once 1.5 made it possible.)
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PM wrote:If a mod adds capital ships for player to pilot, it should add some way to repair interior. (I added interior repair to shipyards in PSD once 1.5 made it possible.)
For that matter, players shouldn't pilot capital ships unless the ship is complimented by a full crew.
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Atarlost
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The player should never pilot a capital ship in Stars of the Pilgrim. Capital ships require crews and the player in SotP is a lunatic on a pilgrimage to the undiscovered country.
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Atarlost wrote:The player should never pilot a capital ship in Stars of the Pilgrim. Capital ships require crews and the player in SotP is a lunatic on a pilgrimage to the undiscovered country.
My Cabbage Corp mod includes several types of crew members, everyone should just make their capital ship mods dependant on my mod and add a little bit of code to prevent you from removing crew members unless you have more than some minimum number of them.

Also, there is nothing wrong with being an insane/fanatical ship captain while simultaneously being responsible for the lives of dozens/hundreds of crew members. You should try to be a little less bigoted.
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Atarlost wrote:The player should never pilot a capital ship in Stars of the Pilgrim. Capital ships require crews and the player in SotP is a lunatic on a pilgrimage to the undiscovered country.
Might be useful for filling out the high tier Fleet ranks, but that may be a stretch.
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Even one of the great-ancestors of Transcendence let the players upgrade their ships.

A game named "Empire!" published by the long-defunct company Firebird.

Sadly, I never made it to the point where you could get the upgrade (from your lowly Cub scout ship to the supposedly far superior Wolf attack ship).
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neogoliath wrote:Not having played too much, so I'm probably not familiar with the intentions of the community or the developer
:oops:
But I had hoped to play in a Charon frigate or Tripoli Destroyer, cuz those look cool
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From an engine perspective, every ship in the game should automatically be playable. There should be no need for <PlayerSettings> or any additional stats.

The ship control interface only needs a few extensions for capital ships, specifically a fire secondary and fire tertiary weapon. Everything else can be controlled using the existing interface.

With mouse support, there could also be manual turret control and true RTS-style autopilot for the heaviest ships.

Capital ships also need a new ship customization system. Perhaps something similar to PSD shipPoint system, but only changeable at the dock services screen.
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I like the idea of linked turrets being a major differentiating factor, perhaps that could be done with the slots themselves for some ships instead of manual fire control though? I'm just thinking that it might be easier to make something like a combination of the CLAW and and the IM90 where you can take weapons to somewhere (a shipyard maybe) to link them, and they become a new weapon of the same type that has multitarget abilities and takes up multiple slots, but can only be mounted in a special "linked weapon slot."

No clue if it would be easier to do that for a bunch of weapons than to add mouse controls, but just my first instinct.
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