Maybe there's already been a few posts about this, I'm not sure, I haven't been around long enough to know about them yet.
Anyhow, I'm looking for ideas for player ships that will alter the way the game is played. The default ships provide a pretty basic spectrum: you can have a a big fat cargo ship with little weapon support, a small fast gunship with lots of weapons support and little cargo space, or the yacht which is capable of going either way but not to such an extreme.
A couple of ideas for expanding the user's selection with new ships that must be played differently might be:
1. Small fast wimpy ship with more cargo than the Wolfen.
2. Large slow warship with less cargo than the freighter.
Those two are obvious. Some other ideas, some of which I'm sure are used elsewhere:
3. A stealth vessel, comes with stealth armor and minimal armament/cargo space.
4. A black market fighter that comes with chip/smuggling hold.
5. A black market freighter that comes with chip/smuggling hold.
6. An explorer ship with no weapons support at all, but fair cargo and lots of equipment slots. Comes with several ICX turrets. The player would have to rely on autons and allies for defense.
7. A standard mining ship that comes with all the necessary mining equipment.
8. Solar ship that comes with everything it needs to glean power from the sun. Any way to keep it from shedding its solar equipment and becoming a standard ship?
I've also thought that changing the way the armor is setup on a ship might shake things up a bit. A ship with an excessively exposed front end may take a lot more damage there, requiring heavy or reinforced armor at the front, while a ship with a little-exposed rear armor segment might encourage the player to equip more functional armor such as solar armor there.
Anyone else have ideas for ship designs that will encourage different gameplay styles?
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I hope in the future the game supports more styles of play instead of essentially requiring all ships to be combat vessels. I'd like to make a fortune buying/selling/mining cargo with a relatively defenseless ship and hire support fighters to protect me throughout my journey. Go to Korolov and pay for some fighter escorts instead of signing on to be one.
Player Ship Concepts?
A lot of those can either be built on the standard ships or are nonviable.
1. The game engine doesn't really support this because of the way maneuverability is handled. You'll find that when you load that cargo hold your ship will handle like the freighter anyways.
2. This is a viable ship concept, but may not be balanced.
3. Having stealth early is overpowered, but once you get past St. K you can have stealth on a ship with excellent armament or cargo space and this ship becomes drastically underpowered.
4/5. Same problem as with stealth, but the BM ID and hold are available even earlier and the ship loses its purpose.
6. Not a viable ship. Autons cannot win you the game. Even if more powerful autons were introduced the auton AI would make this extremely subject to luck. fake difficulty is bad.
7. Again, you can easily get standard mining equipment in Eridani so what's the point?
8. Not enforceable, and if it were enforceable it would not be viable. Solar equipment doesn't scale.
1. The game engine doesn't really support this because of the way maneuverability is handled. You'll find that when you load that cargo hold your ship will handle like the freighter anyways.
2. This is a viable ship concept, but may not be balanced.
3. Having stealth early is overpowered, but once you get past St. K you can have stealth on a ship with excellent armament or cargo space and this ship becomes drastically underpowered.
4/5. Same problem as with stealth, but the BM ID and hold are available even earlier and the ship loses its purpose.
6. Not a viable ship. Autons cannot win you the game. Even if more powerful autons were introduced the auton AI would make this extremely subject to luck. fake difficulty is bad.
7. Again, you can easily get standard mining equipment in Eridani so what's the point?
8. Not enforceable, and if it were enforceable it would not be viable. Solar equipment doesn't scale.
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Aeonic
- Militia Commander
- Posts: 469
- Joined: Sun Jun 14, 2009 1:05 am
- Location: Designing his dream ship.
Which is roughly the equivalent of giving each ship infinite slots for everything, right?
Well I still need to give my new ships some stats, and I'd like to make them something beyond just another cookie-cutter gunship.
Well I still need to give my new ships some stats, and I'd like to make them something beyond just another cookie-cutter gunship.
How about a ship that uses cyber attack items?
maxWeapons=1
Of course it would require custom device with Invoke scripts.
The cyber weapons could drop shields, device damage, maybe shpOrderHold, you could have the target's reactor and overload it, or at the top level take over the enemy's ship and they begin attacking your enemies for you.
How about an Organic ship.
You start with 2-3 weapons that cannot be removed (they're physically part of the ship) no shields, but heavy armour that regenerates. All of the equipment would have to evolve over time to stay competitive so would drastically alter game play.
I've played with a Carrier type ship. A large, slow ship with a hanger that spawns fighters. this is a trick to play because you have to direct your ships to attack from afar. The carrier can take a beating for a while but dosn't have the firewpower to stand up in a fight nor the speed to run away if ambushed.
I guess these ship ideas really rely on custom items more so than the ship stats themselves.
maxWeapons=1
Of course it would require custom device with Invoke scripts.
The cyber weapons could drop shields, device damage, maybe shpOrderHold, you could have the target's reactor and overload it, or at the top level take over the enemy's ship and they begin attacking your enemies for you.
How about an Organic ship.
You start with 2-3 weapons that cannot be removed (they're physically part of the ship) no shields, but heavy armour that regenerates. All of the equipment would have to evolve over time to stay competitive so would drastically alter game play.
I've played with a Carrier type ship. A large, slow ship with a hanger that spawns fighters. this is a trick to play because you have to direct your ships to attack from afar. The carrier can take a beating for a while but dosn't have the firewpower to stand up in a fight nor the speed to run away if ambushed.
I guess these ship ideas really rely on custom items more so than the ship stats themselves.
Coming soon: The Syrtian War adventure mod!
A Turret defense genre mod exploring the worst era in Earth's history.
Can you defend the Earth from the Syrtian invaders?
Stay tuned for updates!
A Turret defense genre mod exploring the worst era in Earth's history.
Can you defend the Earth from the Syrtian invaders?
Stay tuned for updates!
My ships do use slots, but the one with a limit on total mass will rarely ever fill them all. The one with a per-device limit definately will use all its slots, and it doesn't have more than a normal ship.
Making devices nonremovable would require overriding the install code. Making certain items not installable would also require overriding the install code. You'd want to override the same functions my mod does.
Making devices nonremovable would require overriding the install code. Making certain items not installable would also require overriding the install code. You'd want to override the same functions my mod does.