Homeworld-style mothership mod feasibility study

[Autohummer]

On IRC, I had asked if it would be possible to create a playership in Transcendence that is a self-sufficient, self-upgrading and self-fleet-building mothership. It seems possible with existing coding resources. This thread is for putting down design and mechanic documentations as the mod is built.

Personal comments: I would suggest using this mothership along with miningpack and dynamic systems and other extensions that enhances the strength and number of enemies and the viability of mineral collection. Vanilla Transcendence would provide too little mineral resources for the mothership to grow.

Notes on the main requirements of the ship:

Self-sufficient:

1) Must be able to refine/gather fuels that are usable in the ship's reactor.

2) Must be able to self repair (with harvested resources or for free)


Self-upgrading:

1) Must be able to mount weapons, devices and armour without any facilities.

2) Must be able to build new items to upgrade ship. Limitations can be resources and/or blueprints and plans. (eg can only build something when an undamaged sample is onboard and researched.)

3) Can produce some upgrade items (nanos, ROMs) to a certain limit.

4) Able to repair damaged items or produce replacements for damaged devices.


Fleet construction:

1) Must be able to use stored resources to build ships. Resources include weapons, shields, armour, minerals/ship hull and reactors. (To simplify things, a Homeworld-style RU system can be used.)

2) Ships includes small craft that can be stored onboard the mothership and larger ships that serve as escorts. Limits include blueprints, resources and possibly a hard cap. Can only construct ships if they are somehow reverse-engineered or researched.

3) A resource collector (preferably dozens) is a must for enjoyable mothership commanding.

4) (Optional, advanced) Ships can be built with weapons, armour and shields as selected by player.

It looks this for now:

[FourFire]

This is a great idea, and one which I want to see come to fruition!

On self-upgrading points 2 & 4 I suggest modifying and integrating Miningpack RMP and SDW weaponlabs dockscreen menus

As for the resources, I think that such an extension would have to be a custom adventure extension with increased amounts of ore and enemies (yes integrate a modified System density and Dynamic systems)

Research may be accomplished by "reverse engineering" a sufficient number of the same type of wrecked hull (say 10 of them)
"reverse engineering" will happen by via the scuttle function in PSD (which will change to "salvage" and provide a certain number of "Resource Units" per salvaged wreck), and after 10 wrecks have been scuttled the mothership will be able to produce hulls of this type equipped with various equipment you have in cargo.
Upon salvaging a wreck damaged items will be "melted down" into a random number of RU and undamaged devices will be place in the cargohold.
(you will be able to set up Blueprints of specific hull loadouts in Advanced Settings)

I also suggest that the Mothership have a specialized cargohold menu which allows you to view one type of item at a time, rather than all of them at once (and we will need to think up something for the blueprint dockscreen, maybe a modification of G.O.D's Browse items menu combined with PSD's Link weapons Menu).

[Autohummer]

As per yesterday's IRC chat, we are also considering the possibility of having the mothership's sprite change as armour (or other) upgrades are applied.


@FourFire: The Scuttle idea is good, but it would be better if it can be made to be called "(S)alvage" instead and that the player gets some resources from each wreck (undamaged equipment are directly transferred to storage. Damaged devices may be melted down and the hull itself can yield some resources.). We can even have Salvage Corvettes to do the work for us.

[newtonianfreak666]

I would like to provide an idea.

Generally all motherships, actually, all big ships have the worst speed and turn capability. Take the CSC for example, lots of firepower, insane armor, but the speed??? It would actually take a year to get to the core. I'm kind of a bad-assed battleloving freak. Generally dont mine and trade until absolutely necessary for lack of money. Prefer big guns and fast ships. My dream of ultimate battle came true when i got to use the CSC and the ICS. Although the ICS is way more powerful but i prefer the CSC. Looks cool. ONLY DOWNSIDE- THE CSC's SPEED!!! I would like to request Autohummer to give this mothership atleast 18% lightspeed (i know this is insane but please), so that we can atleast reach Heretic system while we are still young and about 4.5 thrust (Giant ships don't stop well. Takes them ages to stop).

As for weapons, since it is a "MOTHERSHIP", i'd like to request atleast 5 link slots on 360 degree turrets and about 9 weapon slots total and 8 non-weapon. I liked the Agauptera's self learning function. You could add that too. It could also have a Cyber attack/defence system like the one used by the sungs. And a device protect system/armour(protection against ventari). Since it is a mothership and not a small ship that's why i think these defences should be there. Reactor maybe about 2-5GW. Massive shield, Huge armor(CSC armor's good)

And umm, something about the cargo bay of MOTHERSHIP size... 50000 tons??? I request this insane cargohold for 1 reason- To store ships. For example, a britannia weighs over 300tons atleast. To create and store such ships we're gonna need a massive cargohold. And i would also like to request one other thing. Once a ship is created and called for deployment, like an auton, we should also get the option to call it back, once the combat is over and store it in the cargohold. Maybe create a separate cargohold inside the cargohold or giving different cargoholds and naming it as a FIGHTER-BAY(Not the mod). The best would be multiple holds.

I propose 4 primary holds-

1) The 'ore-refining' and 'creating fuel and armor' can be classified as the 'Factory Bay' which will contain the Cargo/mining bay. All self sustaining systems will be produced here including the Damage control party (highly recommended for a ship of this class). The damage control party will be slowly depleted if it is operating and the ship sustains damage (much like a patch spider but you can regenarate this one)

2) The 2nd one's the 'Research Bay' which will contain the Research-hold. The damaged armor and stuff used for reverse-engineering will be stored here. The research bay will also contain the science & research unit responsible for all reverse-engineered and advanced researched products.

3) The 3rd one's the 'Weapons Bay'. All undamaged weapons will be stored here. This could further be subdivided into 2 more bays namely Missile bay (storing different kinds of missiles) and Grenade Bay (for the grenades). It would be nice if you'd give this ship the ability to mount multiple launchers (since in reality a ship of that size and power would not just have one single launcher)

4) The final bay would be the 'Hangar Bay'. It'd be subdivided into Hangar and Shipyard. The hangar'd create ships and store them when not in combat. The shipyard refuels and repairs them. Fuel and armor will be deducted from the Cargo bay.

If you liked this idea and are interested in it then plz reply. I'll be very glad to add some more ideas. But after all, its your mod and its completely upto you...

[Autohummer]

@ newtonianfreak666: Yay, reply!

I, for one, is one of those who knows that a big ship shouldn't be fast but want to make it so. (I gave a 7.5 km long superbattleship called the Tabinka the manoeuvrability of a Su-37 Flanker (it exits FTL by doing a Pugachev's Cobra) and a sub-light speed of 0.5 times lightspeed.) Back to business. I would like to give the mothership some speed, but just enough that it can transit systems in a reasonable time, but not chase down fighters and gunships. After all, the fighting is meant to be done with your fleet, and the mothership takes mainly a support role. Some upgrades can make it somewhat faster and more agile. But at late-almost endgame, I would like things to change for the dramatic, with perhaps reverse-engineered Ringer/Heirodule/Io-cream propulsion technology being a constructable upgrade that effectively turns your ship to something like the Naggarok in HW Cata, as fast as a raging beast-infected extragalactic explorer and as powerful as one.

On weaponry and protection, I am content with giving the mothership some good ICX (a few extra device slots) to take care of pesky strikecraft and missiles but not so that it is a battleship itself. It can have a few slots (4 omni linked and 2 non-linked is okay?) for weapons and they should be omnidirectional, of course, but it should never be meant to run headfirst into a firefight. Again, when it's almost time to fight the ICS, things change, and a superweapon (think Siege cannon or Sajuuk's main gun) becomes available to the mothership, turning it into a very powerful ship that can lead the fleet into battle. (It still needs the fleet, though. It can't do everything by itself.)

The mothership's hold will have to be leviathanic, it has to store all the minerals and little fighters and bombers that it builds. I am thinking at least 50,000 tonnes of cargo space maximum, but initially you don't need so much, not to mention your early engines can's move so much without the player/modder dying of boredom. I think 1,000 tonnes at the beginning is more than enough, and this cargo bay can be expanded with the addition of storage bays.

I think all the "Bays" can be done with some intense dockscreen magic. Separating them into different cargo holds may be harder, though.

Expanding upon your ideas:

The 'Factory Bay' can be spilt into "Processing" and "Manufacturing" Decks.

The Processing Deck handles the raw materials and turns them into a common resource currency that can be used be various other systems on the mothership (we're still a bit torn on the IRC as to using RUs like Homeworld or separate ore types.) It includes a "Smelter," which obviously refines the ores into ingots/RUs (we are basing the thing on the miningpack at this stage.) And a "Refinery" for turning fuel-type ingots/RUs into fuel (from miningpack again.)

The Manufacturing Deck turns the resource currency into useful items and devices. There is an "Armour Forge" for turning resources into armour plates. A "Weapons Factory" for making weapons (If we include SDW labs' custom weapons, this will allow custom weapon configurations to be set and saved for rapid production.) A "Shield Lab" for the shields. A "Device Plant" for all those assorted devices. And finally a "Upgrades Factory" for producing various barrels, ROMs, field crystals and mem cubes.

I would make the damage control party a bit more innate and undamageable. The ship is complicated enough as it is. It can be upgraded throughout the game, though, becoming faster in repairing, and even capable of fixing damaged devices on the mothership.

I would like to add a progress indicator to the Research Bay.

Each item that can be researched is listed wither their research progress. Research requires both samples and time. Higher level items takes longer time. Additional samples can be used to boost research, with damaged samples being less effective. To make things more interesting, research can only be started with an undamaged item in storage. Damaged items can only be used to boost an ongoing research on that particular item only. Any items used in research is automatically consumed.

The ships are researched through salvaging wrecks.

I don't know if the Weapons Bay is meant for weapons for use on the Mothership or weapons for use in fleet ships. If for the mothership, the standard configuration should suffice. If for fleet ships, read on. Also, I think it is hard-coded for ships to be allowed to have only one launcher-mounted weapon, correct me if otherwise.

The Hangar Bay is the very point of the mod, I dare say. I am trying to use the Homeworld system, with fighters and corvette-sized craft being storable in the hanger, but frigate or above has to leave the Mothership after being built. (I like Cataclysm's feature of letting frigates dock for repairs, though. Capital ships may be allowed to dock externally for a quick fix (If programmable.)

NPC ships don't have a fuel count, IIRC. And they can repair their armour when docked point by point. The point of producing so many armour, shields and weapons is for mounting them when you build a ship. I am still a bit unsure as to how this should be done, but it can either be:

a) A fleet ship requires some ingots (for the hull,) and some pieces of armour to be built (think PSD shipwright.) Weapons and shields and other devices can be mounted when finalizing production as well. (A handy stock number display will be shown.) If possible, a refit utility can be made to bring all fleet ships of a certain type (eg Sapphire) to the exact same player-ordered configuration. A retire option is useful when the resources is needed for something else. The ship will dock with the mothership, its armour and devices will be returned to storage, the hull will be molten into ~70% of the ingots used in construction.

b) A fleet ship can be built in a "standard" configuration (which is the way they appear in NPC hands,) for ingots/RUs only, but to customize them you need to have the necessary parts in stock and in sufficient amounts. Refit and retire are similar as in a).

Also, I am wondering if you want all ships to be reverse-engineered Transcendence ships or do you want some original ships for the mothership fleet? (The current graphic for the mothership is the HW1 Banana, by the way.)

PS: It's not exactly my mod. I'll do my best throwing ideas, preparing graphics, do some basic coding, balancing and playtesting, but the really hard-coding is left for the expert(s) (RPC) and the IRC crew.

[newtonianfreak666]

Alright, first of all, i'm just a gamer, not a programmer. I know nothin about programming(The only thing i ever did was to change the CSC's stats giving it the manoeverability of the wolfen and 1.5 lightspeed!!! Result- Ship goes faster than lasers!!! ). So, i missed out on some technical points that you said. And secondly, i've played only Trancendence, nothin else(Homeworld or Anacreon). So, havin a hard time tryin to figure out some of the things.

Anyways, lets get down to business, 1st of all, I like and completely agree with with the fact that it is a mothership and not some hulking destroyer, and hence should have better defence than offence. For a moment, i was carried away by the idea of a massive, super-powerful mothership out to wreak havoc on the badguys. But that's history now. And, i believe 18% or 15% lightspeed would be enough(The EI500 freighter has 18%). Anything slower would be a bit too slow. And the fact, that the fleet does all the fighting while we defend ourself is good. That's what mothership's generally do. The fleet will guard us and take out the enemy fighters/gunships while the MS(short for mothership) takes on the big guys like Stations/fortresses etc.(Necessary!!! I've lost many wingmen/drones/merceneraies taking on stations, Penitent shrines especially ). And about the defence capabilities, you said 'some good ICX'... If you're thinking about multiple anti-projectile systems on the ship, ITS AWESOME! I hadn't thought about this idea. By using multiple ICX systems on the MS, it will be well defended from any type of threat(2/3 Longreach autocannons would be enough to defend this monster). The weapon slots you suggested are good enough for a MS as you said but i'd emphasize on the cybercortex/warfare. I believe, it should have something like this, as in reality, a MS would have such weapons in its arsenal.

The Expandable cargohold system (extra storage bays) that you proposed sounds good but will it be possible to upgrade a 1000ton hold into a 50000ton hold? I'd like to request you to give it a thought though with the big guys. Max cargo space of 50000tons is good, but upgrading the cargohold at different stations? It's a mothership, generally doesn't need to be upgraded(Just my POV though). And the 'dockscreen magic' concept is good. Will save a lot of programming.

I really liked how you expanded on my ideas. Splitting the Factory bay into Processing and Manufacturing and the Ingot system is awesome. They could be stored as we store ores now and used as and when required. The progress indicator idea is good. And, the fact that research can be started only when an undamaged sample is present on board is novel. I would also like to expand this idea that We could also add a feature that determines the speed of the research. e.g. Having multiple undamaged sections of stuff on board speeds up research considerably fast(like compounding the time taken). Also, would it be ok if the research would speed up a bit if docked to a station of that type? Like, if we are researching a shield generator and dock at an armour station, or some kind of weapon and dock at a weapons dealer, the research would speed up considerably. Also, if we are trying to research something like the Raisermesser Launcher, and we dock at a raisermesser station or the raisermesser HQ, there is the option of working together with the station to speed up research in return for some favours or the ability to trade research or even the ability to buy the research(from the raisermesser HQ only). What do you say?

The weapons bay idea was for multiple launchers only. I know nothin about the code. Can you ask any of the big guys if this is possible? The reason for this is that its very annoying to constantly keep changing launchers in the game. The NAMI launcher's versatile, it's missiles are cheap and common, but it's limited to the Lucifer. 75hp tracking thermo works good enough till mid-game, not till endgame(Once, during my early Transcendence days I wanted to see how the Lucifers fared against the Iocrym. So, i bought all the lucifers the game had to offer. It was the most powerful missile i'd discovered till then. With a full payload of 763 lucifers i jumped into Heretic and engaged the Iocrym sentinels... 763 lucifers, 6 sentinels dead!!! THAT'S NOT FAIR!!! ) The NAMI Heavy launcher on the other hand is very uncommon including its missiles, not to forget they're insanely heavy. M2; M5; S3, These are the bad boys, but where do i find them? If i run out of Lucifers in the small launcher, I atleast have the stilletos, longbows, starburst etc. as backup. But the Heavy launcher? You run out of missiles, get to a station, install a new launcher. Then there's different kinds of launchers- Makayev; Raisermesser; Ares... and none of them are compatible with the other's missiles Grenades on the other hand are the most commonly found type of projectile that can be fired from a single launcher but are non tracking, heavily inaccurate against(and for) fast ships and very slow/clumsy/dangerous when used in close quarters combat while using a fast gunship(You know what i mean. You're going backwards and you fire a grenade and suddenly accelerate forward to get a clear shot or dodge incoming fire and suddenly you see the grenade's moving slower than you! KABOOM!!! You got killed by your own grenade! Happened many times to me.) The everything launcher mod seems good enough for this but, it is very clumsy. You'd have to scroll through a huge no of projectiles to find the right one. So, i had the idea to classify different projectiles as different. So, you could ask Mr. George if its possible. A little bit of dockscreen magic would do...

As for the Building ships in the Hangar, I'd go with a mixture of both the options. The option could be there to create ships with standard NPC configuration or with custom config. Standard ships would take less time to be built while custom configs would compound the time taken. The more the customisation, the more the time taken. The refit and retire options are cool...

As for the MS fleet ships, if possible, we could add a few new heavy gunships(really powerful ones ) and the rest would be reverse engineered transcendence ships. Also, ship building technology could be traded/bought/looted from different stations and not only from wrecks. eg. docking into a shipyard gives the option of buying researched shiptech. The same way, Looting an enemy station will have the possibility to find researched enemy shiptech like ares ships etc. Also, cruisers and dreadnoughts would be the max size of ships created, CSC's wouldn't look too good being created from a ship. Also, bigger ones like cruisers and dreadnoughts could be built only when docked with a station and not independently. What do you say?

As for your detailed Manufacturing deck, i'd say it's awesome, but it'd be insanely complex to code this thing... and using it would also be quite a challenge. It would be like, you're basically handing out the player to create whatever he wants in this game. Like in age of empires or populous... The coding would be insane for this ship... Using it, even cooler... I can't wait to test this thing out...

PS:- I'd love to hear some more ideas from you...

[PM]

I would like to give the mothership some speed, but just enough that it can transit systems in a reasonable time, but not chase down fighters and gunships.

You need to overwrite or otherwise do something about the standard inertialess drive. It lets any ship, even massive ships like CSCs, stop and go easily; and with .25c (.28c if enhanced), the ship can chase down many other ships.

[Atarlost]

@ newtonianfreak666: Yay, reply!

I, for one, is one of those who knows that a big ship shouldn't be fast but want to make it so. (I gave a 7.5 km long superbattleship called the Tabinka the manoeuvrability of a Su-37 Flanker (it exits FTL by doing a Pugachev's Cobra) and a sub-light speed of 0.5 times lightspeed.) Back to business. I would like to give the mothership some speed, but just enough that it can transit systems in a reasonable time, but not chase down fighters and gunships.

I would suggest a high top speed but low thrust to mass ratio. That will make intrasystem transit relatively fast, but not be capable of rapid vector changes.

[PM]

I would suggest a high top speed but low thrust to mass ratio. That will make intrasystem transit relatively fast, but not be capable of rapid vector changes.

If that is done, all inertialess drives must be eliminated because they provide instant stop-and-go. Top speed used is the greater of the ship's default drive or the installed engine drive.

[Autohummer]

Sorry for the delayed reply. Christmas was crazy.

@ newtonianfreak666:

The MS could use a lot of empty non-weapon device slots, I guess at least 15. We need to install CPUs and plenty of other devices on it. If there is some kind of device that can be used to electronic warfare except the Quantum CPU then it most likely come as a mod device that can be installed on the MS. For vanilla-style electronic warfare, I think one of the things the MS must have is a way for it to build memoric cubes. The limited number and uses of these cubes (one shot use and unreliable source) is what makes the electronic warfare mechanism useful for NPCs only in vanilla Transcendence. (I think they can be added to the "Upgrades factories" since cubes can also be used as upgrades, or just change the name of the "Upgrades Factory" to "Miscellaneous Items Factory."

For the ICX part. I don't know if the MS (or any other ship for that matter) can have more than one ICX installed at a time. If so, the player can effortlessly fill any surplus slots with them (fresh from the MS' own factories, or bought if the player must insist.) If only one ICX can be used, I suggest players pair the MS mod up with the ICX mod which has some very effective ICX devices.

I may have exaggerated a bit with the numbers, but I was trying to make the cargo hold size be upgradeable in smaller (relative to ship size) increments (and properties such as mining and smuggling) unlike standard ships, which jump to their maximum hold size (or a fraction of which) instantly from their standard hold size with the addition of any kind of cargo hold. For example: 1,000 tonnes standard hold. Mineral Processing Module: +500 tonnes +allow Mothership to loot mineral asteroids with no loss (same as miner's hold.) Sensor-proof hold: +500 tonnes +allow MS to dock without being caught while carrying illegal items (same as smuggler's hold.) Ore Canister 1: +5,000 tonnes. Ore Canister 2: +5,000 tonnes. Cargo module 1: +5,000 tonnes. Cargo module 2: +5,000 tonnes. (Basically the ore canister and the cargo module does the same thing, with different names.) Only one of each of these modules can be installed at a time to prevent spamming of storage space (hence the numbers for some of the modules.)

The formula of the research speed is something that needs lots of balancing. It would have to take account of the level of the item (Class X obviously would take longer than Class I,) and what item it is (armour/devices/weapons would take longer than other items. Ships take the longest or may even use another formula.) A research time is produced after calculation by the aforementioned, still undecided formula. eg, 15 minutes or 900 ingame seconds. The player can either autopilot through it, or boost research by expending items of the same type being researched. eg, using damaged or undamaged Jotun Deflectors to boost research on the Jotun Deflector. Each item used to boost a research would take a certain amount of time off the research (either through another formula or a set percentage, eg 5%.) Damaged items boost only half or a quarter of time (whichever's more playable) as an undamaged sample.

We can mod the vanilla stations to sell us plans of weapons or PSD shipyards for ship blueprints (hard to catch them "in the wild" otherwise), which automatically completes the research on that particular weapon/ship. eg, Raisermesser Research Station sells MS Akan 30 blueprints. MS immediately completes Akan 30 research. Speaking of which, I think it'd make sense to automatically complete the research of the standard ammo type of a certain weapon (eg, Akan 30 shells would not need to be researched and is immediately available for use as Akan 30 is researched.) I don't know what would happen with mods that allow multiple kinds of ammunition for one weapon, though.

Having multiple launcher is more of a general feature request, I think. I can try asking around. I sometimes wonder why I can't have another launcher installed even I had the slot and room for it, too. The ammo issue, though, should be an non-issue as the MS can definitely produce ammunition by itself. You can stock up on your favourite missiles by the thousands and produce more in the field (much like a HW missile destroyer, actually.)

The shipyard should introduce a build-time as well. Popping out a full fleet in a few seconds is fun but makes no sense. It would be nice if custom ship takes longer to build, but it may to too complicated to implement. I am thinking if we need a limit on the ships your fleet can have as well. The bigger the ship the longer it would take. I think building heavy capital ships can be done by the MS independently, there's no need to resort to another station (In HW the MS builds everything except another MS.)

I have a few custom ships in the works. They are smaller gunships and fighters (maybe I'll port the HW fighters and Corvettes. Lazy much?) which basic design allows the MS to survive the Eridani System. They can be customized later on so they'll remain useful. At Heretic System, a alien-technology-based battleship would be available for construction after some event, such as successful clearing of the event horizon or research on the Iocrym Sentinel that allows you to fight the ICS with some heavy firepower.

The coding for any single part of this mod would drive people crazy. I am certain. So I begin with a feasibility study, which allows us to slow down and think before burning our brains out.

@PM: Thanks for reminding me the Inertialess Drive exists. Petrancium Megadrive is faster, though it has inertia. These end-game-level overpowered drives are possible upgrades for the mothership to make the final battle more dramatic (maybe the mod will buff the Io-cream, but if Dynsys and the other expansions, I doubt if that would be needed.)

@Atarlost: Actually, all ships should have a theoretical light-speed limit on conventional drives, if using real-world physics. Most games, including Transcendence, put a hard cap so that the big ships will stay slow, but in reality it should be like what you said. They can go very fast, but very hard to accelerate and decelerate. Perhaps the MS can have the max speed of a Wolfen, but low thrust coupled with a huge mass? It will be initially slow and unwieldy, but utterly dramatic when facing the ICS

[PM]

Having multiple launcher is more of a general feature request

You cannot install multiple launchers on a ship. You can bypass the one launcher limit by installing virtual launchers, but that way (as done for PSD5) lies madness. Ticket #1010 is a request to support multiple launchers.

Re: Megadrive
All that the pteracnium megadrive has going for it is high top speed. For a theoretical ship that is bigger(?) than the Xenophobe Ark, the acceleration bonus is negligible. The megadrive is best used on light freighters (EI500) or heavy gunships (Centurion, Manticore). For slow and massive capital ships, the inertialess drive is the clear winner.

[PM]

For the ICX part.

ICX devices are stackable, normally. They also use non-device slots by default, but can be redefined to use a weapon slot instead.

[shanejfilomena]

I DO NOT care what you say: I love Autohummers' Ships since I first tried his MASSIVE first product entry into the Transcendence Universe.

Since then : While abit Alien to me, his technical skills and options are normally best for these Strange devices he brings to us from other Galaxies.

BTW: I seem to remember seeing that MS : I forgot what / where but i think it was Darker colored and I wanted it sooooo bad
I will be happy to see it join the Fleet of Playerships : which are only getting better with these other-worldly additions I have been seeing.

EXamples:

Code: Select all

http://xelerus.de/index.php?s=mod&id=1241
http://xelerus.de/index.php?s=mod&id=1240
http://xelerus.de/index.php?s=mod&id=1221
http://xelerus.de/index.php?s=mod&id=1219

[TVR]

@ newtonianfreak666: Yay, reply!

I, for one, is one of those who knows that a big ship shouldn't be fast but want to make it so. (I gave a 7.5 km long superbattleship called the Tabinka the manoeuvrability of a Su-37 Flanker (it exits FTL by doing a Pugachev's Cobra) and a sub-light speed of 0.5 times lightspeed.) Back to business. I would like to give the mothership some speed, but just enough that it can transit systems in a reasonable time, but not chase down fighters and gunships.

I would suggest a high top speed but low thrust to mass ratio. That will make intrasystem transit relatively fast, but not be capable of rapid vector changes.

If that is done, all inertialess drives must be eliminated because they provide instant stop-and-go. Top speed used is the greater of the ship's default drive or the installed engine drive.

There's no need for that - infinite linear impulse AND top speed won't change the rate of angular acceleration, AKA turn rate.

Moment of inertia depends on the mass distribution distance from the rotation axis, or in the case of a spaceship, the center of mass. Given that angular acceleration depends on torque (directly proportional to radius) and moment of inertia (exponentially proportional to radius), that spaceship would be a drag racer at best: High acceleration and high top-speed, but near zero turning capability. This would also prevent it from bringing the spinal mount to bear in any situation other than pursuit.

This applies to Transcendence too, turn rate is determined solely by mass and base maneuverability, not any drive upgrades.

As for the mothership, I would personally prefer playing it in nothing less than The Sandbox or Uncharted with more than a 100 nodes - D&O is just too short to enjoy leveling up your ship.

[pip]

There's no need for that - infinite linear impulse AND top speed won't change the rate of angular acceleration, AKA turn rate.

By way of example, try out a game with a Maruader Raid Platform. You can't just wander into a system and dart around, you have to think about where you want to go and how before you set off.
Installing drive upgrades can reduce travel times considerably, but has the effect of making the ship quite difficult maneuver as you're going much faster but still turn like a cathedral.
The inertialess drive is great for maneuvering as you stop instantly, but it removes the ability to cruise sending your fuel consumption soaring.

So even with a huge mothership there wouldn't really be a need to change the engine upgrades.
It would be awesome however if you could make an engine upgrade that didn't increase the speed of the ship, but rather it's turn rate....