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STATION!!!!

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Sep 20, 2003 Suicidal Lemming link
Stations should also have a 'Teleporter' or a 'Beacon' so ships can home there, if you're going far away your ship will need a 'Teleporter' 'Beacon' or 'Signal Finder' in order to go back.
A Teleporter on a station means that you home there you will instantly appear back at that station. These are big, bulky, and power hungry so certain stations will have these (key point stations), the farther away the longer it will search for you. (instant-will not lock) (about 0-5 jump time)
A Beacon (station) means your ship's escape pod will find the signal and warp to it, this will take about 3 jumps worth of time. (0-3-8-will not lock)
A Signal Finder means your ship's escape pod will find the signal quicker, about 1-2 jumps time, if the station has a beacon. If the station does not it will take about 3 jumps worth of time. (0-1-3-6-8-will not lock)
A Beacon (ship) means the station's teleporter can lock onto your ship from farther away. (instant-will not lock) (about 0-8-will not lock)
Teleporter (ship) means the ship will teleport ALL of the fighter pilots and crew to the sector it docked in. (station 0-1-3-5-will not lock) (station with beacon 0-1-2-4-7-will not lock) (station with teleporter 0-1-2-3-5-8-10-15-will not lock) Ship with teleporter must be of sufficient size.

If your ship fails to get a teleport\warp lock on a station, you will be adventually picked up by your nations teleporter that does a teleport check every 10 minutes, after checked you will be teleported to your nation's home planet in 5 minute, this is bad because the vendetta universe is 'going to be huge', so getting to where you were will be a pain. Also if possible you could be picked up by another nations teleporter, if you're a representative between nations your free to go, if your at war well, uh oh.

Jump time is warp in + warp out animation, about 5 seconds both ways. i think.

Of course all these self recover outfits have there drawbacks, a frigate with a teleporter will be a lot easier to find then a frigate without one as teleporters use enormous amounts of energy and in the heat of battle need to be ready to transport the second something goes wrong.
Sep 21, 2003 Pyro link
What if they licensed the FPS engine from someone? Project Entropia's engine is nice...
Sep 21, 2003 roguelazer link
They could use cube. It's free and open source. But they shouldn't. They're not making a fps! They're making a space sim! So let them work on their own thing and go play quake3.
Sep 21, 2003 Arolte link
A seperate engine? You're asking the devs to somehow merge the Vendetta engine with some sort of FPS engine for stations exclusively? Not only is it nearly impossible to merge two game engines together, but it'll also double the download size of Vendetta. It'll certainly boost the system requirements of the game drastically also. Plus, I don't think the devs are in any position to license any engine with the budget they've got. As cool as it may be, it just doesn't seem practical right now.
Sep 21, 2003 roguelazer link
Exactly. As I said, they could use cube, which is free, cross-playform and quick-starting, but is also large and requires a 700Mhz PC to use (not sure about the mac spec). However, I think they shouldn't use a FPS at all. If they did it with their engine, it would look pretty bad unless they spent another year redesigning their engine to do both. And if they did it with a separate engine, it'd be large, slow and cumbersome. So just forget the whole idea!
Sep 21, 2003 Arolte link
Cube sucks.

=b
Sep 21, 2003 roguelazer link
Obviously somebody hasn't found any high-textures patches. :D
Sep 21, 2003 Arolte link
I was thinking more along the lines of the engine itself. The level geometry is just horrid. It just looks way too dated. And don't get me started on the character animations. Just about the only thing that comes close to being complete is the fact that it has texture mapping. That's it.
Sep 21, 2003 roguelazer link
Back on topic... Devs, does the station do anything new? I mean, I see three large docking ports and several shadowy recesses that could also be docking ports elsewhere. But does the rest of the station do anything, or is it like our new, improved and cow-like frigate?
Sep 21, 2003 Suicidal Lemming link
Moooo.

(this is NOT off topic!)
Sep 21, 2003 crazydeb8r link
Ok, update on my idea:

1: It would be ONE station per sector. you would have to work as a team to secure the sector. AND YES it would be a battle of endurace. That's the point.

2: Make the stations "Easily Destroyable" That is, if you pound them with a fleet they go boom.

3: CAPTURE would be the optimal way for a Station to change hands.

Still onyl a thought, but I like it.
Sep 21, 2003 Sage link
Battles of endurance are pointless in Vendetta. It's just a matter of who gets bored first. It simply isn't exciting if people can just keep dying without a significant consequence.
Sep 21, 2003 roguelazer link
I like the idea crazy.
Sep 22, 2003 toshiro link
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Battles of endurance are pointless in Vendetta. It's just a matter of who gets bored first. It simply isn't exciting if people can just keep dying without a significant consequence.
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exactly. but
a) deaths in the final game won't be as meaningless as they are at present, and
b) (this needs more time to read :D)
do you know "Gridz"? it's a game where you start on an empty plane, overed by a grid (duh). you have to set up border pylons and let robots put them online to activate them. thus, you can enclose areas on the gaming board, which subsequently belong to you (they change to your color). you can also build robots to kill other robots, and robots to destroy border pylons, but all the robots are only able to start out from the portion of the battle field taht you own.
now, if you set up a pylon all alone, far-out in the plane, it's likely to be destroyed VERY soon, because supplies (a worker robot that repairs it and killer robots to protect it from destroyer robots) are a long ways off. same thing with "outposts". if dynamic economy affects weapon supplies too, your stores in an outpost will run dry really quick. try to defend against massed attacks of a fleet of bombers without missiles/rockets/mines... not funny, in my imagination. likewise, fleets that have been fought off will have to travel some ways before they can get back to the same outpost. hopefully, other players from the nation/faction that was attacked will be online and arrive in time to defend/resupply the endangered station.

thank you for your patience.
Sep 22, 2003 crazydeb8r link
EXACTLY toshiro.

Here's a scenario -

Serco puts an outpost in S 9.

Itani controls s 7 with a strong presence and decides to attack s9.

Since s9 is a newer outpost, without many traders, it's suplies are seriously limited. The Serco would probably have started mining, and may even have started trading, but the number of Military personel that could home there would be seriously small. Like 3 or 4. Thus it would have to produce as many defbots as possible (I like the idea of defbots being eternally dead, and new ones have to be produced, thus if a outpost gets attacked, and it's defbots go down, it has to replenish them one by one slowly.), and also maintain a character presence.

Realize that in the future, by the time this would be implemented, a few things would change.

1: Big Ships.

Duh. These could actually take on an outpost. Also, hopefully you can resupply at a big ship, think X-Wing Alliance for an idea.

2: Dynamic Economy and MILITARY LIMITS based upon the Economy.

This is the most basic principle you are taught in Poli Sci. The Military is supported by the economy. Simple, right? Wel, if vendetta has a dynamic economy, that's what it should do. the traders should be the ones who support the battle, by moving the supplies to the front lines, and the military fights. And honestly, there is no incentive. Just loyalty. But if there was territory like this, then there would be that loyalty.

Oh, come to think of it, there would be incentive for traders.

Mining the sector that you are attempting to secure.


ANYWAY

back to the point.

what would probably happen there?

Itani would probably move a few capital ships into place, warp in with 3 Cap ships and about 20 fighters. They have a base in S9 to respawn from that can probably hold 5 or 6 of those fighters, so they have a dedicated force.

The Serco may have 1 cap ship and 3 fighters here, but they cannot hold up. Or can they?

That depends on if the traders did their job right. If so, then the station could have constructed defenses. ALSO mines will be a huge problem for capital ships to deal with, as they could be destroyed by one minefield. The time they spend clearing the mines that should be laid will be an asset as well.

I like to think that fighters alone will probably never take down a station. That would be an interesting experiment. Someone try to shoot 2 full slots of Avalons at a station. In a ragnarok. Betcha you can't. And Just imagine if the station shot back!

Anyways, I've bored you enough, what do you all think?
Sep 22, 2003 ctishman link
So once the sector daemon is working right, I suppose that there will be AI trading convoys that keep a basic level of resources flowing? That way, stations won't just die off at 2:45 A.M. because at 1:30 the oxygen recompressor died, and nobody was present to hear the alarm siren.
Sep 22, 2003 toshiro link
hmm... right you are, ai convoys will be needed.
you could make it so that special resupply missions could be on the mission bbs for a set amount of time, let's say an hour (real time, definite times would have to be worked out), thus being accessable by human traders. after that time has elapsed, a robot convoy/ship will be sent to complete the mission.
also, if the human trader would take too long to deliver the goods (say, more than 24h, real time), the same thing as in the EV series would occur: you'd lose both shipment and expected pay. losing the shipment works thus: the cargo in the trader's holds gets marked as non-profittal, and can only be sold for 0 credits. if you bring the cargo back to where you received from, or you deliver it, albeit too late, to the station it was expcted at, you'd get a (small) percentage of the pay you would have received if you'd delivered the goods.
these goods (call 'em supply widgets or w/e) would need something taht discouraged pirating it, too. maybe if you picked it up after you killed a trader ship, it'd only sell for 75cr/widget.
Sep 22, 2003 crazydeb8r link
My thought was mroe like this:

while water/air/food could be added, at first the convoys will transport ammunition, fuel, etc. to the stations, and the stock would be depleted as ships resupply.
Sep 22, 2003 Pyro link
"and the stock would be depleted as ships resupply."

... thus causing prices to rise until someone delivers the next load of cargo... /me likes...
Sep 22, 2003 taumuaddib link
/me likes this whole idea

I'm not the biggest fighter in the world, but I would love to be a front line trader and supplier!
/me goes off all happy agreeing with most of what was said

~The Trader Penguin Person Thing