Forums » Suggestions

Advanced Armor System

«12
May 12, 2003 Renegade ++RIP++ link
yeah I know, but in my opinion giving only 1 freeking stupid gizmo that hasn't got that much effect other then very tiny. in contradiction to the special armor what is a nice advantage or the 10% to speed with the neutrals and on top of this also some gizmo's.

It really loks like, the itani get ripped off"sorry to tell it like this :D"

but maybe if you put in another armorsection:

serco armor: very high defense, lowers manouvrability "slightly"
itani armor: very low defense, higtens manouvrability "slightly"
neutral: standard defense 2 extra cargo pods

this will actually make it more strategic and all, do you want an atlas that is more amnouvrable but can absorb less damage or do you prefer one who is sluggish but can take one hell of a beating.

and so on , and so on.

and maybe you can put in those gizmo's, some advanced ones for the itani "highten speed, cloacks", put some in for neutral"cloacks, extra shields, ..." and serco "advanced guiding system"btter homing", battlecomputer, ..." things like this

These would improve gameplay a lot and would make every single ship special"cause an itani atlas would be different from a neutral one or a serco one "

but anturally these are just thoughts, and the devs will have something in their mind already :D

cheers
May 12, 2003 slappyknappy link
[advanced warning: this post is largely irrelevant]

"Those pesky chat fraggin npcs..."

It's not just npcs that chat-frag. I logged on for a few minutes last night, and twice within five minutes, I couldn't even return to the station safely because I was distracted by chatting in-game and chatting out-of-game*... kept dying so I logged off. Now, I know I'm a horrible fighter, so would LOVE to have some way to absorb a bit more damage, making it possible to safely dock somewhere, finish an in-game chat safely, and then leave when the game has my full attention.

PS - I am not whining. I dont hold anything against the player that shot me (although a warning would have been appreciated), and solved my problem by logging off until I could play un-distracted. But the armor would be nice.

* Out-of-game-chatting sounds like this:

"What are you doing...?"

~silence~

"Are you even paying any attention to me?"

~pause~... "not really... busy.. someones chasing me"

"Good grief."

"Look, I'm kind of busy right now -- damn! wait--"

"Well when you get a second, could you--"

"Ahhhrgh! Never mind, I just got killed. What did you want?"

Those of you who are married will understand :-). In this case, I was trying to type "leave me alone" while piloting with one hand and not really looking at the screen. I ended up wobblying around, getting stuck in chat-mode while desperately needing to use key-binds, and eventually ramming the station head first while getting blasted up the wazoo.

Oh well.

May 12, 2003 Celebrim link
renegade: I personally think that the Itani advantage (1 extra electronics slot, better electronics), is at least as good if not better than the Serco advantage (1 extra armor slot, better armor). For one thing, it is a heck of alot more versital. For another, wars are often one by the side with the technology advantage.

Look at it this way. Suppose you are equiping a light fighter with 3 electronics slots. You have to choose between the following items sold at the station:

1) Counter Measure Dispencer: Ammo 12. Automatically shoots small high velocity homing missiles at incoming rockets or missiles while emmitting a signature designed to look like your own to incoming homing missiles. Has a 50% chance of breaking the lock of homing weapons, and tends to destroy incoming weapons (~80% of the time) before they reach you.
2) Advanced Stealth Suite: Enemy sensors detect you at 1/3rd the normal range.
3) Cloaking Device: At a cost equal to turbo, you become invisibile, break weapons lock, and are invisible to all sensors except mass detectors. You may not fire or turbo when cloaked, and you may not recloak within 3 seconds of decloaking.
4) Improved Booster: You have a 10% bonus to max cruising speed.

If you are Itani, you not only can choose all 4, but you can buy the better ones at a lower cost. And while the bigger ships (say those with 10 electronic slots) would benifit less percentage wise from one extra slot, the same is true of the Serco ship's one extra armor slot. But for the big ships, being able to buy 'Advanced Shields' or 'Advanced ECM field' more cheaply than your Serco foe will probably at the least make up for the difference in quality and cost of his armor.

I don't think you realize how important good radar will if we have things like going behind an asteroid breaks radar contact, things that aren't on rader contact don't show up on 'u', capital ships have the capacity to attack you from several kilometers away, and other nifty things. Knowledge is power.
May 12, 2003 Renegade ++RIP++ link
<unneccesarily jibberish>

Yeah, I remember that, but in stead with a wive, it was with my dad.

something in the lines of:

what are you doing
I'm being chased
Ahh so you can search this for me on the net
Euhm I'm being chased
"looks with one eye to dad with a face of goddamn, leave me alone, then tells, ok, OK will search it up later"
I will leave it here
"me looks at it"
OK,Fuck,I'm death
loggs off and starts the searching

cheers

</unneccesarily jibberish>

EDIT after celes post :D:

Oh, there are other electronics slots possible, I thought you meant that on small ships:

itani: 1 "cloaking or speed based"
Neutral :1 "tradebased, so no others possible"
Serco: 0

But if it is rather like you said, then it could prove better. I thought you meant: serco get armored plates and no gizmo slots, neutrals get 10% to speed "both normal and turbo AND trading gizmoslot" and Itani only get the electronic gizmoslot.

In my eyes that would have been to underpowered for the itanis, but if it will be something in thelines like you stated, then it would be more even yes.

cheers
May 12, 2003 Celebrim link
No, it works something like this:

Serco Light Fighter
1 Armor Slot
3 Electronics Slots

Itani Light Fighter
4 Electronics Slots

Nuetral Light Fighter
3 Electronics Slots
10% bonus to cruising speed

Bigger ships get more slots.
May 12, 2003 hydrocarbon link
/me likes the idea, but thinks that the numbers should probably get tweaked.
May 13, 2003 Shiny Frog link
A metaphor, if you will (Kuz I just love the damn things).

"You're flying through space in your ship, you see pirates off the port bow at about 500m and closing on you.. you hit turbo and try to make it for the gate, but then suddenly... your cell phone rings. It's your dad, he wants you to run down to the store. While you're talking your the integallatic phone, paying no attention to where you're flying, you crash into an asteroid and the pirates shoot your corpse up and steal your loot."

Honestly, type kills happen and it's nothing to do with the game. It's a sign that you aren't paying attention. Lock your door so your dad can't get in if vendetta is that important. Or hit Esc and quit.. chances are, you'll survive 10 seconds.

(Post note: I think type kills are in the wrong thread, this being a thread about armor)
May 16, 2003 slappyknappy link
Type kills can go in another thread, sure.

The point of armor, however, isn't to avoid type-kills. The point is to add depth and flavor to the game, to make it even better than it already is. This is not a FPS, remember, it's an RPG... that means there should be abilities to play and communicate without manning the guns 100% of the time. I get distracted a lot during game play, as I am more-or-less on 24-hour call. So my character is not a pirate or a heavy combatant... my character has evolved into a peaceful and generous explorer-type that only fights when called upon to do so by team-mates. My character knows that the time to pilot will be short and most likely interrupted, and therefore avoids prolonged campaigns were my sudden disappearance would result in others dying.

So, in short, my character would like to have the option of choosing defensive options over offensive ones, knowing that the intergalactic cell phone is going to ring a lot... and wanting the ability to survive better when that happens. It's not a type-kill issue, it's an RPG issue that has evolved due to the ease with which you can be type-killed :-)
May 16, 2003 Celebrim link
Slappyknappy is right, at least from my perspective on the system. I'm not just trying to protect people from type kills, and indeed since I'm also (as you will note on other threads) wanting to see most of the weapons in game (ei the ones not being used) be made more powerful one could argue that I'd actually be increasing the chance that if ambushed you'd be destroyed.

The RPG aspect of this is just a secondary aspect of the system. For my purposes, the really important contribution of the system is that it increases the tactical (and indeed operational) richness of the game. However, if you are the sort that thinks that the coolness of this is the RP choices it opens up to you, then that's a perfectly valid opinion and one I wouldn't want to squash.

The only thing that I would disagree on is that this is both a FPS _and_ an RPG (or at least will be). It is maybe the first RPG envisioned which has the full combat depth of a good first person shooter rather than relying largely on 'left click to see an attack animation' 'right click to see a special attack animation' type mechanisms.
May 16, 2003 Renegade ++RIP++ link
naturelly you are right Celebrim,

But that was not what he meant, or at least I think so, In my opinion what he meant is this, if I'm willing to make my character a full time trader because of some of my habits, then The RP in the vendettastructure should let me do that, I would still have to fly the game myself and if attacked I will still have to defend myself, but my outside life shouldn't inpede the others involvement of the game. For instance, I have to go now, so the attack on the neutrals can't go on. If my character was a military one, then I would have time to spent and would have done nothing then attack everybody of another nation. If I'm an engineer then I should be able to build/repair other units, but my prime objective wouldn't be that I should be able to shoot everybody in game. Like slappy stated, RP means roleplaying, and if people don't want to fight with their character at that moment, then nobody has to push them, but they still should be able to do the flying themselves.

PS: my character isn't a military person, isn't a trader , isn't anything specific. My character is a jack off all trades "some people would even call it a goody 2 shoes :D". So I won't do anything against the law "of vendetta"

cheers
May 16, 2003 slappyknappy link
You are both right. I want to have the option to play as more of an RPG than a FPS, but I also agree that others should be able to play as a FPS if they want to. A well balanced armor system with lots of depth will benefit both: it will benefit the RPG types because it will allow us to make ourselves less of a target to the FPS guys. Likewise, it will allow the FPS guys to develop more complex strategies that will allow them to enjoy the game better. And (most important) is that it will allow every who falls in between the two extremes to benefit as well.

But also, to clarify: When I say "FPS" I'm thinking in terms of some of the better shooters out there; the ones that require tactics and game-play (Like Dues Ex and the Clancy shooters) versus the "always run, always move, and always shoot" variety (like QIII and UT). I think Celebrim* would agree that vendetta really has no place for the "move as fast as you can and shoot everything that moves" crowd... even the minimal RPG-ish-ness that the venndetta universe currently supports doesn't really allow that. Even Icarus RPG's beyond that simple paradigm.

PS - * my spell checker always tries to change "Celebrim" to "Celery".. I just think that's very funny :-)
May 16, 2003 sheepdog link
it seems that neutrals are getting the shaft here, am i the only one not noticing that?
I think all ships should have at least one armor space. but you could only have a certian amount of mass on your ship. (this would include engine but all ships would be able to cary as much as they can hold with the ship "naked" or with out any switching)
(so Valks wouldnt get that much armor prolly only the alluminum alloy plate).

This could also help if we could trade cargo space for armor space. Armor space for weapon space, weapon space for cargo, cargo for weapon, armor for cargo. You get my drift. But if mass was an issue, or not mass, space for electronics, engine space, thruster space. i think i should start a new post with this. But you all are seeing my drift?
May 17, 2003 Celebrim link
Err..I guess you are the only one noticing that. What was I thinking? Gee, how could I have decided to shaft the Nuetral. It must be that I just don't like the Nuetral, that I decided to give them an unimportant advantage like a free boost to thier speed. I mean, its not like the ability to keep your speed up while firing or turning is that important. And I bet I never thought how a boost to your cruising speed might be really important in a capital ship that couldn't turbo. Or wait, did I?

I'm seeing that you have alot of ideas that you need to think about some more. I'm thinking that most of the ideas you are outlining are ones I've already thought about quite a bit, but you probably wouldn't believe that. I'm thinking neither of us are the designers of this game so none of it really matters all that much.
May 17, 2003 slappyknappy link
I am a neutral. All of the suggestions that I've made wouldn't necessarily make it **easier** to play, but they would all make it **better*** to play.

Easy doesn't always equal fun.

Some people think that easy=fun=good. These people inevitably grow up, join the workforce, are useless, and then quickly get promoted to management :-)
May 17, 2003 Renegade ++RIP++ link
euhm,

me wants to become management , the entire day sitting on your lazy ass

mmhhhhh :D

cheers
Nov 27, 2004 bsp link
The idea of armour "slots" seems stupid. Take the armoured BMW — there are no "slots" in the traditional car that chunks of metal are slipped into. I can see two types of armour: Internal armour, and external armour. Internal armour provides much less protection, external armour eventually falls off (which looks cool)
Nov 27, 2004 Celebrim link
"Take the armoured BMW — there are no "slots" in the traditional car that chunks of metal are slipped into."

First of all, the term slots is used merely for conveince. I was in no way implying that there was some sort of physical slot that armor could be dropped into in the ship. I was using 'slot' in the same manner that 'slot' is used when it refers to weapons - some physical feature that would accomodate a particular sort of modification. The exact physical properties of how that armor is built into the ship were not addressed by the post.

Second of all, while there are no 'slots' in a traditional car for armor to be slipped into, in a military vehical like the Humvee, there are removable fiberglass armor panels that work quite abit like 'slots'.

Lastly, this system was written with two things in mind: simplicity and compatibility with what was then the existing system. It would be perfectly possible to create a slotless armor system that simply modifed the weight of the ship within a certain range and generated an armor rating based on the quality of the armor and the ammount of added weight. At the time of the original suggestion however components did not add weight and whether or not they should add weight was an argument unto itself. Furthermore, the goal of the suggestion was to add a maximal ammount of content for a minimal ammount of work on the part of the devs. For that purpose, armor 'slots' are ideal, both in terms of the code required and the ammount of balancing that would be required.
Nov 27, 2004 Shapenaji link
Overall, I think its a great idea. Wtg dude, hope the devs pick it up.
Nov 28, 2004 jexkerome link
The whole system seems too Serco-centric, specially when you consider the Itani have stronger ships due to UIT-developed Xirite Alloy.

And I think you left out Ablative armor. Makes you "immune" to all weapons and explosions (not crashing) but it only withstands a number of hits; after that it's gone until you buy some more.

If we were to use extra ships slots, it'd be easier to make them generic, and then have the specific items (armor, gizmos, ship stat boosters) be nation-restricted, or perform better/worse for each nation, and sometimes both (a gizmo that is forbidden to Serco but Itani use much better than UIT, for example). The gizmos, depending on their nature, could also drain some of your battery as long as they're equipped, and/or make your ship heavier and less maneuverable to a point (so a slab of Xirite armor won't drain energy but put some weight on the ship, while a radar scrambler will drop your battery by about five points and yet weight nothing).
Nov 28, 2004 Celebrim link
"The whole system seems too Serco-centric..."

If you will read the thread, you'll find that it is Serco-centric for the simple reason that at the time it seemed most like what we knew of Serco to have the more durable ships. There are other areas were I would intend to give other factions other advantages.

For the record, I am not Serco. My primary character is and always has been Blue/Itani. So I have absolutely no reason to give Serco any unfair advantages.

"And I think you left out Ablative armor."

No, I didn't. Ablative armor is one of the gadgets that can be equiped in the gizmo slot discussed in my 'toys' threads. My implementation is different (simplier), but it is definately there. The rest of your comments are best directed to my 'toys' thread.

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/1494#48543